Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

TWENTY-THREE

HURRICANE WARNING

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE WARNING FOR SANTA CRUZ, MONTEREY AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES. HURRICANE LANDFALL IS EXPECTED BY 9:00 A.M. EVACUATION OF OCEANFRONT AND LOW-LYING AREAS SHOULD BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

(The Weather Channel)

‡

Paraiso

Emilio fought through the horizontal sheets of rain assaulting the ambulance as he wound up the road through the woods to Paraiso. Bolts of lightning lanced the sky, clearing the way for the ground-shaking thunder, but the heavy vehicle hugged the road.

When the storm had changed course in the early hours and it became clear that it would strike Monterey County, the Senador had sent him to find an ambulance for Charlie, to take him inland out of harm’s way.

But there were none to be had. The city had placed every available ambulance, public and private, on standby alert. Emilio had stopped by a few services personally, contacted many more by phone. No matter how much he offered, they would not risk their licenses by hiring out for a private run during the emergency.

Call the county Civil Defense, they said. All you’ve got to do is tell them it’s an emergency, that you need an ambulance immediately to remove an invalid from an evacuation area, and they’ll okay it. No problem.

No problem? Not quite. Emilio could hardly get Monterey County officialdom involved in moving an AIDS patient who happened to be Senator Arthur Crenshaw’s son. The word would spread like the wind from this storm. He couldn’t even allow a private ambulance company to know who it was transporting. He wanted to rent a fully-equipped rig and drive it himself. The answer everywhere was the same: Nothing doing.

Emilio had wanted to scream. He could not let the Senador down on this. He’d already suffered the withering fury of his anger after he’d learned about the nun. The Senador had been quiet at first, then he’d exploded, calling Emilio a murderous fool, a ham-handed incompetent, a dolt who had jeopardized a lifetime of effort. The Senator had turned away in disgust, telling him to see if he could do something as simple a hiring an ambulance without screwing that up.

Hurt, humiliated, Emilio had vowed never to fail the Senador again, but events continued to conspire against him. He had to get an ambulance. To return to Paraiso without one was unthinkable.

So Emilio stole one.

Quite easy, actually. The whole world was in panicked turmoil over the systematic destruction of temples and mosques across the globe. California had not been spared. Dawn had left not one church or synagogue standing. This area of the state was in double disorder because of the added threat of the storm.

Emilio had taken advantage of that. He’d parked his own car at an indoor garage, then walked two blocks to the lot of one of the ambulance services. Amid the tumult of the storm, they never heard him jump start the engine and drive away.

A particularly violent blast of wind buffeted the ambulance as it crossed the one-car bridge over the ravine. The top-heavy vehicle lurched and for an instant—just an instant—Emilio lost control as it seemed to roll along on only two wheels. It slewed and skidded and veered toward the guardrail, but before he could panic it rocked back onto all four wheels again.

And then a deafening pop and a sizzle as a blinding bolt of lightning wide as a man arced into the base of a huge ponderosa pine on the far side of the ravine. There was no pause between the flash and the thunder. The ambulance, the bridge, the entire ravine shook with the deafening crash.

Emilio slowed as he blinked away the purple after-image of the flash. Through the blur he saw flames licking at the blackened trunk of the pine. The whole tree was swaying wildly in the wind...seemed to be moving his way.

He blinked again and cried out in terror as he saw the huge pine toppling toward him. He floored the accelerator, swerving the ambulance ahead on the bridge. The right rear fender screeched against the metal side rail. Emilio bared his clenched teeth and let loose a long, low howl as he kept the pedal welded to the floor. Had to move, had to get this huge, filthy puerco going and keep it going, couldn’t go back, couldn’t even look back, straight ahead was the only way, even if it looked like he was driving into the face of certain death, his only hope was to get off this bridge and onto the solid ground straight ahead on the far side of the ravine. Because this bridge was a goner.

