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Closer to the door of the utility room, LaMastra was still struggling with the twin vampires. They were good-looking kids with luminous green eyes and angelic faces, and LaMastra could not make himself accept that these lovely kids were monsters. Then they snarled at him, showing their fangs and their flickering tongues, and as they did this their eyes flared from green to an unholy red. They fanned out on either side of LaMastra; he fired and missed, fired and missed, and each time the twins mocked him with high-pitched laughter. They were in
credibly fast, but then LaMastra faked toward one of them and pivoted to fire point-blank at the other. The vampire twisted out of the way so that only a third of the pellets tore through his hip and upper thigh, but it was enough to make the boy pirouette like a dancer in some macabre ballet.
The other twin watched, startled for a moment, and then dodged in at LaMastra and with one extended hand slashed him from shoulder bone to hip, tearing open the Kevlar vest and most of the shirt beneath. The injured twin screamed like a banshee as the garlic worked like poison to burn its way through his veins. His heart exploded in his chest, ripping out through his breastbone in a spray of blood and bone.
The sight of this jolted the other twin, who stopped and stared at his brother and at the bloody ruin of his chest. LaMastra took that moment to step forward and ram him in the stomach with the wide barrel of the Roadblocker and then hoist him up into the air, using the shotgun like a tent-peg to pin the vampire hard against the cellar ceiling. The boy writhed and spat and then LaMastra pulled the trigger. The full blast of the ten-gauge weapon blew a fist-sized hole through the thin body and punched a hole in the ceiling so that blood and bits of vertebrae geysered into the room upstairs.
LaMastra reeled back from the falling corpse and the rain of blood.
“God!” he cried as the thought that he had just killed two children stabbed him through the heart.
A second later something hit him between the shoulder blades and he fell; the shotgun flew from his hands and went spinning off into the shadows. He landed hard on his knees, the concrete shooting pain up through his kneecaps; but even as he landed he reached over and back to grab a handful of hair in his fist, then with a growl of mad fury dashed a red-haired boy of eight or nine onto the floor in front of him. The impact flattened the back of the child’s skull, but did not stop him from immediately whipping around onto all fours and baring his teeth. The boy lunged again, and LaMastra used the side of his left fist to parry the biting mouth away from his inner thigh as he drew his Sig Sauer with his right. He racked the slide and as the child flew at him again he fired twice. Two black holes appeared in the child’s chest as the body flew backward, arms and legs swinging brokenly.
LaMastra dodged another small scuttling form and saw that it was a toddler, no more than two or three. Its mouth was smeared with day-old blood and it had red rat-eyes. The tiny hands clawed the air as it waddled toward him. Vince shot it once in the head and spun away, vomiting onto the wall. But as he turned he had a brief, fleeting image of something black floating toward his head and then there was an explosion of pain and stinging lights and he could feel his body falling. Small, sharp fingers clutched at him as he fell hard. Instantly he felt tiny teeth bite deep into the soft flesh at the crook of his arm, and another bite on his inner thigh. He was helpless, dazed by the fall, and they were feeding on him. He could hear the slurping sounds as tiny mouths drank his precious blood.
Crow rolled over and over with the Cub Scout on his back, the creature’s arms and legs wrapped around him like steel bands. Crow’s samurai sword impeded the roll and with each ungainly revolution it pressed painfully into his floating ribs; his shotgun was gone. The child couldn’t have been more than nine years old and yet was immensely strong. The vampire tore at Crow’s shirt collar, trying to get at his neck—then suddenly stopped, gagging as he encountered the smears of garlic oil on Crow’s skin. Undeterred, the little creature started ripping at the softer flesh of Crow’s armpit. Crow managed to fight his way back onto his knees and then threw his weight backward into the boiler. The metal cylinder made a huge hollow booming sound and Crow felt the pressure release just for a second; he took that second. He slid his hand up between his body and the child’s forearm, wrapped fingers around the thin wrist, and then bent forward sharply and flipped the child off with great force, using the grip on the child’s arm to snap him all the way forward like cracking a whip, and at the end of the movement he yanked back with a sudden jerk. He could feel and hear the bones and tendons of the child’s arm tear and break, and the extended feet of the Cub Scout caught another vampire, a fat boy of twelve, right in the face. The fat vampire fell back and Crow released the Cub Scout’s forearm.
The child’s arm was unnaturally distended, but his face showed no trace of pain, only an intensified hatred. He scrambled back to his feet and ran at Crow, but Crow dodged to one side, diving toward his fallen shotgun. He did a complete roll and came lightly back onto the balls of his feet, shotgun in hand, jacking a round into the breech as he turned. His first blast caught the Cub Scout in the stomach, tearing him into two parts.
