Into The Fire

"We wait until we can see enough to find the entrance — unless we hear it breathing first."

"I can still radio for assistance," she said. She knew he would not allow it, but if things went wrong, Pegeen wanted to be able to say she had tried to do the right thing.

"We'll ask for assistance if we need it," he said.

"Right now we don't need it."

She watched him for a moment, then sat on the ground, folding her legs under her. Her body was sore in spots; she could still smell him, taste him, almost feel his hands upon her. She knew it wasn't smart to say anything right now, but she said it anyway.

"Should we talk about last night?"

She thought she caught him trying to stifle a sigh.

"Later," he said.

"I just want to clear up one thing," she said. When he didn't respond, she continued, "Was last night the reason you brought me along on this case?"

Becker turned to her, his brow wrinkled quizzically.

"You said you asked for me to work with you for a special reason," she said. "Was last night it? Was last night the special reason?"

"No," Becker said, surprised. "I didn't expect last night until it happened… I love Karen, you know. I didn't mean to mislead you otherwise."

Pegeen gasped inwardly. Mislead her?

They experienced it first as a change in air pressure, as if the shock wave of some great cataclysm had swept over them, and then, almost immediately, they heard it-the sound of something enormous coming right at them, swooping down at them with a rush of wings. A great column of moving blackness was overhead, moving very fast, and then it whirled and poured into the ground be hind them with a noise unlike anything Pegeen had ever heard. The column assumed a funnel shape as it drained into the earth, accompanied by a cacophony of beating wings and shrieks and pounding air.

"Bats," Becker said, but Pegeen did not need to be told. The swooping, swerving flight of the stragglers on the edges told her what they were; bats, millions of them, flying as if in the vampires' panic to beat the sun to their resting place. As they disgorged into the hillside, vanishing into the solid ridgeline as if by magic, they looked like the ominous whirling wind of a tornado, touching down only yards away from them. Underbrush waved and whipped about in their wake, and the closer trees bent under the pressure created by millions of leathery wings.

It seemed to Pegeen to last for hours, but in reality it was over in a few minutes-the moving cloud thinned to a wispy trail of black smoke tendrils, and then to the few latecomers, each one exposed and vulnerable away from the flock. As if on a signal, the sun's rays hit the sky overhead as the last of the bats vanished into the earth.

"I think we found our breathing hole," Becker said, moving to the spot where the bats had disappeared.

Pegeen realized she had been crouched reflexively into a protective ball, her hands over her head to protect her hair. She was grateful that Becker was more concerned with the hole than he was with her at the moment. She joined him, dragging the two backpacks they had carried from the car.

"You're not planning on going in there now,' she asked.

"They're insect eaters," Becker said, opening one of the backpacks.

"They won't bother us."

"They already bother me," Pegeen said, but Becker wasn't listening.

"He's here," Becker said. His voice was hushed and strained as if holding in excitement. Pegeen thought it sounded almost reverential.

A rope vanished into the hole, barely visible at the lip of the opening but rising slightly above the ground as it approached the tree to which it was tied. Becker sensuously slid his hand back and forth on the rope.

"New rope," he said.

In the increasing light Pegeen saw a path leading to the hole, where something large and heavy had been dragged over the weeds and underbrush. The path trailed off down the hillside.

"And he's not alone," she said.

"Not anymore," Becker said, grinning.

He removed a length of synthetic climbing rope that was coiled onto the back of his pack and secured it quickly and efficiently to a tree trunk.

Shouldering the pack, he whipped the rope around his body and under his leg. With his left hand on the secured portion of the rope, his right holding the trailing portion, he backed up to the hole. The opening was no more than four feet wide and went into the side of the ridge so that it rode on a plane that was close to vertical before it plunged straight down.

Pegeen surveyed the abyss with her flashlight and saw no bottom.

"Browne's chart says it's thirty-five feet to the bottom," Becker said.

"They taught you to rappel in training camp, right?":,Of course."

"This will be a little different. The chart shows the mouth opening out as it goes down. There won't be anything for your feet to touch after the first few feet, so it's more of a free fall, but just take it slow; you'll be fine.

"I know that," she said, angrily. "I can do this."

"If I had any doubts, you wouldn't be here," he said.

"Once we're down there, keep quiet. Sound travels a long way.

"I don't plan to sing and dance," she said.

He looked at her for a moment. The sunlight was increasing; Pegeen could make out the shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. She imagined she looked as bad, or worse. But unlike Becker, she feared that she also looked apprehensive. She certainly felt that way. Becker looked happy; his eyes were shining too much.

"When we get to them, you protect the girl," Becker said. "I'll take care of him."

She nodded. She had no doubt that he would take care of Swann.

"Oh, and, uh-Pegeen," he continued, having trouble saying her first name, "thanks for last night. You kept me sane.

He grinned again-Pegeen was not certain if it was at her or in anticipation of Swann-and backed into the hole. With a little hop, he broke away from the surface and his head dropped out of sight.

Thanks for last night? Thanks?

She shone the light into the hole, watching the top of Becker's head recede, spinning slowly as he dropped.

There was a small bald spot on the crown of his head which she had not noticed before. Well, why should I? she thought bitterly. I've been blind in general. Thanks for a night that had left her shaken and disbelieving and filled with hope and fear and emotions so raw and basic and mysterious to her that she couldn't even name them?

I fucked him to save his mental health, your honor. Never mind what it did to mine-I was happy to make the sacrifice for the good of the Bureau.

When he had reached the bottom of the shaft, Pegeen wrapped the rope around herself and eased her way into oblivion, following a ray of light that he shone up at her.

She wasn't frightened, she told herself. She was too fucking angry at the insensitive son of a bitch to be scared of anything, but she kept her eyes fixed on the diminishing patch of sunlight above her. When her feet touched something solid at last, the light had dwindled to a space so small she could cover it with her thumb. So maybe I'm a little scared, she admitted.

Becker awaited her impatiently, turning his flashlight from the rope to the chart in his hand as soon as she released the rope. Without a word to her he motioned with the beam and moved off.

They followed the meandering course of an old riverbed, walking upright most of the time but stopping now and then as the roof curved down.

Pegeen could not believe how dark it was. The stone seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it, and she could see only where her flashlight pointed and nowhere else. She had not been prepared for the cold, either. It felt as if she had stepped into a meat locker, although the sound of water running somewhere told her that the temperature was not below freezing.

Becker slipped suddenly, his feet flying from under him, and he landed on the stone with a squashing sound.

She knelt beside him and saw why he had fallen. In front of them, as far as the flashlight would carry, was a spreading mat of bat shit. She played the light up walls and onto the roof, where hung a writhing mass of animals, still settling in for their daylight rest. They hung everywhere she could see, like a million inverted winged mice Their teeth shone eerily white in her light as they chattered and nipped at each other, and she had the feeling she was being leered at by a madman.

The entire mass of them moved and twitched and wriggled like one huge body in torment, as if the cave itself were brought to squirming painful life. The bats were crowded so closely together that Pegeen could not distinguish one from another until an individual one would be knocked loose and it would fly in the characteristic swooping, erratic pattern until it returned to the general body, wedging itself in and vanishing into the whole.

"Holy Christ," she breathed.

