The Servants of Twilight

PART TWO: THE ATTACK

Wine & Dine was located in an attractive, upscale, brick-and timber shopping center, half a block from Newport Beach's yacht harbor. Even on a Monday, the shop was busy, with a steady flow of customers through the imported foods section and almost as many in the wine department. At any one time there were at least two or three people browsing in the cookware department, inspecting the pots and pans, imported ice cream machines, food processors, and other kitchen tools. During the afternoon, in addition to food and wine and small culinary implements, Christine and Val and their clerk, Tammy, sold two top-of-the-line pasta makers, an expensive set of cutlery, one Cuisinart, a beautiful copper buffet warmer with three serving compartments, and anornate copper and brass cappuccino machine that was priced at nine hundred dollars.

Although the shop had done uncannily well almost from the day they had opened the doors, and although it had actually become profitable in the third week of operation (an unheard-of situation for a new business), Christine was still surprised and delighted every day that the cash register kept ringing. Six and a half years of dependable profitability had still not made her blas6 about success.

The hustle and bustle of Wine & Dine made Monday afternoon pass a lot faster than she had thought possible when, reluctantly, she had left Joey with Charlie Harrison. The crazy old woman was in the back of her mind, of course. Several times she thought of Brandy's decapitated corpse on the back porch, and she felt weak and dry-mouthed for a few minutes. And Henry Rankin was ever-present, helping bag purchases, putting price tags on some new merchandise, assisting them wherever he could, pretending to be an employee, but surreptitiously keeping an eye on the customers, prepared to tackle one of them if Christine appeared to be threatened. Nevertheless, in spite of the bloody images of the dog that haunted her, and in spite of the constant reminder of danger that Henry's presence provoked, the hours flitted past, and it was a relief to be kept busy.

Val Gardner was a help, too. With some misgivings, Christine had told her the situation, although she had expected Val to pester her with questions all day long and drive her half crazy by five o'clock. Val seemed to thrive on the smallest adversity, claiming to be "traumatized" by even such minor setbacks as a leaky bathroom faucet or a run in her stockings. Val found drama and even tragedy in a head cold or a broken fingernail, but she was never really upset or depressed by any of the little twists of fate that brought on her histrionics; she just enjoyed being the heroine of her own soap opera, dramatizing her life, making it more colorful for herself. And if she was temporarily without a trauma to brighten her day, she could make do with the problems of her friends, taking them upon herself as if she were a combination of Dear Abby and Atlas with the world on her shoulders. But she was a well-meaning woman, with a good sense of humor, honest, hardworking. And now, somewhat to Christine's surprise, Val was sensitive enough to avoid dwelling on the crazy woman and the threats on Joey's life; she held her tongue even though she must have been eaten up by a thousand nibbling questions.

At five o'clock, Charlie Harrison showed up with Joey and two guys who looked as if they were on their way to a casting call for a new Hercules movie. They were the bodyguards who would be on duty until another team replaced them at midnight.

The first was Pete Lockburn, who was six-three, with curly blond hair, a solemn face, and watchful eyes. The shoulders of his suit jacket looked as if they were padded out with a couple of railroad ties, but it was only Pete himself under there. The other was Frank Reuther, a black man, every bit as formidable as Lockburn, handsome, with the biggest hands Christine had ever seen. Both Lockburn and Reuther were neatly dressed in suits and ties, and both were soft-spoken and polite, yet you would somehow never mistake them for Baptist ministers or advertising account executives. They looked as if they wrestled grizzly bears and broke full-grown oak trees in half just to keep in shape.

Val stared at them, amazed, and a new look of concern took possession of her face when she turned to Christine." Oh, Chris, baby, listen, I guess maybe it didn't really hit me until your army here showed up. I mean, this is really serious, isn't it?"

"Really serious," Christine agreed.

The two men Grace chose for the mission were Pat O'Hara and Kevin Baumberg. O'Hara was a twenty-four-year-old Irishman, husky, slightly overweight, a convert from Catholicism. Baumberg was a short, stocky man with a thick black beard. He had walked away from a lifetime of Judaism-as well as from a family and a prosperous jewelry store-to help Mother Grace prepare the world for Twilight, the coming of the Antichrist. She selected them for the assassination attempt because they symbolized two important things: the universal appeal of her message, and the brotherhood of all good men, which was the only power that had a chance of delaying or preventing the end of the world.

A few minutes after five o'clock, O'Hara and Baumberg carried a couple of laundry bags out of the church basement in Anaheim. They climbed a set of concrete steps into a macadam parking lot.

The early winter night, sailing across the sky like a vast black armada, had already driven most of the light toward the western horizon. A few threatening clouds had come in from the sea, and the air was cool and damp.

O'Hara and Baumberg put the laundry bags into the trunk of a white Chrysler sedan that belonged to the church. The bags contained two shotguns, two revolvers, and ammunition that had been blessed by Mother Grace.

Tense, frightened, preoccupied with thoughts of mortality, neither man felt like talking. In silence, they drove out of the parking lot and into the street, where a newborn wind suddenly stirred the curbside trees and blew dry leaves along the gutters.

As Tammy dealt with the last customers of the day, Charlie said to Christine, "Any problems? Anybody cause any trouble?"

"No. It was peaceful."

Henry Rankin said, "What did you dig up on The True Word? "

"It'll take too long to tell you," Charlie said." I want to take Christine and Joey home, make sure their house is secure, get them settled in for the night. But I brought your car. It's outside, and on the front seat there's a copy of the file to date. You can read it later and get caught up."

"You need me any more tonight?" Henry asked.

"Nope," Charlie said.

And Joey said, "Mom, come on. Come out to the car. I want to show you something really neat."

"In a second, honey."

Although both Lockburn and Reuther were, at least physically, the kind of men about whom most women fantasized, Val Gardner hardly gave either of them a second glance. She zeroed in on Charlie as soon as he was finished talking to Henry Rankin, and she turned up her charm until it was as hot as a gas flame.

"I've always wanted to meet a detective," Val said breathlessly." It must be such an exciting life."

"Actually, it's usually boring," Charlie said." Most of our work is research or stakeout, hour after gutters.hour of boredom."

"But once in a while. " Val said teasingly.

"Well, sure, now and then there's some fireworks."

"I'll bet those are the moments you live for," Val said.

"No one looks forward to being shot at or punched in the face by the husband in a nasty divorce case."

"You're just being modest," Val said, shaking a finger at him, winking as cute as she knew how.

And she sure knows how, Christine thought. Val was an extremely attractive woman, with auburn hair, luminous green eyes, and a striking figure. Christine envied her lush good looks.

Although a few men had told Christine that she was beautiful, she never really believed those who paid the compliment. She had never been attractive in her mother's eyes; in fact, her mother had referred to her as a "plain" child, and although she knew her mother's standards were absurdly high and that her mother's opinions were not always rational or fair, Christine still had an image of herself as a somewhat pretty woman, in the most modest sense, more suited to being a nun than a siren. Sometimes, when Val was dressed in her finest and being coquettish, Christine felt like a boy beside her.

