Fright Night (17 page)

“Beautiful,” Jerry muttered, entirely to himself. Everybody else was too busy screaming or dying. He liked the dimples in the man’s neck, where all five claws were deeply embedded. He liked the way they trickled ever so slightly.

Effortlessly, he began to lift. Over two hundred pounds of limply flailing carcass rose an inch off the floor. Two inches. And more. When the man was well over a foot in the air, Jerry flung him casually into the middle of the dance floor.

Where no one was dancing.

Anymore.

. . . And the screaming was all around her now, a hurricane howling that shattered her thoughts and sent the sharp fragments soaring through her skull. Words like
omigod, Charley
jumbled together with
help me
and
so that’s what it’s like to die,
a subsonic morass that drowned in the screaming, but that was strangely okay, because she was screaming, too . . .

. . . and then somebody grabbed her by the arm, and she screamed a little more until she realized that it was Charley, it was Charley, and his mouth was moving but she couldn’t understand a word that he was saying, she couldn’t
hear
him, she was too busy screaming and screaming and . . .

. . . then they were running,
everybody
was running, the world had become a shrieking madhouse of pandemonious motion, wave upon wave of terrified flesh that pressed against her from behind, pressed against Charley, pushed them forward and into the night . . .

Charley heard a split-second whistling by his temple. Then he felt the blow, and the world went electric with white blinding pain. He felt his hand fall free of Amy’s arm, felt himself begin to tumble.

The first wave of fleeing people plowed into him from behind. He dropped like a stone, and they began to pile up on top of him. When his senses returned, he noticed the pair of enormous tits that were jammed against the back of his head. They failed to cheer him up.

“OUCH!” he yelled. “GET THE FUCK OFFA ME! OW!” The weight was crushing; worse yet, it was immobilizing. Above him, the pile was beginning to tip over, to grow in size, to reach dangerous proportions. Charley got a vivid flash of what being trampled to death might be like. He started to crawl painfully toward the curb.

The woman fell off his back and onto his legs. He winced and let out a thin screech of anguish. His gaze swept out to the street before him.

The black Jeep was there. Its back door was closing. Jerry Dandrige stood beside it, grinning warmly at him. Through the rear window, the back of Amy’s head was clearly visible.

So was the face of Evil Ed, whose name was no longer a joke. It leered at him as Dandrige hopped into the passenger seat, and the Jeep kicked into rubber-burning motion.

“NO!” Charley screamed, wrenching himself free at last. He staggered to his feet and began to run after them; but the car was already wheeling around the corner, and he was too late, too late . . .

TWENTY

P
eter Vincent was throwing things into a battered leather suitcase. His choices were based on nine parts panic, one part practicality. Shirts, socks, pants and underwear were high on the list of priorities, which made sense. On the other hand, one pair of pants, five shirts, five socks and eight pair of underwear, only some of which matched, did not.

Memorabilia kept making its way in and out of the suitcase. Desk-sized photo frames, housing shots of Peter Vincent with everyone from Roddy McDowall to Ingrid Pitt to a late-model, strained and staring Bela Lugosi; his shattered cigarette-case mirror, a stiletto that shot out a ten-inch aluminum cross (from
Hickies From Hell,
the teenage vampire classic), a trick crucifix/spritzer that used holy water instead of seltzer. He even tried to tuck framed movie posters in, but gave up when
Blood Castle
slipped out of his fingers, spraying shards of glass all over the floor.

The room was a disaster area. Evil Ed’s visit had been only the beginning; most of the damage had been done by Vincent himself. Drawers were thrown open and tossed to the floor; the things still hanging on the walls were wildly askew. A hurricane called Hysteria had blown through the room, and nothing therein would ever be the same again.

I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here,
his thoughts prattled over and over. It was the mantra of a man in mortal terror. A psalm on self-preservation. A communion with cowardice.
I gotta get outta here.
The only thought in his head.

When the knocking at the door began, he let out a little shriek and dropped everything he was clutching.

“MR. VINCENT!” screamed the voice from the hall. “OPEN THE GODDAM DOOR!” The pounding continued, making the fillings in Peter’s teeth rattle.

He thought he recognized the voice, but it was hard to tell: he’d never heard such panic. All the same, he edged toward it tentatively.

“Who is it?” he trilled, voice thin and quavering.

“CHARLEY BREWSTER, GOD DAMN IT! LET ME IN!” The pounding stopped, and there was the muted thump of Charley, leaning heavily against the door. Peter put his hand on the knob, started to turn it, then thought better of the idea.

“What do you want?” he asked. “I’m very busy.”

“HE HAS AMY!” Charley howled, and the pain in that voice stabbed into Peter’s gut like a rabies vaccination. “HE HAS AMY, AND WE’VE GOT TO SAVE HER, AND I NEED YOUR HELP, AND . . . OH, GOD DAMN IT, JUST
OPEN THE DOOR!”

Peter could hear, from the other side, that Charley was starting to cry. He leaned his back to the door and took a deep, hitching breath that made his chest flare up for one agonized second. The words
heart attack
popped up in his mind like shooting-gallery ducks, then vanished.

I can’t do it,
he thought, and the thought made him sick. He hated himself, the cowardice he embodied.

He was powerless before it.

