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  She grabbed the shovel from inside the wagon and slid out. Quickly she moved toward the giant and the convict, her weapon cocked back over her right shoulder, and then charged. The shovel swung in a wide arc and whistled as it cut through the air.

  The edge of the shovel blade slammed into the hollow back of the tin man and drove a dent into the metal. The noise was not as loud as she expected, but was followed almost immediately by a muffled scream from inside the thing.

  Elisa swung again and again, feeling the impact from every blow as it ran up her arms and into her elbows. The mechanical thing spun toward her, letting go of the prisoner, and she saw the red eyes and bared teeth of the wicked little thing crouched inside of the metal man’s chest.

  The convict fell to the ground and shook his bloodied arm, several lacerations marking where the tin fingers had scraped his flesh. He did not stay on the ground, but instead rose to his feet, looking at the cross in his hand.

  Elisa danced backward as the tin man made a lunge for her, and she swatted the metallic head with the flat of her shovel, hearing the ringing noise that echoed through the head even as one of the handles on the side of the skull crumpled under the impact. From within the deep sockets of the carved tin face, something wet rolled out and struck the ground. Elisa stared in horror at the wet, ruined eye that looked up from the dust.

  The tin man took advantage of her distraction, reaching out to grab her weapon, the thick fingers clutching the handle of the shovel and squeezing until the wood snapped in half just above her hands.

  From somewhere deep inside of the chest she heard the thing with the red eyes screaming at her. “I’ll feast on your blood, you vicious sow!”

  The prisoner moved forward then, staggering briefly before he corrected his charge and shoved his hand into the opened chest of the tin man. The hand held Stefan’s cross, and when it touched the thing inside, it screamed, the sound echoing eerily inside of the metal torso.

  Two small hands reached out and grabbed the man’s arm, and at the same moment, the arms of the tin man went suddenly slack. The little monster’s tiny fingers clutched hard, tearing the prisoner’s shirt sleeve into shreds and drawing fine lines of blood from his exposed skin. Still the man held on, his arm shaking and his face twisted into a mask of hatred and revulsion as he held the crucifix impaled inside the monster’s chest.

  Elisa moved to her left and saw the tiny vampire pinned within the tin man, its face made even more hideous as it screamed and wailed its pain out into the night. The cross was driven into its chest and where the vampire’s skin and the crucifix met the flesh had blackened and was rotting away.

  The convict pushed harder, and something in the vampire’s chest broke. The little monster let out one final wail of pain and then the tin contraption around it fell backward with a groan and a dozen explosive bangs.

  Elisa looked the man over, her breaths rapid and stressed. The prisoner looked at her and shook his head, at a loss for words.

  She pointed to the wagon. “We’ll be safer in there,” she said softly. “There are things out in the night that should not exist.”

  He nodded and moved toward the wagon. In the distance screams still carried through the darkness and prompted them both to move faster. They were not the screams of people, but of things that neither of them wanted to consider too closely.

  Elisa climbed back into the wagon and the man made his way in after her and drew the opening closed before settling back against the canvas. His body twitched with exhaustion and his face was drawn down in a pained scowl. They sat across from each other and did not speak, but instead listened to the wind and the screams, each lost in their own thoughts and nightmares.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thin gray cornstalks whipped at Gayle’s face as she dashed through the withered remnants of her father’s last corn crop. There would never be a harvest. Leaves stung her cheeks and the stalks broke as she ran over them. Her eyes were wide but she had no tears to cry now. Terror had overcome her so completely that she could not have wept. Her heart pounded and in her mind she could still hear the voice of the pale man with his beautiful eyes and hideous face, her parents’ blood smeared on his cheeks.

  Evil. Surely, he was a demon, just the sort she had always been told about. Sometimes Gayle had doubted that such things existed, but now she knew better. Evil was real.

  And it was after her.

