Nightmares streamed into the basement like a dread and dark­ling tide, washing over the only line of defense, engulfing them all. Bart’s shotgun went empty, but Billie’s still roared defiantly. Its report mingled with the screaming, both men and women, rising in pitch until gender was no longer an issue. It was one long ululation, starting on one side of the room and then jumping to the other and back again. “You bastards!” Billie cursed and fired her last shots into the grinning horde and then drew the extra Magnum Charlie had given her and used that.

“Del, Bart, get behind me! Did you hear?” She turned to look for them in the dim light and confusion, and that was when someone grabbed her wrist and knocked the revolver from her grasp. They swept over her like a cold wind, arms enfolding her, dead mouths on her cheeks and chest and sliding over her until they could find her throat. The bare bulb hanging overhead swayed from the melee, splashing everything with a strobic split second of light but illuminating nothing. She couldn’t even see who was going to kill her.

Teeth broke the skin of her neck. Her own screams joined the communal wailing.

A voice in the darkness, familiar to her. Frank Sipes. “Hold it.”

The teeth sank no further. The mouths pulled away.

“Not her. She’s Stiles’s woman. The Master says he can use her. Take her to him.”

She tried to twist away from them, pummeling at where she thought faces should be, kicking at them, struggling to get away, to get to her boys. “Delbert! Bart!” she called out in vain against the other screams of the basement-cum-dining room. But a fist split her lip and filled her mouth with blood, and a second blow stunned her, and a third left her limp as a rag doll. She felt herself thrown over a shoulder and jostled about, and then there was the sensation of motion and a chill to her skin and the screams began to fade. She realized she was outside in the cold night air, being carried away. And she couldn’t even cry out. Not for her children. Not for herself.

She was gone almost ten minutes before the screaming in the basement finally stopped. But the other sounds didn’t. The moans. The smack of lips.

The feeding.

20

Chapter Twenty

Del couldn’t stop crying. He knew it wasn’t doing him any good, and it sure as hell wasn’t helping Bart or Mom. But he just couldn’t stop. C’mon. Tough it out. How long has it been since they dragged them out of here—fifteen minutes? Half an hour? What could have happened since then? Are they alive, or . . .

They’re alive! They’ve got to be alive!

Then you can still help them. You’ve got to try. But you can’t do anything till you stop crying.