There was a stiff undead thing behind Sally Yan but she would not be afraid. She had faced a jiāngshī before. She had no sticky rice or yellow paper this time but she had the wŭxíng pentagram. In a minute she would turn and face the horror.

But something was happening right before her, in the ash that filled the blasted coffin. A stirring in the harshly glittering deadly bits of jagged crystal. They seemed to be … dissolving.

There was now an opening before her. That was strange. She leaned forward to look into that opening, drawn like a mouse to the red eyes of a snake.

Her eyes locked. Through that hole was an endless fall to ground which was light-years below.

Her terror of heights choked her. She couldn’t even scream. She clutched the fused, melted walls.

It was inevitable that the ground would tilt beneath her. It had to be. She struggled not to fall but she slid helplessly toward that opening and her hands slipped and clutched at nothing.

She toppled forward and fell and fell, shrill fingers of whistling air pulling at her. Her eyes stared like glass beads.

***

Lavinia Starr stood above the bloody body of Rich Poore.

She had probably just lost Sally, the best thing in her whole life. She had nearly lost her when she had crushed Bunt’s skull, just as she’d lost Poky those years ago. The kid had put himself completely and whole-heartedly in her power. She tried not to see the hurt misery on his face as she dropped the gory fragment of stone.

But she had saved the world. The vampire plague was over. She had stamped out the source.

Except that there was an icy sound from the crypt, as though a hooded cobra swayed hissing, looking for another source of terror. In a moment Lavinia would see the Tartar Man, the faceless thing she feared most…

But Lavinia’s fears were ill-formed, not like Rich with has deadly image of the vampire from the old movie.

There was another nearby who had a sharp and terrifying fear. A very simple fear. The icy presence hissed: Aaaahhhhhh….

The next second the ground tilted. Lavinia grabbed at shrubbery.

***

Jesse Casselberger, already feeling the icy fingers of death reaching for him, breathing now only through the allowance of whatever force kept him in unlife, suddenly felt the floor tip beneath his feet. He grabbed at Walter but Walter, eyes bulging, slid with him, and over they went, Jesse trailing a fan of blood.

Such a simple fear Sally had. No mingling with shame and sexuality and the hidden human urges to do bad things and get away with them or sexual servitude and abuse, no creeping fear of the dark or sinister faces. Such a simple, juicy, raw terror: falling! Everybody had the fear of falling to some extent. The new illusion gripped the world. The movie vampire illusion with all its nuances … dropped in favor of a clean-burning, high octane, nutritious fear: falling!

Everywhere people fell.

The earth opened up or tilted or simply fell away and people tumbled in, screaming.