  Her breath rasped in her chest, coming too fast. She thought her lungs would explode. Her foot caught on a bent corn stalk and she stumbled, fell to one knee, and scraped her hand on a stone jutting from the dusty earth. The night was so warm and close around her that she thought it was hunting her too. And how could she escape the night?

  In the moment that she pushed herself up again to run, she heard noises in the corn behind her. Low to the ground. Footsteps, running, and the snapping of leaves as she was pursued.

  Gayle would not look back. She knew what was chasing her. Not the evil man, the demon, but the living dolls with their cruel, porcelain faces. He ruled them, and they would kill for him.

  Kill her. Or bring her to him so that he could drink her blood, just as he had her parents’.

  The field was uneven. She staggered again but kept her footing, crashing through the corn stalks. A numbness began to fill her, a terrible emptiness as she thought about the farm next door, and the one after that, and the town beyond. All of them were so far away, and she was so small. Gayle was fast for her size, for just a little girl, but not fast enough.

  Behind her, the noises in the corn grew louder, and the porcelain dolls began to laugh.

  “No,” Gayle said, not so much in defiance as in prayer.

  Then she felt the first one grab at her leg, heard others pacing her in the corn to either side. They were upon her. Any moment they would drag her down, and then all would be lost.

  “No!” Gayle said, and she stopped running.

  The little girl turned, blond hair flying around her head as she spun, and stomped one foot down as if in some childish tantrum. Her shoe shattered the porcelain doll that had grabbed hold of her a moment before.

  The others rushed through the corn, appearing all around her, beginning to surround her. Gayle did not wait. She screamed, more hollow inside than ever, and attacked them. She grabbed hold of the largest one she could reach and swung it at the others, shattering two of them with a single blow. Their faces cracked into pieces and the bodies collapsed.

  Three tiny ones came at her feet, one of them carrying a knife from her mother’s kitchen. Gayle kicked them with all her strength, one, two, three. The first two shattered on contact, but the third shifted slightly and grabbed hold of her leg. Its fingers pushed through the skin on her leg and she cried out in pain.

  Then they were upon her, cruel, doll faces enjoying her terror, claws sinking into her flesh. The porcelain people got underfoot and tripped her. Gayle fell, screaming once more as they rode her to the ground, a swarm of them now flowing from the corn field, covering her, holding her down.

  They were laughing at her.

  She opened her mouth for one, final scream.

  “Hush,” said a soft velvet voice, and she looked up to see the bloodsucking demon standing in the corn off to her right, just watching as they crawled all over her.

  Her mind felt like there were spiders crawling all in her brain, like she was about to go completely mad. The pale-faced man, the blood-drinker, would have her now. He would take her, and tear her open, and she would join her parents in heaven. If the demon did not destroy her soul along with her body.

  The dead, damned look in its eyes made her wonder.

  Gayle shrieked, thrashing against the porcelain people. Two of the dolls were thrown together, their heads shattering with the impact. She fought them, unwilling to let the evil take her without a fight.

  Then, as if in answer to her cry, the night was split by a thunderous jungle roar. The doll people paused for an instant, and between them she
saw a huge lion burst from the corn. It lunged from all fours, but landed on its two hind legs with its huge front paws in the air. It grabbed hold of the pale, velvet, hideous man’s shoulders, opened its massive jaws, and bit his head clean off with a crunch of bone and a wet tearing noise that made Gayle shudder.

  The body collapsed and broke apart into little more than dirt, just another layer of dust in the fields of Kansas.

  Instantly, the porcelain people stopped moving. They fell to the ground, tumbling off of her, and simply lay there, faces expressionless and innocent as before. Just dolls again. Whatever evil influence the pale man had held over them had died with him.

  At last, Gayle felt her tears coming and she could cry again.

  When the lion came over and scooped her up in his arms, she did not scream or fight. He had come in on four legs, but he could walk on two, like a man, so he was no ordinary lion. But he had killed the monster, had saved her, and she had no strength left to run.

