

Four for Death

A Horror Collaboration

By

Robert DeFrank, Tamsin De La Harpe, M.A. Leibfritz, and David Burton

# Copyright

© 2015 Robert DeFrank, Tamsin De La Harpe, M.A. Leibfritz, David Burton

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1stDigital Edition

Organized by Robert DeFrank

Cover by M.A. Leibfritz

Editing in part by David Burton

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors' imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Warning: This book contains mature content, including graphic violence

# Introduction

This story is the result of four authors attempting to write a story together by alternating sections. Four interpretations of characters, setting, and adaptions to ideas based on what came before. Four perspectives from various parts of the globe, connected by that marvelous thing known as the internet. The result is a unique and unusual tale, dealing with all manner of things that go bump in the night.

Enjoy.

-Leibfritz

# DeFrank

Maddy peered through the grime-smeared windshield of the truck at the tangle of tree limbs in the headlight cones. Beside her, Bart mumbled to himself as he drove. Maddy twisted a strand of her long, dark hair around her fingers and watched him squint into the night. His brain had always been a deck short a few cards. A year in the pen hadn't helped.

"Almost there," he grinned around rotting teeth.

His parents' old dairy farm took shape. Stone house and barn blocking stars and moon. He cut the lights and drove the rest of the way by memory.

"You sure nobody's here?"

"Sure I'm sure, babe. Fuckin' township seized the property after the farm went bust, nobody's bought it."

_Doesn't mean kids aint using if for a hangout._ Maddy wished she'd had time to look the place over in daylight, but Bart had been closed-mouthed about the locale till they could make a little trip his parole officer would never know about.

They parked behind the barn and took a couple of flashlights from the glove compartment and shovels from the truck bed. As they passed the barn entrance, Maddy shone her beam into the open door. The light played on empty stalls and rotten hay.

Four small black and white birds were rooting around the hay. Maybe they'd built nests nearby. The quartet went still and four beaked heads turned to the flashlight beam. One bird gave a staccato call and hop-flapped.

_Magpies,_ Maddy thought.

"I remember milking the cows here when I was a kid," Bart muttered. Then: "What the-?" His beam traced the bones of something big where the magpies were congregating. "Coyote?"

"No," Maddy said. "Looks bigger than that-"

A pair of eyes like gleaming silver coins reflected in the beam, and something rushed past, scattering the birds. There was the sensation of fur. Heat. Musk.

Maddy jumped out of the way and landed in the grass. She looked around, but whatever had denned in the barn was gone.

Bart helped her up. "What the fuck was that?" he gasped. "A deer?"

"More like a mastiff. Let's just get what we came for, then get out," she said and brushed off her jeans and boots, zipped her jacket against the cold autumn air and touched her brother's sidearm, hanging from a docker's clutch at her side.

They walked into the tangled woodlands, shovels over their shoulders, and soon enough had found the old colonial wall and dug up a gym bag.

"Here it is! Fifty thousand! And nothing to point our way!" Bart laughed. The cops had busted him for possession and complicity, but as far as they knew, Eddie was the main man, and he'd OD'd on his own product.

Bart plunged his hands in and fingered the money, oblivious to anything else. Maddy stood over him, glancing down, and around at the woods and the sounds of furtive movement.

### ***

Back at the house and barn, the four magpies returned and perched among the branches of a nearby. The air stirred with wings flapping and three more joined them. The seven birds settled in their places as if contemplating the stars.

Twenty minutes later, moonlight picked out Maddy dragging Bart's bulky body out of the woods, a gym bag over her shoulder. She stopped when she reached the corner of the house, wiped hair from her forehead, touched Bart. Cold skin. No pulse.

Then she saw headlights coming up the lane.

# De La Harpe

Maddy diverted her gaze from the glare of the headlights. Instinct, perhaps. Or something she remembered from the old cowboy flicks she used to watch with her brother when they were kids. It was important to keep your eyes adjusted to the dark. The moments it took for pupils to dilate again after being hit by a bright light were moments spent blind and vulnerable.

The snarling blue Cadillac shuddered to a halt within spitting distance of where she crouched over Bart, her left hand clutching reflexively at the gym bag, making sure it was still there. Her right hand still gripped his cooling wrist. Making sure he wasn't.

The driver scrambled out of the vehicle, a familiar hunched figure, hobbled by a prominent limp, rushed toward her.

"Jesus H. Christ, Maddy...is he...?" Jimmy's watery eyes looked ready to pop.

"Shut up, help me get him in the car."

"What happened?"

"Not now," she hissed, "help me!"

Something rustled in the underbrush and she jerked, reaching for the knife that was no longer there. Where had she dropped it? She listened, painfully aware of her own breathing, and Jimmy's clumsy, lumbering gait. Nothing for it, they had to leave.

She tugged on Bart's limp arm, pulling his inert body toward the Cadillac. Jimmy bent down to help her, his limp making his movements jerky and ragged.

Together they hauled Bart into the back seat. Maddy was strangely aware of the minutest of details. The bead of sweat on Jimmy's forehead, the white of his jaundiced eyes widened in fright, the sickly trickle of coagulating blood on Bart's forehead. She shoved his legs inside and shut the door, wincing at the sound when she did it harder than she intended. She slipped into the front seat of the Cadillac. Think. She had to think.

Jimmy got in beside her, breathing heavily.

"Did you get it?"

"Most of it. I think." She tugged the gym bag closer.

"What about his truck?"

"Leave it. We need to get away from this place."

He glanced at her. A hint of a question formed on cracked lips, but something in her face must have made him think better of it. He started the car. The blue dinosaur coughed and spluttered some before going still. Jimmy twisted the key again and swore when the car gave nothing more than an anemic chug before quitting again.

"Goddamit!" He slammed his fist against the wheel, breathing heavily. Asthma. Maddy remembered suddenly. Jimmy had asthma.

"We can take Bart's truck," she said.

Jimmy shook his head. He had an unnatural attachment to the monstrous hunk of scrap metal.

"Gimme a second." He wheezed, pulling himself out to pop the hood.

Maddy looked down at her hands, splayed out on her lap. They were steady.

She felt preternaturally calm.

Shock. She should be in shock. That's what they said three years ago when she had flipped her car over. She had gotten out fine enough, more annoyed then anything, and the policemen had told her that she was in shock, she only thought she was calm, but really her body and mind were struggling to comprehend how close she had come to snuffing it. Some kind of defense mechanism.

Only, she hadn't felt any shock. She had felt nothing. Not fear, not excitement, just nothing. Like now. Her hands were steady, except for dirt beneath her nails that had not been there before. Bloodstains bloomed like a field of poppies on the pale denim of her jeans. Not her blood.

A gust of hot breath on her neck caused the hair on her arms to stand on end. Soft lips traced the nape of her neck.

"Goddamit Jimmy!" she snapped, reaching to smack him away. Her hand met with thin air.

Outside the car Jimmy slammed the hood down. "You say something?"

She whipped round, eyes raking the back seat. Only Bart was there, glassy eyes staring at nothing, head pushed at an unnatural angle so his chin dissolved into his neck. A hint of a smile on his lips.

# Leibfritz

Wild baying, the howl of a damned soul. It slid though the ears and into the depths of the brain, stirring something primal and afraid. Maddy squinted into the darkness, it sounded close, but she saw nothing. Just the restless trees, harsh in the moonlight coming up over the barn.

"The hell is that?" Jimmy asked, sliding back into the car to try the engine again. "Wolf or something?"

"There's no wolves out here," Maddy snapped. "Not in forty years." She had seen the news clipping in the house as a child, when the last holdout was shot. The snippet and its gloatingly grim tale had been floating around in a corner with other neglected scraps of interest. "Probably some damn hound." Stupid people, letting their dogs yowl at all hours. Letting them run loose. A hellish noise either way, and one she was not glad to hear again when it's cry resumed.

The engine would still not turn over, only gasp like the withered old man it was, the man that Jimmy was in line to become. It hacked and groaned and died. More useless than Jimmy, the damn Caddy.

"Just give up," Maddy said, fighting the door open. "Bart's truck runs fine." She strode to the other vehicle, and tugged the door. Locked, she didn't remember locking it. She checked the other side, locked too. She fumbled for the keys. Where were the keys? Maybe they were inside, could she get the back window open from out here?

A trace of bitter laughter, breath in her hair sending icy trembling down her spine. Maddy whirled around, but nothing stood behind her. Jimmy was back under his hood, the damn idiot. The sound had been so close. She must be imagining things, the moan of wind in the trees getting to her. The moonlight playing tricks on her eyes. A loose dog, bedding in the barn and baying at the moon. The rustle of old leaves like muttering. Normal things, twisted out of proportion by nerves and the night.

Maddy shook her head, and tromped back to the Cadillac. Bart must have the keys, she'd have to dig through his pockets. A sneer of disgust crossed her face, she didn't want to handle the body any more. It was a sagging dead weight, the last indignities of death fouling it before it started to go stiff. But it was that or hoof it home, the way things were looking with the Caddy. Shining her flashlight into the car, her guts froze.

Bart wasn't there.

"Jimmy," she hissed. "Jimmy, what did you do with Bart?"

"What're you talking about? What's wrong with him?" Jimmy snorted. "Other than going cold, I mean." He snickered at his own poor joke, a nervous sound to distance himself from death.

"Don't play games with me, he's not back here." Maddy snarled, looking at the blood soaked back seat. "Where'd you put him?"

"What?" Jimmy came around, staring dumbfounded at the vacant car. "He wake up, run off?" Reasonable questions, on another day, but tonight they seemed especially dim.

"Don't be stupid," Maddy said. "He was dead, is dead. I checked for a pulse." Her fingers hadn't trembled, no shaking to mar the results. Only the slow cooling and nothing. "He's gone."

"Except he _is_ gone." Almost an astute observation. "Corpses don't go walking," Jimmy muttered. "I didn't move him. Didn't hear the door open or shut either."

Another howl cut the night, full of enthusiasm. Sucker sounded like it was right next to them, but Maddy could find no trace of the damn thing with her flashlight. The beam flickered.

"Just what we need," Maddy muttered, smacking the thing. "I swear these were fresh batteries." Despite their newness, the flashlight flickered again, and went out. No amount of striking or cussing would revive it. "Where's yours, Jimmy?"

No response. Maybe he had gone to try the truck.

"Jimmy?" she called louder. "Damn it, where'd you get to?"

Nothing.

Maddy was alone. A cold feeling slid up her back.

Hot breath, something wet along her ear.

Heh heh. That wasn't nice, Maddy.

But not alone enough.

# DeFrank

Bart's voice, wet and glottal but definitely Bart, made the bones of Maddy's skull shudder and churned her brains like cake batter. The voice trailed into a laugh that oozed over her skin and she felt more than heard the presence looming behind her.

She spun, aiming a punch at the shape that occluded the stars. It—he?—didn't try to block or dodge the blow, but it was like hitting a balloon full of cold vomit, like punching a blood sausage. Soft and yielding a little, but no reaction, not even a grunt of pain. Moonlight and shadow contrasted on Bart's leering, idiot grin, and when she tried to pull back her arm he enveloped her fist with his hand. The touch cold and moist. Sickening.

Not nice, he repeated. Not nice at all.

-not happening not happening isn't happening can't be happening-

A frantic voice that she pushed aside. She aimed a knee between his legs, to little effect, but it served chiefly to buy time for her other hand to snake up her jacket. Fingers found the zipper, pulled it down, reached in and drew her brother's gun.

She put three rounds in Bart's body. He jerked back a little at each impact, drawing her with him by his hold. Then another hand the size of a ham closed on the her jacket collar and she was lifted from the ground, the frantic kicking of her boots didn't reach the grass.

Not nice at all.

The echo of gunshots seemed to rebound from the sky and her ears were ringing, but she heard him all the same. The pounding of her heart against her breastbone and the blood in her ears should have deafened her, but still she heard him. Bart paused as if inhaling her terror. If her mind could have formed words, they would've been a loop repeating variations of _What the fuck is happening?_

Bart's mouth opened wide. Wider. Jaw unhinged like a python's-

Something hit him from the side, something big and so fast it was over before she quite registered everything. Her only warning was when Bart's chuckling became a projection of surprise–anger–fear.

He dropped Maddy and she scrambled away from the rolling combatants till she reached the truck. When she turned and pressed her back to the wheel, the fight was over.

What looked like a wolf the size of a pony reared over Bart and plunged massive canine jaws that gripped and wrenched. A forepaw splayed like a taloned hand pressed the corpse's chest as the canine head pulled up, trailing viscera. Bart twitched and shuddered, uttered a final, gurgling cry and went still.

With the truck as a brace, Maddy pushed herself up to her feet, eyes never leaving the scene.

The beast threw its head back to swallow the entrails, then turned that monstrous head in her direction. Its own eyes gleamed like silver dollars.

Maddy's breath caught in her throat. Like it had a mind of its own, her hand went to the handle and tugged vainly at the locked door. Not that it would do any good. In her mind, those jaws crushed the frame like tinfoil. She didn't even consider the gun in her other hand.

The wolf-thing must've been more than ten feet away, but a single, fluid bound seemed to close the distance and a maw that could crack her skull like a nut was only inches away. Was it standing upright? Hot, fetid breath that reeked of attar gusted onto her face.

Maddy pressed herself against the truck. Squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head.

In her mind, she could see it's flaring nostrils as it sniffed her neck. But then she felt the wolf withdraw, as if it were no longer interested in her. When she dared open her eyes it was to see the beast dragging its kill into the barn.

Like a switch had flipped, the two flashlights flickered to life.

Maddy took a hesitant step from the truck, then darted to grab her flashlight. Jimmy's light was on the ground, but there was no sign of Jimmy himself.

And he's got the keys to the Caddy.

She thought of the keys to the truck, in Bart's pocket. Wet, crunching noise came from the barn...

Inspiration like lightning: she hurried to the back of the truck, felt under the license plate and found a magnet box with a key.

Maddy almost wept with joy when she pulled the door open, but paused before jumping in.

The money.

_No,_ she told herself. Don't _you dare. Don't you stay here one goddamn second longer-_

She was sprinting to the Caddy.

She leaned in the driver's side window, grabbed the gym bag.

Maddy...

A chill along her spine. She shone her flashlight out the passenger window. The light was flickering, on the verge of dying again, but the beam picked out Jimmy at the very edge of its range. He seemed almost to float, bobbing up and down like a balloon.

His gaping mouth twisted in a grin. His watery eye...wasn't leaking water.

Maddy wasn't conscious of the run back to Bart's truck. She threw the gym bag in and practically dove after it, slamming the door behind her.

Minutes later she was racing down the county road, shaking as if she would break apart. One minute a comforting numbness suffused her, the next she was looking at her hands on the wheel as if they belonged to someone else.

Adrenaline withdrawal.

The road ahead seemed endless, and she pushed down all the way on the gas. Had to get out of here. Had to get away. What happened back at the barn – her mind couldn't encompass. It was a bubble, a nodule, cut off from everything else and sealed, and she had to put distance between it and her.

Little by little, waking up to a fact she would rather not recognize or acknowledge, she realized she might not be on the right road to the highway. This'd been Bart's home growing up, not hers, and she could very easily miss the turn to the highway on these winding country roads. Would she have to turn around?

No fucking way.

The sight of police top lights in the rearview mirror, the siren sounding through the air, was the last straw and she missed a turn, shot off-road. She saw a tree in the headlights, but not the airbag deploying, that happened too fast.

### ***

There were two deputies in the cruiser.

"Are you all right?" one said as they approached the wreck, centered in their headlights. "You'd better not move."

