The Abhorred

By Matthew Sawyer

Professor Hebert Stock is a good man. This professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay truly believes he is a force for good. All alone, he considers himself a mortal god. His accomplishments support his delusions – Strock here has harnessed cold fusion. He has shrunken this miraculous engine under the size of a clay pot. Not only that, he has brought the dead back to life.

Professor Strock has revived whole specimens and their amputated constituent pieces. Raw energy revives and intoxicates each of the monstrosities the man has packed with batteries and sewn back together. Each nameless creation is a step toward immortality. Yet Strock's discoveries are not primarily for himself. He helps mankind combat a scourge of vampires.

As much as Strock's genius, vampires and werewolves are real. Unchanged by time, these monsters now flourish in the Mack State Wildlife Area – ever since a Hellmouth had opened the earth south of Madison. The Hellmouth itself rent the earth then walked away.

The vampires in The Abhorred are immaterial, blood-sucking ghosts. They become solid when they consume blood. The master of the horde in the Mack State Wildlife Area is a pudgy, Midwestern-looking fellow. His name is Vlad Blaski. This vampire has discovered semi-permeability. All vampires need do is boil the blood they drink.

Having decimated the prey inside the Wildlife Area, the hungry ghosts eat werewolves – hairy Wild Men of Eastern European folklore. They look closer to Lon Chaney's Wolf Man than actually wolves or upright demons. And they do not transform under a full moon. The werewolves in the Abhorred are emaciated, wildly hirsute naked men cursed at puberty. How this curse is transmitted is an unimportant mystery.

Hunger drives werewolves unto Strock's private property – a hobby farm between Appleton, WI and Greenville, WI. These trespassers discover the professor's secret experiments. They meet his reanimated monster – a discolored, walking corpse that calls itself Angst. The reassembled boy bleeds motor oil. And a union is made. Professor Strock, his assistant Gloria, and Angst join forces with werewolves and they fight Blaski and his vampire horde.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Sawyer
• Release date: Sep 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310556814

Matthew Sawyer

I hate talking about myself. Like everyone, I suppose, I am a bit narcissistic, but not egotistical. My own failure for success is that I just do not think much about myself. That is not to say I spend too much time thinking about others. In truth, I should think more of everyone; and there is a dull guilt attached to that confession. There is something of who I am, I am old enough for regrets.At my age, I am prone to think about immortality And being an atheist, there seems no alternative but science. Even so, I know that science is beyond my lifetime. I have no faith nor hope, nor do I believe in ghosts, elves, unicorns...In that hopeless disbelief, I write so there remains a record of accomplishments in my life. Unrecognized and even scorned, I continue to tell stories so I will be remembered after I am dead. My struggle with grammar and punctuation are evidence of my effort to make my writing decipherable. Because, what success means to me are hieroglyphics upon a Pharaoh's tomb.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Carried upon consistently inclement breezes, the weather northwest of Appleton Wisconsin grows cold. Here at forty-two degrees latitude, the like Fahrenheit always feels more severe than those in London England – sometimes chiller than even Saint Petersburg Russia. There are no ocean currents rolling uphill and ushering warmth from the tropics here into this corner of the American Midwest. There is the nearby two-hundred and fifteen square foot Lake Winnebago, no more than three and a half fathoms, twenty-one feet, at its deepest. And there is also Lake Michigan thirty-some miles away, but neither are wards against the onset of winter.

The Mississippi River delimits the western edge of the state, but that broad channel of water is far away on the other side of this wooded territory. And like all things proper in the United States, it flows downhill from North to South. And in the US at the start of the twenty-first century, Fahrenheit is still used. Although, a Celsius of five degrees would distinguish the temperature tonight from its currently equivalent latitude.

Yet, as fixed Americans are to their units of measurements, the folks from Wisconsin are mindful of their state's cultural history. Fahrenheit is a German name. German immigrants had populated this territory. There have been the Swiss and the Welsh, the Irish and Polish, but Germans had primarily been the people who'd dug the countless stones from the black earth deposited by primordial glaciers. People here respect the toils of their Slavic heritage and especially honor the namesake of the man who invented the mercury thermometer.