Branches slashed, crashed, smashed against the roof and windshield, spiderwebbing the glass in half a dozen places. It held though, and Emilio kept accelerating. He heard the flashers and sirens tear off the roof as he slipped the ambulance under the falling trunk with only inches to spare. But he wasn’t home yet. He heard and felt the huge pine’s impact directly behind him. The ambulance lurched sideways as the planked surface of the span canted right and tilted upward ahead of him. He fought to keep control, keep moving, keep accelerating, because he knew without looking that the bridge was going down behind him. The wet tires spun and slipped on the rapidly increasing incline and Emilio filled the cabin with an open-throated scream of mortal fear and defiant rage.

Emilio Sanchez refused to die here, smashed on the rocks a hundred feet below. His destiny was not to meet his end as a storm victim, a mere statistic.

The tires caught again, the ambulance lunged forward, its big V-8 Cadillac engine roaring, pushing the vehicle up the tilting incline and onto the glistening asphalt and solid ground.

He slammed on the brakes and sagged against the steering wheel, panting. When he’d caught his breath, he held his hands before his face and watched them shake like a palsied old man’s. Then he stepped out into the wind and rain and looked back.

The bridge was down. The giant pine had broken its back, crashing through the center of its span and dragging the rest of it to the floor of the ravine.

Emilio began to laugh. He’d stolen an ambulance and now he couldn’t use it. No one could use it. And no one would be leaving Paraiso, not Emilio, not the Senador, and certainly not Charlie.

Prisoners in Paradise.

His laughter died away as he remembered the fourth occupant of Paraiso. That ancient body. He’d have to do something about that. It was evidence against him. He had to find a way to dispose of it. Permanently.

‡

“Turn here.”

Dan sat behind the wheel of their rented Taurus and stared at the electric security gate that stood open before them. Through the wind-whipped downpour he made out identical red-and-white signs on the each of the stone gateposts:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

NO TRESPASSING

VIOLATORS WILL BE

PROSECUTED

“Are you sure?” Dan said. “This is a private road.”

“Turn here,” the voice from the rear repeated.

Dan glanced at Kesev in the front passenger seat.

The bearded man nodded agreement that they should proceed through the gate.

“Yes. The feeling is strong. The Mother is near.”

Dan then turned to look at Carrie where she sat in the back seat, staring up the private road.

She wore one of Dan’s faded plaid flannel shirts over his oldest pair of jeans, and a pair of dirty white sneakers they’d found in the housekeeper’s closet. She looked like a refugee from a grunge band.

Once again Brad’s AmEx card had come in handy for the tickets and the rental car agency. They’d driven south from San Francisco, following Carrie’s directions as she took them deeper and deeper into increasingly severe weather. Now they were on the coast of Monterey County.

Dan faced front and did as he was told.

He was on autopilot now. His head throbbed continually, but it had been aching so long now he barely noticed. The post-concussion dizziness and nausea were what plagued him physically. Emotionally and intellectually...he was numb.

With no sleep for thirty-six hours, with the woman he loved murdered but sitting in the back seat giving him directions toward the corporal remains of the Virgin Mary, what else was there to do but shut down his emotions, turn off his rational faculties, and become some sort of servomechanism?

Go through the motions, follow instructions to get to where you’re going, do, do, do, but don’t think, don’t question, and for God’s sake, don’t feel.

Because mixed with the guilty joy of having Carrie back was the horrific realization that she wasn’t really back...not really back at all. And Dan knew if he unlocked his emotions he’d go mad, leap from the car, and run screaming through the trees.

So he kept everything under lock and key, turned the car onto the narrow asphalt path, and kept his eyes on the road.

Water sluiced down the incline toward the Taurus but the front-wheel drive kept them moving steadily. Pine needles, pine cones, leaves, and fallen branches littered the roadway. Dan drove over them, letting them snap and thud against the underbelly of the car. He didn’t care. Didn’t care if they punctured the oil pan or the gas tank. All he wanted was to get where he was going. Somewhere ahead was the Virgin, and with her maybe the man who shot Carrie.

