He flicked the wall switch and the two lamps on either side of the wall mirror popped to life, though he almost had to light a match to see if they were lit. The bulbs were cheap and barely illuminated the room’s sparse furnishings. He punched the TV with his elbow. There was a war movie on somewhere behind the curtain of snow but he was unable to find it and cared to even less. He threw his Uzi and holsters on one of the single beds and draped his shirt over the back of a recliner and leaned across the chair to flick on the hanging lamp over the table. Just then the heater decided to come to life and blow a puff of warm air against the side of his face and neck.

He caught the smell of that warm gust and found it nauseatingly foul, like a roomful of bad eggs, and wondered in that same split second how anyone’s breath could possibly be so bad.

Breath. Not the heater. His fatigued senses finally registered the presence in the chair.

Stiles grabbed for the only weapon within reach, the bali-song on his belt, and a flick of the wrist had the knife out of its case and snapped open. But powerful hands caught him and physically flung him the length of the room. He sailed over the beds and hit the wall with an audible crunch. His head left a melon-sized crater in the woodgrain paneling.

Fireflies danced before his eyes in sync with the sound of big guns on the television. He floundered on the carpeting, disoriented but desperate to regain his footing before the attack continued. But it did not. There was only John Wayne on TV, leading his men onto the beach.

He lunged for the lamp on the bedstand and slammed into it, knocking the vibrate-a-bed machine and his alarm clock onto the floor and spilling the lamp onto the bed. It flashed to life and floodlit the other side of the room.

The intruder was still sitting in the chair, one leg crossed casually over the other. It was just a kid, Stiles thought at first glance. Early twenties, with short blonde hair and a stern, mid-western face and eyes shadowed beneath a heavy brow. But then he noticed the clothes. They were the same tattered coat and torn trousers, the same dried and cracking boots. No, it can’t be. The soldier studied the face again. This time he saw the cross-shaped scar on the cheek. This time he saw the eyes. The cold, the black-within-black emptiness. His jaw went slack. It was Danner’s face, the one from the ancient newspaper photo, youthful and vigorous and full of life if not for the stricken pallor. Only the cheeks held color. He had fed recently.