"I'm fine," Maddy managed as she climbed out of the truck, shaken but no worse for wear. A good thing about habit: she'd buckled her seat belt without thinking.

"What was that all about?" a deputy said. "You were racing like the devil himself was on your tail."

"You've got no idea," Maddy muttered, not a comeback worthy of her usual smartass self.

"I think I've got an idea," the other deputy said. "I don't need to run these plates. I know this truck and this license. It's Bart Woodrue's."

His voice was grim. "I'd heard he was up for parole. Didn't think he'd change his spots."

When the deputy came back around, he was holding the open gym bag, spilling money. Her brother's gun was in his other hand.

"Care to explain this?"

Maddy tried to bolt. It was the worst thing to do and she should've realized that. The deputy dropped the bag, lunged and caught her.

"You have the right to remain silent," he said as he pushed her against the side of the squad and wrestled her arms behind her back. She felt handcuffs snap around her wrists.

She was cussing him out, all the while barely aware of what she was saying.

"So Bart Woodrue's dead?" the deputy repeated. He shoved Maddy into the back seat. Before he swung the door shut, she heard: "His parents used to have a farm not too far from here. Somebody should go check it out."

# Burton

"Don't go there," Maddy said, straining to see past him to the other deputy, to her brother, desperate for him to be nowhere near that farm, but not wanting to worsen her situation.

"Oh, really?" The deputy she didn't know stepped between them. His eyebrows lifted as his right hand rubbed his gun, as if the idea aroused him. Maddy cursed and struck her head against the seat in front. The deputy reached in through the open window and caressed her throat. "Looks like Officer Renfield needs to question his witness." He winked slowly. "Or something," he whispered.

Then he was gone, wrenched away from the window with a curse, and Maddy scooted across the back seat, certain that whatever had taken Jimmy and the reanimated Bart had returned for her. But it was her brother's face that appeared, eyes wide, head shaking just enough for her to notice and understand.

"Ma'am," he said, his eyes widening, blind to his partner. "Is there something we should know about the old Woodrue Farm?"

Maddy's head hurt, a distant throbbing moving closer, like an axe striking wood a mile away. _Doc... doc... doc..._ There was something important in that sound, but she couldn't find it. She swallowed and shook her head, then mumbled, "Don't go there, Steve."

Renfield yanked open the driver's door and dropped into the seat. He turned and chuckled as he studied his partner. "She's a cutie, huh? But we should leave that till later, and go check out this farm?"

Maddy gave a quick shake of her head and Steve opened his mouth.

Renfield said, "I'm newly transferred to this office, Steve, so it's your call. But this little missy knows something about something, and you said you thought you heard something weird, and like you said, the only place round here is the Woodrue farm."

Maddy watched her brother's eyes harden then turn away. He obviously didn't want Renfield to know they were related, though she wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was their father's hate finally manifesting in his first born? She had shamed their name, but didn't care. What she cared about was not heading back to that farm, and, preferably, finding a way to escape with that bag of life-changing money.

Steve clambered in beside Renfield and told him to drive.

Maddy said, "Don't-"

"You hush up!" Steve snapped, not even turning.

"But you don't-"

"I said SHUT UP!" he hollered, now turning in his seat to glare at her.

Renfield chuckled. "Easy, big fella."

Maddy tried to form a plan, but the closer they drew to Bart's old farm the more she worried, and the foggier her brain seemed to become. By the time they pulled up behind Jimmy's old Caddy she couldn't stop shaking.

Renfield turned the cruiser's flashlight on the Caddy and called for anyone inside to step out slowly, but nothing moved. Maddy groaned, and Steve turned; she knew that he recognized it.

"Looks off, but we probably shouldn't do anything without touching base, right?"

Steve opened his mouth.

Renfield cackled with laughter. "I'm just messing with you. We need to check on this while it's hot." He glared at the radio and tried one last time, but then simply shook his head and banged it back down in place. "Time's a-wasting," he almost sang, barging open his door and slipping out into the night.

Steve snapped. "What the hell, Maddy? Why are you here? Why's Jimmy's Caddy? And where's Bart?" He checked on his partner and cursed. "You better start talking, or things will get ugly quickly."

Renfield re-opened his door and leaned inside. "Nobody in the Caddy," he said, sighing. "But there's a shit-load of blood, and I heard something move in that farm."

Maddy whimpered, "Don't go there, just leave."

Renfield laughed. "That's what your partners want, right? Well, it's not gonna happen, little missy. And I'll tell you why-"

"I'm going to check the farm," Steve said, opening his door.

"No!" Maddy cried.

"You keep quiet," Renfield snapped, withdrawing from the cruiser and studying his partner over the roof. "You want me to come with, buddy? Or keep an eye on the prisoner?"

Steve shook his head, but glanced at Maddy one last time, asking for her to say something, to explain, but she shook her head and silently pleaded with him to stay. Steve refocused on his partner. "Wait here. What would the captain say if something happened to her? Especially after what you did to-"

"Yeah, okay," Renfield barked. "We don't need to get into that. You go," he said, nodding at the farm. "I'll try the radio again, and take care of little miss. But if you see anything crazy, call me, and I'll come running. Don't be a hero."

Steve rolled his eyes, drew his weapon, and slipped out of Maddy's view. She shifted across the back seat again, desperate to stop him, but what could she say? Beware of the zombie or fucking giant direwolf? She snorted and then leaped against the door in shock when there was a doubleclick and the other back door opened. Deputy Renfield slid in beside her, the doors relocking.

She said, "The hell are you doing?"

Renfield leered. "Questioning my witness." He chuckled softly. "This should be fun." He shook his head. "And pay no mind to what my partner said about that other girl. That was just hateful rumors and lazy speculation." He inched a little closer. "And she meant nothing to me."

Maddy opened her mouth to scream, but his hand was over it before she could, part-pinching her nose, making it difficult to breathe. Her eyes bulged as his free hand landed on her chest, just resting there, but then slowly rubbing. She groaned beneath his hands, trying to find something to bite, but he was strong, and looked determined. She glanced back toward the farm, desperate for her brother's return, not least because that would mean he was safe.

The cruiser's spotlight flashed out and the twirling lights vanished. Even the dashboard slipped into darkness as the electrics failed, and the doors unlocked.

"The hell!?" Renfield mumbled.

He was still fondling her chest, but his left hand loosened its grip over her mouth. She leaned back a fraction, further freeing herself far enough to be able to suck in a deep but stale breath.

A scream blatted into the night, and Maddy and Renfield turned toward it. Losing focus, his hand pulled further away. She tried not to think about the scream, about who it was and what it might mean. And whether it was human.

Renfield shook his head. "What the-"

Maddy seized her moment and bit down on his thumb, feeling what she feared was his skin flop into her mouth as he screamed. She yanked her head away, drawing more of him with her teeth, sickened by the coppery taste filling her mouth. The hand on her chest lashed up and landed an uppercut. He wrenched his bleeding hand free from her mouth before pushing her away. Maddy twisted as she spat something to the floor, her fingers struggling with the door handle, fearful she couldn't do it, but then she had it and pulled, and fell out of the squad, tasting mud with the blood as she landed in the dirt as another stronger, more heart-frying scream penetrated the cold night air.

# Leibfritz

On the ground, she pulled back her feet, trying to get them through the handcuffs. It pulled, and scraped as she bent near in half, but the alternative was to lay there and wait for either Renfield to recover, or find what he was screaming about. Neither option was feasible, and so she bit her tongue and slid her arms. Success was accompanied by a soreness in her shoulders she didn't want to think about. It didn't matter, her hands were now in front of her. Maddy struggled to her feet, scrambling on the moist earth, and turned to look at the squad.

Big Mistake.

Jimmy was there, hands on Renfield, dripping god knew what onto the screaming man as he pulled him along the ground. Dragged him through mud while he himself floated. An unholy smile split the dead man's face.

_Nuh uh._ Jimmy said. _I'm gonna have her all to myself. She owes me, owes me somthin' good. Don't like sharing._

With an awful crunch, Renfield stopped screaming.

Maddy didn't wait to see what Jimmy wanted from her. She bolted for the house, for Steve. She didn't fancy her chances out here on her own. He was armed, and no matter what anyone knew or didn't know he wouldn't leave her to those things.

She didn't have to go far.

"Hey!" Steve was running toward her, gun drawn. Must have heard his partner screaming. "The hell's going on? Where's Renfield?" He snagged her arm, and cuffed as she was he manhandled her around.

"Jimmy," she muttered. "Jimmy's got him." She didn't have the energy to fight back, her legs starting to buckle. Her heart pounded as though it would burst. Too much. It was hard to think, wrap her grey matter around what she'd seen, heard. Too much of this shit.

Steve snarled. "Damn it, Maddy." He dragged her back toward the squad. "Jimmy!" he called. "Come out with your hands up."

Nothing, not a sound. It had gone far too quiet, unnatural stillness in the air. A wet sound, gagging, came from the tree-line.

Steve pushed Maddy against the squad as he reached in to turn the key. The ignition went over without hesitation, and the squad came back to life, lights cutting through the oppressive dark. He muscled her into the back seat again, and she sank into the padding with a ragged sigh. The car was running, now they could leave. Steve might be difficult, but he could shoot straight. Not that she was sure that would help.

"Don't move," Steve hissed. "Think about bolting and I'll shoot you like the petty criminal you are, sister or no." He shook his head, face twisted with disgust. "Now hold on while I check for Renfield."

"Jimmy," Maddy said. "He took him. Now they're probably both dead. Don't you go and get killed too, can't we just leave? Why don't you call for backup, get someone else to look while we just leave?" For an instant she considered offering to split the take if Steve would just let them get out of here. But no. He wouldn't take it, the stubborn ass.

Steve snorted. "Radio's been on the fritz, or I'd already have called you in. Phone's not working either, hasn't been any reception out here all week. Now shut up while I check for my partner. Then we can go."

He walked into the darkness, leaving Maddy to listen to his crunching footsteps. She tried the door, he'd locked them, the damn bastard. The moments ticked by, a cold dread filling her guts. "Steve?" she called, cursing how her voice faltered. "Steve?"

Thunk.

Maddy shrieked as a heavy weight hit the side of the car. Panting, she turned to the far window.

"Aw, shut up," Steve snapped, yanking open the passenger side door. "Looks like you're going to have company for the ride back."

Maddy blinked as he shoved a gaunt, pale-haired man next to her. The only thing the stranger was wearing was a set of handcuffs. Those, and blood. Some bright, the rest dark, but all of it reeking of death and rot. And vomit.

"What the fu-?" Maddy pressed herself against the door, trying to get away from the guy. He looked sick, diseased. Sallow, or jaundiced, like his body couldn't decide exactly what was wrong with it.

"Found him in the bushes," Steve said, sliding into the front seat. "You're both coming to the station. No sign of Renfield or Jimmy, and it's too damn dark to keep looking. We'll get a bunch of guys and lights out here." He looked back at her, scowling. "We've got us a long drive, and you best start talking. I need a solid story out of you before we get there."

The naked man groaned, interrupting Steve's threats. He started giggling, a high and unsettling noise. He turned toward Maddy and opened an eye. It glinted like a silver coin.

# De La Harpe

Some primordial genetic memory, buried deep in her synapses, stirred. She froze, unable to look away.

He was _wrong._ Somehow, all wrong.

Thin, emaciated even. Matted hair hung in his face in lifeless dreadlocks. The sunken folds of his belly, lined with a thick fuzz of blood-clotted hair, clung to his spine in a manner that put her in mind of a starving dog. Something in the stoop of his shoulders, the unnatural angle at which they were hinged, caused his chest to look too narrow, his ribs to protrude too far. He was bent at the wrong places. Joints swollen, limbs too long. It was as though he was strung together by a committee who had heard the theory behind human anatomy, but never quite got the hang of it.

The car lurched to life and Steve maneuvered it along the dirt track, one white knuckled hand clutching the wheel, the other reaching inside his jacket pocket for a half-empty packet of Pall Malls.

His hand shook slightly as he fumbled with his lighter.

Maddy dragged her gaze away from the stranger. "Bum a smoke?" she asked. The same phrase she'd used when they were teens. She reached to the mesh partition, her hands still cuffed. For a moment, her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. He lit his smoke and one for her and passed the cigarette through the mesh, diverting his gaze as she did so. She leaned against the back of the driver's seat, careful to put as much distance between herself and the stranger as she could. Tremors shook her body in waves. Perhaps she would never stop shaking now. Perhaps she would shake until her bones rattled loose from her sockets. She felt an insane urge to laugh.

"Your naked buddy over there want a cigarette too?" Steve exhaled a large cloud of smoke, filling the car with a foggy haze.

"I don't know him."

"Better start telling me what you do know then."

From the edge in his voice she surmised their brief truce was coming to an end. "Steve," she tried to keep her voice calm. "It's not..."

"What it looks like? What do you take me for, Maddy? Everything you touch turns to shit. How many lives have you wrecked by now? Jesus, I can't even tell people about you, you know that? If anybody asks I say my sister died..."

She shut her eyes. She didn't need to say anything, nothing would stop him now he had got going. Steve was one of god's most natural ranters. A veritable prince of tirades. The kind of person who said things like "...it's the principle of the thing." or "I try to be open-minded, but..."

There's just no reasoning with that type of person.

"Fleeing a crime scene with bag of cash and a gun. I can't help you this time, I have a goddamn child on the way, Christ, I don't need this! I don't need a murdering scumbag of a sister."

She drew air through gritted teeth. "It's not like that."

He paused. The red ember of the cigarette waxed and waned as he drew on it. He must be rattled, she realized, to allow her to interrupt his argument. Then again, he must be rattled to leave Renfield behind. She couldn't quell the faint sense of satisfaction she got from that. Steve afraid. Steve being human after all.

"What's it like then?" he asked, sounding almost reasonable.

She let her head drop back against the seat, suddenly weary. "We were just there to pick up the money."

"What money?"

"From the job, a year back. The one Bart got busted for. He stashed it."

"Thought the other guy got the money, the one who OD'd"

"Everybody thought that."

Beside her the stranger was looking from one to the other. His raspy breathing was steady, unworried. Insane, she thought. He has to be, or it's some kind of syndrome. An 'ism.' Maybe he escaped from a nearby loony-bin and happened to be hiding out on the abandoned farm. The image of the lupine figure attacking Bart, or what looked like Bart, rose up in her mind unbidden. Yeh right.

"So Woodrue had the money the whole time and he was just generous enough to take you with to go get it." Steve sneered.

"Yes," she lied. "But it wasn't there when we dug it up. Not all of it. There was something else. Someone is fucking with us." The last bit she added quietly to herself, so he wouldn't hear.

The Stranger began to laugh again. She shuddered. She sucked in a lungful of nicotine before continuing.

"He lost it. Went nuts. Accused me of stealing his stash, like I had any idea where he hid it."

"Smart guy."

"Fuck you. It was self-defense. He would have killed me." Not very nice Maddy.

"Hope you can prove that." A flutter of movement and a hard thunk against the wind shield. The car veered. "Fuck fuckfuckity fuck!" Steve banged his fist against the wheel. Balled against the windshield, lodged in the wipers, the remains of a bird lay splattered against the newly cracked glass.

"A fucking bird at this time of night!"

Maddy barely looked. She was staring at the stranger. A smile creased his stubbled face. His lips began to move, she caught the slur of thick accent, but not the words.

"What's he saying?" Steve snapped.

"Fuck should I know?"

"Talk louder buddy!" Steve said in sing-song voice. "You want to give me a name? You my sister's latest casualty? Another one to discover she's a lady of unsalvageable morals?"