And then what will I do?

Whatever he did or didn’t do, Dan sensed that he was on his way toward a rendezvous with destiny...or something very much like it. Whatever it was that lay ahead, he wanted to confront it and have done with it. Things had to change. Something had to give.

Because he couldn’t go on like this much longer.

The trees thinned as they came to the top of a rise. It looked open ahead. And then Dan saw why: A deep ravine lay before them.

“Keep going?”

“Straight ahead,” Carrie said.

Kesev pointed. “I see a bridge.”

Dan gunned the engine. The car accelerated.

‡

“And so, Senador,” Emilio said, spreading his hands expressively, “I’m afraid we are stuck here.”

Arthur Crenshaw nodded slowly, amazed at his own serenity. Here he was, trapped in a house that was little more than a giant bay window set in a cliff overhanging the ocean, looking down the barrel at the most powerful Pacific storm on record. He’d watched the front steamroll in, the lightning-slashed clouds sweep past, blotting out the rest of the world as the storm launched its assault on the coast—his coast. And every time he’d thought he’d seen the peak of the storm, it grew worse. The ocean below churned and frothed like an enormous Jacuzzi; thirty-foot waves lashed at the rocks, hurling foam a hundred feet in the air; wind and rain battered the huge windows, warping and rattling the glass. And yet he was not afraid.

Something—who else could it be but Satan—had destroyed every place of worship in the world. Saint Patrick’s in New York, every synagogue in Brooklyn, the National Cathedral in DC, all the small-town Baptist churches in the rural South, the Mormon Cathedrals in Bethesda and throughout Utah. And yet he was not afraid.

That amazed him.

Perhaps he was too drained to be afraid. Or perhaps all his fear was centered on Charlie.

His son was worse.

Arthur didn’t need a CD-4 count to know that. Instead of falling, Charlie’s fever had risen through the night. He was now in a coma.

His son was dying.

Arthur moved to Charlie’s side, passing the so-called miraculous relic as he did. He was tempted to boot the piece of junk off the table, even drew his foot back to do so, but for some reason changed his mind at the last moment. Why bother? Just another in a long line of fakes. And to think a young woman had been killed in order to bring it here.

And then it occurred to Arthur that perhaps that was why Charlie had not been healed. An innocent life had been snuffed out in order to save Charlie’s, and so Charlie could not be saved. Because a life had been taken on one end of the country, another life would be allowed to burn out on the other. A balancing of the scales.

Rage flared. Damn Emilio!

But he’d only been following orders. Arthur remembered his own words: Bring me that body—no matter what the cost.

But he’d meant money and effort and expense—not life.

Hadn’t he?

Not that it mattered now. The inescapable reality of Charlie’s impending death blotted out all other considerations.

“He’s going to die, Emilio,” he said, staring at Charlie’s slack features. “Charlie...my son...flesh of my flesh and Olivia’s...the last surviving part of Olivia...is going to be gone. Why didn’t I appreciate him while he was here, Emilio? When did I stop thinking of him of a son and start seeing him as a liability? That never would have happened if Olivia were still here. She was my heart, Emilio. My soul. When I lost her, something went out of me...something good. Charlie was harmless but I came to loathe him. My own son! And that loathing infected Charlie, causing him to loathe himself. That’s when he stopped being harmless, Emilio. That’s when he started becoming harmful to himself. His self-loathing made him sick so he’d end up here in this pathetic miniature intensive care unit in the big gaudy showplace of a home where he was never really welcome when he was well.”

Arthur bit back a sob.

“I’ve got so much to answer for!”

Unbidden, unwelcome, another thought slithered out of the darkest corner of his mind, whispering how if Paraiso were damaged by the storm...if, say, some of the windows were smashed and Charlie’s terminally ill body were washed out into the Pacific, he’d be listed as a storm victim instead of an AIDS victim, wouldn’t he?