To Charlie, Val said, "I'll bet you're the kind of man who needs a little danger in his life to spice it up, the kind of man who knows how to deal with danger."

" You're romanticizing me, I'm afraid," Charlie said.

But Christine could see that he enjoyed Val's attentions.

Joey said, "Mom, please, come on. Come out to the car. We got a dog. A real beauty. Come see him."

"From the pound?" Christine asked Charlie, cutting in on Val's game.

"Yeah," he said." I tried to get Joey to go for a hundredand-forty-pound mastiff named Killer, but he wouldn't listen to me."

Christine grinned.

"Come on and see him, Mom," Joey said." Please." He took her hand and pulled on it, urging her toward the door.

"Do you mind closing up by yourself, Val?" Christine asked.

"I'm not by myself. I've got Tammy," Val said." You go on home." She looked wistfully at Charlie, obviously wishing she had more time to work on him. Then, to Christine: "And if you don't want to come in tomorrow, don't worry about it."

"Oh," Christine said, "I'll be here. It'll help the day pass.

I'd have gone crazy if I hadn't been able to work this afternoon."

"Nice meeting you," Charlie said to Val.

"Hope to see you again," she said, giving him a hundredkilowatt smile.

Pete Lockburn and Frank Reuther left the shop first, surveying the promenade in front of the rows of stores, suspiciously studying the parking lot. Christine was self-conscious in their company. She didn't think of herself as important enough to need bodyguards. The presence of these two hired guns made her feel awkward and strangely pretentious, as if she were putting on airs.

Outside, the sky to the east was black. Overhead, it was deep blue. To the west, over the ocean, there was a gaudy orangeyellow-red-maroon sunset back-lighting an ominous bank of advancing storm clouds. Although the day had been warm for February, the air was already chilly. Later, it would be downright cold. In California, a warm winter day was not an infrequent gift of nature, but nature's generosity seldom extended to the winter nights.

A dark green Chevrolet, a Klemet-Harrison company car, was parked next to Christine's Firebird. There was a dog in the back seat, peering out the window at them, and when Christine saw it her breath caught in her throat.

It was Brandy. For a second or two, she stood in shock, unable to believe her eyes. Then she realized it wasn't Brandy, of course, but another golden retriever virtually the same size and age and coloration as Brandy.

Joey ran ahead and pulled open the door, and the dog leaped out, emitting one short, deep, happy-sounding bark. He sniffed at the boy's legs and then jumped up, putting paws on his shoulders, almost knocking him to the ground.

Joey laughed, ruffled the dog's fur." Isn't he neat, Mom? Isn't he something?"

She looked at Charlie, whose grin was almost as big as Joey's.

Still thirty feet away from the boy, out of his hearing, she spoke softly, with evident irritation: "Don't you think some other breed would've been a better choice?"

Charlie seemed baffled by her accusatory tone." You mean it's too big?

Joey told me it was the same size as the dog.

you lost."

"Not only the same size. It's the same dog."

"You mean Brandy was a golden retriever?"

"Didn't I tell you?"

"You never mentioned the breed."

"Oh. Well, didn't Joey mention it?"

"He never said a word."

"This dog's an exact double for Brandy," Christine said worriedly." I don't know if that's such a good idea-psychologically, I mean."

Turning to them, holding the retriever by its collar, Joey confinned her intuition when he said, "Mom, you know what I'm gonna call him? Brandy!

Brandy the Second!"

"I see what you mean," Charlie said to Christine.

"He's trying to deny that Brandy was ever killed," she said, "and that's not healthy."

As the parking lot's sodium-vapor lamps came on, casting yellowish light into the deepening twilight, she went to her son and stooped beside him.

The dog snuffled at her, checking her out, cocked its head, looked at her as if it was trying to figure how she fit in, and finally put one paw on her leg, as if seeking her assurance that she would love it as much as its new young master did.

Sensing that she was already too late to take the dog back and get another breed, unhappily aware that Joey was already attached to the animal, she decided at least to stop him from calling the dog Brandy."

Honey, I think itd be a good idea to come up with another name."

"I like Brandy," he said.

"But using that name again it's like an insult to the first Brandy."

"It is?"

"Like you're trying to forget our Brandy."

"No!" he said fiercely." I couldn't ever forget." Tears came to his eyes again.

"This dog should have his own name," she insisted gently.

"I really like the name Brandy."

"Come on. Think of another name."

"Well. "

"How about. Prince.

"Yuck. But maybe. Randy.

She frowned and shook her head." No, honey. Think of something else.

Something totally different. How about.

something from Star Wars? Wouldn't it be neat to have a dog named Chewbacca?"

His face brightened." Yeah! Chewbacca! Thatd be great."

As if it had understood every word, as if voicing approval, the dog barked once and licked Christine's hand.

Charlie said, "Okay, let's put Chewbacca in your Firebird. I want to get out of here. You and Joey and I will ride in the Chevy, and Frank will drive. Pete'll follow us in your car, with Chewbacca. And by the way, we still have company."

Christine looked in the direction that Charlie indicated. The white van was at the far end of the parking lot, half in the yellowish light from the tall lampposts, half in shadow. The driver wasn't visible beyond the black windshield, but she knew he was in there, watching.

Night had fallen.

The storm clouds were still rolling in from the west. They were blacker than the night itself. They rapidly blotted out the stars.

In the white Chrysler, O'Hara and Baumberg cruised slowly, studying the well-maintained, expensive houses on both sides of the street. O'Hara was driving, and his hands kept slipping on the steering wheel because he was plagued by a cold sweat. He knew he was an agent of God in this matter because Mother Grace had told him so. He knew that what he was doing was good and right and absolutely necessary, but he still couldn't picture himself as an assassin, holy or otherwise. He knew that Baumberg felt the same way because the ex-jeweler was breathing too fast for a man who hadn't yet exerted himself. The few times that Baumberg had spoken, his voice had been shaky and higher-pitched than usual.

They weren't having doubts about their mission or about Mother Grace.

Both of them had a deep and abiding faith in the old woman. Both of them would do what they were told. O'Hara knew the boy must die, and he knew why, and he believed in the reason. Murdering this particular child did not disturb him.

He knew Baumberg felt the same way. They were sweat-damp and nervous merely because they were scared.

Along the tree-shrouded street, several houses were dark, and one of those might serve their purpose. But it was early in the evening, and a lot of people were still on their way back from work. O'Hara and Baumberg didn't want to select a house, break in, and then be discovered and perhaps trapped by some guy coming home with a briefcase in one hand and Chinese take-out in the other.

O'Hara was prepared to kill the boy and the boy's mother and any bodyguards hired to protect the boy, for all of them were in the service of Lucifer. Grace had convinced him of that. But O'Hara wasn't prepared to kill just any innocent bystander who happened to get in his way. Therefore, they would have to choose the house carefully.

What they were looking for was a place where a few days' worth of newspapers were piled up on the porch, or where the mailbox was overflowing, or where there was some other sign that the occupants were away from home. It had to be in this block, and they probably wouldn't find what they were looking for. In that case they'd have to shift to another plan of attack.

They had almost reached the north end of the block when Baumberg said,

"There. What about that place?"

