Michael Joke hacked his way through a sea of vampires and finally reached the bar entrance.

  He caught the heart-wrenching, ear-piercing screams from inside, and the growls of a whole bunch of vampires were ringing in his ears.

  Even standing at the door, he could catch a whiff of the overpowering stench of blood.

  Charging in blindly? Bad idea.

  Michael Joke scoped out the building and nimbly scaled up to the second-floor balcony.

  He did his best to stay out of sight, ducking behind the curtain and peering in.

  What he saw next made his eyes pop.

  Billy Jean was actually tossing scraps to the vampires.

  The tied-up guy’s legs had been picked clean, nothing but bare white bones left.

  Judging by the crazy zigzag of knife marks on those bones, he’d been sliced and diced alive a thousand times over.

  Every now and then, Billy Jean would pause, pick up a glass from the table, pour a drink, and knock it back like she was sipping top-shelf vino.

  The first floor was a writhing mass of vampires, like a vampire slaughterhouse.

  Blood was splattered all over the walls, and there was a crimson lake on the floor.

  Guess his worrying was for nothing.

  These were her kind, and she was having a ball!

  Michael Joke spun around to split.

  But the second he did, a flesh-eating crow the size of an eagle swooped in, aiming for his eyes.

  Quick as a flash, he clamped his vise-like grip around the crow’s neck.

  “Caw, caw…”

  The crow flapped and thrashed like crazy.

  Michael Joke zapped it with a bolt of lightning from his palm, and just like that, the crow was toast, a charred, smoking mess.

  The smell of burnt feathers filled the air.

  At that exact moment, darkness swallowed the sky.

  He glanced up, and his face fell.

  A massive swarm of flesh-eating crows was dive-bombing the bar from above.

  Must be the bloodbath inside that had lured them in.

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  They had to scram, pronto, or it was gonna get ugly.

  Michael Joke hopped onto the balcony railing, ready to make a leap and bail.

  But he looked back, frowned, and then took the plunge.

  “I must’ve owed her big-time in a past life.”

  He grumbled and marched into the bar.

  Billy Jean did a double-take when she saw Michael Joke pop up.

  “Why the heck are you here?”

  Billy Jean eyed the vampires downstairs, who’d gone berserk at Michael Joke’s arrival, and she was actually kind of ticked off.

  “Why aren’t you snug in bed and out here? Don’t you know vampires go wild at night?”

  She wasn’t thrilled about sharing her food supply with other vampires.

  Michael Joke wheeled around, shut the balcony glass door, and hustled over to Billy Jean.

  “Come with me, let’s haul butt.”

  “What’s the deal? You’re acting nuts.”

  “The flesh-eating crows are zeroing in on this bar. No time to waste. Let’s vamoose.”

  Billy Jean’s face paled a bit at the mention of the crows.

  Flesh-eating crows?

  They’d eat anything that moved—or didn’t.

  Dead bodies, humans, vampires, you name it.

  Word on the street was, wherever those crows swooped in, nothing but bones were left.

  Their beaks were like razors, could strip a body down to the skeleton in no time.

  “Let’s go. Hurry it up.”

  Billy Jean was on edge.

  Her beat-up body couldn’t take much more chaos.

  Michael Joke’s face was all business.

  “Too late.”

  The next second, every window in the bar exploded, and thousands of crows flooded in.

  “Caw, caw…”

  The cawing was deafening.

  “Back off.”

  Michael Joke shielded Billy Jean and backed away, step by step.

  Scarfman, tied to the chair and barely clinging to life, watched the crows swarm him, eyes bugging out.

  He didn’t have the juice to scream anymore.

  His eyes suddenly went blood-red and were plucked out by the crows.

  “Mm, mm…”

  He let out a gut-wrenching moan.

  Countless crows swarmed him, pecking away at his flesh.

  It was agony, pure agony.

  As his chest was ripped open and his still-beating heart gobbled up, Scarfman finally bit the dust after a world of pain.

  In a flash, the crows took off, and Scarfman was nothing but a skeleton, every scrap of flesh gone.

  The vampires downstairs were getting mobbed too.

  They fought back on autopilot, slashing at the crows with their razor-sharp nails.

  But there were just too many crows.

  Sooner or later, they’d get pecked.

  Once a vampire went down, a horde of crows would descend and turn it into a skeleton in seconds.

  Flesh and blood flew everywhere.

  The floor was littered with more and more bones, and the mangled crow corpses were piling up.

  The bar was a living hell.

  By this time, Michael Joke and Billy Jean had retreated into a second-floor private room.

  The thick door was holding the crows at bay, for now.

  “Boom… Boom…”

  The crows kept slamming into the door, making a racket.

  It wouldn’t hold for long.

  Listening to the growls of her vampire pals outside and the non-stop cawing, Billy Jean gulped.

  “What the heck do we do now?”

  Michael Joke scanned the room.

  It was sealed up tight, not a single window in sight.

  That meant there had to be a ventilation duct.

  He craned his neck, eyeballing the ceiling, and bingo, there it was.

  The door was on the verge of caving in.

  They had to move, and fast.

  “I’ll go up first. Then reach for my hand, and I’ll haul you up.”

  Billy Jean nodded.

  Michael Joke was tall and spry, so climbing up was a piece of cake.

  He perched on the duct opening and reached down.

  “Grab my hand.”

  Something cold clamped onto his warm hand, and Michael Joke’s fingertips twitched.

  He looked down and yanked hard.

  But halfway up, Billy Jean let out a shriek.

  “Let go, let go right now.”

  Michael Joke thought she was throwing a fit and said patiently,

  “We’re almost there. Hang in a bit longer.”

  “It’s all over.”

  Billy Jean felt a “pop” in her joint, and then she was in freefall.

  “Boom…”

  Billy Jean hit the ground hard.

  Good thing she couldn’t feel pain.

  Michael Joke stared at the rotten severed arm in his hand and froze.

  Billy Jean saw she was now a one-armed bandit and stomped her foot in frustration.

  “You owe me an arm.”

  Who knew Michael Joke would turn his head and hurl.

  Billy Jean:!!

  Damn it, have some class!