Bad Moon Rising (25 page)

Mike took a definite step toward Vic, who didn’t budge.

Behind him, Mike could hear his mother quietly weeping.

Mike looked over his shoulder at her huddled form. He tried to muster anger at her, tried to conjure hate, but he couldn’t. Maybe there would be a time for that, but right now all he felt for her was sadness. Still, as he turned back to face Vic, a searing white-hot hatred sprang up in his heart, charring his soul.

“Yeah,” Vic said in an offhand way, “Lois’d ball anything with a dick back then.” Vic leaned forward and gave Mike a secretive leer. “How do you know John Sweeney was even your dad?”

“He
was
my father, asshole!” Mike snapped, though he knew it was a lie.

“John Sweeney was a useless piece of shit who did the whole world a favor by rolling his car down the hill. Kid, if I was you I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone that I was even related to that loser, let alone scream that he’s your father.” He gave Mike a knowing sneer. “You couldn’t begin to understand who your father is. Or what he is! You should be ashamed of yourself, you little faggot, for being such a weak, miserable piece of crap, when your father is—”

He never finished his sentence because against all logic and expectation Mike Sweeney hit him so fast and hard that Vic never saw it coming. It caught Vic in the mouth and ground his inner lips against the teeth of his laughing mouth and knocked him back three steps so that he slammed against the living room doorway. Vic touched his mouth and looked at the hot blood on his fingertips.

For a moment he stood there and stared through shocked eyes at Mike. The boy’s chest heaved, hands clenching and unclenching, and there was a look of mingled fury and surprise in his eyes.

“Oh, God, Mike…no!” his mother cried from the shadows.

Slowly Vic’s eyes rose from his bloodstained fingers to stare at Mike, and Mike swore he could see a crimson veil of fury fall over his stepfather’s gaze.

“You just killed yourself you stupid shit,” he said and hurled himself off the wall, looping a hard right hook that broke a big white bell in Mike’s head and sent him crashing into an overstuffed chair. Mike slid to his knees as blood ran into his left eye.

“Fucking hit
me
?” Vic said, still overwhelmed by it. He moved toward Mike, bringing his hands up into a boxer’s guard.

Mike scrambled to his feet and backed away as he brought his own hands up the way Crow had taught him, remembering the advice he’d learned: “The best block is to not be there.”

Vic started throwing jabs and short hooks, uppercuts and backhands, tagging Mike in the biceps and shoulders, trying to beat down his guard. Mike blocked and parried as best he could, but his head was ringing so badly that he couldn’t think. Vic’s hands were pistons, driving Mike back into the living room, into shadows, toward the edge of the couch.

Mike felt the back of the couch against his thighs as he was battered backward. He almost overbalanced and fell over, but Vic darted out a hand and caught his shirt, holding him upright as he delivered a short hook to the ribs that knocked all the air out of the room. Mike’s head swirled with pain and disorientation. This had been a mistake. Stupid, and probably fatal.
Well
, he thought as the beating continued,
at least I hit him, at least I made him bleed.

Vic cuffed him again in the head, but this new blow had a weird effect. Instead of worsening the disorientation it seemed to hit some kind of internal circuit breaker and suddenly all of his interior lights came back on, all at once. Crow’s voice seemed to whisper in his ear: “Never hold someone with one hand and hit him with the other. It limits you. The hand that’s holding on can’t hit and the punching one can’t block. Use both hands because otherwise it leaves half of your body wide open.” How Mike was able to remember that at such a time was beyond understanding, but suddenly that germ of information was there. He had looked at what Vic was doing and somehow managed to analyze it for a flaw—and found that flaw. From his perspective, despite the constant blows, Mike could see what Crow was trying to tell him. He could see how vulnerable that whole side of Vic’s body was.

FUGUE.

Before he even knew he was going to do it, both of his hands moved at once. With his left he blocked the incoming high hook, meeting it at the source and jamming the swing of Vic’s shoulders so that the punch never generated any power; and at the same instant Mike’s right hand lashed out, palm foremost, and caught Vic on the side of the head, just at the curve of the eye socket where eyebrow meets temple. This time the blow was delivered the right way, and Mike even used one foot to push himself away from the couch and turn into the blow as he delivered it. This combination of movement was unexpected and immensely powerful; it spun Vic halfway around so that he had to let go of Mike and flail his arms to keep from falling as he took three staggering sideways steps.