"Shut up!" She looked from the man to the dead bird, black feathers rustling in the wind. Understanding dawned. "What kind of bird is that? In the windshield."

"What? I don't know, some kind of crow or something."

She risked leaning in closer to the stranger. "Sorrow? Are you saying sorrow?"

Pale eyes were suddenly fixed on her. He held up his hand, showing her one crooked index finger, tipped by a blackened nail.

"One?"

His face split open in a grin, revealing two large canines along with a wave of fetid breath. Maddie recoiled.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"One for sorrow."

"Huh?"

"It's a rhyme. About magpies. You've heard it. One for sorrow, two for mirth..."

Steve snorted. "Great, another fucking psycho. Just what I needed."

# DeFrank

"You'd know all about psychos, wouldn't you?" she snapped. "Would you like to know what your partner was getting up to while you were off looking for Jimmy? Or do I even have to tell you?"

She shook her hair clear of her face and forced a sneer to her lips.

"This the quality of people you rub shoulders with? Don't see why you're ashamed of me. Think you're so much better. That you'd got away from all that shit. Look who you were riding with."

"Maddy-" he bit back whatever he meant to say next. Instead: "What did he...did he hurt you?"

"No, and no thanks to you," Maddy slumped back. "Jimmy got him. I told you."

"Jimmy?" Steve said like he was hearing it for the first time. "Limping, runny-eyed asthmatic _Jimmy_ took out Renfield? He must've been hopped up to even think about it." He looked at the naked, bloody stranger. "What about you, Flash? What's your story?"

The naked man grunted and stretched. There was a cracking and bones seemed to pop and slide under his skin like he was reshaping himself from the inside out. When he leaned back against his seat his shoulders seemed a little straighter, his chest more proportional, but he still wouldn't be getting any modeling contracts for anything but the walkway at Castle Frankenstein.

From the shadows: "One...for sorrow."

A whisper, almost like the naked guy was thinking out loud to himself.

"The cry of one alone...is always sorrow."

"What's he going on about?"

"Two, but no mirth," the whisper from the dark crept into Maddy's brain. "Then one again, but four...for is..."

Her and Bart, the thought flashed in her mind. Then just her. Then Maddy, Jimmy and dead Bart, and the wolf thing with eyes so silvery...

"Four for death," she said. It wasn't even a whisper.

Silver eyes lit the darkness with a white fire, or so it seemed, burning into her with...recognition?

For Maddy, it was like being pressed against the truck again, with the hot, slaughterhouse breath of the wolf-thing on her. The naked man leaned his face toward her and...was he _sniffing?_

"You listening?" Steve. "I want to know what the fuck you're doing here!"

The man shifted his gaze to Steve, as if reluctant to look away from Maddy.

"I hunt," he said in a cold, clear voice.

"Well that's fuck-all helpful. You always hunt _au naturale?_ Is it the kind of prey you snort or smoke?"

The naked man didn't deign to respond, only leaned back into the shadowed corner of the cruiser.

"Something else." Maddy shook herself and decided now was as good a time as any. "If you want to keep our familial ties under wraps, you might want to look at your evidence. That gun I had, it look familiar to you?"

"What're you-" Then Steve looked more closely at the weapon. Recognition lit his eyes and made his voice flat. "That's one of my guns," he said. "How the fuck-"

Then he remembered, deducing the only time the theft could have taken place.

"You lifted it," he said. "Four days ago, when you came by. Just to try and borrow money I thought. More fool me."

"So the shit's got on everybody. Tell me more about your precious, salvaged morals," Maddy said. It was a small, nasty taunt, but it made a small, nasty part of her feel better to see him flinch.

"It's been fired recently," he said after examining the gun. She'd put multiple bullets in the Bart thing, but it hadn't so much as slowed him down. "Is my gun a murder weapon?"

"Steve, you want to shut up for once and _listen?_ Yeah, we went up there for the cash, Bart and me, and Jimmy too. I guess Bart had called him up." Why? To divide the money even more? The idiot. Every time she'd thought Bart couldn't get any stupider he'd surprised her. The past few months she'd been on edge as she waited for him to get out, half expecting him to slip up and run his mouth about the money he'd stashed away somewhere.

The visiting days when she'd buttered him up about how smart he'd been, getting hold of that cash before the cops could descend and seize all the evidence, hoping he _would_ let slip to her where he'd put the take, but no. Was a sword that cut both ways, his staying mum, and nothing to do about it till this morning when he'd got out and she'd been waiting for him, leaning against the side of his truck, her boot heel tapping a tire as she kicked with apparent idleness, a come-hither look pasted across her face. His kiss was slobbery and tasted of garlic and liver.

She shook her head. This morning, it felt like another age in another world. For a heady instant Maddy wondered if she'd died and gone to hell without knowing it. But no, she must be alive: there was too much desperation and fear, which implied hope and something to lose. Hell was pure despair. An Army chaplain she'd known growing up had explained it to her.

"We went there for the cash, but something happened-"

"More of that shit you were carrying on about when Renfield and me snapped the cuffs on you? Shit about Bart being dead but up and walking around like some kind of zombie, and a wolf the size of a Buick dragging him off and _eating_ him? God, Maddy for a minute I thought you'd started using."

Maddy shook her head. For all Steve liked to think the worst of her, she'd never touched anything stronger than pot. She tried to remember what she'd said as she'd ranted, but it was a blur.

"Steve, I'm serious. Dammit, something's out there, something not right. What was that you said about weird stuff going on? About noises and shit?"

Steve clenched his fists tight on the wheel, then released his hold. "We need to talk about what we're going to say about this money when we get to the station," he muttered, almost talking to himself, and Maddy saw a weight of strain and weariness pressing down on him, just under the front of perfection and ramparts of bluster. "When Sandman gets a whiff of this-"

"Who?"

Steve came back to himself, aware of her as something other than a problem that refused to be solved. He gave a _fuck it_ shrug and said: "Captain Jerard Sanders," he said. "The Sandman, everyone calls him. Cause of the extra sandbags he convinced the county commissioners to request for flood season, that's the official line. Really it's because if you piss him off he'll put you to sleep. Your pets anyway. A lot of places have stray cats, feral cats. He has volunteers trap them and take them to a shelter to be put down. Somehow, a lot of cats belonging to people he doesn't like end up straying off their owners' properties and losing their collars. They just happen to get put down too."

Steve stared out the windshield. "That's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's how it works round these parts: the sheriff, he's a good guy, but he's past seventy and climbing on eighty. Looks good in the paper. Jolly old elf who shows up at dinners and gives nice speeches, visits the schools, all that, but Sandman takes care of the day to day business. Has for almost twenty years."

There was hate in Steve's voice. Real, raw, personal hate.

"What, he's on the take?" Maddy ventured.

"Nothing so obvious. There's things everybody knows. Open secrets. Guns and evidence sold on the sly and the money pocketed. Assets seized but that disappear, and the records lost or conveniently damaged in one of the floods. A prominent citizen's kid gets in trouble and it's covered up for favors owed. Blackmail. Evidence planted. But there's rumors of worse stuff. A lot worse, and Sandman's at the center of it. He makes money off the badge any way he can, but nothing that'll stick. He's too smart for that. Smart and cautious and too well-connected."

In the rearview mirror, Steve's reflected gaze bored into hers.

"He _runs_ this county."

He glanced back out the windshield. "Renfield, he's Sandman's guy. Or he was. If that sick bastard's really dead I won't shed any tears. Hell, I'd stop by after his nice official funeral and piss on his grave."

Pieces came together in Maddy's head.

"Renfield. You weren't showing him around. Not really. He was keeping an eye on you."

Maddy saw confirmation in Steve's face, the set of his shoulders. Knowing her brother, he'd probably had a run-in with this Sandman guy. Steve, law and order idealist that he was, would probably love taking this bastard down, but...too smart...too cautious...too well-connected. Nothing would stick, and if he tried, Sandman would crush him.

Still, this was _Steve_. He'd risk it anyway.

Unless it wasn't just him at risk.

"Steve." She remembered something he'd said. "You've...got a kid on the way?"

"Her name's Emily," he said softly, confessing an avenue of vulnerability. "She's a couple months along. We're gonna be married this weekend."

_You never told me,_ she thought but didn't say. Why would he? A part of her she'd thought calloused over stung as if blood had been drawn. She felt another pair of eyes on her and shot a glare at the cuffed and naked man beside her, grateful for a chance to look anywhere but at Steve. The guy wasn't as out of it as he'd looked at first: was quietly observing them. Observing _her._

"The fuck you looking at?"

He bent his head forward, she could've sworn she caught a flash of silver in his eyes that sent a shiver through her blood. She and Steve had torn into each other the way only siblings could—they knew each other so well—but this guy...one glance and she felt pierced to the bone with quicksilver.

"Maddy, that is your name," he said. Not a question. "It is the short form of Madeline."

She blinked. "Nut," she said under her breath and looked away with a quick toss of her head. No one had called her that since she was twelve. She didn't want to hear it now.

"Shit," Steve hissed and felt the cruiser slowing. Another cruiser was parked roadside, and a man in a deputy's uniform got out to wait while Steve's car came to a stop. Then he strolled in front of them, into the headlights' path. He'd flipped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses against the glare. Maddy didn't need to ask.

Sandman.

"I'm going to talk to him," Steve said. "Maddy, for God's sake keep your tongue civil if you don't want it nailed to a wall."

He got out of the squad and walked to meet Sandman like a dog with his back up.

Sandman looked about fifty, but like he could break men half his age or leave them gasping dust at the track. He was smiling and square-jawed, the kind of picture you put on posters. But Maddy watched him with narrowed eyes. The way he held himself, the tilt of his head, not wrong, but artificial, like he was performing for an audience. He didn't so much move as go from one pose to another and pause to project the desired emotion to those watching.

He's practiced that in front of a mirror.

The perfect front. A carefully maintained image, so perfect it couldn't help but cause unease, for at some level you knew it was a put-on. If half of what Steve said about this Sandman guy was true, it was no wonder her brother hated him: Sandman was a living mockery of everything Steve had worked for and all the ideals he tried to serve, to redeem their family name from their father's disgrace.

Their father...the image that arose in Maddy's mind was the tall, straight figure of a man in uniform, quick to smile and laugh, always understanding, but who never shirked his duty. Until everything changed.

She and Steve had been military brats, and the first eleven years of Maddy's life had been with one base neighborhood or another as her father was transferred to different duties. An image, a voice on a phone and face on a computer screen, a beloved presence when he could spend time with them. _Serving our country and keeping us safe,_ Mom had said.

Then the phone call. The weeping. Dad coming home a shell, someone else, someone violent and frightening. Traumatic brain injury, she'd heard. A concussive blast had scrambled his grey matter.

Everything had fallen apart. The bureaucracy had broken down. Benefits and counseling didn't help as he was misdiagnosed, and the world her father had fought for abandoned him.

Drugs were next, and more violence, and finally suicide, three days after Maddy's fourteenth birthday. Her strongest memory of that day was bawling her eyes out on Steve's shoulder while he comforted her. Mom didn't last much longer and then they were on their own. Now her brother'd seen what came of trying to rebuild what was lost. Why? It would only be destroyed again. All you can do is survive as best you can, any way you can, with whatever means you have-

"Do I know you, Madeline?"

"What?" she glanced at the naked man.

"I recognize you," he murmured and sniffed.

"Stop calling me that," she hissed. It was too beautiful. Something to be broken. Nothing she was or wanted to be.

She turned to the window and the darkness beyond. From the night there came the call of birds. More magpies, by their distinct, staccato cries.

"The birds, Madeline," he breathed from behind her, a low growl. "Count them."

"W-what?" She said. "Count?" She glanced from him to the night beyond the flashlight beams and headlight cones. "Count them how? It's night-"

"Their voices," his breath against the back of her neck, the low rumble. " _Listen,_ Madeline."

His voice dropped to a whisper to make way for the magpies. He was right. Each one was distinct, recognizable, engaging in a conversation she couldn't quite comprehend, but whose participants she could guess at.

"There are six of them." The man said. "Six for gold...now a seventh joins them...for a secret not to be told...

But Steve was leading Sandman back to his cruiser, their brief exchange of words over.

"Why am I here?" Sandman chuckled, hale and hearty. "What kind of question is that? Where else _would_ I be, Steven, with radios out and a truck crashing head-on into a tree?" he looked into the window at Maddy, smiled and tilted the brim of his hat in a practiced gesture. His teeth were so white they shone.

"Well hello, missy," he said and took off his mirrored sunglasses. Maddy felt a chill. She could understand why Sandman would prefer to wear reflective shades: this was like looking into a reptile's eyes. Flat. Empty. She felt herself coldly evaluated: not a person but an object, her emotions, fears and pain mere levers and fulcrums by which she could be manipulated. As he must see all people.

_Sandman, where've I heard that before?_ The thought flitted through her head, a memory of something Bart had heard from Eddie. Something he'd said when he referred to his higher-up...the Big Sleep?

"So you're the last one to see Renfield," he said in a commiserating tone. "I'd like to talk about that."

Yeah, he'd be the kind of guy to set up a program to catch feral cats and use it to kill people's pets. The kind of guy to keep a sicko like Renfield around to do other dirty work. She thought of Jack Merridew from Lord of the Flies and his sadistic enforcer, Roger, and poor Steve was in Ralph's role.

"Captain, look!" Steve pointed. From the darkness emerged a shambling figure. Sandman's and Steve's hands went to the butts of their sidearms, undid the locking straps, only to recognize Renfield.

He was no walking dead. Not the floating kind either. The electrics of Steve's cruiser were working and Maddy'd begun to associate that weird effect with the presence of the zombie things, but his hair and eyes were wild and he practically fell, giggling, into Steve's arms while Sandman stood off, watched them and scanned the surroundings with a sweep of his flashlight.

# Burton

Sandman said, "The hell happened to you?"

Renfield stopped walking, but staggered on the spot, as if drunk or high or both. His eyes were all over the place, and there were cuts on his cheeks and forehead, and part of his right ear appeared to be missing. On top of that, his knees kept almost giving out, while his hands kept clenching into tight fists, then relaxing, and then clenching again, his fingernails leaving deep cuts on his palms where they had sunk beneath the surface.

Maddy had to smile, but then caught Steve's glare and stopped just before Sandman turned to her, his eyebrows tilting up as if he knew something. Maddy felt an itch in her skull, and hoped to god she wasn't going to get one of her headaches. But this was different, more like a tickling, and a repeating sound, like a muted clock ticking.

Doc... doc... doc...

She shook her head, knowing that wasn't right, but not far off something important. Yet she wanted to be rid of it, needing to refocus on the three men in the street, although she wasn't sure Renfield looked like he qualified anymore. Sandman turned back to his officer and took a step closer.

"Sir?" Steve said, grabbing his captain's shoulder.

Sandman stopped and stared at the hand until Steve removed it and took a step back. "Better," he snapped. "Never touch me."

"But sir-"

"But nothing. Now step back and learn something."

Steve took another step back, happy to be away from his partner. He chanced a quick glance at his sister, hoping she wouldn't get them in more trouble, but she seemed mesmerized by Renfield, and he wondered again about what she said happened in the cruiser while he had been in the farm. He turned back to Sandman and Renfield.

Sandman kept an arm's length away from his twitching charge. "Stand up straight, Renfield, and make your report."

Renfield tried, but his body wouldn't cooperate. Instead he slumped to his knees, his head lolling onto his shoulders, so at least he could see his superior.

Sandman said, "What the hell happened to you?"

Renfield shook his head.

"Tell me," Sandman said.

"Don't know, sir," Renfield mumbled.

"Speak up, man, what's wrong with you?"

