"We're working on it."

"Well, I'd appreciate if you'd keep me informed on anything you do find out." He checked his watch. "Your friend seems to be running a little late. He wouldn't be trying to avoid me, now, would he?"

"He'll show."

"I guess I'll have to take your word for it being as he's your friend and you know him better than me."

Loretta refilled the sheriff's cup. "You won't get any trouble from the boys, Marshall. They're good fellas."

"I've got no reason to doubt it. Just the same, it'd be nice to meet him. Just to be friendly."

Duke tilted his head and listened. A soft hiss, several soft hisses, fell within his supernatural hearing. He filtered a deep breath through his sensitive nostrils. There was something in the air. Almost too faint for even his senses. It stank of decay, blackest magic, and demons. It was the unmistakable aroma of ghouls.

Every light in the diner flickered.

"d.a.m.nation," Loretta cursed.

There wasn't any time for a warning. Duke threw off his leather jacket as the lights snapped off and darkness fell upon the diner. Murky shapes just outside his perception hurled themselves through the front doors. Gla.s.s shards spilled across the linoleum with a deafening tinkle. Duke shifted, shredding his clothes. Becoming the beast took bare seconds, but he was in mid-transformation when the shadows pounced upon him.

Sheriff Kopp and Loretta were still coping with the dark. The starry sky cast a weak light through the windows. Just enough to make out the hulking werewolf struggling with shadows.

They oozed and crawled over him. He tried to grab one. It slipped from his grasp like a lump of watery gelatin coated with three layers of grease. It scrambled up his back and roughly shoved a knife between Duke's ribs. The werewolf howled at the touch of silver. The ghoul twisted the blade, thrusting it deeper. Duke yelped. He spun around the darkened diner in a painful convulsion. The ghoul slipped away from him. The werewolf fell to his knees.

The ghouls slithered through the diner, under its tables, over its booths, and across the tile floor. Sheriff Kopp drew his revolver and struggled to draw a bead on the cackling, slippery things. One stood mere feet away. He still couldn't wrap his eyes around it. He couldn't pick out any vital points. What looked like a head one second became an arm after another, then a misshapen foot or possibly a tail.

"Get light," Duke gasped between wheezes.

Loretta ran into the kitchen.

In darkness, ghouls were not wholly real. They dwelt in a semi-material state, just insubstantial enough to make them a pain in the a.s.s yet solid enough to claw, bite, and stab. Duke could barely see the living shades circling around, much less fight them.

He yanked the silverware from his side and squealed like a wounded pup. He tossed the knife away. A ghoulish blob s.n.a.t.c.hed up the blade.

They circled the werewolf, uninterested in the diner's human inhabitants. He leapt on the nearest ghoul. His wicked claws shredded cloth as the shadow slipped underneath him and jabbed him in the thigh with a fork. Another ghoul slid beside him and jammed a knife in his shoulder. He snapped at it. He could taste the rotten flesh on his tongue, but in that fraction of a second it took to close his jaws, they bit into nothing but air. Another blur of darkness whizzed past, slicing Duke's forearm. It was a superficial cut. Barely a scratch really. But it burned like a paper cut doused with fifteen pounds of salt and five gallons of lemon juice. So did the other wounds. It was the silver. It made his blood boil and poisoned his muscles.

The ghouls chuckled dryly. They were playing with him. He wasn't used to being on this end of a fight. He was supposed to be predator, not prey.

The shadows darted around, tearing shallow gashes with each pa.s.s. Snarling, he did his best to fend them off, but they easily avoided his claws. Each cut made him slower and weaker. Blood clotted in his black fur and dripped onto the floor. They were mostly flesh wounds. A thousand fiery flesh wounds.

The kitchen doors swung open, and Loretta appeared, brandishing a blazing flashlight in one hand, a shotgun in the other. She aimed the light at Duke. The ghouls became real, solid things. "Good Lord."

The ghouls froze under the sudden brightness. Howling, they covered their eyes.

