The Taking

55

MANDOLIN AND FLUTE AND TAMBOURINE AND French horn on a bed of holly, encircled with ribbons, formed the motif on the seat of the straight-backed needlepoint chair to the left of the door.

In the hall, the bitten man kicked the door. The latch twanged but didn't spring, though one more kick would pop it.

Molly tipped the chair onto its back legs and quickly wedged the head-rail under the doorknob.

A second kick shattered the latch mechanism, but the bracing chair held the door and resisted a third kick as well, exquisite needlepoint proving a match for savagery, as ought to be the case in a properly ordered world.

He cursed her, pounded on the door with a fist. "I'll be back at you," he promised. "I'll be back when I'm done with my lambs."

Then maybe he went away.

Whether he was waiting for her or not, he was just a man, not something from another world. He hadn't been able to phase through the barricaded door.

Numerous encounters with threats unearthly and unthinkable had left her unharmed, yet an ordinary man had wounded her. In this fact was a significance that she could sense but not grasp, and once more she felt herself to be on the doorstep of a revelation of enormous importance.

She had no time to connect the puzzle pieces to which intuition had called her attention. Contemplation required peace and time, and she had none of either.

The beast she'd bitten had said the lambs, the children, were his sacrifices. To what, to whom, on what altar, for what purpose did not matter, only his intention-and stopping him.

Her crushed and bleeding ear ached, but it no longer rang. She could hear well enough.

The only sound was the ceaseless movement inside the walls, the rustle and slither. No voices rose from the whispery throng.

Through her rolled waves of nausea. Saliva flooded her mouth. She could still taste blood, so she spat instead of swallowing, and spat again.

Turning from the door, probing with the flashlight, the first thing she saw was a hatchet embedded in the side of a tall wooden cabinet. Blood on the blade, on the handle.

Sickened, she didn't want to look further, but she had to, and did.

She was in a home office, unrevealed by two windows looking out on moss-strangled trees in the purple noon. A door stood open to an adjacent bathroom.

She shared the room with two chopped bodies-a man on the floor, a woman tumbled in an armchair. She had become inured to horror, yet she didn't look at them too closely or too long.

Family photos on the wall behind the desk revealed that these were the parents of the children locked in the room near the head of the stairs. The kids in the pictures were a dimpled boy and an older sister with black hair and Cleopatra bangs.

Appearing in none of the photos, the scarred man must be an intruder. She had known that Michael Render would not be the only sociopath to embrace the chaos of a crumbling civilization.

Sacrifices.

Hurriedly, she searched the desk drawers, seeking a weapon. She hoped to find a handgun. The best she could come up with was a pair of scissors.

Behind her, the scarred man said, "Drop them," and pressed the muzzle of a gun, probably her own 9-mm pistol, against the nape of her neck.