Vampire$

do.”

“Like what?” Anthony wanted to know.

Crow sighed. They always came to him with questions like this. He was the elder veteran, three years at it now, and probably had, in fact, the longest career of this type in the world. But that didn’t mean he knew shit about vampires. Nobody knew shit about vampires. Nobody lived long enough to learn, and it pissed him off the way they all looked at him to know all the answers. What right did they — he caught himself, took a deep breath. He looked again at Anthony, who had been an all-pro outside linebacker with the Seattle Seahawks when Crow had hired him. A man who was deeply loyal, sharply intelligent, and one of the bravest human beings he had ever seen, and who goddamn well deserved an answer from the man who claimed to be his boss and leader.

“I’m sorry, buddy. I just don’t know.”

Crow told the pikemen to stand at ease, brought the demo bunch in to punch the last of the charges deep into the rubble and went over to talk to Cat who still stood chattering away with the townsmen. On the way he passed the local priest, Father Hernandez, stepping dully forward to turn his trick over the nine piles of ashes. Crow swallowed the resentment the old man’s sighing gait brought up in him.

“Priests call it Joplin juice on account of Carl Joplin, the guy who put it together for us,” Cat was saying to the mayor and another man whose name Crow didn’t recall. “It just makes it hard to climb up out of. Even without it, y’know, it’s too hard for most of ’em. Getting the damn coffin open at all is most of it. Remember—”

“Cherry Cat!” Crow called abruptly, not being able to stand it any longer. The townsmen, who just hours before had been too frightened to speak, were now full of patronizing pretend-interest questions about procedure. It was the kind of transition Crow had expected since noon, of course, but that didn’t make it any better.

Cat excused himself and stepped through their disapproving looks. Crow put an arm about Cat’s shoulders and turned away with him, speaking in an obvious but inaudible whisper sure to be taken as the insult it was.

“Don’t you see what’s happening, goddammit?”

Cat sighed. “Yeah.” He looked hurt. And was, Crow reminded himself with more than a little amazement. “Damn,” continued Cat, “I liked these people. Y’know that banker guy, Foster? He’s planning to build—”

“Planning to cheat your ass blind and mine both.”

Cat frowned. He glanced in the direction of the townsmen without seeing them.

“Yeah,” said Cat at last.

They lit cigarettes and started walking toward the trucks.

“But, y’know, Jack? Not really,” cried Cat in an abrupt plaintive whisper. “They’re just trying to pull themselves up outta the hole they’re in.” He stopped. “You’re the one who told me all this yourself.”

Crow was adamant. “Then they shouldn’t have got themselves in the hole in the first place.”

“The vampires did that, Jack.”

“Like hell they did. No sympathy, Cat. If they’d had the damn guts to face it… And now they’re trying to take it out on us for doing it for them.”

“Right in front of them, and the whole town. Their town.”

Crow stopped and looked back the way they came. “No sympathy,” he repeated.

“Look, just because they’re feeling a little… I don’t know — ashamed, I guess—”

“Did it ever occur to you that they have something to be ashamed about?”

They were silent for several seconds.

“All tight,” said Cat at last with a sigh. “I’ll get it ready.”

Crow shook his head. “No need. Not this time. I’m not gonna put up with this shit this time.”

Cat eyed him briefly. “Just the same I think I oughta—”

“No, dammit!” Crow all but shouted. “Look! I’m so tired of these bastards crawling over and begging us on bended knees because they aren’t man enough to stand up to the creatures turning their wives and daughters into blood-whores. And then they try to pretend they aren’t groveling little cretins by haggling over the price, like this is just another business deal, this had nothing to do with the fact that we just cratered when it counted.”

Crow stopped and panted with the anger, slamming his cigarette to the ground and lighting another.

Cat waited him out until he was calm. “Well, just in case,” he began as casually as so guileless a man could, “I’ll set up the—”

“Do what you want,” Crow interrupted fiercely. “But I’m telling you I’ve fucking had it with these twerps and all the others like ’em. I’m putting my foot down.” He jabbed his trembling index finger under Cat’s nose. “Do you hear me?”

Cat nodded meekly. “I hear you.”

Crow nodded with satisfaction. He tossed his new cigarette to the ground, hitched up his pants, and stalked toward the circle of men still at the Jeep. He paused and jerked a ferocious glance back at his friend. “I’m putting my foot down!” he snarled.

Then he stalked ahead even faster. Halfway to the townsmen, Cat overheard his harsh whisper to himself: “Putting it fucking down!”

Chapter 2

It was a nice jail — if you liked old westerns.

Crow’s cell reminded him of every Rifleman he’d ever seen. It had a cot, a stool, a chamber pot without a lid, and a door that required the keys to the city to open it.

But the deputy was something so special it was almost worth it.

The deputy was a miracle.

To begin with, he had a gut Crow considered an anatomical triumph. But it was in the region of nose- picking where the man achieved greatness. Never in his lifetime (and, he suspected, anyone else’s) had Crow seen anybody pick his nose with such fervor — not to mention tangible results — for so many hours at a stretch.

He had other virtues. Besides being a social slug he was also the town bully. During his first hour in the slammer Crow saw him grovel obscenely to his mayor’s son-in-law, thump a large red-stoned ring off the crown of some high-schooler for being late to pay a parking ticket, and smash Jack’s fingers with a reinforced flashlight to keep them off the bars.

The idea of killing him made Crow feel all warm and tingly. It made the hours bearable. Or rather, setting him up did. “Bullies don’t like to fight,” Crow’s grandaddy had long ago told him. “Bullies are scared of fighting. Bullies like to beat people up.” Keeping this in mind, Crow worked on a plan for the first hours. He decided at last on whining.

He whined about being shut up in the jail, about being cheated by all “those rich guys who think they’re such a big deal ’cause they got money.” He whined about the food — or lack of it — claiming he was starving. He whined about the taste of the water and the smell of the chamber pot and suggested a connection.

He said his fingers hurt, sucked them loudly and often, held them up to show how swollen they were, and demanded to see a doctor.

The third time the deputy told him to shut up it was a snarl.

Crow’s reply was equally ferocious. “Make me, fatso!” he snapped back but dropped his eyes when he did.

The deputy smiled, and stood with the flashlight in hand. He stepped around the desk smacking the weapon rhythmically into his fat palm.

“Maybe I will,” he purred menacingly.

Crow took a half-step back from the bars, appeared to catch himself, stepped back up, and declared, “I ain’t scared of you!” in the least convincing tone he could muster.

It was bully heaven. The deputy’s little pig eyes gleamed as he reached for the keys. His yellow front teeth — all three of them — were bared with delight as he saw the prisoner backing to the far wall of the cell. But when he opened the door of the cell his raspy fat-punk voice changed from a smug chortle to a clear-bell high- pitched scream.

Crow bounced him across the desktop.