It was a two-story Spanish house, light beige stucco with a tile roof, half hidden by large trees, banks of veronica, and rows of azaleas. The streetlight shone on a real estate company's sign that stood on the lawn, near the sidewalk. The house was for sale, and no lights glowed in any of its rooms.

"Maybe it's unoccupied," Baumberg said.

"No such luck," O'Hara said.

"It's worth taking a look."

"I guess so."

O'Hara drove to the next block and parked at the curb. Carrying an airline flight bag that he had packed at the church, he got out of the car, accompanied Baumberg to the Spanish house, hurried up a walkway bordered by flourishing begonias, and stopped at a gated atrium entrance. Here they were in deep shadow. O'Hara was confident they wouldn't be spotted from the street.

A cold wind soughed in the branches of the benjaminas and rustled the shiny-leafed veronicas, and it seemed to O'Hara that the night itself was watching them with hostile intent. Could it be that some demonic entity had followed them and was with them now, at home in these shadows, an emissary of Satan, waiting to catch them off guard and tear them to pieces?

Mother Grace had said Satan would do anything he could to wreck their mission. Grace saw these things. Grace knew. Grace spoke the truth.

Grace was the truth.

His heart hammering, Pat O'Hara gazed blindly into the most impenetrable pockets of darkness, expecting to catch a glimpse of some lurking monstrosity. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Baumberg stepped away from the wrought-iron atrium gate, onto the lawn, then into a planting bed filled with azaleas and dark-leafed begonias that, in the gloom, appeared to be utterly black. He peered in a window and said softly, "No drapes.

and I don't think there's any furniture, either."

O'Hara went to another window, put his face to the pane, squinted, and found the same signs of vacancy.

"Bingo," Baumberg said.

They had found what they were looking for.

At the side of the house, the entrance to the rear lawn was also gated, but that gate wasn't locked. As Baumberg pushed it open, the wrought-iron barrier squealed on unoiled hinges.

"I'll go back to the car and get the laundry bags," Baumberg said, and he slipped away through the night's black curtains.

O'Hara didn't think it was a good idea to split up, but Baumberg was gone before he could protest. Alone, it was more difficult to hold fear at bay, and fear was the food of the devil. Fear drew the Beast. O'Hara looked around at the throbbing darkness and told himself to remember that his faith was his armor. Nothing could harm him as long as he trusted the armor of his belief in Grace and God. But it wasn't easy.

Sometimes he longed for the days before his conversion, when he hadn't known about the approach of Twilight, when he hadn't realized that Satan was loose upon the earth and that the Antichrist had been born. He had been blissfully ignorant. The only things he had feared were cops, doing time in prison, and cancer because cancer had, killed his old man. Now he was afraid of everything between sunset and dawn, for it was in the dark hours that evil was boldest. These days, his life was shaped by fear, and at times the burden of Mother Grace's truth was almost too much to bear.

Still carrying the airline flight bag, O'Hara continued to the rear of the house, deciding not to wait for Baumberg. He'd show the devil that he was not intimidated.

Joey wanted to ride up front with Pete Lockburn, to whom he chattered ceaselessly and enthusiastically all the way home.

Christine sat in back with Charlie, who occasionally turned to look through the rear window. Frank Reuther followed in Christine's Pontiac Firebird, and a few cars back of Reuther, the white van continued to trail them, easily identified even at night because one of its headlights was slightly brighter than the other.

Charlie said, "I can't figure that guy out. Is he so dumb he thinks we don't notice him? Does he really think he's being discreet?"

"Maybe he doesn't care if we see him," Christine said." They seem so.

arrogant."

Charlie turned away from the rear window and sighed." You're probably right."

"What've you found out about the printing company-The True Word?"

Christine asked.

"Like I suspected, The True Word prints religious materialbooklets, pamphlets, tracts of all kinds. It's owned by the Church of the Twilight."

"Never heard of them," Christine said." Some crackpot cult?"

"As far as I'm concerned, yeah. Totally fruitcake."

"Mustn't be a big group, or I'd probably have heard of them."

"Not big, but rich," Charlie said." Maybe a thousand of them."

" Dangerous?"

"They haven't been involved in any big trouble. But the potential is there, the fanaticism. We've had a run-in with them on behalf of another client. About seven months ago. This guy's wife ran off, joined the cult, took their two kids with her-a three- and a four-year-old. These twilight weirdos wouldn't tell him where his wife was, wouldn't let him see his kids. The police weren't too much help.

Never are in these cases. Everyone's so worried about treading on religious liberties. Besides, the kids hadn't been kidnapped; they were with their mother. A mother can take her kids anywhere she pleases, as long as she's not violating a custody agreement in a divorce situation, which wasn't the case here. Anyway, we found the kids, snatched them away, returned them to the father. We couldn't do anything about the wife. She was staying with the cult voluntarily."

"They live communally? Like those people at Jonestown a few years ago?"

"Some of them do. Others have their own homes and apartments-but only if Mother Grace allows them that privilege."

" Who's Mother Grace'?"

He opened a briefcase, took an envelope and a penlight from it. He handed her the envelope, switched on the light, and said, "Have a look."

The envelope contained an eight-by-ten glossy. It was a picture of the old woman who had harassed them in the parking lot.

Even in a black-and-white photograph, even in two dimensions, the old woman's eyes were scary; there was a mad gleam in them. Christine shivered.

Along the back of the house were windows to the dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook, and family room. A pair of French doors led into the family room. O'Hara tried them, even though he was sure they'd be locked; they were.

The patio was bare. No flowerpots. No lawn furniture. The swimming pool had been drained, perhaps for repainting.

Standing by the French doors, O'Hara looked at the house to the north of this one. A six-foot cinder block wall separated this property from the next; therefore, he could see only the second story of that other house.

It was dark. To the south, beyond another wall, the second story of another house was visible, but this one was filled with light. At least no one was looking out any of the windows.

The rear of the property was walled, also, but the house in that direction was evidently a single-story model, for it couldn't be seen from the patio on which O'Hara stood.

He took a flashlight from the airline flight bag and used it to examine the panes of glass in the French doors and in one of the windows. He moved quickly, afraid of being seen. He was looking for wires, conductive alarm tape, and photo-electric cells-anything that would indicate the house was equipped with a burglar alarm. It was the kind of neighborhood where about a third of the houses would be wired. He found no indication that this place was part of that one-third.

He switched the flashlight off, fumbled in the flight bag, and withdrew a compact, battery-powered electronic device the size of a small transistor radio. An eighteen-inch length of wire extended from one end of it, terminating in a suction cup as large as the lid of a mayonnaise jar. He fixed the suction cup to a pane in one of the French doors.

Again, he had the creepy feeling that something dangerous was moving in on him, and a chill quivered down his spine as he turned to peer into the shadow-draped rear yard. The wind clattered through the thick, somewhat brittle leaves of a huge ficus, hissed in the fronds of two palms, and caused smaller shrubs to sway and flutter as if they were alive. But it was the empty swimming pool that drew O'Hara's attention and became the focus of his fear. He suddenly got the idea that something large and hideous was hiding in the pool, crouched down in that concrete pit, listening to him, waiting for the opportune moment in which to make its move. Something that had coalesced out of the darkness. Something that had risen up from the pits of Hell.

