He realized that Sandy and Annie and Maggie and Khalil were all staring at him, and he hesitated.

“Look,” he said, “It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s using their own weapon against them, after all. They try to eat us, don’t they? And to kill a vampire, which sucks blood, you stop the blood from flowing with a stake through the heart. It’s the law of the jungle, as I said.”

Smith paused, looking at them all.

“Kill or be killed,” he said. “Eat or be eaten.”

5.

“How do you mean that?” Sandy asked.

Maggie moaned, and took a step back toward the bathroom.

“Mr. Smith,” Annie said, “You don’t mean we have to eat those things?”

Smith nodded. “I think we do,” he said. “I think that’s why Maggie’s bite hurt it. I think that’s the only way to kill them.”

An uncomfortable silence followed Smith’s pronouncement.

“Mr. Smith,” Annie asked at last, “How do you propose to test this theory?”

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know that I do propose to test it. I was just presenting it as I saw it.”

“Of course we’re going to test it!” Sandy said. “We’ve gotta kill those damned things!”

“But eat them…” Annie said, aghast.

Maggie moaned again.

“Maybe we wouldn’t need to eat all of one to kill it,” Smith said. “Maybe just the heart, same as a stake through the heart kills a vampire.”

“Mr. Smith,” Annie said, “I asked you before, and I’m asking again – how do you propose to find out?”

“Well, Ms. McGowan, I guess we’d have to try to eat one.”

Maggie ran for the bathroom again.

“We’ll need to get one of them alone,” Sandy said. “They don’t seem too eager to work together – I mean, the other two never attacked us when we set that one on fire – but we couldn’t expect them to just stand by. We couldn’t count on it.”

Smith nodded. “Maybe we could lure one here, somehow. We lured that one out to the woods, after all.”

“Not here!” Annie protested.

“Maybe at that house,” Khalil said, “Maybe we lure two of them away?”

Smith and Sandy looked at one another. Sandy nodded. “Yeah, we could try that,” he said. “Maggie must know someone else who knew Elias, someone who could lure him away.”

“Do we know which nightmare people they are?” Smith asked. “The one that got Elias was the one that used to be Mary, but what about the others?”

“Who cares?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe they do,” Smith said. “That one that was after me – it tried every night for five nights, and as far as I know it didn’t go after anyone else.”

Sandy shook his head. “Then why did that thing give up Mary’s skin to get Elias?”

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know. It did, though. And that other one, the one we burned, that used to be the Goodwin kid, judging by its voice. I guess they get tired and move on to the next victim, or something. But do they maybe still… I mean, if I tried to get Bill Goodwin for something, would that thing come, even though it’s not Goodwin any more?”

“Nah,” Sandy said. “Why should it?”

Smith had no answer to that.

6.

They talked and schemed until 2:00 a.m. Maggie phoned her parents and told them she was staying over at the Ryersons’. Annie apologized and went to bed around midnight, and the others sat up, planning.

They discarded a dozen ideas, and finally settled on a clear and simple one. Maggie would phone the Samaan house and tell whoever answered that she wanted to meet him outside, alone, somewhere. The others would be watching the house, and when one came out, they would follow it, jump it, and try to eat it.

If two came out, they would break into the house and go after the one left behind.

If all three emerged, or none, they would abandon the scheme and try again another time.

There was some argument as to whether Sandy, with the fresh bite in his jaw and the older one on his hand, was fit for this, but he won out, and was included.

Smith was glad of that; Sandy was clearly the strongest and most aggressive of the lot of them, and two humans against one of the creatures would not be odds much to Smith’s liking.

At least, whatever the things were, they didn’t seem to have the legendary strength of ten that vampires had, nor the ability to turn to mist, or a bat, or a wolf.

Smith wondered if vampires had really been able to do all those things, or whether the legends had grown in the telling. He remembered what Elias had said about unicorns and rhinoceri.

That was not comforting, however, when he considered that he’d much rather face a unicorn of legend than a real rhinoceros. What if vampires had been worse than the legends? What if the nightmare people had hidden powers that Smith and his little group hadn’t yet learned about?

He said nothing about that, though, as they headed back to Amber Crescent.

They parked Sandy’s car two houses up, and crept quietly down the street, and into the bushes beside the Samaans’ front porch, just as they had before, and then they waited.

It seemed forever. The cool air was thick and humid, the silent street oppressive, and the heavy overcast reflected a diffuse and hostile blue-grey light down upon the unlit house. There was no sign of the moon; if it was up the clouds hid it, and Smith was fairly sure it had already set.

Then, faintly, Smith heard the ring of a phone. He smiled; Sandy glanced back at him, and he, too, smiled.

A light came on, and then another, somewhere inside, and golden light spilled across the lawn. Smith tensed.

It seemed like another eternity before the front door opened, turning the flow of light from within into a flood. The thing wearing Elias’s skin stepped out onto the porch and looked around cautiously.

Smith and Sandy ducked back down.

It pulled the door closed behind itself, and started down the steps. Sandy had his hunting knife in his hand; Smith raised his own weapon, a bread knife he had borrowed from Annie’s kitchen.

“Get it!” Sandy whispered, and he and Smith leapt forward.

Khalil appeared from somewhere beside them, and the three of them landed heavily on the back of the Elias thing, knocking it to the ground and falling with it, so that all four of them lay in a heap on the front walk.

Sandy got up on his knees and heaved at the thing’s shoulder; the others slid off, and he flipped it onto its back.

It was wearing a grubby T-shirt and a pair of jeans, colorless in the darkness. It looked up at him and smiled.

“Hello, Sandy,” it said, showing those needle-sharp teeth.

“Hold that pose,” Sandy said, and he plunged his knife into its chest.

Smith had its right shoulder and was pinning it down; Khalil had the left. It raised its head and looked at the knife piercing its flesh, and it smiled again.

Sandy dragged the knife down, trying to open a cut; the T-shirt ripped, and the skin beneath it parted, but the underlying grey flesh oozed thickly and closed up again, leaving only a thin line like an old scar. The thing watched with mild amusement.

“Give me a hand here,” he muttered.

Smith reached over.

“Hold it open,” Sandy said, and he pulled at the knife again.

Smith shoved his fingers into the wound before it could close.

It was like a thick pudding, like wet sand, like shoving his hand into lukewarm mud, and he could feel the stuff oozing between his fingers, and he thrust his other hand in as well, trying to hold back the flow, holding the thing’s shoulder with one knee.

“It won’t hold,” he muttered.

Khalil added his hands, and Sandy stabbed and ripped again, but the wound continued to close, and the thing just smiled at them.

“Having fun?” it asked.

Sandy spat in its face.

Khalil, inspired, spat in the wound.