Although, esteem and deference are strained when night skies rain. Any water this far north of the equator feels colder than it actually is any typical and regional November. Suffering any slight degree of sogginess in this climate immediately threatens hypothermia. Fortunately this evening, Professor Herbert Strock, a physically ordinary, abdominous young fellow, is driving his recent-model pickup truck. The at once gifted and learned man is on sabbatical and has this day taken leave from his position at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. He is not to return teaching Masters-level Nuclear Engineering until the Fall semester of next year.

Nuclear Engineering had chased him to Wanderer's Rest Cemetery. There and before his visit to the since and recently abandoned necropolis, he'd thought the words of Robert Oppenheimer. I have become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Not yet, Professor Strock tells himself while he contemplates more beatific verses from the Bhagavad Gita. Coming upon the intersection from Greenwood Road onto divided Highway Fifteen, the man bundled in a mass-produced parka from China tells himself, Not if I can help it.

As the professor nears his turning point, traffic lights arched from the four corners of the intersecting roads trade their hues and deliver him a crimson instruction. The taillight of a motorcycle adds a richer red tint and overwhelms the turquoise glow thrown from his own vehicle's dashboard. Irrespective the traded complement of colored illuminations, his parka remains black – it's blue, daytime shade remains pronounced only in memory.

Outside and before him, the solitary cyclist sits bent forward over his sputtering machine and waits for the lights to change between these deserted roadways. This miserable night, only him and Professor Strock alone are on the deserted streets. Shielded and mute inside the dry and warm cab of his automobile, Strock thinks aloud Idiot.

Professor Strock may be mistaken, the cyclist might be a woman – a tall and brawny woman. The sex of the sodden wretch is difficult to distinguish beneath a black helmet and slick leather jacket the figure wears this frigid and drizzling late evening. Proffered an annoyingly long duration for study during the stop, the professor notes the figure is armored in a red snowmobile suit beneath the tailored hide of the jacket.

Upon the observation, the assessment the professor had made regarding the girth of the figure could be erroneous. The slanted cyclist may in fact be thin – scrawnier than the barbed wire fence posts often lining the highways between Wisconsin's urban civilizations. He or she may owe the automatic intimidation generated by his or her appearance solely to the extra padding insisted by the typical pre-winter weather.

The only bullying the cyclist may be accused of exercising might be the insistent revving of the bike's two-cylinder engine. Although he isn't an enthusiast, Professor Strock can discern the architecture of the machine on sound alone. The professor is an acute man of many talents and casual interests.

Bathed in increasing rain and an eternal red aura, the cyclist presumably tinkers with the plugs of his bike's motor and twists the throttle on the right side of the handlebar. Professor Strock determines the rider is male based upon the man's brusque movements and narrow hips in proportion to his wide shoulders. The cyclist lays over the tank of the bike with his left boot atop the foot-operated clutch, presenting his backside to Strock's near, driver-side headlamp. His covered butt is made prominent because the pose.

Suicide clutch, Professor Strock says aloud. Now more annoyed by the unproductive racket than the perpetual stop light, he chants to himself, I only wish the lever did what its name implies.

There is no rhythm that dictates when the cyclist makes his machine roar. The lack thereof and jarring growls force the professor to grind together his already worn molars. Every time the motorcycle is made to belch causes Strock to jump in his seat and his heart skips a beat. His starts are frequent.

There's nothing wrong with the damned machine, he curses. Unheard, the professor questions the rider. What are you doing, masturbating? You're like a desperate middle-aged woman riding atop a perfectly fine washing machine.

He further criticizes the cyclist. Have you found a non-invasive means to massage your prostate?

The traffic signals barring their passage then finally turn green. They are released from their willful detention. The way is clear with no other automobiles within sight and the rider does not move. Behind the motorcycle, Professor Strock takes angry action and switches his headlamps onto their high beams. The mirrors mounted on either side of the bike's handlebars flash back pure white light. Their broad lasers attack the professor and make him wince and squint his eyes.

Come on, he screeches. His shout penetrates the windshield of his truck but surely not the rider’s glossed helmet. Even if his volume had been sufficient, his voice could never have overcome the dissonance of the revved motorcycle. The cyclist remains planted and experiments with his noisome machine. Despite the measure wholly in his control, the professor will not simply drive around the cantankerous loiterer.

