Just like that, it was over.

Chapter Sixty-Five.

Ponytail Pete was dead, God rest his soul.

Jermaine Whittock had been injured in the fall, but not seriously. Just out cold for the moment. Denver Dugan knocked all to hell, but too blasted ornery to die. Paul hadn't found Freddie yet, and was hoping for the best. His side hurt like hell and was still bleeding slightly; his back felt like that of a man of fifty-two after an intense workout.

The rain had put out most of the beer-bottle flames, but five of the town's six firefighters were working on the gas tank fire that had erupted from the misused blood donor vehicle. The flames had pretty much torched the Sundown, too. Another fireman, a guy named Dave Madgett, had taken a bunch of sick days over the last week or so and was found blocking the doorway of the lobby. Or at least what little remained of the charred corpse seemed to resemble Madgett.

D.B. was okay. A little bruised, maybe. Same with Haggerty and Mona. The downstairs room Carl had been holed up in had been sprayed with gunfire, but he'd propped up mattresses and pillows to the windows, fashioned himself a shooting nest and weathered the worse of it.

Denver wasn't in great shape, according to the woman doctor in a yellow warm-up suit.

Paul heard her telling Drake, "The forearm shot's just a flesh wound, but he fractured his leg in at least a couple places when he tumbled off the balcony. Hit his head, too. We'll have to get an MRI, but I'm guessing compound fractures. Lots of blood loss, too. Don't touch him."

Drake muttered something to her that Paul couldn't hear. Something that made the woman doctor blink.

"I won't allow that," she said. "He's my patient."

Not giving up an inch, thank God.

The rain had stopped toward dawn, the clouds having parted slightly to let in a sliver of dying moonlight. The doctor had cleared a space for Denver, still unconscious, and wrapped him in a damp blanket. Flares had been lit all around the battle site, and in their sputtering glow, Paul watched Denver's bloodless face.

The older man's lips were blue, his teeth chattered and eyelids fluttered. The doctor stood and motioned for a stretcher crew that was already occupied. She was a slight woman, fiercely determined but not as young as her figure suggested. She squatted next to the seriously injured man and Drake awkwardly crouched likewise to say something more to her in a low voice.

"What was that?" Paul asked nervously over the vampire's shoulder.

No response. Drake unbent with a crackle of gristle and bone, but continued to hover and stare grimly at Denver. Paul, not sure what else to do, laid a hand on the vampire's shoulder.

Drake shrugged it off, scowling. "This has nothing to do with you," he said.

A stretcher arrived and the doctor barked orders for the careful placement of her patient.

"Stop right there," the master vampire snapped, freezing the attendants. "We have to discuss this."

"There's nothing to discuss," the doctor replied. "He's my responsibility."

"And the town is mine."

"Load him," the doctor quietly ordered.

They studied Drake and the doctor. She stood a foot shorter than the vampire glaring down at her, but her eyes met his directly. After several seconds, one of the paramedics shrugged and bent to Denver. The other followed suit.

The recent rain had turned the fires to smudgy smoke, further blackening the predawn sky except for that sliver of moon.

Drake directed the heat of his gaze first on Paul, then the doctor. There was a fine speckle pattern of blood on his chin and along one side of his face.

"You ignored me," he said flatly to the woman.

She said, "It's my job to save lives, not take them."

Then she moved off to another fallen cluster.

When she was gone, Paul said, "You wanted to kill Denver, didn't you?"

Drake sniffed the air and his eyes fell to Paul's side, the blood seeping from a makeshift bandage. He stalked away without a reply, his face chalky white in the sporadic gasoline-fueled light.

The master vampire's world was changing, Paul thought as he followed. He was about to continue the conversation-though he had no idea where he'd take it-when D.B. shot into sight.

He said, "Paul, you gotta come quick. It's Todd. Hurry up, willya?"

The vampire had overheard. He turned as quickly as Paul and followed D.B. toward the woods at the back of the charred motel.

It was Todd Dunbar, alright, or what remained of him. He lay sprawled by the creek bed at the bottom of the ravine, a layer of sycamore bark serving as his litter. His bedraggled wife hunched next to him. They both smelled of gasoline and ash.