Renfield turned toward Steve's cruiser and seemed to notice Maddy for the first time, and raised his left arm, slowly but surely pointing directly at her. Sandman and then Steve followed his finger, while Maddy did her best to retain her composure, not helped by the fact that the naked man had moved closer, and was currently drooling in her hair. She tried to shake him off while giving nothing away to her tormentors outside.

Sandman said, "What of her? Come on. Time's wasting and I've better places to be."

Renfield cackled like a demented witch and threw his head from side to side, droplets of blood flying free from his still open cuts. "She's hiding something at her place."

Sandman grinned. "Is she now?" He turned and stared at Maddy, who opened her mouth to say something, but a quick shake of his head dissuaded her. "And do you know what this something is, Renfield?"

Renfield laughed again. "Two things."

Everyone waited.

Finally, Sandman said, "And they are?"

Renfield darted his hands to his face and hid behind them, his head shaking in small twitches, as if only his head was cold. "A body," he mumbled.

Maddy screamed, "That's not true."

Sandman turned to her and glared.

Steve said, "Shut up."

"No," said Sandman, grinning. "Let her speak."

Maddy shook her head. "I don't have a place. I can't afford one. I rent the attic of an old family friend," she said, glancing at Steve, who shook his head.

Sandman turned from Maddy to Steve. "Something to tell me, Steven?" Steve shrugged, so Sandman chuckled and turned back to Maddy. "Go on."

Maddy sighed. "I can barely squeeze into my room. I couldn't possibly hide anyone there. And how would I get a body up there past the family? They have five kids, and someone is always there. The Daltons. You remember, right?" she asked, again turning to Steve, figuring if he wasn't going to help her she didn't care if his boss knew they were related. "The mother used to babysit me. You had a crush on her?"

"Shut the hell up," Steve said.

Sandman chuckled softly to himself. "So this is your little-known sister?"

"Sir."

"I should have known," Sandman said, but didn't elaborate. Instead, he turned back to Renfield and crouched in front of him. "How do you know this?"

Renfield uttered a low rumble from deep in his throat. "Bart told me."

"Who is Bart?"

Steve smirked at Maddy and said, "He's Maddy's accomplice, sir. Supposedly dead at the farm. Same as her second accomplice, Jimmy, although she claims otherwise." He chuckled and stepped away from the cruiser, moving back toward Sandman, as if changing sides again, although there was a reticence to his step. "Says he was dead but not dead, sir."

Sandman turned to Maddy.

She thought she saw something else in his eyes. Was it fear? Concern, at least. Worry. Perhaps this was somehow connected to all the secrets and schemes Steve had spoken about? But how? Bart had always suggested there was something else going on, something huge—with a mastermind, he had said, the infamous Big Sleep—but he hadn't known enough to share anything more than weak hearsay. And surely the sheriff's office was a stretch too far for even his crazy imagination?

Sandman turned back to Renfield. "And the second thing?"

But Renfield no longer appeared to be with them, as his focus had drifted to the side of the road, his eyes still rolling all over the place, but also somehow seemingly focusing on something that Sandman couldn't see, although he quickly lost interest and stood up straight again, silently looking between Steve and Maddy, as if waiting for either or both to crack and admit to something, anything, if only to stop his maddening stare, but neither did.

Maddy shrieked as the naked man's hand slid between the car seat and her backside, and lunged toward the window, although there was nowhere to go.

She said, "I'm being molested here."

Sandman raised an eyebrow. "Lucky you."

He nodded at Steve and stepped away. Steve glared at Maddy but then followed.

### ***

"Steven," Sandman said. "Tell me your thoughts."

"Where should I start?" he asked, distracted by the sight of Renfield on his hands and knees in the shadows beyond his boss.

"Your sister."

"Sir-"

"I don't care about you keeping the secret," he said. "Or trying to." He winked. "Well, not right now do I care. As for later, we'll have to see, as it is deception." He shrugged. "Everything could depend on how things pan out."

"Sir?"

Sandman waved away the question. "Speak."

Steve's face contorted, as if struggling physically and mentally. Then he said, "My sister's a bad apple, sir. And I wouldn't put murder past her." He sucked in a deep breath, disbelieving the traitorous words pouring from his own mouth about his only remaining family. Although that was up-family, being part of his past, and he had to focus on his down-family, his soon-to-be wife and child. And with Sandman there was only one way out of a mess if he believed you were knee deep in one, and as much as he hated bowing to the man in this moment, he felt confident he could find a way back out of the mess again later, although he had seen better cops than him sucked down and swallowed by the big man.

Sandman slapped Steve's left cheek, snapping him out of his reverie. Steve stared at him, his head barely rocking, but then simply nodded, trying not to think about how much of himself he was losing tonight, and whether it could ever be re-found. He hoped so, for his future family's sake.

"And these Daltons?"

"Clean as a whistle, sir," he said, shaking his head. "Live in a huge house that used to be a dental surgery. Bill Dalton's dad, Duke, used to run it, but Bill's a renovator. Makes a fortune, apparently. Not quite sure why they would let someone like my sister share their house, to be honest, so maybe there is something there."

"Are you talking blackmail?" Sandman asked.

Steve shrugged. "Tonight, sir? I'm no longer sure."

"Well," Sandman said, suddenly grinning. "I think we need to call on this Bill Dalton and family and see if we can find this body Renfield seems convinced is there."

He turned and called Renfield, who snatched something off the ground and slid it inside his shirt, holding it there, thinking he had hidden it as he approached. Sandman looked from Renfield to Steve to Maddy, who was squirming in the back seat of Steve's cruiser, whoever that naked man was, he'd seemingly taken a shine to her. He glanced at his own car.

He said, "We'll all go in your car."

"Sir?"

"You drive. I'll sit up front with you. Renfield can keep your sister and that naked man company. Who is he, by the way? I'm certain I know him from somewhere, but he looks off, and I can't quite get a bead on him."

"Not sure who he is yet, sir."

"Not a problem," Sandman said. "Help Renfield into the back and let's go."

He yanked open the front passenger door and slipped inside, turning in the seat so he could keep an eye on their prisoners as he dialed someone on his cell phone, said something behind a cupped hand, and listened to whatever they said, nodding but not speaking again, his eyes constantly darting between Maddy and naked man. Steve sucked in a deep breath and looked to the skies, then shook his head and unlocked the back door, waiting for Renfield to make his own way inside, while he seemed preoccupied, caught between whatever he had in his shirt and leering at Maddy. Steve sighed again and helped him duck, his left hand automatically moving toward Renfield's head to ensure he didn't bump it, but then pulling back, smiling when his partner smacked it rather hard, although he didn't seem to notice. Steve slammed the door and walked as slowly as he felt he possibly could to his own, wondering if this night could get any worse.

Maddy said, "The hell are you doing to me, Steve? It's not bad enough you've got naked groperman on my left, mumbling some gibberish he seems convinced I should understand, but you put your tit-pinching partner on my right? Why not just write 'molest me' across my forehead."

Steve said, "You've known worse," and started the car.

### ***

Maddy opened her mouth to defend herself, but couldn't draw her eyes away from Renfield. Naked groperman still had his hand twitching under her butt while he whispered in her ear, yet that was nothing to the... whatever it was Renfield had in his hands, first sniffing and then biting into... was it an opossum? The hell was going on here? This was supposed to have been a simple cash pick-up and move-on, and yet had quickly soured into a right mess.

She sighed, and tried to move away from naked groperman, despite some curiosity regarding what he seemed committed to telling her, but was disinclined to close any of the distance between herself and Renfield. She closed her eyes and sighed again. "What the hell is going on?" she screamed, mostly to herself.

Sandman mumbled a few words, then turned off his phone and grinned. "First," he said. "We're going to meet your accomplices, the Daltons. And then we're going to find the body you have hidden in your room." He winked at her. "My men are already working on it. Everything will be sorted in no time."

# Leibfritz

The Dalton house was a looming behemoth at the end of a long, curving driveway. The lawn was long and scruffy, the kids had busted the mower, and the small windows utterly dark. There was an empty squad parked out front, and the door was open.

"What's this?" Sandman asked. "Looks empty. Where's the family? Where are my men?" He prodded his phone, scowling.

"Who knows," Maddy muttered. "Maybe they went out." It was possible, and she hoped it was true though deep in her guts she doubted it. No one was getting away today.

Steve hissed. "Damn it, Maddy, are you squatting?"

"No," she snapped. "They were here this morning. Asked me to pick up some eggs while I was out." One of the small uses for that fat sack of cash she couldn't seem to hang on to. Last time she'd do anyone a favor, the way this night was going. "I'm not their keeper. Maybe they're playing shuffleboard with your buddies in the basement." She didn't like it. The house was never this dark, not even a television's flicker in one of the windows.

On her left, Renfield kept gnawing at his grizzly vermin, bits and spittle flying from his mouth as he coughed. Against all sense she leaned toward the naked nut. At least he wasn't getting road-kill on her, though if he didn't get his fingers away from her ass she was going to get violent.

His gibberish was interrupted with words. "The time has come," he muttered, losing himself in the words as he again tried to press his mouth to her ear. "Many things...sealing wax...kings."

The fragments turned in Maddy's head, but instead of recalling what it was he was trying to recite, her mind snagged on something similar. Something related. "Beware," she said to herself. "The jaws that bite, the claws that, that-"

His breath was hot, fetid, "catch." He dragged his tongue along the side of her head. It was a rough motion, like a dog.

Maddy shrieked, and put her elbow into his side. "Back the fuck off you damn nutter!" It was too much, way too much. This couldn't be real, she was stuck in some surreal nightmare.

He grunted, and finally withdrew, though he smiled at her, licking his lips and leaving a moist split that showed far too many teeth. "You will do, Madeline," he whispered, as though she had passed some test, won some kind of prize. "Clever. The jaws that bite are not bird or beasts. They are those that were but aren't as they should be. The jaws of the prey. Beware. They're here, I scent them." His speech slid into a language she didn't understand, and he pawed at her leg, urgency to his muttering but nothing sensible.

Maddy held her ground, not willing to back up to Renfield.

"Quiet back there," Sandman said, holding his phone in front of him. "Come on," he muttered. "Pick up. Lazy bastards."

"What's wrong, sir?" asked Steve. He spared her a quick glance, full of apology. Fat lot of good that did her, with how he'd run his mouth.

Sandman grunted. "Pete, that's his squad. I told him to get searching, but he's not picking up the damn phone." He huffed. "We'll have to head in after him." He opened the door, stood up. "Come on."

Steve slid out of the squad, eyes fixed on the house. He took a tentative step forward. A waft of air entered through his door, bringing an unsettling smell.

The naked man laughed, a high bark of sound. "Can you scent them, Madeline?"

Maddy panicked. "You're not leaving me in here."

Steve sighed. "Damn it, Maddy, just sit tight. This won't take long, either way." His eyes were full of warning, but Maddy shook her head. She would not be abandoned.

"You are not leaving me with a rapist and a crazy man." It was no longer important which was which.

Sandman chuckled. "Oh, stop your whining," he said. "But it won't take all of us. Let Renfield out. He can show me the body while you manage these two."

Maddy was more than happy when Steve pulled Renfield out of the car. At least he took the damn opossum with him. She was less happy when Steve shut the door before she too could exit.

"Now, you stay here while we go check the body," Sandman said. "I'm sure Pete has everything under control, probably taking statements from the Daltons."

"Yeah," Maddy muttered. "In the dark." Not damn likely.

"No," Renfield said, fingers trailing along the window, leaving smeary lines. "No, she's got to come, got to be there." His eyes swung to her, something so very wrong with his gaze. He laughed, a lilting, unhinged sound. "Not nice, Maddy."

Maddy's insides turned to ice.

# DeFrank

Renfield grinned at her reaction, tongue flicking out to lick gory lips, then he drew back, eyes widening. His finger jabbed at them as though he wished it would fire a bullet. His target was no longer Maddy, but the madman behind her.

For his part, the naked man who shared the back of the car had gone still, not frozen, but poised and watchful as a predator.

"That-" Renfield said. "That _thing_ , it-"

" _Enough,_ Renfield," Sandman's hand closed with an evidently crushing grip on Renfield's shoulder and turned him round. "You've brought us here on your say-so and I think I've been most accommodating," he bent closer to the madman. "But we're not assembling like a party when the Daltons open the door, like hosts to shindig they'd forgot about. You and I're going to go have a look at that house and see what's been happening. Now."

"But-but-but-"

Renfield stuttered like a motorboat as Sandman propelled him along.

Suddenly the crazed deputy twisted around to glare at the cruiser window, past Maddy and right at the groperman, his face a rictus.

"Puppy likes to do tricks?" He shouted, almost hysterical with hate and fear, and it was like something _else_ spoke through him. "Puppy likes to count the birds?"

"Enough of that!" Sandman got control of him again.

The naked man with the silver eyes didn't respond, but remained still and watchful, with the kind of look she'd seen in her Dad's fellow vets. Always assessing their surroundings. A thousand-yard stare. A _hunter's_ stare.

"The door's locked," Maddy heard Sandman say. "We'll check around back. Stay there."

When he and Renfield went around the house, Steve let her out of the back of the cruiser but slammed the door on the other prisoner.

"Thanks," she said, though she only half-meant it. It felt good to stretch her legs and she felt suddenly grateful to Steve for the thought of not wanting to leave her in there with the nut, but there were worse things in the night. "Think you could take these off?"

She held out her cuffed hands and Steve only shook his head. "I don't trust you. Still too many questions left."

"Well I don't know the answers and I've told you everything I do know," she said. "Hard as it is to believe, and I don't blame you, I'm telling you the truth. Look, can't you see I'm scared shitless and not of jail or Sandman? Just of what he's getting us into."

A noise interrupted her. A noise from the high grass.

"Something moving there in the yard. C'mon." Steve the Boy Scout, always sticking his neck out. She followed. His flashlight illumed a man in uniform.

"Pete!" Steve said. He and Maddy rolled him over. Maddy's stomach lurched on touching him. He felt like a body that'd been fished out of a lake after floating overnight. Muscles soft like they were filled with fluid. Skin clammy and pale, but he blinked up at them.

"Steve?" he whispered. "Steve...they're...they're here."

"Who?" Steve demanded.

"Come right after we got here. Daltons ran for it. Maybe hiding in the house. Don't know where they went. Were laughing Steve. Hungry. Wanted..."

"I don't think it's safe to move him," Steve said. "He's wounded. Bite marks it looks like. But no bleeding."

"Aw Steve," Pete muttered. "Steve, I always liked you. When I see Saint Peter...not want a sin weighing me down. Gotta tell you-"

"Save your strength-"

"No! Steve, watch out for Sandman. He...he called and told me...he had something planned for here. And a cover-up. Was gonna make you the fall guy. You and your sister...Oh God tell Darlene...tell her..."

But he fell silent.

"He's dead," Steve said after few seconds. He stood. "What'd he mean...fall guy? And what killed him? And-damn!"

His flashlight had gone dead. Dead as Pete. Pete who gurgled with laughter.

"Madeline," a voice that was practically a growl from the cruiser.

Not nice.

Maddy gasped as the body rose behind Steve. Seemed to float to its feet like a balloon. Arms reaching for him. Maddy gripped her brother in cuffed hands and pulled him away from the thing's reach. Pete strode forward, half walking, half floating. Swinging from one sibling to the other as if making up his mind which to pursue. Which treat to snatch up first.

Steve had his gun drawn. "Pete-"

"It's not him anymore!" Maddy yelled, and some instinct made him believe her. This was not Pete, and the very chill in their bones told him this was something unnatural.