There are laws, dammit, the professor curses to himself, those laws of which are why he would not stoop to robbing graves this night; them and the hellish weather sure to ensue the next five months. There will be no feasible opportunity for such genuinely kinetic skullduggery until Spring of next year.

Crazed and ineffective, Professor Strock leans on his truck's horn. Its volume is enough and seizes the attention of the understandably malcontent. The racket wakes the sleepers in homes fifty yards from three of the intersection's corners. Despite streetlights, the houses this night are pale phantoms barely within the cusp of any fraction of illumination. Familiar with his whereabouts, the professor knows their ghostly representations.

He also remembers the blackened barn out of sight on the farmstead on the fourth corner and to his immediate right. Professor Strock assumes he's startled the animals therein – a majority are dairy-producing Holstein cows. And he bets when he honks once more and again, his tirade curdles the milk in their tensed utters. Despite his wish he's produced the same affect upon the motionless and now upright rider's scrotum, the nerveless cyclist twists at his waist and raises the middle finger of his gloved left hand.

No one comes outside and investigates the disturbance. Nobody in any one of the nearer homes even turns on a single light. Professor Strock can't possibly hear the sheltered cattle bellow their protests. He is only assaulted by another howl from the spun engine of the motorcycle. Refraining against leaning onto his truck horn another time, he watches the rider lift his second foot off the wet asphalt.

The cyclist twists a squeal from his bike and he then slips into the southbound lanes of the divided highway. His cycle barely remains under control within the twisted grip of one hand. That profane salute also remains raised while the rude stranger crosses into the empty intersection. He nor Professor Strock observe the silent van fly toward them from the lawful direction three feet above the pavement.

The headlamps of the airborne vehicle are not ignited. Instead, an interior dome light flickers a feeble fire through the front windshield, a strobe between angry shadows jumping and dancing inside the impractical aircraft. The vehicle comes directly at the pesky bully and his drifting cycle.

Fully consumed with casting vindictive gestures for the torment a law-abiding citizen, the motorcycle rider has no knowledge concerning the approach of his own doom. In truth, Professor Strock doesn't notice the ambush until the van comes under the rain-strained illumination of streetlights. He suddenly sees its nose and the roof of the vehicle. It floats sideways, its velocity only increasing as the vehicle falls downward and slams against the ground and the obtuse cyclist.

Upon impact, a thunder of metal comes smacked from the street and lifts Professor Strock from his seat higher than his late aggressor had ever succeeded to accomplish. There are no sparks. In their place, the hefted van splashes up water and sprays tarred gravel chiseled from the roadway. The landed vehicle and the concealed body of the rider and his hidden motorcycle skid toward the concrete divider on the southern side of Highway Fifteen.

The wreckage hits and jumps the curb. Professor Strock watches the whole of the accident and sees the van slide from the perimeters of streetlamps. The periphery of the professor's own headlights yet reveals the scene. They showcase the shadows he'd spotted inside the deadfall as the incorporeal shapes stream outside and back into the vehicle.

They come and go appearing as dozens of paired wings – eager and black angular shapes. The professor recognizes them and quickly extinguishes his thrown illumination. Him and they vanish, but like those local farm animals, all are still present somewhere in the darkness.

These are vampires, blood-sucking shades. For the sake of his own safety, the professor does not move. The man barely breathes. Monsters are not uncommon. Now in this unguarded age, mythology and superstition are reborn. Strock has never seen one supernatural creature, but he has heard truthful reports of varieties on network news.

God is gone, Christian Evangelists have declared. Since the proclamation, all things unreal have erupted from inside the earth and come out of waters. Since a plug had first been gouged from near the center of that horrid city named Wister Town, monsters have seeped from the center of southern Wisconsin.

On whole, these have been amorphous chimera more comfortable in the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft. They crawl from the shadow of a malevolent netherworld and spread across the planet. Released from an unknown abyss, they grow, contaminate and infect human populations.

This plague has generated vampires, so say triumphant Evolutionists. Being scientific by default of his occupation in nuclear energy, Professor Strock believes them all. The dead are revived victims of this infestation. They spread iniquity in the shape of deceased persons, compelled by expired human and alien minds.

A local dead man named Blaska is one such undead creature. The legendary monster hides from daylight and the earthly authorities who hunt him. Truly, no one knows where he is besides somewhere in the proximity of Appleton, Wisconsin. Rumors repeat as much. While he'd been alive and mortal, the unwed architect had earned transient fame and more lasting fortune designing mansions and office buildings. His wealth will last generations. In his veritable form of an ageless shadow, he is silent, and supposedly inert and benign.