Crow heard a cry behind him and saw LaMastra on the ground with two small creatures kneeling on him—feeding on him! With an inarticulate cry of disgust, Crow waded in, clubbing the small bodies aside with the shotgun. One, a pretty little girl with blond braids, hissed at him with a mouth filled with LaMastra’s steaming blood. Crow shot her in the face.
Wheeling, Crow saw that the other vampire, a small olive-skinned boy with a yarmulke bobby-pinned to his hair, was already creeping back toward the dazed sergeant. Crow kicked the vampire in the ribs to knock him back against the wall and shot him in the chest.
Crow wanted to check LaMastra, to see how bad he was, but there was still the fat kid. Crow turned quickly and saw that the child was advancing on him, holding a shovel in two hands. Crow had no way of knowing that it was the same shovel that had been used to knock LaMastra to near-unconsciousness. The boy lunged forward, swinging the long-bladed weapon clumsily but with great force. Crow dodged back, sucking in his gut and evading the shovel’s blade by less than an inch.
As he dodged, Crow caught sight of the kid’s face in the glow of the flare and realized that he knew the kid, knew him well. It was Kurt Bernhardt, the son of Chief Gus Bernhardt. Crow had seen the kid just two days ago in the Crow’s Nest when the boy had come in to buy a Hunchback of Notre Dame costume for Halloween. He opened his mouth to say something, to try to make the kid understand, but the kid swung the shovel again and knocked the shotgun out of his hands.
Crow backpedaled as he clawed his clawed his Beretta out of his shoulder rig. He had to lunge backward to dodge the next swing of the shovel—a slicing blow that would have torn his throat out—and he saw the murderous delight on Kurt Bernhardt’s face as he advanced, swinging the shovel like the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
“I’m sorry,” Crow said and put three rounds into the kid’s head.
Before the kid was even down Crow whirled around, then the world froze in horror as he saw a sight that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. The big sergeant lay sprawled in the same position as before, with his arms and legs thrown wide and his limbs streaked with blood. A creature knelt on his chest and was tearing at the stitches on the detective’s jaw. Blood welled and the little thing began sucking at it with desperate greed, then it must have heard Crow’s moan of horror and it raised its head to stare at him with baleful, inhuman eyes. It was the infant who had come crawling out of the utility room with its bloodstained diaper drooping from its desiccated little body, and its two needlelike fangs sprouting from the otherwise toothless mouth. Blood was smeared on its lips and dripped thickly from the fangs as it stared at Crow. The infant could not have been more than a few months old. Just a baby, and they had done this to him. They had corrupted the innocent flesh of an infant and made it into a monster more horrible than anything Crow had ever imagined. The baby lowered its head again to the wound and began drinking.
A sound—a mingled cry of horror, disgust, and appalling sadness—burned its way out of Crow’s chest as he heaved himself back to his feet. He kicked the creature away from LaMastra’s chest and it fell roughly onto the ground, where it landed on its back, arms and legs wriggling. Crow staggered after it, holstering his pistol and then drawing his sword. As the little creature struggled to turn over, Crow braced his legs and raised his sword
“God forgive me,” he said and sank to his knees. The sword fell, and his heart fell with it. He could hear it fall, feel it drop from the anchors in his chest. It toppled down into a lower, darker place, and there it would remain.
Crow heard LaMastra moan and he turned away to see that the detective had managed to get into a sitting position. He was covered in blood and breathing heavily. LaMastra looked around the cellar…at the bodies, adult and children, littered like trash. The violence that had been forced out of both men was humiliating and dehumanizing. LaMastra put his head in his palms and began to cry.
Crow stood in the center of the cellar, feeling the grief twist in him, but they were still trapped in the land of the dead, and neither of them knew what other dreadful things they would have to do in order to escape.
4
A moment later the cellar was rocked by a BOOM! as something outside exploded.
It jolted them both back into the moment, and Crow grabbed LaMastra and hauled him to his feet.
“What the hell was that?” LaMastra demanded.
Their eyes met.
“Frank!” LaMastra said, a smile leaping onto his face. “He’s still alive and he’s trying to get us out of here. ”
“Goddamn!” Crow said. “But let’s not sit here and wait. There has to be a way out of here. ”
Shaky and sick to their stomachs, they nonetheless picked up their guns—careful not to look too closely at the bodies—and reloaded. They went over to the fourth door, braced it, opened it…and saw the short flight of stone steps leading up to the yard. Crow used his flash to find the lock and LaMastra blasted it apart. The cellar doors flew open and a waft of fresh air buffeted them.
They stumbled up out of the darkness and collapsed with weary gratitude on the withered brown grass behind the house. The wind was cool and damp and the stormy clouds above looked ready to open. They heard a sound and looked up to see hands of flame reach up from the roof of the house, and a great column of smoke twisted its way into the sky.
