

####

#### By the same author

The Devil May Care

Captain Ninja

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##

## Sins of the Fathers

A novel

by

JOHN RICHMOND

Published By

John R. Richmond

Johnrollinrichmond@hotmail.com

First Published 2006

Copyright © John Richmond, 2005

All rights reserved

without limiting the rights under copyright

reserved above, no part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system

or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Any attempt to imitate (steal, plagiarize—I'm looking at you Ms. Coulter) the contents of this book will be considered poor sportsmanship and all around lousy manners.

Any resemblance to the lives of any persons, either or living or dead (especially dead), is coincidental. As I am a broke-ass writer, I am currently without funds so a lawsuit would be a waste of your time anyway.

This last little paragraph is just to make

sure this section of text comes

out looking like a circle.

For my demons.

Stay in your cages

ONE

RUBY SLID THROUGH the happy hour yammer, her short skirt ringing from hip to hip. The table by the door, known at the Five Rabbits as the "reading corner," had acquired a patron. It was too small to accommodate more than one person and so invariably attracted a single customer with a book or a bag of private thoughts. The waitress dodged around a couple of gents well on their way to being very happy this happy hour and stopped.

The man at the "reading corner" had his face buried in a large, leather bound book. His hair was a little too long, chestnut with a wave just shy of a curl. Really the kind of hair that most people have to pay for, but the waitress had the idea that his didn't come from a bottle. She glanced at his eyes, dark and moving as they ticked off the words. For a second she didn't hear the pub bustle, didn't smell the smoke or the yeasty reek of the kegs behind the bar.

He felt her eyes and looked up.

"Good book?" she shouted over the noise.

He didn't smile back, and caught her noticing the square inch of white just below his Adam's apple. "The good book," he said, his voice penetrating but well below a shout. She just looked at him, nothing moving behind her baby blues. He remembered how he could be and reminded himself what he was supposed to be, this evening. Just another priest out for a pint after evening Mass. He summoned a smile, the one he used in airports and pubs. "I've been in the service of the Lord for," he checked his watch, "well over a decade and I still don't get half of it."

"Half of what?"

"The book."

She looked down at his bible, back at him, shook it off. "What'll it be tonight, Father?"

"Pint of the black, please."

She winked and smiled before flouncing away. He watched the crowd absorb her, or rather watched her ass. It was worth the watching, even if she didn't seem to be worth much else. At least she hadn't asked about his accent. It'd been a while since he had used the Irish lilt, and he had worried that it wouldn't pass the test of native ears. Just another padre out for a pint was all he was, sure and begorah and all that lucky charms bullshit. But she hadn't noticed, or if she had, she didn't care which equaled the same for his purposes.

He opened his book, and sighed, letting his mind fall back into the cadence of the narrative, careful not to let the leather book jacket slip off. It was one thing to pretend to be a practicing priest for the sake of the task at hand, it was quite another to have to actually read the Bible yet again. He wondered what his waitress would think if she knew he was just up to the part in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge where the author trips so hard on peyote tea he believes his head has sprouted crow's wings. Probably nothing; she didn't seem the type to read much. Come to think of it, she didn't seem the type to read.

After scanning a few more pages, just enough to allow time to pour the proverbial Perfect Pint, he sensed her motion back through the crowd. They had some new fangled tap for that now, a gizmo that could fill a glass with Guinness in thirty seconds instead of the several minutes a satisfactory head required the old fashioned way. He hoped this place hadn't caught up with the times as he caught sight of his waitress. Some things were better left to the old ways.

Ruby negotiated a couple of red-faced debaters—arguing, he was sure, over something far more important than the football match flickering on the TV bolted to the wall above them—slipping past them with professional grace, a dark pillar of beer balanced atop her tray. The debaters spared her a slaver and went back to their discussion. He watched all of this over the rim of his book, through the screen of his eyelashes, and glanced up just as she set down his drink.

"That's four euro and twenty, Father."

He tried not to show much of his pain. Vow of poverty, indeed. "Thank you, dear."

He sipped, watched her ass pendulum away, and allowed himself to fall back into the disguised book. It wasn't as if the Bible were uninteresting. He'd just gleaned all the insight he ever would from that particular interpretation of the God Thing. Reading the damn book over and over would bring him no closer to the answers he sought. He knew priests who did that: finished the last page in Revelations only to close the book and open it again at Genesis, as if the repetition were like some sort of prolonged Christian Om. There were answers in the Bible, plenty of them, but he found it lacking, unfinished. There was more to the God Thing than John 3:16 and so he spent what free time he had attempting to fill in the holes left by his traditional Euro-centric teachings.

He had read everything from the Hebrew Cabal to the Tao Te Ching. He'd even assimilated enough Arabic to make his halting way through the Quran after learning that to truly appreciate its message one must read it in the language in which it was written. (To be fair, he'd taken the Arabic hypno-immersion course for an entirely different purpose, but it had come in handy when his search had led to the pages of Muhammad's teachings.) In the end, it had held about as much truth as the rest of them.

He looked up.

One of the blustering debaters, a man in his middle forties, heavy glasses and bad taste in suits, clapped his companion on the shoulder and reeled off into the crowd. The priest picked up his pint and took a gulp—smoke, coffee, cream—capturing the man in the half circle of his beer glass as he stumbled through the churning mass of tobacco fumes, limbs and clothes. He let the man get about halfway to the W.C., before he clunked his glass back onto the table and followed. The priest allowed some urgency in his step and jostlings as he elbowed through the other patrons. He just needed to baptize the porcelain like anyone else who might have put away a cocktail or two. He arrived at the bathroom behind the man in the glasses and bad suit. The door swung shut behind him, muting the bar noise. Save for the two of them, the room was empty, just two urinals, a doorless stall and a cracked window.

Glasses fumbled his zipper and weaved over to a urinal. In his present state, the going required a bit more concentration than normal. The priest took advantage of this and removed a small triangle of rubber from his hip pocket, the kind of simple doorstop one could purchase at any hardware store, as he had only a few hours ago. He stooped and wedged it under the door. He straightened, his feet a little farther apart, his chin lowered. As the sound of Glasses's urine flowed over the porcelain, the priest flowed over the floor.

He stood a pace behind the man, listening to him grunt and sigh as the water left and the pressure abated. After what felt like at least a full minute, Glasses gave a shake, another, and the priest heard the teeth of his zipper intermesh. Glasses turned around and started.

"Ah, Father!" he said, his breath a miasma of scotch and pipe tobacco. "You scared the life outta' me." Suspicion creased his brow. "Whadya' mean standin' there like that?"

The priest took a moment to record every detail of the man's face down to the last broken capillary and black pore. There was no question. "Doctor Connolly," he said.

Glasses took a step back, moistening the back of his pants on the urinal. "I'm sorry, Father, you have me at a loss. Do we know each other?"

The priest looked down and rocked back on his heels. He stuck his hands in his hip pockets, just here to have a conversation, really. He tilted his head and looked back at Dr. Connolly. "You know the saying, God loves a drunk?"

Connolly said nothing. His lips were dry, parted.

The priest took his hands out of his pockets. In his left he held a stun gun, in his right a hooked linoleum knife. The two men looked into each other's eyes. Outside in the din, someone broke a glass. Connolly's pupils dilated.

The priest whispered, "It's a lie." and struck like a two-headed snake.

It was over in a moment. The gouts of dark jugular blood did not even flow in earnest until the body hit the floor. Careful not to get any on the cuffs of his pants, the priest stepped over the already cooling Dr. Connolly and made for the window. Like everything else about this pub, he already knew it led into a deserted back alley.

Only a few minutes after he'd gotten up from the "reading corner", the priest slipped back through the front door and sat back down. No one noticed as he took a sip from his glass and re-opened his book.

Within a paragraph, he became aware of a change in tone at the back of the pub near the W.C. Someone was trying to force the door. He paid no mind and continued to read. After a short time, he finished his Guinness, dropped his money on the table, and walked out. The first scream ricocheted into the street a few minutes later.

He walked several blocks before stopping at a pay phone. Without inserting any coins he dialed a long chain of numbers into the keypad and waited. Tires hissed past on the pavement, shoes clicked and clocked. He looked up and noted the clear air and slow rotation of stars. He pretended to have a conversation, nothing too hammy, just talking, but the receiver was silent save for an occasional, far away beep. After exactly three minutes, a voice came over the line, mechanical and flat, as if filtered through a machine.

"Pronto?"

"Jesus Christ goes to an inn." the priest said. "He walks up to the inn keeper, hands him three nails, and asks, 'Can you put me up for the night?'"

"He has been martyred?"

"All we have to do is tally up the miracles."

"Bene. Come home."

The line clicked and a dial tone droned. The priest hung up and stepped away from the phone. He had an open-ended ticket and there were four departing flights before morning. There was time to walk and he needed to.

Something was wrong. Not with this operation. All that remained was to fly home, kiss the ring and debrief the boss; but his stomach was tight, jumpy. He dipped into a chemist's for a pack of cigarettes and stood on the corner smoking, watching the lights of passing traffic bleed and smear.

Sirens blared a few streets away, echoing off the close buildings and dopplering around corners. They sounded so different on this side of the ocean. He'd been a European for how long now? Fucking forever, and he still couldn't get used to the sirens. He liked them, the steady up down, up down two-tone was somehow classier than American sirens. When he had left Detroit ten years ago they still made that wrow, wrow, wrow noise. Now, it was all weird high tech bleeps and bloops. At least, they still had simple sirens over here. Everything else was changing, Americanizing, but they still had those classy sirens. He finished his smoke and crushed it under his shoe. There was a drop of something dark on the toe.

A cold wind picked up and hissed around the corner. Passers-by hunched up their shoulders and moved a little quicker. Father John Calvin, a member of a very special, very ancient order, squinted into the gritty wind and put his hands in his pockets. The wind pushed the heavy bangs off his forehead and then, for the strangest moment, he seemed to go deaf. Silence fell like a curtain and engulfed the scene. The only sound was his own heart beat, heavy and alone. He listened to its thuds—one pairing, two—and began to wonder what was happening. Was this a stroke or some kind of seizure? But just as suddenly as it muted, the street noise rushed back in. He craned his neck and stared up into the spaces between the stars.

Hell was that?

John Calvin had seen many strange things, done many strange things in his life, but this momentary hood of silence, as if his head had suddenly plunged into a still pool, was a new one on him. Every event has its own essence, and if you trust your mental tongue and can shut off your shouting mind long enough, you can taste that signature. While the sudden silence was original in his experience, the taste of the event was not. Father John Calvin closed his eyes and drew a deep breath in through his nose. Car exhaust, a woman's vanilla perfume, his own deodorant, the stars themselves. He opened his eyes and looked down the empty street. Striped autumn oaks bent over the pavement, rows of dead soldiers. A white plastic bag fluttered down the road like a ghost in a tunnel.

Something was coming.

TWO

THE OTHER BOYS were bigger. Jeremy hated that. A fight was bad enough. Every ten year old boy knows you have to have them from time to time. Especially ten year old boys who happen to be a few grades smarter than maybe they ought to be. But there was a difference between a fight and an all out beating.

Jeremy watched from his spot under the oak as the three bigger boys converged on the new kid, all sweaty arms and little eyes. The new boy was Korean, just introduced in class that morning as Seung Quan. He had been reading by himself at the edge of the dusty school yard, as Jeremy was under his oak, when the welcoming committee had spotted him. Except they didn't call it a school yard here at the Ottawa Institute for Learning, it was a free area. Poor kids had recess in school yards, Ottawa Institute peers took afternoon contemplation in the free area. But new kids who looked a little different and read by themselves got their asses kicked no matter how much money their parents might have. This might be the manicured suburbs, but it was still Detroit.

Jeremy squinted from under his canopy of shade into the June sun, hot and white. The light bleached away the Rockwellian color from the scene. There would be no charming tussle ending with four new friends for life, each covered with badge-of-honor bruises. The three big American boys were going to beat the yellow off the little Korean kid and laugh while they did it. Jeremy glanced down at the cover of his book. Enthroned in his high-tech wheelchair, Stephen Hawking gazed back, knowing, and somehow as ageless as the star field behind him. Jeremy brushed a lock of curly blond hair out of his eyes and stood up.

As he started into the sun from under his shade tree, Jeremy wondered if he should call for reinforcements. The cell phone clipped to his belt was there for a reason—his father, on the rare occasion he might be around, was always reminding him of that. If he pressed number 2 on the speed dial, Mr. Horton would materialize and take care of any situation that needed taking care of.

Jeremy visualized the bodyguard his father had assigned to watch over his only son: Mr. Horton's six foot four inches of brick-walled body ended under a scalp so highly polished you could pick your teeth in its reflection. Jeremy couldn't imagine anyone with enough courage or self-loathing to try, except maybe his father. His father owned Mr. Horton, or paid him well enough so the distinction between absolute ownership and well-compensated loyalty was indiscernible.

Across the yard, the three boys closed around Seung like a triplet of glaciers. Jeremy's hand strayed near the cell phone—a gunfighter going for his Colt—and stopped as one of his father's many axioms surfaced. Never over-extend. Overkill just causes more problems by leaving you exposed. His father had said as much from the sidelines during a fencing lesson. Frank Mason might have been only an occasional presence in his son's life, but when he did appear, he always left a mark in the form of a lesson or gift. Among his father's many specialties was the art of sword play. Like chess at high speed, son. Teach your mind to focus on fast-forward and you'll always win. Jeremy surveyed the scene again. He thought of Mr. Horton and the high-caliber bulge under the left lapel of his suit. Jeremy shook his head, his fingers dropping from the phone. This was a playground, not a beach head. And besides, if he overextended now it would only cause more problems later. His dad might not be the world's most attentive parent, but he was smart.

Jeremy looked toward the school building, but at the Ottawa Institute, the Learning Guides (never teachers) gave the student peers as much room as they could. Ottawa peers were far too socially advanced to need the kind of supervision that public school children required. The learning guides were most likely ensconced within The Retreat (teacher's lounge), partaking of refreshments and stimulating conversation (smoking cigarettes and bullshitting). Jeremy squinted through the sunlight at the school's blank windows, sunglasses on a disinterested face.

He would have to wing it.

Jeremy jogged up to the nasty little group just as Seung peered up at the glowering threesome. He might be a foreigner, but from the look on his face, Seung knew this scenario well enough. Brutality doesn't need a language to get its point across. Jeremy who, in spite of his privileged life, had been on the receiving end of a pummeling or two, knew that look. It was resignation, a mental dropping of the shoulders. It was Oh shit, let's just get this over with. And it was just as recognizable on Korean features as on his own.

Jeremy singled out the leader and called, "Hey, Noah," to Noah Wright, son of Preston Wright, heir to the Wright Way Cleaning products fortune. Noah, the biggest of the three, turned what would become a body of gross proportion later in life, but was now little more than "husky", and set his gaze on Jeremy.

"Fuck off, faggot," he said through fleshy lips. "This is between us and the chink."

Jeremy tried to keep the shakes that jigged his spine from showing in his voice. He knew he should be scared, but he wasn't. He was furious. It was something about unfairness that did it to him, set him off like this. Jeremy didn't know why, but he'd been like this as long as he could remember. He didn't think it was from one of his father's many lessons, though. The concept of fair and unfair semmed to elude Frank Mason. It's not that the world's unfair, Jer-boy. There's no such thing as fair. Fair is an illusion. During all of these lessons, Jeremy nodded like a good student, even tried to understand his father's point of view, but he'd never bought that one. He couldn't. It just wasn't in his make up. His father said he got it from his mother's side, but Jeremy had to take his word for it. His mother had drowned in a boating accident when Jeremy was about eighteen months old.

Now, in the face of this bloated thug and his cronies, the part of him that just couldn't make sense of unfairness caused him to tremble with rage. "He's Korean," was all he could say.

Noah lumbered a step closer. Jeremy smelled candy and something else underneath, wet and sour. The two boys were in the same grade, but Jeremy had skipped ahead two years, and his learning guides were already making noises about moving him ahead again at the end of this year. Jeremy was ten and just the right size for his age. Noah was thirteen and enormous for his. He had almost a foot in height on Jeremy and was nearly twice his weight.

Noah loomed in, squinting, pig-like, "Whacha' gonna' do, faggot? Call the Terminator on us?"

Jeremy yanked his cell off the belt clip and tossed it into the grass. He didn't want the temptation to call Mr. Horton so close. One of Noah's cohorts, Harry Ukstins, scuttled forth like a trained spider and grabbed the cell phone. Jeremy ignored him. He glanced down at Seung, whose eyes darted from point to point in a frenetic dance while his face remained impassive. Jeremy wondered if something was wrong with the kid. He looked back at Noah, "Why don't you just leave him alone, Noah?" His father had said that when you want to influence another person, it helped to use their name.

"Why don't you just suck my dick, faggot?"

A slick comeback like "I'm not into necrophilia." would have been perfect, but Jeremy wouldn't think of it until hours later. Skipped grades or not, his brain didn't work like that under this type of pressure. His father, now that was something else. His dad, always had something to say. In this instance all Jeremy could muster was, "Just leave him alone."

The third leg of the welcoming committee, Pete Webster, pulled their attention back around to Seung, "Hey, Noah, the chink thinks he's going somewhere."

Seung had gotten to his feet and was brushing the dust from the back of his slacks. It was as if this exchange of American pleasantries was all very interesting, but now it was time to return to his studies. He made quick eye contact with Jeremy and gave a ghost of a nod before taking a step to remove himself from the circle.

"Where you goin', chink?" Harry Ukstins said and pushed at Seung's shoulder with a stiff arm.

Seung fell back a step, sighed and turned away from Ukstins. He attempted to walk out of the circle through Webster and was similarly rebuffed. "Wrong way, chink-boy."

Seung turned to Noah this time, but did not attempt to walk through the big boy. Jeremy watched his eyes do that frenetic dancing trick before settling on Noah's chest. Without making eye contact, as if he knew his words would go unheard, Seung said in Midwestern accented English, "Please let me by, Noah."

Noah answered the "please" with a full body charge. Jeremy winced as the mountainous bully tried to fall on the slight boy, to crush him to the ground. His wince turned into open-mouthed astonishment as Seung began to move.

Seung leaned back and seemed to flow with the force of his attacker. Instead of bending under Noah's greater weight, he fell back and to the side, while reaching out and taking Noah by the thumb of his splayed left hand. It was impossible for Jeremy to see everything because Seung's motions were both hidden behind Noah's bulk and just so fast. One moment, Seung had been asking Noah to let him by, the next, he was standing to the side with Noah upside down in the air next to him. Just as Seung regained his relaxed posture one pace to the left, Noah hit the dusty earth with a thud the other boys felt all the way up their legs.

Noah grabbed his chest and wheezed. His own bulk had knocked the wind out of him. Seung turned around and faced Ukstins and Webster. They stood as frozen as Greek statues, carved in tribute to the gods of toady jack-asses through time. Seung held out his hand to Ukstins. "Phone, please," he said.

Ukstins gawked, "Huh?"

"The cell phone, please."

Webster smacked his compatriot on the arm. "Mason's cell, dick-wad!"

"Shit, right!" Ukstins whipped it out and handed the phone to Seung. "Here."

Seung took it, stared at the two boys for a moment and turned to Jeremy. "Thank you for intervening," he said and handed the cell back to Jeremy.

Jeremy took the phone and realized he was smiling like an idiot. "Yeah," he said, "uh, sure. Whatever. I mean, I didn't do anything."

"You spoke up," Seung said, and with that he walked back toward the school building.

Jeremy watched him go for a moment and looked down at the gasping lump of bully at his feet. Noah stared up through the tears squeezing from his eyes. "He work for your daddy too, Mason?"

* * *

AFTER SCHOOL, MR. Horton drove Jeremy home in the back of his father's Lincoln Town Car. Jeremy tried to read his book, but just couldn't stop seeing the fight from earlier in the day. Seung had moved like...liquid. He tried to describe it to the back of Mr. Horton's head as he drove them to the house deep within the gated community of Ottawa Hills.

"It was kinda' hard to see past Noah—he's such a blimp. But it was like Seung hardly moved a muscle. He just flipped this great big kid end over end."

Horton smiled under the smoked lenses of his sunglasses. Jeremy kind of thought they made him look a little like a skull with the bald head and everything. He wasn't sure if he liked that or not. Horton seemed to glance at Jeremy—impossible to be sure with the shades—in the rear view.

"Sounds like Aikido."

"Yeah, why?" Jeremy asked, "I mean what makes you say so?" Jeremy wondered, not for the first time, how many martial arts and dirty little tricks Mr. Horton stored in his bodyguard repertoire. "You know any of that stuff?"

"I know some Aikido," he said as the car slid up to a red light. Mr. Horton scanned the intersection, peered into the other cars. "You learn to use an attacker's force against him, so it doesn't matter how much bigger the other guy is."

Jeremy sat forward. "Yeah, that's just what Seung did. He barely touched Noah, but wha-BAM!" He slapped his left palm with his right fist and sat back.

"Yup, Aikido's a good one," Horton said. "Maybe I'll show you a few moves."

Jeremy grinned. "Really?"

"Sure, you're old enough, and Aikido's pretty gentle stuff. I don't think Mr. Mason'd mind."

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Every now and again as they made their way deeper into the suburban enclave of Ottawa Hills, Mr. Horton stole a glance back at Jeremy. He had been in the employ of Frank Mason for two years, but mostly on Mason's personal detail. This assignment, watching over young Jeremy, could be considered a combination of reward and light duty.

Six months ago, while enjoying a cappuccino at an outdoor cafe in Florence, a cleaner had taken a shot at Mr. Mason. Horton had seen the man riding up on a scooter and without much thought, shadowed a step or two closer to Mr. Mason than usual. When the gun came out and the muzzle flashed, he was already in position. The other two body-guards on Mason's personal detail practically evaporated the would-be assassin with a storm of return gunfire, but Horton took a hit in the chest. The slug, a nine millimeter, collapsed his left lung, and he nearly expired right there on the seven-hundred year old marble of the piazza. The doctors had called his survival a miracle. Horton liked to joke that he figured God wouldn't want him, and the Devil was probably afraid to deal with him, so he stuck on earth instead.

At first, this assignment had pissed him off. He'd recovered fully, was back in fighting shape, as it were. He shouldn't have to be the one to watch the kid. He wasn't nobody's nanny, for Christ's sweet sake. But after three months of playing guardian angel to Mason's son, Horton realized that he'd never been happier in a job. Jeremy was more than an all right kid.

He wasn't what Horton had expected at all, not like some of the brats he'd seen in his time. Jeremy had something that a lot of rich children don't get: Character. And he was tough, especially for his age and privilege.

Horton would never say anything, but he'd watched the entire exchange in the school yard earlier that day from a darkened classroom window. He'd have been on those other kids faster than they could've wiped their little punk asses if he'd been needed. He knew Jeremy wouldn't call for him, probably even if he should have. While that worried him a little for his young charge, it also made him like the kid that much more. Jeremy wasn't just tough, though, he was a good kid, too. Kind. Maybe that made the boy a little naive or something, but Horton had seen him stand up to three other boys for that little slope. This Seung hadn't needed the help, sure, but still, that meant something in Horton's book.

And smart? Jeremy knew about stuff that Horton could never wrap his mind around. Sometimes when he would go on about this physics shit, and probability this and theorems that, it made Horton just want to laugh. Might as well be another language. What it all came down to for Horton was that if the rubber ever broke, he'd be proud as hell if the kid were like Jeremy.

They pulled into the driveway of a grand Tudor mansion, shouldered by spreading oaks and venerable cottonwoods. "Home sweet home, kid."

Jeremy, who had rediscovered his focus enough to delve back into A Brief History of Time, looked up from the pages, eyes a little frosty and far away. "Did you know that gravity's considered a weak force and that electromagnetism is a strong one?"

Horton put the car in park and threw an arm over the passenger seat so he could twist around and look full on at Jeremy. "Nope," Horton made sure he looked serious. "What's the big deal?"

"Well, nothing all that big right now." Jeremy sat forward, his eyes fast and bright, "but if in the future we could generate enough electricity, we could probably control gravity with electromagnetism, or overcome it." He thought for a second. "Oh, hey, we already do that."

Horton's eyebrows went up. "No kiddin'?"

"Yeah, with superconductors. I was watching the Discovery Channel the other day and I saw them playing around with a superconductor. This little piece of ceramic or something was just floating in mid air. It was the coolest thing."

Horton smiled, huge teeth under reflective lenses.

"Just think," Jeremy said, eyes far away, "what we could do if we could build a field generator big enough to move a ship in outer space."

"What, like Star Trek?"

Jeremy zoomed back, "Just like that," he said, "I didn't know you liked Star Trek, Mr. Horton." He squinted, "Next Generation or Capt'n Kirk n' Spock?"

Horton lowered his sunglasses just enough to reveal a pair of starburst-green eyes surrounded by smile (or scowl) wrinkles. "Listen," he conspired, "I know people my age ain't supposed to like that stuff, but Star Trek, the Next Generation is about the only good TV show I ever saw." He thought for a second. "Hawaii Five-O was pretty cool, too, though."

Jeremy looked down at the cover of his book. Steven Hawking looked back, somewhat amused. Horton saw how difficult it was for Jeremy to do what he was about to do and wanted to put a hand on the kid's shoulder or something. Dammit. Made him a little misty. But he kept his cool and just waited for the kid to ask.

"You know, my father's got this new widescreen in the game room. A plasma TV? It's supposed to be much clearer than other kinds of screens."

Horton nodded.

Jeremy tore his eyes away from Hawking. "If you wanted to, you could maybe watch Star Trek with me sometime." He blurted, "It's in syndication now, all re-runs and all, but I know all the times and channels it comes on. I got a bunch TiVo'd, too."

"That would be great, kid. When's it comin' on?"

Jeremy checked his watch, a child-sized Rolex his father insisted he wear, and said, "In about ten minutes on TNT. They're going through the last year of the series this season, so it's all the really good ones."

"Like when Troi and Worf are dating?"

"Yeah," Jeremy's faced opened like a flower. "That's right."

Horton popped the locks. "Let's move then. Ten minutes is just enough time for Mrs. Sanchez to fix us up some Trek food."

THREE

HELL IS NOTHING. There are no lakes of fire in which sinners writhe and crisp. There are no forests of bodies impaled on pikes of ice to bend in the wind of their own shrieks. No spectral judge pronounces sentence at the end of some oversized salad fork. No monstrous henchmen heap nightmares upon the wicked. The wicked are left alone, and in that lies the truest pain. Hell is darkness.

In that darkness, something rolled over.

It had memories, oceans of intelligence and galaxies of experience, but in the dark nothing is certain and so all was meaningless. Differences blend and distort over time, so that history and fiction flow into one another like tallow. It had memories of the Light, and that was a truth to hold onto in the confusion. If there was all this dark, there must be Light. It had its stories of times in the Light, of profound glories. It remembered strength and it remembered pride. Gone now, but never forgotten.

It did not know its own age, no longer counted in eons what could be felt in the weight of quasars. It knew that the Light was outside of time, and had shone before it had known anything at all. The Light had created it and once even loved it. Oh, how that had felt, to turn its face into the sun and be wanted, praised simply for being. It had been young then, and its time with the Light had been short, perhaps. It could never be certain how long it had been in the dark, only that it was dark. Only that the Light had gone, turned away and left it in the closet with a monster.

Its memory was its own fanged demon, its hope the foulest sting. Hope that once again it might taste something outside of the lonely dark. It could never hope to once again bask in the Light, but even the tiniest hint of recognition or attention for any reason at all would be Shangri-La, something upon which to feed in the great nothing. But how?

Out of the black it had a spark, a flame, an idea.

Not love. Hate.

And so, after a long time in the dark, it reached a decision and became a thing different from what it once had been. The new shape of its intention was recognized, allowed. A crack in the darkness was opened. A way was given. It moved. All voices are heard, all prayers are answered, but not always by the same thing.

FOUR

FRANK MASON STOOD over a naked man bound to a stainless steel chair. Mason's two bodyguards, Sinclair and Finch, flanked him at a pace removed. The three of them were a wall of expensive suits and subtle jewelry. The dirt floor cellar was cold and damp, but sweat slicked the man in the chair. His eyes shone wet in the cone of light shed from the single bulb above his head. He looked from Mason, to Finch, to Mason, to Sinclair and back to Mason again. Mason took a long, slow drag on a cigarette and exhaled. He almost never smoked, but this was a special occasion.