"It's bat guano," Becker said, pulling himself to his feet.

"It's bat shit, " she said, trailing her light from the appalling mass of bats to the equally appalling mass in front of her. The pellets were gray and shaped like grains of rice, and they looked dry and solid but Becker's slip had demonstrated otherwise.

She played the light carefully along the edge of the mat, trying to assess it. "It must be more than three feet thick," she said.

"Closer to four," said Becker. He seemed remarkably unconcerned.

"How do we get around it?" Pegeen asked.

"We don't. We go through it." Becker's flashlight picked out the two-foot-wide where something had been recently dragged across the surface of the mat. "He did it. We can."

"Did you know this was here?" she demanded.

"The chamber is on the chart, but Browne didn't bother to indicate what was in it. I guess this sort of thing doesn't bother him."

"Fine, let's get him down here."

"It's only guano," Becker said.

I 'It's shit, " insisted Pegeen.

"Only in your mind." Becker stepped directly into it, following the path where Swann had dragged the loaded golf sack.

"I can't believe this," Pegeen said, placing her foot gingerly in the track Becker had created. "I-'m walking through shit up to my thighs."

"Sounds like a fair description of life," Becker said.

"Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ."

"Hey, the FBI isn't all paperwork and investigations, you know," Becker said cheerfully. "We got to have some fun sometimes."

Pegeen would gladly have pushed him face first into the goo. Just don't let me slip, she prayed silently.

The muck rose above her waist, but the footing underneath seemed dry and solid. She could not imagine the age of the pile, but knew it had to be counted in centuries.

"Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ," she muttered with every step, unaware that her silent mantra was escaping her lips. In front of her, Becker seemed terribly amused and she thought she heard him chuckle once or twice.

"Just think how badly Swann must have wanted to get in here," Becker said in a whisper.

And how badly you want to get in after him, Pegeen finished the thought.

Still, she was grateful that he was leading her, taking long, sweeping steps, pushing much of the guano out of her way like the prow of a ship.

The stuff didn't appear to be clinging as much as she had feared, only the surface layer was moist, the rest as dry as sunbaked pellets.

When his flashlight picked out the dimensions of a wall in front of them, Becker stopped and turned to Pegeen.

"There's a tunnel ahead of us, according to the chart," he said, his voice hushed. "It looks narrow, we may have to crawl. We'll do it without lights-we don't want anything shining into the main cavern."

"Without lights?"

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"

"No more than most sensible people. How do we know where we're going?"

"The chart shows it to be pretty much a straight line.

Just keep going forward."

"What if the chart is wrong?" Pegeen hissed. "What if there's a dropoff or something in there that Browne didn't bother to put on the chart?"

"If I fall out of sight, you'll know it's time to stop."

"You won't be in sight-we're not using lights."

"Use your imagination, Haddad. You'll be fine."

"Are you going to call me Haddad now? Are we back to that? If we are, would you mind if we just kept going a little further before we continue this discussion?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm standing up to my navel in bat shit and I don't want to be insulted at the same time."

Becker shined his light directly in her face until she pushed the flashlight away.

"You mean last night?" he asked.

"Duh."

"Last night was indescribable. You saved my sanity, I don't think I would have made it until morning."

"Could we not talk about it right here? Could we maybe find a nice sewer to sit in first?"

Becker looked down at the guano rising to his belt as if he had forgotten it entirely.

"It's dry," he said as if he didn't understand her objections.

Pegeen sighed. "Just get me to the tunnel. Please."

"When we get to the chamber, if he hears us he'll probably douse his own light. Don't use your weapon because you'll only pinpoint yourself and he may be armed.

"I won't be able to see and I won't be able to shoot.

What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever I tell you."

"How do we find this son of a bitch in the dark?"

"I'll find him," Becker said.

"Great. How?"

Becker paused. When he spoke, she heard a smile in his voice. It was not a friendly smile.

"I'll find him by his fear," Becker said.

Swann was moaning now to a methodical rhythm, interspersing little yips like a child's bleats that came with every inward breath. The sound was monotonous and metronomic and Aural wondered if it came now from some source other than pain. It was almost a genteel snore, and in the dim candlelight that illuminated him from a distance she could not see clearly if he was asleep or awake.

He hadn't moved in several minutes and both hands were still clasped upon his face. The candle had burned down several inches since he had moved across the cavern, and Aural estimated that it must have been at least an hour.

She had tried to time it at first, using the tick of her water clock, but his moans were too loud at first for her to keep track and then it didn't seem to matter anyway. Time had long since lost any meaning.

There was no way to measure the length of a torture session-each seemed to last an infinity, and minutes and seconds and hours signified nothing at all. Progress was marked by inches as he burned his way slowly across her flesh, cigarette by cigarette, and by candles that glowed and melted and shrank and guttered into darkness only to be replaced by another.

And by pain, endless pain. There was no way to measure the quantity of her agony, but still it was distinguished by a surprising variety. Some things hurt differently than others, some pains lasted so long that she could nearly ignore them and regard them as background, some were so intense she could only scream her way through them.

Aural shivered and huddled her arms against her chest.

It was the first time in days that she had had the leisure to notice the cold. Her legs seemed ablaze but her torso was chilled. She had been shaking with the cold for several minutes and hadn't even noticed.

Another way to die, she thought. I could freeze to death before he kills me.

The rhythm of his breathing changed and she realized that he was actually falling asleep. When she was sure he was out, she would make her move. She would need at least several minutes to make her way to the tunnel, moving backwards on her hands and heels. Once in the tunnel she had no idea how far or fast she could go, but at least she would be trying. It would be something she could do for herself One hand slipped off his face and into his lap, then moments later, the other hand fell away. His head moved back slightly in reaction to finding itself unsupported, then stopped in position. After another few moments the head drooped lower, bounced back up, drooped lower still, bounced again as he nodded deeper and deeper into sleep.

Aural waited for his head to come to rest on his chest.

One more drop, maybe two.

Swann's head slumped all the way to his chest, then sprang back violently and he woke up crying out in pain as if the final fall had reactivated his injury.

"My eye!" he called, as if he expected someone to respond, as if he expected her to help him. "Please, Jesus, please! "

And then Aural realized that she could help and she smiled to herself because she felt for the first time. as if she had a real weapon.

Despite her pain and her condition and her shackles, she realized that he had given her power.

She waited until he was momentarily quiet, and then she spoke to him, keeping her voice low but intense.

"I can help you," she said.

It brought him to silence. He listened for a moment as if he expected her to repeat it.

"What did you say?"

"I can help you," Aural repeated.

She could see him peering at her through the cracks between his fingers.

"How?" he asked cautiously.

"You know how."

He brought his hands to his lap and grasped the knife, suspecting a trick.

"How?" he repeated.

"I can heal you," Aural said. She hoped it was her stage voice but it sounded cracked and wounded to her ear.

Again he was quiet, studying her for deception, then a shiver of pain coursed through him again and he tilted his head and gave a moan like a whinnying horse.

When his spasm passed, Aural said, "You know I can do it. You have seen me heal. You have seen the divine power of Jesus Christ move through me.

I have the power."

"Yes," he said. "I've seen you do it."

