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KISS THE COOK batted a Kirikkale from Answer’s hand. Answer raised the other pistol and fired. KISS THE COOK’s right eye imploded in a spurt of yellow stuff resembling marmalade. The vampire twisted away. Answer shot him in the ear, tearing the lobe off. The vampire moaned. Answer shot him in the nose. The vampire mewled, smelling of Brylcreem and fireplace ashes. His shot-out eye was a deep conical hole, black and yellow. There was a light bubbling sound where his nose had been. Answer wasn’t even breathing hard. He shot the aproned vampire through the cheek, blowing teeth between his lips. The vampire staggered. Answer took his stake and plunged it into KISS THE COOK’s chest.

KISS THE COOK shrieked. KISS THE COOK shook.

Then KISS THE COOK exploded in dazzling fashion.

“Huh,” Answer said.

Beehive was at Tripwire’s neck. Her teeth brushed his skin.
I don’t want to die
, he thought.
On the other hand, I don’t want to live, if it means becoming one of them
. He clamped a hand over Beehive’s face, fingers sinking into her flaming features. He pushed harder and the lion’s share of Beehive’s face came away in his hand, slipping between his fingers like fondue cheese. Beehive’s jaws rattled and clacked like wind-up chattery teeth. She tried to say something but could not on account of her tongue being fused to the roof of her mouth.

“Blaa graaa lahhe,” she blubbered. “Blaa gr—”

Tsst
.

As soon as the vampires began to attack, Crosshairs had slotted his silver bullet into the Remington. His knowledge of the supernatural was sketchy—was silver good against werewolves? Witches? Bogeymen?—but silver struck him as a strong, pure metal, effective against any creature of evil. He saw Tripwire was in trouble: a faceless vampire was on his neck like a hobo on a ham sandwich. Crosshairs centered his breathing and—

Tsst.

There was no other way to describe it: Beehive’s head flew apart. Fragments of skull bone exploded off in every direction like a flock of pheasants flushed from tall grass. Her headless body twitched atop Tripwire. He shoved her off and plunged the stake into her chest. It sunk to the hilt with sickening ease: like stabbing a warm loaf of bread. Beehive thrashed. Moth-like insects flew from the stump of her neck. She shriveled into ash and blew away, leaving only a faint outline in the snow. Tripwire staggered to his feet and went to help Oddy…

Crosshairs jerked the breech to insert a new cartridge. He did not see her slinking up behind him: blonde, petite, wearing a shredded mackinaw. He did not—
could not
—feel her nails tearing down the back of his parka, the noise of gunfire drowning out the sound of ripping fabric. Chill wind whipped up his spine. He felt nothing. He did not feel the razor-sharp nails cutting a vertical slash above his hipbone, deep and long and red. He did not feel the blood pouring down his back, pooling in the snow.

All he felt when she shoved her hand inside the wound was a dim sense of pressure. No pain. But he knew something was terribly wrong. Although the sensation of his organs being displaced was painless, he was keenly aware that, had the proper nerve centers been operational, he would be screaming like a motherfucker.

“What the—?” He spun on wobbly legs. She was squatted on the ground at his feet. Her hands overflowed with…
things
.

Red things. Deep purple things. Softly-shaped things that shone wetly in the moonlight.

A yellow tube ran between her fingers, dipping into empty space, rising again to connect to…
him
. He realized that the tube was his intestinal tract. His mouth opened. No sound came out.

She crammed one of his organs—a liver? a kidney? Jesus Christ, they all looked the
same
—into her salivating maw. She sucked greedily, like an infant. The organ changed color, purple to red to pink to peach to bone-white as she drained it of blood.

“Oh, Lord,” Crosshairs whispered. “Oh, Jesus, no.”

Crosshairs’s legs buckled. An out-of-place odor—French vanilla?—filled his nostrils for a second before fading. His eyes were hard and dry, like marbles. He couldn’t feel himself dying. This knowledge, the underhanded injustice of it, made him want to cry. “Give…give those back,” he said quietly.

He shot the pretty woman in the belly. She bent forward, as if punched. He ejected the spent cartridge. His mouth was full of something. He turned and spat a pouch of black blood into the snow. He sat down and picked up some of his guts, trying to push them back inside, but they were slick and kept slipping through his fingers. He got some loops back inside but then the pretty woman crawled forward and tugged them out again. Equilibrium tilted madly. She started to suck on his intestine like it was a pixie stick.

“Those are mine,” he whimpered. “I
need
them.”

She said, “I’m sorry.” She didn’t stop sucking.

Schrutt
was the sound Oddy’s stake made as it sunk into surfer-dude’s chest. The burning vampire made a queer noise and started to melt. His face softened and liquefied, running off his bones in gelatinous strings. His ribcage cracked open like a bomb-bay hatch, spilling warm guts onto Oddy’s lap. Then the bones themselves melted, sagging like overcooked noodles before turning into a thick white paste that ran down Oddy’s arms. It all happened very rapidly. Oddy stood. His parka and pants were soaked with the weight of molten vampire.

Zippo’s face was purple from the hydrostatic pressure. Blood forced its way from his nostrils and ears and the corners of his eyes as Turban bear-hugged him. The vampire gibbered in a foreign dialect, breath stinking of tabouli and rotting meat. He tore a strip of skin off Zippo’s throat and lapped at the gushing blood. Zippo hawked a blood-veined loogie into Turban’s face. Turban squeezed tighter. Bones cracked. Zippo’s body curved like a tightly-strung bow.