Something sent to stop them from killing the boy. Underlying the myriad sounds produced by the wind, he thought he could hear a sinister, wet, slithering sound coming from the pool, and he was suddenly cold clear through to his bones.

Baumberg returned with the two laundry bags, startling O'Hara.

"Do you feel it, too?" Baumberg asked.

"Yes," O'Hara said.

"It's out there. The Beast himself Or one of his messengers."

"In the pool," O'Hara said.

Baumberg stared at the black pit in the center of the lawn.

Finally he nodded." Yeah. I feel it. Down there in the pool."

It can only hurt us if we begin to doubt Mother Grace's power to protect us, O'Hara told himself. It can only stop us if we lose our faith or if we let our fear of it overwhelm us.

That was what Mother Grace had told them.

Mother Grace was never wrong.

O'Hara turned to the French doors again. The suction cup was still firmly affixed to one of the panes. He switched on the small device to which the suction cup was connected, and a glass-covered dial lit up in the center of the instrument case.

The device was a sonic-wave detector that would tell them if the house was equipped with a wireless alarm system that protected the premises by detecting motion. The lighted dial did not move, which meant there was no radio wave activity of any kind within the family room, beyond the French doors.

Before Mother Grace had converted him, O'Hara had been a busy and professional burglar, and he had been damned good at his trade. Because Grace had a propensity for seeking converts from among those who had fallen the furthest from God, the Church of the Twilight could tap a wealth of skills and knowledge not available to the average church whose members were from the law-abiding segments of the population. Sometimes that was a blessing.

He popped the suction cup off the glass, switched off the wave detector, and returned it to the flight bag. He withdrew a roll of strapping tape and a pair of scissors. He cut several strips of tape and applied them to the pane of glass nearest the door handle. When the glass was completely covered, he struck it hard with one fist. The pane shattered, but with little sound, and the fragments all stuck to the tape. He pulled the pieces out of the frame, put them aside, reached through, fumbled for the deadbolt, unlocked it, opened the door.

He was now pretty sure there was no alarm, but he had one last thing to check for. He got down on his knees on the patio, reached across the threshold, and pulled up the carpet from the tack strip. There was no alarm mat under the carpet, just ordinary quilted padding.

He put the carpet back in place. He and Baumberg went into the house, taking the laundry bags and the flight bag with them.

O'Hara closed and locked the French doors.

He looked out at the rear lawn. It was peaceful now.

"It isn't out there any more," Baumberg said.

"No," O'Hara said.

Baumberg peered across the unlighted family room, into the breakfast area and the dark kitchen beyond. He said, "Now it's inside with us."

"Yes," O'Hara said. He had felt the hostile presence within the house the moment they'd crossed the threshold.

"I wish we could turn on some lights," Baumberg said uneasily.

"The house is supposed to be deserted. The neighborswould notice lights and maybe call the cops."

Overhead, from an upstairs room, a floorboard creaked.

Before converting to Mother Grace's faith, in the days when he had been a thief, stealing his way along the road to hell, O'Hara would have figured the creaking was merely a settling noise, one of the many meaningless sounds that an empty house produced as joints expanded and contracted in response to the humidity-or lack of it-in the air. But tonight he knew it was no settling sound.

O'Hara's old friends and some in his family said that he had become paranoid since joining the Church of the Twilight. They just didn't understand. His behavior seemed paranoid only because he had seen the truth as Mother Grace taught it, and his old friends and family had not been saved. His eyes had been opened; their eyes were still blind.

More creaking noise overhead.

"Our faith is a shield," Baumberg said shakily." We don't dare doubt that."

"Mother has provided us with armor," O'Hara said.

Creeeeeaaak.

"We're doing God's work," Baumberg said, challenging the darkness that filled the house.

O'Hara switched on the flashlight, shielding it with one hand to provide just enough light to guide them but not enough to be seen from outside.

Baumberg followed him to the stairs and up to the second floor.

"Her name's Grace Spivey," Charlie said as their car moved through the increasingly blustery February night.

Christine couldn't take her eyes from the photograph. The old woman's black-and-white gaze was strangely hypnotic, and a cold radiation seemed to emanate from it.

In the front seat, Joey was talking to Pete Lockburn about Steven Spielberg's E. T, which Joey had seen four times and which Lockburn seemed to have seen more often than that. Her son's voice sounded far away, as if he were on a distant mountain, already lost to her.

Charlie switched off the penlight.

Christine was relieved when shadow fell across the photograph, breaking the uncanny hold it had on her. She put it in the envelope, returned the envelope to Charlie." She's head of this cult?"

"She is the cult. It's primarily a personality cult. Her religious message isn't anything special or unique; the whole thing's in the way she delivers it. If anything happened to Grace, her followers would drift away and the church would probably collapse."

"How can a crazy old woman like that draw any followers?

She sure didn't seem charismatic to me."

"But she is," Charlie said." I've never spoken to her myself, but Henry Rankin has. He handled that case I mentioned, the two little kids whose mother took them with her into the cult.

And he told me Grace has a certain undeniable magnetism, a very forceful personality. And although her message isn't particularly new, it's dramatic and exciting, just the sort of thing that a certain type of person would respond to with enthusiasm."

" What is her message?"

"She says we're living in the last days of the world."

"Every religious crackpot from here to Maine has made that proclamation at one time or another."

"Of course."

"So there must be more to it. What else does she say?"

Charlie hesitated, and she sensed that he dreaded having to tell her the rest.

" Charlie?"

He sighed." Grace says the Antichrist has already been born."

"I've heard that one, too. There's one cult around that says the Antichrist is the King of Spain."

"That's a new one to me."

"Others say the Antichrist will be the man who takes over the Russian government after the current Premier."

"Sounds a bit more reasonable than laying it on the King of Spain."

"I wouldn't be surprised if there's a cult somewhere that thinks Burt Reynolds or Stephen King or Rodney Dangerfield is the Antichrist."

Charlie didn't smile at her little joke." We're living in weird times, " he said.

"We're approaching the end of a millennium," Christine said.

"For some reason, that brings all the nuts out of the trees. They say that, last time, when the year 1000 was approaching, there were all sorts of bizarre cults, decadence, and violence associated with people's fears of the end of the world. I guess it's going to be that way as we approach 2000. Hell, it's already started."

"It sure has," he said softly.

She perceived that he still hadn't told her everything Grace Spivey professed to believe. Even in the dim light that came through the car windows, she could see that he was deeply disturbed.

"Well?" she prodded him.

"Grace says we're in the Twilight, that period just before the son of Satan takes power over the earth and rules for a thousand years. How well do you know the Bible-especially the prophecies? "

"I was very familiar with it at one time," she said." But not any more.

In fact, I can't remember much of anything."

"Join the club. But from what I understand of Grace Spivey's preaching, the Bible says that the Antichrist will rule for a thousand years, bringing mankind indescribable suffering, after which the battle of Armageddon will transpire, and God will at last descend to destroy Satan forever. She says that God has given her one last chance to avoid the devil's thousand-year dominion.