Arthur shook off the thought—though, despairingly, not without effort—and shoved it back down the dank hole it had crawled out of.

Is this what I’ve come to?

He backed away from the windows as the wind doubled its fury, battering those floor-to-ceiling panes until he was certain one of them was going to give.

‡

Emilio watched the Senador retreat from the storm, but he stood firm. He felt no fear of wind and rain. What were they but air and water? And even if he were afraid, he would not show it. He feared nothing...except perhaps that body he’d brought back from New York. He had to get rid of it.

An idea formed...put the body in the back of the ambulance...send them both over the edge of the cliffs into the wild, pounding surf far below...

And as the plan took shape...

The storm stopped.

The thunder faded, the wind died, the rain ebbed to a drizzle. Suddenly only swirling fog danced beyond the windows.

“Senador?” Emilio said. He rested his hands against the now still glass and stared out at the featureless gray. “It is over?”

“Not yet,” the Senador said, his voice hushed. “I’ve read about this type of thing. I believe this is what they call the eye of the storm, the calm at its center. It won’t last long. But why don’t you hurry up topside and take a look around, see how much damage we’ve got up there. Don’t get too far from the door. As soon as the wind starts to blow again, get back inside, because the back end is going to be just as bad as the front, maybe worse.”

Emilio nodded. “Of course.”

He hurried up the stairs and stepped outside into a dead calm.

The still, warm air hung heavy with moisture. Fog drifted lazily around him, insinuating through his clothes, clinging to his skin. So strange to have no wind. Emilio could not remember a time when a breeze wasn’t blowing across the cliff tops.

And silent...so eerily silent. Like cotton wadding, the fog muffled everything, even the sound of the surf below. No birds, no insects, no rustling grass...silence.

No, wait. Emilio’s ears picked up a hum, somewhere down the driveway, growing louder. It sounded almost like...

A car.

Emilio gasped and took a hesitant step toward the noise. He glanced at the carport. The Senador’s limousine and the ambulance were where he’d left them. And still the sound grew louder.

No! This is not possible!

Instinctively he reached for his pistol before he remembered that he’d left it downstairs in the great room when he went into town. He hadn’t retrieved it because what need for a pistol with the bridge out and Paraiso isolated from the outside world?

The bridge was out! He’d seen it fall. He’d almost gone down with it. How could—?

Emilio stood frozen as a Ford sedan rounded the final curve in the rain-soaked, debris-littered approach road and pulled to a stop not a hundred feet in front of him. Normally Emilio would have rushed forward to confront any trespassers, but this was different. Something was wrong about this car.

A short, bearded man stepped out of the passenger side and glanced around before staring at Emilio.

“The Mother,” he said in an unfamiliar accent. “She is here. She has to be here. Where is the Mother?”

The Mother? Emilio wondered. What is he—? He was jolted by a sudden thought: Can he be talking about the ancient body below in the house?

But Emilio had questions of his own.

“How did you get here?”

“In the car,” the man said with ill-concealed impatience. “We drove up the road.”

“But the bridge—!”

“Yes, we came over the bridge.”

“The bridge is out! Down!”

The bearded man looked at him as if he were crazy. “The bridge is intact. We just drove over it.”

No! This couldn’t be! This—

The driver door opened then and out stepped a familiar figure. Emilio steeled himself not to react, to hide the sudden mad thumping of his heart against the inner walls of his chest.

The priest! Father Daniel Fitzpatrick!

The priest looked Emilio square in the face but gave no sign of recognition. Without the hat, the mirrored glasses, and the phony beard he’d worn that night in the church, Emilio was a different person.

But if he hadn’t come looking for Emilio, if he hadn’t brought the police to arrest him for the murder of the nun, why was he here?

“Where are we?” the priest asked.

Emilio was about to answer, to tell them both to get back into their car and get off the Senador’s private property, when the rear door opened and out stepped a dead woman. He knew she was dead because he’d killed her himself.

