It cut through the fabric, spewing gray padding. The vampire's blade kept going, going all the way through the cushion and into Dunbar's cheek.

Paul's mind played a troubling trick as he watched, in shock, the vampire shave the side of the Sundowner's face. It seemed as though the inhuman growl, much like the unforgettable sounds he'd heard the night Judd Maxwell disappeared-seemed like it had come from Dunbar's side of the cushion.

A thin spray of blood jetted from Dunbar's face as he shoved cushion and vampire away. The creature Penney tripped over Mona Dexter's prostrate body and fell squarely in the middle of the bright rectangle of sunlight where he lay screaming and writhing convulsively.

Smoke poured from his body as though from a broken car radiator.

Until that moment, only two of the daylighters-Dunbar and Mona-had been directly involved in the claustrophobic battle. Jamey and Paul had remained frozen on the sidelines. But with Penney crumpled to the ground and the girl screaming, still tightly wound in her bedsheet, Jamey Weeks saw a chance to escape his trapped position by the window shade he'd so injudiciously raised.

With the shotgun clutched to his chest like a good-luck charm, he made a mad dash for open ground. Almost made it, too, but he slipped in the pool of blood and gore near Penney and the beheaded Gary Leckner.

He went down to one knee, eyes wild, as he studied the thrashing vampire on the floor next to him. In his panic to rise and get the hell out of there, Jamey slipped again, this time falling fully over the spasming creature. Jason Penney instinctively buried his teeth and swollen face into the man's neck and tore at his flesh like a pit bull taking down a poodle.

Jamey's blood had a cooling effect on the creature, hissing as it splashed over his overheated face. Penney hoisted Jamey's twitching body in a two-handed grip over his head as protection from the deadly rays.

Paul could no longer watch. He grabbed Mona, still stunned by her collision with the flying lamp, and whisked her to her feet. "Todd, fall back," he barked. "Get out of there."

Dragging Mona, he took two steps to his right and grabbed the shotgun next to Jamey's slashed body, and five shells that had fallen from the dead man's pocket.

Dunbar was holding the side of his face, but blood trickled freely between his fingers. He grunted from deep within his chest as his legs did a rubbery, vaudevillian shuffle. It looked to Paul like the wounded Sundowner might keel over in the next second.

Paul stuck the shotgun high under his free arm and grabbed Dunbar as he fell. He pulled and dragged the three of them toward the hallway.

As they passed the couch, a thick-fingered hand shot out from behind a hastily stacked tent of cushions to snag a section of Dunbar's T-shirt. Paul let go long enough to slam the vampire's hand with the stock of the sawed-off. It made a satisfying crunch and elicited a howl of pain as Paul yanked the bloodied Sundowner out of reach. Then he reversed the gun and let go with both barrels. A deafening roar, an explosion of couch guts and a scream of pain as acrid smoke filled the room.

"Fuck you, Zeebe," Dunbar said with the last of his foundering strength.

His knees buckled and he choked on the smoke. Paul leaned him against his hip and somehow hugged and tugged and dragged both barely surviving Sundowners down the narrow hall and out the apartment door while still clenching the red-hot shotgun under one arm.

"Wait here," he gasped, propping Todd and Mona against the wall at the head of the stairs before ducking back into the horror apartment.

Vampire snarls had turned to mewling cries that Paul tried to ignore. Holding his breath against the smoke, he grabbed the phone receiver in the kitchen and ripped the cord from the wall. He depressed the inside doorknob button that Jamey had popped open only minutes and a lifetime ago, then closed the door after him, locking it. Buying them a little time, he hoped.

Gulping for air, he examined the front of his clothing and beheld an even ghastlier sight than he'd imagined. He'd be arrested or shot on sight if anyone saw him on the streets-even in a more normal town-but he'd have to risk it.

Mona had slumped to one knee by the time he got back to the dark foyer. Dunbar stood at her side, as though at attention and unaware of her presence. Unaware of much of anything. The blood from the six-inch gash on his cheek had begun to coagulate, but Dunbar had a dazed, irretrievable air about him that worried Paul even more than the injury.

They'd have to hurry. Paul tucked the shotgun under Dunbar's arm and pushed and led the two down the stairs. He made his face a mask of bored unconcern as he pushed open the exterior door. Both wounded survivors gasped in panic at the sudden daylight.

Leaving them behind, Paul forced himself to saunter casually to the parking lot. He found the van behind the building where they'd left it, engine running and Kathy Lee behind the wheel. It seemed impossible how normal and unchanged it all seemed when the entire world had been shaken from its moors inside the bloody apartment.

He made the cranking motion he'd stolen from Ponytail Pete, and Kathy Lee rolled down the window. "What happened? I heard-" Her eyes popped when she got a good look at him. "Oh my God, you're covered in-"

"Pull up closer to the door," he ordered.

He slid open the van's door as she backed out of the alley and squeezed as close as possible to the side of the building. Todd and Mona seemed incrementally aware of their surroundings when he went back for them. They walked on their own, albeit shakily. As they climbed into the van, Mona exchanged seats with Kathy Lee. Todd and Paul crouched between the two rows of back seats, as before. They smuggled the still-smoldering shotgun into the floorspace between them.