"God be praised," she said, trying to project strength which she did not feel.

'Amen.

"He works through me." She lifted her hands, already forced into a prayerful attitude by the cuffs, and held them in the air, fingertips touching. "He has given me the hands to do his work."

"I hurt so much," he said.

"Jesus never gives us more than we can bear," she said.

She smiled at him, summoning up the smile of beatitude, the smile that stiffed hearts and eased consciences and made miracles seem not only possible but within the order of things. She smiled at Swann her own sweet promise of love and forgiveness, of redemption and deliverance. It was the reason he had chosen her in the first place-the sign of virginal divinity that he always looked for and then somehow forgot in the vileness of his actions when the beast that dwelled in his chest stiffed and took him within its tentacles. But that was not the true Swann, it was the beast. The true Swann loved God and his holy son and yearned for goodness and yearned now most of all for release from his pain.

"Would you do that for me?" he said.

"Only I can do it for you. Jesus has not answered your prayers, but he will answer mine on your behalf."

"But I've been-bad-to you," he said.

"It is not for humans to judge," Aural said. She extended her hands toward him, palms up. "Jesus forgave his persecutors, we must do the same."

She had him, she thought, he believed her, he wanted desperately to believe her, and that was always the necessary prerequisite. Their pain, their illness, their unhappiness had to drive them to you, then you had to make them welcome and pull them in the rest of the way. She smiled again, that radiant smile, trying her best to light the cavern with her own illumination. The effort took a lot out of her; she did not know how much longer she could keep it up; she wanted nothing more than to lie back and rest; she needed rest so badly, if only her pain would allow it.

He had risen slowly to his knees, but still he hesitated, cowering back in the shadows so far away.

I've reached them from farther away than this, Aural told herself, I've brought them from the back of the tent when they didn't want to come and didn't even know they needed me; I've summoned up the love of God, the trust of my healing power in souls dark and dead and shut off, those who had come to gape and those who had come to scoff and I've pulled them to me and I can pull this asshole to me, too.

She began to sing, her voice rising with lyric sweetness in the hypnotic melody of "Amazing Grace." She sang it straight to him, straight to his heart, pouring into her voice every ounce of fraud and deceit and practiced cunning that she possessed, transforming it by her art into the irresistible musical locution of the angels.

As her voice filled the cavern with haunting reverberations of the timeless hymn, it was as if she were joined by a heavenly chorus.

Holding one hand to his eye, gripping the knife with the other, Swann rose to his feet and crossed the chamber towards her outstretched arms as she sang to him with her face aglow in serenity and her eyes closed with the intensity of her love.

As she heard his faltering step on the stone and saw the glint of the approaching knife blade under her squinted eyelids, Aural thought, Try this one, Tommy R. Walker.

You couldn't pull this one off if your life depended on it.

And she — remembered that hers did and she sang all the sweeter.

The bat chamber was so configured that the guano gave out well before the enclosing wall was reached, and the trail that Becker and Pegeen had followed vanished on the hard stone. They searched for the tunnel indicated on Browne's chart for several minutes, playing their flashlights on the surface where the floor met the vertical wall.

When she found it, Pegeen was not certain it was the right trail, the hole seemed so small.

"Could this be it?" she whispered. She knelt in front of the opening, resisting the urge to shine her light directly into the tunnel. She would have to crawl into it on her knees and elbows-there was no other way to fit her body through.

"Must be," said Becker in a voice that made her look at him sharply. She lifted her light so that it spilled from the wall onto his face. Becker wore an expression she had never seen on his features. If she didn't know better, she would say he was frightened.

"It's so small," she said. He nodded with a look on his face that suggested he did not trust himself to speak.

Pegeen noticed beads of moisture on his forehead. Sweating in the coolness of the cave seemed so unlikely that she thought he was ill.

She asked if he was sick and Becker shook his head, forcing a very unconvincing grin.

"What's wrong?" she persisted, reaching to touch his forehead. He jerked away angrily.

"You keep asking why I wanted you on this case," Becker said.

She knew immediately that she would not like what he was going to say; she knew he wanted to hurt her because she had seen something that he didn't want her to see.

"Yes?"

Becker pointed towards the entrance hole of the tunnel.

"This is why," he said. "You're small enough to fit."

Pegeen struck back immediately. "You're afraid of it, aren't you?"

Becker avoided her eyes.

"You're claustrophobic?"

"I'm fine," he said. His whole face was now shiny with perspiration.

"I can see how fine you are."

"I'll manage," he said.

"You knew this was here all along," she said.

"You've been studying the chart on this cave since last night. Why didn't you do something, why didn't we call somebody? Are you so desperate to do this?"

"I'll make it."

"Why didn't you tell me, at least?"

"What good would that have done?"

"Maybe I could have helped you," she said.

"I can only help myself," Becker said, but at the moment he looked to Pegeen like someone who couldn't begin to help himself His whole physical being seemed to have changed, to have softened and weakened, as if the phobia had sapped his very bones.

"You don't have to be brave all the time," Pegeen said softly. "Not with me." She tentatively placed her fingertips on the back of his hand and he jerked as he always seemed to when touched unexpectedly, but when he relaxed he did not pull away and Pegeen gently slipped her hand across the top of his.

After a moment he rolled his hand over so that they were palm to palm and his fingers closed slowly over hers.

Pegeen remembered holding his hand in the car before he went into the prison to visit Swann. That was how this had all started for her, this obsession with this powerful, dangerous, complicated man who could be reduced to immobility by his own secret fears, who could rouse such passion in her, in himself, then cloak it again as if it never happened, who could be so vulnerable, then draw such strength from the touch of her hand. He had granted her a power over him on that first day, she realized, and whether he knew it or not, whether he held an equal power over her or not, he had needed her ever since.

"It's all right," she said at last. "I'll go, you can wait here.

He shook his head dully, resignedly, not looking at her, knowing what had to happen.

There would be no easy way out for Becker, Pegeen realized. He would never allow that.

"Shall I go first, then?" she asked.

Becker shivered violently, as if hit suddenly by a frigid wind, but he nodded again and shrugged off his backpack.

"I'll keep in touch with your foot," he said. "But if I don't…"

"You will, I know you will."

He was on his hands and knees in front of the hole, his head hanging like a beaten dog's. "If I stop, keep going."

"You'll make it," she said.

"Right."

Pegeen removed her pack and stretched out flat before the opening of the tunnel. She shifted her pistol so that it rode securely in her belt in the middle of her back, reachable but well out of the way.

"No lights, no firing," Becker said. She could hear his voice quavering.

Pegeen wanted to hug him but knew that what he wanted most was for her to be gone so that she couldn't see him in the grip of his fears. Pegeen tucked the flashlight into her belt on her back alongside her pistol.

She might not use either one, but she was sure as hell going to have them with her.

She took a deep breath as if she were going underwater and went headfirst into the tunnel. Behind her, Becker doused his light and the world became pitch. She moved forward slowly, feeling first with her hands across the surface of the stone that was as smooth as polished marble before pulling herself forward. Sometimes there was room enough on either side for her to slide a knee forward, sometimes the sides narrowed in so that she could propel herself only by pulling with her arms and elbows and the tips of her toes. There were sudden drops of several inches, sometimes a foot or more, as sheer as miniature waterfalls, but everywhere she touched the surface had the burnished feel of ice. It was like crawling into a giant intestine, she thought.

