Bad Moon Rising (7 page)

Crow gripped Weinstock’s sleeve. “What about the baby? I’ve been terrified to even ask. She didn’t…lose it?”

Weinstock brightened. “No, thank God. For a slender woman Val has the constitution of a bison. We ran every test in the book and even made up a few new ones, and as far as our OB resident is concerned everything is looking good. Even so, Gail Somerfield will be here later this morning and there’s no better OB-GYN in the state. I love Val, and I’ll be damned if after all that’s happened I will let anything happen to her or her baby.” He paused and gave Crow a warm smile. “Your baby.”

Crow closed his eyes and a great dark wave of tension seemed to roll out of him.

“So, yes—lucky in that regard,” Weinstock said, “but there’s still everything that went on at the farm last night. You’ll have to really be there for her, buddy. More than ever, what with Mark and Connie and all…”

“I know. About Connie…did she suffer much?”

“I doubt she was even aware of anything from the time she was attacked.”

“God. I just can’t believe this. It’s like Ruger and Boyd had some kind of vendetta going. Why them, though?”

Weinstock shook his head. “Who the hell knows what goes on in minds like that?”

“Is there anything new on Terry?”

“Not much. They moved him out of surgery and into ICU but—”

“Are you talking about Mayor Wolfe?” a voice asked.

Weinstock stopped and wheeled around to where Newton was struggling to sit up in the chair by the window. The little reporter blinked like a turtle and fisted sleep out of his eyes.

“You!” Weinstock said, pointing a finger at him. “Whoever you are, get out.”

“Whoa,” Crow said, stepping between them. “Ease up, Saul—Newton’s a reporter. You know him, the guy that broke the Ruger story.”

Weinstock inhaled through his nose. “In that case get the
hell
out. And I mean now.”

“Hold on, Newt’s with me,” Crow said, waving Newton back to his seat.

Weinstock’s face was alight with anger. “Crow…there are some things I want to tell you that I’m sure you’re not going to want him to hear. Trust me on this.”

“Don’t be too sure. A lot of stuff happened yesterday and Newt was with me. You can speak openly.”

“No way…not in front of a reporter.”

“Saul, I don’t think there’s anything you can tell me that he won’t be ready to hear.”

“No.” This time it was Newton who said it.

Crow and Weinstock both looked at him. “Hey, Newt, you can’t bail out on me now.”

“Crow…honestly, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I haven’t even gotten my head wrapped around what we saw yesterday. I need to stop thinking about this. It’s all too…” He stopped and just stood there, small and defeated, hands jammed defensively into his pockets.

Weinstock arched an eyebrow at Crow, who sighed. “S’okay, dude. I guess I didn’t give you a lot of time to prepare for this, and what we went through yesterday…well, I’m just glad I had a friend with me.”

Newton looked at him in surprise, his eyes searching Crow’s face for the lie, but not finding it. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his eyes wet.

“Why don’t you go home, get some sleep, and meet me back here later today? Try to put this stuff out of your mind for a while.”

Newton smiled at the absurdity of the concept. “What do you think the chances are that I’ll ever be able to do that?” He sketched a wave, picked up his soiled jacket, and shambled out of the room.

“Poor bastard,” Crow said. “He’s a pretty good guy, Saul. A little fussy at first, but he kind of stepped up. It’s just that yesterday was…well, when I tell you the whole thing you’ll understand.”

Crow sat down on the edge of the bed and Weinstock dragged the chair over. For a full minute neither said a word, their eyes meeting for a second at a time and falling away. Crow leaned on his forearms and stared at the floor between his hiking boots; Weinstock leaned back and studied the blankness of the speckled acoustic ceiling tiles.

After a while Crow took a breath. “You want to start?”

Weinstock barked an ugly little laugh. “Not really.”

“Me neither.”

The tide of silence washed back and forth between them for a while before Weinstock finally said, “The problem is, now that I’m right up to it I don’t know
how
to start.”

“There’s that.” Crow chewed his lip for a second. “On the other hand, brother, do you have the same feeling I have that we both want to say the same thing but are just too damn scared about how we’ll each react?”

Weinstock stopped looking at the ceiling. “No, but that sounds encouraging.”