Mike stepped in and kicked Vic in the back of the knee with the edge of his foot, jolting the knee into such an extreme bend that Vic’s legs buckled, and as he went down Mike hit him with two overhand rights, one after the other, that smashed Vic’s nose and nearly tore his ear from his head.

Vic crashed down onto hands and knees, shaking his head, trying to fight through explosions of light and shadows to understand what had just happened. Blood poured down his face and neck and splattered on the floor. Mike surged forward and landed a football place kick that caught Vic in the floating ribs, half-lifting him off the ground. Vic flipped over onto his back, wrapped his arms protectively over the point of impact, and struck the floor with a crash that knocked decorative plates off the shelves in the living room.

Vic was vulnerable and Mike stepped forward to kick him again, had actually raised his foot to do it…

…and hesitated.

Vic was bleeding, dazed, down.

Don’t stop! Don’t stop now!
His own voice screamed in his head, but he didn’t listen. Instead he turned, searching the shadows for his mother, wanting to grab her, pull her out of here, run while Vic was dazed. He saw her; she was on her feet now, a dark shape against the greater darkness of the room.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a voice filled with dread.

“Mom…I had to…”

She didn’t move. “Oh, Mike,” she said softly, but her words were strangely muffled.

A metallic clicking sound saved Mike’s life. Vic had pulled out his clasp knife and with a flick of his wrist he snapped the four-inch blade into place. The gleaming metal seemed to fill the whole room. Mike saw his death on that gleaming blade as it slashed at him. He ran backward out of the way, but he was in the middle of the living room now and Vic was between him and the front door.

“Oh boy…” Vic crooned softly, “Oh boy. Here it comes, now. Here it comes. Oh boy. Here it comes.” Vic held the knife, guarded by his other hand, the way an expert would hold it. Mike had seen Crow hold a knife just that way. Crow probably knew how to take a knife from someone. Mike did not. Their lessons hadn’t gotten that far. He wished he had a sword, even the blunt-edged
bokken
.

He was going to die. After all that he had survived, he was going to die.

“Here it comes, now. Here it comes.” Vic’s eyes were insane. Blood dripped from his mouth and torn ear, it streaked his grinning teeth. “Oh boy. Here it comes, now.”

Vic advanced on Mike, the knife slicing at the air between them as if he was cutting a path toward Mike’s heart. Mike knew in that instant, without any reason for knowing it, that Vic had killed people, and he wondered how many people had seen Vic smile just that way before they died.

Mike didn’t know what to do or where to go. There was no other exit from the living room that the doorway, and Vic’s crouched body blocked it entirely.

“Here it comes, now. Here we go.”

Mike didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to just give up and collapse and be killed with no way left to fight. He wanted to fight, even if it meant going down fighting, but he didn’t know how. Not against a knife, not against this.

Suddenly something smashed him out of the way even as Vic lunged in to bury the knife in his throat. As he fell, Mike saw something dark blur past him and crash into Vic, driving him backward, crashing him out into the hallway, propelling him down onto the bottom steps of the staircase.

He stared, dazed with unbelief,
“Mom?”

She had leapt over the sofa and slammed Vic down, taking his knife wrist in one of her slim hands. Mike watched in horror, waiting for the moment in which Vic would tear his wrist free and slash her to death, but try as he might Vic couldn’t get free. With his other hand, though, he hit her, shoved her…but all to no effect.

“Mom?”

She shouted at him. “Run!”

“But, Mom!”

“Run, for God’s sake!”

It was impossible that she had held him even this long—Vic was twice her size, many times her strength—yet somehow, impossibly, she kept him pinned there with his knife arm hard against the floor.

“Run!” she screamed.

“Mom!” He took a step toward her, desperate to help.

Lois Wingate whipped her head around toward him, and for the first time in days he saw her face. Her skin was as white as new milk; her eyes were as red as fresh blood. Her mouth was a snarling mask of curled lips and bared teeth.

Mike felt every molecule in his body turn to ice. He wanted to scream, couldn’t remember how to do it.

In a voice that shook the walls of the house, a voice that was a bellow of sheer force and volume that it literally staggered him back a pace, his mother screamed, “RUN!”