Straight up the devil's ass.

Becker crawled behind her, his hand touching her ankle or the sole of her boot when she braced, falling away as she pulled herself forward and then contacting her again as he followed her movements. Pegeen took comfort in knowing he was there and wondered what this exercise was costing him. It was bad enough for her-she felt like screaming at times as the tunnel seemed to stretch forever without end-what damnation must he be suffering? She thought, too, of Swann, following this same course, dragging the girl behind him. He had to drag her, there was no other way. How compelling a need must it be to make a man do that?

Becker knew; in some way Becker understood; but Pegeen did not. Nor did she want to.

Swann had advantages, though, she realized. He had been here before. He knew there was an end to the tunnel, and some sort of reward, however sick and twisted, when he got there. And he had light. Pegeen would have given anything for any illumination, even as faint as a spark.

Crawling like this was like living without hope.

Her fingers touched a beveled edge and explored it on all sides. The tunnel had reached a cincture, as if a belt had suddenly been tightened.

Her hands told her that the walls spread out again on the other side, but at this point the stone narrowed in even farther than before. Her head cleared easily but the gap was too narrow to pass her shoulders straightaway. She twisted her body to one side, squeezing her shoulders towards each other, but then her hips were caught and she hung, helplessly, with gravity pulling her head lower than her waist and her fingers scrabbling for purchase on the ivory-smooth rock.

Oh Christ, oh shit, oh Christ, oh shit, she thought, repeating the mindless mantra to herself as she wriggled and squirmed. She was caught by the gun and flashlight tucked in her belt and they were on the other side of the opening; she could not reach back to free them; she didn't have enough of a grip on the stone with her hands to push herself up and backwards so she could retreat. She dangled half in, half out, writhing, her fingers scrabbling for a hold.

As she fought her sense of panic it occurred to her that this might be the wrong tunnel, it might be a dead end that narrowed and shrank and came to nothing and she would be trapped within it. They had taken it on faith that this was where Swann had gone, where he had to have gone, and they had trusted Browne's chart, but who knew how thoroughly Browne had searched? Perhaps he had found a different tunnel and had not bothered to mark this cul-de-sac on the map at all.

She felt Becker's hands on her and knew that big fingers were assessing the situation of stone and flesh. He pulled back on her hips and Pegeen rose, her hands now in touch with nothing. As she flailed to make contact with the walls, she felt Becker yank the gun and flashlight from her belt. He put his hand on her ass and shoved. She wanted to tell him to stop, to pull her all the way back, they were heading into nowhere, but she suddenly popped free and had a fleeting image of herself slipping through a birth canal.

Her feet slithered down the three-foot drop-off and her knees thudded against the stone. It took her a moment to realize that she was free and to gather herself before advancing again. Whatever lay ahead, she knew it could not be worse than where she had just been.

The tunnel began to widen and she could get her knees under her and she moved ahead with eagerness, so relieved to be moving at last, until she realized that Becker was no longer with her.

Swann stood over her, pointing the knife at her, not threatening, just reminding her that he had it, keeping it there for when she looked at him. Aural finished the hymn, keeping her eyes closed until the last sweet note faded and fell to silence. She could see his feet and legs up to his knees through her lashes, but she was careful to keep her face from pointing directly at him. She didn't want to be forced to look at him, she didn't want to deal with him, until she had to. First she had to summon her concentration onto herself, to focus on creating herself as saint and healer.

She let the silence sink in on him for a few seconds, making him realize what a wonder had been taken from him. She opened her eyes slowly as if recovering from a trance, as if she had not been aware of him at all, standing there with a knife. She took a deep breath and released it with an audible sigh, and then slowly canted her head upwards with a look of mild astonishment as if she could not imagine how she came to be in such a place with such company. Some of her fans had told her she looked reborn when she came out of a song. They thought she must surely have been with the angels while she sang, letting their voices ring through her, which was why she was always disoriented when she finished. They were grateful to her for having come back to them, it showed how much she cared for them. Rae said she looked washed clean with the waters of Jordan when she, completed a hymn, cleansed and a little shaken by the experience. The Reverend Tommy R. Walker confessed that it was about the neatest trick he'd ever seen.

Aural looked up and fastened her gaze on Swann and realized that he, too, had been fooled. He was gaping at her, not quite sure who, or what, he saw.

"I know why you did it," he said. His voice had changed, — grown younger.

Aural recognized the childish petulance in it, but there was something else there, something she couldn't identify.

She didn't know what he meant. "Do you?" she asked.

" You hurt me because… " He sniffed suddenly, wiping at his nose with the back of his knife hand. Aural realized that he had been weeping. "Because you love me," he finished.

Aural recognized the other quality in his voice now. It was forgiveness.

He was absolving her for stabbing him with the fork.

She nodded slowly, not trusting herself to say the right thing, but realizing she didn't need to speak at all, that he had something he wanted to say.

"You only do that because you love me, I know that," he continued.

Aural nodded again, arching her eyebrows slightly, trying to look loving but stern.

"For your own good," she said, suddenly inspired.

Swann's face wrinkled and he whimpered in his throat.

He looked at that moment about five years old.

"I know it," he said, crying openly now. "I know I'm bad."

"Sometimes you're bad," Aural said carefully. She was still not quite certain of her role. Was she his mother now? Or was she still the woman he planned to torture to death? He had not put the knife down nor even wavered with it. It continued to point at her as if it were a gun.

"But I do love Jesus, I truly do," he said.

"Do you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"But you're bad anyway." She thought she had gone far. Swann stiffened and his lip trembled with defiance.

"Sometimes," he said, agreeing but not giving in.

Aural continued to look at him, not backing down but not knowing what else to do. He had regressed so quickly that she knew there must be something about her that made him think of his mother; something about her; something about pain. For a moment the knife seemed to quiver and she wondered if he was going to stab her. She wondered if he had stabbed his mother.

He stood there for a moment, towering over her as she sat on the floor, waving the blade in front of her face now, closer and closer, looking for all the world like a child with his first taste of power. Aural didn't know what to do, but she knew that she couldn't let him win. If she were to beat him, she had to do it now, when he was five years old and not an adult, when he was not certain he was in control and not happily convinced he was evil.

"Jesus loves you anyway," she said at last.

He had wanted her to plead, to react to his menace; he had not expected calm. For a moment he was startled, as if instead of stepping away in fear she had slapped his face.

"Can I show you something?" he said, and Aural realized that things had changed again. He wasn't fully adult yet, but he wasn't addressing his mother anymore, either.

He sounded like an adolescent about to reveal a great truth to a newly discovered friend.

Aural nodded her consent, but he wasn't waiting for permission, he had already sat on the stone and was eagerly stripping off his shoes and socks and then tugging at his pants.

You're not going to show me anything I haven't seen too many times before, she thought, but to her surprise he made no motion to remove his underwear. He thrust a bare leg at her, proudly.

'What?" Aural asked.:,Look." He gestured to his leg, using the knife as a pointer.

It took Aural a moment to realize what she was seeing.

