A car rumbled across the bridge and Vic waited, looking up a the tiny particles of dust that drifted down from the heavy timbers, then peered down at the wires he held in his fingers. He twisted the leads onto the terminals of the heavy-duty battery. Once the wires were in place he slid the whole assembly into the niche he’d carved out of the bank. Vic removed a diagram from his shirt pocket and consulted it, glancing up to check that the lines on the map matched the long strands of wires that trailed up the supports to the three bundles that were each nestled into their proper places.
He picked up the clock and set the time, then very carefully pulled the button that primed the clock to ring at just the right moment.
“Boom!” he said softly as he backed away from the timer.
As he trudged up the bank toward his truck he tugged a notebook out of the back pocket of his jeans, humming as he walked. There was still a lot to do, but he was ahead of schedule, and that made him happy. He wanted the Man to see that he was still the most reliable of his army, still his right hand. Yeah, he thought as he opened the truck door and climbed in, he’d get all of it done in time, and maybe a little more besides.
He was grinning as he spun the wheel and headed back toward town.
(5)
There was an unreal moment of mingled darkness and trapped flashlight illumination, a sensation of floating that did not feel at all like falling. Then they hit the cellar floor so hard it sent agony shrieking upward through Crow’s whole body; the carpet padded their fall to a degree, but Crow landed badly, hitting first on the edge of his heels and then falling backward to slam the flat of his back on the concrete floor. Instantly the world exploded in white light and thunder as LaMastra accidentally jerked the trigger of his shotgun and blasted a hole in the carpet inches from Crow’s cheek. Small flecks of gunpowder sizzled into his skin.
The rug collapsed on top of them, and Crow groaned as the weight of the heavy material drove the hard scabbard of his sword case into his spine. Beside him, LaMastra snarled in confusion as he thrashed at the carpet, and with every movement he elbowed or kicked Crow.
“Vince, stop it for Christ’s sake!” Crow bellowed and emphasized it with his own elbow. It caught the detective somewhere soft and there was a whoosh of air and a grunt of pain.
They both stopped thrashing and let the moment settle around them.
“Are you hurt?” Crow asked.
“Everything hurts,” was LaMastra’s muffled reply.
“Let’s get this frigging carpet off us…”
But that fast the folds of the carpet were whipped away from Crow by unseen hands. While LaMastra still struggled to get free of the carpet, Crow scrambled around onto his hands and knees, his heart hammering in his chest, scrabbling for the fallen flashlight, but his desperate fingers sent it rolling away. The light pinwheeled around and then came to an abrupt stop as someone caught it with the toe of a polished shoe.
On all fours, Crow stared at the face of the man who stood over them. The blood turned to ice in his veins and the world seemed to spin sideways into unreality as he watched the man bend down and pick up the Maglite.
Jimmy Castle held the light in his bone-white fingers. He held the beam under his chin the way a prankish child might at a campfire.
“Boo!” he said, and his mouth stretched wide to show two rows of jagged white teeth.
Chapter 35
(1)
It took a long time for Val to soothe Mike. Clinging to her he seemed to regress to an almost babylike state, his words reduced to an inarticulate wordless noise that was drenched with tears. She stroked his matted hair and kissed his dirty face and rocked him back and forth until his terrible sobs slowed to a whimper and then he felt silent. Jonatha and Newton came in and when they saw Mike they kept silent; Weinstock waved them over to the far side of the room. Jonatha sat in a chair and Newton leaned against the wall, both of them looking as confused and uncomfortable as Weinstock.
When Mike finally lifted his head, he sniffed, accepted the tissue Val gave him, then slowly looked around the room as if he’d never seen it. He wiped his nose and blotted his eyes. He offered no weak smile or embarrassed apologies for his tears. People in wartime don’t need to do it, and their fellow refugees don’t require it of them.
Because his eyes were now so red and puffy Jonatha and Newton didn’t immediately notice their unnatural look.
Val helped Mike to his feet and led him to the bathroom. “Why don’t you clean yourself up, honey? Take your time. You know Mr. Newton, he’s a friend. He knows what’s going on. Professor Corbiel is also a friend. She’s from the University of Pennsylvania.” She put her hand on his cheek. “She’s a folklorist. She knows about vampires.”
That made Mike’s eyes flicker and he turned to look at her and she saw his eyes. Jonatha gripped Newton’s knee and her fingernails dug deep.
Mike went in and closed the bathroom door.
Val and the others huddled around Weinstock and she told them what Mike had said.
“What’s with his eyes?” Newton asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Val admitted, “but something terrible must have happened.”
They heard the toilet flush and the door opened. Mike came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. His face was composed, but the abiding hurt was there in the stiffness of his posture and the profound sadness of his face.
“Mike,” Val said, sitting down next to him, “you know what’s going on in town, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Some of it,” he said. “Maybe a lot of it, but not all of it.”
“What do you know?” Newton asked.
Mike sighed. “This is going to take time.”
Val wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “We have to know.”
“Before I tell you what I know I guess I should tell you how I know.” He took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. “You know that there are vampires in Pine Deep, don’t you?”
Val just squeezed his shoulder.
“My mother is one of them.”
“God…” Weinstock breathed.
He told them what happened at his house and didn’t dare look at the horror on their faces. “She saved my life,” he said, and sniffed back some tears.
“So…Vic Wingate’s involved in this,” Jonatha said. “If he knew about Mike’s mom—”
Mike snorted. “Vic isn’t just ‘involved’…he’s his right hand.”
“Who, Mike?” Val asked.
He gave her a quizzical look. “Why…Ubel Griswold, of course. Don’t you know?”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s the other thing…the other way I know about what’s going on. I know because the Bone Man told me.”
“The Bone…,” Val put her hand to her mouth. “Mike…tell us everything.”
He did. He started with the Massacre and how Griswold began hunting humans after his cattle were killed by the first blight. A blight, he said, that was different from the current one because it actually was just a freak of nature, a real plague. “This new one is something Griswold did,” he told them. “The first plague just gave him the idea.”
He told them about how the Bone Man, who knew a thing or two about the supernatural from his childhood in the deep South, was able to piece together what Griswold was doing, and what Griswold was. He told them how the Bone Man hunted Griswold that day, trying to catch and kill him before he turned into a monster as the moon rose. He told about the fight they had in Dark Hollow, and how the Bone Man killed him with his old blues guitar and buried him in the swamp a couple of miles from Griswold’s old house.