Gunfire thundered in the night air as Steve emptied a mag into what had been Pete, but he only shrugged it off and turned on her brother.

"Ah fuck it," Maddy said and leapt, flinging her arms over Pete's head to try and strangle him with her cuffed hands. For a few seconds she rode his back as he spun.

Pete laughed and pitched forward, threw her off him. She rolled and broke her fall. Pete reared and swung around on Steve.

But Maddy's gaze flew to the cruiser.

The vehicle rocked from side to side. Dents deformed the top and the door bulged as if someone inside was working a sledgehammer. The window shattered outward and in the dark what looked like a wet and toothy muzzle stuck out, withdrew. Silver eyes burned argent.

The squad rocked again. Rolled onto its side. The passenger door bulged and strained and burst open.

Pete had gripped Steve by the throat. Now he dropped Steve and drew back. Steve looked to what had spooked the walking nightmare.

A massive wolf's head and gaping jaws reared from the broken door. Heavy forearms and paws with articulate claws braced on the sides as the giant wolf launched into the night.

# De La Harpe

Steve buckled at the knees, sputtering for air. Maddy grabbed at his arm, trying to yank him to his feet as best she could.

"The house. We have to get inside."

Her brother was staring at what remained of Pete, but his eyes were unfocused, blank. He looked sick and afraid. Not comprehending any of what had just happened. The cold hand of fresh fear clenched a fist in her belly.

"Steve? Buddy, stay with me here."

Her voice brought him back. He turned to her, eyes focusing, lips moving soundlessly.

In the distance a screeching howl shook them both. The kind of howl which reminded the darker recesses of your brain just why you're afraid of things that go bump in the night. It was followed by a scream and gunshot. Somewhere down the street a car alarm was triggered.

She dug her fingers into Steve's arm and yanked.

"Let's move."

Steve lurched to his feet, the lost look on his face vanishing. With one hand on her arm they made a run for the Dalton house.

They skidded to a halt on the porch. Steve tried the door.

Locked.

Fuck.

"Goddamit!" She screamed, aiming a kick at the door. "Can just one goddamn thing go right tonight!" She clenched her hands in front of her and threw herself bodily at the barrier, kicking and swearing.

A frightened female voice brought her up short. "Maddy, is that you?"

"Sophie?" She bit back a sob of relief, Steve put a shaky hand on her shoulder. "I mean, yes, it's me, Mrs. Dalton, please let us inside!"

There was the sound of voices and a short scuffle.

"Maddy! That you? You alone out there?" The gruff, anxious voice of Bill Dalton rang out.

"I've got my brother with me. Please, you need to let us in." Something shifted on the edge of her peripheral vision.

"No can do, Maddy! I'm sorry but this could be a trap. I can't risk letting one of those things in here!"

...one of those things...

There was movement on the edge of the lawn. Steve shoved her toward the door, raising his gun.

"Please! Sophie, please! Help us!" Maddy begged, leaning her forehead against the door panel, not wanting to turn around.

There was the sound of angry voices. A heated exchange. Then the window to Maddy's left swung open. Sophie Dalton's artificially-dyed red hair bobbed out of the window. "...be ashamed of yourself," she was saying.

Nestled in the crook of her arm was a shotgun aimed straight at them.

"Come closer, let's get a look at you!" Sophie barked.

Maddy took a wary step forward. Sophie eyed her up and down, before turning to shout back into the house.

"Her feet touch the ground! She's a live one." She turned back to Maddy and waved her forward. "Get in, and be quick about it!"

Maddy and Steve moved as one. She fumbled at the windowsill with her cuffed hands and Steve used one hand to pull her up, the other still aiming the gun at the shifting shadows of the woods.

Maddy half climbed, half fell through the window. Behind her Steve fired off another two rounds into the bushes before the gun went 'click'. Cursing, He pulled himself through behind her.

"Help me get this back in place," commanded Sophie, a slight woman with a waterfall of unruly hair who spoke in surprisingly brisk tones, given the nightmare that was upon them.

They helped push a bookcase in front on the window.

In the kitchen doorway, Bill Dalton stood brandishing a colt, looking bemused. He was bleeding from his left shoulder and held a cloth to the wound to staunch it. His gold wedding band stood out against the blood.

"You shouldn't have done that, Soph, could've been a trap," he grumbled.

"Hush! Over my dead body are we leaving Maddy and Steve out there with Satan's army, now help me move the cupboard."

Muttering under his breath something about it being everybody's dead body on the line, the short, portly man did as he was instructed. Maddy saw why Sophie hadn't opened the front door. The family's ancient piano had been jammed against it. They were barricading themselves in.

"Right," said Bill gruffly, "Better get you to the basement then."

"We got the kids in there," explained Sophie. The little woman looked pale, but there was a stubborn set about way she held her chin. "We were hiding out when we heard the screams, I says to him, "Sounds like Maddy. We have to go get her," but Bill thought you were already done for. We had quite a row about it."

Bill Dalton squared his jaw defiantly. "A man has to defend his own family first Sophia." He turned to Maddy, clutching his hurt arm with his good one, and he asked her almost plaintively, "You understand, don't you?"

"Well never mind that." Sophia interrupted her husband. "The rapture is upon us and the dead are walking the earth, best we get to the basement." She paused, her gaze suddenly fixing itself to Maddy's cuffed hands. "Steven Turner. I don't know why you have handcuffed your sister right at the end of times, and Lord knows, it none of my business, but I won't have it in my house, you hear, get those things off her."

Steve looked as though he was coming out of a dream. Nodding vigorously, he began digging in his pockets for his keys while Maddy held out her hands, the beginnings of a victory smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Then he dropped his hands, his eyes bulging. Maddy's smirk faltered.

"You dropped them, didn't you?" She hissed.

He nodded.

"Goddamit, Steve!"

"Watch the language!" snapped Sophia. Outside a cacophony of screaming broke out. They froze, listening. Quickly as it started, it stopped.

"Sounded like Angie Kauffman." Sophie whispered. For the first time since entering the house, Sophie's fear became visible. Her shoulders sagged, the lines on her face etched themselves deeper. Bill moved into place, putting an arm about his wife's shoulder, pulling her to him. She covered his hand with her own, the gold of their wedding rings touching, a reminder of the life they had built. The shotgun dangled from her other hand. Maddy thought she heard a sob.

With the lapse in his wife's control, Bill stepped up. "Right you two, to the basement, and be quick about it."

They hurried to the door in the hallway. Bill knocked three times in quick succession. There was a faint click as it was unlocked from within.

# Burton

Sandman closed the door behind them and moved to the window, pulling back the net curtain as he bundled Renfield out of the way, desperate to see what Steve was doing. He watched, wondering where his original plan to set them up for the whole thing had stumbled, while his brain continued to work on an alternate plan that would no doubt end up being just as ingenious. So long as idiots like Renfield didn't...

He turned on Renfield, slapping his shoulder as he span him around and directed him down the hall to the stairs, taking the lead and almost skipping up the first few.

Renfield said, "Where are you going?"

Sandman laughed. "Just come."

"There are monsters in this house. I felt them. Saw them."

Sandman stopped and turned, glaring at his (soon ex-) officer, wondering if he might know more than he let on, but then sprayed with laughter. "Aren't there, though?" he mumbled as he turned again and continued up the stairs.

Renfield took a step but then stopped, thinking he heard movement beyond the cellar door. "Sandman? I think-"

"What did I tell you about thinking?" Sandman snapped. "Now get your ass up here while you still have one."

"Where are we going?" Renfield asked, struggling up the stairs, his legs not quite doing what he thought he was asking of them.

Sandman shook his head. "Questions are the same as thinking."

"They're really not."

Sandman snapped. "They really are, as they are both things I DO NOT WANT YOU TO DO! Understand?"

"Yes, boss."

"Good, cos I don't really care."

He turned and stopped at a door with a big gold sign stuck to it around chest height. "DUKE DALTON, ORAL" was all it said.

Renfield said, "That's Bill's Daddy's office," as if it were reverential. "Nobody goes in there. Not even Bill."

Sandman chuckled softly as he reached deep into his trouser pocket and withdrew a key. He said, "Then I guess tonight we are nobody." He sneered at his companion as he unlocked the door and pushed. "Well, one of us is."

Renfield took a step back, memories of having been slapped down for even asking about what went on behind Bill's Daddy's office door, and now they were going inside? What a crazy day. Renfield sucked in a breath and stumbled forward, only just slipping through before Sandman slammed the door.

"Come on!" his boss snapped.

Renfield watched him almost dance across the office, passing the chair he and his schoolmates had called TC, the torture chamber, not because anything particularly horrific had happened, just simply because he had always hated visiting the dentist, and despite all the mothers loving old Double D the dentist --because he could turn on the charm when he wanted-- all of the kids feared and loathed the mean-spirited old coot, as he always seemed to linger a little too long, or tweaked a nerve before stopping, fuelled by a glint in his eye. Renfield shivered at the memory, but scurried after Sandman when he turned and threw him a withering look.

"Pee your pants in your own time," Sandman chuckled, separating another key from his ring of wonders.

"Where you putting that?"

"Don't tempt me."

Sandman grabbed one of old Double D's awards and rotated it ninety degrees counterclockwise, revealing a key hole. He inserted the key, twisted, and then pushed, a door seeming to appear from nowhere. He stepped through and then aside, waiting for Renfield to catch up. Renfield almost turned and ran, but when he dared to glance up into The Big Sleep's eyes he knew he could never get away. It was this or nothing, and he wasn't sure which was worse. At least this way there was still a slim chance of a desirable option falling into his lap. He tried a smile and followed the big man through.

The hidden room was small, consisting of only a bed and a chair. On the chair was a nurse. She looked up at Sandman, her eyes almost popping. He waited a beat and then nodded over his shoulder, and she scampered past and away, not even bothering to look at Renfield. Sandman stepped slowly toward the bed, his steps becoming smaller, more measured, as if approaching the Pope, Renfield reckoned, having to stifle a little chuckle, somehow knowing it would be the last thing he did if it escaped.

Sandman stopped by the head of the bed, and Renfield chanced a look.

"Double D," he whispered.

Sandman started to turn, but thought better of it, and refocused on his old friend lying in the bed. He didn't look any worse than the last time he had visited, but how long had that been? He couldn't remember. Duke looked good, all things considered, but they still had to resolve the current mess or they would all be in a humungous world of hurt. Gently, he squeezed the man's hand and waited. Eventually Duke's eyes eased open.

"Sleepy," he said.

Sandman wondered if he was saying how he felt, or using his old nickname. "Double D," he replied, assuming the latter, confirmed when the old man tried to chuckle. Sandman put a hand on his chest. "Easy now, old man. We've come too far for you to die laughing."

Duke seemed to reset himself. "Then I'm safe with you around," he wheezed. "Cos you're shit outta funny."

Sandman leaned away and grew serious. "I think your boy's gone rogue."

"The hell you say."

Sandman shook his head and sighed. "Do you know where he is?"

"The hell could I?" Duke all but snarled. "The boy thinks I'm dead. I can't keep tabs on him."

Sandman counted to four, being as far as he could get. "He's figured something out."

"He's too stupid."

"I didn't say he'd done it alone."

"Well, it's not his wife helping him. She's all caught up in the End Days."

"Still?"

"She doesn't change, Sleepy."

Sandman shrugged. "Well, something has, because we've got problems."

Duke squinted at his old business partner and waited.

Sandman rolled his eyes and smiled. "Don't try that on me, Double D. You know it won't work."

"Then just tell me, and stop sucking up my oxygen." He glanced toward Renfield, as if seeing him for the first time. "Who's that freak?"

Renfield backed away.

Sandman said, "He was running things for us in... one of our other plants."

"I don't recognize him."

"It's best you don't know everyone on the payroll."

Duke nodded. "So why's he here?"

"I got word that his site was gonna be raided, just a couple of hours before it happened. And it happened. We barely got out. Almost everything lost."

"Almost?"

Sandman nodded.

"What are we missing? Don't tell me the formula."

"Then I won't."

"Shit damn, Sleepy. Can't you be trusted with nothing."

"Now listen up, old man."

"Do NOT start that old man shit with me, little man."

"Then don't question me."

"I've earned that right."

Sandman shrugged. "Perhaps. When your boy was on our side. But I've got it on good authority that he sold us out. And for just $50k."

"The little pissant. Tell me."

Sandman sucked in a deep breath, and then let out an even longer one. "We've lost three sites this month. The last to go before today was Renfield's, but today we lost the old Woodrue Farm."

Duke snorted. "You were using that place?"

Sandman nodded.

"I told you not to shit in our own backyard."

"Bill's been running out of properties. That's what I'm telling you. But I don't think Bill's been on side for a while now, we just didn't see it. I blame his holier than thou wife. She must be twisting his tiny little brain."

"You leave her out of it," Duke said. "The woman's a saint."

Sandman rolled his eyes. "Either way, there's been a whole shit load of problems at the Woodrue Farm today, and I think we might be to blame for most of it, given the little I know. I'm still processing, and conjuring up a solution."

"You and your conjuring. Just shut the whole thing down."

"You can't mean that."

"I'm a dying man, Sleepy."

"That's partly why we're doing what we're doing."

"I know," Duke sighed. "But I'm tired. And I'm tired of playing God."

Sandman chuckled. "If anyone's God, it's me."

"I thought you'd feel that way."

"I've overseen all the properties your renovating son-of-a-bitch son has offered. I've set them up, kitted them out, installed the staff and services to try and perfect this damn formula."

"MY DAMN FORMULA," Duke bellowed.

"Originally, yes," Sandman nodded, suddenly realizing why he should have recognized the naked groperman, and shivered.

"And you don't know what you're doing," Duke continued, quieter now, as if he had given up, or was in the process of doing so. "You just keep creating these freaks, and it's not good. It's not natural."

"What the hell do you care about natural or good?" Sandman laughed. "Don't go getting a conscience on me now, just because you're dying."

"And whose fault is that?"

Sandman shrugged as he stepped away. "You're the dude getting old, Duke. I'm just trying to help."

"Yeah, help yourself," Duke sneered. "But you better watch your back."

"What does that mean?"

Duke chuckled. "Can't you hear that?"

Sandman held his breath and listened, wondering if it could be what he thought it sounded like.

Renfield said, "Boss, come see."

"Shut up!" Sandman snapped, focusing on the sound.

"Sorry, boss," Renfield said, almost wetting himself, caught between Sandman's wrath if he interrupted, and his wrath if he didn't warn him about what he could see through the window.

Duke 'Double D Doc' Dalton chuckled softly to himself as he tapped his fingers on the bed cover.

# Leibfritz

Maddy and Steve descended quickly into the basement. The Dalton's five children were there, armed to the teeth.

"Maddy!" Sarah, the eldest tilted her head. "Why are you handcuffed?"

Maddy hissed between her teeth. "Because my brother is a-"

"Language," snapped Sophia.

"I didn't even say-"

Sophia gave a penetrating glare. "But you were thinking it."

Bill Jr., smirked. "Aww, that's no problem," he said, looking at the cuffs with the sort of disdain only a sixteen year old boy could possess. "We can take care of those with the Master Key."

Steve narrowed his eyes at the boy. "What Master Key? What makes you think you've got a key to those?"

Bill beamed and scrambled to a work bench on the other side of the basement. He grabbed and brandished one of the biggest sets of bolt-cutters Maddy had laid eyes on. "This is the Master Key."

Maddy couldn't help but grin back, thrusting her arms out in front of her. "Go for it, key-master."

"Hey," said Steve, "You can't go cutting up police property."

"Stuff it," Maddy snapped. "Unless you've magically got another set of keys on you."