Swann looked as if he were wearing the skin of a smaller man, and his entire leg, from foot to thigh, was being shrunken and drawn together as the flesh shriveled and puckered in what Aural finally knew to be the accumulated scar tissue of hundreds of dime-sized burns. His limbs gleamed in the candlelight with the particular sheen of contracted flesh.

He was watching her reaction eagerly, and when she looked at him again with the first glimmer of sympathy he lifted his foot and waggled it to get her attention.

"Look, look," he said, excited by what he had to show her. He placed the point of the knife between his toes where, in the exquisitely sensitive space between the digits, were positioned more scars the size of the tip of her little finger, the flesh still recoiling as if in perpetual horror at the insult of the burning ember placed there years ago and pulling his toes together so that he could barely separate them on his own.

Aural gasped at the unforgiving nature of the traumatized skin. I'll look like that, she realized, and tears of sorrow welled up in her eyes.

But there was no self-pity in Swann's face as he pushed forth the other foot to be examined and admired. He looked proud, even smug.

"Your mother?" Aural asked.

"Mother was a Christian," Swann said approvingly. As if she had given her son her own version of the stigmata to prove it.

"I can make it better," she said.

"Can you?"

"I can make it all better," she said. She extended her fingers towards his legs, and then up, towards his head, to indicate his heart, his mind, his past, his memories. "I can heal your very soul."

"God be praised," he said.

"Help me up," she said. He looked at her dully. "On my feet," she said.

"I can't do it sitting down."

Swann extended a hand and helped her stand, then delicately traced his finger down her chest to a point just below the sternum, probing gently to find the point where the bone gave way to the soft tissue and muscle of the abdomen. He placed the point of the knife on the precise spot.:'You won't hurt me again, will you?" he asked.

'I'm going to heal you," Aural said. "I am a healer; but you got to trust me.":'I trust you," he said, not moving the knife.

'You got to have faith," she said.:'I do." 'Faith in me, not just Jesus, but faith in me."

"I do," Swann said sincerely. "I surely do." Then his face slowly crinkled into a grin. "But I ain't stupid, neither."

Aural raised her manacled hands. "Let us pray," she said, and her voice took on the reverentially inspiring tone of the show tent. "Sweet Jesus, dear sweet, sweet Jesus, this man is a terrible sinner, this man has the blood of his fellow human beings on his hands, this man has tortured and killed defenseless people, and he will do it again, dear Lord, he will do it again and again because there is no true repentance in his soul.

His soul is as black as this hole in the ground, his soul is twisted and warped and unholy, Lord, he is the worst of your children, he is the lost and forsaken and most despised of all your children here on earth.

Men have given up on him, men hate and revile him… but you love him, Lord.":'Hallelujah," said Swann.

'You love all your children, even the worst of them, even those that crawl and slither like the reptiles are beloved in your sight, Lord, and that's a miracle in itself, that's a blessing that passes all understanding. But you know what we have forgot, sweet Jesus, you remember that even the slimiest of your children has an immortal soul, and that soul can be washed clean, that soul can be washed as clean as if it never was drenched in the blood and the fear and the agony of other human beings' painful dying. You can wash that soul clean, Lord, wash it in the blood of the Lamb until it comes out as sparkling white as snow. Praise be!"

"Praise him!"

"If you can wash this soul clean, sweet, compassionate, Jesus, you can do anything. And we know you can, we know you can. Take his pain, Lord, take away the hurt from his-eye and the blisters from his legs and wash away the filth from his spirit and make him like a newborn babe.

He loves you, Jesus, he believes in you, and that's all you care about.

He believes you are the son of god and you promised us that whosoever believeth in you will be born again in purity and joy forever."

Aural paused to breathe deeply, preparing herself for the moment for which everything else was but a prelude.

She could fake belief and feign the fervor, but the courage had to be real.

She edged closer to him, lifting her hands to place them on his head. He winced at the movement, then settled, allowing her to do what he had seen her do before at the healing meeting. She put her hands high on his forehead, avoiding his stricken eye. She didn't want him to make any involuntary movements and stab her in reaction. The knife snuggled up against her abdomen as she moved to him.

"Take the pain away," she said, her voice rising in intensity towards the incantatory peak. His breath smelled of charred rubber.

"Take it away, sweet Jesus, and HEAL!" She pushed hard against his forehead, at the same time sliding her foot behind his heel. Swann tilted backwards, tried to shift his feet, but was caught by Aural's foot and he fell, instinctively swinging his arms out for balance. The point of the blade sliced across Aural's stomach, barely pinking the skin as it dropped away and clattered on the stone. In three hobbled steps Aural was atop the candle. She hurled it into the cavern and its light blinked out, casting them into darkness.

She had heard his head land on the stone but knew she could not count on his being seriously injured. She was depending on confusion and the darkness. She hobbled and hopped towards the side of the cavern where the vertical wave formations offered her a hiding place. There was no time for anything else, no chance of getting as far as the tunnel. If he was injured in the fall, it was a bonus, but all she really hoped for was a chance to get to hiding before he figured out what to do. She staggered forward as quickly as she could, her hands held in front of her, aching to touch the wall. She knew the way, she had rehearsed it in her mind over and over when she could see, and she knew how long it should take her. If only she had enough time-she had to have enough time. She fell suddenly, crashing forward as her foot hit an outcropping.

The burns on her legs raged furiously at the contact with the stone but she scrambled up again, hopping and hobbling and reaching blindly in front of her for salvation.

She heard him moaning, heard him scrabbling around on the stone, wasting his time by feeling for the knife first. She heard the metal scrape against the rock as her own fingers found the edge of the wave shape.

She reached around it and her hand groped into empty air.

There was a space behind it. Aural slipped behind the sheltering rock and tried to quiet her breathing. She knew she couldn't have much more time before Swann was in control of things again.

"Bitch," Swann yelled. "Cunt bitch."

He pulled the lighter from his pocket, snapped it on and held it high, the knife in front of him, half expecting the crazed woman to launch herself at him.

She was gone.

"Cunt," he raged. "Filthy cunt bitch." Then he realized his own noises had betrayed him. If he had been quiet he might have heard where she was going, but he had been too loud, groaning and cursing. He should have gotten the lighter first but he had been afraid she would get the knife and attack him in the dark.

Swann swung in a slow circle, holding the lighter in front of him as if it were a beacon, but it was a pointless exercise. There were too many shadows, too many areas where the light didn't reach. He would have to search for her foot by foot. And when he found her-when he found her.

His imagination carried him no further than that. It would depend upon her. If she resisted, he would probably need to kill her right then… but he did want to finish, oh, he longed to finish her the right way, the slow way, the only way that would satisfy his demon.

Oddly enough, his eye had stopped hurting him. Maybe she did heal him after all, he thought, no matter how deceitful her intent. He took two candles from the golf sack and lit them both, then used their flames to burn a hole in two empty cigarette packs. He inserted the base of the candles in the holes so that the wax would not drip on his hands, then began his search.