  He cradled her in his arms and carried her back toward the barn. As he took her away, she could not help but look back at the still forms of the porcelain people scattered in the field behind her, unable to shake the certainty that they were not really dead, that they would come to life again, and that they would have her blood, once and for all.

  Gayle wept, the lion’s soft, musky fur absorbing the grief and moisture of her tears.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The night was quiet outside the wagon, the only sound the wind tugging at the flaps that hung across the back. Hank sat with his legs drawn up, almost beneath his chin. The woman, Elisa, had taken a risk by lighting several candles, but neither of them had pointed out the obvious peril involved, both from fire and from whatever horrors the light might attract.

  Neither of them could abide the thought of huddling in the darkness for another moment.

  The flickering candlelight gleamed off of the dozens of crucifixes that had been affixed to the walls and roof of the wagon. Others hung from chains and strings at the front and back of the wagon and swayed in the breeze that made its way through the flaps. A pair of them collided with regularity, making tinny wind chimes.

  Hank stared at Elisa as she picked up a cross that had fallen to the floor. She clutched it in her hands, offered him a small, sheepish smile, and then her gaze turned once more to the rear of the wagon. She was pale and drawn, her eyes a bit wild, as though she expected another attack at any moment. Hank understood. He felt the same way. His ears were alert for the slightest sound of anything out on the road.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said, his own voice startling him as he broke the silence.

  Elisa turned her head slightly and watched him with birdlike wariness. “Of course we can. We must. My Stefan’s faith keeps us safe tonight.” She shook the cross at him as though to ward him off. “I know the stories well enough. My grandmother used to talk about them all the time. When I was very small, if I woke up during the night, I never dared to leave my bed until I saw the light of morning. Then it would be safe.

  “In the morning we’ll be safe, and then we can leave. We’ll run far away and pray there are places where the hell that’s come to Kansas has yet to spread.”

  A sadness touched Hank’s heart that was even more powerful than his fear. He shook his head, hating to have to disagree. The woman was crushingly beautiful, even with the grief and terror etched in her features. He wished he could protect her, wanted to try. But though he might be able to keep her alive, he couldn’t protect her from the anguish that had already twisted her heart, the loss of her husband and child, and the fear.

  The scars were already there.

  “I’m sorry, Elisa. We can’t wait until morning. Even with faith, even with whatever protection the crosses give us . . . we just don’t know. You saw the tin man. The monster was inside, in its heart, but I’m pretty damn certain he could’ve used the tin man to tear this wagon apart, faith or not. Point is, we don’t know what else is out there. Just because the cross was like poison to that thing, and it scared off the ones that attacked you, the . . . Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but the monkeys . . . that doesn’t mean it’ll work on all of ‘em. The ones I saw, the ones with the emerald eyes—“

  He could feel the warmth of the emerald in his pocket, even as he spoke of the vampires that had slaughtered everyone at the prison. Would it be better to leave it behind, to forget he’d ever found it? Could they sense it somehow, use it to follow him? Hank didn’t know. But he’d been poor enough to starve once, and poor enough to steal many times, and only a fool could have felt the gnawing of real hunger and be willing to throw away a jewel like this emerald without a fight.

  “You think they’re different from the others?” Elisa asked. Her voice was small and soft, like a little girl’s, but her eyes were hard, now. She had already proven herself a fighter when it came down to it, so he wasn’t going to be fooled by the timidity she now showed.

  “Could be,” Hank replied. “That’s what I’m saying. We don’t have any idea what else is out there tonight, what else the storm brought to Hawley. We can’t just sit here waiting for something to show up that isn’t afraid of the wrath of God, you see what I’m saying? Evil’s been around a long time. Could be some of it’s afraid of other gods, or no gods at all. And if they’ve got someone to be their hands for them—like that little shit did with the tin man—we’re as good as dead.

