Crow threw down the pinch bar. “Well, kiss my ass!”

“What’s wrong?” LaMastra called, racing around the corner.

The window frame was splintered and devoid of glass, but they couldn’t see into the house because the entire frame was securely blocked by neat rows of new red bricks. Crow reached up and touched the cement, and though it looked recent it was cold and hard. He shook his head. “This son of a bitch thought of everything.”

“Yeah?” asked LaMastra. “I’ll bet he didn’t think of this.” With that he took Ferro’s shotgun, fed in a Shok-Lock round, aimed the weapon at the length of shiny steel-welded chain and pulled the trigger. The chain leapt like a scalded snake, spitting sparks and metal splinters, then the weight of the lock on the inside of the door yanked the ends through the holes and they heard the chain slither into a heap behind the door.

Crow nodded his appreciation. “Wow. That gives a whole new slant to breaking and entering.”

LaMastra handed the Remington back to Ferro and picked up his ten-gauge. “Shame I can’t get them for Bessie here.” He stood four-square in front of the door, shotgun leveled. “You guys ready?”

Crow jacked a fresh round into the breech and Ferro drew his Glock. They stood on either side of LaMastra, and Ferro said simply: “Kick it.”

LaMastra slammed his heel against it and the door flew inward, swinging all the way around to smash against the inner walls, sending the chain skittering across the floor of the entrance foyer. LaMastra stepped forward and fired a shot into the doorway, pumped, fired again, jacked in another round, and crouched to fire again. “Who has light?”

Ferro moved to LaMastra’s side and aimed a flashlight beam inside. LaMastra moved inside cautiously, with Crow closed behind. The living room was big, intensely dark, and totally empty, without furniture or carpet, nothing but darkness and dust. Ferro held the light above their heads and fanned the beam slowly back and forth; wherever the light went, two shotgun barrels and the sprayer followed. It was a big living room with a high ceiling and a hardwood floor. The flashlight showed the brickwork that denied entry through the windows. Some old wiring drooped through the torn plaster of the ceiling, and there was a piece of new plywood nailed to the ceiling, ostensibly to cover a hole. The repair job on the ceiling had been the first really bad bit of carpentry they’d seen because the tips of the dozens of nails used to affix it from the second floor had come poking through the wood and stood out in little tufts of wood splinters.

Crow exchanged a look with LaMastra, who nodded, and the two of them moved through the living room toward the doorway to the adjoining room, careful where they stepped in case the floor was rotten, listening intently for any sound. Their hearts hammered in their chests. Ferro lingered by the front door and directed his light in front of them as Crow and LaMastra inched toward the doorway to the next room. There were French doors connecting the two rooms, and all of the little panes of glass were painted flat black. Crow reached for the handle and turned it. The handle turned easily, but as he pulled there was a springy resistance.

“It’s not locked, but feels like it’s caught on something.”

“Give it a good yank,” said LaMastra. “If that doesn’t work knock out a pane and reach through.”

“Be careful,” Ferro said from the doorway. “I don’t like this.”

“Wait,” said Crow, “I think I have it.” He gave the handle a sharp pull and it abruptly gave, sending him staggering back a step. LaMastra caught him and almost as an aftereffect they heard the snap of strong twine. The sound was followed by a brief rumble that shook the house and then a rasping sound from overhead. They looked up in horror to see the sheet of plywood that was nailed to the ceiling detach itself at one end and swing down with a high-pitched squeal of hinges and pulleys.

“Frank! Watch out!” LaMastra called, lunging toward Ferro, but the heavy panel slammed into Ferro even as the detective turned to run. LaMastra and Crow saw the gleam of the long nails as they caught the flashlight’s glare. There was a thump and Ferro screamed as the nails struck him in the back, driving him back through the doorway, and then the panel slammed into place and all light was extinguished.

Chapter 34

1

“Here, drink this,” Val said, handing Mike a cup of hot tea. It was vending-machine tea, but if it tasted bad there was no sign of it on Mike’s face. He sipped it and then cradled the cardboard cup between his palms, body hunched over the rising steam, his face pale and unspeakably sad.

“Crow isn’t here?” he asked.

“No, he…had something important he had to do this morning.”

Mike nodded, not looking at her. “He went back to Dark Hollow, didn’t he?”

Weinstock gave Val a sharp glance; she shook her head. “Mike?” she said softly, laying a hand on his knee. “What makes you think Crow’s gone out to the Hollow?”

