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Ruger’s mouth moved to form the name "Griswold" and the shape of it felt faure spoke "Vic Wingate has been my John the Baptist…he has paved the way But you, Karl…you will be my Peter, my rock, and on this rock I will build er’s head was heavy with mockery, but he liked the sound of it

All at once tier and the car hurtled at the ain and the instant of contact (or had it been a hallucination brought on by stress?) was gone Tony’s hands were er kneas about to happen Tony swung the wheel to the right, trying to swerve around the apparition, but he was ham-​fisted with blood loss and overdid the turn The car lurched away fro him by less than a foot, and rocketed off the road out of all control Ruger grabbed the wheel with both hands, shoving Tony against the door He fought the wild turn, swerving into it with a gentle angularity, preventing it fro a tue of the drainage ditch for a border between road and field The car aler jerked hard on the wheel to correct the angle, and a e of the ditch The impact slackened some of the car’s momentum, but Tony’s foot was still on the accelerator and the sedan plowed into the cornfield like a runaway train Cornstalks whipped at the s and died beneath the wheels in sharp crunches of agony

"Get your fucking foot off the pedal!" Ruger hissed When Tony didn’t, or couldn’t, Ruger cocked his arm and drove his elbow into Tony’s nose once, twice The brittle cartilage in Tony’s nose crunched and blood exploded froed against the door and his foot slid frorinned, shifted his hips, then reached over with his own left foot and staer against the dashboard and Boyd against the back of Tony’s seat Tony’s seat buckled forward, and Tony’s right te wheel with a sharp crack

A moment later there was a much louder crack! and then the car swayed drunkenly to the right, slowed abruptly, then stopped altogether

The engine growled in confusion as it wound itself down

Pushing hier reached over and shoved the autoine A tarpaulin of silence dropped over the car, broken only by sine and the far-​off ru black lines of burned rubber one off the road into the corn The tall man with the blond hair stood at the outer curve of the skidtime, his mouth cut into a cruel smile of triumph Despite the total cloud cover his skin and blond hair seeht

He reached out his left hand, fingers splayed so that from his perspective his hand encompassed the whole of the car; then he closed his hand slowly, for a knotted fist A wind seemed to blow past hied as he felt a presence behind hiht and dark in the strange light Across the road, standing just at the edge of the forest, was a second ray as dust and he wore a black suit smeared with dirt The blond man’s face twisted into a sneer

The h his lips foristered alarain and the strain of his effort was clear on his face

The blond hed "Pathetic," he said in a voice that was the sound of icy wind blowing through the li, the other man forced out tords--"…stop…you…"--but the effort drained him and his shoulders slumped He mouthed bastard, but it had no sound and carried no force

"You thought you had won, didn’t you?"

The other man could not make himself heard, his lips writhed without sound Finally he stopped trying to talk and just stood there looking stricken

"You have no idea what you did You have no concept of hoerful you’ve made me" He took another step closer and was now only a few feet away froray man "So now…every drop of blood that falls will be on your head Every Single Drop"

Then his eyes flared from pale blue to a fiery red as hot and intense as the furnaces of hell

In terror, the htning flashed in the sky, bathing the road with harsh white light; when the shadows returned, the road was empty

2

Malcolm Crow held the severed arm in both of his hands and wondered what to do with it Put it with the others? Orit in the

He opted for the

Tossing it playfully up and down as he walked, he went to the long counter that forle of skulls, rats, spiderwebs, tombstones, and necrobilia that lay streith artistic abandon in front of the thick plate glass He pursed his lips, htful decision, and then bent down to lay the severed arest tombstone, the one that read:

COUNT DRACULA

Born 1472

Died 1865

Died 1900

Died 1923

Died 1988