He ran. Of course he ran.

He screamed as he backed away and then turned and ran out of the house. He was still screaming when he grabbed his bike and jumped on it and tore away into the night. He did not remember doing that, he did not remember the nightmare ride down the street past neighbors who stood on their porches and stared at him, or stared at Vic’s place. No one called the cops. No one on that block dared.

Mike tore down the street. His mind was black with shock except for the clear and vivid memory of his mother’s face.

Her white, white face.

Her eyes, her skin. Her teeth.

Oh, God
, he thought as he fled into the darkness,
her teeth
.

(1)

They all met for coffee in Weinstock’s office. Val, Crow, Jonatha, and Newton were seated on a ring of chairs pulled around Weinstock’s desk, which was covered with the evidence he had collected. Weinstock had gone over it step by step for Jonatha’s benefit. The morgue videos had rattled her, and she accepted the doctor’s offer of a stiff knock of Scotch in her coffee.

After she’d downed half of it, she said, “I’ve been on the Net all afternoon, and I’ve made a number of calls to friends and colleagues who are deeper into the vampire folklore than I am. I told them the story that I was doing deep background work for a book, and now they all want to be footnoted. I made a lot of promises here, so our boy Newton here had better write that book.”

“Did you find out anything new we need to know?” Val asked.

“Nothing you’ll like.”

“No offense, Jonatha,” said Crow, “but we haven’t liked anything you’ve told us so far.”

“Okay, I know we’re all pressed for time here,” she began—and Crow noted that she used “we.” He cocked an eye at Val, who had registered it, too, and she gave him a tiny nod.

“First, Professor Allenby at Rutgers, who’s written the definitive book on Peeter Stubbe, said that the likelihood that Stubbe was born in Serbia is near to one hundred percent, not in Bedburg as most books claim. There are records in Serbia of the Stubbe family—under a variety of name variations—dating back as early as the 1420s. He wasn’t known in Bedburg until around 1589. That means that he was at least one hundred and fifty years old when he was put on trial for werewolfism.”

Weinstock whistled.

“That would mean that he is likely to be a
Vlkodlak
, the dominant werewolf species of that part of Eastern Europe, and one widely believed—in folklore before now—to come back to life as a vampire.”

“I’m confused about something,” Val said. “I was looking through some of Crow’s books and they seemed to indicate that Stubbe, or Stumpp as they called him, was brutally executed. Why didn’t he come back as a vampire then?”

“Allenby’s theory is that like many of the more powerful vampires, some werewolves were known to have human familiars and confidants. It’s entirely likely that Stubbe, who was known for being extremely charismatic, suborned some local yokel and—since Stubbe was not truly a native of Bedburg—used that other person as a kind of stand-in or body double. Maybe he appealed to their religious mania—kind of like Manson or Jim Jones. In such cases the person under the charismatic control is more than willing to die for their master, even to the point of undergoing torture. Like a martyr. Even in ordinary psychology there are plenty of cases of it. Add to that some degree of supernatural persuasion and, well, there you go.”

“That fits with what we know of Griswold,” Crow said. “He had a whole crew of local guys who pretty much worshipped the ground he walked on. My own father was one of them. When Oren Morse killed Griswold, it’s a pretty good bet that these followers were the ones who murdered Morse.”

“Reasonable,” Jonatha said. “Scary as hell, but reasonable. How many of them are still around?”

“Except for my father? All of them.”

“Then we are going to have to work them into the equation…take a good hard look at them.”

Val said, “Did you find out anything more concrete about the process of becoming a vampire?”

“Well, the consensus from among my colleagues is that, folklorically speaking, a psychic vampire like Griswold would be able to create other vampires at will. As I mentioned before, all he needs to do is impose his will on anyone who has recently died through violence.”

“You mean anyone bitten by a vampire?”

“No…not exactly. There are as many ways to become a vampire as there are vampire species, but I think we can distil that down to the three most common methods,” Jonatha said. “The first is also the oldest. A person has to die with a corrupt heart and unrepentant. That creates a kind of schism between them and the next world—call it Heaven or whatever. An evil person who dies, typically by violence, and who does not repent of their sins is likely to come back as a vampire of one kind or another. We see this in the folklore of dozens of nations.”

