Something bit deeply into his neck. The vampires would come now, cross or no cross. They’d fall on him like the sharks they were once they got their first whiff of his life’s blood. Help me God, give me strength, Callahan thought, and felt the strength flow into him. He rolled to his left as claws ripped into his shirt, tearing it to ribbons. For a moment his right hand was free, and the Ruger was still in it. He turned it toward the working, sweaty, hate-congested face of the fat one named Andrew and placed the barrel of the gun (bought for home protection in the long-distant past by Jake’s more than a litde paranoid TVexecutive fadier) against the soft red wound in the center of the low man’s forehead.

“No-ooo, you daren’t!” Tirana cried, and as she reached for the gun, the front of her gown finally burst, spilling her massive breasts free. They were covered with coarse fur.

Callahan pulled the trigger. The Ruger’s report was deafening in the dining room. Andrew’s head exploded like a gourd filled with blood, spraying the creatures who had been crowding in behind him. There were screams of horror and disbelief.

Callahan had time to think, It wasn’t supposed to be this way, was it? And: Is it enough to put me in the club? Am I a gunslinger yet?

Perhaps not. But there was the bird-man, standing right in front of him between two tables, its beak opening and closing, its throat beating visibly with excitement.

Smiling, propping himself on one elbow as blood pumped onto the carpet from his torn throat, Callahan leveled Jake’s Ruger.

“No!” Meiman cried, raising his misshapen hands to his face in an utterly fruitless gesture of protection. “No, you CAN’T-”

Can so, Callahan thought with childish glee, and fired again.

Meiman took two stumble-steps backward, then a third. He struck a table and collapsed on top of it. Three yellow feathers hung above him on the air, seesawing lazily.