High beams from my right momentarily blinded me. I squinted through the sunglasses to see a fifty-eight Plymouth Fury racing toward me. And Charles Hubert was a libriomancer.

“Nice,” I said, firing again. The Fury had been cannibalized straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. I could see now where Hubert had welded parts of King’s homicidal car to the other vehicles, bringing them all to life. Had he grown them all from a single, book-sized piece of that Fury? King’s book had hinted that the car could repair itself.

I pocketed the gun in my right hand and drew Excalibur, while continuing to try to pin down the vampires with the other pistol. “Until this moment, I failed to understand or appreciate the might of your organization,” I shouted. The dialogue was straight out of “The Final Problem,” the story in which Holmes sacrificed his own life to destroy his archenemy, Professor Moriarty.

I hoped that wasn’t prophetic.

I fired left-handed, then jumped back. Excalibur twisted in my grip, jerking my arm out and downward. The impact of sword on car reminded me of hitting a baseball, if the baseball was made of solid lead.

I couldn’t have released the sword if I wanted to. It sliced through tires and steel, emerging from the Fury with enough speed to whirl me in a complete circle. The Fury spun out, wrecking a station wagon.

I checked Smudge’s cage to make sure he was all right, then ran to hide behind the mangled car. “Best. Sword. Ever!”

Lena was using her bokken to cut through the barbed wire. I crouched behind the Fury as both vampires concentrated their fire on me. I blasted the side mirror off the car and used it to peek over the hood. I fired blindly, using the mirror to try to guide my shots toward the figures on the roof. Then a cloud of mist flowed out from the garage and solidified into the figure of a woman.

Lena thrust her bokken through the new arrival, who promptly dissolved into ash. One of the vampires on the roof dropped his weapon and sprang into the air. He snatched one of Lena’s bokken in now-clawed feet, ripping it from her grasp.

“This is inevitable destruction!” I shouted, quoting the story once more. “Surely you can spare me five minutes to hear what I have to say.”

The cars slowed. Over the idling of their engines, I heard an answering cry, “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.”

That was one of Moriarty’s lines to Holmes. I had hooked him. I peeked out from behind the car. “Have you any suggestion to make?”

“You must drop it.”