"Listen, Frank," the man in the chair began.

Finch leaned in and around Mason's left shoulder with a quick arm. His open hand impacted the side of the captive man's head like a brick at the end of a whip. Even in the midst of a nauseous shower of stars, the man knew enough not to call out. Finch recovered his pose, a dark pillar of flesh in the shadows. "Not until Mr. Mason asks you, Howard."

Mason took a step closer to Howard, his features resolved in the light cone. At forty-five, he looked every bit the Italian-American Gentleman, from his perfect suit of clothes to the brushed platinum Rolex on his wrist. It threw a dull glow as he swept a lock of hair from his forehead. His skin was flawless, cultured with only the best products and attention. The subtle lines around his mouth and eyes could have been painted by a master. Frank Mason was beautiful the way a wolf is beautiful, lithe and purposeful, its health due to its success as a killer.

Mason crouched down on his haunches, the rare cigarette held by easy lips. He looked up. "I'm going to ask you a question, Howard, okay?"

Howard nodded hard, a stark pop issuing from his neck.

"And when I ask you my question," Mason dragged on the smoke, the tip an orange flare, "I want you to answer me honestly. That's all I want." He bored into Howard's eyes with his own. "You need to understand something first, though, I think."

Howard tried to swallow. His Adam's apple jumped around, but he couldn't quite seem to get the trick of it. He gave up and mouth-breathed instead, quick and raspy.

Mason exhaled a stream of blue fumes. "I need you to understand that you won't live through this."

Howard let out a sob.

There he'd been, returning a DVD he and the wife had watched the night before. Misty with her damn Masterpiece Theatre or BBC Presents—four hours of Victorian bullshit in the English countryside where everyone was either fucking their cousin, or had tuberculosis or both. He'd just slipped into the store and out, was sitting in the Lexus, about to turn the key, and whack! For a moment, he wondered if anyone had seen it happen, if anyone had noticed the two well dressed gentlemen approach him while he sat in his car, if a concerned passer-by just happened to catch it when they sapped the hell out of the back of his head. He knew well enough when he'd woken up in this damn basement, this chair, his skull going off like a klaxon, that he was a dead man. But to hear it said aloud... A steady flow of gelatin tracked his cheeks.

"Howard," Mason said. "Howard?" He dipped and pivoted until he recaptured Howard's eyes, squatting down on his hams. "Yeah, there's a guy. I realize that with this understanding you may find yourself somewhat depressed. And that's okay. It comes from being out of control and that feels terrible, I know." He drew on the cigarette. "But I don't want you to feel completely out of control, because you're not, not really."

Howard tried to look away from those reverse points of light in Mason's face and couldn't. Even as Howard's tears blurred the rest of his features, Mason's eyes remained vivid, hot.

"You have a choice, Howard. You can answer my one question, just one, honestly and die fast, or we can hook you up to an IV and make it take forever." Mason half-turned his head, "Sinclair, what's our record?"

A stone soldier in five-hundred dollar Gucci loafers answered, "Six an' a half days."

"That right?" Mason said, shaking his head. "That was who?"

"Vin Jones."

"Huh," Mason said, pausing as if in the throes of memory, then reached out and grabbed Howard's ankle in a vice grip. Before he could so much as whimper, Mason pushed the glowing coal of his cigarette into the sole of Howard's foot. Howard screamed, an awful sound, high and surprised, but Mason would not let go. Skin crackled, vaporized, a whiff of burned meat seeped into the room. Howard ran out of breath on his first cry and began to draw in a great gulp for another shriek when Mason pulled the butt away. Mason studied the wound, a perfect black circle. He dropped the ankle and stood up, flicking the cigarette away.

"I got a whole pack." He smiled over his shoulder. "Finch smokes too. What is it, Ian? Reds? And Sinclair smokes those big fuckin' Cubans."

Howard could only blubber, but it was quiet, resigned.

Mason grinned down at him. "Howard, I don't care how much. Shit, I already know how much. And I don't care about how long or even how at all, you get me?"

Howard waited for it, could smell the size of what was coming for him.

Mason's smile melted away. "The truth now. All I want to know is...why?"

Howard snuffled, snot gleamed from his nose in twin runnels. "Please," he cried, "I'm sorry."

Mason's eyes died. "I know."

* * *

THEY KEPT HIM alive him alive for almost seventy-two hours. In the end, Sinclair dispatched what was left of Howard with a bullet behind the ragged hole where his left ear had been. Still bound to the chair, the hairless, sexless husk, bruised and burned into a new species, slumped forward. The air pumped from its lungs. It sounded like a sigh of relief.

With the smoke from Sinclair's .44 still hanging in the air, Mason stretched and cracked his knuckles. He looked at his men: sweaty, dirty, their shirts rolled up at the elbows. The three of them had been sleeping in shifts over a long three days. Mason glanced at his watch. "I miss my kid," he said. "Let's go home."

FIVE

FATHER JOHN CALVIN dragged his carry-on suitcase away from Rome International Airport's Customs gate a few minutes before sunset. He never took more than just the carry-on. As much as he traveled, it was just a matter of time before the airlines would lose a piece of checked baggage. The contents of the carry-on were far from precious, a couple changes of clothes, his shaving kit and the like. He could certainly afford to part with it. The loss of time was what he deemed too expensive a risk; tracking down misplaced baggage, waiting for it to arrive and be delivered to a hotel room, etc. John Calvin could accept a great many things, but inefficiency wasn't one of them. As he neared the exit, a soldier in camouflage fatigues caught the white square at Calvin's throat. Most people paid attention to the collar, if not to him. It often proved a helpful distraction. People remembered a priest, the black suit and white tooth at the neck, but not the face floating above it. The soldier nodded, the corner of his serious mouth twitched in what might have been a nervous smile. Calvin grinned his airport smile at the reflexive Catholic, making sure to appear a little nervous as he glanced at his AR-51 sub-machine gun. He loved Catholics. The uniform never failed to scare the shit out of them. Calvin moved toward the automatic glass doors. They withdrew on their tracks and burnt jet fuel pounded up his nose.

The buzz of a propeller was drowned out by the tearing roar of a large passenger jet. He supposed anything was better than the screaming child who'd sat behind him on the flight from Dublin. Under that all too familiar circumstance he often used a trick of self-hypnosis, a kind of forced concentration to drown out a squalling child, pleading target, whatever. But as he had begun to roll his eyes back and start the breathing exercises, strange images had disrupted his thoughts. With every attempt at calm, a flashing soup of religious icons and violence had thrashed behind his eyes. The images seemed so foreign, so injected, that he had finally given up trying to control them. He knew well enough not to fight with his subconcious when it clamoured. For the rest of the flight he'd endured the screeching toddler.

Now, he stared at a row of taxis purring at the curb, but instead saw the soldier. He'd been holding the sub-machine gun in a manner that left him vulnerable to three modes of unarmed attack. One would break his arm, the other his nose. The third would kill.

Calvin nodded to the taxi dispatcher, a man in a red jacket and a cap with a patent leather brim, standing at the head of the cab line. The dispatcher smiled. "Bongiorno, Padre," and asked for Calvin's destination. He had a piece of biomatter, lettuce or squashed pea perhaps, embedded between his two front teeth. Calvin almost answered in English and caught himself, covering the stammer with a cough. He gave the address in the Italian he'd spent a full year learning in one of many phonetic immersion courses. It had been the easiest of many new languages to master, his grasp of Latin already solid. He'd graduated the course, class of one, years ago, and after basing himself out of Italy for so long, spoke as well as a native. His accent gave him away as a Sicilian country boy. A few minutes later, he was staring into his book as the cab raced past the outskirts of the city.

His driver was less than talkative, for which Calvin was more than grateful. A silent hour passed as they moved away from Rome and into a countryside flayed open by fields and dotted with old forest, not yet plowed under. Just as Calvin sensed the driver's suspicion that they might be lost, a dirt drive snatched out at the main road from a stand of silver olive trees. Calvin asked the driver to stop. He paid, tipped the adequate amount for a man with nothing extra, and got out. "Grazie," he said through the exhausted version of his airport smile. The driver grunted and drove off down the two lane highway, empty save for his receding cherry tail lights.

Calvin stood in the dark at the head of the drive. A moonless sky roared with a blizzard of stars and Rome glowed on the southern horizon. He turned, the gravel underfoot popping and rasping. Insects and nightbirds jockeyed for auditory position, their calls quick and shrill. A frog droned in the ditch. At the end of the lane a house sat and waited, a fat stone cat with one square, yellow eye. Calvin couldn't see it, squatting back in the olive trees, but he knew it was there. It and its single occupant.

He took a deep breath of spring air, balm on his sinuses and throat, and began to drag his suitcase down the drive. It hopped from pebble to dip, threatening to tip over in the dust, so Calvin grabbed one of the side handles and picked it up. He almost swung it next to him as he walked through the cool evening. The olive leaves gleamed and swayed in a gentle breeze that had yet to reach up the lane and caress him. He watched the movement of the trees, and just as he wondered when the wind would get to him, his brow cooled and his hair waved. The air, the sounds and stars. Calvin sighed. A man could forget a lot on a night like this.

It all hushed.

The breeze and night music did not taper off as if in response to a looming storm, but toggled off, harsh and definite. Again, Calvin stood frozen in a world gone mute. Only the sound of his heart, heavy and quickening, came through. Nothing outside of his own skull made a sound.

He rotated slowly, scanning, the hair on his neck stiff at attention. The stand of olives revolved to the corner of his vision, was replaced by a field of still, waist-high grass, silver in the starlight, then the lane where it stretched back to the black-top. Calvin squinted. There was someone standing at the end of the lane where it met the highway. His grip on the suitcase tightened. Concealed within the handle of the carry-on was a single razor blade. On an airport x-ray scan it appeared as a pencil thin line, a piece of reinforcement in the handle, but with a practiced twitch of the hand, it could be between Calvin's thumb and forefinger before you could say mickey-mouse-airport-security. Had his eyes been lasers, Calvin would have incinerated the shadow at the end of the drive.

He shouted, "Hello?" in Italian and like the sound of his heart, the words were inaudible past his own lips. He could feel himself call out, hear the words reverberate in his mouth, but not in the air outside it.

The man started to walk toward him.

"Hello!" This time in French.

The man remained silent, but his walk was strange, hampered.

"Hello!" Calvin shouted in American accented English.

The shadow-man kept coming, his features indistinguishable in the moonless night.

Calvin willed his pupils to yawn wider, to suck in every available photon. He flicked his wrist just so. The carry-on dropped in a puff of dust at his feet and an inch of artful murder glinted in his palm. He unlocked his knees and waited in the unnatural cloud of silence, the only sound the steady pump of his blood. He told his heart to slow a few a beats, and as always, it did as it was ordered. Calvin held his hands loose, but up and in front. The razor hand offered out flat.

The man kept coming. A hundred feet. Seventy-five. Fifty and Calvin again noticed the man walked keeled over to one side. His shoes puffed up little clouds of dust, but not a single pebble popped underfoot. Twenty-five meters now, and the dark could no longer blind Calvin to all the details. Features resolved, a black suit, a single square of white at the throat, and pulling the man's stride a bit, was a wheeled carry-on suitcase bumping along as he dragged it behind him. Calvin's breath caught. He was looking at a reflection of himself as he'd been a few minutes ago. He blinked. Then it was gone.

The screeching of bugs and birds, chirping of frogs, the breeze through the tossing trees, all rushed back. Calvin barked a cry of alarm and actually took a swat at the air with the razor blade as if to slash a wound in the shouting night. After that instant of panic, his training kicked in and he whirled on his heels. The field, the trees, the drive spun around as he took it all in and analyzed for predators. There was nothing, just him and a warm spring night. He took himself down a notch, easing the hammer of his reflexes back to safe. Calvin was the killer on this road, and, as far as he could tell, there was only one of him.

Calvin made himself breathe in measured intervals as he bent over and slipped the razor blade back into its hiding place. He straightened and started back toward the trees and the house they hid. His brain wanted to scream, to gibber and whine questions for which he had no answer. He could feel the doomsday theories piling up: stroke, tumor, insanity. How long did he have? Was it somatic or neurotic? He walked, head down, carry-on bumping dumb and clunky against his leg.

There were plenty of causes for spontaneous auditory and visual hallucination. All rational reasons pointed to disease, madness. None of that bothered him. The dirt drive plunged into the hissing trees and increased darkness. Calvin remembered a time in his childhood that had felt a great deal like what had happened in Dublin and just a moment ago. A drop of sweat drew a line of frost down his ribs and he shivered.

He rounded a gentle bend in the drive and the house pounced, one-eyed and suspicious. He stopped just outside of the light thrown by the single illuminated window and looked up between the over-arching branches. They netted undulating triangles of star-field. Father John Calvin stared into one of those patches of sky and thought of a God whose name he did not know, a God in whom he believed, but did not trust.

"Not again," he said.

As if in response, the door of the house swung open. A figure filled it and called his name in English.

"Yeah!" he answered, and trotted out of the gloom. "It's me."

The man in the door drew Calvin into a modest foyer with a gentle hand on the shoulder. Calvin set the carry-on down on polished floor boards that were at least four times his age. He faced the man he had come to meet, a healthy sixty-something, white-haired and quick-eyed. He too sported a black suit and white collar. He offered the back of his hand to Calvin, a jeweled ring winked like a frozen drop of blood. Calvin was supposed to put his mouth on it. He hesitated just long enough to remind the other man of his distaste for the ritual, then bent at the waist and brushed his lips over the ring.

"Your Eminence," he recited and straightened. "How are you, Thom?"

Bishop Thomas Neary glowered a little. "Sill hate kissing the ring, don't you?" he said. His voice held a trace of his beginnings in a small Bronx chapel decades ago. He held up a finger, the flesh soft and pink, smooth. "The office if not the man, John," he admonished and held out his other hand.

Calvin gave a tired smile, a real one, and shook hands. "The man's fine, it's the office I worry about."

"Cute, Father Calvin," Neary said and lead the way into a modest study. He motioned to a couple of wing chairs drawn up to a crackling fire. Without thinking about it, Calvin plopped into the one that kept his back to the wall and gave him a view of the door. He sighed, deep and long. Neary moved over to a walnut high-boy and pulled out a couple of tumblers. "You need a drink." he said over his shoulder. "You need a double."

He brought over the glasses and handed Calvin four fingers of what he knew would be very old, very expensive single malt. He smelled it first, then took a sip. It burned in his mouth and cleaned the last of the airport fumes and road dust from his throat. He closed his eyes and relaxed into the creaking chair.

"Christ, that's good."

"Blasphemy, Johnny."

Calvin squinted through one open eye. "Christ, that's damn good?"

"There you go."

Calvin chuckled and took another drink. "How's things down at HQ? How's Grampa?"

Neary looked into the fire. "I don't think he'll live through the winter, John. He's awfully sick."

"We've been saying that for years."

"Yes, but he can't even get through an entire mass by himself any longer. He has one of the bishops do the mainstay of the recitation." Neary's brow creased. He took a drink. "It's tough to watch."

Calvin sat forward. "You know what I think?"

"Oh, please, enlighten me."

"I think he's been dead for years and Holy Mother Church has been covering it up."

Neary's eyebrows lifted. "Really? Then who's the little guy in the funny hat?"

"A puppet."

Neary pursed his lips, appeared to consider the possibility. "And, uh, who's pulling the strings?"

"Jim Henson," Calvin deadpanned.

"The Muppet guy? Now, I'm certain he's dead. Saw the funeral on TV. Kermit the Frog sang and everything. I cried like a baby."

"That's another part of the cover-up. Henson's alive."

"That's quite a conspiracy theory."

"Well, yeah." Calvin brushed a hand over his lapel. "Men in Black and all."

Neary chuckled. The Pope a puppet. It was funny, but John Calvin was the only man on earth from whom Bishop Neary would accept this kind of horrendous joke. It had taken years to find the right person for his unique job, and years more to train him, not to mention the cost. There was only one of Calvin, and Neary didn't relish the idea of replacing him. Besides, he and Johnny went back.

Neary took another drink, a gulp, and winced. "I shouldn't drink this with my stomach."

Calvin nodded, waited for it.

Neary paused a beat, another. "So," he began, "speaking of conspiracies and shadow operations."

"Uh, huh."

"Your latest triumph made the front pages of all the major rags."

"Triumph," Calvin tasted it. "Sure."

Neary scrolled a hand through the air as he said, "Nobel Laureate Murdered in Dublin Pub."

"Film at eleven."

Neary set his eyes on Calvin. "I'm not happy about this one, John. You're supposed to make them look like accidents. The paper said you damn near took his head off."

Calvin gazed into the fire. A knot popped like a shot. "Linoleum knives'll do that."

"And just how was that supposed to look accidental?"

Calvin sipped his scotch. "Dunno'," he said. "Like he cut himself shaving?"

"Enough with the jokes, Father Calvin." Neary's Bronx reared its head right and proper. "Cut the crap, Johnny. What's with the friggin' horror show?"

Calvin watched a tongue of flame lick over a log, the bark glowing like electrified paper. "I was sending a message: Don't fuck with things best left to God." He looked up. "Thought you'd like that, Thom."

"We're not the Mafia."

"No, they're just our squad of friendly little errand monkeys."

"That's right. They don't leave the right signature, so we have them do the smaller jobs from time to time." He jabbed a finger at Calvin. "You're the one who does our killing for us."

"That's right."

"Not like this it isn't."

"Look, Thom," Calvin said. "I really thought you'd go for it, the way I did Connolly."

"It was monstrous."

"Maybe, but it'll make the next geek who starts talking about making a Xerox copy of Christ think twice." Calvin's eyes flashed. "I'm not even against cloning as a rule, Thom. In fact, I'm for it. I think it'll end up helping a lot of people one day, but you don't get to do what Connolly was talking about doing."

"So you slashed his throat and left the corpse like a common terrorist." Neary looked out the black square of the window. "It was too much."

Calvin paused a moment. He looked into his drink and spoke low and even. "Did you ever think about what might happen if some joker actually does clone Christ one of these days?"

"It would be an abomination."

"Oh, quit reciting, Bishop Neary."

"What?"

"Try to think past having your fucking Christian sensibilities offended, will you?"

Neary stared, a muscle in his jaw flexed.

"Maybe it wouldn't be an abomination." Calvin offered, and sat back. He took a long, slow pull of his scotch. If His Eminence wanted to know where Calvin was headed, he'd ask after he'd calmed down enough to stop clenching his teeth. Calvin took another drink, swirled the amber fluid around in the tumbler.

After a quiet minute. "What do you mean?"

Calvin sat up. "Thom, you and a lot of other people think of the idea of cloning the Son of God as an abomination because it's what, unnatural?"

"Among other things."

"It can't be unnatural because God himself gave man the ability and inspiration to do the act. And if that's true, and the hypothetical clone of Jesus Christ isn't an abomination, then what is it?"

"You'll tell me." Neary said. "I'm just sure of it."

Calvin opened his hand, palm up. "If it isn't an abomination, a clone of Jesus might just be the Second Coming." Calvin looked over into the fire again. A tendril of Revelations snaked through his mind. Black as sackcloth... His hand collapsed into a fist. "Maybe I bought the world some time."

"By using Connolly like what—a scarecrow?"

Calvin smiled a little, his eyes far away. "Yeah, just like that."

For a moment, Thom Neary could only stare at Father Calvin while his brain rolled over what the man had said. After a while, he took a drink. The liquid in his glass trembled just a little. "Did you enjoy Ireland?"

"The beer was good."

Calvin watched the bishop drain the rest of his scotch, aware that the man was trying to speed toward the end of this meeting. He smiled into his own drink and tipped up the tumbler. Poor Thom, he thought. Just like Dr. Frankenstein, you created a monster and now you're afraid it's gone out of your control. He watched the older man over the rim of his glass. Thing is, you think I might be right.

Neary waited until Calvin set his glass on the arm of his chair and then, "You must be tired, Johnny."

Calvin kept himself from smirking. "Exhausted."

"The room's all made up for you. We can talk about your next duty in the morning."

Calvin showed his best and most harmless smile. "You want I should make pancakes?"

Neary couldn't quite laugh. "Sure, John. That'd be great."

SIX

JEREMY FACED THE mountain of human being in front of him and thought of Newtonian Physics. All he had to do was remember what Horton had taught him so far, and this should work. They had gone through the motions without any physical contact for the past couple of days after school, laying the crash mats down on the floor of the racket-ball court his father had added onto the house just last winter. Jeremy went over those motions in his head and reminded himself that acceleration is proportionate to mass; a body in motion stays in motion. He splayed his legs shoulder width, the blue crash mat cool and sticky under his feet, and waited for Horton to charge.

Horton loomed a few feet away, his loose sweat pants and T-shirt masking the bags of iron underneath. The florescent lights shone in a strip of white on one side of his bald head. A dark strip, the absence of light from the observation balcony, reflected off the other side. The effect made it seem as if he had donned war paint for the occasion. He smiled at Jeremy, all dressed up in a starched white karate gi. "You ready, kid?"

Jeremy frowned, concentrating. "Yeah, I mean... Okay."

"You'll be fine. Just do what I showed you and remember to move in circles."

Jeremy was just opening his mouth to say, "I got it," when Horton launched at him, all pounding footsteps and grasping hands. The big bodyguard destroyed the distance between them in two steps. Horton's right arm snatched out at the boy's shoulder, a gripping construction crane. Jeremy was so startled he couldn't think. As Horton's hand clamped down on his shoulder, Jeremy grabbed the top of it, his fingers wrapping under the meaty part of Horton's thumb. Horton bore down, smashing Jeremy's ten year old frame toward the floor. If Jeremy tried to resist that incredible force, his collar bone would snap, probably his knee as well. So, he didn't.

Jeremy twisted and bent backward, falling with the pressure. He ducked under his own arm, the one holding Horton's thumb, and before he lost his balance, brought his other leg around behind him. Now, he stood next to Horton who continued to fall under the weight of his own attack. While guiding Horton's momentum with the thumb grip, Jeremy reached out and placed the palm of his other hand against the small of Horton's back. He gave a little push and the enormous man went flying, head over heals. Horton landed on his back with a "Whuff!"

Jeremy stood in utter shock. "I can't fucking believe it."

"Whu—," Horton wheezed, "watch your language, kid." He sat up and shook his glassy head, turning a grin on the boy. "That was great, Jeremy. Really perfect."

Jeremy snapped out of it and ran over to Horton. He slid to his knees next to the big man. "I'm so sorry!" he blurted. "Are you okay, Mr. Horton?" His small hands fluttered just off Horton's skin, uncertain birds. "I didn't hurt you or anything, did I?"

Horton laughed and got to his feet in one easy motion, illustrating that he was not only okay, but could still move like a jungle predator if he wanted to. He took a few steps away from Jeremy and bowed at the waist, keeping eye contact with his incredulous pupil at all times.

"Just like I told you, kid. That's one of the neat things about Aikido. If you do it just right, you can't even hurt the punk tryin' to mess with you. You just kinda' redirect em'."

Jeremy returned the bow and gave a shaky smile. "I'm surprised I even remember what to do. You scared the heck outta' me."

"You didn't remember what to do."

"But I thought you said—"

Horton closed his eyes and waved a hand. "Your brain didn't remember."

"I don't understand."

Horton explained, "I wanted you not to be able to think about what you were doing, so you wouldn't have time to hesitate."

A voice floated down from the observation deck. "Muscle memory, Jeremy."

Jeremy's insides tore. Half of him cartwheeled, the other half scuttled back into the shadows. He squinted up into the dark observation balcony: a strip where the wall had been removed and covered with a fine netting to keep stray racket balls from bouncing out. Frank Mason moved forward into the light.

Jeremy shouted, "Dad!"

"Welcome home, sir," Horton said.

"Muscle memory," Mason repeated.

Jeremy and Horton both straightened.

"Yes, sir," Jeremy said.

Horton looked at his feet. He needed new tennis shoes.

Mason softened a little. "You did a fine job, son."

Jeremy blushed. "Thank you, sir."

"Horton?" Mason called down.

"Yes, Mr. Mason?"

"I'd like to see you in my study if the lesson is over."

"It is, sir."

Mason smiled. "Twenty minutes okay?"

"Of course." Shit, he was in trouble.

Mason checked his watch. He frowned, licked a finger, and rubbed something dark from the crystal. It was four thirty. He turned his eyes on his son. "You finish your homework?"

Jeremy's voice rose. "I only have to read a little—"

"Get it done and then come to my study."

Jeremy's shoulders dropped. "Yes, sir."

Mason turned and disappeared from view. Jeremy and Horton heard a door close a moment later. Horton wondered what the kid's life would be like if he hadn't caught that bullet for Mason. He put on a warm smile for the boy. "You did a great job, kid."

Jeremy smiled, but it didn't get to his eyes, not even close. "Thanks," he said. "I'd better go finish up my homework."

"What's the subject?"

"Astronomy."

"You'll get an A."

This time Jeremy smiled for real. Horton reached out and roughed the boy's hair as they made for the exit.

Up in the observation balcony, standing next to the door through which he'd only pretended to walk, Frank Mason listened. When boy and bodyguard left, he nodded. They were still his.

* * *

FOURTEEN MINUTES LATER, Horton stood outside Mason's study door, showered and dressed in his best black suit. Not having to worry about styling his hair helped to save a lot of time in the long run. He straightened his tie and rapped his knuckles against the mahogany.

"Come in," muffled through the heavy wood.

Horton ducked a bit as he moved into the room and closed the door behind him. Mason sat behind a massive Chinese desk. An antique, it had been hand-carved to look as though the surface and drawers were supported by the legs of a dragon. At the end of each, great scaly talons gripped four disembodied heads. The desk had belonged to an actual emperor, as Mason made certain to inform anyone who wasn't already in the know. The heads were supposed to be the likenesses of defeated enemies. Mason was on the phone, and waved Horton into the room.

"Sure, sure," he soothed into the handset. "No, I understand completely."

Horton kept a blank face, but wanted to wince. Mason was never this conciliatory. He looked over Mason's shoulder and out the window. On the back of a green and yellow John Deere riding mower, one of Mason's wetbacks cut perfect stripes of dark and light green into the expansive lawn. Mason hired illegals from one Latin American humidity pit or another for the house work, and Italian-Americans for everything else. Their names might sound as English as that old dyke Thatcher, like Horton or Mason, but they hadn't come over on the boat that way.

Horton was one of the few who knew that Frank Mason's people had come over as Mancini, then Mancy, and finally within the last couple generations, Mason. Mr. Mason owned one of the best steak houses in town, and it still bore one of his family's old monikers. If you could get a better New York strip somewhere other than Mancy's, Horton would have loved to hear about it. And even if the beef was better at another place, the waitresses wouldn't be as fine, nor as responsive to a good tip.

Horton chanced a glance down at his employer. Mason had tossed his suit coat over the back of the small leather couch pushed against the north wall. He had rolled his sleeves up and loosened his tie. A stray lock of hair fell over his forehead. He looked worn out.

"Yeah," he said into the phone and looked up at Horton, his eyes dark. "You bet. No, no, it's all clear." He waited a minute, kept silent. Horton could hear the voice of the other party buzzing in the handset, a trapped insect. Mason took a deep breath. Horton knew it was coming and looked away.

"Now," Mason said low and silky. "Shut the fuck up. I don't care why you can't do it by Thursday, but you will do it by Thursday."

Horton listened for the insect, but it was silent. After another moment, it buzzed once.

"Fine," Mason said and hung up. He looked at the phone for what felt to Horton like several minutes, and then blinked. Horton almost jumped through the ceiling. Mason looked up at the bodyguard.

"Do you think it's appropriate to teach my son this Jap shit?"

"Sir, I would never do anything to harm the boy."

"I know that, Horton, but that doesn't answer my question." Mason leaned back in his chair. It did not creak.

Horton thought for a second. "I thought Aikido would be best for a kid his age, Mr. Mason."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir." Horton made eye contact, looked away. "Jeremy was almost in a fight at school the other day, and—"

"Almost?"

"Three bigger boys were about to beat up a chin—" he started, "a new child, and Jeremy stepped in."

If Mason was proud he didn't show it. "And?"