“That could explain Ruger easily enough,” Crow said.

“And probably does.”

“But Boyd was corrupt rather than evil,” Weinstock said, “at least according to what the cops told us.”

“Which brings us to the second most common cause of vampirism worldwide—death by violence. Any death, any kind of violence. There isn’t a lot of commentary on why this is, but generally I take it as a feeling of unresolved anger at having died and the need for some kind of revenge for having been killed. In Boyd’s case it appears that somebody killed him. Maybe even Ruger, who knows? When he rose from death he was a vampire, but for some reason we don’t know his anger was not directed at Ruger but at humans.”

“Griswold?” Val ventured.

“Could be,” Jonatha agreed. “If he is the directing force behind this, then his will would be strong enough to turn Boyd’s anger and aim it like a gun.”

“At my family.”

“You told me your dad was no friend of Griswold’s, and he was a friend of Oren Morse. Griswold also killed your uncle. Maybe there are other reasons he doesn’t like your family, but clearly he wants you all dead.”

Val said nothing but the muscles at the sides of her jaws flexed and bunched.

Crow said, “What’s the third method?”

“That one is closer to the traditional view,” Jonatha said. “In the more modern stories, meaning those from parts of Europe beginning in the early eighteenth century, we see a pattern of vampire stories being built around a bite and an exchange of blood. Not the willing and bizarrely sensual exchange you see in movies where Dracula bites some chick and then she drinks his blood—that’s a Hollywood distortion. No, once a person has been killed by a vampire, then any human blood will reactivate them, so to speak. Not animal blood…it has to be human, according to the stories. Even a few drops will do it.”

“Otherwise they stay dead?” Val asked. She took Crow’s hand and held it.

“Well, that’s a bit cloudy. In about half of the stories the vampire’s victim is caught between Earth and Heaven in a kind of purgatory. Some even rise as ghosts, but they have little or no power.”

“God…” Val said, touching her cross.

“In the other stories the victim is just plain dead unless human blood is poured into their mouth. At that point a demonic spirit enters into them and reanimates their flesh. They have all of the memories and personality of the person they were before they died, but that’s all a trick. What’s inside is pure demon, or ghost, depending on who you talk to.”

“Damn,” Crow said. “So we don’t know what state Mark’s in.”

“No, we don’t,” Jonatha said, “and bear in mind, we don’t know how much of the vampire legend is even true. We’re really fishing in the dark here and for every bit of reliable folklore—if we can call it that—there’s a hundred times as much nonsense, bullshit, and storytelling embellishment. We could be wrong about all of this.”

“Swell.”

“Now, there’s one more thing. In a few of the older stories, if a person is brought to the point of death but not killed outright they can simply transition into a vampiric state without going through the process of actual death. You follow me? In those cases the person retains their soul and true personality only as long as they drink animal blood, but should they take so much as a taste of human blood their human soul is pushed out and the demonic spirit takes over forever.” She paused. “I know this doesn’t apply to your brother or sister-in-law, Val…but in going over everything with Newt I can see that we don’t actually have proof positive that Ruger or Boyd actually died prior to becoming vampires. They could have transitioned.”

“So what?” Crow asked. “Does any of that matter?”

“Well, the vulnerabilities are different. A vampire who has transitioned instead of dying is usually stronger. Much stronger…and the more they feed the stronger they’ll become. So if Ruger transitioned, then he could be even stronger now than he was when you last encountered him.”

Crow sighed and bent forward so he could bang his forehead on the desk a couple of times.

Newton said. “What do you want us to do now? You want us to go with you to meet the cops?”

Crow looked at Val, who shook her head. “No,” he said. “Why don’t you find out everything you can about how to stop these bastards? I mean, can we rely on any of the usual stuff? Crosses, holy water…?”

“No, that’s all Bram Stoker stuff. Fiction.”

“What I figured.”

“Garlic is good, though. It’s deadly poison to vampires. It weakens them and if it gets into their bloodstream it might be fatal. I’ll ask some of my guys about it.”

“Good, we’ll offer them garlic bread next time we see one.”

“I’m sorry, Crow…Val…I thought I’d be able to find something comforting…”

“Actually,” Val said, her voice tight, “you’ve at least told me what I need to know for now. Keep researching this, Jonatha. Right now you’re the most important person in the world to us.”