Steve snorted, glowering as Bill Jr. cut the chain.

"Just bracelets, now," Maddy said, stretching her arms. An edgy fashion statement, nothing more. She was free. Now if only she could survive, and get the hell out of here. Visions of the bag of money flashed in her mind.

"Well," Sophia said, surveying her brood. "That's all taken care of. And Billy, these are special circumstances, being the End of Days. Normally Steve would be right, and you couldn't do such a thing." Trust the woman to feel the need to clarify exceptions to the law, even when the world was coming apart at the seams.

"What are those things?" Sarah asked. "Do you know? What was all that noise?"

Outside, a howl cut through the night. It was deep, and close, one minute full of longing, the next brimming with savage joy. Even knowing how big the beast was, the sound was horribly loud.

"Damn Furball," Maddy muttered. "You've got some lungs in you."

Even Sophie didn't venture a sound into the silence after. There was noise at the window wells, a huffing, then nothing. They waited, but it remained quiet. Bill and Sophie's hands sought each other again and clasped, gold ring to gold ring.

_Gold, six for gold_ , Maddy thought. _No, just a coincidence. Though, there were seven in this family, but hadn't there been seven birds? Secrets, nah._ Furball's crazy was catching.

"All right," Sophia said, fixing Maddy and Steve in her sights. "Out with it. Why are you two running around on a night like this, and with hardly a civil word between you in more than a year?"

"Maddy got into some trouble," Steve said. "Involving Bart Woodrue and Jimmy. I found her fleeing a crime scene."

"That's not what happened," Maddy said. "Bart attacked me, then both he and Jimmy turned into those things." She glared at Steve. "Like poor Pete outside."

"What?" Bill Sr. said. "What happened to Pete? I thought that was his squad. Who else is here?"

Steve clamped his mouth shut, not meeting the man's eyes.

"Some guy called Sandman," Maddy said, unable to remember the man's real name. "And his nasty, molest-y pal, Renfield."

"Captain Sanders?" Bill's eyes went wide, gaze boring into Steve. "Here? That monster is here? You let him near my family?"

Steve tried to pull Bill to the side, but was halted by Sophia.

"Whatever you have to say, you say it before God and all of us," she said. "This is no time for secrets."

"Renfield fingered Maddy for murder, said she had a body stashed here," Steve said, with at least the grace to look embarrassed as Sophie inflated.

"And you believed that craven creature?" Sophia demanded. "Believed the devil's own word against your blood, whom we sheltered? That we would allow such within our home?" Her eyes darted to her daughters, lingering on the three of them. "You brought that foul thing here?" It would seem Renfield's reputation proceeded him.

Maddy was caught between gratitude and guilt. Sophia would always believe the best of her, even when there was no reason too. Another debt Maddy had meant to repay, would repay if they got out of here.

"I wasn't spoiling for options," Steve muttered. "Anyway, we got separated, I don't know where he got off too. Pete was trying to tell me something, before, before..." he drifted off, shuddering.

Maddy couldn't blame him, the not dead thing had been horrifying.

"What did he say, Steven?" Sophia asked gently, placing a hand on his arm. "What was it?"

"He said Sandman had something planned for here," Steve said. "With me as the fall man, whatever that meant. Then he asked me to, to tell Darleen..." He closed his eyes.

A musical tone startled them all. It was some sappy, romantic thing. Maddy knew the tune to it even if she couldn't place the lyrics. Steve scrambled for his phone, jamming it to his ear. "Babe?" he said. "Babe, your breaking up. Emily?" He pulled the phone back, examining it, trying to redial. "God Dammit."

"Steve," Sophia couldn't manage more than a mild reprimand in the face of his lost and desperate expression. "Steve, is she all right?"

"I don't know," he muttered. "I've got to find her, check on her. She called from home." He looked up, brow scrunched. "I've got to go."

"How?" Maddy said. "Your squad was trashed, by a wolf the size of a pony."

Bill spoke, cutting over his wife's denial. "You're right, Steve, you should go." He heaved a sigh. "A man has to look after his family." He reached in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys. "My SUV's in the garage. You can help yourself to anything you want from the tools, but I can't spare any guns."

"Bill!" Sophia hissed. "He can't go out there alone!"

Maddy felt a great weight settle in her middle. "I'll go," she said, surprising herself. The bonds of blood were old, wiry, and hard to snap. "What?" she said at his disbelieving look. "You need someone to watch your back, and if anything can be salvaged from your squad, I'm just as good a shot as you." Steve had a kid on the way, a fiancé. It was more than Maddy had ever had. It was worth something.

Steve shook his head, but wasn't eager to go back into the night alone. "Fine," he said. "But you better not try to book it."

"Didn't cross my mind," Maddy lied. They picked up some choice items from the workbench. Maddy hefted a crowbar. Iron. Wasn't that supposed to be good against the dead? Or was that fairies? She took it anyway, and snapped a thick knife to her belt with a few other goodies.

They headed up the stairs, escorted by Bill. "You two be careful," he said, and let them out. "And if this isn't the end of everything, I expect the SUV back with a full tank."

"Yes sir," Steve said, smiling weakly, and they headed into the night.

"He wasn't kidding," Maddy whispered as they dug through the remains of the squad. She reclaimed the gun she'd borrowed once already, checking the magazine. Half full, it would do for a while. "Heaven help you if you don't fill that thing with gas before you get back here."

A high, riotous laugh came from behind them, "Heavens help you now, Madeline."

Maddy spun.

Furball. He was wearing tattered pants this time, and stood without a sway. The silvery light in his eyes was still there, but there was purpose, clarity. He grinned, showing far too many teeth, fresh blood and ooze smeared across his chest. Pete, probably. They were probably Pete's pants too. Standing there, clad in something torn from the damned, she almost wished he were still bare.

"Oh Madeline," he said, focusing that uncanny gaze on her. He was panting, his twisted chest heaving. He was high, or possessed, or utterly mad. "Don't you hear it? Smell it on the wind? The hunting is good tonight. Those who shouldn't be walking are about, their taint a siren's cry. Will you run, and answer it? Sweet Ulysses would, and you've no wax."

"What?" Steve shook his head, not quite training his gun on the man. "What is he saying?"

"Wax," Maddy muttered. When had she become interpreter to the nutter? "The crew used wax in their ears so they couldn't hear the sirens." She looked at the man sideways. All the things he said, nothing made sense, and yet she could just hear it. Meaning crept at the edges of perception. A promise and purpose beyond the bounds of flesh and thought.

He grinned, a joy and violence aimed wholly at her. He stalked closer, circling them, staring at her; no, into her. Those dark eyes with their glint of silver, boring into Maddy's soul. "Clever, clever woman." His voice was a caress, a dragging of fingers in the small of her back. Maddy shuddered.

Steve moved to aim his gun, but Maddy threw out her arm. If furball wanted them hurt, they would be. "Let him say his piece," she muttered, turning, keeping herself facing the advancing beast.

"They are here, I followed them. From the cold and forests that never end, from the sun that never sets, and never rises. They stalk, and think they are the hunters, but are only the hunted." He laughed, an abrupt bark that rang in the night. He threw his head back, spreading his arms as the wind whipped up behind him. His hair was wild, his eyes shining and teeth barred.

"They are nothing but prey to Ivan, and I have crossed field and mountain and ocean! I will run until the moon weeps her last, and they will all fall to fang and claw!" He laughed again, and it was wild and echoing, pouring into a howl that slid down her spine. It was challenge and joy and promise of suffering, and unhinged. Watching him was like watching a storm roll in, the kind that brought flood and disaster with it. So entrancing was his madness she almost missed the glimmer of the gun barrel.

"Ivan," she called out. "Behind you."

It was Renfield, face a mask of horror and revulsion as he brought up the rifle and took aim.

Ivan was twisting, warping with fur and teeth as the shot rang out. A high yelp, followed by a furious snarl. The wolf was bent, it's back arched, legs not quite under it. It lunged, disregarding the second shot as it had the first. Colliding with Renfield, it engulfed the man's head in its maw, and squeezed.

A hand on her arm, wrenching Maddy's attention from Ivan. "Come on," hissed Steve. "While they're distracted."

His problem, Emily, it all came crashing back into Maddy's awareness. Still, she couldn't help but look over her shoulder at the wolf, who had thrown back his head to proclaim his triumph. The moon shone along Ivan's fur, glinting from his teeth, saliva and viscera dripping from his muzzle.

"Good riddance," Maddy muttered, unable to suppress a thrill of smugness at Renfield's screaming death-wail. There was an urge, an urge to run, but not away. The wind was high, the moon bright. She let Steve pull her to the garage, bumping into him when he stopped short. Maddy turned to see what had stopped him.

"Going somewhere?" Sandman asked, unfriendly grin on his face.

# DeFrank

Maddy had her stolen gun drawn and centered on Sandman's forehead as quickly as Steve, and with just as much accuracy. Sandman merely raised an eyebrow.

"Glad to see you too, Steven. Alive and in one piece when maniacs seem to be running loose. Under the circumstances I can overlook pointing a gun at a fellow officer.

"What the ever-loving fuck is going on here?" Steve barked.

Sandman shrugged. "Why ask me? I'm as much in the dark as you."

"Renfield tried to kill somebody just now," Steve went on. "And he-the guy turned-"

"Renfield was further off his rocker than I thought," Sandman said easily.

"Steve, are you buying this load of-" Maddy bit her tongue, half expecting Sophia to show up.

"Pete talked to me before he...died and came back," Steve gritted out. "He said you were planning something. That I'd be taking the rap."

Sandman didn't so much as blink. "Poor guy must have been delusional at the end. And seeing as now I don't have any other officers left, teamwork's even more important."

Maddy wanted to scream. Steve the Boy Scout. Law and order forever. Every instinct might tell him to squeeze the trigger, but he just couldn't kill in cold blood-

Steve's arm shot out, grabbed Maddy's wrist and pulled her aim away.

-or let someone else do it.

"You're loading up the Dalton's SUV," Maddy said, looking past him into the garage. "Why?"

"Sleepy?" a voice wheezed from the side of the vehicle. "What's going on?"

Steve and Maddy edged by Sandman, guns ready, and looked in. An old, old man was propped up in the seat. He blinked at the pair.

"More guests for the party?"

"You could say that, Doc," Sandman answered.

"Duke Dalton!" Steve found his voice. Maddy couldn't speak at all.

"My old friend here had to fake his death and go into hiding some years back," Sandman said. "Circumstances. Not even Bill knows. He wouldn't've considered the Doc's spare keys to the SUV."

"This is too much," Steve shook his head. "We don't have time. We've got to get to Emily!"

Maddy agreed, for more than one reason. Looking past Dalton, she saw the bag of cash on the floor of the SUV. Sandman must've gone back and rescued the evidence.

Then the garage light, porch light and the SUV battery went out.

"Shit," Maddy whispered as she chambered a round. Cold settled over them. Sandman walked past and leaned into the SUV.

A woman in a nurse's outfit drifted into view from the side of the garage. Starlight glistened on her hair. She looked at them and smiled.

Sandman emerged with what looked like a spear gun.

He took aim, fired and pinned her to a tree with the harpoon. The nurse hissed and spat and in seconds would run up its length like a speared boar, but Sandman didn't pause in his advance. He held a bottle of lighter fluid and sprayed her when she was in range, then struck a match and tossed the flame on her.

The nurse lit up, writhing and screaming as she burned.

"Was wondering where Doc's nurse had gotten herself to," Sandman said. He might've just taken some recyclables to a bin.

"A spear gun? What is this, a Spielberg movie?" Maddy muttered, wondering if Sandman would morph into Richard Dreyfuss on them. But...it made a sort of fridge-logic sense: something to pin the floater in place long enough to burn it.

"You made that look easy," Steve said as the lights came back.

"It wasn't," Sandman said. "She was new and stupid. I was fast and lucky. Now let's get in gear before more show up."

Steve and Maddy complied, but first they exchanged a look. There was no longer any doubt: whatever was going on, Sandman was in it up to his neck.

### ***

Georgia Romeo was driving her Chevy along the road, so intent on home, letting Mouser out of his carrier, opening some food and getting to bed that she almost missed the wrecked sheriff's cruiser by the Dalton place.

" _Meow?_ " From the back seat.

"Quiet now," Georgia said. She slowed, got out her cell to call 911, and the screen and dash both went dead. Georgia looked round her stalled car, a chill filling her, then she noticed a pale man just outside her window, standing beside the car. Georgia was about to roll down the window when the stranger punched through the glass, grabbed her blouse and hauled her out.

### ***

Renfield watched as the cold one ate, while he feasted on fresh rat. Little lives, the voices in his head promised. Little delicacies to eat. He blinked eyes set in a ruined face, between gouges made by fangs, and forced chunks of rat down his throat. No matter he couldn't digest. He had piled his guts back into his belly and held them there long enough to find the first aid supplies in the cruiser and wrap himself up to hold his innards in.

With sepsis and internal bleeding, he probably wouldn't live to see morning, but the gleeful, hungry voices in his head still had work for him and would not let him fall or feel pain while he still had life in him. The wolf-thing had spoiled the trap and Renfield had failed to kill it, but the night was far from over.

Bad puppy...

The cold one moved away and the car came to life. He climbed into the driver's seat, shotgun beside him. Renfield looked left and right, then snuck an ear from his pocket and nibbled. Georgia wouldn't be needing it, and the cold ones, the hungry ones, surely wouldn't miss one tidbit. A good dog can occasionally snatch a scrap from Master's plate...

A soft hiss drew his attention to the back seat, and the cat crouched in a carrying container and watching him with baleful eyes.

Renfield grinned.

### ***

Hesitantly, Bill Dalton poked his head out of the door and watched the departing lights of the SUV. He was tempted to wish Steve and Maddy godspeed, but doubted the big man in the sky was in much of a mood for him. Leave the prayers to Sophia, still safely downstairs with the kids and no part of this.

He saw the two cruisers, one abandoned, the other wrecked from the inside out.

The porch lights and street lights had returned, good, but no surprise. His terror had begun to ebb once he'd heard the howling, though it killed him to keep the news to himself and not tell his family the cavalry had showed up. Particularly when the cavalry in question was as unsettling in its own way as the undead floating hellspawn.

"Ivan," he whispered from the security of the island of light, knowing keen canine ears would pick up the faint sounds.

_Am I reaping what I sowed?_ he thought. But it was a crop his dad and Sandman had started.

Like a devil summoned by his name, a massive lupine shape leapt to the lawn and bounded into the periphery of the porch light's range. Bill yelped and nearly shit himself, found he had crouched and thrown his hands protectively over his head without realizing it. Damn monster must've been perched on the roof.

The wolf prowled back and forth, powering and grace with every step, eyes like white fire.

His hand gripping the doorknob, Bill Dalton pulled himself to his feet, mouth working: "W-w-one...w-one for s-s-sorrow, t-t-two for j-j-j-j-joy-"

The prowling ceased, though the burning eyes remained fixed on him. Bill shut his own eyes and put his throat on autopilot. When he got to the last verse: "And ten for the devil's own self," he dared to look.

The shape was still terribly huge and not at all human, but the silver eyes seemed to have something close to sanity. The old stories and particularly the rhyme worked like that: reciting them or hearing them recited gave him a lifeline back to his right mind. Bill found this out shortly after he'd first summoned the thing here, after looking through his dad's old stuff.

After that glance, Bill kept his eyes on his shoes. Sane or not, the beast was still unsettling.

"What went wrong?" he managed to say, if not in the demanding tone he'd wanted. "You were supposed to get them all when you raided the old Woodrue place, not let them spread!"