Sheriff Kopp fired. A ghoul's head jerked, and it fell over only to scramble to its feet. Kopp fired two more rounds into the ghoul's chest. It stumbled back but stayed on its feet. The green-skinned creature hunched over in a predatory stance and tossed an annoyed glance at him. Not angry or upset. Merely bothered, and maybe even slightly amused judging by the grin on its twisted lips.

The ghouls scrambled for the darkened corners of the diner, but one wasn't fast enough. Duke caught it by the leg and dragged it back. It hissed and spat and squirmed as he pinned it to the floor. With relish, he pulled the ghoul's head back. The thin neck cracked. Rotted meat tore. Duke ripped the head off. It glared daggers at him as he threw it aside. The decapitated body kept writhing. Duke wrenched off its limbs, one at a time, in a matter of moments. He broke the torso's spine for added measure. The ghoulish bits still moved. Its head snarled. But a ghoul in pieces was mostly harmless unless someone was stupid enough to stick a toe in its growling mouth.

Loretta swept the diner with her flashlight. Ghouls recoiled from their beams. One creature huddled in a corner. It squinted, shading its eyes, and uttered a low, b.e.s.t.i.a.l growl. The flashlight dimmed.

Duke pounced on the ghoul. He seized it by the collar of its moldy suit and raised a clawed hand. The light clicked off. The liquid ghoul seeped through his fingers. Duke sliced at the shadow. It squealed. A piece of black arced through the air, hit the floor, and became a twitching arm. Duke struck again, but the ghoul slipped away.

Loretta fumbled with her broken flashlight, but there was nothing wrong with it. Nothing she could fix. A ghoul rose beside her. She blasted the shadow with both barrels. Somehow, she missed. The ghoul slid underneath her, and hoisted her in the air. It shuddered beneath her tremendous weight and tossed her over the counter. Loretta hit the tile with a monstrous thud.

Kopp turned and fired at point-blank range. The creature didn't try to get out of the way. It just hovered there. But he missed. It fixed him with eyes that were mere pinpoints of red and yellow. Then it moved away, ignoring the mortal in favor of the werewolf.

Duke hunched into a fighting stance as four shadows closed in from all sides. He couldn't take them all. Not with silver and the darkness on their side. Maybe one or, if he was really lucky, two before they decided to stop s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around and jam a fork in his heart.

The ghouls took on just enough form to allow him to see the grins on their drawn faces.

Duke had always known that it would come down to this. Not this exactly, but a violent death seemed the inevitable end of the curse of lycanthropy. Werewolves didn't die of old age.

The headlights of Sheriff Kopp's police cruiser snapped on. Bright, white light poured through the windows.

Duke bared his teeth in a s...o...b..ring smile.

He pounced on a ghoul and sank his fangs in its neck. Flesh and bone tore away. The ghoul's head rolled back, clinging by layers of shredded skin. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the creature's legs. With a feral roar, he yanked, and split the ghoul up to its abdomen. The ghoul growled and twisted in a vain struggle to stand with its mangled body.

Another dead thing with only one leg lurched at Duke. He knocked aside its clumsy charge and shoved his clawed hand through its chest.

The ghouls hissed their call to darkness to extinguish this newest light. Before they could bring their power to bear, the headlights turned off on their own. Only for a spare second. They switched back on again, and the sudden light sent the ghouls into disarray.

While Duke ripped the one-legged ghoul to pieces, the two other walking corpses turned their attention to easier prey. They loped towards Sheriff Kopp with the slow gait of ghouls bathed in light.

Kopp shoved the sixth bullet in his revolver and slapped the cylinder closed. He fired two rounds into its head. The ghoul staggered but didn't fall. Not that Kopp expected it to. He was just hoping to keep it busy long enough for Duke to finish rending his current project. He emptied his gun into the closest ghoul. It jerked and twitched but steadily advanced.

The last two ghouls licked their sneering lips with blackened tongues. Kopp lowered his gun. The weapon seemed useless against them. And the monstrous werewolf creeping up behind them seemed to have everything in hand. A low rumble rolled from Duke's throat, and the walking corpses twirled around to face him.