“You,” she said softly, staring at him levelly. “I know you. You murdered me. Why? You didn’t have to kill me. Why did you do that?”

Something snapped within Emilio. He could stand no more. He turned and fled back inside, slamming the door behind him. As he turned the deadbolt, he leaned against the door, panting and sweating.

This was loco! A car carrying a walking, talking dead woman drives across a bridge that is no longer there. He was going loco.

He turned and shut off the power to the elevator.

Good. If they were real, they now were locked outside and would be at the mercy of the second half of the storm. If they were not real, what did it matter?

Emilio pulled himself together, took a deep breath, and descended to the great room.

“All is well topside, Senador.”

But the Senador did not seem to hear. He stood by Charlie’s bed, staring out through the windows, a mix of awe and terror distorting his features.

Emilio followed his gaze and cringed against the stairway when he saw what was taking shape out over the Pacific and racing toward them.

“Madre!”

‡

Everything had happened so fast.

You murdered me.

Dan had been momentarily stunned by Carrie’s words. His mind whirled, adding a beard, hat, and glasses to the mustachioed face staring at Carrie in horrified disbelief, comparing this voice to the one he’d heard in the church, and then he was sure: Here was the motherless scum who had put a bullet in her heart.

Before he’d been able to react, the man had turned and dashed back to the hemi-dome behind him and vanished through a doorway. And then a Navy reconnaissance plane had swooshed overhead. He’d just started wondering what sort of idiot would be flying in this hellish storm when another sound captured his attention.

A dull roaring filled Dan’s ears. At first he assumed it was enraged blood shooting through his battered brain, then he glanced beyond the hemi-dome and saw something impossibly tall, incalculably huge looming out of the foggy distance and hurtling toward them.

“Oh, my God!”

Nearly half a mile wide and God knew how tall, it stretched—swirling, twisting, writhing—from the dim, misty heights to the sea where it terminated in an eruption of foam on the wave-wracked surface of the Pacific. Water...an angry towering column of spinning water...all water...yet bright lights flashed within it.

To call this thing a waterspout was to call Mount Rushmore a piece of sculpture. And it was coming here, zeroed in on this spot.

Dan spun around, looking for a place to hide, but saw none. The car—no...too vulnerable. The door in the hemi-dome—it had to lead below, to safety.

Pulling Carrie with him, he ran to it and tugged on the handle. The handle wouldn’t turn, the door wouldn’t budge. Kesev stood back, strangely detached as he watched death’s irresistible approach.

“Locked!” Dan shouted, and began pounding and kicking at the unyielding surface. “Let us in, damn you! Open up!”

And all around him the roaring of the approaching waterspout grew to a deafening crescendo.

This is it, he thought. We’re going to die right here. In a few minutes it’ll all be over. But God, I’m not ready to go yet!

And then Carrie laid a hand on his shoulder, reached past him and turned the knob.

The door swung open.

Dan swallowed his shock—no time to wonder how the door had become unlocked—and propelled Carrie through ahead of him. Kesev followed at a more leisurely pace, closing the door behind him.

Stairs ahead, leading downward toward light. Dan went to squeeze past Carrie but she’d already begun her descent. He followed her down the curved stairway into a huge, luxuriously furnished room. His hope of surviving this storm rose as he saw that it was carved out of the living rock of the cliff itself, and then that hope was dashed when he saw the huge glass front overhanging the ocean. The monstrous waterspout was out there, still headed directly for them, and no glass on earth would stop that thing.

He noticed two—no, three—other people in the room: a new face, unconscious in a hospital bed, the man who had shot Carrie, and...Senator Arthur Crenshaw. The killer and the senator stood transfixed before the onrushing doom.

And supine beside the bed...the Virgin.

Carrie must have spotted her, too, for she began moving toward the body—

—just as the windows exploded.