More believable than legend and rumor, suspicion implicates the missing and reportedly insubstantial corpse as the father of the bloodthirsty shades now ravaging the killed cyclist and likely passengers of the ruined van. With his second death, his annihilation, as it is said, the plague crippling the western suburbs of Appleton and the landscape between there and all of Greenville will come to a spontaneous end.

Professor Herbert Strock has never met the man in life nor death, and tonight is the first time he's ever encountered his children. All the same, he knows what they are and the destruction they bring. Whereas he can't account for the ruined van or how the intangible monsters kill, he knows the evil they generate and spread. The Internet and unbiased television news has exposed their purpose to the general public.

Their malevolence is the diabolic crime that Strock wishes to end. Rather than let loose a repeated shape of evil genius into the world, this wondrous inventor wants to use his technological discoveries and renew the true nature of mankind. Professor Strock has created his Fusion Engine, a perpetual motor that doesn't rev and growl. It is the engine of life, or minimally an essential component in a wary occult regime including alchemical chemistry.

With its beatific use, he will be recorded in history as a saint and not some shamefaced devil. Surely, he will be alive and conscious to witness his own eventual ascension into godhood. His process will ensure that much.

His cold, desktop nuclear generator will not be used for weapons. Such a purpose is the very reason he, himself, has been as secretive as Mister Blaska. Back at the university, his everyday assistants have no idea how far he's progressed. All, including DARPA and every coalition of national spies in the world, must honestly believe he and the university are still hammering against basal obstacles. And no one knows Professor Strock alone has broken through and invented a working model of his landmark engine.

Simultaneously, his personal overlapping work in chemistry has arrived to a point at which he must dedicate himself to earnest experimentation. The multiple achievements and milestones warrant his time-honored and traditional leave of absence. Within months, his life and all the world will change. Immortality is within reach and such a discovery is so much more important than taking some large step in a perpetual arms race between nations.

Dreams and minutes wrapped in blackness pass exceedingly slow this night. As with the wreckage, Professor Strock's truck, too, stands outside the fringe of burning streetlamps. The changing traffic signals tint his vehicle's shadow but its presence has so far gone ignored. Strock wonders aloud "What are they doing?

Feeding, he answers in thought. The shuddering man questions himself in whispers. Are they done? Are they gone?

More nervous and worried he may draw the attention of monsters once their feast is complete, the man contemplates turning off his constant truck engine. Strock plans he will switch the ignition so that his vehicle's heater draws solely from its battery. Before his bare and shaking fingers touch the key, he catches sight of light coming from either lateral horizon. Pairs of headlamps simultaneously approach from west and east. Clueless commuters soon come near the scene of the accident, this trap.

Chapter 2

Late night travelers are either coming home or striving to attend their jobs on the Central Time zone graveyard shift. Those driving eastward on Highway Fifteen are racing to Appleton, Wisconsin where work persists around the clock. The more weary westbound commuters are coming back for their late suppers and to beds in Greenville. Judging the pace marked by their headlamps, the two groups will pass each other here at the intersection with Greenwood Road. This intersection is where Professor Herbert Strock waits for vampires to desert an accident the parasitic ghosts haunt.

Greenwood Road is scarcely within Greenville's city limits. Here, there are fewer streetlights and they are spread further apart. Most are functioning and present dim inspiration. Just outside their rain plashed auras, an overturned van lies invisible on a narrow divider. The pillaged wreck is clear of the thoroughfare and passerbys are safe against suffering a sudden stoppage.

Parked squarely in the right lane upon a perpendicular street, Professor Strock is concealed in his darkened truck. Its engine is purposefully dead. The only indication the vehicle is even present is its faint reflections of changing colors cast by cycling traffic signals. Strock, too, is safe and he creates no obstacle. No one comes from Wanderer's Rest Cemetery. He chuckles.

The frightened man tells himself, No one ever leaves the graveyard except Blaska and his minions – if that is where they come from.