"What about Jamey?" Kathy Lee wanted to know.

"Let's go."

His tone of voice must have answered her question. Paul regretted having to leave Jamey behind, but they simply didn't have the strength between all of them to carry him out-or anywhere to put him if they did.

"Head back to the motel first," he told Mona. He caught a brief glimpse of her forehead welt in the rearview mirror as she tried to shake the cobwebs loose. "We'll pack up the Dunbar kids and Kathy Lee's. They're going with my wife and son. After we get someone to patch up Todd's cheek we'll-"

"I'm okay."

Paul had been avoiding the sight of Dunbar's bloody face, but something made him glance at the man huddled on the floor near him. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, and the closer he looked the less sure he became.

Dunbar's shirt and pants were sticky with blood from a gash that had gone cheekbone deep, and the van was similarly smeared. Mona had tossed the injured man a room towel from the duffel bag Dunbar still carried over his shoulder, and he'd clamped it to his face. Now, as though to prove a point, he held the blood-soaked towel aside.

All that remained of the injury was a thin red line that looked plenty sore to the touch, but the bleeding had stopped.

Paul's lips smacked with a dry sound as they parted. He tore his glance from the scarred face, but his eyes returned, unable to look away.

"Guess I wasn't hurt as bad as I thought," Dunbar mumbled as he dabbed at his cheek.

"Guess not."

There was always a lot of blood with head wounds. That was common knowledge, wasn't it? Anyway, there'd been so much madness and mayhem in that dark apartment that it wasn't surprising if his mind had put the worse spin possible on the injury.

Nonetheless, another voice kept saying, I saw what I saw.

He turned toward the two women in the front seat, trying to remember what he'd been planning. "The daylighters aren't used to making decisions for themselves. That's why I think we can make it to the motel and out again as long as we do it with the sun up. I want all of you to grab your families and stuff your things in a few small bags. Take nothing that won't fit on the floor of the van, and hurry up about it."

He was amazed at how in control he sounded.

"I'm not going anywhere," Mona said.

"Sure you are. I want the women and children-"

"I don't care what you want," she snapped. "I've lived here all my life and I'm staying."

There'd be no room for argument. Paul sighed. "Then we'll leave you at the Sundown, but we still need your van."

"I'm staying, too," said Kathy Lee. "I can handle a gun as well as any of the boys."

"I know you can. That's why I want you to lead the way out. There are few people I'd trust more with Darby and Tuck. Besides, you've got your own kids to think about."

She made no reply for a long time. Finally she said, "So what do you have in mind?"

"No time," he said. "I'll explain it as we go along."

From this moment on, there wasn't room for a single mistake.

Chapter Forty-Three.

The day had not gone well, to say the least, and now he had a swarm of loud, curious kids to deal with. Todd wedged himself into a tighter ball, burying his face between his arms and the base of the van's middle bench seat, but the sunlight pricked him like tiny arrows.

Pricked him like the paper clips being shot at him from the rear seat.

"Ouch, goddamn it," he snarled as one tiny bit of metal made contact.

"Sorry," said one of the Dwyer kids, but his fit of giggles robbed the urchin of all credibility.

Todd's cheek still hurt, but not like before. He'd sneaked a peek at the mirror in the room while Joy and the kids stuffed suitcases, and saw a scar that looked a week old. He'd given his wife an abbreviated version of events, a story that was horrifying even with most of the worst parts edited out.

"You did that today?" she'd asked, touching the dry welt.

He'd jerked away as though her touch pained him, but it hadn't. Not really. "Of course I did it today," he'd shot back. "When do you think I did it?"

She'd looked at his face funny after that.

Even worse than the cut itself had been the way the other Sundowners had looked at him as he sneaked his family out to safety. He'd taken only D.B. aside to explain the situation, but it was like everyone knew he was taking advantage of an opportunity only limited to a few.

Then there was that little problem of impending vampirehood.

"Daddy, does it hurt?"

He felt a burst of irritation as Crissie's little finger poked his cheek, but he stuffed the anger down inside himself, in the dark place where he stored everything he didn't want to take out in the light of day. He found his five-year-old's hand with one of his own and squeezed it.

"I'm okay, honey bear," he whispered, holding a finger to his lips. "We're hiding, remember? Keep your head down, Cris."

He'd spent plenty of restless nights in other people's homes. Times when they'd lost their apartment and friends or relatives had taken them in for days or weeks. But despite his ample experience worrying about what the morning would bring, even his bleakest moments hadn't prepared him for this. Joy and the three kids and him, hugging the floorboards in front of the middle seats of Mona Dexter's van while being assaulted in a rubber band and paper clip volley by Kathy Lee's two brats from their hiding place next to Highsmith, last row back. Kathy Lee drove, oblivious as usual to the commotion caused by her demonic offspring.

The nine of them could be shot, jailed or worse at any moment. That's what he'd brought upon his loved ones by taking the backroads to Detroit.

Todd squeezed Melanie's shoulder, then reached out to touch Little Todd. Joy took and held his hand until he pulled it away, as casually as possible, from the sun's bite.