Aural could see the light flickering and jerking off the walls with his movements, but when she looked down at herself her legs and hands were still in darkness. The nook behind the stone was deep and secure from anything but direct light. He would have to be standing behind the recess himself before he could see her. And eventually he would be, she knew that, but she would hear him coming, she would see him coming by the approach of the candle, and she would be ready. She would have surprise and she would… she realized with horror that she had forgotten her own knife. It was still tucked away in the niche by her boots, useless, lost to her. A wave of despair washed over her and it was all she could do to keep from crying aloud in anguish.

Claustrophobia clamped down on Becker and shook him.

Uncontrollable tremors racked his body and he shivered as if he were freezing to death. His skin was cold and clammy but sweat sprang out all over it and grunts of panic burbled from his throat despite his efforts to remain quiet. He couldn't move, he could not force his body to take him either forward or back, and he squeezed his eyes closed, trying to escape the encompassing darkness of the tunnel for the safety of his mind. But his mind was no haven. He felt the walls of darkness close in ever more tightly around him, the stone seemed to be growing together, closing over him like a scar, encasing him forever in eternal blackness.

Entombed, buried alive, but not alone, for the blackness of his crypt was peopled by the monsters of his youth. The cavern gave way to the lightless cellar where he cowered as a boy, imprisoned for transgressions more imagined than real, awaiting with dread through the interminable night and day for- the heavy, drunken tread upon the stair that would signal the beginning of his long, long punishment that ended only with his father exhausted and unable to scourge him any longer.

Becker's ears filled with his own youthful cries and fruitless begging, his father's muttered curses and imprecations of damnation, the grunts of exertion that accompanied each swing of fist or belt or shoe; and with his mother's voice assuring him it was for his own betterment, acting as monitor to her husband's severity, never to ameliorate but only to judge and assess the limits of flesh and bone, calling all the while for Becker's repentance and self-improvement, as if a boy of five and six and seven were nothing but obstinacy and willful disobedience.

Afterwards, the sound of his own sobs making barely audible the creaking of the cellar stairs as his parents left him alone in the darkness-the better now to contemplate his behavior-his terror of being left alone in the blackness again surmounting even the pain of his tortured body.

Abandoned in the lightless hole while those he loved, those who professed to love him, moved about above him, not indifferent to his fate, worse, the agents of his fate, the architects of his misery.

Becker could hear again the sounds of their footfalls over his head, their voices in normal conversation, muted by floorboards and carpet, and occasionally laughter, the cruelest sound of all. They were happy above while he cringed in terror below, waiting intern-iinably for the shaft of light at the head of the stairs that would signal his release, the light that would seem never to come, the light that would be denied him until he screamed and screamed with the horror of his abandonment only to be chastised and punished again for such impertinence.

Eventually he learned to bear his torment in silence, listening for the weakness in others.

He heard the voice coming from the radio, filtered and distorted by distance as his mother moved about in the kitchen, turning to music to drown out the sounds of his whimpers, perhaps. Bluffed by its passage through the walls and floors, the voice was nonetheless sweet and pure, a voice filled with love and religious serenity… and Becker returned to himself and realized that he was not in the cellar of his tormented youth and the singing voice was not from a radio. Someone living, distant but alive, was voicing the old hymn, and the sound beckoned him like a siren's song.

Pegeen saw the light, at first not daring to believe her eyes. The tunnel passage had seemed so long that she had all but abandoned hope of ever getting out of it. Becker had vanished in the hole behind her. She had heard noises from him at times, muffled groans, and she had thought she should return to him, but then she knew that the real crisis lay ahead. Whatever Becker's torments, she knew they would not kill him; she had no such confidence about the woman who was somewhere in front of her. She heard the voice singing, incredibly singing in the blackness of the cave and shortly thereafter Pegeen saw the light, scarcely more than a pinprick at first, but it grew as she hurried towards it.

The singing stopped and Pegeen heard a drone of voices which also ceased abruptly and then the light vanished along with the sound. Pegeen pressed forward, hearing a man's voice calling out to someone, elevated and angry. Then light again, first the flickering light of a flame, then soon something steadier. She could see she was at the end of the tunnel, that the walls gave way and opened out and she hurried even more. Just as she reached the end of the tunnel the lights went out again and the man's voice lapsed into silence.

She paused at the end of the tunnel, not knowing what lay beyond, sensing only the hush of a crowded room that falls into quiet when a newcomer enters and all eyes shift to him.

Swann had put on his miner's hat and switched on the lamp. He left the candles several yards apart so they would illuminate as much of the cavern as possible, then began his search in the section of the cave that served as the latrine, thinking that Aural might have gone that way since it was the only place she had been before the light went out. He scoured that area, then returned to the area lighted by the candles and scanned the walls. He noticed a peculiar pattern of wave-shaped rock formations and started towards them when he heard something and froze in his tracks. There had come a noise from the tunnel and he knew immediately that it wasn't Aural. Incredibly, someone was there. Someone was coming into the cavern.

Swann doused his headlamp and rushed to blow out the candles. When he stood abruptly from extinguishing the second candle, the pain in his eye struck him so severely that it nearly knocked him off his feet.

Aural heard Swann gasp with pain. He was only a few feet from her,just the other side of the protective formation that shielded her from his view. She would go straight for his eyes, she told herself. If he found her, she would strike at his injured eye with all she had and simply forget about his knife. If she ran into it, what did it matter, she would die anyway if she didn't get away from him.

She would lunge before he realized he had found her; if he had the knife in front of him, then she would skewer herself on it, but at least she would be trying, she would be doing her best to ruin him in the process.

His light snapped off abruptly, then the candles went out. Aural could hear him panting with pain, then she heard something else. It sounded like-she knew it couldn't be, it was a cruel trick of her imagination, but still it sounded like someone else entering the cavern… but where was the light? No one would come without light.

Blessedly, Pegeen was able to stand. She rose to her feet, stretching her back after the long journey, trying desperately to orient herself.

She reached her arms out to her sides and felt nothing. Nothing to either side, nothing above her. The tunnel had been horrible, but at least she knew where she was in relation to her surroundings; now she felt as if she had stepped into the emptiness of outer space. Her feet told her which way was down, but that was all she knew.

She silently cursed Becker. He had abandoned her, sunk into himself, and she had neither light nor weapon.

Swann knew where she was, he had heard her coming and doused the light, he had had time to prepare, he knew where the tunnel was in relation to his position, he knew what lay between it and himself. Pegeen knew nothing.

For all she could tell, he stood within a foot of her. She felt her skin tighten at the, thought.

Pegeen bent her knees, sinking into an athletic crouch, elbows out, hands ready. Beyond that, she didn't know what to do but wait.

The silence of the cave seemed ominous as she strained every nerve to hear some human sound. It took several minutes for her mind and heart to quiet enough before she could make out a distant trickle of running water and, somewhere closer, an occasional drip.

Finally, she had no choice but to act. It was why she was here.

"Federal agent," she said. She was surprised by the strength of the echo. "Swann, you're under arrest." She hoped the threat didn't sound as foolish to Swann as it did to her.

She heard a low sound, a moan, then silence. Pegeen moved forward, towards the sound, walking in the crouch, securing one foot before creeping forward tentatively with the next. Her boot slipped out from under her and she fell, catching herself with her hands. He can take me anytime, she thought desperately, anytime. I could walk right onto him and never know it. When she had calmed herself, she started forward again, no longer certain after the fall if she was heading in the right direction or not. But the girl was still alive, she knew that-she had heard her groan.