“There’s a word that’s in my head here, Saul, and I wonder if you’re thinking about the same word.”

There was another long time of silence, but this time they kept eye contact. Finally, Weinstock licked his lips and, very softly, said, “Does your word start with a
v
?”

“I’m sorry as hell to say it does.”

Weinstock closed his eyes. “Oh…shit.”

(1)

In his dreams he was Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil. In his dreams he was tall and powerful, his hand was strong and sure, his courage a constant. In his dreams Mike rode through the burning town on a cut-down Harley, a Japanese
katana
slung across his back, matching pistols strapped to his hips, the fire of purpose burning in his eyes. In those dreams he sought out the killers and the predators, the monsters and the madmen, the dragons and the demons—and he slew them all.

That’s what happened in Mike Sweeney’s dreams.

Last night he stopped having those dreams, and never in this life would he have them again. The interior world of fantasy and heroics, of drama and excitement was gone, completely burned out of him by a process of change that had begun the night Karl Ruger came to town. For a while his dream life had intensified as new dreams had snuck into his mind, dreams in which he was chased down by a madman in a monstrous gleaming wrecker—chased and then run down, ground to red pulp beneath its wheels—or dreams in which he walked through Pine Deep as it burned, as everyone he knew and loved died around him.

The heroic dreams were gone. The dream of the wrecker was gone, too.

Only the dream of the burning town remained.

All through the night, as blood was spilled on the Guthrie farm, and as the doctors labored to save the lives of people Mike knew and didn’t know, Mike phased in and out of a dissociative fugue state. Memories flashed before his dreaming mind that his waking mind would not remember. Well, not for a while anyway. Halloween was coming, and that would change everything for Mike, as it would for the rest of Pine Deep. The part of him that was emerging, the chrysalis forming in the shadows of his deepest mind—that part of him knew everything—but it was still unable to communicate with Mike’s conscious mind. Unable, and unready.

Mike slept through that night of pain and death and most of who he was burned off, fading like morning fog will as the sun rises. The part that was left, the memories and personality that was truly Mike Sweeney had become thinner, just a veneer over the face of the
dhampyr
who fought to emerge. Yet both boy and
dhampyr
shared the dreams, the former unaware of the presence of the other, and the latter indifferent, but both caught up in the remaining dream as it played out over and over again as the night ground to its end.

When Mike woke only one image remained in his conscious mind, and it lingered there, enigmatic yet strangely calming. In it Mike stood in a clearing by a ramshackle old farmhouse that was overgrown with sickly vines and fecund moss. Behind the farmhouse was the wall of the forest, but in front of it was a big field that had gone wild with neglect. Mike stood in the clearing, just a few feet from the house, and he heard a sound that made him turn and look up to see a sight that took his breath away. Overhead, from horizon to horizon, filling the sky like blackened embers from a fire, were crows. Tens of thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Featureless and dark, flapping silently in the still air, and Mike turned to watch them as the carrion birds flew from west to east, heading toward the forest, which was burning out of control. The last image Mike had before he woke was the silhouettes of the swarm of night birds painted against the swollen face of a gigantic harvest moon.

“This is what Hell looks like,” Mike heard himself say. “The Red Wave is coming…and the black wind follows.”

(2)

After he left the hospital Willard Fowler Newton did not drive home. He walked the six blocks to where his car was parked outside of Crow’s store, fished in his pocket for the keys, unlocked it, climbed in, pulled the door shut, and locked it. The interior of the Civic smelled of stale air, old coffee, dried autumn leaves, and sweat. He didn’t roll down the windows, didn’t start the engine.

For twenty minutes he just sat there, his keys lying on the passenger seat, the engine off and cold. At this time of day Corn Hill was empty except for an occasional car rolling past as someone went off to start an early day at work, or drifted home after the graveyard shift. There was no foot traffic, no one to take notice of him, no one to see a man sitting alone in his car in the early morning of October 14. No one to observe a young man sitting with his face buried in bruised and filthy hands, his shoulders hunched and trembling as he wept.

(3)

“You’re up early, Mikey.”