Kathy Lee's kids giggled louder as another length of paper clip wire zinged past Todd's ear.

"What're you brats up to?" Kathy Lee drawled. Then, for the benefits of the adults stashed behind her, she added, "We're almost there."

The van made a couple more lazy turns, Kathy Lee doing all she could to convince anyone who might be watching that she was in no particular hurry.

Putting her behind the wheel was a risk they'd had to take, according to Highsmith. "Purcell's daylighters aren't real sharp and they're spread pretty thin," he'd said before they'd headed out of the Sundown. Word of the bloodbath in the apartment over the Winking Dog wouldn't get out until nightfall, the theory went. Since the daylighter cops guarding the front of the Sundown had seen Mona's van coming and going all day, they'd either not notice that Mona wasn't driving or not care. Even if they knew it was Kathy Lee in the driver's seat, they'd figure she wouldn't be going far without her kids-as long as the cops didn't spot them in hiding.

A whole lot of ifs, probablys and hopefullys.

Todd felt the van whine slightly as it took a sharp turn and a rise.

Kathy Lee murmured, "Heads down, heads down...okay. We're here."

No one said anything for several seconds. Not even Kathy Lee's own kids, never at a loss for words. Todd peeked cautiously out a window while maintaining a tight grip on the stolen twelve-gauge stashed under the seat.

The house stretched for the horizon, but soared high in the middle, a fairy tale structure of stone and timber and glass. And that was only the view from the back, the van idling where the long driveway ended at an attached garage that was larger and pricier than any house they'd ever called home.

"Daddy, is that a castle?" Crissie asked in an awe-filled whisper.

"No, honey, it ain't." Easy to say. Harder to believe.

House like that, you'd have more bathrooms than you could count. No waiting in lines for three poky kids to quit splashing in the tub. There'd be TVs everywhere-flat screens-and central air and rooms you didn't even know the names of. You'd go right through sunrooms and dens and family rooms and music rooms and libraries and playrooms. Go right through them and still have rooms waiting to be discovered. If that wasn't a fairytale...

Todd glanced at his wife. She, too, had risen to take in the view out the van windows, a dazzling smile playing in her eyes and on her lips as though the fairy tale castle had been built and placed there for her viewing pleasure. It was despair and a slow and untargeted anger that kept Todd from saying another word.

With a motorized whir, the overhead garage door came down and lights lit the three-stall garage. The concrete floor looked newly poured. The riding tractor off to one side cost more than Todd's last two cars. Tools hung from the walls over neatly stacked boxes. Damn if it didn't feel air-conditioned out here, even.

"Wait till I get the door open," said Highsmith as he slipped out of the van.

Todd watched him insert a key into the garage door and open it just an inch until a security chain stopped his progress.

"Darby!" he called out in a stage whisper.

Seconds later, the door opened and a young, trim and attractive blond had him in her embrace. Todd smirked as he tried picturing the woman with her arms around the old guy if he was a truck driver or drywall hanger.

Kathy Lee got out and rolled back the van's side door so her kids could jam their way past Todd. His kids followed, cautiously, like mice peering from a safe hole. Joy laid a cool hand on his neck on her way out and he offered her a grim, unfelt smile. Clutching the stolen shotgun, he came out last.

Trailing the others through the garage door, Todd found himself in a pitched, high-ceilinged stone and timber kitchen with gleaming copper pans and an array of stainless steel appliances. The sun lasered down through a skylight, its awful power unfiltered by a row of hanging ferns.

Todd bit off a scream. His flesh stinging as though immersed in acid, he tripped past his kids as inconspicuously as possible and took a spot against the room's best-shaded wall. Only when his breathing evened out again could he take in his surroundings.

By an arched doorway that led to a dining room with too many windows, the bubble blond Darby Highsmith stood watching him, a young boy pressed tightly against her.

"Todd, Joy, Kathy Lee..." said Highsmith. "Meet my wife, Darby."

Todd nodded and mumbled something. He felt awkward, standing there with a shotgun like some goddamn toothless hillbilly.

"My husband will take that if you'd like," said the cheerleader, nodding at the weapon.

"Oh. Yeah." Todd handed it over and it disappeared into another room, one presumably more child-proof than the kitchen.

When Highsmith returned, he flitted from window to window in the dining room and beyond. The house went on forever, Highsmith's footsteps echoing and fading and rising with his progress.

"Coffee or something?" Darby's voice was high and feminine, a perfect match for her petite form, but deceptively firm. "Something for the kids, maybe." She nodded at the five youngsters. Even Kathy Lee's kids looked quietly intimidated in the soaring structure.

Todd watched his own for reactions. They wore expressions that were too old, too distrustful and experienced with danger to be as young as they were. They looked pale and pinched, nothing like the golden-toned toddler standing so self-assured in front of his mother.

Joy answered for all of the Dunbars with a barely audible murmur. "Thank you, ma'am. We haven't eaten," she said timidly. She looked big and unkempt in the same room with the cheerleader.

Darby responded with a gasp of sympathy and a burst of activity. She began pulling loaves of bread and crackers and cheese and fruit and lunchmeat from the vastness of her cupboards and refrigerator.