“He’s gone out there to try and find Griswold.”

When they didn’t answer Mike raised his head and looked at them. Both of them had horrified, stunned expressions on their faces, but these worsened as they got their first clear look at Mike’s eyes.

“God!” Val recoiled. “Mike…what’s happened to you?”

He managed the slightest of smiles, but his voice quavered as he said, “Don’t worry…I’m not one of them.”

“You’re not one of…what?” she asked, and without realizing she was doing it she moved her right hand down toward her purse, where she had a .32 pistol she’d taken from her father’s gun collection.

Mike’s eyes followed her, his smile flickering. The gold rims around his blue-red eyes seemed to flare for a second. “You going to shoot me?”

Her hands paused, fingertips just over the closed mouth of the bag. Narrowing her eyes, she said, “Do I need to shoot you, Mike?”

“I hope not,” he said. “I’ve already been dead once today. Don’t know how many times I can take it.”

“God, Val, he’s a vampire!” Weinstock hissed.

Mike turned to him. “No,” he said softly, “I’m something…else.”

Val paused a moment longer and then pulled her hand back. “What happened to you?”

He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know. I told you, I’m not one of them…but I don’t really know what I am.”

“Mike, tell me what happened.”

Tears pearled the corners of his eyes. “I…,” he began and a sob broke his word in half. Mike slid off the bed toward her and suddenly wrapped his arms around her; one sob became a flow of them and they built and built until he was sobbing uncontrollably, hanging on to Val as if he’d fall into the abyss if he let go. His thin body shook and bucked and after a moment of stunned hesitation Val gathered him in and held him as tightly as he clung to her.

He kept saying one word over and over again as he wept. “Mommy…”

2

Since he’d awakened in his grave a month ago the Bone Man had spent most of his time wandering the roads and fields of Pine Deep searching for some kind of purpose, for a reason that he was back. Some of the time his mind seemed to be opening up and filling with insights, with knowledge he could not have acquired while he was alive; but these moments of insight were always brief and they never let him look deeply enough into the mysteries. It was insanely frustrating.

He knew, for example, that Griswold was a psychic vampire and that Mike was a dhampyr; but he didn’t know the limits of what each of those things was, which didn’t exactly help him plan his next move.

He knew that the Red Wave was coming and that it was going to do great harm to the people of Pine Deep—but he didn’t actually know what form it would take, or the actual moment it would start. He knew it was going to be on Halloween, and he guessed that it would be sometime after sunset, but that’s where the whole process showed its rust: it was half knowledge and then guesswork.

He knew that he was here for a purpose, and that it was tied to Mike, certainly more so him than anyone; and along the way he’d learned that he could blind the eyes of that Bible-thumping tow truck driver any time he tried to put Mike in his sights. Yeah, mission accomplished there at least, but now he felt that there was a bigger, greater purpose.

He wondered if somehow Griswold was blocking him off from understanding his greater purpose. That wormy old bastard was strong enough—strong in ways that the Bone Man didn’t always understand. He was old strong, an evil intelligence centuries in the making.

Twice now he’d told that poor boy Mike the truth, first about his parentage, and then as much of the story as he knew. He knew, knew for a sure-thing certainty you could take to the bank, that it was the right thing to do, that telling Mike was part of why he had come back; but now, looking back on it, he was filled with doubts. The boy hadn’t taken the news well. Who would? The first time he’d crashed his bike and nearly died out in the fields. The second time the kid actually had died. That had scared the Bone Man worse than anything he’d known in life or death, and for a lot of long confused hours he’d sat by the boy’s body as it cooled. He’d never felt so lost and alone, so Judas guilty as he did then. Surely this boy was not meant to die. How could that make any kind of sense? And there had to be sense somewhere in this madness or why else had he been brought back? Granted, the kid was probably going to die during the Red Wave or maybe later when the strange genetics of the dhampyr wore the kid down and killed him as it did everyone cursed with that legacy, but the kid just up and had a coronary right there and then.

Sitting by the boy’s body the Bone Man cursed God until even the crows in the trees looked aghast.

Then Mike had stopped being dead.

From wherever it had gone the kid’s spirit came and reclaimed his body. Just like that.

Thinking about it as he walked through the woods toward Griswold’s house, the Bone Man cast an angry eye at Heaven. “Moves in mysterious ways, my ass.”