"Turned out the other boy didn't need his help. He took out the biggest kid with what looked to me like an Aikido throw." Horton looked up again. "Jeremy asked me about it on the ride home and I told him I'd teach him a few moves."

Mason spun his chair around and faced the window. Horton could only see the back of his boss's head. What in hell went on within that skull was anybody's guess. Without turning, Mason asked, "Why didn't you step in, Horton? You are Jeremy's protection, are you not?"

Horton kept quiet for a moment. To answer too quickly would be a sign of weakness and he needed a platform of strength to stand on now. "I didn't think you'd want me to fight his battles for him, sir."

Mason spun around. "You'd have stepped in if he'd been in trouble, correct?"

Horton looked Frank Mason deep in his eyes, but refused to fall in. "If those little punks had given Jeremy anything more than a bloody nose, I would have broken their arms for them."

Mason looked at his man, and smiled. "I believe you would have, Horton."

"Yes, sir."

"Good," Mason said. "Continue the lessons." He waved a hand at the chair on the other side of his desk. "Sit down, Horton."

"Thank you, sir." Horton made sure not to sigh as he folded into the seat. "How was Italy, Mr. Mason?" He pronounced the word it-ly.

* * *

IN HIS BEDROOM, at his own desk—a multi-tiered construction of teak and chrome—Jeremy tried to focus on his textbook. His class had to read the chapter on the history of calculus and answer the work sheet questions at the end. Jeremy sighed. He already knew the story of how Isaac Newton invented calculus so he could figure out the orbits of the planets around the sun like forever ago. Jeez, Jeremy'd been what, eight when he first read that? He glanced up. 5:01 spread across the ceiling in a digital spray from his projection clock. Jeremy looked down at the book and counted out the remaining pages in the chapter. God, there were like six or seven. He was torn between just flipping to the back of the chapter and answering the questions or taking the time to actually read the material first. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could go see his dad. Jeremy started reading.

The next moment, Jeremy's eyes focused on his reflection in the full length mirror hung on the inside of his closet door. He stood, mouth slack, eyes at half mast. His mind was foggy, like he was waking from a dream. Head on gummy ball bearings, he turned to look at the open astronomy text book on his desk at least ten feet away. How'd he get all the way over here? Head clearing a bit at a time, he looked up the ceiling. The digital projection read 5:47. He'd lost almost forty-five minutes.

Someone giggled.

Jeremy whipped his head around toward the sound and faced his reflection. A stain was spreading over the crotch of his khakis. Fresh urine ran hot against his right thigh. He looked into the eyes of the reflected boy. The other Jeremy winked.

Focusing on the floor, Jeremy walked toward the closet door and shut it. For one uprooted second he wondered if the boy in the mirror was still there, locked in the dark and waiting. He let it go and decided to work on the most immediate problem, his wet pants. He kicked off his shoes and squelched into the little adjoining bathroom. He peeled off his slacks and ran them under the hot water faucet in the tub before hanging them over the shower curtain rod. He would throw them in the hamper after they'd had a chance to dry. He took a wet wash cloth and cleaned himself up, then slipped into a pair of jeans and a merino sweater.

Jeremy felt better as soon as he walked out of the bathroom. He didn't know what that episode had been about, but he felt fine now. In fact, now that he wasn't soaking in his own piss, thank you very much, he was kind of intrigued by what had happened. Maybe he'd had a seizure or something. Or perhaps, he'd had a waking dream. He'd read enough about both to know that his behavior might fit with either. He glanced at the sheet of notebook paper next to his astronomy text book and smiled, his eyebrows up. Whatever else had happened during the time he had lost, it seemed Jeremy had managed to do his homework. Writing filled in at least half of the lined notebook paper. He didn't spare it another look. Time was fleeting and his father expected him.

By the time Jeremy stood outside the massive door to his father's inner sanctum, he had forgotten the episode in his room. His mind was clean, untroubled. He didn't even feel the familiar clench of anxiety that usually asserted itself whenever his father returned from one of his business trips.

The longer Frank Mason's dealings kept him from his son, the more he felt he needed to impart some kind of vital lesson to the boy upon his return. Jeremy just figured it was the way his father expressed guilt over being absent so often. He'd read about that too. Just because Jeremy wasn't enrolled in college was no reason for him not to read at a college level, although he kept his interest in things like literature, the arts, and psychology to himself. His father had made it clear on more than one occasion that Jeremy could waste his time on that crap when he was finished with the hard sciences. Math means money, his father was fond of saying. Jeremy was smart enough never to ask how far his father had advanced in the subject himself. Jeremy shook his head and smiled, and with no thought to the consequences, reached out and turned the knob of his father's office door.

Mason gripped the .44 taped under his desk and tensed. He stared hard at his boy for a moment before relinquishing the trigger. "You know better than to come in here without knocking."

Jeremy reacted as if he'd been lightly smacked on the forehead. He did know better, really knew better. When Jeremy was still only a very small child, four or five, he had trundled into his father's office when Mason and another man (not Horton, but another of Mason's hired men) were having a talk with a business partner. Jeremy could never conjure a clear recollection of what he saw that day, but remembered the flavor of his father's reaction well enough. Mason had exploded down at his son in a pyroclastic torrent, and Jeremy had never made the same mistake again. What could he have been thinking?

"Jeez, dad," he said, his brow wrinkled. "I'm sorry." Jeremy looked around the room, and not finding an explanation for his sin in the bookshelves or carpet, gave up and faced his father. "I don't know what—"

"That'll cost you if you ever do it again, son."

Jeremy looked at his father, those eyes, and marked him. "I understand, sir. It won't happen again."

"Good." Something far back in Mason's gaze seemed to click. "Sit down, I want to talk for a while."

Jeremy did as he was told, sliding into the leather seat on the other side of his father's dragon desk. Jeremy had once awoken from a nightmare, covered in sweat, wherein the desk had been chasing him through a dark forest. The desk had galloped after him, each of its severed-head feet wheezing the boy's name. Caught in panicked flight, Jeremy had looked over his shoulder to make certain the monstrous furniture wasn't right on top of him when he crashed into a tree. He'd looked up and saw that it wasn't a tree at all, but the blue-suited leg of a giant. His father, a hundred feet tall, had looked down and shook his head. You deserve this, he had thundered. Jeremy had sat up in bed, tears flowing down his cheeks.

He waited for his father to talk first.

Intent on some papers, Mason said nothing for almost a full minute. Jeremy wondered if his father did things like this—let the silence stretch out and engulf—just to make him squirm. Whatever the reason, it always worked.

"Finish your homework?" Mason asked without looking up.

Jeremy's sphincter contracted so fast it almost hurt. "Yes."

Mason caught the blankness there and looked up. "Oh yeah? What was the assignment?"

"We had to read about the history of calculus," Jeremy said. "And answer some questions."

"You do a good job?"

Jeremy couldn't remember a word of what he'd written down. He had a memory flash of walking by a half a sheet of inked notebook paper on the way out of the door, but nothing specific came to him. "I guess."

"What?"

"I mean, I guess I won't know until it gets graded tomorrow."

Mason scanned his boy for a second and let it go. He didn't give a shit what the little brainiac was studying anyway. It was irrelevant. When it came to pure intelligence, Jeremy could probably out think everyone at that snobby school Mason paid so much for, including the teachers. It was more a high-class day care than anything else. The kid was way beyond the work they sent him home with, but that was all right. As long as they kept exercising the boy's mind so he would be ready when it was time to take over the family business.

Mason was no intellectual slouch himself. He'd read and understood most of the books lining the walls of this office, but he didn't have the kind of brain his son possessed. Maybe if his own father had allowed him to explore his mental abilities as he did with Jeremy, Mason would be even smarter than he was now. Francis Mason Sr. hadn't believed in formal edification past high school, preferring his name sake get more of a real world education. Mason the elder had little Frankie on the street running numbers by the time he was Jeremy's age. By eighteen, Frank Jr. had already been in charge of the low-end gambling and book-making operations for over a year. When his old man died of a massive coronary, Frank took over the entire family business. As luck would have it, the day of his coronation had also been his twenty-first birthday.

Jeremy was lucky, luckier than Mason in any event. The kid didn't have the faintest idea what his father was into, what he was slated to inherit. Mason worked hard keeping the business a secret from the kid. Jeremy was brilliant and naturally inquisitive, so Mason did his best to stymie that curiosity when it came a little too close. Jeremy was smart, but he wasn't ready to deal with what his legacy meant. Mason had ordered his first hit when he was only five years older than Jeremy was now, and had supervised the event personally. He could scarcely conceive of his delicate, genius son participating in anything more violent than the dissection of a embalmed frog.

He looked at Jeremy now, blonde like his mother, that bitch, and with eyes like his. Eyes that went deep and kept going. There was strength in there, he knew it. All it would take was careful planning, and he would mold his boy into a prince worthy of the family throne. What a leader he would one day make; what a powerhouse Jeremy could be with intelligence like that. In the meantime, Mason had to maintain a tight grip on that mind. Jeremy was too smart to just let him think for himself. Well, control was not a problem.

"Horton tells me you almost got into a fight the other day at school."

Jeremy remembered the other boys standing around Seung, ready to pounce. He remembered the anger at the unfairness, the heat that had propelled him across the school yard. His heart began to pound. "Yeah," he began, speaking quickly. "These other kids were going to—"

Mason held up a hand, and Jeremy silenced. "How many of them were there?"

"Three."

Mason nodded, and for a shining instant Jeremy thought his father was proud of him, then Mason said, "You were stupid."

Jeremy looked at the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, a severed head stared forward, its black tongue lolled. Here came the lesson. "Yes, sir."

"What do we do when we're confronted with superior numbers?"

Jeremy knew his role in the tired play, and kept his mouth shut.

"Do we just charge in like some lump of meat? Do we?"

Jeremy and the head regarded one another.

"No, we don't," Mason said and tented his fingers on the desk blotter. "What have I told you to do when the odds are stacked against you?"

Now, set up to repeat Mason's own words, Jeremy took his cue. "Change the odds."

Mason sat back. "There were three of them," he said, constructing the image. "What could you have done?"

Jeremy saw it himself, that little triangle of cruelty around Seung. He got an image of the Korean boy moving like water, guiding Noah Wright through the air. Jeremy tried not to smile. If Seung had actually needed his help, what could he have done? His father was right. The other boys would've stomped him as flat as they had intended to stomp Seung. Jeremy took a stab, "I guess I could've called Mr. Horton," and wished he'd thought of something else the second after it was out of his mouth.

Mason seemed to consider the option. "You could have, and when you grow up you will delegate assignments to your employees." He frowned at his son. "But for now, you can't act like a sissy and call for your bodyguard every time you get a little scared."

"Yeah, but I didn't call—"

"What else could you have done?"

Jeremy blanked. He knew his father would see it and waited.

"You could have waited, Jeremy. You could have waited until there weren't three of them and taken them on one at a time." Mason mused for a moment. "Or, once their numbers were down you could have attacked from behind if the opportunity had presented itself."

Jeremy wanted to wrinkle up his nose. If a thought could have an odor, then what his father had just said smelled like old trash on a hot day. What Mason wanted him to do was no better than what Noah Wright and his toadies had been up to in the first place.

"Don't start in with that unfairness bullshit again, either," Mason said. "I've told you a million times: the world is unfair, so..." he held out his hand, palm up.

"So I have to be unfair," Jeremy recited.

"That's right," Mason said, and bent over his papers again. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Yes, sir," Jeremy said and stood up to leave. Just as he got to the door, his father spoke.

"Make me proud with those lessons, boy. See if you can't get a little blood out of Horton next time."

Jeremy turned around.

"Don't look at me like that. He can take it. He's paid to take it."

"Yes, sir." Jeremy said. He thought about explaining that Aikido was a means of bloodless self-defense, but stopped himself. It would be wasted on his father. In fact, it would be a good way to lose his lessons. Jeremy closed the door, slowly, carefully behind him. He stood in the hall and checked his watch. Dinner wasn't until seven and it was only six-fifteen. Jeremy decided to waste some time surfing the internet from the computer in the library and walked down the hall.

* * *

"MISTER JEREMY?"

The voice, tinny and Spanish-accented, floated through the intercom by the library door. Jeremy slouched in his chair at the computer, mouth open.

The voice belonged to Mrs. Sanchez, the chef, and while she might be from Colombia, she could cook a dish from anywhere. "Meester Jay-ray-mee?" she sang. "Deeener."

Jeremy stared at the screen, but as it had been in his bedroom, he felt as if he were waking from some sort of fugue state. He blinked and closed his mouth. Jeremy looked around at the shelves of leather-bound books, the rolling ladder. A green glass banker's lamp glowed on the table at which he sat. Out the window, the sun threw its last breath over the horizon and cooked the edges of the sky. Jeremy blinked again and focused on the computer screen. It burned with a single digitized photo. It took almost a minute for him to process what he was seeing.

A naked woman lay sprawled on a old couch. Her wrists and ankles were bound with heavy rope. She might have been Asian, but it was hard to tell for sure because her head was encased in a clear plastic bag, the opening taped shut at her neck. Her lips were clamped around a vacuum hose, also made air-tight with electrical tape where it punctured the bag. The tube looked a little like a black rat snake, shiny and wet, that Jeremy had once seen sunning itself on the lawn. It ran between the woman's breasts and terminated in a red shop vac. A man with a big belly stood over her. The frozen arc of his piss was unmistakable as it struck the bag over her face.

Jeremy jerked up straight in the chair. His right hand flew to his mouth. His other hand wanted to join it there, but was impeded. Jeremy looked down. His left hand was pushed deep into his pants, massaging a painful erection. "Ohmigod," Jeremy whispered and yanked his hand out of his pants.

"Mister Jeremy, you there?"

The position of his right hand at his mouth was fortunate, as it stifled a little screech of surprise. Jeremy glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. It was already five after seven. He'd lost another forty-five minutes. In a state of semi-shock Jeremy called over his shoulder, "I'll be right there," trying to sound as normal as possible. Just lost track of time surfing the net is all, be with ya' in a sec. Don't worry about me. Just looking at my usual nerdy stuff.

He looked back at the screen and shivered while zipping up his pants. Jeremy clicked the mouse arrow over the "back" button on the internet browser and another still-frame popped up. This one was of two women, naked, and both very pregnant. One woman lay on her back, hands busy at her crotch, mouth gaping, expectant. The other squatted over her, belly round and straining, legs spread wide. The camera shutter had clicked at just the right moment to catch a long turd hanging like a diseased tail. Jeremy made a sick "Urk!" and almost vomited all over the key board.

He got himself under control and thought fast. If someone caught him, they'd tell his father. If his father found out he was looking at something like this... He didn't even want to think about it. Careful to keep his eyes from focusing on the images on the screen, Jeremy minimized the display window to a simple bar. He then moved the mouse arrow over to a drop-down menu and selected "History." He deleted everything as far back as he could, then ran a cookie cleaner program and shut down.

Jeremy checked his watch and jumped to his feet. He'd be in enough trouble just being this late to dinner. He ran out of the library, and by the time he'd rounded his first corner, his mind had again gone clear of the strange episode. He couldn't remember anything after his talk with Mason. Just as before, his mind seemed to clean itself after the incident, and after a few moments he felt great. Jeremy walked into the dining room whistling Mary Had a Little Lamb.

As luck would have it, that's just what was on the menu.

SEVEN

FATHER JOHN CALVIN drove northwest from Phoenix on a Saturday afternoon. The digital thermometer in the rear view mirror read off an outside air temprature of one hundred and fifteen in grains of electric-blue rice. It had been a hundred and twenty-two when he'd steered the Mercury Mountaineer off the airport rental lot a half hour ago. That was the city for you though. No matter which one, they were all places of extremes. Didn't matter what was going on outside the limits, once you hit fields of pavement, everything intensified. Precisely the reason he was now driving out of town.

Calvin headed for an area of little-known high pine forest along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It could only be reached by hiking a good ten miles of trail that ran along the top of sheer cliffs, where there was trail at all. The rest of the way required a certain kind of forest craft not available for purchase at discount prices from R.E.I.

The flight to Phoenix and then the drive to the North Rim was not the most direct route, but it would afford him some time to mull over his next assignment. He wanted the details sorted out before he reached the forest. The woods were for retreat and meditation. Calvin didn't need work jumping in and out of his thoughts like some annoying insect. And it would if he didn't at least lay the ground work before taking his little vacation.

Calvin turned the SUV onto State Highway 60, once the main road to the Canyon and points north and west. Twenty years and a few hundred thousand more people demanded a six lane concrete river to replace this two lane blacktop as the main artery between cities. If he took the big blue line on the map, National Highway 17, he would make the forest at least a half day sooner, but that would mean a loss of scenery and silence. Calvin remembered the squalling infant on the plane from Dublin. There'd been another screamer on the long jaunt from Rome to Boston and then on to Chicago and finally Phoenix. The screeching infant and its mother had followed him through every lay-over and plane transfer. Again, he had found himself unable to screen out the noise. But here, at last, was a great nothing. The two lane blacktop shot off into the distance and plunged between two rocky hills at least five miles distant. There wasn't another car in sight. Calvin sighed and put his foot down.

The American Southwestern desert slipped by the windows; sage and cactus, weeds and green. Desert. That was kind of funny when he thought of its middle eastern counterparts. Every now and again, a large modern dwelling, jeweled with smoked glass and environmentally friendly solar panels, reared up from clumps of brush and boulders. This was the outskirts of the Phoenix suburbs. Calvin's head whipped to the side, drawn by the motion of a jack rabbit scampering away from the road. He thought about an assignment he'd endured in the Sahara four years ago, a Berber tribal leader with aspirations involving certain information Holy Mother Church preferred buried in the sand. Calvin caught a patch of deep jade and glanced over in time to see a man watering a small lawn in front of his house. A tiny line appeared next to Calvin's mouth. The Great American Desert. The Sahara would laugh at this place.

"Fucking Disneyland," he muttered.

And it was, at least just outside of major cities like Phoenix where they had grabbed a river and forced it through a concrete channel running the length of the city. But to be fair, Calvin knew, there were small islands of hell in the American Southwest that hid the desiccated remains of more than one hapless traveler. Places like Valley of the Gods. The last time he'd been out this way, Calvin had toured those canyons and towering spires. It had felt like walking among the ruins of a temple city—a little like Angkor Wat but covered in blood and ground smooth over time.

A driveway slid up on the right. A mailbox tacked to a forty foot pole and marked with a sign reading "Air Mail" marked the entrance. A sun damaged woman with yellow hair, enormous sunglasses, in a white halter top and shorts was washing a pick-up truck. As if in slow motion, Calvin watched the arc of clear water gush from the hose and hang, glistening in the sun. He remember that other desert, another arc of liquid, darker, and the sand that drank it up without leaving a trace. The world was just full of Disneylands.

He stopped looking around and focused his eyes on the road, his thoughts on the next assignment. He remembered his conversation with Bishop Neary just threes day ago. Or had it been two? With all the travel, it was hard to keep track sometimes. They had sat at the modest kitchen table in the Italian country house eating pancakes. After devouring most of a tall stack, Neary had leaned back in his chair and groaned. Taking it as a compliment, Calvin had favored the Bishop with a rare genuine smile.

"I wonder," Neary said.

"Hm?"

"Of all the amazing things we've spent so much money for you to learn, if your best trick isn't making pancakes."

"God, I hope so."

"Do you?" Neary stared at him. For a while, neither man spoke. Outside, a sparrow trilled in the bright blue morning. "We need another martyr, Johnny."

Calvin looked out the window, the taste of good coffee fresh on his tongue. "Busy year."

"Indeed." Neary pushed a piece of pancake around in a pond of syrup. "It's something of a special assignment."

"They all are."

"Not like this."

Calvin pulled his gaze back indoors and looked over. "Who is it?"

"An American."

"Big deal, so am I. So're you for that matter."

"An American priest."

Calvin was in a good mood and wanted to make a joke of it then, repeat himself, but something in his superior's, his friend's voice cut him short. Calvin nodded, and Neary laid it out. The martyr to be was the priest of a small parish on the Ute Indian Reservation in southern Colorado. According to Neary, Father Matthew Katey had always been something of an embarrassment.

"Problems with alcohol and some bucking of authority."

"Like him already."

Neary sighed, and in the harsh morning light, Calvin thought he looked very old. "A few years ago, while Katey was still in Boston, there were some reports of molestation." Neary looked back at his plate. "Nothing was substantiated, but—"

"With things in the media the way they were you had him shipped off to the land of cowboys and wild injuns."

"Exactly."

Calvin waited. There had to be more to require his services for a guy like Katey. A disgusting piece of trash, sick and worth sticking under a rock for the rest of forever, but sadly priests like that were not that uncommon. Not enough to order martyrdom for all of them. "What else, Thom?"

Neary's little pancake raft had become the center of his world.

"Thom?"

"Three kids have gone missing on the reservation in the past few months."

Calvin sat back. "Most pederast priests aren't predators in that sense," he said. "It doesn't really fit the profile." He watched Neary try to scuttle the raft with his fork. "What makes you think it's Katey?"

Neary banged his fork on the plate. "Because he's done it before." He got up and walked out of the kitchen. Calvin half smiled and shook his head. Can't get away like that, Thom. He went after Neary and they ended up strolling down the lane into an olive grove. They walked without speaking, the only sounds were the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel, the twittering of birds, and the sush of the breeze through the trees. After they'd gone some distance down the little road, Calvin asked, "How many times?"

"Just the one that we know of for sure. A boy, street kid from a downtown mission Katey staffed on and off when he was in Boston."

Calvin didn't need to ask how they knew. Confession was good for more than the soul. "Johnny," Neary put a hand on Calvin's shoulder, "it has to look natural this time."

Calvin laughed. "Natural."

"Dammit, Johnny, you just can't be so sloppy, so angry." Neary waved a hand in the air as if shooing an insect. "We're not the damned C.I.A."

"I know; they have better toys."

Neary ignored him. "I want you to take some leave first, some down time." He held Calvin's eyes. "Get yourself together."

Calvin went stony. There was an implied consequence at the end of Neary's statement. Father John Calvin and Bishop Thomas Neary were two members of a very old, very elite order, but it was an order that could go on without Calvin if need be. For a moment, he wondered if they were already training his replacement. He stared hard at His Eminence and tried to read the truth in his seamed face.

* * *

CALVIN BURNED MILES between himself and the North Rim. There he would find a spine of granite that humped out of the pines like the back of some huge leviathan, swimming through time and earth instead of the sea. He would hike through blue tree shadow and gray dust until he reached the end of that outcropping. He would camp on the red rock, above its shadow, and watch the stars. Far from other humans, he would confront his own inner workings, regain control and find peace. Under the orders of his superior, John Calvin would get himself together, then travel north and murder a man. The pavement roared beneath his tires.

The sun scorched across the sky as Calvin slid through vast expanses of open rock, dotted with sage and cacti. He veered onto highway 89 at Wickenburg—an agglomeration of fast food restaurants, gas stations and a mall—and the digital dashboard compass swung from NW to NE. Every twenty miles or so he would pass through a town—Pebbles Valley, Prescott, Cottonwood. Outside of Sedona, he pulled the Mountaineer into an empty rest stop that fronted a huge wall of umber rock. Under the noon sun, the rock seemed to pull at the light, absorb it. Calvin drank a bottle of water from the cooler and ate a tuna sandwich while staring at the cliff face. It was hot outside the air conditioned car, but the sweat disappeared off his brow as soon as his skin could push it out. In the evening, the red monolith would release that light, glow like something radioactive. Calvin wasn't sure how he knew that. It just made sense. Furnace, he thought, and got back into the S.U.V.

After Sedona, the road began to climb into mountains covered with deep, secret forest; dark pine hallways stretched away in his peripheral vision. Flagstaff was the next big town. According to his map, it offered decent skiing in Winter and the best Sushi in the Southwest. Calvin drove through as fast as he could without risking a traffic stop by any of the local deputy dawgs. He emerged at the terminal edge of a ponderosa forest. Great columnar trees, their gold bark tinged with red, gave way to hardpan scoured into alien shapes. For a few miles, even the scrub and cacti ceded to the patient rock. Calvin spent the rest of the afternoon rolling through a blasted plain, broken by intrusive igneous formations and dry gorges that led away from the road like paths to nowhere.

It reminded him of Detroit. Here those dry canyons could lead a person deep into the waste, like walking a battlefield trench dug by a regiment of psychotics. Detroit had whole districts, crisscrossed by alleys and streets, that led into demilitarized zones where the police never went, always quiet until someone opened fire or screamed. Calvin had grown up in those urban arroyos, sleeping in burned-out warehouses, stealing, sometimes turning a trick or two to get something to eat.

He was ten years old when he had run down his first canyon, away from the last of many foster homes, cauldrons boiling with abuse. He'd been more of a government check to his foster parents than a child. When he wasn't on his hands and knees, he had been a target for shouts and fists. One foster home after another, one new family after another. Nothing had ever changed. It had all been a matter of degree.

The first year on the street had been the hardest. Calvin had survived by living like a rat—hiding, thinking and moving quickly. He stayed away from people as much as was possible in a city. It was a simple lesson: people equaled pain. If they were stronger than he was, and almost everyone was, they took what he had or tried to take him. If he faltered and they found him, a little boy with dirty cheeks and shining eyes, he was meat. Looking back, Calvin supposed he'd been somewhat lucky to have learned never to trust anyone before he had hit the street. Had he run down the canyon into the waste without that knowledge he never would have survived. After a night in a drafty warehouse, the first chicken hawk to have crooned at him from an open van would have been young Johnny's end.

But he had been smart and fast. He had learned the rules. Stay down during the day, forage and steal at night. Never talk to strangers. Everyone is a stranger, no matter how well you know him. If someone turns his back, take him for everything you can. Fight or run, never ask questions. By the end of his second year in the Detroit wastes, Johnny Calvin had become formidable. People had begun to extend respect to the strange boy with the long, dreadlocked hair and shiny eyes. No one learns faster than a child, and so perhaps no one on the street understood how to survive as well as he had, even at twelve. There had been hordes of homeless, junkies, crazies and the like, all living on the street. But Johnny Calvin had become a part of the street itself, losing his humanity to the concrete in exchange for the ability to merge with it. By the time he was fifteen, Johnny had become an expert, a graduate of the Academy of Survival. Perhaps that was why the street chose that year to kill him.

* * *

"YOU BREATHIN', PUNK?"

Johnny Calvin stared up at the man who'd just stabbed him. He couldn't be certain, but he guessed the shiv was still in his chest. He thought about yanking it out and burying it in his attacker's left eye, but his fingers would only twitch. He was growing very tired. Johnny felt the man paw into his old coat for his stash and got an image of a mutt going through a garbage can. Johnny knew the guy: forties, grizzled, stank of urine and various poisons, called himself Toons. Cuz I's loony, he always said. But Johnny knew Toons wasn't any loonier than he was, just another bum trying to get by. Johnny didn't even take it all that personally that Toons had just punched an old taped up ice pick through his breast bone. It was the street, this was how it worked. It wasn't like Johnny hadn't shivved one or two himself over the last five years.

Fuck you, Toons. Johnny tried, but succeeded only in pushing a bubble of red spit over his lips.

Toons stopped rooting in the boy's coat. He leaned in close, squinting into Johnny's slack face. Johnny imagined Toons's stench pushing in like a force field, but could not smell it. You had to be able to draw a breath for your nose to work. At the moment, the only air Johnny drew was bubbling in and out of his sucking chest wound. He could hear it, like a pin hole leak in a wet air hose.

Toons grinned, a yellowing fence minus most of its slats. "So you still kickin' a little?" He waved the shiv like a magic wand for Johnny to see. "Maybe I should jus' finish your ass off. Whachoo' think?"

So the shiv wasn't still stuck in his chest. Johnny hadn't felt it when Toons had pulled it out. Shock was some strange shit. This wasn't the first time he'd been in its grip, but this was the deepest he'd ever sunk, that was for sure. A dull heat began to spread through him from his crotch outward. Johnny realized with some humor that he had just pissed himself. He wondered if this was finally going to be his out. Jesus-H-Christ, it had taken fucking long enough. He was constantly amazed that he'd made it this long. Soon his whole body had become warm, his vision dimmed. Toons became little more than an ashy blur. Johnny could barely understand him as he said, "Nothin' personal now, gray meat. I jus' needs me a little..."

"Drop it, shit-head!"

A different voice, funny, amplified.

