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it picked me up and flung me limp into the far wall of the crypt. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was that laugh. And Mike screaming.

Chapter 7

    When I woke up I was alone in the crypt. There was a puddle of melted silver on the floor where I last remembered Mike standing, and the seatbelts I had tied the girl with were lying on a pile in a corner. They’d been cut neatly, not torn, but that was all the info I could glean from my surroundings. I went to the door and eased it open just a crack to see the bright sunlight begin streaming into the crypt from the cemetery.

    Crap
, I thought.
Guess I’m stuck here for a while, at least.

    The whole thing about sunlight is real, too. We don’t burst into flames immediately, but it doesn’t take long for one of us to be reduced to a pile of charcoal briquettes if we come into contact with direct sunlight. And of course my best-case scenario was that Mike had recovered enough to go into the church, where I am certainly
vampire non grata
, so that wasn’t much better. I took a quick inventory and saw that my cell phone had been crushed at some point in the fight, so I settled down to wait for nightfall.

    After a ridiculously boring day of staring at a sunbeam, I felt more than saw the sun finally dip below the horizon, and I headed out into the cemetery. Mike was on his way out of the church and hurried across the sanctified part of the graveyard to meet me.

    “Where have you been, dude? I’ve been stuck in there worried sick all day!” I started to lay into him pretty solid, but then I got a good look at my old friend. He looked his age for probably the first time ever. He had a bandage on his forehead that looked fresh, and his left hand was wrapped heavily all the way from the elbow to the fingers. “Jesus Christ, man, how bad did she get you?”

    “Pretty badly, I’m afraid. Not all of us are blessed with eternal youth, James. I just recently returned from the hospital with our young guest. She’s terribly shaken up and I only got her to sleep in the parish house a few moments ago.” He took my elbow and led me further from the church, as though there was someone in there he didn’t want to take note of our little chat.

    “What? She’s in the church?” I was baffled. I would have bet the farm that she was way less welcome on holy ground than me. “And have you heard from Greg? My phone got…”

    “Trashed. Again. Here.” Greg tossed me a replacement phone as he came out from behind a tree. I looked him up and down, but he didn’t seem to be any the worse for wear after getting pummeled last night. As if in answer to my unspoken question, Greg went on. “I’m fine. I had a snack before I went to bed last night. Tommy’s arm is a clean break, but she got both the bones so it’s gonna be useless for a month or so. They kept him at the hospital for observation; I talked to him while I was on my way over here.”

    I put the phone in my front pocket this time, since my back pocket didn’t seem to be very good for protecting them. “So what was that you said about the girl being in the church, Mike? I figured her for a serious bad guy, given what she did to all of us last night.”

    “What was residing in the girl was in fact, a very serious bad guy, but the girl herself was guilty of nothing more than curiosity and a desire for a little payback on the kids at school who teased her. I think we can all relate to those sentiments, can’t we?” He raised an eyebrow at Greg and me, and we had the good grace to look sheepish. I’m not sure when my old friend had developed the juice to get me to be embarrassed at my youthful indiscretions, but he certainly had it now. Maybe it came with the first grey hairs. I’d never know.

    “So you’re saying she was possessed? By what?” Greg asked.

    “Yes, she was possessed. And based on the amount of power she exhibited, we may have a very serious problem. I don’t know exactly what type of