This was what he'd been most afraid of. The very thing he'd tried to prevent.

"That's how this is supposed to work: I point out the targets, you clean them out. We need to finish this: Sandman's beginning to suspect me, I know it."

He'd like to think he didn't have a choice when his dad brought him into this. After Duke Dalton died, Bill had gone on autopilot for awhile, managed not to think about what was going on in those properties he'd acquired for Sandman while the corrupt cop kept running the operation. When Bill did think about it, he'd turn his mind to his dad's and Sandman's talk about power and immortality and the greater good.

That mess with Eddie Gorrance and Bart and Maddy had shaken him. Sandman had managed to put a stopper on that bottle and got rid of Eddie – the only potential loose end – but it had been close. Bart and Maddy never knew how close. That was what made him open his doors to Maddy afterward.

He'd also begun seeking out the mythical beast of his dad's stories. The only one he knew who could put a stop to this.

A snarl from Ivan broke through Bill's introspection. The tone was one he'd come to recognize: he was demanding.

"I don't know where it is, I've told you. I haven't seen it since my dad died." His father's holy grail. The prize he'd brought back from his travels.

" _It's the sangraal, Bill,"_ he'd said of that withered piece of flesh kept up its thumping—doc doc doc—like the Telltale Heart. "The source of the formula. Run some fluid through and let it pump."

"I looked for it in that da–in that dang shrine that used to be my dad's office." Nothing. But he'd fancied he heard a doc-doc-doc like the ticking beat of that obscenity. "I don't know what Sandman did with it. I guess Renfield said some nonsense about a body in the house, but-"

Ivan's ears perked up. He lifted his snout to the air and sniffed, then loped to the garage. Bill followed. _What is it, boy? Something down at the old well?_ he thought absurdly.

Ivan sniffed around the garage where the SUV had been. He growled. His tail stiffened and he bounded into the darkness, in the direction the car had gone. Bill licked his lips.

"Godspeed, hunter."

# De La Harpe

The streets were quiet. Despite the forecaster's predictions earlier that week, heavy splotches of rain began to splatter the windshield. Maddy had opted to sit in the back while Steve drove, behind Sandman and alongside Duke Dalton, whose waxy complexion gave her the creeps. She kept a firm grip on her gun, her eyes off the gym bag. She didn't want to draw attention to it.

Steve drove only slightly faster than the speed limit, his eyes flicking from the mirrors to the windows, watchful. Ahead of them the junction of Wilcox and President loomed.

"Easy now there, son," said Sandman, "You can take the right turn, I think."

Steve shook his head. "My fiancé is out there, I'm heading home before anything else."

Maddy could only see the back of the Sandman's head. He was looking out of his window, no hint of tension in his shoulders.

"All the same, Steve, I think you'll turn right here."

Beside her Duke coughed.

"Why is that?" Steve asked quietly. His left hand gripped his gun on his lap, pointed at Sandman.

Sandman sighed. "If I told you it's for the greater good of mankind, the next evolutionary step, the complete transcendence of our species from the status of mere mortal animals to gods in our right, would that persuade you?"

Maddy shoved the nose of her gun into the back of Sandman's head. "You know you're really beginning to piss me off," she growled.

"Feeling's mutual, little miss. Of all the unforeseen variables you've been the most unforeseen and the most variable. A thorn in the proverbial side, I should say."

"You're behind this?"

Sandman chuckled. "What am I ? A Bond villain? Silly child, if anybody's behind this it's you and your brother, tinkering with things you shouldn't, going places you have no business being....I said turn right!" They had turned left. Overhead a street lamp flickered and died.

"I told you, I've got Emily..."

"God, you people and your obsession with your myopic little lives!' Sandman slapped his hand to his forehead. "Fine. If the greater good won't motivate you, do it for your precious Emily. You won't find her at home."

The tires screeched to a standstill.

"You're lying." Steve spoke through clenched teeth.

"I never lie when I'm threatening people."

"We can kill you right here, right now," said Maddy.

Sandman pinched the bridge of his nose, "A thorn, Maddy. A very annoying thorn. Try not to act even stupider than what you very clearly are. Not if you want to see Emily." He looked at Steve. "Turn us around."

A muscle clenched in her brother's jaw. He started the engine and swung the wheel. "Where to?"

"It's best if you take my directions. Don't want your little brain working overtime now." His fingers tapped thoughtfully on his armrest. "You know what the oldest written story in the world is?"

"Epic of Gilgamesh." Maddy answered without thinking. "Originally Sumerian, but only the Babylonian versions survived."

Sandman cocked his head. "Very good, Maddy. Thought you were going to say the Bible. I suppose you know the little section in it about a fella named Utnapishtum."

"The original Noah. God got angry because humans made too much noise and sent a flood. He rescued his family and animals on a boat."

"And what his reward?"

"Eternal life."

"What does this have to do anything?" Steve demanded.

"Everything." Sandman replied calmly. "You see, since the beginning of history certain individuals were privy to the god's little secrets, their little plans, and learned to step outside them. To pick and choose their own rules from which to live by..."

Maddy stared at the opalescent skin of Duke Dalton. Dead years ago, wasn't he? Of an heart attack? She shook her head. A vague memory caught her attention. Some sort of scandal. A body stolen from a morgue. She hadn't paid much attention at the time, it was during the days she acted as a go-between with Eddie and Bart's operation and their supplier. She hadn't paid attention to much that went on in the outside world back then.

"What have you done?" she said, feeling suddenly sick.

The car swerved, a figure of a man had stumbled into the road, hands flailing at his face where a small black creature was lodged, clawing and biting, fur on end. A small blue Prius was standing at the roadside, it's window shattered and glass scattered on the road side. Steve slammed on breaks, bringing them to a halt.

"Hey!" he shouted.

The animal, a cat, screeched and took off, bounding away into the woods, tail held vertically like a ship's mast.

The man turned to them, his face crisscrossed with deep gashes from the cat's claws. One eyeball had been dislodged and was hanging by a tenuous and bloody thread from the gaping, empty socket.

"Hey there, Steve." Renfield grinned. "Man, am I just having the worst day."

# Burton

Sandman leaned across Steve and shook his head at Renfield, then glanced up at Steve and said, "Kill him."

"What?" Steve tried to pull away.

"Hey!" screamed Renfield. "I'm the victim here. That cat was feral."

"I'm guessing you got what you deserved," Sandman said.

Renfield shook his head, his left eyeball swinging around to his ear. Maddy laughed as it stuck to his earlobe, but nobody heard. Renfield reached up and eased his eye away from his ear, then opened that eye socket with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand and oh so carefully slipped the appendage back inside, blinking a few times.

Steve shook his head. "Wrong way round."

Renfield's good eye rolled as he shrugged. "No worries, it's not working. But thanks for caring, man," he said, smiling at his short-term partner.

Sandman sighed. "Either suck him off or kill him."

Duke chuckled. "Always the coarse maniac, no matter the airs you try and put on."

Maddy snapped, shoving her gun up into Duke's chin. "Shut up."

Duke winked, but paid her no mind. "We're not killing Renfield."

"Thank you," Renfield said.

Sandman sat up and spun around in his seat. "The hell you say?"

Duke grinned at them all in turn. "Nobody understands a thing," he wheezed. "And you shouldn't make me laugh so much. It's really rather cruel."

"Shut UP!" Maddy yelled, jamming the gun further into his flesh. "We've got the guns, so you get to decide nothing."

"I think you're wrong," Duke said, still gasping.

"Well, I think YOU'RE wrong, numbnuts."

"They may well be numb," Duke said. "But I'd still enjoy fu-"

"What is it with you guys and your dicks? Crap on a cracker, dudes." She shook her head and moved back to her side of the car.

Steve stared at her, seemingly lost for words. Instead, he turned to Sandman, who nodded, and mouthed for Steve to kill Renfield.

Duke said, "Not happening. He's coming with. He still has a part to play."

"And what's that?" Sandman snapped, spinning around again. "You keeping secrets, old man?"

"I've told you before about the old slur, Sleepy."

"The hell you say," Sandman said, then faced forward, his eyes widening in fear as he felt compelled to bang his head against the window. "What the fu-"

Duke Dalton chuckled, and Sandman fell back into his seat, clutching his head. "Now," Duke said, turning to Maddy. "Do you want the pleasure of sitting next to me or Renfield?"

"Neither."

"Play nice."

"Play nice?" Maddy laughed. "Play cat-shagging nice? What is wrong with you people? Steve," she said, leaning forward and focusing on her brother. "Let's go get Emily, okay? I think Duke brought us this way to pick up Renfield." She glanced at Sandman. "And I don't think Sandy had any idea." She glanced back at Duke. "Right?"

"You're a perceptive little thing," Duke grinned.

"Then we're sorted. Go find Emily."

"But Renfield?" Steve said.

Maddy shot him a glare. "Not you too?"

"What?"

"You want him back in your car?" Maddy tightened her grip on her gun. "After everything?"

"I'm guessing we don't have a choice," Steve said. "If Duke's play friend doesn't join us he won't tell us where Emily is, whether that's my house or elsewhere."

Duke chuckled softly as he wound down his window. "Perception seems to run in your family. Perhaps I underestimated you both."

"That'd be a bad mistake to make," Maddy said.

"As opposed to a good one?" Duke grinned, tilting his head toward Renfield, who had stepped up to his window. "Would you mind travelling in the back?"

Renfield looked. "The trunk?"

"There's a good chap," Duke said, winding his window back up and turning toward Maddy. "Happy, dear?"

"That's a stretch," she said. "But I can live with it."

"For now, maybe," Duke grinned.

"Hang on," Sandman said, spinning back around in his seat, albeit holding his head between his hands this time, as if frightened of accidentally hurting it again. "What did you do to me?"

Duke Dalton bellowed with laughter, then fell into a coughing fit, his face turning purple as he writhed and struggled for breath.

Sandman glanced from Maddy to Steve and then back to Duke. "Should we help him?"

"He's your friend," Steve said.

"I know, right. Hang on a second while I think."

Maddy turned at the sound of the trunk squeaking open, wondering if there was anything hidden there that they shouldn't be giving Renfield access to, but she couldn't be sure, and didn't want to ask Steve in case it gave anyone else an idea, and hopefully he had a secret plan, although she didn't think he had his mind on anything other than Emily. And she was key for now. The question was, where would Sandman and/or Duke hide her? Where was the last place they would expect Maddy or Steve to go?

"Steve," Maddy said, turning back around as the trunk slammed shut. "I know where Emily is."

"Where?" he asked, forgetting Duke.

Sandman laughed. "You may be Duke's perceptive girlfriend, but-"

"I am SO not!"

"But... you've no idea-"

"The Woodrue Farm," she said.

Maddy grinned at Sandman's bulging eyes, then nodded at her brother and slapped Duke on the back, knowing if they were ever going to figure out any of this he needed to be alive to answer questions. After that, all bets would be off, but for now she would play along.

# DeFrank

Maddy was beginning to think she'd died and gone to hell after all. Nothing else seemed to explain how she kept ending up back here, and in worse trouble every time.

The farmhouse loomed before them, the barn to one side. What looked like firelight danced in the doorway. She saw four magpies loitering about the entrance, their shadows danced beneath them. As one, the quartet went still when the SUV closed, then one of the birds flew away, wings clumsily flapping to gain some lift. The remaining trio retreated to the edge of the torchlight and watched.

"Help an old man out, will you?" Doc Duke Dalton chuckled. "Sleepy's out of it for now, I think."

Renfield had clambered out the back, giggling like a ten year old prankster who didn't understand the difference between putting tacks on a chair and slipping a razorblade in a sandwich. He hopped and shuffled. His abdomen swelling with infection he didn't seem to feel. Whatever Dalton needed him for, he'd better use him soon.

"Oh I'm good, old man." Sandman slid out of his own seat. They helped Dalton into a collapsible wheelchair. The three magpies fluttered at the periphery as they approached the barn entrance. Torches on stands stood on either side of the barn door and inside.

"Is there a party going on or something?" Maddy said.

"You'll see," Dalton said as they wheeled him inside, but Maddy could already guess the need for the old-fashioned lighting.

Jimmy was floating against the wall, tethered to the floor like a balloon, unresponsive and quiescent.

"He's out, and the rest can't get in. Wards've been set up around the perimeter. Wards you and Bart disrupted with your hunt for cash. Watch your step there, girl." Dalton pointed to a series of oddly-arranged leaves across the threshold. They navigated around them like a minefield. Renfield, she noticed, was nowhere to be found. Must have slipped away. Maddy didn't like that. As unpleasant as Renfield was to be around, she liked him out of her sight even less.

There were empty stalls, old partitions, the only thing that looked new was a hook and chain that dangled from the ceiling cross beams, operated by a manual pulley.

"Looks like everything's set up neat," Dalton said. "You got your ducks in a row, Sleepy. Or your floaters anyway."

A howl cut through the night.

"Sounds like there's worse than dead things out there," Maddy said. "Whatever powers you've got, I don't think they'll help you with Furball."

"Furball, is it?" Dalton raised a wispy brow. "That's what you're calling Ivan Agafonov? From Medieval boyar to plush toy...yeah I know him. Met him in Russia awhile back. Told him I'd help end his curse. Poor bastard believed me. I got what I wanted out of it. He dug up one of the oldest of them for me. Let me cut out his heart while he ate the rest. That's one of his hunting strategies: dig them up where they den during the day. Like a regular old truffle-sniffing pig he is. He's got a hunger for their flesh he can't resist. What is he really and what're those things? That I can't say for sure, but even the supernatural world's got an ecosystem. Food chains. Predators and prey. Only natural that something would evolve to keep those undead things in check. He doesn't see it that way. Not Ivan. Thinks his curse was put on him for a reason. That he serves a purpose. He wasn't a good man you see, not by any stretch of the word, and he sees this – this exile from humanity and condemnation to hunt the monsters that prey on us – as a path of redemption. It's a path that's taken him centuries by the way. A side effect of eating the undead: you live forever. That's what interested me. When my heart gave out, well, Sleepy was kind enough to purloin my body and try an experimental transplant using the one I stole. Thought it best to keep the whole thing secret from Bill till we were sure the process was stable and duplicable. But I didn't expect Ivan to follow me here."

A low growl. The object of his talk was in the doorway. Fur bristling, ears pricked and jaws slavering, silver eyes agleam with argent. The monster's focus was Dalton and Jimmy, so much so it didn't notice Renfield behind him, raising a weapon.

"Look out!" Maddy exclaimed, but couldn't say why. The warning was cut off as Sandman struck her on the back of the head.

From a long way distant, hovering above herself it seemed, she saw everything. A bear trap sprang closed on Ivan's paw. Renfield fired a taser gun, pronged projectile trailing wires, and lit Ivan with electrical jolts. Sandman fired an identical weapon, shocking Ivan from both sides. The beast howled and it echoed in her mind: _Madeline!_

When she came back to herself, Sandman and Renfield were hauling Ivan up by a hook, tying his paws and anchoring them to the ground. The big wolf stirred and Renfield laughed, darted in and jabbed Ivan with a hand-held taser.

Steve had tried to draw his gun but was standing frozen, hands pressed to the sides of his head. Dalton was focusing on him. "Hurry up, Sleepy," the old man gritted out as Sandman scooped up Steve's gun, then Maddy's. "It's taking all I've got to hold him."

"That's good to know, old man," Sandman said.

Then he shot Doc Duke Dalton in the head.