  “We’ve got to find horses, darlin’. Get this wagon hooked up and get on out of here. I can’t just wait to die, and I won’t let you do it, either.”

  A gust of wind rocked the wagon and the two of them froze, staring at the darkness beyond the entrance. Hank felt his pulse hammering at his temples and when the moment had passed he looked down to find that he had clutched his hands into such tight fists that his fingernails had cut small red crescents into his palms.

  “Hank,” Elisa said quietly.

  He looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “Are we going to die?”

  For several seconds he only stared at her. Then he nodded. “Could be.”

  A terrible emptiness filled her eyes. “What frightens me most is how nice that sounds. To be with Stefan and Jeremiah again . . . I long for that. But I know that Stefan would give his own life again and again to save mine, and so I know I must fight to live.”

  She shuddered and gnawed a moment on her lower lip. Then she reached up and unhooked first one, then a second and third of the crosses that hung from the roof of the wagon. She looped them around her neck and reached out for the shotgun they had recovered from the ground outside—for all the good it would do them.

  “A little more than a mile along the road, round the corner, there are two farms. If the evil has not yet reached them, there are horses there.”

  Hank nodded slowly, the reality of the task before them sinking in. The idea of leaving the supposed safety of the wagon did not sit well with him at all, but his own logic compelled him.

  “All right. Let’s go. We wait another minute, and I’ll change my mind. Either way it’s a risk, but I can’t just sit here and wait to die.”

  Elisa offered him the shotgun but Hank waved her off. Instead he grabbed a heavy shovel that was among the few tools the traveling salesman had carried with them. He’d rather have had his scythe again, but he’d lost that. He also found a small hatchet Stefan and Elisa had used for chopping firewood, and this he hooked through his belt.

  Finally, he followed Elisa’s example and gathered crucifixes from around the wagon—careful not to leave any one surface inside without protection—and hung them around his neck. In his pocket went the thick cross he had used to kill the vampire dwarf who had controlled the tin man. Then they were both ready.

  The night had been sultry and warm but now as they climbed down onto the hard packed road, weapons in hand, and stared around at the moonlit plains, the air had turned cold. Hank shivered, gooseflesh rose on his arms and made him grip the shovel harder, and he
cast a single, longing glance back at the wagon. When he started off, Elisa was not beside him.

  He turned to find that her own reluctant final glance would not release her. She stared at the wagon as if it were all that remained to her of the husband and child she had loved with all of her heart, as though the wagon itself were all she had left of her soul.

  Hank took her by the elbow and led her away, but as they trod up the middle of the dusty road in the light of the moon, she looked even more hollow to him. Nothing but a shell, now.

  Morning would help, he told himself. It will take a lifetime to heal her wounds, but sunshine was the first step. If they could just last that long.

  It occurred to him for the first time how much simpler it would have been for him if her husband had survived, and Elisa been torn apart by the vampires. A cold thought, but a true one. She was beautiful and vulnerable and he was the kind of man for whom kind, pretty women are a weakness of the heart.

  Hank kept her three steps ahead of him as they walked and while Elisa kept her eyes on the road ahead, he was alert to anything moving in the withered fields around them. With the way the land had dried out and the storms that regularly passed through, he’d heard some men wonder aloud if maybe they’d all died and gone to hell—a hell slowly being revealed to them. He didn’t believe that for a moment, but one thing was certain, God had turned a blind eye upon Hawley, Kansas these past few years.

  And tonight, more than any other.

  The wind spun into dust devils that reminded him unsettlingly of miniature tornadoes, and of the storm that had come through the previous day. But nothing else stirred but the dirt and the wind that whispered across the empty fields. Three quarters of a mile from the wagon, the road turned. Even before then, he had seen a sparse handful of small trees in the distance. There was a farmhouse and a barn with a collapsed roof, but the fields were so arid—just expanses of barren, abandoned land—that they did not even pause. Elisa had said there were two farms.