His wrist froze in midair, caught in an icy vise of a grip that grated the bones together and shook the gun from his numbed grasp. Danner was somehow standing right in front of him, a hairsbreadth away, and Stiles would certainly have felt that rancid breath in his face had the vampire’s head not been jackknifed onto his chest like a hanging bag. But Danner was watching him. He was looking up from the corners of his eyes, totally coherent.

And he was grinning.

Danner’s other arm, shattered at the elbow and hanging limp, proved still operable after all. It suddenly seized Stiles by the crotch in a merciless grip.

The pain rolled up through Stiles in a wave, engulfing every-thing in its path, cutting off his breath, blacking his vision. His arms and legs went numb. A scream tried to reach his lips but was drowned by the rising bile in his throat. For the few seconds that he was still conscious, it felt like his pubic bone would go through the roof of his mouth. Then the wave engulfed him totally, and there was only the merciful darkness.

11

Chapter Eleven

Isherwood did not sleep well. The nightmares began just before midnight.

On Cayuga Avenue there was an anxious tapping on a windowpane. Ten-year-old Nate Haskell awoke and reached for his glasses on the nightstand, only to find familiar faces pressed against the window. He could hardly believe it; there was Joey Lipp and Freddy Felder and the Yeager twins, and Andrea Hart was with them, too. Andrea Hart, who was about as hot as a ten-year-old could get, bar none. She even had tits, or at least the starter kit. To Nate she was a goddess. Hell, they were all special—each one a member of the fifth-grade elite, and not one of them had ever deigned to give him the time of day.

No, that wasn’t true. Andrea had said thank you once when he gave her butts in the lunch line, and Freddy had called him a fat-nerd-four-eyes-dipshit once last year on the playground. But nothing since.

So what were they doing here?

“C’mon, Nate,” Joey whispered urgently, looking back to make sure the lights didn’t come on in the other window further along. “Let us in. We gotta . . . talk to ya ’bout something.”

“Yeah, talk,” the Yeagers, boy and girl, both giggled.

“About what?” he asked. “Can’t this wait till school tomorrow?”

“No, it can’t wait,” Freddy sneered, showing a momentary flash of anger and teeth. Andrea swatted him and his smiling, friendly face returned.

Turn it off, Freddy, Nate wanted to say. I’ve never liked you anyway.

“Nathan,” Andrea said lyrically, brushing up against the window so that the budding breasts beneath her sweater flattened out and looked larger. It was a cloying caricature of adulthood. “We just want you to be in our club, that’s all.”