“Go away, Charley,” he said, very quietly. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry—”

The sudden
SLAM
against the door was full-bodied, and more violent than all of the others combined. It made Peter jump backward, heart thumping madly, hot shame flushing up into his cheeks.

“YOU
BASTARD!”
Charley bellowed. “YOU LOUSY, CREEPING, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
BASTARD!”

Peter backed away from the door, heading vaguely toward the bedroom. If he pulled the covers up over his head, and pressed all the pillows on top of it, maybe he wouldn’t have to listen anymore. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to hear the truth that branded him forever . . .

“YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW, DON’T YOU? I’M GONNA HAFTA GO OVER THERE, ALL BY MYSELF, AND THEN DANDRIGE IS GOING TO KILL
ME!
AND YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN
THEN,
RIGHT?”

Charley was sobbing wildly between the words. Peter continued to back away, every step getting harder and harder.

“I’M GONNA COME BACK AFTER
YOU,
YOU COWARDLY SON OF A BITCH! I’M GONNA MAKE A
POINT
OF COMING BACK AFTER YOU, BECAUSE YOU
DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE!”

The sobbing took over completely then. There was one last vicious slam against the door, almost an afterthought; and then Charley’s leaden footsteps staggered miserably down the hall and away.

Leaving Peter Vincent, the Great Vampire Killer, to drop to his knees and start crying himself: for Charley, for Amy, for Eddie and for the long-lost Herbert McHoolihee.

But it was already far too late for that.

TWENTY-ONE

D
arkness, spiraling upward into gray. Hardness beneath her, also spinning, like a wooden raft caught by a whirlpool’s outermost whorl.

In the distance: strange music, driving and seductive, dark and elemental as freshly drawn heart blood. Injecting her with its rhythms. Awakening her to its call . . .

Amy pulled herself back into consciousness slowly, battling weakly with the swirl inside her mind. Her eyes flickered open, and she saw that it was indeed dark. There was wood beneath her, yes: a hardwood floor, very old.

And the music was there as well. Not distant at all. Just soft.
Insinuating,
she thought, and the word fit just right. It didn’t overwhelm, it worked at her subtly.

She liked the music. It fit her mood, which was dark and dreamlike. No jagged edges. No stridency at all. Just a wicked, languid, red warmth that suffused her, washing over and through her, making her curl and stretch and roll over luxuriantly, then stare up at the ceiling with a smile on her face.

“Well, well,
well,
my little precious one,” said the silken voice above her. “You’ve come back to me. I’m so glad.

“I’ve been waiting.”

Fear, as yet, had not occurred to her. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know who had spoken. The end of her life was the farthest thing from her mind.

There were candles in the room. They were the only source of light.
Romantic,
she thought, enjoying the way the shadows flickered across the walls and ceiling.
That’s how I feel. Romantic.

Like something very special is about to happen.

A very special shadow loomed over her suddenly: a great silhouette, long and stark and profoundly masculine. “Dance with me,” it said, and a long band of darkness stretched out toward her.

Her memory came back; and with it, her terror.

He liked the girl. There was something about virgins that appealed to him greatly. They didn’t yet know what they were missing; it was all pent up inside them, coiling, blindly gathering power. When she came, he knew, it would be in a big way.

He looked forward to it greatly.

He did not plan on waiting for long.

She was huddled in the corner now, her eyes wide and pleading. He understood the emotions that were churning inside her; he could taste them in the air, as he had a thousand times before. They were, as
he
was, undying. They blossomed ever fresh, thank the gods both light and dark. They brought their wide-eyed innocence to the altar for sacrifice, never knowing what they stood to gain, or what they stood to lose.

One after the other.

Forever.

Charley was still at the core of it, of course. The vampire wanted nothing more than to make the kid suffer for his pestiferousness: after that scene in the disco, Rancho Corvallis wasn’t exactly safe anymore, and he hadn’t even finished unpacking. Charley Brewster had definitely climbed to the top of Jerry Dandrige’s shitlist, and breaking in the girl was bound to ruin the boy’s morale.

But the girl would be fun. No question about it. She would be fun, and she would be delicious, and she would make a wonderful weapon. The combination was unbeatable.

“Amy, I want you,” he purred. “Come and get me.”

And then he began to dance.

For a moment, the panic was complete and untainted. All other considerations were knocked aside like Kewpie dolls by the fastball of fear whipping through her. She was alone in the room with a creature of incredible evil, and it didn’t look like anybody was going to save her, and the fact that she was about to die loomed more enormously over her than the vampire’s projected shadow.

A shadow that had nothing to do with the light in the room. Like a mirror, it refused to acknowledge his presence. Dandrige cast no shadow.

Dandrige
was
shadow.

And that was where the moment ended. There was more than just panic; there was more than just terror. There was
fascination,
sick and intrinsically sane all at once.

Jerry Dandriges didn’t happen past every day, don’t you know. Most lives were filled with perfectly ordinary happenstances: tick tock, seven o’clock, time to watch
The Jeffersons.
Most people never had undead monsters pursue them all over town.

Most people had never been seduced by an individual of such incredible beauty and power.

And that was the other thing that was happening to her: difficult to admit, impossible to deny. There was an aspect of her that was turned on by the dance. There was a longing, inside her, for something entirely outside and beyond ordinary experience. She couldn’t help but respond to the hypnotic motion, the eyes that flashed out of the darkness at her.