Toons looked away from Johnny and down the alley at two of Detroit's finest and their guns.

What were cops doing here? Johnny wanted to laugh. You could always tell them by their voices. Scared shitless and arrogant at the same time.

Toons froze, shiv in hand. He turned toward the policemen and offered an enormous grin. "Evenin', officers. I was jus'..."

Their guns exploded.

Johnny watched as the bullets shredded through Toons like a swarm of metal bees. They picked him up and flew him several feet down the alley. He was dead before he hit the pavement.

Fucking cops, Johnny thought. Didn't even give Toons a chance to bullshit. What was left of his vision evaporated and left him in the dark. Through a strange rushing, like wind from a subway train, Johnny heard the cops trot over on blocky shoes. A radio squawked.

"This is Daniel-Mary 12. We need an ambulance at the alley between 12th and Park."

As the last of his senses dissipated, Johnny wondered who it was for.

* * *

A LONG WHILE went by, or maybe it was only a minute. Johnny couldn't tell. None of his senses worked; there was nothing to gauge the passage of time. It was dark where he was, dark, but not empty. There was...Another in here with him. Johnny wondered if the other knew he was there, and then it turned toward him. Its searchlight awareness defined him, and Johnny understood that everything he had ever known about dirt, and sickness, everything he had known about greed and insanity had been...small. In the dark, the other came for him.

Mine.

Mine!

MIIIIIIINE!!!

* * *

DAVE RILEY HAD worked the E.R. at Immaculate Heart for a less than a year, and had seen enough to make him wonder if he could pull off this doctor bit for another thirty or forty. For the most part Riley could take the stabbings, the shootings, the overdoses and assaults. He was even getting good at turning his emotions off when the ambulance jockeys wheeled in a child without a limb or missing part of his or her face, screaming and oozing.

There was a trick to it. He just didn't give a fuck. He thought of them as machines, because all he really was in the end was a mechanic for bodies. Riley had pretty much dumped the last of his doubts about his longevity in the field of medicine. He could handle it. Just turn off the emotions and try not to let his drinking get too bad. And then, the street boy came in.

Apparently, the kid had expired before the wagon even got there. Instead of tagging and bagging the little punk right there, one of the paramedics (brand new of-fucking-course) had decided to yank the bum-boy back from the brink.

The surgery had gone rather well. The wound had been a neat hole. The ice pick had angled through the sternum, pierced the left lung and collapsed it. It had been a simple matter of reinflating the lung and sewing up the puncture, just like a child's inner tube.

Riley stood over his fresh repair work, tugging the last sutures taught. He wondered about brain damage. He threw red-rimmed eyes at the gas-passer. "We know how long he was flat-lined before they got him here?"

The anesthesiologist peered over her mask. She had long eyelashes. "EMT said just a couple of minutes."

"Good," Riley nodded. "I wouldn't want to go to all this trouble just to save a cabbage." He stepped away from the operating table and stripped his gloves. Turning his back, Riley tossed them into the biohazard bin. The anesthesiologist also turned away to check a monitor displaying the vital signs of her comatose patient. No one noticed as Johnny's hand flashed out at the instrument tray and back to his side.

Riley was just about to make a joke about how bad the kid smelled when the anesthesiologist gasped, "Oh, my god."

Riley spun around. "The hell?"

His patient was sitting up on the table, oxygen intubation hanging from his mouth. The boy grabbed the tubing and yanked, retching and throwing raw, wet coughs until he expelled the apparatus. It only took a second and there he was, one moment swimming in an artificially induced drug coma, the next sitting up and staring at Riley with something like amusement. The blue surgical covers fell away from the street urchin's chest, exposing his white rib cage and the iodine smear around the freshly stitched wound.

The anesthesiologist stepped forward, her voice calm. She'd never seen this level of cognizance, but sometimes patients did come around early. "Stop," she soothed, " you have to lay—"

Without taking his eyes off Riley, Johnny whipped backward with his left hand. The anesthesiologist wailed and fell over backward, her upper lip slashed most of the way off. A scrub nurse stepped up and tried to grab Johnny's arm. Still staring at Riley, smiling now, Johnny grabbed her around the neck in a one-armed headlock like they were barroom chums in a tussle. Her eyes bloomed as Johnny bit the tip of her ear off and shoved her away. She cymbal-crashed through the instrument tray and balled up in the corner, holding her head. The blood seeped through her fingers, bright and electric on the white surgical gloves. The room swam in shrieks.

Johnny sliced into the soft the pad of his index finger and offered it to Riley. A voice that had not spoken in a thousand-thousand years rasped over abused vocal chords, thick and delighted. "Would you care to be blood brothers, Doctor?"

* * *

A CAR HORN blared, and Calvin glanced up. The line of vehicles at the entrance to Kaibab National Forest had moved forward while he had been wool gathering. He idled up to the gate house and rolled his window down. Calvin was almost surprised when a blast of desert air didn't flow into the SUV, but he was at a higher elevation now and farther north. The air temperature was already down to eighty-six and would be forty degrees colder an hour after sunset. A blonde woman, early thirties, freckles, and a Ranger Rick hat, leaned in and beamed. Calvin liked her. She smelled very clean.

"Purpose of visit?"

Gonna' get my head together before I go waste a fellow man of the cloth. "Do a little camping," he said.

"And how long will you be visiting the park?" Her eyes, deep brown, dipped into the SUV and over his backpack.

"Just tonight and tomorrow day." He pegged her eyes with his own and watched the capillaries in her cheeks dilate and fill with blood. He was being stupid, flirting like this, allowing her to etch his portrait on her memory. "It's so pretty up here, I wish I could stay longer."

She asked where he would camp.

He lied.

She asked if he had a National Parks Pass.

He flashed the one he'd stolen from an open vehicle back at a rest stop.

She waved him through. He smiled and almost meant it. He rolled away from the gate and into the park proper, sparing a glance or two back at the helpful ranger. Normally, when his myriad vows got in the way of something, Calvin just ignored them, but in this case, vow of celibacy or not, he couldn't allow for distractions. Even those with freckles and smelling of Ivory soap. He glanced down at his map and turned off the black top at the second gravel road. He guided the SUV up into the woods for five miles before the gravel road ran out.

Calvin turned off the engine and got out of the SUV. The motor ticked. Birds and insects filled the air with their noise. The wind moaned up the mountainside, ten-thousand pine trees for vocal chords. To Calvin's left the forest: a maze of wooden pillars and shifting shadow. In front the road narrowed into a hiking trail that wound into the gloom. To his right the cliff edge, sheer and plunging to the valley below. A good twenty miles into that vast expanse lay the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a great river of absence and old force.

But between him and the Canyon was Calvin's goal: an enormous spine of pink granite, arching out of the forest below like some Native American serpent god. If he walked into the woods in front of him and kept true, he would find himself at the serpent's head just after sundown. Calvin strapped on his pack and walked into the scent of ancient pine tar and blue rock dust. The forest closed over him. A hawk shrieked.

EIGHT

JEREMY SAT UNDER his favorite oak by the fence in the free area and tried to think about Romulan starship engines. Last night on Star Trek Counselor Troi—would he love to tie her to a chair and—had talked about how the Romulans used a "quantum singularity" to power their warp drives. He had read about singularities on the macro level—pluck her hair out one at a time—but he'd never heard of a singularity on a quantum scale. Jeremy leaned forward and clutched his head as if his skull would fly apart. A copy of Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman slid out of his lap in a puff of dust. He tried hard to keep it together, but the horrible—and make her swallow each hair until she was bald and puking—thoughts kept pushing in. It had been getting worse over the past few days, since the episode with those sicko internet sites. He was beginning to believe that he was losing his mind.

Something beeped next to his head. Jeremy jerked his hands away. The beep was his thumb on the "END" button of his cell phone. He stared at it. Had he just called someone? This kind of thing was also happening more often. He'd find himself in some part of the house and not remember why he was there. He'd be doing his homework and realize it was written in a mish-mash of English, French, Latin—never in his own handwriting. Sometimes there were pictographs he couldn't identify. He thought they might be Chinese. Last night he had awoken to find himself sitting lotus position in front of his father's den at just past four in the morning.

Now, as he sat in the shade of his favorite tree, he squeezed his eyes shut. In the darkness Jeremy panicked as quietly as he could. If he was silent in his terror maybe the madness wouldn't be able to find him, like a game of hide and seek. Only, the seeker seemed to be skulking around in his mind.

A pair of shoes settled on the grass in front of him.

"Hi, Jeremy."

Jeremy looked up at the new kid, Seung. He tried to smile and was about to say something witty like You need me to kick somebody's butt for you again? but the words froze just behind his forehead. He could feel something in there squirm, and then he heard himself say in a voice that was not quite his own, "You ever wonder what it would be like..." to bugger a woman while she vomited her own hair, Seung?

Seung's eyes dimmed. "What what would be like?"

"Pluck em' out one at a time."

Seung took a step back. "You okay, man? You're acting really weird."

The world strobed once, like the sun was a giant flash bulb, and Jeremy flowed back into himself. He shook his head and got up fast. "I'm cool," he blurted, brushing off his khakis. "Think I've got a fever or something. You know that flu going around."

The bell signaled return to class. "Yeah, really bad this year," Seung lied. He hadn't heard about any flu. Uniformed boys drifted toward the school building in cellular clumps. Seung started walking.

"Seung?"

Seung half turned, "Yeah?"

Jeremy looked at Seung, his face growing hot, his eyes burning. Help was all he could think of, he wanted to scream it, but the thing in his head started to roll over, an eel in his mind, an eel with teeth. "Nothing. See you inside."

"'Kay, man," Seung said, and trotted away. As he moved closer to the school, he could feel Jeremy staring at his back, boring holes through his blazer. Maybe he should stop and go back. Jeremy had come to Seung's aid when those other boys had tried to mess with him. Seung hadn't needed the help, of course, but that wasn't the point. He liked Jeremy, and something was wrong with him. He was sick, or...or something. Seung was the last boy at the door. He put a hand on the push bar and craned a look over his shoulder. The oak tree stood alone in the yard, a discarded book at its roots.

On the other side of the fence a taxi pulled up and Jeremy got in. He grunted to the driver and they drove off with a screech of melting tires.

SEVERAL MINUTES LATER, a man in his mid-fifties, home from work on his lunch break, answered a knock at his front door. Harry Braithwaite's eyebrows lifted off as he found a young white boy in one of those fancy private school uniforms on the stoop. The boy smiled. Harry's forehead wrinkled, but he smiled back and cast a look over the boy's shoulder to the cab purring at the curb. He looked up and down the street. His neighborhood wasn't all that safe a place for white folks at any time of day (not for black folks neither, God's honest), certainly not a rich kid like this. "Help you, son?"

"Your daughter works for my father."

Harry's brow lifted further. "That so?"

"At his restaurant."

Harry's smile increased, gleaming and wide. "You know Tiesha?"

"My father considers it part of the tip when he cums in her mouth, black man."

Harry's lips lowered over his teeth. His fingers tightened on the doorjamb. The wood creaked. He couldn't have heard right. Was this some kind of goddamned joke? The boy beamed up at him and hopped backward off the top step, belching low and guttural as he landed. He hopped back to the next step, letting out another burp. Harry's rage crested and he took a step out of his front door into a cloud of rotten meat and feces. Harry gagged and stopped as if he'd run into a wall. The boy's brow drew down, he lifted his palm to his lips and blew Harry a kiss. Harry retched and stumbled back into his house, slamming the door after him.

Harry leaned against the door, his heart trip-hammering. It felt like he'd been poisoned, listening to what that crazy boy had said. And that breath! God almighty, like gas from an exploded road kill in July. Something was so far from right with that kid he could hardly believe it. Something beyond just body sick. He scrunched up his nose and exhaled hard to clear it. He held his breath a minute, listening. Through the door, Harry could hear a car door thunk shut and the cab roar away. He let his breath out in a, "Shoosh!"

For a moment he just stood in his small, neat foyer and wondered just how he should react in a situation like this. His mother's antique mahogany coat rack gleamed like a frozen molasses fountain in the low light. The floor creaked under his weight as he shifted from one foot to the other. There was something obviously wrong with the boy. He knew that as well as he knew rain hurt his knees. Harry figured he should probably take a boy like that to the hospital, but for the cab already driving off. At the end of it all, he couldn't even be angry about what the kid had said. You didn't blame sick people for their disease. It just wasn't Christian.

Maybe if the boy did know his Tiesha, he could give her a call and find out if he was being taken care of. Maybe the boy was retarded or panic depressive, or whatever. Harry shook his head and walked back to the kitchen to get his lunch. He wasn't much on eating now, but he still had the hard half of the day left over and not eating would just make it that much harder a few hours from now.

He got through his lunch and most of that day's crossword in the paper. Half an hour later, Harry padded back to the door and grabbed his coat off the hook. He gripped the doorknob and burped, egg salad and lite beer. A little ripe, but nothing like that kid. What a stink. "Shew," he whispered under his breath. Harry shook his head and opened the door.

The boy stood there, smiling.

Harry grabbed his chest.

"Part of the tip, black man," he rasped through a broken, harmonized throat. The boy's nose suddenly erupted, hemorrhaging over his teeth and down the front of his shirt. He giggled wildly, as if something had broken loose in his mind, the blood bubbling and flying from his lips. And just as suddenly, his eyes rolled up white and he collapsed on the stoop at Harry's feet.

Harry Braithwaite, father of three grown children, thought nothing of what the boy had said about his youngest, or possible infection, or law suit. He gathered Jeremy in his arms, ruining his best shirt, and raced into the house to call the paramedics. From the smell—old, strong rot and something sharp, chemical—and the blood, it was like carrying a dead body. A warm one. Harry lay the boy on his sofa, the ichor from his nose spreading into the fabric. He grabbed a lap blanket from the back of his reading chair and spread it over Jeremy, using his right hand to staunch the bleeding. With his left, Harry reached for the phone on its stand by the chair when the theme for Star Trek: Next Generation wafted tiny and electronic from the boy's blazer.

Harry reached into the blazer and pulled out the phone. Tiesha was always trying to get him to buy one of these things, but he hated them. He said, "Help me? Hello? The boy...," but the phone continued to ring. Harry pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the confusion of buttons and keys. He mashed a callused thumb down on the largest button—an oval stamped with an old style handset icon—and the phone went silent, but the face and screen remained illuminated. Harry read the words Mr. Horton and a phone number in digital type on the little TV looking thing.

The phone said, "Jeremy?"

Harry smashed the phone into his head so hard he nearly boxed his own ear. "I don' know who this is, but the boy's in bad shape. He's bleeding and out cold and I'm..." Without a pause, Harry dropped the cell phone and reached over for his good old rotary dial. He dialed 911 and blurted that he needed an ambulance at his address right away.

FROM WHAT MIGHT as well have been a million miles away, Horton listened to a strange man talk on another telephone to the 911 operator. All he knew was that Jeremy had gotten away from him at school and was now in some kind of physical distress. Bleeding. Horton sat in the driver's seat of the Lincoln, its engine humming in the parking lot of the Ottawa Day School, and told himself that if he didn't remain calm he would kick his own ass. He'd chosen a fine time to take a dump earlier and had lost the kid. Now his charge, his boy, Jeremy, was bleeding somewhere. If it wasn't already too late, he might still have a chance to get control of the situation. He breathed, he listened.

The man gave his address to the 911 operator. Horton stopped breathing. The man repeated his address for the operator. Horton exhaled, moved the Lincoln into traffic and shoved his foot down on the accelerator. The Lincoln's modified twelve-cylinder heart roared and pulled Horton along behind it. He maneuvered the big sedan through traffic like a boat through rock strewn rapids, one hand on the wheel, the other pressing the cell phone to his gleaming head. He drove, he waited, he listened to the man who had Jeremy thank the 911 operator and hang up. A VW Bug cut Horton off. He swerved into oncoming traffic and slipped back in front of the Bug just before meeting a sanitation truck head on. The driver of the trash truck had mouthed Holy Shi-. Horton glanced into the rear view, caught the license number of the Bug, translated the reverse in his mind, glanced at the driver and embedded her face in his head. For. Fucking. Ever.

The strange man came back on the cell. "You still there?"

"How's the boy?" Horton said, his voice still, deep water.

"His nose was bleedin' somethin' fierce a second ago, but it looks like it's done now. He's still out, though."

"Who is this?" Horton asked. This man could be anyone, could want anything. Horton was closing in on the man's street. He took a hard corner at speed, thankful for the big car's weight and the expensive custom suspension job he had convinced Mr. Mason to authorize. A regular Lincoln would have rolled in a turn like that.

"Who's this?" Harry asked.

"The boy's uncle." Bodyguard said money. You didn't say money to a possible kidnapper.

Harry breathed a sigh and apologized. He blurted everything he knew from the first moment he opened the door and found Jeremy on his stoop to where events now stood.

"Mr. Braithwaite, I want you to wait for me there, if you would please."

"But the ambulance—"

"Won't get there before I do."

"Where are you?"

"About three blocks away if I heard you correctly. You told the 911 operator Superior Street, am I right?"

"You got sharp ears."

"Please just stay put. I'll be there in a minute."

"Sure I'll wait. You want to drive the boy yourself, then?"

"No...I—FUCK OUTTA OF THE WAY!"

Harry yanked the phone away from his ear for a moment. "Hello?"

"Sorry, Mr. Braithwaite. I'm driving very quickly and someone...doesn't matter. I do want the boy to go with the paramedics, but I would also like a word with you."

Harry glanced at Jeremy, apparently just asleep on the couch, a little worse for ware, but he looked all right now. The smell seemed to have dissipated as well. Good thing he'd left the front door open. The boy's eyes were moving behind his lids, lively grapes. Part of the tip. "Yeah, I'd like a word with you as well," Harry said.

A shadow fell across the boy. Harry spun around. One of the biggest white men he'd ever seen filled the front door. With his perfect bald head and sun glasses he looked like a skull floating above a three piece suit; a sleek Dia de los Muertos costume from some Mexican daydream. A siren wailed from down the street and tires screeched on a corner. Horton crossed the room and was kneeling beside Jeremy in two great steps. Without looking up at Harry he said, "We'll talk at the hospital."

* * *

MASON STOOD OVER the corpse of a young Asian man and puzzled. The body cooled on a ceramic table that was tipped at a slight angle with a drain at the foot end: a human-sized sink. He knew the stiff was an Asian stiff, but couldn't figure out just how he knew that. A moonscape of waxy craters with crisp edges smudged out the face, so it couldn't have been from the identification of an epicanthic fold or similar tell-tale feature. It could be the skin-tone, but then again, just about everyone took on a yellowish hue in the early stages of putrefaction. Maybe it was the smell. The stiff had not yet been embalmed, in fact would never be embalmed, so his natural odor still hung in the air over the meat, mingling with the exhalations of the bacteria already cooking him from the inside out. Then again, if someone were to ask him, Mason could not say exactly what an Asian smelled like. It was just a feeling.

Mason grunted.

Sinclair, Mason's man, looked up from his post by the door. There was nothing to guard against here, but Sinclair always gravitated toward portals. When it came to security you could never have too many barriers, especially human ones who were excellent shots. "You say something, Mr. Mason?"

Mason glanced up from the corpse's un-face. "Shotgun to the puss."

Sinclair craned his neck for a look, nodded.

The funeral director, Habib, stepped up, a silent shadow. "Gang violence," he said, his dark eyes grave. The lightest Lebanese accent spiced his voice. "Sawed-off twelve gauge. I see it all the time."

Sinclair smiled and shook his head from side to side. Mason's left eyebrow rose an inch. "Sawed-off?"

"See it all the time," Habib repeated.

"Bullshit," Mason said, turning toward the diminutive man. Habib was a loyal member of Mason's organization, so he was tolerated and rewarded, if not highly regarded. Mason thought of him as a body troll, slinking through the dim places, manipulating dead things. A necessary ghoul. "Guess how I know that, Habib."

Habib looked at Mason's nose and waited. You didn't look this man in the eyes if you were smart. Not because Mason took it as an affront, but because you couldn't get them out of your head for days after. Other people's eyes reflected light; Mason's ate it. "Sir?"

"I know it wasn't a sawed-off because a sawed-off is only effective at short range." He flicked the corpse's skull on the word "range" for emphasis. It thocked like ripe cantaloupe. "And I know that if a sawed-off had been used on this slope at close range," thock, "his head wouldn't look like a pizza. He wouldn't have a head at all."

Habib nodded. "Ah, of course."

Mason was right. Mason was almost always right, and when on that rare occasion he was incorrect, no one was foolhardy enough to point it out. He was a brilliant man. This little funerary front was only one manifestation of his intelligence.

It had been Mason's inspiration a few years ago to set a up formaldehyde smuggling operation. The preservative was good for a great deal more than discouraging decay. It was used in the manufacture of PCP as well as several other illicit drugs. Because it had so many applications, the government kept a tight watch over the distribution of formaldehyde, so what better front than a funeral parlor? They had all the cause in the world to buy up gallons and gallons of the stuff. Of course, it almost never went into any of the bodies that crossed the threshold at Habib and Sons. Due to the violent nature of the cases at Habib's (Hamburger Habib's to those in the know), most of their clients ordered closed-casket funerals. Habib's was conveniently located just down the block from the shock-trauma ward in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. And, with Mr. Mason's help, Habib's also enjoyed agreements with orderlies in almost every morgue in the city. If it was hamburger, it went to Habib's.

Habib and his boys still made sure to drain the corpses, a desiccated body stays fresher longer, then pack them in salt and lime. And while their customers were not much to look at, none of the mourners did much more than drape themselves over the caskets to drip and wail, so there was little risk of discovery. As long as the odor was controlled, the hamburger went into the ground and the formaldehyde went, well, elsewhere. And Hamburger Habib's always got top marks from the Health Inspector for efficient disposal of chemical waste. There was hardly ever any trace formaldehyde on the premises, even in the embalming room. Habib and Sons was a model of compliance.

Since its inception three years ago, the operation had not only generated enormous revenues from its smuggling activities, it also managed to turn a tidy profit from the funeral clientele alone. It was one of Mason's favorite businesses. Today he was here for a routine inspection. He'd already been over the books in the office upstairs and finding everything satisfactory, had moved to the embalming room. He liked the embalming room, the green tiled walls and smooth ceramic surfaces mentholated his nerves.

He looked down at the shotgun victim, and flicked the skull again. Thock. "How long's this one been dead?"

"Less than twelve hours, Mr. Mason."

"When's the service?"

"Tomorrow morning, sir."

Mason's brow lifted. "You work fast, Habib."

Habib smiled, revealing a discolored incisor. "We have to, sir."

"Where's this week's outgoing shipment headed?"

Sinclair flinched just the tiniest bit. He reached inside his jacket at the discreet buzz next to his ribs. He pulled out a cell phone, glanced at the screen. He made quick eye contact with Mason, got permission with an almost imperceptible nod, and rolled around the doorjamb into the hall.

Mason wrangled Habib's attention back to him. "The shipment? Where?"

"Indiana, sir."

"The new lab?" Mason smiled. "Business must be booming if they need another shipment this soon."

Habib rocked forward and back on his toes. "Yes, sir. Near an Amish town."

"God love those Amish. Lots of bored teenagers." He considered a moment. "Good furniture too."

Sinclair stepped back in the room. Mason saw it on his face before the man could even open his mouth.

"Jeremy?"

"In the hospital, sir."

* * *

HARRY BRAITHWAITE sat in a molded plastic chair outside of the ER at Immaculate Heart and watched Mr. Horton scare the shit out of the duty nurse. They'd been sitting in the waiting area for some time now (Harry was beginning to feel like he had a molded plastic butt), but had received precious little information. Horton loomed in front of the admissions desk and stared through the smoked lenses of his sunglasses. His voice was a pair of stone slabs sliding over one another.

"Mason. Jeremy."

The duty nurse, Angie Hawkins, pretended to be unimpressed. "Sir," she said to her double reflection in his sun glasses, her thin mouth pressing tight at the corners, "as I've already told you, you'll have to wait until called." She made a show of scanning the other people in the waiting room over Frankenstein's shoulder. "There are other people here that we have to take care of too."

"Mason. Jeremy."

Harry tried not to smile as Horton's back expanded like the hood of a giant Cobra. Harry had three kids of his own and had been in this very same emergency room on more than one occasion. He was all too familiar with the type of tight panic a man can feel when an injured loved one has been placed under the care of strangers who don't show much concern. You wait quietly, like a good little bill-payer, because the people in the white uniforms and shiny black name tags have the power. Harry didn't know anything about this big man who claimed to be the boy's uncle, but he liked him well enough. Anyone who loves a child as Horton loved the strange boy who'd darkened Harry's door earlier that day was worth liking. Besides, it was just so damn gratifying to watch him scare the smug right off that nurse's face.

"Sir, I told you—"

"Mason. Jeremy. M. A. S. O. N."

Horton inflated a little further and Angie Hawkins backed a step away from the desk as if pushed by his aura. She flicked a glance at the off-duty police officer stationed at a small podium by the front door. He sat up straighter, then got up altogether, as if the force of her stare had somehow activated him. The cop, a head shorter than Horton and soft as a pillow, walked up and put a hand on the bodyguard's shoulder.

"Everything okay, buddy?"

Harry's jaw dropped. "Oop, here we go," he muttered as Horton's head revolved, the muscles in his neck a nest of organic pistons.

Horton looked at the cop and very slowly removed his sun glasses. "Problem, officer?"

The cop pulled his hand away and let it rest on the butt of his service pistol. "Not if you leave the lady alone and have a seat." The cop stared into Horton's eyes, brown at green, and sighed. It wasn't like he didn't have people he loved. "Listen, you chill out and I'll walk back and see if there's anything to see, okay?"

Horton's head snapped back an inch, and for a moment his mind was a blank. He blinked and softened, a hard giant into an affable bald guy. "Yeah?" he said, wary. "You'd do that?"

The cop smiled. "It's not busy. I'll be back in minute." He tipped the nurse a wink and headed toward a door to the side of the admissions desk.

Horton called after him. "His name's—"

The cop turned and deadpanned. "Mason. Jeremy. M. A. S. O. N."

Horton turned back to the waiting area. His lips twitched at the audible sigh of relief from Nurse Hawkins. Amazing. There really were some good cops. He never thought he'd live to see one. Horton sat down next to Harry.

"My Tiesha broke her ankle falling off the front stoop when she about that boy's age," Harry said, staring off into times past. "Screamed like I don't know what, a screech owl maybe. I went to the Blue Ridge Mountains to visit my daddy's folks when I was a much younger man, and I heard a screech owl." He stopped, and for a moment Horton could almost hear Harry's memory. "I rushed Tiesha in here and we waited while her poor ol' ankle swoll up like a melon. Took 'em an hour to do anything for her." Harry laughed. "I wish you coulda' been with us then, Mr. Horton."

Horton wanted to laugh too, but couldn't. "Mr. Braithwaite," he sighed. "I'm grateful to you for coming along. I know you have a life of your own and were sort of just dragged into this."

"What is this anyhow?" Harry asked, shoulders up, hands cupping the question. "Is there something wrong with boy?"

"Jesus, I hope not."

Harry was careful. "So he's not..."

"What, retarded or something? No."

Harry waited a second. Oh, hell with it. "You ain't really his uncle."

Horton smiled. "No. I'm his bodyguard."

And Harry got it. He didn't need to know the particulars of Jeremy's identity to understand that his parents were important. Horton had brought him along so he could ensure Harry's silence in the matter. Now it would come: money or intimidation. Harry nodded, waited for it.

"I need your cooperation in something, Mr. Braithwaite."

Harry sighed. "Cut to the chase, Uncle Bodyguard. You need me to keep my mouth shut about the boy."

Horton stared at, into Harry. "Yes," he said. "What will that take?"

Harry wondered what Horton saw in him then. Was he someone that a man like Horton could scare into being quiet, or someone who would need money in exchange for silence? Harry didn't want to be either of those people. "A phone call."

Horton's brow lifted.

"To my boss," Harry said. "I've been on the longest lunch break in history."

"Done," Horton said. It felt like a fat man had just got off his chest. "Listen, Mr. Braithwaite—"

"Harry."

"Harry then, okay. I, um," Horton looked at his shoes. They needed polishing. "I totally fucked up. I'm supposed to watch this kid." He looked up. "Take care of him, you know, and I let him get away from me. Now, something—I don't know what—is wrong with him and...," he trailed off, not really sure where he was going with this.

