After a couple minutes, there were loud voices on the stairs, accompanied by heavy footsteps. The tower door banged open, jolting Mooner out of his contemplative state, filling me with renewed fear. Eugene and Mo rushed in, and the man who’d arrived in the Lincoln labored up the stairs behind them.

“We would have brought them down,” Eugene said to the man.

“Shut up, you idiot,” the man said. “I’m not an invalid. I’m a Bulgarian bull.”

The Bulgarian bull lunged into the room, and I thought he looked like a bull having a stroke. His face was purple, and he was sweating and breathing heavy. He was close to six feet tall and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes were dilated black and glittered in his feverish face. His jowls shook when he talked. He had small, square, yellow teeth behind fleshy protruding lips. He was dressed in bagged-out dark dress slacks and a white dress shirt, open at the neck, showing a mat of graying chest hair.

“So,” he said, looking down at Mooner with his mean little pig eyes. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

“Dude,” Mooner said.

The Bulgarian bull leaned over and got so close to Mooner their noses were touching. “Do you know who I am?” he yelled at Mooner. “I’m Gregor Bluttovich. I’m the man you cheated.” And before Mooner could say anything, Bluttovich hit him open-handed on the side of the head and knocked Mooner over.

“That isn’t Vinnie,” I said.

Eugene and Mo sucked in air and froze.

Bluttovich turned on me. “Who’s this?”

“She was with him,” Eugene said. “We thought you’d like her.”

“They’re lying,” I said. “They took the wrong man, and they were going to keep me for themselves.”

Bluttovich looked over at Eugene and Mo. “Is this true?”

“She’s trying to make trouble,” Eugene said.

Bluttovich grunted. “I’ll give her trouble.” He turned away and powered himself to the door. “I’m hungry,” he said. “I want something to eat, and then I’ll deal with these two.”

Bluttovich led the way down the stairs, and Eugene and Mo stumbled after him, closing and locking the tower door. Mooner was still stretched out on the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from a split lip.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“He’s a scary dude,” Mooner said.

I went back to the window, desperate to see Rangeman in the driveway. I was counting down to the moment when Bluttovich was done eating and the real horror would begin. I was staring so intently, and wanting to see help so badly, I almost missed the movement in the woods to the right. There was no wind, but something was disturbing the undergrowth. Animal, I thought. And then more movement a few feet over. And next thing, the woods were alive with Hobbits. They were everywhere, creeping forward out of the woods onto the grass, inching up to the fortress. I ran around the room, looking out all the windows, and everywhere I looked I saw Hobbits. There were hundreds of them.