Traffic in either direction advances while he entertains himself and distracts his focus from fear. The man makes plans other than fleeing the moment he might escape being attacked by the spectral undead. While he postpones his flight, the headlamps of oncoming cross traffic illuminate the landscape the glow of scant municipal lights can't touch. Professor Strock easily spies the scene between rain drops accumulating on his windshield and through the clear rivulets they eventually form.

The animated wisps of solid smoke he had spotted moments ago plainly reveal themselves. These solidify. The conscious and voracious shapes become gossamer ravens and smaller crows. The ephemeral creatures flit in and out of the wreckage between the divided routes of Highway Fifteen. They feed upon the dead inside. While glutting themselves with blood and becoming substantial, these shapes tear apart the accident victims. Parts and pieces are thrown outside.

The savage vampires change and assume thin humanoid forms. The monsters finish with the shredded stumps still inside the battered van. They romp outside in the cold downpour. Their firm, naked bodies fluoresce when struck by the beams of halogen bulbs. Bathed in the faint colors of cycling traffic signals, their tints change from green, yellow, red and over again.

All the while, they feed from torn amputations. Those body parts are quickly leeched dry and become blanched. Yet unsated, the vampires suck blood from scraps of torn clothes until not a drop of human oil remains. The monsters then adorn themselves with the remains of whatever less tattered and more whole funerary clothes.

Occupied with their dying frenzy, the forever starving creatures do not notice Professor Strock hiding inside his silent truck. Having consumed the last of the sanguine liquid giving them form, they turn their downy, pale heads and meet the approaching traffic with pupil-less eyes. They hiss with dripping mouths, making sounds Strock cannot hear while he hides inside his shelter. He notes only tattling raindrops against the roof of his shelter, taunting him with the dire threat of uncovering a helpless victim.

From where he spies and once the automobiles are near his vicinity, Strock sees two vehicles coming from Appleton – a dark sedan and a lighter truck. One closed convertible comes from the opposite direction, Greenville. Perhaps thinking the rain and their wipers distort their vision, the commuters pay no heed to the dozen plus albino men with swollen, carmine bellies dancing on the slick road.

Oh, no, chants Professor Strock thinking the commuters must surely know of the barefoot threats possibly awaiting them. Up ahead, a couple vampires already fade into transparency. The rest split into squads and charge toward the moving vehicles.

The same moment, the signals on Highway Fifteen change and paint the backs of most monsters completely red. The fronts of four absorb the same radiation and these dash through the intersection. The dumb, mortal drivers on Fifteen obey the automated commands of equally senseless traffic lights.

Too late and their occupants suddenly aware, the vehicles stop short. Surrounded, the truck from Appleton bumps the back of the sedan and pushes it into the intersection. Already latched into the seams of the car's four doors, vampires are dragged along. The bloodied, undead creatures are hurt no more than death has already inflicted upon them. They hang on and claw against glass and metal.

Across the street, the person driving the convertible wakes and turns his or her vehicle around before the monsters can touch the idolatrous prize. This driver escapes the way he or she has come. Vampires run after the vehicle and disappear into the night. The truck's driver mirrors the decision and throws his or her own vehicle in reverse. This commuter is not so lucky and pursuing monsters leap into the open bed and ride along.

The smashed sedan at once honks and resumes travel through the red light. This car turns north onto Greenwood Road, the same direction Professor Strock is pointed and had intended to go. Before the stranger clears the intersection, a rear tire blows but does not slow the driver's flight. The clinging vampires go with the automobile.

The last of separated monsters go after their fresh prey and do not return. Professor Strock tests that hypothesis and waits for them only until the taillights of the vehicles vanish across dark horizons. No vampires appear left behind, filling the professor with hope. They leave behind, he wishes aloud, Opportunity.

Though completely siphoned, the pieces lying on the Highway Fifteen are fresher than the parts long-buried in Wanderer's Rest Cemetery. These here are also easily available and, by chance, recently showered. The cold preserves them – not that their condition is so important. Professor Strock had been resigned to reanimating embalmed flesh. He's happy he mustn't dig up graves and find only bones.

Strock is also thrilled he needn't wait until Spring. Despite the storm at its fullest, the man steps from the cab of his truck. He shudders and shivers, not wholly because the wet and chilly wind. There may yet be vampires in the wreckage of the van. The professor retrieves an unused shovel he'd thrown into the bed of his truck a week ago.