The next moment was a blur of werewolf savagery and ghoulish shrieks. Even wounded as he was, Duke was more than a match for a pair of ghouls. Even ghouls armed with silverware. As sheriff of Rockwood County, Marshall Kopp had beheld many horrible things, and he had never once turned away. But he turned away now as the ghouls were savaged beneath Duke's glinting claws. Not out of fear or disgust, but to shield himself from all the flying bits. He only turned back after all the screaming had finally quieted. Duke stood over a collection of wiggling body parts.

The diner lights spontaneously clicked back on, revealing the limbs and torsos scattered all around the diner. The legs twitched. The clawed hands drummed their fingers on the floor. The heads rolled around in tight circles looking for a carelessly placed ankle to sink their teeth into.

Kopp holstered his revolver and checked Loretta.

She sat up. "I'm alright, Marshall. Takes more than a little tumble to hurt me." She struggled to get her weight to its feet. "What the h.e.l.l are these things? They ain't zombies."

"Ghouls," Duke replied. "Part zombie, part living shadow."

"How do you kill'em?"

"Well, you can burn 'em, but that leaves a stink for days. Or you can wait for the sun and let 'em melt. 'Course, that leaves a h.e.l.l of a mess."

Loretta frowned. "Not in my diner it won't." She went to the back to retrieve her broom.

Earl walked through the shattered front doors. "Everything okay in here? Jesus, you look like h.e.l.l, Duke."

The werewolf righted a fallen chair and took a seat. He was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess, but it wasn't as serious as it looked. Already the gashes were closing. They'd take a few days to heal completely, and, because they were silver inflicted, there would probably be a couple of scars left to remind him of this night.

"Good thinking with the headlights, Earl."

"Thanks."

"You okay?"

The vampire glanced at the hole in his chest. "Oh. This? This is nuthin'. Just a scratch."

Loretta appeared again. Muttering, she swept the dismembered ghouls and broken gla.s.s out the door.

Tammy gave her ghouls two hours to complete their mission. It was more than enough time, she reckoned. Then she and Chad climbed on his motorcycle and headed out to see the damage her minions had done. She could hardly wait to view the slaughter.

But as the bike neared the diner, Tammy knew something had gone horribly wrong. The lights were on, and a mound of body parts had been piled under the hard neon glow. At first, she'd a.s.sumed they were the pieces of those who dared oppose her, stacked there by her minions as an offering to their mistress. Then she noticed their green color, and as Chad pulled into the parking lot, Loretta's hulking shape strode from the diner carrying an aluminum trash can. She dumped the can's contents onto the pile, adding another batch of writhing limbs, snarling heads, and twitching torsos to the mix. Loretta reached into the can and pulled out a handful of innards. She tossed them with the other parts.

"Evening, kids."

Tammy gaped, though not for the reason Loretta would expect.

Loretta wiped her greasy fingers on her ap.r.o.n and went back inside.

Tammy circled the pile. The ghouls averted their eyes and gnashed their teeth in duly embarra.s.sed fashion. This was not how it was supposed to be. Five ghouls, properly armed, were more than a match for a vampire, a werewolf, and one fat waitress. But her minions sat before her, an undulating monument to yet another failure.

"What now?" Chad asked.

Fuming, she grabbed a head and stuffed it into her backpack. She struggled to make it fit, finally settling for holding it closed since she couldn't get the pack to zip up.

"Take me home."

The night was still young, and Chad was still h.o.r.n.y. But he knew better than to argue with her when she got like this. She had always been a weird chick doing her weird-chick stuff, but when that tone entered her voice and that darkness rose in her eyes, she got too strange for even him to ignore. At such moments, he could almost feel the malevolent power of her soul, colder than an icicle in his jugular. He sped off to her house, all too eager to get rid of her.

"So . . . uh . . . I'll see you tomorrow," he said.

She jumped off the bike and ran into her house.

"Or something," he sighed.

Tammy dashed into her bedroom. Her dad was engrossed in the middle of a John Wayne movie, and her mom was busy knitting. Her mom was always busy knitting things that n.o.body ever wore. Scarves, mittens, sweaters, and other pieces of winter clothing that had no purpose in a desert h.e.l.l like Rockwood.