She says He's ordered her to try to save mankind by organizing a church of righteous people who will stop the Antichrist before he reaches a position of power."

"If I didn't know there were people-fanatical and maybe dangerous people-who believed in this kind of nonsense, I'd find it amusing. And how do they think their little band of righteous people is going to combat the awesome power of Satanpresuming you believe in the awesome power of Satan in the first place?"

"Which I don't. But as far as I'm aware, their battle plans are a secret known only to those who've become members of the church. But I suspect I know what they've got in mind."

"And what's that?"

He hesitated. Then: "They intend to kill him."

"The Antichrist?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"I don't imagine they think it'll be easy."

"I should say not!" Christine said, smiling in spite of the situation."

What kind of devil would allow himself to be killed with ease? Anyway, the logic's inconsistent. The Antichrist would be a supernatural figure. Supematural beings can't be killed."

"I know that Roman Catholicism has a tradition of justifying points of doctrine through logical processes," Charlie said." St.

Thomas Aquinas and his writings, for instance. But these people we're dealing with are fringe types. Fanatics. Consistency of logic isn't something religious fanatics require of one another."

He sighed." Anyway, assuming that you believe in all this mythology as presented by the Bible-and as interpreted by Gracemaybe it isn't such lousy logic. After all, Jesus was supposed to have been a supernatural being, the son of God, yet He was killed by the Romans."

"That's different," she said." According to the Christ story, that was His mission, His purpose, His destiny-to allow Himself to be killed to save us from the worst consequences of our sins. Right? But I hardly think the Antichrist would be as altruistic."

"You're thinking logically again. If you want to understand Grace and the Church of the Twilight, you've got to put logic behind you."

" Okay. So who does she say is the Antichrist?"

"When we pulled those two little kids out of the cult," Charlie said,

"Grace still hadn't identified the Antichrist. She hadn't found him yet. But now I think perhaps she has."

"So? Who?" Christine asked, but before Charlie could respond, the answer hit her with the force of a sledgehammer blow.

Up front, Joey was still talking with Pete Lockbum, oblivious of the conversation between his mother and Charlie Harrison.

Nevertheless, Christine lowered her voice to a whisper." Joey?

My God, does that crazy woman think my little boy is the Antichrist? "

"I'd almost bet on it."

Christine could hear the old woman's hate-filled voice, rising from a dark pool of memory: He's got to die; he I got to die.

"But why him? Why Joey? Why didn't she fixate on some other child?"

"Maybe it's like you said: You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time," Charlie said." If some other woman with another child had been in the South Coast Plaza parking lot at that same time last Sunday, Grace would now be after another little boy instead of Joey."

Christine knew that he was probably right, but the thought dizzied her.

It was a stupid, cruel, malignant lunacy. What kind of world were they living in if an innocent shopping trip to the mall made them eligible for martyrdom?

"But. how do we ever stop her?" Christine asked.

"If she actually resorts to violence, we deflect it. If we can't deflect it, then. well, we blow her people away before they touch Joey. There's no question of legal responsibility. You've hired us to protect you, and we have legal sanction to resort to violent force, if that's necessary and unavoidable, to fulfill our obligation."

"No. I mean. how do we change her mind? How dd we get her to admit that Joey's just a little boy? How do we get her to go away?"

"I don't know. I would imagine a fanatic like this is about as single-minded as anyone can be. I don't think it would be easy to make her change her mind about anything, let alone anything as important to her as this."

"But you said she's got a thousand followers."

"Maybe even a few more than that by now."

"If she keeps sending them after Joey, we can't kill them all.

Sooner or later, one of them will get through our defenses."

"I'm not going to let this drag on," he assured her." I'm not going to give them a lot of chances to hurt Joey. I'll make Grace change her mind, back off, go away."

" How? "

"I don't know yet."

An image of the harpy in the parking lot returned to Christine-the windblown hair, the bulging eyes, the lint-specked and food-stained clothes-and she felt despair clutching at her.

"There's no way to change her mind."

"There's a way," Charlie insisted." I'll find it."

"She'll never stop."

"I have an appointment with an excellent psychologist in the morning.

Dr. Denton Boothe. He's especially interested in cult psychology. I'm going to discuss the case with him, give him our profile on Grace, ask him to work with us to find her weak spot.”

Christine didn't see much promise in that approach. But then she didn't see much promise in any approach.

Charlie took her hand as the car sped through the windy darkness." I won't let you down."

But for the first time she wondered if his promises were empty.

On the second floor of the empty house, O'Hara and Baumberg stood by the windows in the large master bedroom.

They still felt the menacing presence of an evil entity watching over them. They tried to ignore it, holding steadfast to their faith and to their determination to complete the task Mother Grace had given them.

Outside, the rear yard lay in darkness, scoured by a rising wind. From up here they could see into the swimming pool. No beast crouched within that concrete concavity. Not now. Now it was in the house with them.

Beyond this property was another Iawn and another house, a sprawling, one-story, ranch-style place with a shake-shingle roof and a swimming pool of its own. The pool held water and was lit from the bottom, a glimmering blue-green jewel in the shape of a kidney.

O'Hara had taken a pair of night binoculars from the flight bag at his feet. They made use of available light to produce an enhanced image of a dark landscape. Through them, he had a pretty good view of all the properties that butted up against the rear of the lots along this street. Those houses faced out onto another street, parallel to this one.

" Which is the Scavello place?" Baumberg asked.

O'Hara slowly turned to his right, looking farther north." Not the house behind this one. The next one, with the rectangular pool and the swings."

"I don't see any swings," Baumberg said.

O'Hara handed him the binoculars." To the left of the pool.

A child's swing set and a jungle gym."

"Just two doors away," Baumberg said.

"Yeah."

"No lights on."

"They aren't home yet."

"Maybe they won't come home."

"They'll come," O'Hara said.

"If they don't?"

"We'll go looking for them."

"Where'?"

"Wherever God sends us."

Baumberg nodded.

O'Hara opened one of the laundry bags and withdrew a shotgun.

As they turned into Christine's block and came within sight of her house, Charlie said, "See that camper?"

Across the street, a pickup truck was parked at the curb. A camper shell was attached to the bed of the truck. It was just an ordinary camper; she had noticed it but hadn't given it a second thought.

Suddenly it seemed sinister.

"Is that them, too?" she asked.

"No. That's us," Charlie said." I've got a man in there, keeping an eye on every vehicle that comes along the street. He's got a camera with infra-red film, so he can record license plate numbers even in the dark. He's also got a portable telephone, so he can call your place, the police, or get in touch with me in a hurry."

Pete Lockburn parked the green Chevy in front of the Scavello house, while Frank Reuther pulled Christine's Firebird into the driveway.

The white Ford van, which had been following them, passed by. They watched it in silence as its driver took it into the next block, found a parking space, and switched off its lights.

"Amateurs," Pete Lockburn said scornfully.

"Arrogant bastards," Christine said.

Reuther climbed out of the Firebird, leaving the dog in it, and came to their car.