With a deafening crash every pane shattered into countless tiny daggers. Dan leaped upon Carrie to shield her—she was already dead, he remembered as he pushed her to the floor and covered her, yet his protective instincts prevailed. Instead of slashing everyone and everything in the room to ribbons, the glass shards blew outward, sucked into the swirl of the storm outside.

A thundering roar filled the room as warm seawater splashed against his back, soaking him. Dan squeezed his eyes shut, encircled Carrie with his arms, and held her cold body tight against him...one last embrace...

Any second now...

But nothing happened. The water continued to splatter him but the roar of the waterspout remained level. Dan lifted his head and risked a peek.

It had backed off to a quarter mile or so, but remained out there in the mist, dominating the panoramic view, lit by flashes within and around it, swirling, twisting, a thousand yards wide, snaking from the sea to the sky, but moving no closer.

Dan rose and studied it. For no reason he could explain, it occurred to Dan that it seemed to be...waiting.

Ahead of him, the senator and the murderer were struggling to their feet and staring at it through the empty window frames.

“What is that?” Senator Crenshaw cried.

“Not ‘what,’“ Carrie said as she rose to her feet behind Dan. “Who.”

The senator turned and stared at her a moment. He seemed about to ask her who she was, then decided that wasn’t important now.

“ ‘Who?’ “ He glanced back at the looming tower. “All right, then...who is it?”

“It’s Him,” Carrie said, beaming. She pointed to the Virgin. “He’s come for His mother.”

The senator glanced at the Virgin, gasped, and gripped the edge of the hospital bed for support. Dan looked to see what was wrong.

The Virgin was changing.

The seawater from the spout that had soaked into her robes, into her skin and hair was having a rejuvenating effect. The blue of the fabric deepened, her hair darkened and thickened, and her face...the cheeks were filling out, the wrinkles fading as color surged into her skin.

The murderer cringed back and murmured something in Spanish as the senator leaned more heavily against the bed. Carrie moved closer and dropped to her knees. Dan glanced to his right and saw that Kesev, even the imperturbable Kesev, was gaping in awe.

And then the Virgin moved.

In a single smooth motion she sat up, then stood and faced them.

Dan saw Kesev drop to his knees not far from Carrie, but Dan remained standing, too overwhelmed to move.

She was small framed, almost petite. Olive skin, deep, dark hair, Semitic features, not attractive by Dan’s tastes, but he sensed an inner beauty, and an undeniable strength radiating from her sharp brown eyes.

Those eyes were moving, finally fixing on Carrie, kneeling before her. Smiling like a mother gazing upon a beloved child, she reached out and touched Carrie’s head. “Dear one,” the Virgin said softly, her voice gentle, soothing. “Rise, both of you. I am not to be worshipped. We are almost through here.”

Kesev rose but Carrie remained on her knees.

The Virgin’s smile faded as she turned to Senator Crenshaw.

“Arthur,” she said. “The prayermaker.”

Crenshaw held her gaze, but with obvious difficulty

“Emilio,” she said, frowning at the murderer. “The killer.”

He turned away.

Then it was Dan’s turn.

A tiny smile curved her lips as she trapped his eyes with her own.

“Daniel. The hunger-feeder.”

Dan felt lifted, exalted. He sensed her approval and basked in it.

Finally she turned away and Dan felt the breath rush out of him. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. She could have called him vow-breaker, fornicator, doubter...so many things. But hunger-feeder...he’d take that any day.

Her expression was neutral as she faced Kesev.

“So, Iscariot...you broke another trust.”

Iscariot! Dan’s mind reeled. No...it couldn’t be!

“Mother, events conspired against me. I beg your forgiveness.”

“It is not my place to forgive.”

“Perhaps it is I who should forgive!” Iscariot cried. “Once again I have been used! Used!”

“You are not alone in that,” the Virgin said pointedly.

Iscariot’s head snapped back, as if he been struck, but he recovered quickly.

“Perhaps not. But it is I who have been reviled throughout the Christian Era. And yet without me, there would be no Christian Era—no crucifixion, no resurrection.”