Tammy shut her door and very quietly locked it. If her father heard the lock turn he would come barreling from the living room and accuse her of smoking dope, or something equally stupid. Then she removed the ghoul head from her backpack and set it on her dresser.

The head hissed. It stuck out its tongue and ran the wrinkled thing round and round its lipless mouth.

"Shut up!" she growled.

The ghoul shot her a squinted glare and opened its mouth as if to howl. She stuffed a sock into the gaping orifice. The head replied with its best sock-m.u.f.fled cry.

"Mmmpphhh! Mmmpphhh!"

Tammy leaned in close enough that her nose almost touched the open hole where the ghoul's own nose should have been. "Cut it out."

The ghoul lowered its head and nearly rolled onto the floor. It spat out the sock with a frown. The language of ghouls was the language of the abyss. It was a dialect of hisses, growls, grumbles, and other unpleasant noises. Tammy understood it as only a true mistress of darkness could. Just as she was able to read the range of ghoulish expressions which were all subtle variations of scowls and glowers.

"Terribly sorry, mistress," the head apologized, "but I do have an image to keep up. It's not often I'm given form, and I would like to enjoy it while I can."

Tammy sat on the edge of her bed. "What happened?"

"Things got rather mucked up, but it wasn't our fault."

"Who's fault was it then?"

"Since you asked, I dare say, in all honesty, that it was yours, mistress."

Tammy grabbed a pen and stuck it in the ghoul's eye.

"How terribly immature," the ghoul snarled.

"What went wrong?"

"The graveyard guardian. She saved the vampire, who saved the werewolf, who saved the mortals. We weren't prepared for a ghost. And we can't do anything against them anyway. So it really wasn't our fault, now, was it? Can't send ghouls against spirits and expect to win, now, can you?"

"Shut up."

"I was just answering your question, mistress. No reason to get snippy just because you muddled the job."

Tammy rubbed her palms together. "It-shay, uck-fay, amn-day."

The head burst into flame.

"Really, mistress. How infantile."

The ghoul went up like flash paper once alight. Nothing was left but a small pile of ash that she swept into the waste-basket.

She spent the next half-hour listening to music on her headphones and pondering the situation. Everything seemed to be going wrong. She was beginning to question her great destiny. She was a teenager and p.r.o.ne to moments of angst and self-loathing. Whenever such moments. .h.i.t her, there was only one thing to do. She had to talk to the spirits. She had an easy method of communication in the back of her closet, sitting somewhere behind her checkers and Parcheesi sets. She fished around and removed her Ouija Board.

She'd bought it when first embarking on her occult dabbling and quickly realized how utterly useless it was. Not that it couldn't summon spirits under the right circ.u.mstances. Particularly at parties, since the dead were always happy for an invitation to a big shindig. There were so few good parties on the other side. But the kind of ghosts channeled through the board were hardly worth her time. She threw it aside and dug deeper before finally hitting upon the object of her desire: her Magic 8-Ball.

As an instrument of spiritual communication, most Magic 8-b.a.l.l.s weren't much better or much worse than Ouija Boards, but this one was special. It was filled with the blue blood of Goorka-mushalavtoteca, Queen of Horrors Unborn. And rather than having to summon a spirit, which was always unreliable, Tammy had already permanently bound a soul into the orb.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, cleared her mind, and shook the spirit awake. Then she explained the situation to the 8-Ball, asked it what to do, and gave it another good shake. She peered into its tiny window and waited for the triangular thingamabob to surface with its reply.

ANSWER UNCLEAR, the ball said.

Tammy rattled the orb once again. It stubbornly held its ground.

ANSWER UNCLEAR.

She gave it a hard smack. The thingamabob dipped below the murky depths and emerged bearing a new message.

p.i.s.s OFF.

She rolled the ball in small circles on her bed. The specter in the ball, while invaluable as a source of advice, could be uncooperative at times. Most times, in fact. She couldn't exactly blame him. It had to suck, spending all day in the back of a darkened closet, but it was his own d.a.m.ned fault for pestering her all the time while he'd been free to roam.