As Charlie put down the window to talk to Frank, he asked Christine for her house keys. When she produced them from her purse, he gave them to Frank." Check the place out. Make sure nobody's waiting in there."

"Right," Frank said, unbuttoning his suit jacket to provide quick access to the weapon in his shoulder hoister. He headed up the walk to the front door.

Pete got out of the Chevy and stood beside it, surveying the night-shrouded street. He left his coat unbuttoned, too.

Joey said, "Is this where the bad guys show up?"

"Let's hope not, honey."

There were a lot of trees and not many streetlights, and Charlie began to feel uneasy about sitting here at the curb, so he got out of the Chevy, too, warning Christine and Joey to stay where they were. He stood at his side of the car, his back toward Pete Lockburn, taking responsibility for the approaches in his direction.

Occasionally a car swung around the corner, entered the block, drove past or turned into the driveway of another house. Each time he saw a new pair of headlights, Charlie tensed and put his right hand under his coat, on the butt of the revolver in his shoulder holster.

He was cold. He wished he'd brought an overcoat.

Sheet lightning pulsed dully in the western sky. A far-off peal of thunder made him think of the freight trains that had rumbled past the shabby little house in which he'd grown up, back in Indiana, in what now seemed like another century.

For some reason, those trains had never been a symbol of freedom and escape, as they might have been to other boys in his situation. To young Charlie, lying in his narrow bed in his narrow room, trying to forget his father's latest outburst of drunken violence, the sound of those trains had always reminded him that he lived on the wrong side of the tracks. The clatteringgrowling wheels had been the voice of poverty, the sound of need and fear and desperation.

He was surprised that this low thunder could bring back, with such disturbing clarity, the rumbling of those train wheels.

Equally surprising was that the memory of those trains could evoke childhood fears and recall to mind the feeling of being trapped that had been such an integral part of his youth.

In that regard, he had a lot in common with Christine. His childhood had been blighted by physical abuse, hers by psychological abuse. Both of them had lived under the fist, one literally, one figuratively, and as children they had felt trapped, claustrophobic.

He looked down at the side window of the Chevy, saw Joey peering out at him. He gave a thumbs-up sign. The boy returned it, grinning.

Having been a target of abuse as a boy, Charlie was especially sensitive to children who were victims of violence. Nothing made him angrier than adults who battered children. Crimes against defenseless children gave him a cold, greasy, sick feeling and filled him with a hatred and a bleak despair that nothing else could engender.

He would not let them harm Joey Scavello.

He would not fail the boy. He didn't dare fail because, having failed, he very likely wouldn't be able to live with himself.

It seemed quite a long time before Frank came back. He was still watchful but a bit more relaxed than when he'd gone inside.

"Clean, Mr. Harrison. I looked in the back yard, too. Nobody around"

They took Christine and Joey and Chewbacca inside, surrounding the woman and the boy as they moved, allowing no clear line of fire.

Christine had said that she was successful, but Charlie hadn't expected such a large, well-furnished house. The living room had a huge fireplace surrounded by a carved mantel and oak bookshelves extending to the corners. An enormous Chinese carpet provided the focus for a pleasing mix of Oriental and European antiques and antique reproductions of high quality. Along one wall was an eight-panel, hand-carved rosewood screen with a double triptych depicting a waterfall and bridge and ancient Japanese village, all rendered in intricately fitted pieces of soapstone.

Joey wanted to go to his room and play a game with his new dog, and Frank Reuther went with him.

At Charlie's suggestion, Pete Lockburn went through the house, from bottom to top and back again, checking to be sure all doors and windows were locked, shutting all the draperies, so no one could see inside.

Christine said, "I guess I'd better see what I can find for supper.

Probably hot dogs. That's the only thing I have plenty of."

"Don't bother," Charlie said." I've got a man bringing a lot of takeout at seven o'clock."

" You think of everything."

"Let's hope so."

O'Hara trained his binoculars on an upstairs window of the Scavello house, then on the next window, and the next, eventually scanning the first floor as well. Light shone in every room, but all the draperies were drawn tight.

"Maybe she came home but sent the boy somewhere else for the night,"

Baumberg said.

"The boy's there," O'Hara said.

"How do you know?"

"Can't You feel him over there?"

Baumberg squinted through the window.

"Feel him," O'Hara said in a hushed and frightened voice.

Baumberg groped for the awareness that had terrified his partner.

"The darkness," O'Hara said." Feel the special darkness of the boy, the terrible darkness that rolls off him like fog off the ocean." Baumberg strained his senses.

"The evil," O'Hara said, his voice reduced to a hoarse whisper." Feel it."

Baumberg placed his hands against the cool glass, pressed his forehead to it, stared intently at the Scavello house. After a while he did feel it, just like O'Hara said. The darkness. The evil. It poured forth from that house like atomic radiation from a block of plutonium.

It streamed through the night, through the glass in front of Baumberg, contaminating him, a malignant energy that produced no heat or light, that was bleak and black and frigid.

O'Hara abruptly lowered his binoculars, turned away from the window, put his back toward the Scavello house, as if the evil energy pouring from it was more than he could bear.

"It's time," Baumberg said, picking up a shotgun and arevolver.

"No," O'Hara said." Let them settle in. Let them relax. Give them a chance to lower their guard."

"When? "

"We'll leave here at. eight-thirty.

6:45 P. M.

Christine watched as Charlie unplugged the telephone in her study and replaced it with a device that he had brought with him. It looked like a cross between a phone, an answering machine, and a briefcase-sized electronic calculator.

Charlie picked up the receiver, and Christine could hear the dial tone even though she was a few feet away.

Replacing the handset in the cradle, he said, "If someone calls, we'll come in here to answer it."

" That'll record the conversation?"

"Yeah. But it's primarily a tracer phone. It's like the equipment the police have when you call their emergency number." 64911?"

"Yeah. When you call 911, they know what number and address you're calling from because, as soon as they pick up their receiver and establish a connection with you, that information prints out at their end." He indicated what looked like a short, blank length of adding machine tape that was sticking out of a slot in the device he'd put on her desk." We'll have the same information about anyone who phones here."

"So if this Grace Spivey calls, we'll not only have a recording of her voice, but we'll have proof the call was made on her phone-or one that belongs to her church."

"Yep. It probably wouldn't be admissible as court evidence, but it ought to help get the police interested if we can prove she's making threats against Joey."

7:00 P.m.

The take-out food arrived precisely on the hour, and Christine noticed that Charlie was quietly pleased by how prompt his man was.

The five of them ate at the dining room table-beef ribs, barbecued chicken, baked potatoes, and cole slaw-while Charlie told funny stories about cases his agency had handled. Joey listened, spellbound, even though he didn't always understand or appreciate the details of the anecdotes.

Christine watched her son watching Charlie. Mote poignantly than ever, she realized what the boy had been missing by not having a father or any other male authority figure to admire and from whom he could learn.

Chewbacca, the new dog, ate from a dish in the corner of the room, then stretched out and put his head down on his paws, waiting for Joey.

Obviously, he had belonged to a family that had cared for him and had trained him well. He was going to fit in quickly and easily. Christine was still disconcerted by his resemblance to Brandy, but she was beginning to think it would work out anyway.