The instrument had been purchased with a single purpose in mind. This evening and now, it inherits another function. Defense, he tells himself and fondles the improvised weapon. Exposed to the element these few moments, both his jeans and parka grow heavy with absorbed water. His legs become numb, but his torso stays warm and dry.

In truth, his chest feels hot because his pounding heart. He feels the pulse in his neck without ever touching himself and hears his own teeth clack together with each hard beat. The blood in the veins of his upper body feels so hot, Strock imagines his bare head steams and rides atop the tangible breath he exhales. The man dreams he is a full moon, the only moon, moving through a cloudy sky.

Concerned more for convenience than gazing upon his visage in a mirror, he returns to the cab of the truck. There, he reignites the headlights. Nothing rushes toward the shaking man. Slightly more brave, he examines what is revealed in the van's mangled wreckage.

Pairs and single shards of plastic reflect red and white light from the roadway. Whether the chipped pieces have come from the van or rear-ended sedan, Strock cannot know. He'll let the Outagamie sheriff make the distinctions whenever they arrive. If the pursued commuters survive this night, they'll surely summon deputies to this location. Someone will call, not him.

The reflections now inspire the professor to think of nocturnal fauna. The flecks of light remind him of their specialized eyes. He doubts any animal would roam about under this foul weather. Strock says to himself, They got more sense than I do.

And he thinks If anybody wonders what's happened to the missing pieces, they'll just assume bears and skunks got them before going and turning-in for the winter.

Coyotes, he adds, reminding himself of legitimate animals that don't hibernate. He doesn't think vampires would have taken the parts with them. He doesn't know and won't conjecture no matter how intelligent he may be.

No other traffic appears in the darkness. Taking a cautious step into the intersection, the torn and twisted metal of the van also looks docile. Professor Strock proceeds. He comes first upon and recognizes a gloved hand. The middle finger of the amputation is still raised.

Who wins, he grunts and chuckles when he stoops and collects the part. Whose going home tonight? You're coming with me.

Professor Strock takes two more steps toward the far side of the highway, splashing the sheen his truck's headlights draw from the slicked asphalt. Here, he finds naked fingers – their nails painted with acrylics muddied under the alternating traffic signals. After adding the cyclist's filled glove to the shovel held in his left fist, he bends and collects these six pieces and an unvarnished thumb.

Holding his face nearer the ground, the professor observes the rippling pavement speckled by dark teardrop silhouettes cast by the rain. The thrum and sensation of those actual drops against his back distract him from his esthetic appreciation. Upright again, he drops human digits into his parka's right pocket.

Nearer the suspicious accident, long shadows cast by larger severed parts stretch away from the ghoulish salvor. Professor Strock claims them. He gathers arms, organs and a blond head. All are locked into bundles between his elbows and sopping jacket. Because these are superficially kosher, the parka remains unstained.

Two then three parts are dropped between three and four steps from the spot they'd been lifted, but Strock doesn't care. Tonight, he is provided a bountiful harvest. The man exchanges on arm for a leg with an attached foot, a heart and unfurled intestine. This last organ is not rewound and comes along with him dragged in loops through currents of water.

A blanket of rainfall runs toward the far curb on Highway Fifteen and Professor Strock wades the wash, following its flow downstream. The overturned van is within arm's length, if he could extend either of his own without dropping his collection. The motorcycle he'd been held hostage behind earlier this evening is nowhere in sight. He assumes it is completely under, or quite possibly inside, the van.

The bike rider is nowhere whole. Besides the hand Strock carries with him, the professor wouldn't recognize the bully without clothes. The dead man's parts are feasibly everywhere and Strock had noted a vampire had been wearing the leather jacket of the corpse. That monster is gone. The professor had seen it leap into the bed of the escaped truck returning to Appleton.

Standing still in the rain, the Professor Strock grows legitimately cold and contemplates investigating the dark side of the wreckage. The man certainly is not climbing into the automobile. His reason immediately reveals itself. A vampire!

Strock drops every piece he's arbitrarily selected and his shovel falls into the palms of both his hands. The same instant the shadowy monster lunges for him, the professor swings his weapon. The wide flat of the dull blade passes partway into the evaporating creature and sends it reeling. Without thinking, Strock assumes a more advantageous role of attacker and he jumps after the batted fiend.

Before the vampire can