A covering of black blood was plastered to Dunbar's shirt, more of it smeared on his face, but Paul saw no torn flesh.

"He's healing," Mona Dexter said. She stood next to Freddie and Carl and several townspeople with flashlights or guns.

Paul forgot the others as Mona's eyes traced his own.

"You know what you have to do," she told him quietly. "For his own good."

"Everyone stay away," Joy Dunbar cried. The crowd moved back as she picked up a beer bottle that sloshed with liquid. A dirty rag poked from its neck. "I done in Zeebe with one of these and I can take out the rest of you."

She jabbed her thumb at a point behind her as she said the last part and flashlights picked out the charred organic pile twenty feet away, half in the underbrush.

Paul said, "Joy, you've got to understand-"

She cut him off by raising the bottle higher and producing a plastic cigarette lighter in her other hand.

Paul wanted D.B. to take over, but the other man stood silently. Paul shifted his weight, sycamore bark and pine needles crunching underfoot. His spine sent more electric jolts screaming through his system. He said, "It's just that, there's no changing him, Joy."

Her eyes burned. "I learned that years ago," she said, missing the point entirely.

Or maybe not. Maybe just not wanting to face facts.

Paul tried to think amid his screaming pain, the wail of sirens, the mutters of the unfathomable townspeople, the rainwater dripping from the trees and whipping at his face in little bursts of wind. Not to mention approaching daylight, its threat to some in the crowd, its promise of redemption to others. And most of all, the terrible silence of the master vampire. It all conspired to keep Paul's mind muddled. He couldn't work the problem all the way out until he remembered the slim doctor refusing to turn Denver Dugan over to the vampires, and that's what resolved his mind and loosened his tongue.

As Paul stepped away from the crowd, the vampire followed. Miles Drake still didn't look sufficiently recovered from mortal combat with Purcell. His skin was papery, his mouth thin and gray. He stood so close that Paul could smell coppery death on his warm breath.

Paul, stoked by his numb emotions, said, "If you'd killed the old guy, Denver Dugan, I'd have exposed you and the town as promised."

The vampire's chalky face with its angry purple mottling held no expression. Dawn couldn't be far away. Paul could dimly make out the milling crowds waiting, needing to be led once more to the Babylonian equivalent of a moral decision.

Drake's expression hardened. "Which is it, courage or stupidity that makes you address me in such an insolent manner?"

Paul thought about it, then answered honestly. "Neither. It's fear."

There was nothing to read in the vampire's face. Paul hoped his own was similarly blank.

From behind them, Freddie said, "You don't have to threaten us, Drake."

Both turned. The Detroit attorney's clothing was blackened with soot and splotched with blood-someone else's, Paul hoped. His face was bruised, the back of one hand slashed. He held it against his department store-new jeans to stanch the flow.

"We all know how easy-how tempting-it would be for you to kill us all," Freddie continued. "We saw how effectively you dealt with Purcell, and that's why we must remind you what you're up against if we lose contact with Darby Highsmith."

The vampire's head swiveled from one daylighter to the other, then lighted back on Freddie.

"Who the hell are you?"

"He's my attorney," said Paul.

"And as such I can't stress enough the importance of keeping us all safe. As long as that happens, we have no incentive to reveal what we know to the outside world. We want nothing but peace. And if you think Paul can't simply disappear without questions, that's doubly true of me, Mr. Drake."

The words, with their politely unspoken threat layered into the promise of cooperation and mutual benefit, reminded Paul all over again why he kept Freddie on retainer.

"I have nothing to say to lawyers," Drake muttered.

Frozen in his impotent frustration, he turned to glower at the crowd surrounding them, stopping in their tracks loyal allies and former insurgents alike. "This godforsaken town," he rumbled. "It's losing all semblance of discipline. Of respect."

Nearly all in attendance took a step back.

"I'm not sure that's so bad," Paul said. "Maybe your people are learning to think for themselves. Not always good thoughts...but their own."

In the distance and drawing closer came a familiar voice. Eventually it became Bill Sandy, directing a rescue team or a meat wagon. Both were in high demand.

Paul said, nodding toward the busy police officer, "I almost admire him. The way he can walk the thin line between sworn duty and political reality. Between the law and your law."