Jonatha looked at her, head tilted to one side. “But…no pressure, right?”

Val actually smiled. “No, of course not. Another sunny day here in Pine Deep, America’s Haunted Holidayland.”

“I should have stayed in Louisiana. All we have there are killer hurricanes.”

Crow and Val turned to Weinstock, who had been silent throughout, his face buried in his hands. “Saul?” Crow asked.

Weinstock raised his head and gave them the bleakest stare they’d ever seen. “I need to get Rachel and the kids out of this godforsaken place.”

Val nodded.

“Can we stop the Festival somehow?” Newton asked.

“No,” Crow said. “Sarah Wolfe won’t even discuss the matter. All she says is that the town lives or dies on this Halloween.”

“Christ,” said Newton, “she’s not joking there.”

(2)

Mike fled into the night as if all the demons of hell were in close pursuit. His life seemed to be nothing but horror and flight from it. No matter how far he went, no matter what direction he took, it always seemed to circle back around to another, far worse horror.

And now this, the worst of all.

Legs pumped the pedals, hands clutched the ribbed rubber grips, lungs heaved, and pulse hammered furiously. His shirt snapped and fluttered as he rode, and though he was unaware of the chill of the air against his bare forearms, his heart was heavy with black ice.

With each hill he climbed, his legs ached more and more.

He could not think. Could not bear to think.

All he could do was fly. From horror toward nowhere, through the shadows that opened wide to receive him.

The Bone Man stood in the road and watched the boy fly, feeling the eerie déjà vu that was actually memory. He had stood here before, had watched the boy flee before. It had ended badly that time.

It would be worse this time. Halloween was in two days. There was no turning back for anyone now.

(3)

When the manhunt for Ruger and Boyd was at full burn, all of the town’s former and inactive police officers had been called back to duty, but just as the threat diminished the Halloween season kicked into full gear and most of the officers remained on the job. Tow-Truck Eddie Oswald liked working as a part-time cop, partly because he loved his town—despite its tradition of celebrating the pagan holiday—and he hated the wretched excesses of the un-Christian tourists who had to be kept from running amok. The other reason he liked the job was that it gave him yet another reason to be prowling the streets and roads of the borough in his hunt for the Beast. He needed to complete that task to both honor and appease his Father, whose wrath had turned to a cold and disappointed silence in Eddie’s head.

He drove the main drag now, alone in his cruiser, neat and tidy in his crisp uniform, his sidearm a comforting weight at his hip. His mind, however, was an untidy mess—a ransacked room where hope and trust in his own judgment had been thrown to the floor. Doubt seemed painted inside his brain like some vandal’s graffiti. For a while he thought he’d known the direction of his purpose; for a while he thought he’d known exactly who the Beast was and in which body he was hiding. Now the only thing of which he was certain was that he was now completely
un
certain…and uncertainty in his holy purpose filled him with shame.

“Base to four.” The sudden squawk of the radio made Eddie twitch and he snatched the handset up.

“Four,” he said, “what’s up, Ginny?”

“Got a job for you, Eddie. Domestic disturbance.”

Great, just what he needed.
Eddie sighed. “Give me the rundown.”

“It was just called in a few minutes ago. FedEx guy heard a fight, someone screaming, and then saw this kid go running out of the house, face all bloody.”

So what?
“Give me the address.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to go there. Polk’s already there. He called in and told me to tell you to go looking for the kid. Jimmy said you’re the only one free, so you catch this one. Lucky you, huh?”

“Yes, lucky me. Okay, Ginny, do you have anything on the kid? Name, description…”

“Name is Sweeney. Michael Sweeney. Age fourteen, red and blue, five-six, slim build. Probably on a bicycle.”

Eddie jerked upright. “Repeat that name, please?”

“That was Michael Sweeney. Last seen wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt with some band label, FedEx guy thinks it might have been
The Killers
. The neighbor said the kid had a bloody nose and there was blood on his hands and the front of his shirt. He was reported to have left the scene on a black mountain bike.”

“Michael Sweeney,” Eddie said, tasting each honey-sweet syllable.

“Last seen heading south toward A-32. Probably making for a friend’s house.”

“Out into farm country,” Eddie murmured. “How long since he fled the scene?”