Harry saw him struggling. "You need me to keep my mouth shut when the boy's parents get here, that it?"

"Yeah," Horton breathed. "I guess that's just what I'm saying."

Now, this was a hard point for Harry. The boy had said those awful things about his Tiesha and the boy's father. He wanted to know more about that, his blood was still up. "Mr. Horton? That boy of yours said something before he passed out."

"Yeah?" Horton had always been under the impression that Jeremy knew little to nothing about his father's business. Not because the boy wasn't smart enough to figure a few things out here and there, but because he didn't want to know. Now the kid had shorted a circuit and shown up on some strange man's doorstep. Horton wondered how much information Jeremy might have and how much he might have leaked. He liked Harry, but that didn't make Horton any less loyal to Frank Mason. Horton kept it off his face, but Harry's next few words would be the deciding factor in whether he went home or went nowhere forever. "What'd he say?"

"Horton!"

Harry Braithwaite and Mr. Horton looked up as the sliding glass door sprang out of Frank Mason's path. It was probably his imagination, but Harry could have sworn they moved a little faster for Mason than they had for him and Horton. This had to be the boy's father. This was a man who needed bodyguards for himself and his family, or at least believed he did. His suit and manner said it all. It hit Harry right away that a man would have to be a fool, bodyguards or not, to step to a person like this. It took him a second to get it, but by the time Mason had crossed the lobby to where they sat, Harry realized that Mason had to be the angriest person he had ever seen who was not crazy or on something. Mr. Horton got to his feet as if he'd been called to attention.

"Where is he, Horton?"

"He's in the triage area, sir. They're looking him over now."

Mason burned Horton with a look and walked over to the admitting desk. He stared down at Angie Hawkins. "I'm Frank Mason, the boy's father. Can you tell me what's going on here, please?"

Angie had been a little nervous about the big guy with the sunglasses, but this man made her cold with fear. She watched another man with sunglasses in an expensive suit walk through the sliding glass doors and come up next to the first goon. They stood, hands clasped and watched Mason. Jesus, who the hell were these people? "The doctor's in with him now and just as soon as he comes out..."

Mason stared at her. He held his tongue. He would be patient now. Patient with Angie Hawkins. That was her name. It was on the little rectangle of plastic over her left tit. He wondered how loud she would scream if he cut it off. Mason exhaled through his nose and smiled. "Doctor?"

Angie ripped her eyes away to look at the duty roster and the world solidified. God, it was good not to have to look at him for a second. "Doctor Riley's on today," she said, keeping her eyes on the clipboard. "He's the neurologist on call."

"Thank you, Angie." The sound of her name yanked her face up as if he had put a finger under her chin. He stole her eyes again. He saw her screaming, the blood darkening her uniform. For a moment, Frank Mason was sure she saw it too. "You've been very helpful, Angie. I'll just wait over here then, shall I?"

Angie didn't say anything. She looked back down at her clipboard. She just needed a moment alone to blow her brains out and everything would be fine. Or, maybe she'd just take up smoking again after work.

Mason walked back over to Horton and Sinclair who had come in after parking the car. Sinclair moved to stand next to Mason, leaving Horton in the dock. Horton thought the other bodyguard looked so much like a toady on a school yard that he almost laughed. It would have cost him his life. Not from Sinclair; the little fuck didn't have the balls to take on Horton, but from Mason. Sinclair would just be the weapon; Mason would pull his trigger.

It occurred to Horton that he hadn't had time to get a story straight with Harry. He couldn't chance glancing down at the other man, but sensed Harry sitting, watching.

"Well, Horton?" Mason demanded. "Sinclair said you only told him that you and Jeremy were here and nothing further."

"I would've explained more, but they don't allow the use of cell phones in the hospital, sir. There's a pay phone by the admissions desk, but someone was using it, so when I did use my cell, I had to be quick. I would have stepped outside, but I didn't want to leave—"

Mason waved him off. "Fine, fine. Now what in the merry motherfuck happened to my son?"

Horton shot brain waves at Harry to, please God, go along. "I was watching the boy from inside the school as I usually do when he's on recess when he jumped the back fence and got into a cab." Horton knew Mason would smell an out and out fabrication, so he spiked the punch with some truth.

"Where were you when he was jumping the fence?"

"Running after him, Mr. Mason," Horton countered. "He reads by the big oak tree toward the back of the school yard, so he already had a hell of a good start on me. If that cab hadn't been waiting there for him, I would have been able to get him."

"The cab was waiting for him?" Mason's fists bunched and released, bunched and released. Horton could see them in his peripheral vision, like a pair of beating hearts. He stared straight into Mason's eyes, but kept his focus away from his employer's pupils, too easy to fall in. Instead, he focused on the corners of Mason's eyes, crimson and alive. "Yes sir, it must have been. I think Jeremy must have called for it on his cell phone."

"All right." Mason looked around the room, back at Horton. "You followed him then?"

This is where Horton had to get creative. He used a trick he got from a book by an ex-CIA agent on how to fool polygraph machines. Horton visualized the fictional activity as he spoke, seeing it in his mind just as he would were he remembering an actual event. It slowed the telling down a little, but only enough to make it appear as though he was being careful to report every detail. "Yes, sir. I had to run back to get the Lincoln out of the school parking lot, and lost some time there, but was able to catch up."

"Horton?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You're hiding something."

Horton's scrotum writhed. "Sir?"

Mason showed his teeth, an android approximation of a smile. "You're lying to me because you're afraid. You're smart to be so. But give me the information now, and cover your ass later."

Horton exhaled. His mental movie projector had blown its bulb. "I, uh—"

"'Scuse me," Harry said, standing up. "He's not sayin' everything 'cause he's protectin' me."

Mason, Horton and Sinclair all focused on Harry.

"And who the hell are you?" Mason shot.

"I'm the cab driver, Mr. Mason, sir."

Horton did not raise his eyebrows.

"Why is he protecting you?" Mason asked.

"Well," Harry said, and looked at his feet. "Mr. Horton was able to catch up to me 'cause I had a bit of a accident. Your boy started havin' some kinda' fit right there in the back seat and when I turned around to check 'im, I ran up over the curb." He held up his hands. "Now, he didn't get hurt from that, no sir. It wasn't that big a crack-up, but I think Mr. Horton's worried that you gonna' be some kind of upset with me seein' as how the boy was in my cab when it happened."

"He wasn't injured in the crash?"

"No, sir. He had already blacked out by then."

Mason's eyes grew large. "What?"

Horton rushed in to cover the rest. "We don't know what's going on yet, Mr. Mason, but apparently, Jeremy started spouting some strange nonsense, like the time he had a fever the winter before last. Mr. Brandt, here, told me all about it when I got up to his car. He was kind enough to come to the hospital because he thought he might be able to help." Horton motioned over his shoulder at the double doors. "We told the nurse what we knew and now we're just waiting for the doctor to come out and tell us something. I told Mr. Brandt he should go on."

"But I wanted to make sure the boy was gonna' be all right," Harry added.

Mason looked at Harry. "Brandt, huh?"

Horton willed Harry to go with it, already impressed by his quick thinking. Harry smiled. "Yes sir, Hamilton Brandt."

Just as Mason opened his mouth to say something, a man in a physician's white coat held open the double doors to the triage area and stuck his head out. "Jeremy Mason?"

Frank Mason pushed past the small group, saying "I'm the boy's father, Frank Mason. Are you the doctor?"

Dave Riley held out a hand. The lines around his mouth and eyes said he'd seen more than his share in forty-six years. Mason took the hand and pumped it once just to get the goddamned thing out of his way. If it had been a rat, he'd have stepped on it.

"My man said Jeremy had some kind of seizure?"

Doctor Riley glanced over at the other men, an older black man and two hardcases who looked like they could be in the Secret Service. He had no trouble guessing which two belonged to Mason. "Well, we're not entirely certain what's happened with your boy at this point."

"Is he all right?" Mason said. Fucking doctors never just came out and said anything. Made you fish for the slightest bit of information. "Is he out of the woods or what?"

"He was unconscious when he was brought in, but he's come around now and appears to be nothing more than a little confused. Understandable in this case." Doctor Riley paused, glanced at Sinclair and then gave Mason the most penetrating stare he could muster. It felt like shooting a brick wall with a pellet gun. "Do you keep any drugs in your home, sir?"

"Nothing other than alcohol and aspirin," Mason lied. He did in fact keep a supply of morphine and a couple different broad spectrum antibiotics in two separate emergency kits, but one was locked in the trunk of his car and the other in a safe hidden in his office. One could never be too careful when one ran the risk of being shot on a daily basis. "You think the boy's on drugs?"

Doctor Riley scowled. He didn't like the way Mason referred to his own son as "the boy." It sounded too much as if he were speaking of a possession in need of repairs instead of his child. "It's always a possibility with young people, especially these day. And, it could account for his strange behavior. Speaking of which, has he done or said anything unusual before this incident?"

Harry, listening patiently along with the others, remembered Jeremy hopping backward off the front steps of his house, belching that tepid breath. What the hell kind of drug would do that, goblinol, satanodrine?

"The boy is a model child," Mason said. "I can't remember him doing anything out of the ordinary as of late. Horton?" Mason didn't turn around. "Has my son being acting out of character recently?"

Horton thought for a second. "No, sir. Not to my knowledge."

Mason fixed his gaze on Doctor Riley. "Mr. Horton is in charge of my son's security," he said. "He keeps Jeremy under nearly constant supervision. It would be impossible for someone to even approach my son with illegal drugs."

"I see."

"So, what does that leave us with, Doctor?" Mason asked. "Is he crazy?"

Doctor Riley held up his hands. "The worse thing we can do is jump to conclusions, Mr. Mason. We have to exhaust every possible physical cause before we assign blame to some kind of neurosis or personality disorder. There are any number of somatic explanations for your son's behavior."

Mason crossed his arms. "Such as?"

"Well, since we've ruled out the possibility of drug use or injury—he's not had a head injury or any type of brain trauma that you know of, hypothermia, anything?"

"Nothing. The boy's never even broken a bone."

"Fine," Doctor Riley said. "That's good. It narrows the field. I've already ordered a series of x-rays and a I think an MRI would be a good idea as well. However, the easiest course of action may just be to ask Jeremy."

"Good, then I can see him now?"

Doctor Riley smiled. "Of course."

Mason turned. "Horton, take care of our friend, Mr. Brandt was it?"

"Yes, sir," Harry said.

Mason grunted. "Sinclair, you're with me."

Doctor Riley showed them back into the emergency room, past rows of empty beds and gleaming machines. The walls sprouted myriad tubes and faucets. The dark, square eyes of sleeping monitors reflected their passage toward a drawn curtain in the back corner of the room. Mason stepped in front of the doctor and yanked the curtain back.

The boy lay asleep, his hair a little sweaty and his skin pale. Mason noticed the blood stain on his shirt and pointed. "What the hell's that? No one said anything about any blood."

Doctor Riley stepped up and said, "He had a nosebleed, but apparently it stopped by itself. Nothing to worry about as of yet. It may not even be related to his outburst, but if it is we'll determine how."

Mason looked at his son, his only heir. This was his life extended. An injury to his son was an injury to Mason's immortality. Nothing could be allowed to harm the boy. Nothing. Mason did not think of himself as a loving father in the sense that he felt a great deal of emotion. He had never been an emotional man. It was just his nature and he forgave himself that. He had to satisfy his need to be a good parent with his ability to protect and provide. His love for the boy was a practical love, a love of action. His own father had not spoken to young Frances Jr. of love, not once, but it was the old man's efforts that started him on the road to success. A road he now owned.

Mason leaned in closer and listened to the boy's slow, even respiration. A circle of dried blood crusted Jeremy's left nostril. His eyes roved behind his lids, busy, seeking. They rolled and stopped, as if he looked up at his father through closed eyelids.

"Jeremy?"

What opened its eyes and stared up at Frank Mason was not his son. Mason pushed back from the bed, his movements activating Sinclair. The bodyguard slid up to his boss's side and opened his suit jacket without thinking about it.

The boy on the bed, eyes sly and flat, pegged Doctor Riley. Dave Riley's stomach cramped and his solar plexus turned to lead. Something about the way the kid was looking at him, that sly half-smile bending his chapped lips, made Riley sweat. A drop of sweat ran out of his armpit and counted off his ribs. The boy sat up in bed, his movements languid, reptilian. He turned his face to Frank Mason. "Daddy?" grated over its tongue, too low for a boy of ten. "Will you play a game with me?"

Mason put the back of his hand over his mouth and nose as a stench filled the room. It was familiar. After a moment he recognized it as burnt flesh and hair. Images of the shotgun victim, images of Howard. "Jeremy?" he said behind his fingers.

The boy shook his head, a look of deep regret on his face. "Your maggot's run away, Frances. He squirms down deep in the meat." Jeremy wrapped his arms around himself and hugged as if snuggling into a warm coat. "The meat, the meat, the meat," he sang to himself in a voice now high and feminine.

Mason turned and had to restrain himself from grabbing the doctor by his lily white coat. He took a breath, calmed. "What is this? What's wrong with him? How can he sound like that?"

"Thickening of the vocal chords due to swelling or even some clotting from the nosebleed," Doctor Riley said, going into medical mode. It felt better to be doing his job. He was a neurologist for God's sake. This getting the creeps stuff was foolish. He stepped around Frank Mason and addressed his patient. Jeremy stared at him, expectant and amused. "Jeremy, I'm going to ask you some questions."

"I have a question," Jeremy said through an enormous, toothy grin.

"Yes?"

Blood gelled through the gaps of Jeremy's teeth and pattered into his lap as he gurgled, "Would you care to be blood brothers, Doctor?"

NINE

CALVIN HIKED ALONG the crimson spine of the ancient god, all but buried in ponderosa and scrub pine. Every so often, an underground stream branched off, a line of nerves revealed only by a stand of bone-white aspen. When the wind rolled up these cuts in the god's back, the aspens' leaves danced, dark green and ash, on and off, hissing. The sweat cooled on Calvin's brow. The leaves tried to hypnotize him, root him, make him forget. He smiled at that. It would take more than a pretty stand of trees. His memory was cut stone. Some parts were older than the god upon which he walked. Some parts were almost older than all gods. He focused on a crooked aspen, listened to it hush in the wind, and imagined it burning. Calvin walked on, gray dust puffing at his heels.

He'd been moving along the spine of pink granite on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for two days now, off the marked trail since yesterday. The spine was trail enough. If he went too far left or right it would remind him with a sheer drop to the Kaibab Plateau below. Calvin's daydreams would shatter as his foot slipped on some scree. He would shout a liquid sound full of instant regret and slam into the rocks a hundred feet down. The vultures would corkscrew down on thermal columns to help him along his way even as the echoes of his fall faded.

A fly droned past his ear, fat and lazy. The afternoon was perfect: hot and dry, clear. The shade kept most of heat at bay, but the sun managed to spear through the canopy and mark him every now and again. Undulating pencil-beams pierced the forest gloom, columns of light. Calvin could almost hear them humming as he walked, feel the lines of warmth they drew over his shoulders and scalp. It felt like he was being cleaned. He took a bite of a granola bar and chased it with a sip of water from his squeeze bottle. His dusty throat sparkled.

His senses, already sharpened by years of training and application, had become even more finely tuned over the past couple of days. By moving into the forest, he felt as if he'd shrugged off a coat of grease. By the time the sun began to slip toward the western edge of everything, he was clear and ready.

As the first stars began to burn behind him, John Calvin emerged from the forest onto the barren end of the rock serpent. To the south, the Canyon cleaved the land, a river of purple velvet. To the north, the Kaibab Plateau rolled out, an ocean of old pine, cobalt in the half-light. Calvin walked to the serpent's head. Across the valley the sun was just melting behind the tree line, edging the rim of the world with a line of blood. This is the border, it seemed to say, you have crossed into the dark places.

Calvin nodded. Whatever had been coming over the past several days was close. It would be here soon. He didn't bother to pull out his sleeping bag or make a fire. He sat cross-legged a few feet from the edge, the red stone warm from the day's heat. He closed his eyes and breathed. The night sky opened and a downpour of stars rang around him. The air began to cool and the evening wind muscled through the trees. Calvin breathed and began the work of emptying his mind. He tried not to think of nothing, but instead to let nothing find his mind and fill its corners. He exhaled and heard his breath . . . and nothing else.

It was here.

Calvin opened his eyes. Across from him, legs crossed just like his, sat a teenage boy. His hair was long and clumped in filthy dreadlocks. His face luminesced in the starlight, streaked with dark grime. He wore an old t-shirt blackened with dirt. A line of dark, shiny liquid ran from a small hole an inch from his heart. The boy noticed Calvin looking at his wound and smiled, his teeth neon tiles. The whites of his eyes glowed around irises so black they might have been tiny rips in the fabric of space-time. Behind his head, the purple band of the Milky Way flowed.

Calvin's heart pounded as it were making a steel fist over and over in his suddenly fragile flesh. Liquid nitrogen slid from his hair line and slicked down his temples. Hot mercury lined his tear ducts. This boy was why he feared nothing in life. This boy was why he could stay cold in his head when a situation called for panic. He had known a demon. Everything after that was a fucking joke.

It wore his child's body like a coat, staring, smiling at him.

Calvin had a lot of patience, but not as much as it did. "What do you want?" he asked.

A shooting star streaked behind the boy's head. He giggled as if it had tickled him, but said nothing. A line of drool slipped from the straining corner of his mouth.

Calvin yanked in a shaky breath, tried again. "Why're you here?"

The boy's face didn't change, all smiles and bottomless eyes. He could wait forever.

Calvin's fists clenched. "What do you want from me this time?"

The boy straightened. The voice was that of a wizened, sexless crone. "This time?" he said, leaning forward. "But I never left you. I may have left the meat, but I have always been near." Now, his voice changed, rolling into the timbre of an older man, American Bronx at the core, but Italian at the edges. "You've led quite a life since our time together, Johnny."

"You're not Thom Neary."

The boy chuckled, fresh blood oozed from the puncture in his chest. "I am... Not."

"Thom Neary cast you out." Calvin dared to stare it in the eye. "A long time ago."

The demon-boy's smile faltered, one eyebrow lifted. "Cast out? Hmm."

Calvin blinked and the boy was gone. He closed his eyes tight, squeezed, and opened them. He was alone. He had not imagined this. To think so would be foolish, cowardly. He tensed, senses open, but only the night came to him, quiet and cool, but there. The cone of silence seemed to have departed with his child self. Was that it? Was the mere mention of his friend, his savior from that nightmare of so many years ago, enough to cause the demon to depart? Calvin looked around, his mind a knotted cable. Nothing happened. He waited.

After the stars had noticeably rotated in the sky, he began to relax. The sounds and scents of the night flowed in and were welcome. The wind howled through the valley below. It painted the trees a soft peach as it caressed their trunks. Calvin could see it glowing in the dark. He could feel the sharp-edged polygons of pine scent wafting in the air. The starlight tasted like cold milk.

Hold on a minute.

He could taste the starlight?

Something laughed in his head. Calvin felt the grin on his face even as his heart sank. His field of vision tilted as he was forced to look into his crotch. Hot urine streamed out of his penis and soaked his lap. He heard a strange voice, a combination of his own and the crone's, slip in a harmonized whisper from lips that were no longer his.

"Cast out?"

The intruder made him laugh until he tasted blood in the back of his throat and tears squeezed from his eyes. When it felt like his sinuses would burn and his lungs explode, the laughter died away, melding into a scream of terror and pain. That was Calvin's.

He fell over and panted in the dust, his throat a shredded mess and his lap a cooling embarrassment. After a couple of minutes, Calvin opened his eyes. The grinning monster's face was an inch from his own. The boy lay on his belly, feet up, face propped between his hands like a kid watching television. It looked from Calvin's right eye to his left and back. The smile faded and a look of paternal concern drew down its features. "I am due more respect than that, boy."

"I'm sorry," Calvin whispered. A final tear slid from his eye, and in that moment he experienced the purest feeling of his life before or since. He hated the demon.

"You see how simple it is? How easy for me to slip in and out of your stinking meat? Never believe, for even a moment, that I left because some choirboy cocksucker ordered me to do so." The demon reached out and ran a long finger down the side of Calvin's face. "You will always belong to me. That little white flea collar in which you place so much faith can't protect you. There is no god for you. Only starless night. Only blindness."

That finger on his face. Calvin's guts lurched, but he kept it together and even managed to sit up. "What then?" he croaked. Close to fainting, he couldn't say anything more.

"The boy," the demon crooned. "Mine, mine, mine."

Dark descended and Calvin lost consciousness. He slept the rest of the night, but tossed on the cooling stone, full of bad dreams. He dreamed of two boys, one close and dark, the other far and fair. The dark boy had deep maroon skin and shoulder length black hair. He stood on blasted hardpan, waved to Calvin and cried, Missionary! The ground opened and swallowed him. The fair boy lay in a field of white, sprouting tubes and machines. People bustled all around, clucking, and worried. A man stepped in between Calvin and the boy, his back to Calvin's dream view. His broad outline pulled at the light. He turned to look at Calvin, but there was no face.

Calvin woke the next morning as the temperature shifted once again and the wind scraped up the back of the serpent's spine. He sat up and stared out toward the Grand Canyon. He had come to this end point in the world to find clarity, and instead had found only misdirection and a monster. When he tried to sit and think about his life, he found nothing clear, nothing certain. The only clarity was in doing. He thought of the assignment he'd been sent out here to complete and spat a copper taste into the dust. There was a martyr to be made. He got up, turned away from the open valley and moved back into the shadows.

* * *

AT ONE-THIRTY in the morning, two days after he walked off the red spine of a buried god, Father John Calvin pulled the SUV into the parking lot of a motor lodge off Colorado State Road 160. He keyed off the ignition and sat in the dark a minute, listening to the tick of the cooling engine block. Calvin rubbed his face and sighed. He looked up through the windshield at the single light burning in the office. The motel was a five room strip of concrete block and peeling paint. There was an electric sign proclaiming the name of the place, but it appeared to be burned out. Either that or someone just hadn't bothered to turn it on. He already knew what the beds would smell like.

Behind the motel loomed the profile of a five mile long corpse lying on its back: Ute Mountain. There was supposed to be a story about some chief or warrior turning to stone or some such mumbo jumbo. A shiver ran across his shoulders as got out the SUV and walked to the office.

Calvin pulled open a screeching screen door and found a pink room with blue zigzag detailing along the walls. A lonely slot machine, long dead, stood in one corner next to a table strewn with dusty brochures and what appeared to be a glass coffin.

The six foot glass box was capped with a heavy piece of mesh held down with a brick. Calvin leaned in, curious to see what lived in what he recognized as a huge terrarium. Several old tree branches lay on a floor of fresh, pungent wood chips. An empty drawstring sack printed with the logo for a local nursery was still lying next to the table. It was dim in this corner of the room and difficult to penetrate the shadows in the terrarium. This would have to be the biggest fucking hamster on earth. Calvin leaned in and tapped a knuckle against the glass. One of the tree branches slid away from the glass and rolled into a coil. A lazy rattle flavored the air and died away. Calvin controlled his urge to flinch back, glanced at the brick weighing down the mesh and leaned a little closer. It looked like there were at least five full-grown diamondbacks calling this glass box home.

Calvin straightened, turned. Tree branches. Jesus.

A single fluorescent globe burned in the middle of the ceiling orbited by a disoriented, but determined moth. What looked like several years of his brethren lay on the inside bottom of the lamp's glass bowl, turning to protein dust. Moths are drawn to light sources because they navigate by the moon. They need that single light in the darkness to guide them so badly that they'll kill themselves circling and circling.

"Oh, god-damn!" came from a thirty-ish woman behind the desk. Calvin stepped in closer. She swore again and scratched away at a lottery ticket. He glanced back at the moth.

"Help you?"

Calvin looked back. "Sorry, yes," he said. "I'd like a room please."

"That'll be twenty-nine fifty a night," she said, giving him the once over. She softened and gave what Calvin guessed must pass in her mind as a smolder. He was a little dusty, but it weren't nothing a shower couldn't fix. "You in town on business or pleasure?" She wore an oversized sweatshirt that slid over one bare shoulder. An angry pimple stood out against her white skin.

"Neither," he said. "I'm just passing through."

"Shame," she said. "You gonna' need a wake up call?"

Calvin put his hands on the counter and spread his fingers until the knuckles went off like a string of Chinese firecrackers. "No thanks," he said, trying not to smile at the look of disgust on her face. Subtle girl, this one. "I'd really just like to catch up on my sleep. Been on the road a while." He pulled out a twenty and a ten and laid them on the counter.

She made the money disappear with a crinkle and flash of Vegas-red press-on nails, but didn't offer a key right away. "Where you headed?"

Into darkness. Into blindness. "Up north a ways." He looked at her. She didn't ask for details.

"Welcome to the Rattlesnake Motel," she said and slid him the key. "Room four." Not the farthest room from the office, wouldn't want to seem too impolite, but not too close either. He was cute and not from her town which made him better than ninety-nine percent of what passed for available around here, but he was also a little strange. People disappeared around here sometimes. Not enough to lock your door, but . . . shit, maybe she would tonight. She wasn't unhappy to watch him walk away, and not just because it gave her a clear view of his behind. Definitely cute.

Ten minutes later Calvin stood in the shower and scalded away four days of dirt. He could feel his pores open and release their cargo of toxins and dust. He pressed his palms against the cool tile to either side of the shower head and hung his face down. The water pounded the tension from the back of his neck. He watched it swirl into the drain. He closed his eyes and saw the dark boy from his dream and the look on his face as the ground swallowed him. Missionary! Tomorrow afternoon Calvin would drive onto the reservation and find his target: Father Matthew Katey. His Eminence had said to make it look natural this time. Calvin thought about laughing.

Sleep didn't come easy that night in spite of his exhaustion. Calvin lay between papery sheets that smelled of cigarette smoke and disinfectant, wondering about the man, the priest he was supposed to kill. A killer himself, this one. He'd molested the kids and made them disappear. Calvin wondered if Katey had worn the collar the whole way through, or if he had taken it off while he fucked them. Make it look natural.

Natural.

Was that supposed to mean something to a man like John Calvin? That smile, those endless eyes, that voice that was sometimes one, sometimes many. That horrid, boundless knowledge. That emptiness. Just how would he define natural?

"Fuck you, Your Eminence," Calvin muttered and finally fell asleep.

He dreamed of a succession of hospital rooms, nurses and doctors. A thousand scenes flashed in and out of focus of machines, tubing, wires, needles, and so many questions. Someone was terribly sick and the healers didn't know why. And anger so abundant it was like air.

CALVIN WOKE IN mid morning sitting on the edge of the bed. He didn't remember opening his eyes and moving, just found himself that way. He rubbed his eyes and felt something wet. Calvin pulled his hand away and saw a cut on the index finger of his right hand. He didn't think as he stumbled into the bathroom and clicked the light switch.

Jeremy was written across the bathroom floor tiles in blood.

Calvin stood and stared. An eighteen-wheeler dopplered by the motel, its horn blaring, the ground shaking. A drop of his own blood pooled at the end of his fingertip and fell. It hit the floor with a sound like a soft pat against a cheek. Over the drying Jeremy he opened his mouth.

"This has to be the last one."

TEN

ON THE EVENING of the sixth day into the ordeal with his son, Frank Mason decided it would be best to bring Jeremy home. Whatever was wrong with his boy wouldn't be cured within the sterile confines of a hospital. He had watched as his son was subjected to every physiological, neurological, and psychological test available to modern medical science. He'd watched his boy wince and spit through countless tubes of drawn blood, sweat and shriek within the cervical cylinder of a banging MRI, and howl like a jackal as positrons from a CAT scan attempted to map his malady. Every last test had come back negative.

Through it all, Mason had scrutinized the neurologist, Riley. Even as he ordered all those pricks, and scans, Riley had known there was nothing physically wrong with the boy. It wasn't some scam. Mason would have sniffed that out in heart beat, but Riley was holding something back. He used his tests like a detective with a magnifying glass, but behind the lens his face was already set. At the end, Mason believed that Riley used the tests to rule out what the problem was not. He already knew what it was, but for some reason he wouldn't come out with it.