At 7:20, the intermittent, distant sound of thunder suddenly grew louder. A blast split the night sky, and the windows rattled.

Startled, Christine dropped her fork. For an instant she thought a bomb had gone off outside the house. When she realized it was only thunder, she felt silly, but a glance at the others told her that they, too, had been briefly startled and frightened by the noise.

A few fat raindrops struck the roof, the windows.

At 7:35, Frank Reuther finished eating and left the table to make a complete circuit of the house, re-examining all the doors and windows that Pete had checked earlier.

A light but steady rain was falling.

At 7:47, finished eating, Joey challenged Pete Lockburn to a game of Old Maid, and Pete accepted. They went off to the boy's room, the dog padding friskily and eagerly behind them.

Frank pulled a chair up to one of the living room windows and studied the rain-swept street through a narrow chink in the draperies.

Charlie helped Christine gather up the paper plates and napkins, which they carried to the kitchen, where the sound of the rain was louder, booming off the patio cover at the back of the house.

"What now?" Christine asked, stuffing the plates into the garbage can.

"We get through the night."

"Then?"

"If the old woman doesn't call tonight and give us something to use against her, then tomorrow I'll talk to Dr. Boothe, the psychologist I mentioned. He has a special interest in religious neuroses and psychoses. He's developed some successful deprogramming procedures to rehabilitate people who've been brainwashed by some of these weird cults. He knows how these cult leaders think, so maybe he can help us find Grace Spivey's weak spot. I'm also going to try to talk to the woman herself, face to face."

"How're you going to arrange that?"

"Call the Church of the Twilight and ask for an appointment with her."

"You think she'll actually see you?"

He shrugged." The boldness of it might intrigue her."

"Can't we go to the cops now?"

"With what?"

"You've got proof Joey and I are being followed."

"Following someone isn't a crime."

"That Spivey woman called your office and threatened Joey."

"We haven't any proof it was Grace Spivey. And only Joey heard the threat."

"Maybe if we explain to the cops how this madwoman thinks Joey is the Antichrist-"

" That's only a theory."

"Well… maybe we could find someone who used to belong to the cult, someone who's left it, and then they could substantiate this Antichrist nonsense."

"People don't leave the Church of the Twilight," Charlie said.

"What do you mean?"

"When we were hired to pull those two little kids out of the cult, we first figured we'd dig up someone who'd been a follower of Grace Spivey's but wasn't any more, someone who'd become disillusioned and could tell us where the kids might be and how we might best be able to snatch them. But we couldn't find anybody who'd quit the church. Once they join up, they seem committed for life."

"There're always going to be a few disgruntled, disillusioned-"

"Not with the Church of the T."

"What kind of hold does that crazy old woman have on them? "

"Hard as iron and tight as a vise," Charlie said.

Lightning pulsed so brilliantly that it was visible through the tiny spaces between the slats of the Levolor blinds.

Thunder crashed, reverberating in the windows, and the rain came down harder than ever.

At 8:15, after giving some final instructions to Lockburn and Reuther, Charlie left.

He insisted that Christine lock the door behind him before he would even walk away from the front porch.

She pulled aside the curtain on the window next to the door and watched him hurry toward the green Chevy, splashing through dark puddles, buffeted by the wet wind, hurrying in and out of dense night shadows that appeared to flap and billow like black draperies.

Frank Reuther suggested she get away from the window, and she took his advice, though reluctantly. Somehow, as long as she could still see Charlie Harrison, she felt safe. But the moment she dropped the curtain and turned away from the window, a crushing awareness of Joey's vulnerability (and her own) settled over her.

She knew Pete and Frank were well trained, competent, and trustworthy, but neither of them gave her the feeling of security that she got from Charlie.

8:20.

She went to Joey's room. He and Pete were sitting on the floor, playing Old Maid.

"Hey, Mom, I'm winning," Joey said.

"He's a real card shark," Pete said." If this ever gets back to the guys in the office, I'll never live it down."

Chewbacca lay in the corner, watching his master, tongue lolling.

Christine could almost believe that Chewbacca was actually Brandy, that there had never been a decapitation, that Pete and Frank were just a couple of family friends, that this was merely an ordinary, quiet evening at home. Almost. But not quite.

She went into her study and sat at her desk, looking at the two covered windows, listening to the rain. It sounded like thousands of people chanting so far away that you couldn't make out their words but could hear only the soft, blended roar of many ardent voices.

She tried to work but couldn't concentrate. She took a book from the shelves, a light novel, but she couldn't even keep her attention focused on that.

For a moment she considered calling her mother. She needed a shoulder to cry on. But of course Evelyn wouldn't provide the comfort and commiseration she needed.

She wished her brother were still alive. She wished she could call him and ask him to come be with her. But Tony was gone forever. Her father was gone forever, too, and although she had barely known him, she missed him now in a way she never had before.

If only Charlie were here.

In spite of Frank and Pete and the unnamed man watching the house from the camper outside, she felt terribly alone.

She stared at the tracer phone on her desk. She wished the crazy old woman would call and threaten Joey. At I&ast they would have sufficient evidence to interest the police.

But the phone didn't ring.

The only sounds were those of the storm.

At 8:40, Frank Reuther came into the study, smiled at her, and said,

"Don't mind me. Just making the rounds."

He went to the first window, held the drape aside, checked the lock, peered into the darkness for a second, then let the drape fall back into place.

Like Pete Lockburn, Frank had taken off his jacket and had rolled up his shirt sleeves. His shoulder holster hung under his left arm. The butt of his revolver caught the light for an instant and gleamed blackly.

For a moment Christine felt as if, through some inexplicable interchange of fantasy and reality, she was trapped in a '30s gangster movie.

Frank pulled aside the drape at the second window-and cried out in surprise.

The shotgun blast was louder than the clashing armies of the thunder storm.

The window exploded inward.

Christine leaped up as a shower of glass and blood cascaded over her.

Before he had time to reach for his own gun, Frank was lifted off his feet by the force of the blast and pitched backward.

Christine's chair fell over with a bang.

The bodyguard collapsed across the desk in front of her. His face was gone. The shotgun pellets had hammered his skull into bloody ruin.

Outside, the gunman fired again.

Stray pellets found the ceiling light, pulverizing it, bringing down more glass, some plaster, and darkness. The desk lamp already had been knocked to the floor when Frank Reuther had fallen against it. The room was in darkness except for what little light came through the open doorway from the hall.

The pellet-shredded draperies were seized by an intrusive gust of wind.

Tattered fragments lashed at one another, fluttered and whirled in the air, like the rotted burial garments of an animated corpse in a carnival funhouse.

Christine heard someone screaming, thought it was Joey, realized it was a woman, then discovered it was her own voice.

A squall of rain burst through the ribboned drapes. But the rain wasn't the only thing trying to get inside. Frank Reuther's killer was also clambering through the shattered window.

Christine ran.

In an adrenaline-hot, fear-scorched, dreamlike fever, with the urgent yet weirdly slow-motion time sense of a nightmare, Christine ran from her study to the living room. The short journey required only a few seconds, but it seemed as if the distance from one end of her house to the other was a hundred miles and that hours passed during her panicky progress from one room to another. She knew she was awake, yet she felt as if she were asleep. This was reality yet unreal.