“Fuck you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fu…uuuck
YOU.
”

Answer rose up behind Turban, bringing his stake around in a hard arc at eye level, burying three inches of Canadian maple in Turban’s ear. Turban’s eardrum punctured with the soggy decompression of a balloon popped underwater—
thop!
The vampire gasped. His grip on Zippo loosened. Answer tugged the stake loose. The tip dripped with gelid runners of brain and tissue.

Zippo brought the Berettas up into the gap now separating Turban’s body from his. He planted the barrels on either side of Turban’s jaw and fired two pancaking rounds. The slugs cut an “X” through the vampire’s skull, exploding from his burning headgear in a swirl of cinders. Zippo jammed the barrels further into the wounds, deeper into Turban’s face, twisting, firing, twisting, firing. Slugs blew out of Turban’s head every which way, muzzle flash lighting up the backs of his eyes like Japanese lanterns.

Answer stabbed the stake into Turban’s back. The vampire let go of Zippo, who fell to the ground, puking strenuously. Turban staggered in circles, clutching at the stake. Then he gave up and exploded like a balloon full of lasagna.

Crosshairs fell to his knees. “Please…I need those…” The rifle slipped from his fingers. Even missing her chin, he was struck by the woman’s beauty: smooth skin, nose tapering to a delicate point, eyes black as jewelry-display velvet. A small scar above her upper lip. Her mouth and chin and cheeks were smeared an oily red.
How did she end up here?
the sniper wondered.
Bad luck, bad karma, circumstances beyond her control?
He could not hate the woman. He sensed she was once a tender person, a compassionate woman who didn’t like what she’d become. Crosshairs’ hair was swept back, his prosthesis crack-glazed with ice. Tears rolled down his cheek to freeze on the underside of his chin in tiny clear globes.

“Please…”

She touched his face, finger tracing the seam where flesh met latex. Her fingertips left a sickle of blood on his face. “How did this happen?” she asked, shyly, as a child. She traced a fingertip over his lips, painting them blood-red.

He whispered, “I can’t feel you.”

She whispered, “I can’t feel you, either.”

Crosshairs’s guts were a small red ball coiled between his legs. They were no longer part of him. None of it was. None of this was actually happening. This was all some movie he’d once seen.

She rested his head between her small, cold breasts. The edges of his vision were darkening. She unclasped the clips securing the prosthesis to his face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help myself.”

“Please,” Crosshairs heard himself say.

“So hungry…”

Her teeth sunk into the soft flesh of the divot. Crosshairs raised his hand to her face, wanting so desperately to feel something, anything. He touched her cheek, her nose, the soft hollow of her eye socket.

“Please…”

Her teeth shifted inside his head, sunk deep into the gray matter.

Then it happened.

Crosshairs’s fingers felt…
cold
. He looked down at his hand and curled his fingers. He could feel the snow—feel every individual
snowflake
—on his skin. He brushed his thumb against his index finger. He felt every ridge and valley, felt the tiniest pressure, the wondrous friction of flesh on flesh.

For the first time in twenty years, Crosshairs could
feel
.

Sensation blossomed inside him, unfurling like the petals of some magnificent flower. Feeling sought out every outback and tributary of his body, reawakening long-dormant nerve centers. Crosshairs wondered if a Neanderthal man thawing out of a glacier would feel the same.

Her skin in his hand, the coldness of it like slate. His toes, warm and sweaty in his boots. Ice on the back of his neck, prickling the short hairs there.

Then…

The gaping, raw wound in his back. Her teeth in his head, in his
brain
, the terrible pressure of suction.

Pain, the glorious intensity of it, rocked Crosshairs to the bedrock of his soul.

A massive black hand fell over the pretty vampire’s face, jerking her head back. Crosshairs watched Oddy pin her to the ground, knee jammed into her breastbone, and slam a stake into her chest. He twisted it inside her. Her body shriveled up and blew away like a burning leaf. Crosshairs gagged on blood in his throat. Pain ran a full-out blitzkrieg through his body.

“Pacify, son,” Oddy said. He propped a balled-up sweater under his head.

“I can…” Crosshairs hacked up a wad of red. “I can
feel
, Sarge.”

“Gonna be fine, soldier. Fine as cherry wine.”

Tripwire joined Oddy. He paled.

“Jesus Christ. He’s not gonna make it.”

This time Oddy remained silent.

Tripwire knelt beside Crosshairs. “Want some morphine? One shot’ll ease the pain. Two you’ll go numb. Three to ease you out easy. You want?”

Crosshairs shook his head. “First time in twenty years, Trip—I can feel.” His skull-divot overflowed with blood. “
Feel
.”

Zippo and Answer reconnoitered.

“Oh, Christ,” Zippo said, clutching his ribs. “We got to do something for him.”

“I’m dying,” Crosshairs said.

Oddy said, “Gonna be fine, son.” It was a knee-jerk response and they all knew it.

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Sarge,” Crosshairs said. He twined his hand with Tripwire’s. It felt so good, so warm. Then his face darkened with fear. “It’s just…”

“What’s wrong?” Tripwire asked him.

“I don’t want to end up like them…”

“I promise that’s not gonna happen.” Zippo unhooked a pair of grenades from Tripwire’s bandolier. “Open your hands, if you can.”

Crosshairs assented like a child. Zippo placed a grenade in each palm, closing Crosshairs’ fingers around the clips. “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “About you being a candyass. That was the bennies talking.”