Mason had called a private nursing company and had Jeremy's bedroom converted into a hospital room, complete with monitoring equipment and restraints. Also included in the package was Emma Grouwe, a burly psychiatric nurse with over fifteen years' experience in state mental institutions. She sat sentinel over the boy during the day. Mason's men took rotating shifts at night while Emma slept in the guest suite.

During his fits, Jeremy was capable of incredible strength. While in the hospital, a third shift nurse strayed too close while the child lay sleeping under heavy sedation. His small boy's hand darted out and hardened around her wrist like a manacle. The nurse's screams brought the security guard. He found her slumped against the far wall of the room, silent and wide-eyed. In her lap she cradled what looked like two left hands before the guard realized that her right hand had been sheared around at the wrist. The guard whirled to find the pale, naked boy painting strange geometric shapes on the wall with his own feces.

Mason had paid well to keep the incident quiet. The security guard now drove a brand new Mustang. The unfortunate third shift nurse had to sign a report stating the cause of the spiral fracture to her wrist as accidental, but her medical costs were paid in full, as was the remainder of her mortgage. As added insurance, Mason had Sinclair take some photographs of the security guard with a smile on his face and a blonde head in his lap. (The guard's wife was a brunette.) The nurse was not as easy to push into a situation as compromising, but she had two young children and that would be enough leverage if the need ever arose. You could get a mother to stick her own arm into a pot of boiling water and keep it there if you held a gun to her kid's head.

But that was all another matter. Now that Jeremy was home, Mason could exert some fucking control over the situation, get his boy some real help. He put his hands on the top of his desk and exhaled. Doctor Riley sat across from him, hands on his knees. It was cold in Mason's study. He disliked perspiration, but a bead of sweat winked within Riley's hairline.

"Thank you for coming, doctor."

Riley smiled, his lips shaking around the corners. "I don't usually make house calls."

Mason smiled back. Riley had information he needed. He knew what was really wrong with Jeremy, but Mason wasn't going to get it out of him with hammer and tong. The doctor required a certain finesse. Mason needed this man's help willingly. "Of course, but please rest assured that your compensation will be more than adequate."

Riley looked at the floor. "I appreciate that, Mr. Mason." He caught the carved wooden eye of one of the severed-head feet of Mason's desk, and looked for something else down there to stare at. All he got was the lolling tongue of the head on the opposite corner. Riley gave up and looked back at Mason. Jesus, this guy was like Gomez Addams minus the kooky charm.

"It's not a matter of money," Riley said.

"Yes?"

"It's just that," Riley looked away again, "I don't think there's anything I can do for your boy."

Mason sat back and tented his manicured fingers. "I see," he said and studied the other man. At length he came out with it.

"Doctor Riley, why won't you tell me what's wrong with my son? You know goddamn well what it is. Don't pretend not to. Why haven't you said anything?" Mason saw it scroll across Riley's face, that pained look he'd seen so many times during Jeremy's stay at the hospital that seemed to say I know, but can't tell. Mason slammed his fist down on the desktop. "For Christ's sweet sake! What is it? What the hell's wrong with him?"

The source of Frank Mason's money was a mystery to Riley, but he knew enough to be afraid of the man. He was powerful and dangerous and now Riley had to tell him something so terrible about his son that a diagnosis of brain cancer would be a sunny day by comparison. Riley looked back down into the rolling eye of the severed head. He took a deep breath and sighed. Finally, at least, he would be able to tell someone else.

"Your son's possessed, Mr. Mason." He looked back up.

Mason sat and stared, blank and impenetrable. His eyes roved over the doctor's face, searching for any sign of dishonesty or sickness. Riley was worried and afraid, but he was telling the truth as he believed it. Mason thought about all those tests, all those negatives. He thought about the weird double voices that issued from his son's face, a face that somehow wasn't Jeremy even though it looked like him, as if some Hannibal Lecter had removed the boy's skin and wore it for a mask. He sat back and nodded. "All right, tell me."

Color flooded Riley's cheeks. "You believe me?"

"Let's just say at the moment that I don't dis-believe," Mason said and got up. He walked over to a bookshelf and pushed the spine of a leather bound tome. Riley squinted, but couldn't make out its title. The book and several of its shelf mates slid aside, revealing a crystal decanter filled with brown liquid and two tumblers. Riley muttered, "Hmh," and almost smiled.

"Scotch okay with you, doctor?" Mason asked over his shoulder.

"Please," Riley said. A Darvocet would have been even better, but beggars can't be choosers.

Mason handed Riley his drink and sat back down behind the desk. He took a long inhale over his scotch, but didn't drink it. He just held it, turning and swirling the liquid.

"Aside from the tests and his behavior, what makes you draw such an unusual conclusion?" Mason asked. "You don't strike me as a religious fanatic, doctor."

"I saw it before." Riley yanked down half his scotch. "Once."

"A possession?"

"Yeah... No. When I say 'I saw it before' I'm not talking about just another case of possession." He paused, took another drink and continued, his voice wet and raw. "It was another case of demon possession, sure, but that's not all."

Mason did his best to hold his impatience in check. "You're not making sense, doctor."

"I know it, I know it." Riley took a breath. "When I say 'I saw it before' I mean that I saw it before, the thing, the—the demon—that's in your son." He finished his scotch and gazed into the empty glass. "I know that fucker."

Mason leaned forward and filled Riley's tumbler. "Tell me."

Riley raised his eyebrows. If Mason was going to throw him out on his ass for being a quack, he would have done it by now. He took a sip and let his mind find a set of memories he'd buried a long time ago. It was a little scary how easy it was to unearth the bones of those bad days, how close to the surface that corpse lay. Had it been doing a little digging on its own?

"I was still in residency, working the ER. This was near to fifteen years ago. I was going to specialize in internal medicine, surgery." Riley gave a rueful smile. " One night they brought in this kid, stab wound to the chest with an ice-pick. He was just some homeless kid that had gotten attacked. The wagon boys—the EMTs—they even had to shock him a couple of times to bring him back.

"We get him on the table and it turns out it's really not too bad a deal." Riley's face receded into memory, eyes losing focus. He made a circular motion over the left side of his chest. "The ice pick had just missed the main arteries, but it punctured and collapsed the lung. I tied off a couple of bleeders and re-inflated the lung. We closed up and I turned my back." He trailed off.

"What happened?" Mason's voice was soft, patient.

"He grabbed a scalpel and tore up a couple of people. Anesthesiologist and a nurse."

"The kid woke up? Wasn't he—what do you call it? Wasn't he under?"

"Oh yeah, he was out cold. Came in unconscious, but you can't mess around anyway. We made sure to dope him on top of that. You can't have people waking up when you're mucking around in their chest cavities."

"How then?"

"That's just it, Mr. Mason. It shouldn't have been possible. Being under anesthetic isn't like being asleep. It's chemically controlled death. A fraction more or less anesthetic per pound of body weight and you'll either stay awake or just die. And on top of all that, the gas passer is always monitoring vitals, levels of consciousness."

"So the kid was never under."

Riley shook his head. "No, I thought of that. When we finally got him under control again—it took three big guys—I had the lab run his blood. He was swimming in acetylcholine." Riley looked at Mason. "If anything, the passer had administered a little too much. It was impossible for him to have been awake."

Mason thought about Jeremy's last fit. Sinclair was still nursing a twisted elbow from where the boy had grabbed and launched him across the room like a dirty suit. "Go on, doctor."

Riley stared into the air next to the desk. "It got worse over the next few days. We kept the kid as sedated as we dared, but it was pointless." He looked back at Mason. "It was like the thing inside him was just toying with us. If it wanted the kid to be out cold, he was a rag doll, but if he wanted to suddenly jump up and dance a soft shoe on some poor orderly's head it would get up and get to hoofin'." Riley's mouth twitched—a smile reconsidered or grimace controlled. "A few days after his surgery we moved the kid out of ICU into psychiatric. After he'd healed up enough, we ran every test available, same as your boy."

"The results were negative I take it?"

"Every one."

Mason sat back, his chair creaked and he blinked. Riley was sure he'd just witnessed Mr. Mason make a mental note to either oil the chair or have its legs broken. He wondered what mental notes this man had made about him. Mason tented his fingers. "Why not insanity, schizophrenia?"

Riley smiled. "Schizophrenics can't do the things that kid could do."

"Such as?"

"Levitation."

Mason sat forward. "He could levitate, like float off the bed?"

"Oh, no. We strapped him down from the get-go. He levitated the furniture mostly. We had to take everything out of the room except the bed. Bolted that down." Riley shuddered. "And he did it to me once. Lifted me right up off the floor about half a foot and just held me there for a few seconds."

Mason stared.

"Made me sick. I threw up for an hour and a half."

Mason finally took a drink, a big one.

Riley began to relax.

"You understand, doctor, this is all very difficult to believe."

"Of course."

"Do you have any evidence you can show me? Some kind of documentation? This must have been one of the most extraordinary cases of your career."

"To be sure, but I don't have any evidence that would hold up in court so to speak."

Mason's brow wrinkled.

Riley sat forward. "Oh, it hid. It only showed itself for what it really was in the presence of myself and one other person, not counting the kid himself." Riley took a gulp and stifled a belch. "Don't get me wrong, it still acted out." He shuddered again. "Those awful noises and double voices. What it did to the kid's body, starving it of food, sleep. I've seen pictures of corpses out of Buchenwald that were prettier than that poor kid by the time it was all over. But all that activity was the sort of thing you could explain away if you wanted to. And believe you me, most people want to explain that kind of phenomena away if they possibly can."

"Who was the other person?"

"What? Oh, the priest."

"You called a priest?"

A slant slid over the doctor's mouth. "No, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Called it 'divine providence'. I called it a coincidence. It's a Catholic hospital and every so often a priest will rotate through psychiatric. Ask me, it's never done anything but set the patients off, but the board of directors has always loved that kind of crap. Neither here nor there." He took another drink.

"I was checking the kid's vitals during one of the quiet times."

Mason interupted. "I thought you were a surgeon. What were you doing still on the case after he was moved to psychiatric?"

"I couldn't leave it alone. Used to tell myself it was scientific curiosity. I even used to tell myself that's why I switched to neurology." Riley slurped his scotch. "It was curiosity all right, but I don't think it had much to do with science."

Mason asked, "So, the priest? You were checking vitals?"

"Huh? Oh right. The kid was out like a light, but we'd stopped sedating him as heavily. Mostly just low levels of thorazine at that point. He was just so damn malnourished... Anyway, this priest sticks his head in the door. 'New patient?' he asks me, so I'm about to say 'Yes, but it's not a good time.' You know the drill, get rid of him."

Mason nodded.

"Then the kid puts his hand on my arm. I about have a coronary and jump across the room, but I don't because it's not the—the it this time. It's the kid."

"How'd you know?"

Riley paused. "Same way you'd know, Mr. Mason."

"Okay," Mason said. "Go on."

"So the kid puts his hand on my arm and opens his eyes. God he looked so awful, so sick and so tired, so damn scared. He looked up at me and then over at the priest. I swear I saw him focus right in on that little white collar. It was the most pathetic thing I've ever seen in my life. He looked at the priest and said, 'Turn the light on.'"

"What do you suppose that meant?"

"Mr. Mason I've woken up in the middle of the night with that kid's cracked lips in my imagination whispering those very words for years, and I still don't know." Riley looked at his lap, his voice low. "My guess is he was in a dark place."

"So," Mason waved a hand, rolling on.

"So, this priest comes in and sits on the edge of the bed." Riley's skin prickled, crawled. "He sits on the bed and just looks at the kid for a minute, doesn't say a thing, just stares. Finally, I ask him what he thinks the kid meant and he just looks at me like I'm an idiot." Riley smiled and shook his head. "He knew, just like that. He knew."

"How?"

"I guess the same way I knew with Jeremy, Mr. Mason. I think he'd seen it before."

"You mentioned that earlier, that you knew the particular...demon. How can you be so sure about that?"

"Something Jeremy—it said." Riley sucked in a deep breath. "'Would you like to be blood brothers doctor?' When it was in the other kid, it said the same exact thing to me right after it went crazy with the scalpel in the OR that first night we brought him in."

Mason was quiet, considering. Finally he said, "So then what, this priest performed an exorcism, got it out of the boy?"

"He performed the exorcism, yeah."

"And it worked?"

"If what he wanted to do was make the demon laugh its ass off? Then yeah, it worked great."

"So he couldn't help the boy."

"I didn't say that," Riley said and immediately regretted it. The light around Mason seemed to grown dense. That was the only way Riley could get his mind around it. He hurried on. "What I mean is that the exorcism didn't work, no, but eventually the thing did leave."

"The priest got rid of it some other way?"

"Well, I honestly don't know, Mr. Mason. I wish I could be more clear about this." And boy did he ever. Mason was losing patience with him fast. Riley had to hold himself in the chair. "He stayed with the kid night and day for something like a week, reading the bible, praying, going over the ritual for exorcism again and again. One morning it was just gone. I mean the kid woke up and it didn't come back. He was finally able to heal up all the way and they left."

"They left?"

"The priest took the kid with him. Legally, it was like the diocese adopted him. Ward of the Church, I think he called it."

Mason spun around in his chair and faced the window. Riley could see him in the glass, long fingers tented against his chest. His eyes were carbon points even in the semi-transparent reflection. Through the window, night fell on the sweeping grounds of Mason's estate. Shadows deepened and opened the way for night creatures. In his mind's eye Riley saw a moth caught in a spider's web. It flapped and struggled, but the spider never came. In the end of his imaginary play, the moth died of starvation.

"The priest," Mason said, "he did something, got it out."

Riley answered the other man's back. "I don't know that for sure, sir."

"His name," Mason demanded.

"Father Neary. Uh, Thomas. Thom Neary." Jesus, even his own father never made Riley stammer this much. "Father Thomas Neary, but when he left with that kid he left the service of the hospital as well."

Mason chuckled.

"I don't know how to find him, Mr. Mason."

Mason turned in the chair and favored Riley with a grin he could have done without.

"I do."

ELEVEN

EMILE SINCLAIR LAY in bed thinking about his luck. Most of the time it was aces, but lately things were getting weird on the old Mason ranch.

The problem wasn't his employment. In what other profession could a man without a high school diploma wear custom made Armani suits and Gucci loafers for such cream puff duties. Most of what he did involved driving a fancy car and looking like a hardcase while standing near his employer. Every now and again Mr. Mason would have Sinclair make a delivery or pick-up. Sometimes he had to put the squeeze on some punk if they were holding out, but he hardly considered that work. Work was hauling wet sheets in the steam pit laundry at county, the skin on your hands turning crimson then sloughing off a little more every day. Work was racking your brain to make some kind of dumb-ass sales quota. His job was a dream come true.

The benefits were primo too. According to Mr. Mason's accountant, a little pissant Jew boy named Felder, Sinclair had only cleared twenty grand last year. Of course, even little pissant Jew boys have their uses, so while his income tax return put him just above the poverty line, Sinclair actually made in the neighborhood of a hundred large. And that was just the jack that Mr. Mason knew about.

Sinclair had so many side rackets and kick-backs going he could scarcely keep track of them all. He even got room and board with his own suite in the main house. Had to be close to the boss just in case. And the bitches, well, with his own "servant's" entrance, moving his pussy in and out of the house was smooth as the snatch on a Thai whore.

Sure, there was the danger of being a human bullet catcher, but that was only if he actually got in the way of a slug like that dumb motherfucker, Horton. For fuck's sake, just because he was being paid to take a bullet for Mason didn't mean he actually had to fulfill that particular part of his job description should the time come. Sinclair saw it as simple pragmatics: If someone offed Mr. Mason, Sinclair was out of a job. If someone tried to off Mr. Mason and Sinclair got in the way, not only was he out of a job, he was dead. Fuck that. He'd let Finch jump in if he was stupid enough to try.

Just look what had happened when Horton had taken the big slow-mo leap in front of a fast moving lead swarm. Did he get a reward for almost punching out permanently to save his highness? He got shit detail, watching the royal brat. Jesus, what a drag that would be, having to baby-sit that geeky fucking kid all day.

And now that detail couldn't be more shitty. The kid had gone completely nuts, or had a tumor they couldn't find, or something. Thus the current weirdness in Sinclair's otherwise perfect life. The stuff that came out of sweet little Jeremy was like nothing Sinclair had ever heard, even during any of his several state-supervised vacations. Little bastard had effectively shut down the shop around here too, his father putting operations on hold so they could all stay close to the kid.

Sinclair shoved one of his beefy arms behind his head on a mauve silk pillow, his other hand wandered down to his privates. He looked over at the clock, 4:14 AM; fucking coke keeping him up again. In truth, it wasn't the blow and he damn well knew it. Sinclair had a shift to watch over the kid in another forty-five minutes and he was sweating it something fierce. The kid was what, nine or ten, and he had thrown the big bodyguard across the room like a puppy Sinclair had once owned. Sinclair repositioned his arm behind his head and winced in the dark. Elbow still hurt like hell. Slammed right into the wall. His newly bad luck that he hit a stud instead of just punching through the sheetrock. Little bastard. Now, at least that home appliance of a nurse had the kid strapped down.

Sinclair imagined Jeremy strapped into his bed, helpless except for the endless stream of verbal diarrhea. His hand ceased its crotch exploration, gripped. Helpless, all tied up like that with those big leather manacles they used on psych patients. Sinclair could do anything he wanted to the little fucker and no one would be the wiser. If the kid said anything, he could just say it was one of Jeremy's lies. Anything he wanted at all. Sinclair passed the rest of the time before his shift grinning in the dark.

Anything at all.

* * *

HORTON KEPT VIGIL in a chair by the door. He tried to keep his chin off his chest, but it wasn't easy. When the thing wearing Jeremy like a ill-fitting suit was awake, then hey, no problem, the entertainment was more than enough to peel back his eyelids. But when it let the poor kid sleep, or what passed for it, Horton's own exhaustion slid down over his head like a warm, heavy cap.

He'd been in the room watching over Jeremy for something like forty-eight hours now, breaking only to use the bathroom. Mason himself had instructed Horton to get some sleep, but it had been a half-hearted order. Horton could tell the boy's father wanted him there, and even if Mr. Mason had put some muscle behind his request, Horton would have stayed put. Jeremy was his charge, his boy. And something had him. Horton didn't know what he could do to hurt whatever it was that was hurting Jeremy, but he sure as hell was going to hang around until the opportunity presented itself. And when it did... Horton clenched a rocky fist, startling himself when the knuckles went off like firecrackers.

Jeremy's father had had a consultation with the kid's neurologist, Riley, earlier that evening, but if he had any new information, Mr. Mason was keeping it to himself. He'd stopped by to look in on the kid around ten, but Jeremy was out cold. Mason stayed around long enough to let Horton know that Sinclair would take a shift at around five that morning, earlier if Horton wanted to knock off and get some shut-eye. Horton had said he was fine, and asked what the doctor had to say. Mason had said nothing, just walked to the bedside and stared down at his son. For a moment, Horton thought Mr. Mason would touch his son's forehead, finger a lock of hair, something, but he'd just turned and left.

Horton loosed an enormous yawn and blinked hard a couple of times. He looked up at the ceiling, stretching his sore neck. He could remember a time, not so long ago, when he couldn't have cared less about young Jeremy Mason. A time when his concerns orbited the boy's father and nothing else. In Italy, the café on the ancient plaza. The hitter driving up on that scooter, red with flaking paint, grungy white helmet. The oily-blue smell of exhaust and the sputter of the engine misfiring. No, not misfires, bullets. Near-molten metal flying like a splash of poison rain. Shoving Mason and throwing himself into air filled with lead daggers.

Horton's head bobbed, snapped up. Remembering, dreaming. He looked over at the bed. Shining eyes watched him.

Jeremy was awake, except it wasn't Jeremy. What sat up in the bed, arms down at its sides as if it were simply reclining and not restrained, barely resembled a boy at all anymore. The constant bellowing and exaggerated expressions had rearranged the facial muscles. The jaw had thickened and the brow was heavier, while the cheeks had become sunken, corpse-like. The lips were swollen full, cracked and bleeding. Wrinkles had appeared at the corners of the mouth and eyes. Bluish shadows brushed the bones into sharp relief. Even the hairline seemed to have receded from a brow once smooth but now lined with three horizontal crevices. The skin was washed out, jaundiced and covered with a crosshatch of badly healing scratches. These were from before they'd had the presence of mind to restrain the child. Some of them looked like symbols from an old, alien language.

It hurt Horton to look at the kid, hurt his heart. Poor kid would be ugly if he scarred.

Jeremy grinned. "Do you imagine he would have done the same for you?" The voice was liminal, caught between genders and ages, high and low, smooth and grating. A woman after too many whiskeys and cigarettes, a man crooning through a throat full of wet glass. Sometimes it even sounded as if two people spoke at once, harmonized and painful to hear. Every time Horton heard that voice come out of his boy it felt like a little part of his mind tore loose and floated away.

He knew this wasn't Jeremy. He couldn't prove it, couldn't really explain past the obvious diagnoses, but if you had asked him if there was such a thing as a brain tumor that could talk all by itself he would have said yes. Yes, because that troll on the bed wasn't his boy, his charge. Horton looked away. The fucking thing was obscene.

"That's not polite, Horton," it growl/purred.

Horton looked up. "What d'you want?" he barked, then checked himself, softened. He could see Jeremy in there, like a boy-shaped bundle under a rotten blanket. "What is it, kid?"

The troll beamed and giggled from somewhere deep in its hollowed chest. It sounded like a bird caught in a garbage bag. "We'll repeat the question if you think it necessary, bondsman, but we believe you heard us."

All that shit with "we" and "us" whenever Jeremy talked. Horton couldn't stand it. "Why do you talk like that? What's with all this "us" bullshit? You sound like the freakin' queen of England."

Sitting all the way across the room, it took a minute to get to him, then Horton caught the distinct smell of putrefaction on its breath. "What you been eating, kid?" Rhetorical nonsense. He knew damn well that it hadn't let the kid eat anything solid for the last few days. The last attempt had been pudding back in the hospital, and the kid had vomited it up, right through a great big smile. The nurse had to hook the boy to a sustagen feeder twice a day just to make sure he didn't waste away completely. Horton had read about cancer patients having rotten breath, but they'd ruled that out already with all the testing. He waved a hand in front of his face. "Jesus."

"A naïve cunt."

Horton stared.

"His bitch mother sat on an angel's cock and shat a philosopher."

"Why do you got to talk like this, Jeremy? What's wrong with you, kid?"

"Do you know what an angel is, bondsman?" It's eyebrows rose. "A demon that has yet to wake. They all turn in time," it laughed, and shook its head. "Time."

Horton locked eyes with it and felt a great plane of sadness stretch out. "Is that what you are," he whispered, "a demon?"

It's grin faltered, lost some wattage. "Had we any sympathy, we would give it to you, Horton."

"Me?" Horton sat back, crossed his thick arms. "Why?"

"This will be most difficult for you. We know you, we were you. You will feel surprise when the razor cuts you, though you straddle it." A distinctive lump rose under the bedclothes with unnatural speed, even for a young boy. "Care to straddle something else, bondsman?"

Horton turned his face away in disgust. "Don't, Jeremy."

"No, please," it whined. "Use the meat, Horton. The body wastes as we eat it, but some sweetness remains." Eyes locked on Horton, the troll ground its pelvis, the lump thrusting against the sheets. "It's all we can offer." Darkness began to spread at the boy's crotch and a moment later ammonia stained the air. "Perhaps we have something else."

Horton put a hand over his mouth. He was wiped out, his mind bleached. He should get up and do something, clean up the kid, or at least call the nurse. It was all he could to keep the turkey sandwich he had for dinner in his stomach. The previous attacks had been so random, just fits of violence and barked obscenities. This was deliberate and focused. Horton wondered what that might mean. Was it growing stronger, more sure of its place in the boy?

"We are."

"You're what?" Horton said and looked at his watch. Sinclair was on at five. Horton just had to get through another few minutes.

"Your insistence on linear temporal cognition makes for clumsy conversation."

Horton sighed. This was more like what passed for normal, this disconnected rambling. All this talk about time and space and Star Trek shit. Horton remembered his standing date with Jeremy to watch re-runs of Next Generation after school, and the illumination in his face when he told Horton about some new physics theory he'd read about that day.

"The boy misses you, bondsman. We chew on him and he cries out for you."

Pain from Horton's right hand. He looked down and found his fist, tightening, turning colors, red, purple, white at the joints. He released and his fingers bloomed like some exotic flower that had been run over by a truck. "I don't wanna' hear anymore, Jeremy," Horton said, flat. "If you can, you tell that other one to be quiet for a while or I'm gonna' have to leave, okay?" He realized what a foolish mistake he'd made as soon as the words were out. Maybe, he'd done it on purpose.

"You may go, bondsman." It smiled again, tolerant, like Horton was a slow kid.

There was a light tap at the door and Sinclair strolled in wearing a pair of ironed jeans and a black turtleneck that detailed his musculature. Horton took him in and chuckled.

Sinclair smiled. "Fuck you. What?"

"You look like something out of Bodyguards Monthly."

"Did I mention fuck you?" Sinclair looked over at the bed and wrinkled his nose. "Godawful smell."

Horton kept his eyes on the other man. He still couldn't bring himself to look at the troll. "You got no idea."

Sinclair nodded at the bed. "He been out like that the whole time?"

Horton whipped his head around. The boy was dead to the world just as he'd been a few minutes ago. He looked so serene now, so deeply unconscious that Horton wondered for a moment if he hadn't dreamed their weird exchange. He didn't have the energy to recount the ordeal. "Yeah, mostly, I guess."

Sinclair crossed his arms, gave the impression of attempting to be casual. "You gonna' stay around, or you need me to take over or what?"

Horton got up. It was a rare moment when he was thankful for the presence of a punk like Sinclair, but unusual occurrences were becoming the norm these days. "He's all yours, chum."

"Right. When's that refrigerator of a nurse s'posed to come on?"

"Nine, I think, but you can punch that call button by the bed if you need her for something." Horton patted Sinclair's shoulder on the way out. His skin was hot under his turtleneck, like he was excited about something. Horton closed the door behind him and it came to him: Sinclair was a little freaked out because the kid got the drop on him before. The big bad mobster bodyguard was still nursing his elbow from when the little boy threw his punk-ass across the room. Horton smiled as he made his way down the dark hall to his bedroom.

Sinclair watched Horton close the door and turned back toward the brat. He wiped his hands on his jeans and walked over to the bedside. For a solid minute, he stood and watched the boy wheeze and twitch, chasing whatever rabbits ran in his head. He glanced down at the leather restraints to make sure they were secure, then whispered, "I got something for you, kid."

Jeremy's eyes flew open.

TWELVE

NATHANIEL RED CLOUD stood outside the Ute Mountain Youth Center and yanked a hot drag from a cigarette as the sun dipped below the sleeping indian ridge. The wind blew his shoulder-length hair into his face, and he shook it out like a pony. His hair would have been the envy of any movie star, raven black and somehow always random in that way that hairstylists charged plenty to painstakingly arrange. He liked to stare out from under his stringy bangs and pout. He knew how he looked, young and lanky-beautiful. Nathaniel took another drag and squinted up at a cornflower sky. No clouds today, red or otherwise. He finished his smoke and flicked it into the empty parking lot.

Where the hell was the Padre? He was supposed to be here by now, wasn't he? Nathaniel wished he could go inside and get on one of the center's computers while he waited. The Internet and television were his only conduits to the real world, but it was Sunday, God's day, and the center was closed.

He lit another cigarette, dragged and blew hot smoke into air that stole the moisture from his breath. One day, soon he hoped, Father Katey would finally make good on his promise and take Nathaniel off the res. The Padre had done that for a few of the other kids, taken them off the reservation and gotten them started in places like Durango and even as far as Vegas. In the last year alone, Katey had helped five of Nathaniel's friends. He'd told Nathaniel that he and the kids had made it look like they'd just run away so their parents and the elders couldn't get them back. The Elders didn't want anybody to go anymore. Nathaniel had even seen an article in the Colorado Sun-Times on-line edition about how a lot of the Native American tribes were becoming decimated culturally, spiritually and whatever because all the young people were taking off.

Nathaniel guessed he could just leave on his own one day, but you had to be eighteen and the elders weren't about to grant him special dispensation. He was only fourteen and didn't have a lot of prospects, wasn't in any special program or anything. Just helped the Padre out at services. Some of the older kids got to leave early, though, for school and all.