Mike Sweeney stood in the shadows of the doorway, silhouetted by the light filling the hallway from the foyer window. Lois Wingate turned from the stove and looked at her son. “You want some breakfast? I’m making pancakes.”

“Not hungry,” he said and walked slowly over to the fridge, opened it, and fished around for the orange juice.

“You look tired, Mikey. Your eyes are so bloodshot.”

He swirled the orange juice around in its carton, then opened it and drank at least a pint, wiped his mouth, and tossed the empty carton into the trash. “I’m going out. I have to work at the store today.”

“It’s only seven o’clock.”

He headed back toward the hallway. “I’ll ride my bike for a bit.”

“Mike,” Lois said, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder as he passed. He stopped but didn’t turn toward her. She smelled of last night’s gin and Vic’s cigarettes, and the pancakes smelled burnt. “Mike, are you okay?”

Mike looked at her and their eyes met. His mom looked into his eyes—dark blue eyes flecked with red with thin gold rings around the irises. She blinked at him in surprise and took a small involuntary step backward, her own eyes widening, her mouth sagging open.

“Michael…?”

There were no bruises on Mike’s face, no sign of the savage beatings he’d received from Vic over the last couple of weeks. His skin was pale and unmarked except by his splash of freckles, his mouth thin and sad. Every line and curve of his face was the same as it should have been—though the absence of bruises was strange—but all Lois could see were those eyes. The blue of them looked like they’d been spattered with tiny droplets of blood; the gold rings gave them a totally alien cast.

Mike bent forward and kissed her forehead; she tried to pull back, but he held her close. “I love you, Mom,” he whispered, then he turned and hurried down the hall, opened the door, and went out into the bright morning.

His mother stood there, hand to her open mouth, totally oblivious to the burning pancakes. Nor did she see the cellar door open just the tiniest crack and other eyes watching her. These eyes were a much darker red and they burned with a hungry light.

(4)

Newton grabbed a wad of Starbucks napkins out of the glove compartment, dried his eyes, and then angrily scrubbed away all traces of the tears on his cheeks. He cursed continually under his breath, a steady stream of the foulest words that bubbled onto his tongue; then he wadded up the napkins and threw them against the windshield as his muttering suddenly spiked into a single shriek: “NO!”

He punched the dashboard and then pounded his fists on his thighs until the pain shot through his muscles all the way to his bones. “No, goddamn it!”

Newton reached out, gave the ignition a violent turn, and the car coughed itself awake; he slammed it into Drive and pulled away from the curb. He didn’t head home, but instead did a screeching U-turn in the middle of the street, ignoring the bleat of horns, and when he stamped down on the gas the Civic lurched forward in the direction of his office. He needed a good computer and a better Internet connection than the dial-up he had at home. He needed to get some answers, and he needed them now.

He ran two red lights and a stop sign as he barreled out of town, down A-32, past the dirt road the led down to Dark Hollow—which sent a chill through him despite his anger—past the Guthrie farm, all the way to the Black Marsh Bridge. In his pocket, forgotten in the midst of everything else, the old coin he’d found on the slopes of the Dark Hollow pitch jingled among the newer change. It was a weatherworn dime someone had once drilled a hole through so a Louisiana aunt could put a string through it and tie it around the ankle of her nephew from Mississippi. A charm against evil that Oren Morse had worn until the day he died. A charm that he’d lost just minutes before the town fathers of Pine Deep had beaten him to death.

With all the residual hot-blood flush in his thighs from where he’d pounded out his rage, Newton did not feel the dime flare to mild heat as he drove. Later on he would remember that dime, and a toss of that coin would decide the life or death of a lot of people in Pine Deep. Including Newton.

(5)

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

Vic’s voice caught him unaware and Ruger stiffened, but he composed his face into a bland smile before he turned and looked down the stairs to where Vic stood on the basement floor, fists on hips, glowering.

“I smelled cooking,” Ruger said as he slowly descended the steps, making it a slow roll, making it look casual, like Vic’s hard look was nothing.

Vic looked at him and then up at the near side of the cellar door. “Cooking, my ass. You’re still sniffing after Lois.”

Ruger said nothing as he brushed by him, making sure to use one hard shoulder to clip Vic on the pass-by. Ruger knew he was a lot stronger than Vic and he wanted to leave a bruise. Like the Indians used to do in the books he used to read. Counting coup.