Something squealed underfoot and Paul feinted a kick at a rat that ambled fatly from harm.

"What I'm trying to say, Drake, is that I find Babylon not to be the horror I first thought it was. It's not my kind of place, for sure, but it has its own...decorum." He waved a hand to take in his surroundings, dawn now just around the corner. "Others apparently find it livable."

The smoke and dying flames and the steady flicker of emergency vehicle lights provided unintentional irony.

"You're a fool," the vampire growled.

Paul thought about it. "Babylon offers jobs and a strong sense of community. Of tradition. Family bonds are strong here, to say the least. It's a town with a sense of right and wrong-not everyone's sense-but at least its citizens live by a code of behavior that's consistent. That shifts less than society's." He watched the master vampire's face. "I know people who might thrive here."

The vampire turned his hot gaze on Todd Dunbar, still sprawled on the ground but starting to stir. "No," he said.

"Think about it," Paul said quickly. "I'll bring their kids back. Not your traditional family, exactly, with Mom ruling the roost during the day and Dad prowling around all night, but at least they'll be together. And he'll be alive."

More or less, Paul wanted to add, but didn't.

Drake shook his head. "No. It can't be done."

"You can teach them to be normal. Normal for Babylon. There are other mixed marriages in this town, I've got to believe that," Paul persisted.

The vampire rubbed his dry face. It skritched like the drag of a dead leaf across pavement.

Something caught Paul's attention and he watched Joy Dunbar help her groggy husband to his feet.

"I've got to get him inside," she said, staring up at a sky suggestive of dawn.

"Let the Dunbars decide," Paul said quietly.

"And if I don't allow it?" Drake said as he watched the woman lead her shaky husband toward the ashen motel for shade.

With the fires out, the Sundown didn't look as bad as Paul had first imagined it. He could see Mona already pushing firefighters and their high-pressure hoses out of the way of undamaged portions of her motel. If she had insurance, she could be up and running in a few months.

"Let's focus on the positive," Freddie said breezily. "If the Dunbars and any of the others who want to remain here are allowed to do so, I think I can encourage the Highsmiths to sell their home at a reasonable profit and we'll all leave very soon. I think Paul here will hire me to only occasionally check in to make sure everyone who chooses to stay remains healthy and secure. As long as that's the case, no police, no reporters."

He finished with a what-could-be-fairer shrug and a big smile.

Drake's frown had grown. He shifted position to leave Freddie out of the conversation and to address Paul directly. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Because you can," Paul answered simply. The vampire would recognize the truth in it.

Drake scanned the sky. "We have to be leaving soon," he said. Then he added, "What if they give us up?"

By the distasteful way the word rolled off of the vampire's tongue, Paul knew that they referred to the Sundowners.

It was a good question, but Paul had given it some hurried thought.

"Darby and Freddie and I are stable citizens with steady job histories and respectable lifestyles." He swallowed, hoping that he'd still be seen in such a light by the time his legal problems were resolved. "We don't overdrink, do drugs or tell whoppers. That's why the police or the media will believe us if they ever come looking for confirmation of some wild tale told by Carl or D.B. or one of the others. We'd say we never laid eyes on them. Sure, the tabloids with their tales of women who dated Bigfoot might eat it up, but who'd believe what they read?"

Drake took as much time as the approaching day would give him to mull it over. "What about those who've already died?"

Paul was ready for that one, too. Ready with the sad truth. "Who cares?"

After another nervous glance at the sky, Drake said, "And the one whose wife died? How quiet will he remain?"

Now they were in a minefield. Even with Purcell and his faction destroyed, he didn't think Jermaine would ever agree to peace with the vampires.

"I don't have all the answers," he finally admitted, and watched the vampire gloat. "But I promise to work on it. Will you let me?"

It might have merely been the play of the light of an emergency vehicle over his face, but Drake's head seemed to bow almost imperceptibly.

Yessirree, Paul thought. It was indeed going to be a challenge tying up every loose end. But for the first time in months he didn't feel fifty-two. He felt his energy returning, his brain revving for a hard haul. He caught Freddie's eye and his lawyer nodded slightly, his mouth and eyes set for the work ahead.