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that was the only way to stop it, the only way in the world and this was night! Nighttime and maybe that wouldn't do it either but there it was, propped up against the end table under the lamp and Crow dove for it across the sofa full of horrified mortals, some of them just now rising to their feet because this was all so fast for them, this was just too.. . this couldn't be happening, could it? I mean, we were just having a party and everything was just-
    Crow crashed across the back of the sofa over the tops of somebody's rising head and they flipped him sideways in the air in mid-dive and he came down right shoulder first onto the point of the bolt.
    “God!” he gasped, as it sank into his tissue. He twisted to the side off of it and it tore loose raggedly from his skin and shirt. “God, God, God!” He was bleeding like crazy, agonizing pain, and the lamp teetered and fell to the carpet right beside his bead and started shorting out and then Crow rose to his knees blank-faced and beaten to watch the rest of the strobe-lit nightmare continue.
    Darkness...
    Light: David Deyo in mid-black-belt leap driving the side of his right foot picture-perfectly up under the vampire's chin where the throat was soft and making the sound that would have popped the skull off any normal man- Darkness...
    Light: The fiend using David's. . . oh, God! using his spine like a handle as he slammed him back and forth from the floor to the ceiling. David long dead already, all his bones crushed, flopping gruesomely and Anthony! Sweet Anthony with his huge shoulders slamming forward into the fiend, tackling him for chrissake like this was Astroturf and-
    Darkness... And then crash in the blackness just a couple of feet away.
    Light: Anthony's body hanging on the sill of the shattered picture window and then sliding horribly, slowly, on through, his legs dragging the curtains pop-pop-pop- off the curtain rod to billow gently to the ground covering him and- Cat beside him, lifting him up, hissing, “Yes! Yes! Yes! The window!” as if that had been Anthony's plan for escape all along.
    “What... .” stuttered Crow but he knew what Cat meant. They had to run. The fiend roared and slaughtered invincible in the night air. There was no chance, and he stumbled toward the window, Cat shoving him, grabbing him by the shoulder that already bled, and “Ohh!” spouted forth from Crow's mouth with the pain and Cat said “Jack, you're hurt!” in surprise and Crow mumbled back, “We're all dead!”
    And then more darkness and he was tumbling forward through the last of the glass and landing on something soft and dead like an old and trusted friend but not to think about it. He rose to his feet and turned for Cat, Cherry Cat, without whom there was no point anyway and- And it was light again for the last time and Cat was out and beside him and lifting him up and there-back there through the window was the priest, Father Hernandez, not nutless at all, stabbing the edge of his huge silver cross right into the fiend's forehead before dying, decapitated, from a backhanded, almost casual, blow..
    All blood and horror everywhere back there, on the walls and the ceiling and- And the sheriff, stunned into immobility, stood like a
    lump in the middle of the parking lot staring at the old battered Cadillac convertible alongside his patrol car pickup.
    “Jack, please!” Cat moaned, shoving him along and Crow looked down at him and saw the tears in his eyes and realized that it was fear for his own safety that so terrified his friend.
    So he hurried, because he couldn't stand to see Cherry Cat crying.
    Crow opened the side door to the pickup Cat shoved him at and climbed in beside the sheriff that somehow Cat had collected from the driver's side. And then Cat was inside too behind the wheel and Omigod! The keys! Where are the. . . but they were there, the sheriff had just left 'em there in the ignition, why not? Who would steal it?
    And Crow found himself laughing