“You wish to be celebrated for betraying Him?”

“No. Simply understood. I believed in Him more than the others—I was led to believe He was divine. I thought He would destroy the Romans—all of them—as soon as they dared to lay a hand on Him. But he didn’t! He allowed them to torture and kill him! I was the one who was betrayed! And I’ve spent nearly two thousand years paying for it, most of them alone, all of them miserable. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Her expression softened into sympathy. “I decide nothing, Judas. You know that.”

Judas Iscariot! Of course! It all fit.

They’d been reading the real Gospel of Judas. The scroll’s author had mentioned being educated as a Pharisee, and of being an anti-Roman assassin, using a knife—they were called iscarii. Judas Iscariot had been all those things. And Kesev was Hebrew for...silver!

“But you hung yourself!” Dan blurted.

The man he’d known as Kesev looked at him and nodded slowly. “Yes. Many times. But I am not allowed to die.”

“W-why are you here?” Crenshaw said.

The Virgin turned to him and pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“Yes-yes,” Crenshaw said quickly, “and I’m terribly sorry about that. Grievously sorry.” He pointed at the waterspout still roaring outside the empty window frames. “But why is He here?”

Again the Virgin pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“No!” Emilio screamed.

He had a pistol—no silencer this time—and was holding it in a two-handed grip. The wavering barrel was pointed at the Virgin. A wild look filled his eyes; he crouched like a cornered animal as he let loose a rapid-fire stream of Spanish that Dan had difficulty following. Something about all this being a treta, a trick, and he’d show them all.

Then he began pulling the trigger and firing at the Virgin.

The reports sounded sharp and rather pitiful against the towering roar from outside. Dan didn’t know where the bullets went. Emilio was firing madly, the empty brass casings flying through the air and bouncing along the floor, but the Virgin didn’t even flinch. No holes appeared in her robes, and Dan saw no breakage in the area behind her. The bullets just seemed to disappear after they left the muzzle.

Finally the hammer clinked on an empty chamber. Emilio lowered the pistol stood staring at his untouched target. With a feral whine he cocked his arm to throw it at her.

That was when the light went out.

Not the electricity—the light. An instant blackness, darker than a tomb, darker than the back end of a cave in the deepest crevasse of the Marianas Trench. Such an absolute absence of light that for an instant Dan panicked, unsure of up or down.

And then a scream—Emilio’s voice, filled with unbearable agony as it rose to a soul-tearing crescendo, and then faded slowly, as if he were falling away through space.

The blackness, too, faded, allowing meager cloud-filtered daylight to reenter the room. And when Dan could once again make out details, he saw that Emilio was gone. His pistol lay on the rug, but no trace of the man who owned it.

Dan staggered back and slumped against a support column. He leaned there, feeling weak. So fast...one moment a man in frenzied motion, the next he was gone, swallowed screaming by impenetrable blackness.

But gone where?

“Oh, please!” the senator cried, dropping to his knees and thrusting his clasped hands toward the Virgin. “Please! I meant you no harm, I meant no one any harm in bringing you here. I only wanted to help my son. You can understand that, can’t you? You had a son yourself. I’d give anything to make mine well again.”

“Anything?”

“Absolutely anything.”

“Then you must give up everything,” she told him. “All your possessions—money, property—and all your power and ambitions. Give everything away to whomever you wish, but give it up, all of it, get it out of your life, out of your control, and your son will live.”

“Charlie will live?” he said in a hushed voice as he struggled to his feet.

“Only if you do what I have said.”

“I will. I swear I will!”

“We shall see,” the Virgin said.

Dan had gathered enough of his wits and strength to dare to address her.

“Why are you here?” he said, then glanced at Carrie. “Is it our fault? Did we cause all this?”

“It is time,” the Virgin said. “A war of faiths threatens to devastate the world. It is time for Him to return and speak to His children. And what I say now shall be heard by all His children.”