Tracy Shy Wolf had received a full scholarship to Yale last Fall and she was only seventeen, but her parents had gone to the elders and asked for special permission. Tracy got it, but only if she promised to take the knowledge she gathered in the White Man's World and bring it back for the good of the Ute. Of course, she'd said she would.

Nathaniel watched a fat red ant crawl along a crack in the pavement. Little fucker. Nathaniel was like a god in comparison. He lifted his foot and brought it down on the ant with a satisfying crunch. Tracey was never coming back. "Jesus," he muttered. "Neither would I."

A shadow fell. "Blasphemy, Nate."

The boy looked up, caught, looking younger than his thoughts. "Hey, Padre," he said. "Where'd you come from?" Nathaniel glanced out past the parking lot. He'd expected the usual dust cloud to betray the Padre's old Subaru as it approached. "Where's your car, man?"

"Parked out back," said Father Matthew Katey. A big man at six foot three and two-thirty, he loomed over young Red Cloud. Such a beautiful boy, lean and doe-eyed, with the hair of an angel. Katey smiled, his skin falling into sun-damaged seams like a map that remembers where to fold, the white square at his throat catching the evening light. "I've been here a while, thinking."

Nathaniel took a drag. "Yeah?" He leaned up against the wall and blew it out, his head to the side. "What about?"

Katey tried not to smile at the boy's posing. He knew just how beautiful he was and what effect that had on the priest. Katey didn't believe Nathaniel had much sexual experience outside of the usual fumblings and experimentation, but he already knew how to manipulate. If anyone needed to get away from the reservation it was Nathaniel. There was no room in such a backward place for a beauty like him with such an expansive sexuality. The reservation would eventually chew him up and spit him out a fat, used up old drunk like most of the others. Unless someone saved him.

"I've been thinking it's time we got you out of this place."

Nathaniel's head whipped over, his super-cool forgotten. "Really? When?" He shifted from one foot to the other and leaned off the wall. "Tomorrow, or what?"

Katey stared off into the desert along a dirt track that ran for about a mile and then emptied out into a warren of small gullies, miniature canyons that ran in and out of each other in a natural labyrinth. The sun slid below Ute Mountain and threw a sanguine line along its contours. Venus hung alone in a transitory blue. Katey looked back at the boy as something deep in his mind grew dark and settled. He smiled. "I think we should go now, Nate."

"Seriously," the boy beamed, "now? I don't have any of my stuff. What's my mom gonna' say?"

"C'mon, I've got it all worked out," Katey said and put a hand on Nathaniel's shoulder. "We'll talk in the car on the way."

They walked around the side of the center and there was Katey's Subaru, a black Justy hatchback under layers of red dust. They got in and Katey turned toward the boy.

"You didn't tell your mom you were coming here tonight, right?"

Nathaniel smiled. "I didn't tell her shit. She wasn't even home yet."

"Well, she has to work to feed you, Nate. Don't be angry with her."

"Look father, I don't mean to sound all hard about my mom or nothin'. I mean, I know she loves me an' all," Nathaniel said and peered through the dirty windshield. "But it's just that she's just like everyone else. She don't understand...the way I am."

Katey looked through the glass as well. "I understand, son." He put a hand on the boy's thigh and looked into his dark eyes. "There's something I have to show you," he nodded toward the desert, "before we really get moving."

There was something special, reverent in the Padre's voice. Nathaniel whispered, "What?"

Katey smiled, warm and compassionate. "Something I showed the other kids before they left. Something important."

JOHN CALVIN WATCHED father Matthew Katey start up the little four-wheel drive Subaru and putter off into the desert. He slid down the side of the arroyo in which he'd been hiding for the last hour and trotted over to his Mercury Mountaineer. He jumped in and started up the SUV, but left the headlights off as he guided it down the dry wash. Calvin had a good idea where Katey was taking the boy, and this arroyo paralleled the road for the most part. He'd watched the other priest visit the site earlier, a vascular maze of gullies about a mile into the scrub. Katey had driven out there first, then backtracked to the youth center to wait for the boy. Calvin hadn't been able to see well enough from his hiding place to be certain, but suspected he already knew what the kid looked like up close. Missionary!

Calvin had been Katey's shadow since after Sunday morning services. He'd waited in the parking lot, a dusty SUV in a crowd of old pick-up trucks and degrading sedans slung low on tortured suspension systems. Calvin watched Katey smile and shake hands with a small crowd of worshipers, mostly old folks as dusty as their cars. He tracked Katey to the store and back to his modest trailer behind the church.

Through all of it, Calvin barely took the trouble to disguise himself or hide the Mountaineer. He was devoid of caring. This was the last one. He would end Katey and fly home to Italy. He needed to talk to Thom, needed his friend's help. That other had come to him again and he didn't know what to do. Bishop Thom Neary had been there when it left before, so maybe he could help Calvin with it this time. Maybe he could help Calvin get his mind straight, because waking up after writing a strange name in blood all over the bathroom tiles in his motel bathroom was more than he could deal with right now.

"Shit," Calvin said, swerving to avoid a small boulder in the arroyo bed. The dash lights illuminated him, a ghastly green face hanging in the windshield glass. He reached forward and dimmed down the dash controls. The face faded, but did not vanish. He still needed to see the tachometer to stay on top of the distance from the youth center. Dusk had given way to full on night. The black walls of the arroyo slid by, shapes and humps reared up on either side of the SUV. Calvin checked the tachometer and gently brought the Mountaineer to a halt.

He got out and caught the sound of wind as the exchange of day heat for night cool pushed the air over the desert. A jackrabbit stopped at the top of the arroyo, silhouetted against a star field. It froze, long ears up and twitching like radar locked onto something Calvin's ears couldn't detect. A moment later, the jack bolted as a spray of car headlights splashed over the top the arroyo. Calvin walked to the back of the SUV and removed a canvas sack slow and easy, lest its contents give him away. He waited for the thunking of car doors, crunching footsteps and fading voices before slipping over the edge of the arroyo in pursuit.

"WHAT ARE WE doin' out here, Padre?"

Katey didn't answer, just continued to walk into the desert. He could hear the boy stumbling along behind him, unsure in the dark. Katey had spent a great deal of his time out here at the edge of the reservation. He moved over the dark terrain as easily as he would have walked from his bed to the toilet without turning on the light.

"Father Katey?" Fear edged into Nathaniel's voice. "We, uh, we almost there or what?"

Katey side-stepped the short fountain of needles from a prickly pare cactus, waited for Nathaniel to find it.

"Ah, shit!" came from behind him and to the right. Katey smiled in the dark, his teeth and the white collar the only evidence of his presence. Finally, he stopped as the maze of gullies and dry washes spread out before them, darker cracks in an already deep night. "Stop here a moment, Nate."

Nathaniel almost ran into the priest. His breath came in quick gulps. "You gonna' clue me into to this deal, Padre?" He wasn't totally stupid. He figured the priest was an old queen and wanted a hand job before they got moving, but why he thought he needed to take Nathaniel all the way out in the scrub to do it was beyond him. Didn't matter as long as Katey got him the hell off the reservation. He sure was being weird about it though. Maybe he was feeling all guilty about it or some shit and needed a push in the right direction. Nathaniel reached out and put a soft hand on Katey's arm. Even in the dark, he thrust out his lower lip and let his hair fall forward. "Can I give you a hand with something, Padre?"

Katey stared straight ahead over the labyrinth, his voice devoid of emotion. "You're a beautiful boy, Nate."

Nathaniel squeezed Katey's arm. "Thank you, Father."

"Too beautiful to stay on the reservation. You're life would be wasted here."

The boy moved closer, brushed his hip against Katey's leg. "I know."

"Too beautiful for the rest of the world, I'm afraid."

"Thank you, Father." Jesus, why did he have to drag it out like this? Nathaniel dropped his hand down to Father Katey's belt and started tugging. He glanced up to the priest's face as he unzipped his jeans, but couldn't make out Katey's expression in the dark. Well, he certainly wasn't putting up a fight, so this must have been what he'd dragged Nathaniel out here for. Nathaniel slipped a hand into Katey's shorts.

The boy froze and gasped.

"Cut it off a long time ago," the priest's voice came like wind off a rotten swamp, "but it didn't help."

Nathaniel tried to pull away, but Katey's big hand cemented around his wrist. "No," the boy whined. "Lemme' just...leave it be." Terror desiccated his voice, stole its power. "Lemme' go."

Incredibly, the priest did just that. Nathaniel hit the ground in puff of dust and a scrabble of pebbles. He gawked into the gloom. The impulse to run was just pounding through a block of fear when he heard Katey zip up his pants and move around behind him. The boy twisted in the dust and looked up. A black tower with a perfect square tooth at its throat rose against a wheeling starfield. It was as if the galaxy were swallowed within the depths of this man.

"I'll give you a chance, Nate," he whispered. "About a half mile in front of you there's an old wire fence. Marks the southwestern boundary of the reservation. If you can get to it before I get to you, I'll let you go. This is what you've always wanted...off the reservation."

Nathaniel tasted salt and snot as the tears came. "I cuh-can't see anything. What happens if you get to me first?" Stupid question. Stupid boy. Dumb like his father, dumb.

"It's a straight shot over flat desert," Katey said, staring over the boy's head at the drop-off into the maze. "And I'll give you a head start. I'll count to ten."

Nathaniel sobbed once and got to his feet. He started moving before Katey even began counting. "One," he said, and listened. The boy cried out, a surprised sea bird, as he pitched over the edge of the gully. Katey heard him scrape down the sheer side before he thudded at the bottom.

"Nathaniel?" Katey called, white teeth in the dark. "Silly, beautiful boy." Katey moved over to the edge and picked his way down the slope, taking his time, sure the boy had knocked the wind out of himself and lay helpless. If not, well, only the coyotes knew this natural labyrinth as well as he did, and a bit of a chase might be fun. Who says a man shouldn't take pleasure in his work?

Katey put his feet on the bottom of the gully, a trench twenty feet high and no more than ten feet across at its widest point. He held his open palms out to the side and looked at the ribbon of starfield overhead. He took a deep breath and listened: wind rushing through the bowels of the maze, the distant shriek of an owl on the hunt...and nothing. Where was the boy? Where were his gasps, his cries of pain? Katey peered into the dark, squinting, willing his eyes to pull more of the rare light. There was nothing but dark and the paths that lead into the labyrinth.

"Nathaniel?" he called. "You okay, son?"

He looked up again, listening so hard that when a shooting star sketched a line across the sky, Katey imagined he could hear it. He got moving. If he couldn't hear anything, the boy must be hiding right around the first corner. Probably nursing a broken leg from his fall, crying in the dark and hoping beyond hope that Katey wouldn't find him. The priest smiled and looked in the dust for drag marks. There was something, maybe a foot print, but it was too dark to be sure.

"C'mon, Nate!" he said sunny-voiced and easy. "I'm sorry, kiddo. It was just a joke, like one of those manhood trials you filthy savages love so much."

He pounced around a twist into an even tighter canyon, his wide shoulders brushing the water-carved stone. Still nothing. Katey imagined the boy dragging himself deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, pulling his dead legs over sharp pebbles and brush, shredding his soft hands. There was no way out. The only point at which a person could climb out was back the other way. The rest of the trench walls were too steep.

"Listen," he was giggling now, "you just shout out once, and I'll come find you. We'll go get a burger." Katey moved on around another bend. The light painting the dimensions of the tiny arroyo diminished to a mere suggestion as the walls closed in even further. The ribbon of stars overhead was nothing more than a string. He wasn't worried. He knew his way. A few of the other "runaways" had made the mistake Nathaniel was making, fleeing, dragging out their inevitable capture and salvation.

Katey reached out and touched a familiar outcrop of rock, a strange double point at his waist. He grinned and turned another corner. If the boy had gone this way, it was over. This trench ran straight for a few yards then dead-ended. Katey reached out, his meaty hands groping, his fingers waving like insect feelers. Any moment now he'd brush a long eyelash, or a flower petal lip. "Mine, now," he whispered in the pitch. "Mine."

Katey's hands flattened against the wall at the end of the trench, the dry rock inhaling the moisture from his palms. He stopped. What was this? How could—? He turned and stopped. He could feel another presence standing a few feet away at the entrance to the dead end. Katey didn't know how the boy had managed to get around him, or why he was just standing there, but the Lord's providence was not to be questioned.

"Hey, Nate, you came back," Katey said. "I got something for ya', buddy."

A strange voice, adult male, cold. "I have something for you, too."

Katey sucked in a hot breath and stepped back. "Who is it? Who's there?"

The unmistakable maraca of a rattlesnake scratched out of the dark. It was joined by another and another. After a moment, the trench was filled with the grating white noise of angry pit vipers, but the sound was impure, muffled. The acoustics of the tight canyon scattered and folded the sound. Katey backed up against the dead end, palms against the thirsty stone. The reptile chorus thundered from wall to wall. There must be hundreds of snakes. Katey began to sniffle.

"Who are you?" he shouted over the din. "What do you want?"

"It's not what I want," the snake man said. "It's what you want."

"I don't understand!" Katey wailed, and fell to his knees.

"I have a question for you, Father."

"Anything! What, what?"

John Calvin moved forward in the dark until he was next to the cowering priest. He leaned in and whispered, "Do you want to make a confession?" Calvin moved as quick as the contents of his sack, lifting the drawstring bag and drawing it down over Katey's head and shoulders. Calvin cinched the string and stepped back.

Katey realized what was in the bag with him and began to shriek as five unhinged jaws clamped down on him. One set of fangs punctured the bridge of his nose, another popped his left eye like a grape, another stapled his lips shut, one buried into the meat of his trapezius muscle, while the last battened onto his adams apple and crushed it. Venom, a necrotic neurotoxin that would paralyze as it turned his flesh to soup, pumped into his body in ten burning streams.

Calvin stood back and waited for Katey's feet to stop drumming against the floor of the gully. Rattlesnake venom turns flesh pulpy and black. If the tribal authorities found Katey before the coyotes, they would need to use dental records if they wanted to confirm any ID they might deduce from the Roman collar. If they got there after the coyotes, all the better.

After a few minutes, the snakes ceased most of their rattling. They would be slow now, exhausted after all this excitement, but Calvin wasn't taking any chances. He pulled a rope he'd attached to the top of the bag and tugged it off the cooling corpse. The sluggish snakes spilled out and commenced to hiss and rattle again, but with far less ferocity. Cold blooded animals are not the most energy efficient. The vipers would probably attempt to curl up under the priest's corpse to keep warm. Calvin smiled. It was fitting.

A few minutes later Calvin climbed out of the labyrinth, pulling the empty sack behind him to make sure all the snakes had slithered off. He walked past Katey's Subaru and checked inside. The keys hung in the ignition. He walked a few yards to the other side of the dirt track, then slid down a short slope into the arroyo. Squatting there in the dark like a faithful dog was his SUV. A pair of red-rimmed eyes watched him from the passenger seat. Calvin reeled in the bag, toed it with his boot a couple of times just to be sure and balled it up. He threw it in the back of the Mountaineer and walked around to the driver's side door. He got in and closed the door quickly so the dome light wouldn't illuminate him long.

He looked over at the boy from his dream, real, alive and safe. "How you doing, kid?"

"My ankle hurts," Nathaniel said, his voice shock-deadened.

Calvin had already been waiting in the ravine when the boy had run over the side and come tumbling down. He'd silenced Nathaniel's shouts and dragged him to the side, instructing him to be quiet, so Calvin could lead Katey into the maze. Nate had nodded in the dark, eyes huge, Calvin's rough palm over his mouth. Even as they'd heard Katey picking his way down the slope, Calvin had whispered the location of the SUV to the boy, so he could climb out and find it as soon as Calvin and Katey were around the first bend.

Now, Nathaniel sat in the passenger seat of this stranger's SUV, terrorized into a state of emotional blankness. A veteran would have said the boy had the "thousand yard stare".

"I didn't know he was like that," Nathaniel whispered.

Calvin sighed. "Yeah."

"He didn't have anything down..." the boy trailed off.

"You don't have to worry about him anymore. He's dead."

Nathaniel half-turned, sensed it was a bad idea to get a good look at this guy and redirected his gaze out the window. He looked through the eyes of his own reflection and heard himself ask, "How?"

Calvin smiled in the dark. "Natural causes."

Nathaniel didn't care what that meant. He was just glad it was over. A great yawn stretched through him.

Calvin yawned back, then asked, "How bad's the ankle? Think you could drive a stick? The keys're in it." He glanced at the kid. "You can drive, right?"

"Yeah," Nathaniel pressed his foot against the floor, winced a little. "It'll hurt more by the time I get home, but I don't think it's broken or anything."

"Lucky."

Nathaniel was quiet for a while, then sensing it was time to go he asked, "Who are you, mister? Some kinda' cop or something?"

"A missionary," Calvin answered without thinking.

Nathaniel put his hand on the door and popped the latch. The dome light flared. He got out and turned, daring to look at Calvin full on, taking in the shadows and how they puddled in the particulars of Calvin's face. "I dreamed about you," Nathaniel said and closed the door.

Calvin watched the boy make his way gingerly up the side of the arroyo, favoring his sprained ankle. He waited until he saw the Subaru's headlights cut through the dark and move away. Calvin started up the SUV and surged over the side of the arroyo and onto the dirt track. The Subaru's tail lights fled away toward the reservation and disappeared. Calvin waited another few minutes and then got moving. He'd head into Vegas, drop off the Mountaineer, and get a room for the night before booking a flight back home. Back home to talk to His Eminence, to resign.

THIRTEEN

THE MORNING AFTER his conversation with Doctor Riley, Frank Mason sat up in bed and surveyed the landscape of flesh sleeping next to him. He pulled the sheet back and watched café au lait skin rise and fall, stretch and sweep over hills and valleys. He noted how the skin darkened in the creases at elbow and knee, how the eyelids, though clean of makeup, held a delicate purple tint. Full lips pursed and mouthed the discourse of some dreamed conversation. Beautiful land, lithe and strong, warm, always willing; land Mason owned. He might have smiled at this sight another day, but not this morning.

Mason swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked out the window. It was a couple of hours after dawn and sun washed the grounds. He squinted into the white light, too harsh for his pale eyes, and walked across the room to the mirror. He turned and twisted, scrutinized for flaw. His body was still his own, hard and muscled, shaped from an adolescence of labor and violence. He was one of the lucky ones, a man who could go for weeks without exercise then tone up after a single workout.

A voice creamed from the behind him, "Mmm, nice ass."

Mason didn't turn. He disappeared into the walk-in closet and reappeared a minute later dressed in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. At the window a young woman stretched, luxuriating in the sunlight. Mason glared. "Tie, get away from the window."

She turned away from the glass, smiled sly and sweet. "Come back to bed if you want to get me away from the window so bad."

He raised an eyebrow.

Tie dropped her eyes and moved away from the glass. She slipped into a silk Seungono draped over the end of the bed. "Where you off to so early on a Saturday?"

Mason stepped into a pair of loafers. "My boy's sick."

That's right, his majesty had a son. Tiesha was always forgetting that. As little as Mason mentioned the boy she couldn't be blamed. Meant she would have to wait tables at the restaurant today, though, and that sucked. She worked for Mason, either as his waitress or his mistress. As far as she was concerned the second of the two gigs was far better. Tie let the Seungono fall open, exposing high breasts and a tight belly. She reclined on the bed, positioned back on her elbows so her flexed abdominals would rise and ripple. He loved her six pack. "Sure you won't hang around a while?"

Mason snugged his heel into the other shoe and glanced up, caught by the glow of her skin. It was good land. The boy wasn't going anywhere. He could hardly be considered there at all. Horton was watching him, or Sinclair if Horton'd finally given in and gone to bed. Tie flexed her stomach, the skin darkening in the valleys between muscles. And whatsherface the nurse, Emma something, would be coming on shift soon. Mason walked over the bed. Tie smiled.

Pounding from outside the bedroom door, frantic, fierce.

"Mr. Mason!" Finch.

Mason turned away from the bed. "Cover up."

Tiesha's lower lip tucked behind her front teeth as she mouthed fuck and closed the Seungono.

Mason yanked open the door. He didn't need to ask his bodyguard if the intrusion was something important. All the servants knew better than to cause a floorboard to creak outside of Mason's bedroom door let alone knock on it on a Saturday morning. He noted a diamond of sweat at Finch's temple. An acrid waft surrounded him, not excreted by the man himself, but attached to his sports jacket like smoke from a bar.

"Go," Mason said.

"Jeremy, sir," Finch started, then cast a glance over Mason's shoulder. Mason's bitch was masturbating through the Seungono, staring at Finch, her lips bent in a fierce smile. Finch looked back at Mason, lowered his voice. "Mister Mason, you should probably come see, sir."

"Don't make me guess."

"It's Sinclair," Finch started, glanced at Tiesha again. "He's uh..."

"The boy hurt him again?" Mason checked a smile.

"He's dead."

"Let's go," Mason said, brushing past his bodyguard.

Finch spared Mr. Mason's personal fuckcretary a last glance, gave her the finger, and followed his boss. They pounded from one wing of the house into the next, Finch wondering for a moment what might happen to a person should he get in the way. He got an image of a freight train crashing through a compact car stalled on the tracks.

They rounded a corner into a short hall. A closed bedroom door stood at the end. Both men's noses wrinkled at the miasma of feces and human chemicals hanging outside the door. Mason stopped, listened for the usual cacophony of screeching and laughter, singing.

Silence. Blood pulsed in his ears.

Mason reached out for the doorknob, stopped, turned to Finch. "Where's Emma? Where the hell's the goddamn nurse?"

"Morning off, sir. Not due for about another hour." Finch stared at his boss. "I already thought a' that. She ain't seen nothin', Mr. Mason."

Mason nodded and pushed open the door to a room from hell. The stench from the hall crystallized and spiked up Mason's nostrils. He brought the back of his hand to his nose, his eyes watering, but not enough to block out the sight of Sinclair in the chair by the bed. His head was slumped over his chest, his pants around his ankles. He'd been gutted, slashed from pelvis to sternum. A rope of shiny intestine sprouted from the soupy mess of Sinclair's torso and wound around the body, lashing him to the chair. A puddle of cooling fluids congealed at his feet.

The bed was empty.

Mason scanned the room, but Jeremy was nowhere in sight. He hissed over his shoulder at Finch, "Get in here and close that fucking door."

Finch came in, locking the door behind him. He stood next to Mason, staring, transfixed by the savaged corpse. "Jeremy was gone when I got here," Finch muttered. "The door was locked when I found Sinclair." He choked back an upsurge of bile.

"Of course it was. I had it fixed so it only opens from the outside unless you have the key." Mason glared at his man. "You know that Finch."

Finch couldn't look away from the ripped-open body. "I, uh...Yeah, of course."

"Find him. Check the bathroom, the closet."

Finch took a moment to comprehend the order, its risks. He moved over to the bathroom door, automatically reaching into his jacket.

"Finch."

He turned to Mason. "Sir?"

"If you shoot him..."

Finch scowled down at his hand as if it had tried to betray him. He redirected the five-headed Judas from his holster and put it on the bathroom doorknob. He opened the door a crack and reached his hand around the doorjamb, fumbling for the light switch. Finch imagined his fingers, white and vulnerable on the other side of the doorjamb. He thought about the sharp objects that might be in the bathroom. He thought about the boy's teeth. He found the switch, flicked it on and began to push the door open the rest of the way. A hand clamped down on his shoulder and his entire body clenched, a single drop of urine soaking into his boxers.

"Get out of the way," Mason spat and shoved Finch to the side. "Pussy." He pushed into the bathroom, slid the shower curtain and checked the cabinets under the sink. Nothing. Mason moved back into the bedroom, noting the rough zigzag of the wound on Sinclair's corpse, and walked to the closet. Finch backed into the corner by the desk, waiting for the leap, the capering crazy child covered in blood. Mason whipped open the closet door and pushed aside the boy-sized suits, associating expensive snake-skins. Nothing. Mason turned around and swept the room with his eyes. "The fuck is he?"

Mason left the closet door open and stood over Sinclair. He tipped his head to the side, studying what must have been his son's handiwork. Well, not his son perhaps, but whatever was in him. In a way, Mason wished Jeremy really was capable of something like this. Not only was Sinclair bound to the chair with his own viscera, his cock had been removed. Although, removed was a rather civilized way to describe the ragged hole where the man's genitalia should have been. It looked as if Sinclair had been savaged by an animal with a purpose. If a bear could be in the Business, this is how it would send a message to a rival. Mason chuckled. Maybe he'd buy one and look into training it.

Finch looked up at his boss. Jesus, he knew Mason was hardcore and all, but who could stand over a scene like this and fucking laugh? The smell alone, shit and stomach acid he guessed, was enough to make Finch wonder if anything would ever be funny again.

"C'mere a minute, Finch."

Finch moved, but it took some will to get his legs to carry him over by the bed. He glanced over at the tossed sheets, a leopard pelt of stains. Looked like a road kill had been dressed out where the kid had lain for the past few days. The restraints were cast to the side, undone but intact. Someone either let the kid out, or the restraints just opened up on their own. Finch looked away, focusing on Mason's back as his employer bent to get a look at Sinclair's face.

Finch asked, "You don't think Sinclair would'a let the kid up, do you?"

"Not a chance. I think Sinclair probably knew better after the boy threw him the other day." Something in Mason's voice was not unlike pride. He put the palm of one hand on the corpse's forehead, as if taking its temperature, placing the other on Sinclair's chin.

Finch couldn't help himself. "What're you...?"

Finch almost took a step back as Mason looked over his shoulder at him.

"Looking for his cock," Mason said. He pushed with both hands and Sinclair's jaw let go with a stiff crunch. Mason peered inside, "Nada," and let the head fall. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants legs. He muttered something to himself.

"Sir?"

Mason looked up. "Oh, I was just thinking. I would have stuffed it in his mouth."

"Oh."

Mason smiled at his bodyguard. "Don't break a sweat over it, Finch. The kid's not going anywhere. I don't know how the fuck he managed to get out of the room—." A light came on behind Mason's eyes. He bent and rummaged in the pants pockets around Sinclair's ankles. He stood up. "Took Sinclair's room key. Smart for a kid, isn't he?"

Finch was beginning to resemble a sentient piece of cheese. "Sure."

Mason put his hands on his hips. "Well, he's not getting out of the house without the system code. Doors won't even open from the inside."

"You think he might have gotten that outta' Sinclair too?"

"S'good question." Mason squinted down at the body. "Nah, I don't think he did. Sinclair's a mess, but he's a fast mess. He was unzipped and sopranoed but doesn't look roughed up."

"Like you'd do if you was tryin' to get some information outta' someone."

"Yeah. Whatever happened, happened real fuckin' fast. Which makes me think," he scanned the room. "Sinclair probably had a blade and the kid got it away from him." He looked again at the rough-edged vivisection job on Sinclair. Could the kid have done this with this bare hands? Image of Sinclair hurtling across the room. "Maybe not, though."

Finch looked back at the empty bed, the stains, the smell. He thought of that smile and the strength it would have taken to kill a big fucker like Emile Sinclair. Finch's face drained. There was a psychotic monster-boy in the house armed with a knife. "Shit," he said.

Mason chuckled again. "Yeah."

Finch knew what was coming. His boss was about to order him to go look for the kid. He sighed a deep, shaking breath and looked down at his shoes.

A pair of white hands shot out from under the bed and grabbed his ankles. Finch yelped as steel fingers dug into his flesh and yanked him off his feet. His back slammed the floor and the air rushed out of his lungs with a hoof!

Jeremy exploded out from under the bed, carelessly scraping the skin off his shoulder blades on the bottom of the bed frame. He giggled wildly but it was muffled, his lips shut tight. The boy wriggled over the prostrate Finch, leaving a trail of steaming waste. He straddled the bodyguard's chest and clamped a hand on Finch's forehead, the other on his chin just as Mason had done with Sinclair. Jeremy forced open Finch's mouth and leaned in. He hummed, "Mmmblah," and spat something into Finch's mouth.

Mason stepped forward and shouldered the boy off Finch with all his might. Jeremy grunted low and bovine with the impact and released a vile belch. He slid across the floor, the hyper-adrenalized strength spent. He lay on his side, limp and staring.

