“Who are you?” she asked nervously, peering around the room to make sure there was no one else lurking in there.
He watched her examination and chuckled. “Ain’t no one else, darlin’. Just me. Just the Incredible Melting Man.” He giggled like he was stoned. “Come on in.”
“I…have a bunch of people with me. We all need to come in.”
“Sure, sure, bring ’em in.” He waved the bottle. “I was wondering when you’d get down this way. I was in the hall a few times and heard you talking.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You weren’t in the hall. I didn’t see you.”
“No,” he said with a sly smile, “but I saw you.”
Jonatha frowned. “And you sure you’re all alone?”
“Honest to God, sweetie,” Vic Wingate said, “aside from you I’m the only living soul in this room.”
(3)
They came to him, flooding in from the town, from the farms, from the lonely houses that now stood empty of life along the fringes of the black highway. Those that did not have cars came running, their tireless limbs carrying them across the miles, their powerful muscles helping them leap and dive and climb and drop. They came down the long hill, and they came over the tops of the mountain; they came through secret ways in the forest, drawn to the forbidden swamp deep in the heart of Dark Hollow, compelled by the force of Ubel Griswold’s dark desire.
The farmers came first, their overalls and jeans and flannel shirts splashed with their own blood and the blood of neighbors and family. Sometimes they came in whole family groups, each white face eager to be in the presence of their new father. They lumbered into the clearing and fell prostrate before the bubbling swamp, overwhelmed with Griswold’s nearness, lost in the aura of his power. Then came the teenagers from the Haunted Hayride. Scores of them with slashed throats and black eyes full of hunger. They laughed and smiled, delighting in their freedom, in their strength, intoxicated by the blood that thundered through their veins. The town folk—residents and tourists—came later, most of them in Halloween costumes, and they cavorted like jesters in the court of the king.
They gathered and danced and leapt and sang out in their joy, feeding off the energies released by the Ritual even as Griswold fed off each of them, off each of their kills. It was a sharing of energy, an orgy of parasites.
Two figures stood at the edge of the clearing, and between them slumped a third. The two watchers were as deeply moved as all the others, but they were not allowed to join in. It was their special task to wait, to watch, and to be ready with the sacrifice that sagged in a dead faint in their cold hands.
Ruger stroked the hand he held, delighting in its warmth, knowing that it was the quickly flowing blood that kept it warm even in this cold place. He was glutted, having killed and fed so many times tonight that he had lost count, satiating himself so fully that he had many times had to vomit up the mingled human wine in order to be able to keep on feeding; yet still he hungered for this unconscious woman’s blood. Not that he desired her in the way he had desired his grinning consort, who stood holding this woman’s other hand. No, he desired her because she was the chosen sacrifice, because she was taboo. She was reserved strictly for the Man, and that made Ruger hunger for her with a fierce passion. He knew that Lois felt it, too, and as he turned to her she hissed at him, smiling as her tongue lolled between her fangs. Her pale body was ripe and white, as hard as polished stone. They had used each other over and over again since last night, since the moment when Ruger had forced innocent blood into her mouth and released her into a world of dark delight and bloodred pleasure. That act had driven the soul out of her, had freed her. Now she was his and he was hers; their hungers were equal and incredibly intense.
Ruger had known from the very moment he’d first tasted her vampire blood that she would be like him, a killer who delighted in the joy of the kill, who craved the fear, the hurt, the desperation that could be provoked in the struggling victim. In that way they were more like Griswold than like the rest of the revelers gathered here. A darker power burned in their hearts, and they delighted in it.
Together they watched the writhing bodies. Some of them had stripped and were abusing each other in every possible way, and in some ways only possible for creatures of their kind, creatures with their strength and endurance. There were screams of pain and ecstasy, and Ruger felt himself getting hard as the children of the Man went insane with passion, became frantic with want, as they glutted themselves on blood and violence. All in his name. Ruger thought it was all a blast. As much as he wanted to defile this woman, he also wanted to discard her and throw himself into the press, to rend and tear and take. He wanted to watch Lois as she rutted and bit and tore and screamed. She was so vicious and cold and passionate that it made Ruger dizzy just to think about her at the moment of a kill.
Then a tremble seemed to rippled through the earth under his feet, something different, not caused by the twisting bodies. The first contraction of the swamp’s dark womb as it readied its unholy child for birth. He flashed Lois a razor-sharp smile.
“It’s happening, baby! Can you feel it?”
Lois ran a tongue over the serrated line of her fangs and ran her fingers over her blood-gorged loins. Beneath their feet, the earth groaned in pain.
(4)
They encountered no other roadblocks as they swept along the road, though they passed dozens of wrecked cars. Beside the road a few farmhouses burned like lonely torches, but most of the houses stood dark and empty, surrounded by fields of blighted corn and shadows.
The road unraveled under the car and the miles fled away behind them. Mike closed his eyes and leaned back against the cushions. His hands were still clamped around the intricate hilt of the katana, and his lips moved as if in prayer. He realized he was doing that and stopped, and try as he might he could not recall what words his lips had formed or what prayer he had said, if it was a prayer at all.
Mike felt totally alienated from the others, as if he were from another world or part of a different species; then, darkly, he realized that indeed he was. Ever since he had opened himself up to what he was and who he was, ever since he had let the dhampyr within him emerge, his whole world had changed. He looked at the others and wondered how it was that they could not hear the screams that constantly shrilled in his ears, how they could not sense the huge, pervasive atmosphere of total malevolence that was clamped down over the entire town.
Crow reached back and took Val’s hand and their eyes met. She mouthed the words “I’m scared.” He nodded and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, and his own lips formed the words “I love you.” It wasn’t much to offer each other, but it was the only talisman they had to share.
As LaMastra drove, he tried not to think about what was going to happen. The sight of Frank Ferro charred and blackened in death was burned into the front of his brain, regulating his rage, keeping the gas turned up. It kept the fear banked.
He flicked a glance now and then at the others, seeing them in the rearview mirror, watching as they prepared for what was ahead. Twice he saw something weird and almost spoke up. It was there and gone, just a shimmer in the air of the backseat between Mike and Val. There and gone when he blinked.
“We’re here,” LaMastra said quietly, and Crow turned as the H1 approached the turnoff to Dark Hollow Road. “God help us all.”
There was no reception for them, no guard unit of vampires. Griswold was incredibly confident, or arrogant.