### ***

"The heart's all we need, and it'll keep beating," Sandman said a few minutes later. Steve wheeled Dead Doc Duke Dalton's chair into the Woodrue house, Maddy beside him, Sandman at their backs. It was true. He had shot his former partner so many times the head was nearly gone, but he still bled and his body twitched. From the calls overhead, the magpies had likely taken roost on the roof. Sounded like they were exchanging gossip.

Too damn many of them, and their calls rattled in Maddy's brain. Too many to count, Ivan. No, the rhyme only went to ten.

"Sentiment," Sandman went on. "That was the Doc's big weakness. I knew that boy of his was having second thoughts, but Doc wouldn't hear of it, wouldn't let me deal with Bill and his little clan as they deserved. In the end he was even thinking about backing out of the whole project. Like I'd come this far just to stop short of the gold ring. But you want to see your Emily? Open the door."

The lights still worked when Sandman flipped the switch. His operation probably demanded power. But there were still oil lamps in sconces should the nature of the experiments mean a loss of electricity. He indicated they continue through the foyer.

A dentist's chair had been set up in the den, with Emily tied to it hand and foot. She was a pretty thing, blue eyes, red hair, freckles. She wasn't showing yet, but Steve's kids would be adorable.

Fear came into her eyes as she saw them, and she grunted into her gag.

"What the fuck is all this?" Steve looked around and nearly choked in horror. Plastic had been laid over the floor and walls, and the whole room looked like some kind of medieval torture chamber. Maddy said as much.

"Looks more like a doctor's office from the 1800s," Sandman replied, indicating the surgical beds with straps, the collected saws, clamps, magnifying glasses, beakers and Bunsen burners and stacks of notebooks. "It's tough working with material that dampens electricity. Can't use computers or any modern medical equipment. One more obstacle on the road to immortality."

Steve alternated his attention between his fiancé, and Sandman. "And what's Emily doing here?"

Sandman shrugged. "As long as we were tying up loose ends, I thought we'd try a different kind of experiment. See about infecting the unborn and what harvesting undead stem cells could do," Sandman said. "Waste not."

Maddy rounded on him. "You have to practice being an asshole, or does it just come natural?"

Sandman's smile never altered as he said: "How would you like to spend the remainder of your very short life hooked on smack and giving head in Mexico? I could make that happen easily. I've done it before. An operation like this has expenses. I could get a fair price and you owe me some interest for the delay I had in getting my money. When I killed Eddie and made it look like an OD, I expected to collect all the cash. Didn't expect Bart to stash it. Then you nearly robbed me again. You and Bart. He got off easy, whatever happened to him-"

"A screw up," Maddy said. She looked away as if seeing some unpleasant memory. Her hands twitched as if she were holding weapons. "This whole thing was a colossal screw up."

"Either way," Sandman shrugged. "But like I said, I'll be getting my payback in spades. From you. From the fleabag outside. From the Dalton clan now that the Doc isn't protecting them."

"You really think you can cover this up?" Steve said. "People have died."

"You can take the fall, Steven: the dirty cop behind this violent drug ring, shot dead in the act. Or maybe you'll just eat a bullet. Like father, like son."

"Bastard!" Maddy made to lunge at him.

Sandman shifted the barrel of the gun to cover her and Steve took the opportunity to launch himself. He grabbed Sandman's gun hand before he could fire and the two of them went at it like a couple of bulls finally getting a chance to butt heads.

"Help Emily!" he yelled as he and Sandman wrestled for the gun. Maddy ran for the bound woman and undid the restraints. When she looked back, Steve had landed a punch on Sandman's chin, followed by a second blow to the gut that made him stagger back. Steve had the gun and was aiming at him.

Emily would have run to him if Maddy hadn't held her back. Steve glanced at them to assure himself they were safe, then back to Sandman.

"Jerard Sanders," Steve said with relish. "You are under arrest."

"All right, all right," Sandman gasped, holding his hand up and shielding the other hand with his body as he reached for a scalpel from the medical tray beside the chair.

"He's going for a knife!" Maddy yelled.

Sandman picked up the blade, twisted his body to throw it underhand. Gunfire thundered through the house and Sandman fell back, clutching his belly. His back hit the wall and he slid to the floor, beside the headless body of Dead Doc Duke Dalton.

Sandman looked up at Steve and hissed through clenched teeth: "Not bad, Steven, never thought you had it in you."

The lights went out.

Renfield's giggle from outside, accompanied by a cold sensation.

"Thought I'd invite some friends to the party," he laughed. "Now I get to play with the puppy while they play with you!"

"What the fuck is going on?" Steve shouted. There was a sound of Sandman trying to stir. "Freeze!"

"I've got a lamp!" Maddy picked up one of the lamps, lit it with a match and set in on a table. Lamplight left the room in shadows.

"That son of-" Sandman gasped. "He...must've taken out the wards again...letting them in. Looks like...more than the Doc was giving him orders..."

At that moment, Dalton's hand lifted and plunged sharp fingers into Sandman's neck. He gasped and turned pale. Dalton's body crumbled into a pile of dust topped with a shriveled but still-beating heart.

Doc-doc-doc-doc-

Sandman began to float to his feet. As he did so, he grabbed the undead organ and shoved it in his own mouth. His throat swelled as it went down.

Maddy bolted and jumped out the first-floor window and rolled on the grass. "Come on!" she called, but Sandman's broad back was blocking the way.

Not nice, Steven.

Maddy backed away, turned, and was face-to-face with Jimmy. Watery eyes leaked ectomplasmic ichor as he reached for her, but stopped.

_Not nice, Steven_. He spoke as if echoing other words, and he drifted around the house to the door. Other dead things, almost a dozen, converged on the house, ignoring her. A single, guiding will had gripped them.

Not nice, Steven.

The only exception was Renfield, hurrying to the barn with instruments of torture to give Ivan a lingering, painful death.

And the money was in the SUV.

_Nothing to do,_ Maddy thought to herself through her terror. Nothing but take the money, save herself, or die with Steve and Emily and their future/never will be kid.

Gunshots sounded vainly from the house, and a howl from the barn.

# Leibfritz

Maddy stared for one breathless moment at the means of escape. She ran to it, opened the door, and grabbed the crowbar she'd left on the floor. She couldn't do it, couldn't leave them. She glanced between the barn and the house.

The barn. She couldn't hope to stop all those things on her own, she needed Furball, needed Ivan. Trusting Steve to hold his own for the moment, she slid up to the barn door. She crept closer, staying out of line of sight, and glanced around the corner.

Renfield stood under Ivan, drawing a scalpel slowly down the beast's leg. There were a dozen cuts along the wolf's pelt, thin and bleeding. Renfield took a pair of hemostats, jamming them around the edge of the skin and fastening them. He pulled, ripping the skin loose from muscle and fat.

Ivan howled, a damned cry as he writhed against his bonds. Unfortunately, this resistance only made it easier for Renfield to pull the skin from his body.

"I'm going to skin you, puppy dog," Renfield cooed. "I'm gonna make you into a nice hat to cover what you did to my head."

Maddy waited until Ivan howled again, and ran forward. The noise covered the sound of her approach, and she swung the crowbar. Renfield started to turn just as the metal connected with his head, making a sickening crunch as it shattered the man's jaw. Renfield collapsed like sack of rocks, and once he hit the floor Maddy grabbed the knife from her belt and cut the rope tying Ivan.

The wolf collapsed to the ground, low whine slipping through his teeth. He breathed deeply, and fixed those silver eyes on Maddy.

"We have to save Steve," she said, willing the beast to obey. "My brother, his fiancé. We have to save them."

There was no understanding in Ivan's eyes, only light and pain.

Cursing, Maddy turned to leave, head for the house on her own. Hands gripped her ankle, a sharp pain as Renfield scraped his remaining teeth into her leg. Maddy yelped, swinging the crowbar down to knock him away. She glanced at the bleeding wound, and felt something twist inside her.

No time. She ran, or tried to run, limited to a hobbling shuffle as she made her way toward the house. Most of the dead were still outside, unified will wasn't enough to make them capable of finding the door. Maddy ignored them, striking the one fighting with the doorknob. It wasn't enough to bring it down, but moved the floater aside long enough for her to get in. She shut the door behind her, turning the deadbolt, hoping it would delay them. Steve and Emily weren't in the Den, no anywhere Maddy could see. She weighed her options and screamed.

"Steve!" She listened desperately for a response. "Steve, where are you?"

_Well well, look who's come back,_ the words slid down Maddy's spine, making her gut roil. It pulled something, a tug that trailed all the way down to her leg, to the bite _. Just wait, you'll join us soon enough, and then there will be only your brother and his woman to deal with._

Steve, he was still alive. If she could stop Sandman, Steve and Emily could get out. Maddy was doomed, Renfield had infected her, but the infestation was taking it's sweet-ass time. She could get Steve out of here, do one thing right before Ivan came for her. The floaters, they were responding to the heart, the heart of an old one. If she could take out Sandman, it might take out the others.

Gripping the crowbar, she closed her eyes, trying to feel where the pulsing taint was pulling. It lurched in her, made her nauseous. The sick, twisting tug. Upstairs, they were upstairs.

Maddy opened her eyes and made for the staircase. Halfway up her leg gave out, and she slid painfully down three or four stairs. She wheezed, reaching for the bannister. If she could just grab it.

_Maddy._ It was Jimmy, floating up behind her, ascending the stairs. _I've been waiting for you. Someone bit you first, but I'll have my way for the rest of it._ He drew closer, feet knocking on the stairs as he leaned in.

She swung the crowbar, catching Jimmy in the neck, knocking his head back at an unnatural angle. The whispering corpse flailed about, trying to realign, giving her enough time to scramble up the stairs on all fours. She needed to get to Steve, and damn if she wouldn't crawl there if she had to.

At the top, she turned, just in time to knock Jimmy again. The crowbar wasn't positioned right, and the bent end sunk into Jimmy's putrefying flesh and would not come free.

"Damn it, Jimmy," Maddy muttered, kicking the bloated body. "I need that." No kicking or pulling would give it over, and she abandoned the crowbar, but not before tugging it over and wedging it in the bannister. No point in letting the damn thing follow her.

Limping down the hall, her leg pulsed with pain. Maddy abandoned any attempt at stealth, the ruckus on the stairs had ruined her chances. Instead she pulled out the knife, and cautiously advanced.

There he was, Sandman, running bloated, discolored fingers along a door. The wood was warped, but beating it hadn't been too effective. Maddy shook her head. Steve had barricaded himself and Emily in one of the upper bedrooms, On the one hand, they were currently inaccessible. On the other, it was only a matter of time before Sandman found a way through the door. They had no way out, and if Maddy didn't act fast the house would be full of the floating dead and she wouldn't be able to get them out even if she did take out Sandman.

Sandy hadn't turned, hadn't acknowledged her presence. Maddy lifted the knife, took a step forward.

Pain lanced through her leg. It buckled, and she had to steady herself on the wall to keep from falling to the floor.

_Silly girl._ Sandman looked at her with eyes that didn't see. _You're half mine already._ The pain in her leg, spreading out form Renfield's bite, throbbed in time with his words. _Just give over, and the pain will stop._ He drifted to her, looming up in the hall. Take Renfield's position, go to your brother. A leaking smile split the man's face. _If you give him and his woman to me, I'll halt your transformation. I can stop it indefinitely, let you run off with your precious money. Far too unpredictable, you are. I'd rather send you off. You can go someplace far, and warm, and spend your days on a beach with all of this behind you._ Sandman leaned in, until his face filled her field of vision.

"You mean that?" she asked, leaning on the wall.

He nodded.

Maddy plunged the knife into Sandman's ribcage. "Fuck off."

Sandman recoiled, scrabbling for the blade through the still beating heart of the old one.

Maddy collapsed to the floor, agony rolling through her from her leg. She saw a pale blur surge past her, streaked with red and black and a shot of silver. Her head hit the wood, and she knew no more.

### ***

Maddy opened her eyes. The world didn't look right, her body didn't feel right. Everything was sharp, and clear, even though that was the moon overhead it shone like the sun itself.

_Easy._ The voice was warm, trailing through her thoughts like a caress. _You need to adjust._

_What?_ It wasn't words, her mouth wouldn't form them.

Ivan was next to her, fur covered in blood and black ichor, eyes glinting in the moonlight.

Maddy tired again. _What happened, where's Steve?_

There was laughter in the wolf's face. _Your brother and his mate scrambled off in that fancy vehicle you arrived in. Incapacitating the heart made the host easy prey, and they could escape though you could not. The others who should not be are still about, but lack purpose and direction_. Ivan looked up. _You were bitten, beyond help. I brought you out here, let the moon and my gift do their work._

Maddy went still. His gift, what gift? His gift for poorly timed quotes and rhymes? His gift of impenetrable dialog? What did Furball...Understanding dawned, and she looked at herself. Fur, claws, and at her back, a tail.

Maddy was a wolf. _What did you do?_

Ivan bayed, a high sound, like the giggling he'd produced in the squad. _I've given you life, life that doesn't end. You chose to save your brother, even though it damned you. Will you not run with me? Let the wind carry you to where the rest of these foul things lurk, and save others? Preserve your brother and his woman against them in the future, and every other man like Steve? Every woman like Emily? Can you not feel it, Madeline, the night calling us? Will you run with me?_ He grinned, a mix of teeth and lolling tongue. _I've a gift for you, saved it for you. Won't you come see it, Madeline?_

Maddy got to her feet, tricky with four of them. _What could you possibly gift me with?_

_Come._ Ivan ran forward, tail wagging. _Come see, sweet and clever Madeline. You will enjoy it, I promise you._

Maddy followed, slow at first but soon with greater surety.

A low, broken form lay in the grass. It wasn't crawling, nor was it floating, more of a pathetic drag across the ground. It looked up, single eye fixating on her.

_Two puppies?_ Renfield's voice was not improved by its disembodied quality. _There's not supposed to be two puppies..._

Madeline smiled, lips pulled back from sharp teeth. She moved forward with purpose, the sour scent of the man before her a taint that should be removed from the breeze. Old things stirred in the night, calling her. Beside her, Ivan was a beacon of silver and savage joy.

This was an excellent gift.

# FIN

# About the Authors

Robert DeFrank

Once upon a time, Robert DeFrank opened a book and found Middle Earth. He has combed through bookshelves for similar worlds ever since, then put pen to paper and made some of his own. One day he blundered into R'lyeh. He managed to not wake Cthulhu, but Elves are still bumping heads with Old Ones. His favorite phrase is: "What if?" followed closely by: "Why not?"

 http://www.amazon.com/Robert-DeFrank/e/B00HY3FVLE/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1442633604&sr=1-2-ent

Tamsin De La Harpe

Tamsin majored in English Literature at the University of the Free State, and in Global literature at the University of South Africa. She worked as an design editor at the Irawa newspaper, and spent several years in working with a commercial book retailer. Now convinced big business is anathema to good literature, she spends her time actively supporting Indie writers, and writing children's fantasies with her English Bull Terrier, Amy, who has all the good ideas.

http://writocracy.blogspot.com

M.A. Leibfritz

M.A. Leibfritz is the author of the science-fantasy series The Isra Saga, and lives in Wisconsin with a cat named Odin, a dog named Thor, and a fish tank full of catfish. M.A. possesses a Bachelor's Degree in Art, and suffers from an overactive imagination. Reading has always been an obsession, now rivaled by writing. Big Plans are common, getting them accomplished is the trick.

www.maleibfritz.com

David Burton

David Burton is a prolific writer of short stories, large novels, and everything in between, who graduated from the University of Derby with a BA Hons in Experience of Writing with Literature. His main area of interest is everyday people and their trials and tribulations, often with an element of unreal added to the mix. But such is life. He also works as a freelance editor.

<http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00JZ03YHC>