Pegeen used the girl to draw her forward.

"You don't have any light," Swann said incredulously.

He couldn't believe it, but hearing the woman stumble' about in the dark left him no other conclusion. They had sent a woman to catch him, and she came without light.

He could not have asked for more.

He heard her footsteps stop. She would be orienting herself, he thought.

She wouldn't know how hard it was to pinpoint the source of a sound because of the echoes; she would need help. Swann smiled to himself. He would help her right onto the tip of his knife. He could hear her coming; she would never know where he was until it was too late.

"Are you afraid of the dark?" he asked. Her steps resumed, heading in the right direction now. She moved quickly at first, then slowed as she lost her bearings.

"Most people are afraid of what they'll find in the dark," Swann said.

"I'm not… It's me." He tittered, then listened to the steps hurrying towards him again.

Aural could hear Swann edging slowly towards her hiding place, moving when the woman moved. Maybe he wanted his back to a wall when the woman got to himshe didn't know, she only knew that he was coming closer. He was within a few steps now. If only Aural could move silently, if only her slightest movement wouldn't be betrayed by the clink of chains, if only she could help in some way… The woman was coming to her death;

Aural could hear every step that brought her closer.

Swann felt the rock of the wall with his hand and eased his back against it. He was ready now. The agent was closer, soon she would be within striking distance. He controlled his breathing, keeping it as shallow as he could.

She would not hear him unless he wanted her to, and then it would be too late.

Closer she came, only a few steps left, but a little off course. That meant nothing, he would strike her in the side rather than the front, or wait until he heard her go past him, then hit her in the back. She didn't need to come right into his lap, just close enough. She was almost there now… but she had stopped.

Pegeen paused. Her nerves were screaming with tension. He had to be close, she was very near him now, must be, but he sent no more clues.

The only human sounds were her own. She felt as if every step now was in a minefield, things could explode on her at any time.

She wanted to run, to turn and run and hide herself somewhere in the darkness, cowering, pulling her knees to her chest and waiting until someone else did something, someone else took care of it.

She held her breath, straining to hear. Then came the scream.

"He has a knife!" Aural yelled.

Swann turned, startled by the sound, amazed that he had been almost atop the girl the whole time. He reached out, touched only stone, then swung back to face the agent, who came towards him in a rush. Swann struck, hitting up, felt the knife strike bone. Something swished past his face, missing, and he struck again. The agent gasped and fell away from him, landing hard on the stone.

Swann lifted the blade to stab again and heard the tinkle of chain just fractionally before he felt Aural's hands grasping at him, locating him, then clawing upwards towards his face.

He turned his head, flew at her with his elbow, then kicked her legs.

She cried out in pain but kept after him until he clubbed her with his fist, hitting her several times, then kicking her off balance until she fell. Swann turned back to the agent, feeling for her with his foot on the rocky floor. She tried to scrabble away from him but he had her now.

He knelt and lifted the knife.

There was a sound, more of a sense, of something rushing at him very fast, and Swann turned and lashed out wildly with the knife, trying to fend it off. The knife caught flesh, ripped, and he heard a grunt as the momentum of the thing took it roaring past him.

Swann snapped on his headlamp and saw Becker, who had raced several yards past, turn and blink at the light.

A gash of blood was welling up across his forehead. In the instant Swann also took in the woman agent who was lying beneath him, her arms crossed to ward off another blow, and Aural, also down, a few feet to one side.

For a second, everything seemed frozen in time, then Becker came up on all fours, snarling. Swann screamed and ran towards the tunnel.

In the receding light of Swann's headlamp, Becker knelt beside Pegeen, his hands searching for her wounds.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Get him," Pegeen said.

Becker put a flashlight in her hand. Swann had reached the tunnel; the light all but disappeared as it burrowed into the long hole in the night.

"You'll need it," Pegeen said, pushing the flashlight back.

"No, I won't," Becker said and he rose and ran towards the point of light still coming from the tunnel. Pegeen followed him with her flashlight beam and saw him dive into the darkness of the rock before she turned the light back on herself and the young woman next to her.

Aural was sitting up and staring with amazement.

"Damn," she said.

"Are you all right?" Pegeen asked, wondering at the same time if she was all right herself. She had been stabbed in the hip and the armpit, she realized, but neither blow would kill her.

"Honey," Aural said, "I ain't felt this good in weeks.

Who was that?"

"A federal agent."

"Is he going to catch him?"

"Oh, yes," Pegeen said. "He'll catch him."

"Will he kill him?"

Pegeen let the question hang although she thought the answer was yes.

"Sure looked like he was going to kill him," Aural continued. "Prettiest sight I ever saw."

Pegeen hitched her way across the surface towards Aural, testing the extent of her injuries.

"You're all right. You're safe now," Pegeen said.

Pegeen played the light down onto Aural's legs and gasped. Aural began to laugh and continued, unable to stop herself, and peal after peal of released hysteria echoed through the cavern.

Swann knew that Becker was behind him, but there was nothing he could do. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around; there was no way to bring the knife into play.

Every once in a while Becker would grab at Swann's foot and Swann would gasp and crawl with renewed panic.

Becker would laugh.

"Don't look back," Becker taunted. "Something's behind you."

Swann would burst forward with increased effort, and then when he slowed again, giving in to exhaustion, Becker's voice would whisper at him again like a parent teasing a child. "Going to… get you," he would say, then touch Swann on the foot.

As Swann jerked forward desperately, Becker's laughter filled the tunnel, so loud Swann could feel it pressing on him.

When they finally emerged into the bat chamber, Swann stumbled towards the mat of guano, then turned, slashing with the knife, but Becker was standing well back, out of range of the weapon, mocking Swann's futile attempts with a cruel grin.

"Go %away!" Swann cried, his voice cracking with tears. "Go away!"

Becker grinned, waiting.

Swann slashed the air again, lunging forward, and Becker glided away like a gymnast, at ease, enjoying the exercise.:'I'll kill you," Swann said.

'Do you think so?" He sounded calm, genuinely interested. "Or will I kill you?"

The blood from Becker's wound ran down the side of his face, giving his features a ghoulish cast in the yellow light of the lamp.

Swann didn't understand why Becker didn't attack. He could take away the knife in an instant, they both knew it.:'What do you want?" he demanded.

"There's no rush," Becker said. "It will all come clear to you in time."

Swann realized then that Becker would kill him, wanted to kill him, and was savoring the anticipation.

"I surrender," Swann said.

Becker only grinned and shook his head.

"I give up," Swann insisted. He threw the knife into the guano.

"Not an option," said Becker.

"you're an FBI agent. I give myself up to you. You have to take me into custody."

Becker's eyes danced with pleasure. Swann began to whimper.

"What do you want?" he cried.

"What did you want, Swann? What did you come down here for?":'Please," Swann begged. "Please." 'You said I had a reputation, remember? That's the reason you got in touch with me, that's the reason you pulled me into this in the first place. What did I have a reputation for, Swann?"

"They said you were-"

"What? They said I was what? Don't say 'fair,' nobody told you I was fair. What did they really say about me, Swann?"

"They said you were… worse."

