A voice sounded from over near the door. “Put your dick away,” it said. “Nobody wants to look at it.”

Danner wheeled with a snarl. But there was no one there.

“Alex?” Stiles muttered.

“Who is it!” barked the vampire. “Show yourself!”

“Back here, Smiley.” The voice came from the bathroom. “Catch me if you can.”

Danner buttoned his pants and stormed across the room with a low growl, battering in the lavatory door, knocking it off its hinges. But there was no one there. The voice had already moved on.

“Over here, Smiley.

“No, over here now.

“C’mon, Smiley. You’re getting cold.”

“ENOUGH!” Danner went back to the bed and caught Stiles’s windpipe in a vise-like grip. “Show yourself,” he ordered, “or he dies now!”

There was movement near the front door; an indistinct figure was suddenly standing there, hiding in the gloom, a shadow among shadows. “Whoever you are,” the vampire hissed, “you’re a dead man.”

“Lucky guess, fucknuts,” Alex replied. “Now, move away from the bed.”

“Or what?” Danner picked the lifeless television from its stand as if it weighed nothing and flung it at the intruder, smashing it into the corner and destroying both wallboard and appliance alike. But the shadow man standing there was untouched. “But . . .” the vampire stammered, “how could . . .”

“You’re a little slow on the uptake, son. I’m a ghost, get it? A spirit, a specter, a haunt?”

“That’s impossible.”

“You should talk. Now, I suggest you leave while you can.”

Danner managed to control his shock. He even laughed. “Is that a threat?”

“Gosh, it sounded like one to me.”

The vampire shoved the lounge chair across the room, where, like the TV, it passed through its target and rebounded off the wall. Then he laughed. “You have no substance, spook. How do you plan to hurt me?”

“I can’t,” the shadow man replied. “But he can.” He pointed behind the fiend. Toward the bed.

Danner’s eyes widened. He suddenly knew that the phantom was no threat—only a diversion.

He turned just as the prisoner sat upright on the bed, pulled the Uzi into view and opened fire. The short, static burst started low and swept upward, opening the vampire from crotch to collar­bone. But Danner stayed on his feet. He looked down at the widening fissure in his chest and stomach, saw his captured blood spilling onto the motel-room floor, and he shook with sudden rage. His mouth opened wide and kept going, seeming to fill with more and more jagged teeth, until he gave a guttural cry and lunged toward the bed.