owner had long since locked up and gone home to bed. Then Ortega, desperate for redemption, allowed as how they had already robbed a bank, more or less, so knocking over a liquor store was no big deal.
"Whores first!" piped Bambi.
"I'm too drunk to fuck," snarled Anthony, spilling Bambi onto his head and standing up.
Ortega stared at Anthony. "You're kidding."
"No kidding," Anthony assured him. "I'm too drunk to do anything but drink." He held up his index finger like a lecturer's pointer. "And I gotta get sick first to do that. 'Scuse me."
The spirit of comradeship rapidly degenerated into a squabble that sounded like two competing college cheering sections.
"Booze first!"
"No! Sex first!"
"Booze!"
"Sex!"
"Booze!"
"Sex!"
"Booze!"
Somebody yelled, "Less filling!" and got slapped around a great deal.
Then Bambi rose to the occasion. "I've got a van outside," he piped gleefully. "We can go fill it full of both!"
"Yea!" shouted the crowd as Bambi took his bow, high-stepped carefully over to the door, opened it, and - And the vampire was on him and ripping his claws deep into his ribs and spreading them and then... it... pulled... his... chest... apart. Bambi died, screeching horror and spraying organs and blood and then clumped to the floor in a little pile and the vampire was on them, on the rest of them, coming at them too fast, too damn fast, too on fast to be believed, and the first guy, some member of the pike team, just had enough time to raise his forearm in front of his face before the fiend snapped it through and ripped him open from throat to shoulder and he screamed - Jesus God, how he screamed!
The bolts! Where's the fucking crossbow? was all Crow could think and he spun around looking for it, taking his eyes off the fiend for a second because this was a vampire and 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!"