When she reached the living room, Pete Lockbum and Joey were just entering from the direction of the boy's bedroom.

Lockburn's revolver was in his hand.

Chewbacca came behind them, ears flattened, tail down, barking loudly.

A shotgun blast tore the lock out of the front door. Even as the wood chips were still flying, a man burst into the house. He crouched in the foyer that opened into the living room, holding a shotgun in front of him, eyes wide, face white with anger or terror or both, an incongruously ordinary-looking man, short and husky, with a thick black beard jeweled with raindrops. He saw Christine first and leveled his weapon at her.

Joey screamed.

A hard, ear-shattering explosion rocked the room, and Christine was certain that she was in the last milliseconds of her life.

But it was the intruder who was hit. His shirt blossomed with an ugly red flower of blood.

Pete Lockburn had fired first. Now he fired again.

A spray of blood erupted from the intruder's shoulder. The stranger's shotgun spun out of his hands, and he stumbled backwards. Lockburn's third shot caught him in the neck, catapulting him off his feet. Already dead, he was pitched into a small foyer table; his head slammed backwards, striking a mirror above the table, cracking it, and then he collapsed in a gory heap.

As Joey bolted into Christine's arms, she shouted to Lockbum: "There's another man! The study-"

Too late. The gunman who had killed Frank Reuther was already in the living room.

Lockbum whirled. Fast but not fast enough. The shotgun roared. Pete Lockburn was blown away.

Although he had been their dog less than a day, Chewbacca knew where his loyalties ought to lie. Snarling, teeth bared, he leapt at the gunman, bit the intruder's left leg, sank his fangs in deep and held on tight.

The man cried out, raised the shotgun, slammed the heavy butt down on top of the retriever's golden head. The dog.yelped and crumpled in a heap.

"No!" Joey said, as if the loss of a second pet was worse than the prospect of his own slaughter.

Sobbing in pain, obviously frightened, the gunman said, "God help me, God help me, God help me," and he turned the 20gauge on Christine and Joey.

She saw that he, like the bearded man, did not really appear to be mad or degenerate or evil. The ferocity of the terror that gripped him was the most unusual thing about him. Otherwise, he was quite ordinary.

Young, in his early twenties. Slightly overweight. Fair-skinned, with a few freckles and rain-soaked reddish hair that was plastered to his head. His ordinariness was the very thing that made him so scary; if this man could become a mindless killer under the influence of Grace Spivey, then the old woman could corrupt anyone; no one could be trusted; anyone might be an assassin in her thrall.

He pulled the trigger.

There was only a dry click.

He had forgotten that both barrels were empty.

Whimpering and squealing as if he were the one in danger, the killer fumbled in his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of shotgun shells.

With a strength and agility born of terror, Christine scooped Joey up and ran, not toward the front door and the street beyond, for they would surely die out there, but toward the stairs and the master bedroom, where she had left her purse-the purse in which she'd been carrying her own pistol. Joey clung desperately to her, and he seemed to weigh nothing at all; she was briefly possessed with a more-than-human power, and the stairs succumbed to her pumping legs. Then, almost at the top, she stumbled, nearly fell, grabbed at the banister, cried out in despair.

But it was a good thing she had stumbled, for, in that same moment, the gunman below opened fire, discharging both barrels. Two waves of buckshot smashed into the railing at the top of the stairs, reducing the oak handrail to splinters, tearing plaster from the wall, blowing out the ceiling light up there, at the very place she would have been if she hadn't misstepped.

As the killer reloaded yet again, Christine plunged ahead, into the upstairs hall. For a moment she hesitated, clutching Joey, swaying, disoriented. This was her own house, more familiar to her than any place in the world, but tonight it was alien; the angles and proportions and lighting in the rooms seemed wrong, different. The hallway, for instance, appeared infinitely long, with distorted walls like a passageway in a carnival maze. She blinked and tried to repress the heart-hammering panic that twisted her perceptions; she hurried forward and made it to the master bedroom door.

Behind her, from the stairway, came the sound of the killer's footsteps as he raced after her, favoring his bitten leg.

She stepped into the bedroom, slammed the door behind her, latched it, put Joey down. Her purse was on the nightstand. She grabbed it just as the assassin reached the door and rattled the knob. Her fingers were too frantic; for a moment she couldn't work the zipper. Then she had her purse open, the gun in hand.

Joey had crawled into a corner, beside the highboy. He cringed, trying to make himself even smaller than he was.

The bedroom door shook and partially dissolved in a storm of buckshot. A hole opened on the right side of it. One hinge was torn out of the frame; it spun into the air, bounced off a wall, clattered across the top of the dresser.

Holding her pistol in both hands, painfully aware that she wasn't holding it steady, Christine swung toward the door.

Another blast ruined the lock, and the door swung inward, hanging on only one hinge.

The young, red-haired killer stood in the doorway, looking even more terrified than Christine felt. He was gibbering senselessly. His hands were shaking worse than hers. Snot hung from one of his nostrils, but he seemed unaware of it.

She pointed the pistol at him, pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The safety was on.

The assassin seemed startled to find her armed. His shotgun was empty again. He dropped it and pulled a revolver from the waistband of his trousers.

She heard herself saying, "No, no, no, no, no," in a chant of pure fear as she fumbled for the two safeties on the pistol.

She snapped off both of them, pulled the trigger again and again and again.

The thunder of her own gunfire, booming off the walls around her, was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.

The intruder went to his knees as the bullets ripped into him, then sprawled on his face. The revolver fell out of his limp hand.

Joey was crying.

Christine cautiously approached the body. Blood was soaking into the carpet around it. With one foot she prodded the man.

He was dead weight.

She went to the door, looked into the shadowy hall, which was littered with fragments of the stairway railing and splinters of glass from the light fixture that had been struck by shotgun pellets. The carpet was spotted with blood from the dead gunman's bitten leg; he had left a trail from the head of the stairs.

She listened. No one moved or spoke downstairs. There were no footsteps.

Had there been just two assassins?

She wondered how many bullets she had left. The magazine held ten. She thought she had fired five. Five left.

Joey's sobbing subsided." M-Mom?"

"Sshhh, " she said.

They both listened.

Wind. Thunder. Rain on the roof, tapping the windows.

Four men dead. That realization hit her, and she felt nausea uncoiling in her stomach. The house was a slaughtering pen, a graveyard.

Wind-stirred, a tree branch scraped against the house.

Inside, the funereal silence deepened.

Finally she looked at Joey.

He was bleached white. His hair hung in his face. His eyes looked haunted. In a moment of terror, he had bitten his lip, and a thread of blood had sewn a curving red seam down his chin, along his jawline, and part of the way down his neck. As always, she was shocked by the sight of his blood. However, considering what had almost happened to him, this injury could be home.

The cemetery stillness lost its cold grip on the night. Outside, along the street, there were shouts, not of anger but of fear and curiosity, as neighbors at last ventured out of their homes. In the distance, a siren swelled.