"No!" I bolted upright to my feet, out from under the fallen ceiling, away from Darby, and clapped my hands once to distract the dog.

It sounded like a gunshot in the night, and through the widening hole in the wall, a hundred pairs of glowing blue eyes fastened on the Baxton house.

What a giant herpes zoo tonight had become.

Tree branches had stretched the hole in the wall to the width of about three of me while they twirled up into the rancid night, free at ...