“I’m talking to you asshole,” Vic snarled. The bump had knocked him off balance but he recovered cat-quick and gave Ruger a hard one-handed shove that knocked the cold-skinned man into the corner of the workbench. Ruger rebounded from the desk and spun so fast that he appeared to melt into shadows; one moment he was by the desk, the next he was beside Vic with one icy hand clamped around the man’s throat.

“You don’t lay hands on me, motherfucker…not ever. I’ll tear your heart out and wipe my ass with it.”

There was a small metallic click and then Ruger felt a touch even colder than his own as the barrel of a pistol pressed upward beneath his chin. “You really want to dance, Sport?” Vic said; his voice was a choked whisper, but the hand holding the gun barrel was rock solid.

Ruger’s eyes had gone totally dark again and they burned into Vic as the moment stretched itself thin around them. Vic could feel Ruger’s hunger, his power, prowling around in his mind, could feel the shadowy charisma of that stare as if it were a physical thing, but he kept his gun hand steady. Upstairs Lois put a pan in the sink and started the water, each sound clear and distinct. Both men involuntarily shifted their eyes upward, held their gazes there for a moment, and then awareness kicked in and they noticed each other’s look. Their eyes met and lowered together.

“Take your hand off me, Sport, or I’ll paint the ceiling with what’s left of your brains.”

For a microsecond Ruger’s hand tightened, but then he abruptly let go. “Like you even care about that bitch.”

Vic almost reached his free hand up to massage his throat, but restrained it—that would look weak—but he couldn’t control the involuntary swallow. His throat hurt like hell. He jabbed Ruger hard with the pistol barrel. “I don’t give a leaping shit about Lois…but she’s my property, Sport.
Mine
.”

Ruger said nothing, but he sneered and slapped the pistol barrel away—which Vic allowed—and turned away to hide a hungry little smile.

(6)

Crow watched as Weinstock got up and walked into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. He reappeared in a minute, dabbing at his eyes with wads of paper towels, leaned his shoulder against the door frame, and threw a quick look at the door to make sure it was firmly closed.

“I can’t believe we are having this conversation,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m having a conversation with the word ‘vampire’ in it.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“It’s my world, too, damn it. I’ve been living this nightmare for weeks now, ever since I did the autopsies on Jimmy Castle and Nels Cowan.”

“Not that I want to play who’s the bigger dog, Saul, but I sure as hell got you beat there because mine starts back in 1976, during the Black Harvest.”

Weinstock winced. “Oh man…don’t even try to tell me that the Massacre is tied into all this. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to
know
that.” He came over and sank down in the chair. “Okay, okay…tell me everything.”

So Crow told him. He started with Ubel Griswold moving into the town, talked about the 1976 blight that destroyed the town’s crops and killed most of the livestock—including all of Griswold’s cattle—and how the Massacre began shortly afterward.

“What are you saying? That Griswold was a vampire, too?”

“No…I don’t think that was it.” Crow licked his lips. “I think Griswold was a werewolf.”

Weinstock sat back and studied him. “Okay. Right. Fine. A werewolf. Peachy. Our conversation now includes vampires
and
werewolves. Why don’t we throw in ghosts and the Jersey Devil, too, then I can go and blow my brains out and no one will blame me.”

“You want to hear this or not?”

Weinstock signed. “Not really,” he said, but he made a twirling motion with his index finger to indicate that Crow should continue.

“For whatever reason Griswold moved here, if we at least for the sake of argument accept that he was a…werewolf…” Even Crow had a hard time saying the word. It felt clunky in his mouth and its edges caught in his throat. “Then he must have come here to lay low. Raising and killing the cattle kept him off the radar until the blight killed the cattle and all of the other local livestock. When the urge to hunt came on him where else did he have to turn but people? Even then he tried to keep it on the QT by preying on tramps and hobos, but I think the lust for human blood got the better of him and he just started hunting anyone he could find. Val’s uncle was killed, my brother Billy. Terry’s little sister, Mandy…and remember, Griswold almost killed Terry, too. He was in a coma for weeks.”