"Worse?"

"Worse than they were."

"Worse than they were? Worse than the psychos like you? Well, if I were, they wouldn't be able to tell you, would they? They'd be dead.

But they weren't all dead, were they?"

Swann inched back towards the path through the guano.

"Were they?" Becker screamed. The bats roused at the noise and sent forth a squeal of their own. Several clumps and clusters broke loose from their roosts and swooped in panicked flight around the chamber before replanting themselves among the others.

Swann bent, cringing from the bats.

"No, they weren't all dead," he whimpered, trying to placate Becker with his voice.

"No," said Becker. "I didn't kill all of them. Just some of them…

Some dead; some not dead… Which one are you, Swann?"

"Not dead. Not dead."

"I warned you, Swann. I told you I never wanted to hear about you again … but here you are." Becker grinned wolfishly. He spoke in a taunting singsong. "Here we are together. Alone at last."

Becker slowly turned his palms upward, flexing his fingers. "Aren't you glad you brought me out of retirement?"

"Sweet Jesus," Swann prayed. "Put mercy in his heart."

Becker stepped towards Swann. "Are you ready?" His voice was a whisper.

Swann turned and ran towards the path in the guano.

He was several yards in before Becker hit him, lifting him with the force of the assault and plunging him face first into the shit. Swann struggled but Becker forced him down and down, his weight on Swann's back, his hands pushing his face deeper and deeper into the ooze.

Swann struggled because his body demanded it but his mind knew he was already dead. At the end he thought he was back in his cell with Cooper, the giant's body forcing itself upon him.

Pegeen found Becker sitting on the floor of the bat chamber with Swann's body lying at his feet. Pegeen had seen her cat look like that, a dead bird between its paws, looking to her for approval and feeling proud of itself.

As Aural crawled out of the golf sack in which Pegeen had dragged her through the tunnel, the dead bird twitched-Swann groaned and shifted his leg.

"I thought he was dead," said Pegeen.

"So did he," said Becker.

Aural struggled to her feet and looked down at Swann's prostrate form.

"Thought sure you'd kill him," she said to Becker, disappointed.

Becker shrugged. "Thought I would, too. If he would have died a little easier, I guess I would have."

"Are you all right?" Pegeen asked.

Becker grinned and in the light of the flashlight Pegeen could see that his spirits had lifted and his mood had changed completely. Where during the past several days he had been a man sunk into the darkness of his soul, he was now boyish, charming, a man at peace with himself For how long? she wondered. When will he turn into the werewolf again? What will trigger it? Will there be a warning? Thank God, she thought, surprising herself with the sudden understanding and relief she felt, thank God I won't be with him to find out. He says he loves Deputy Assistant Director Crist? Let her deal with him, and she has my sympathy.

As Pegeen and Becker conferred about the best way to get both Aural and Swann above ground, they heard a sudden whoosh of energy behind them. A brilliant light flared up in the cavern and they turned to see Swann ablaze. Aural stood over him, the can of lighter fluid still in one hand, the cigarette lighter in the other.

Pegeen moved forward to extinguish the flames, but Becker grabbed her and held her back.

"You'll only burn yourself," he said, his voice whispering in her ear.

Pegeen struggled until she noticed the look on Aural's face. The tortured woman regarded the fire at her feet with the beatific smile of a saint. Aural's lips moved, and it took Pegeen a moment to realize that she was singing, her voice barely audible over the roar of the flames and the squeals of the bats.

Karen watched the press conference on television. Both Hatcher and Congressman Beggs were in top form, each deferring to the other, each sharing credit magnanimously with the dedicated men and women of law enforcement in general and the Bureau in particular, yet each managing to make himself appear the true hero of the hour. It was a masterful performance in Washington hypocrisy, simultaneously humble and self-serving. Karen had only a superficial interest in Beggs, but she kept a canny eye on Hatcher's demeanor. He held for her the same disgusted fascination she might have for a snake slithering up a greased flagpole. The man's ability to climb, no matter what the obstacle, was extraordinary. She sensed with suppressed horror that she was looking at the next Deputy Director of the FBI, the man just below the political appointee, the man who ran the show.

The two men gave a compressed and sanitized version of the case. Karen had already read the immediate action reports as well. They had been faxed to her the night before. She knew everything there was to know about the case-except the truth, and she could only get that from Becker.

Becker arrived back in Clamden after a day-long session with Dr. Gold, who had ultimately thrown his hands in the air, despairing of any real progress. "I can't do anything for you by myself, John, you have to cooperate.

You have to want to get at the root of it yourself."

Becker had grinned in a way that made Gold uncomfortable. "I don't want to root it out," he said. "I've decided to keep it."

"Despite all the pain it causes you?"

"The pain comes from trying to repress it."

"That's not true, John. You know it's not."

Becker had continued to grin at him. "Well, you know best, Doc. It says so right on your diploma."

Gold sighed. Becker had always been difficult, too smart for jargon, too perceptive for banalities, and completely lacking in the respectful awe so necessary in the doctor-patient relationship. They had become, after years of contention, grudging friends, affectionate adversaries.

Gold had not cured him and knew he could not and, worse, realized that Becker knew the same. Some conditions were not curable; they could only be contained, and then only at a very high price. Gold feared that Becker was weary of paying the price.

"So what do we do?" Gold asked. "Will you come for more sessions?"

"Do you see any point in it?" Becker asked.

Gold hesitated. There was no point in lying, not to Becker, there was no hope of fooling him.

"I hope you'll keep coming," he said.

"We'll see," Becker said, rising. "Don't look so glum, Doc. There's one good side to this."

"And what's that?"

"Hatcher will be so pleased."

Becker and Karen made love before they discussed anything, each trying to rediscover in the other the passion, the magic attraction that had brought them together in the first place. It had never resided just in their bodies, of course, but that is where they looked for it.

"How was it?" Karen asked when they had lain quietly in the dark for several minutes, each lost in his or her own thoughts.

"You read the reports," Becker said.

"But how was it, John? Are you all right?"

"Fine," he said. "No problem."

"How did you… was it as bad as you thought it would be?"

Becker was silent.

"I'm out of Serial," Karen said. "Hatcher put me back into Kidnapping this morning."

Becker turned to look at her.

"You okay with that?" he asked.

She touched his cheek. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

Karen smiled. "Do you really think I don't know what you're up to or why you do the things you do?"

"You do, do you?"

"I know all about you," Karen said, smiling.

Becker grinned. "You think you know all about me?"

"I know what I want to know about," Karen said.

"And if I don't want to know, I don't ask."

How wise, Becker thought. How lucky I am.

He took her in his arms again and held her wordlessly, his embrace asking for forgiveness at the same time that it expressed his gratitude.

"I'm coming back to work," he said finally.

"You don't have to," she said.

"Yes, I do. I can't keep fighting it-I'm too tired."

But Becker did not feel tired. By giving up his resistance to the pull of his desires, he had unleashed great energy within himself. He felt liberated and invigorated. By submitting to his nature, he had freed himself, he thought. A wolf is a wolf, and cannot be happy as a domestic dog.

"Will you be all right?"

Becker pulled her tighter in his arms, fighting an urge to howl. "I think I can handle it," he said.