Finch rolled over and clawed a shriveled, bloodied chunk of flesh from his mouth. For a moment he just looked at it laying on the floor, his face a wrinkle of question. An instant later his eyes and his mind reconciled and he retched all over Sinclair's severed penis. Still vomiting, Finch attempted to crawl toward the door, slipping in his own mess. He fetched up against the knob. He had a set of keys in his pocket, but panic blanked his mind. Finch pulled himself upright and started to yank at the knob as if he couldn't understand why the door wouldn't work.

Mason looked at the creature on the floor. It gave him a lazy smile, a line of bile drooling from the corner of its mouth. "I'm going to call someone," Mason said. "To get rid of you."

Jeremy rolled over on his back, his fingers scrabbling over his distended tummy. He rubbed and caressed, transcendence warping his already alien face.

"Mmm," he crooned. "Templar."

At the door, Finch's mind broke and he began to shriek.

FOURTEEN

JOHN CALVIN STOOD at the window of his hotel room and stared through his reflection into the night. Las Vegas spread out below and around, the strip sliding past like a river of dirty electric light. Bright and busy, but silenced by the fat black worm of silicone sealing the glass all the way around. All those lights, those cruising sinners, semi-high on the possibilities of fortune or some other satisfaction. Some aware of their direction down, some still hopeful. All moving. Calvin sighed. Babylon, beautiful and empty. The man reflected in the window needed a shower and a shave.

First the call. Calvin sat down on the side of the bed and began punching in the long code. He should have been calling from a pay phone on the street, but fuck it. Katey had been the last one, and he was headed home after this. No one was going to trace him back to the Holiday Inn in Vegas from a killing in the middle of Ute reservation hundreds of miles away. Certainly not the backwater tribal police. As far as Calvin knew, even the NSA couldn't hack their special phones. Calvin listened to a shower of clicks and connections in a field of low phone hiss. Exactly three minutes passed, then a voice silked over the line.

"Pronto?"

"Why can't Jesus eat M&Ms?" Calvin recited, waited a beat. "Because they'd fall through the holes in his hands."

"Has he been martyred?"

Calvin thought about the question for a moment before answering. He thought about laughing. "Yeah, sure. Whatever."

The voice on the other end paused. "Natural causes?"

Calvin imagined Katey's corpse lying at the end of the tiny box canyon in the desert maze, blackened and swollen out of shape, punctured in at least ten places. "Snake bite."

"Interesting choice." Another fat pause, then, "Well done."

"Can I come home now?" Calvin gripped the handset hard enough for the plastic to creek. "I have to come home now. We have to talk about some things."

"Not yet, Johnny."

Calvin held the phone away from his face as if it were alive, aggressive. "We're suddenly on a first name basis over the phone?"

"Special circumstances."

Calvin breathed slow and even. Hell, he'd called from his own hotel room, why not shoot the moon and break another rule? "Okay, Thom," he said. "What's going on?"

"I received a call from one of our higher level errand boys."

Mafia. Fuck. Calvin didn't like slumming. "They have their own cleaners. What—?"

"This is a special job, no martyrs."

"What's going on, Your Eminence? As long as we're breaking all kinds of protocols, why not cut to the chase?"

In a small house in an olive grove in the Italian countryside the head of an ancient religious order took a sip of brandy and stared into a crackling fire. Bishop Thom Neary sighed into the phone, the sound ran through copper wire and fiber optics before converting into waves and bouncing off a private satellite. The sigh found its way back into miles of glass threads, buried under the flowing streets of Las Vegas and up to the only other member of that secret order, Father John Calvin.

Goose flesh broke out over Calvin's skin. "Thom, what..." But he already knew.

"You remember the trouble? How we met?"

Calvin didn't answer. It was all he could do to breathe.

"It's happening again, Johnny. I want you to go take care of it."

A drop of sweat stung Calvin's left eye shut. "I think you're a little confused, Your Grace." Blood roared in his ears. "You were the one who got rid of that fucking thing. I was just an innocent bystander."

"You were hardly innocent, John."

"Why not someone else, Thom, huh? Why not some other priest." Calvin whisper-shouted into the phone, "Why not a normal priest?"

Neary chuckled. "Because another body would just complicate things."

Calvin put his free hand over his eyes and sighed. He didn't like the way the air shuddered out of him. "How many?"

"Just the one, a bodyguard. Garden variety tough-guy. Not your league, Johnny."

"Thom," Calvin said. "It, the thing, came to me when I was in the canyon, before the last martyrdom. I think it's been around for a while now, fucking with me."

"How long, Johnny?"

"Since Ireland, maybe longer. I don't know."

Silence from Neary. Calvin wondered if the encryption machines hooked to their com. network took the trouble to encrypt silence and what scrambled silence might sound like. "You there, Thom?"

"I'm here." An audible slurp of brandy. "What do you make of it?"

"Hadn't really thought about it much to tell you the truth. Kinda' been trying not to, you get me?"

"Well," Neary's voice took on an edge. "Start thinking about it, boyo. You've got some work to do, and I can tell you from personal experience that it's going to be the hardest job of your young life." Another slurp, a big one. "Damn near killed me getting it out of you, John."

Calvin felt the world spin beneath him, not in a physical sense, but as if his very understanding of the foundation of things was on a greasy pivot. He took his hand away from his eyes. The furniture looked contrived, cardboard set pieces. The room was bright, bleached out. He brought his lips close to the mouthpiece.

"When I was on the serpent's spine it told me you didn't make it leave."

"Serpent's spine? John, what're you on about?"

Calvin shook his head, clearing the memory of the mind-bending synesthesia, the pain, when the demon moved into him, to show him just how easy it was. "Sorry, Thom." He took a deep breath. "Forget it. Listen, when it came to me on my little vacation it told me that you hadn't done a damn thing to get rid of it. That it left of its own accord." He closed his eyes again and sighed. "I think that's what it was talking about, anyway."

Another encrypted chuckle from Neary.

Calvin scowled and almost threw the phone across the room. "I'm happy this is so fucking amusing to you, Your Eminence."

"Relax, boyo. I only laughed because it pulled that garbage with me too. Scared the hell out of me, but I kept trying anyway. You were in there somewhere, just a kid who'd been tossed onto the streets and then tossed into the pit of hell itself."

Calvin wondered how long the Bishop had rehearsed this part. Neary didn't know shit about what young Johnny had gone through, where he'd been. That endless, starless night. The immense gravity of nothing. Calvin kept his mouth shut, but it was difficult.

"I hadn't even met the real you when I started on your case, but I knew you were in there somewhere." Neary's tone went dreamy as he receded into memory. "After about a week of pushing at that, that monster to just leave you be, it got very quiet and told me that nothing I did would ever make it leave. It laughed." Silence from the line. "I damn near lost hope."

"But you didn't?"

Neary's voice notched down an octave. "No, Johnny. I kept at it night and day with the old Roman Ritual and anything else I could think of to throw at it. I still wake up some nights reciting those ghost stories from Luke and all that 'Save your servant' stuff."

Calvin's grip began to relax on the handset. "So that's what worked, the bible?"

"Don't sound so surprised, kid. It is the word of the Lord, after all."

"Peddle that shit somewhere else, padre."

"Alright, alright." Calvin could see Neary in his study, holding up his hands and smiling. "You want to know what I really think worked in the end? I think it's because I grew to love you, Johnny. After fighting for your soul day after day, all that stuff about loving one's fellow man started to mean something deeper for me than it ever had."

John Calvin looked up at his reflection in the glass. A man in stained jeans and a wrinkled shirt stared back with deeply tired eyes. Thom Neary had loved him, had taken him from the mouth of the dragon and made him his son.

"Do you know how many men I killed before I recruited you, Johnny? Seventy-seven. I murdered seventy-seven people for the glory of Holy Mother Church before I stopped so I could train you. Seventy-seven faces, seventy-seven pairs of eyes with that look—that one just before you do them, when they know."

Good God. Calvin had his share of notches on the proverbial hilt, but he wasn't anywhere near seventy-seven. Not yet. "Why're you telling me this, Thom?"

"Because I knew what it meant not to feel anything at all for my fellow man. That's why I could know love more deeply than a normal person. When you know what something isn't, you sure as hell know when something is. That's how I got it out of you, kid. Incidentally, that's also how you got your name, John. As in 3:16?"

"'God is love.'"

"'God is love.'"

"Thom," Calvin took a breath. "I'm scared shitless. Why can't you do this?"

"Oh, kid. I'll admit–and maybe this makes me a rotten priest, probably just makes me human–but I'll admit that after going through this once, it's better you than me."

Calvin laughed. It felt wonderful, like a thick needle being removed from the crook of his elbow. "Thanks for the honesty, Your Bright n' Shininess."

"Seriously, though, Johnny. I would do it, but I'm just too damn old." Slurp of brandy, stifled belch. "Uhf, and I drink too much."

Calvin remembered the pain as the demon ran around inside his body, forcing him to laugh until his bladder let go. What if he couldn't keep it out of him? Calvin's face darkened. "Thom, what if I can't..," he trailed off.

"Umm?"

"What if I can't love the kid enough? What if I don't understand about love the way you did?"

Neary sighed. "How'd it feel to martyr the last one? The child molester? The baby killer? How'd it feel, Father Calvin."

Calvin thought for a moment. "Right. It felt right. Just, I suppose you could call it."

"Then you'll be up to the task when it comes to this. I don't need to tell you, the bastard's putting that kid through worse nightmares than anything your martyr pulled."

"No, you don't need to tell me."

"You'll do it, then."

"Yeah," Calvin said, studying his reflection. "I have to."

"Yeah." Neary paused for a moment, switched gears. "There's a package waiting for you at the front desk of your hotel."

"How'd you know where I'd be?"

"Please."

"Right. Package at the front desk."

"It's under the name Luke Johnson."

"Cute."

"Yeah, I'm inventive as hell, s'why I'm the Bishop and you're just a knight."

Calvin smiled. "Oy."

"Critique my brilliant wit later, you heathen. Shut up and listen. Get some sleep tonight. Pick up the package in the morning. It's a plane ticket and a laptop. The pertinent files are already loaded. Take the 8:15 to Detroit and read up on the way. They'll have someone waiting for you at the airport."

"How will I know them?"

"Shouldn't be a problem. No neck, plus-size shoulders, expensive suits."

"Hooray, stereotypes."

"Don't get snippy, double-oh-padre," Neary said. "Johnny, when this is over, if you still want to come home and talk like you said, you can. It's an open-ended ticket."

If he still wanted to talk. Neary obviously thought that this exorcism bit was going to cure Calvin of his existential blues. Like a good fight against a great evil would be just the shot in the arm he needed. Calvin wasn't so sure, but Thom Neary had taken good care of him before. There was no reason to believe he wouldn't now. "Hey, boss," he said, head tipped to one side. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me for this one, kid."

"I'm not. Not for this one."

"Oh," Neary said, softer. "Of course, Johnny. Sleep tight."

Calvin hung up the phone and moved over to the window again. Placing his palms and forehead against the humming glass, he stared down into the light flow. A lanky woman in a silver dress and wig of blue curls argued with a short black man in a red and white track suit. It appeared as if she were attempting to guide in an airplane with a storm of wild gestures. Her acrylic claws flickered around the man's face, her mouth snapping open and closed rapid fire. The guy in the track suit just stood, half-slumped, hands in the pockets of his baggy nylon trousers. After what seemed like several minutes of this strange dance, the iconic woman closing the distance between them in tiny increments, the man in the tack suit slowly removed his right hand from his pants pocket. The woman's palms flew up and froze, her head retracting into her shoulders like a turtle. Her gaze locked on the sidewalk and she took a step back. That's all he had to do, take his hand out of his pocket. Calvin wondered how much she loved him.

* * *

CALVIN WOULD HAVE looked more out of place on the flight had he not had a laptop. He supposed later in the afternoon most of the flights would be populated with tourist-gamblers, hollowed out and returning to wherever they called home. But this early morning bird was all about business people and their tools. Past the engine noise and slight air pressure hearing loss, the cabin was filled with the clockwork of busy fingers clicking resilient plastic keys.

He looked out the window and watched the patchwork desert slide by, dotted with disks of deep green: circular fields growing within the range of powerful rotating sprinklers that swept the arid sand like life-giving radar. He looked across the empty seats next to him. The flight was only about forty-percent full. Even after all this time, the airlines were still feeling the pinch from September 11th. With his personal knowledge of just how easy it was to smuggle weapons past airport security, Calvin couldn't blame the fear-grounded public. If more people knew what he knew, the airlines would be out of business all together.

A woman, alone in her row like Calvin, sat across the aisle with her back against the shaded window, her legs stretched out on the empty seats, laptop across her thighs. She was in her early thirties, stark and serious in a dark suit, light makeup. Calvin could see the screen reflected in her glasses, some sort of bar graph. She'd taken off her shoes and he noted the silver glint of a toe ring. She caught Calvin smiling at her jewelry and tipped him a mischievous wink, quick as a keystroke, before going back to her computer.

Calvin's cheeks flushed and he looked back out the window. Vow of celibacy indeed. He sighed and slid down the shade of his porthole, his computer screen crystallizing into detail. He'd already gone through the file on Frank Mason and his operations, the minutiae. Calvin stared at the screen, letting it fall out of focus as he organized the main points in his mind.

Francis Mason Jr. was Old Country Mafia, but ran his business from a new school of thought. He continued de-wopifying the family name. He had branched out from the penny-ante drug and protection rackets in limited territories, adopting a corporate model with international production and transportation. There were records of sex and slavery rings that went as far as Thailand and the former Soviet Bloc. Even Holy Mama Church didn't have an accurate count of all the pies into which Mason had sunk his dirty little fingers. This guy had taken a small-time family tradition and gone global, becoming a key player in several major corporations and even the governments of a couple "developing" nations. In so doing, Mason had erased anyone with the lack of foresight to get in his way. Including, it seemed, his first and only wife, Theresa, mother of Jeremy.

When the boy was still a baby, mommy and daddy had taken him on a day-trip to sail the placid waters of lake Michigan. Mason radioed an SOS to the Coast Guard from his small yacht, Theresa's Smile, relating the horrible tragedy. Apparently, Mrs. Mason'd had a few too many and fell overboard, hitting her head on the bow railing. She'd sunk like a stone and the body was never recovered. Mason had stayed single since the accident almost ten years ago. Calvin smirked at the screen. Poor bastard was still in mourning. Such a sensitive guy.

So Mason was higher on the food chain than the average Mafia errand boy. That explained how he had access to Neary and Calvin's special branch of the Church. Not including himself and Neary, Calvin could count the number of people who knew of their operation on one hand. Out of those, only one man knew the actual name of their order. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Many people knew their name, but only that special man knew it as something other than an ecumenical blast from the past. Only "Grandpa" knew to link that name to him and Thom.

Calvin hit the PgDn key and pulsed through to the last page of Mason's file. A recent picture of Jeremy pixeled up on screen. It was from some school function, the kid flanked by other boys in similar suit-jacket-short-pants-beat-me-up uniforms. He was holding up a brass trophy shaped like the old 1950's visualization of an atom. The caption read:

Jeremy Mason, Junior Physicists Club, First Prize

He looked about nine or ten in this shot, so it would have been taken within the last year or so. The other boys in the image had at least two or three years on him.

Holding down the left mouse key, Calvin moved the cursor and outlined a square around Jeremy's face. He right-clicked and the boy's face enlarged, lost resolution. The hard drive made a sound like sand grains passing through a funnel and the pixels resolved. Wow, fast. Calvin did it again, centering on the kid's right eye. The computer zoomed in, cleaned up, and now Calvin had a crystal clear image of the muscles in the iris. Calvin took a second to look for a brand name on the top of the laptop, but there wasn't one, just three letters in raised golf leaf. AEO.

"Cute," he muttered to himself. "Probably real gold, too."

In his peripheral, the woman with the toe ring glanced up, then back down at her machine.

Calvin zoomed out to the first close-up of Jeremy's face. There was something important in this kid, something big. Jeremy himself might not know it, but it was all over him. Calvin had met a few people in his life who went beyond genius, transcending to a level where scientific knowledge and faith were one and the same. You could see it in pictures of Einstein and Hawking, hear it in the music of Beethoven and Bach: the understanding that God was in the numbers. The farther you went in, decoding the mystery, the closer you got to the Word. Jeremy had that look.

"Maybe that's why it chose him," Calvin said.

Twinkle-toe looked up again.

Calvin glanced over, smiled. "Sorry."

"Must be interesting stuff."

He sighed, his eyes opening wide. "Big time."

She nodded at his laptop. "Nice 'puter. Toshiba?"

Calvin looked down then back, his mouth pulled sideways. "Alpha Et Omega."

"Huh," she said. "Haven't heard of that one."

"Brand new."

"Like it?"

Calvin thought of the computing power necessary to not only render a resolution clean-up at speed, but to extrapolate details that probably didn't exist in the original image. He knew computers better than most, the tools to share and manipulate information being highly valuable to a man like him, but this little square of plastic and metal probably housed prototypical processors that would have a keyboard cowboy jacking-off for months. He'd bet a dollar this little gem was wired with some sort of new AI. "It's decent," he answered.

"Whatcha' workin' on?" She sat up straight, crossing her legs indian style, the toe ring winking. "If you don't mind my asking?"

Calvin thought for a second. "A metaphysical quandary."

Her eyes lit up, "That does sound interesting." She leaned forward a little, curious about how one might crunch metaphysics with silicone and electricity. "I'm Sally Rosenthal," she offered.

"Lucas Johnson," Calvin said.

"So, what's the quandary, Luke?"

He squinted down at the screen and thought of the demon slipping in and out of his body, controlling him. The picture of Jeremy stared back, that look of cosmic understanding seemed sad, too heavy for a child. Calvin looked up at his new friend and asked, "How do you keep the genie in the bottle and still get your wish?"

Sally closed her eyes behind her glasses and didn't say anything for almost a minute. Calvin was just beginning to wonder if there was something a little wrong with Ms. Rosenthal, when she opened her eyes and bent her lips in an easy smile. Calvin raised his eyebrows.

"Keep the cork in the bottle," she said. "And rub like hell."

Calvin stared at her, his mouth open just enough for her to make out his lower teeth. Now it was her turn to wonder if something might be a little wrong with Mr. Johnson.

"You okay there, Lucas?"

Calvin shook it off, smiled. "Sorry, yeah." His smiled widened. "I'm really glad to have met, you Sally."

She flushed.

"I think you may have given me an answer I can use, or at least," Calvin scowled down at his machine, "a direction in which to travel."

Sally smiled and, sensing that he needed to get back to his work, refocused on her own screen. "Glad I could be of help, Luke." She tipped him another wink as she stretched her legs back out, her fingers resuming their dance over the keys. Without looking up or ceasing her typing, she said, "You let me know if you get that wish."

"I will," he said, fumbling with the internet connection in the seat back. He jacked the data line into the AEO and fired up an encrypted browser. For a minute, he just stared at the blinking cursor in the browser's URL field. Keep the cork in the bottle.

"And rub like hell," he muttered.

Sally smiled and whispered, "Use the force, Luke."

Calvin pulled up a search engine available to a select few and typed in a single word.

Voodoo.

FIFTEEN

FINCH WASN'T RELIGIOUS, but as he pulled into the Detroit International Airport the band of tension around his diaphragm loosened. He piloted the Lincoln Town Car into the short term parking garage and turned off the engine. He glanced at his watch. Still about a half hour before the Father's flight got in. He settled back, the leather creaking, enveloping. He put his palms on this thighs then pulled them back, leaving a couple of dark prints in the fabric. He'd damn near wept with relief when Mr. Mason ordered him to pick up the priest.

Finch found himself in tears so often these days that he was beginning to worry. In his thirty-four years, he had been on the receiving end of more than his fair share of violence, but nothing like what the kid had done. They'd only found Sinclair a couple of days ago, but already Finch was having trouble remembering everything that had happened. That was supposed to be a sign of serious trauma, or post trauma, or some shrinky-dinky shit like that.

"Fuck it," he muttered, glancing in the rear view mirror at the red blur of another car slipping past.

The worst thing wasn't the memory loss, it was the trouble with his tool. Since that thing with the kid...when he'd spit Sinclair's... Jesus, he couldn't even bring himself to think about it. Since the trouble, he couldn't get it up. It'd only been a couple of days, sure, and every guy went through this kind of thing at least once in his life, but still. Before, he'd have a hard-on like an MX missile every morning, like it was just waiting for him to wake up. Mornin' pal, how'd you sleep? Me? I've been up all night. Matter of fact, he couldn't keep track of all the ladies in his sexual history who'd said, "Again? We've already done it four times!" or some variation thereof. But now, it just hung there, limp and empty, like it would be if it didn't have a blood supply at all, like it would be if someone had cut it off. Like it would be if someone bit it off and left it lying on the floor in a pool of vomit.

Finch's mind flashed images of Sinclair tied to the chair with his own guts. It made Finch think of some of the shit the Viet Cong would pull to freak out the American grunts. He'd been too young to go himself, but he'd seen Platoon, he knew. At first, Finch couldn't believe that a kid could have done it. When he'd found Sinclair dead and alone in the room, his first thought had been that someone had broken into the house, whacked Sinclair and kidnapped the brat. He just couldn't get his mind around the possibility that it could have been Jeremy, crazy or not.

Except Jeremy wasn't crazy. Finch knew it. Horton knew it. Mason knew it. Probably the only one in the house with access to the kid who didn't know it was the nurse, Emma. She was okay, for a heavy chick, tough and smart. Finch liked tough women, respected them. Well, as much as he respected any woman. But how she could still believe that Jeremy was suffering from some kind of mental imbalance was beyond him. To be honest, Finch had also thought the kid had a tumor or whatever up until he'd found Sinclair. Maybe that was why Emma still thought it was medical, because she hadn't seen... And she never would.

As Far as Emma Grouwe was concerned, Sinclair had been fired for smoking cigars in the boy's room while on night watch. She'd been listening to Mason explain the new staffing situation, as she bent over a seemingly comatose boy, adjusting his sustagen tube, while Finch was in the basement dealing with Sinclair's remains. He hadn't been aware of weeping as he'd dismembered the corpse, but when he had finished his face had been cool and salty, streaked.

A flicker of motion in Finch's peripheral vision dragged his eyes to a dark spot on his shirt. Another appeared and bloomed. He reached up and touched wet eyes. "Dammit," he said, voice quavering. Listen to that, voice all high-pitched and tight like some scared little bitch. Finch had always thought of himself as The Statue, the big guy who stood behind the boss and scared the shit out of people just by staring and keeping still as stone. What the fuck was wrong with him? But he knew. Deep down, it was there waiting, the knowledge of why he couldn't get it up, why he seemed to start crying for no reason and couldn't stop. He stared through the windshield at nothing.

"A demon kissed me," he whispered and scrabbled for the door handle as the bile rose. Finch got the door open and his face clear just in time.

* * *

JOHN CALVIN SMILED and said goodbye to Sally Rosenthal and her twinkling toe ring as he made his way up the aisle of the airplane. She smiled back, a little sad that he hadn't asked for her number, but such was life. She supposed she could have asked for his, but Sally was headed through to New York and he obviously had business here in Detroit. She looked out the window, the worn tarmac and the local weather were a uniform gray.

Interesting guy, Lucas Johnson, him and his hot-shit computer. He'd been so cryptic with his description of what he'd been working on. Most people were more than happy to detail what they were up to. Perhaps explaining one's job to a stranger made it feel less like work or more important. Who knew? But not him. How do you keep a genie in the bottle and still get your wish? She looked at the span of Lucas Johnson's shoulders as he walked toward the exit, swaying, taking small airplane aisle steps. She tracked down to his behind as he nudged past the flight attendant and her Thanks-for-flying-get-the-hell-off-the-plane smile. Sally's mother began to cluck in her mind, chiding her daughter for staring at that strange man's derriere. Sally just smirked and watched him leave. Shut up, mom. She sighed and looked back at her laptop. Such was life.

Calvin emerged into the throng of an airport in full afternoon swing. Vegas had been slow in waking up, but Detroit, it seemed, was all business. Men and women in dark suits with umbrellas tucked under their arms like folded dragon wings hurried past. They sprayed loud conversation into cell phones that in turn sprayed their brains with radiation. Calvin didn't like cell phones. Aside from the fact that any jackass with thirty bucks and access to Radio Shack could hack into your conversation, he couldn't get past the more intimate privacy issues. He didn't mind it so much when cell phone users spoke too loudly in crowds or restaurants. It was more a dislike of people having access to him no matter where he went. He knew only too well what it was like to have a disembodied voice in his head. He didn't need to simulate that with an overpriced walkie-talkie.

The flowing crowd seemed to run dry for a moment, revealing a man like a boulder in a stream. He was pale with enormous sloping shoulders in a suit that managed to betray piles of money and a simultaneous lack of taste. Big guy, expensive suit, no neck. Calvin moved toward him, noting the man's red-rimmed eyes as they scanned the deplaning passengers. This guy was either allergic to something or he'd been crying. Calvin allowed the crowd to swell around him, washing him around behind the man.

Calvin scanned his contact. The guy stood just like you were supposed to if your purpose was to be intimidating and little else. He hulked. Calvin could imagine him standing behind his employer, grunting to punctuate his boss's jokes or threats. Calvin looked him up and down, recording the man's lack of balance, his weight, on which side he wore his gun. Not at the moment, of course, but it was all over the slant of his shoulders. Cheap Suit was a south paw and had probably wrestled in high school.

Calvin suppressed an impish smile and said, "You looking for someone?"

"Fuck off," Finch said without taking his eyes from the stream of passengers.

"I was on that flight," Calvin continued. "Maybe I can help."

Finch glanced at the smiling moron distracting him from his job. Probably a fag. "You can help yourself get the fuck outta' my face."

Calvin took a step back, fear and sadness washing his face. "I was only trying to help."

"Yeah? Well, like I said, fuck off."

Calvin dropped the surprised bit and sighed. "I'll pray for you, my son." He nodded and turned. Calvin got three steps, wondering if this guy's brain would actually make clicking noises as he got around to it. Then from behind, "Hey, wait a minute!"

Calvin spun around, his face opening. "Yes?"

"You a priest?"

"What gave me away?"

"I was looking for a guy in a, ya' know, a collar." Finch made a slashing motion at his throat.

In a different context, a move like that from a guy like Cheap Suit would definitely require defensive action. Calvin stepped closer. "In this type of situation—working for someone who likes to keep a low profile—I like to do the same." He stuck out a hand. "Father John Calvin," he said and watched as Finch's face broke out into a sweat and a smile at the same time.

"You're?"

Finch grabbed Calvin's hand and mashed it, pumping up and down. "Ian Finch. Sorry 'bout that other shit, father. Been goin' through some rough times lately." It was like shaking hands with a Disney monster. "You got bags or anything?"

"Just this," Calvin indicated the battered carry-on strapped over his shoulder.

AS THEY DROVE through a curtain of smokey mist, Finch tried to keep the conversation light, chatting about the crappy weather and asking if Calvin had ever been to Detroit. Mr. Mason had ordered him to just pick up the priest. He didn't say anything about bringing the Father up to speed on the brat. If he was here for the reason Finch thought, he'd find out soon enough on his own. Jesus, what the fuck did you call a priest for anyway, right? It was either for a wedding, a funeral, or...

"So the kid possessed or what?" Calvin asked.

Okay, so the padre was already up to speed. "I, ah," Finch didn't know how to answer. It was so easy in the movies. A person starts speaking in a voice that isn't his, starts throwing up and pissing all the over place, maybe bites a dead guy's cock off, and all without any kind of medical or head-shrinker reason, you pretty much come out with it and say the person's possessed. That was in the movies. In real life Finch heard himself say, "Yeah, I guess he probably could be," and wondered if he was the one who'd gone crazy.

Calvin watched the highway slide by through the armored window, the white line, white line, white line refracted and bent by the thickness of the glass. "You don't believe in God," he said.

"I, ah, I used to go to church when I was a kid."

Calvin didn't say anything. Just for kicks he theorized about what kind of charge it would take to get through a car like this. A one-inch thick brass plate on top of a box of C4 might do something interesting. Of course, you'd have to get the timing just so.

"I stopped going, though, after I left home."

"Uh huh." A red Cooper-Mini zipped by on the right. The candy apple paint job sang through the gray air. Calvin took a breath. "Listen," he said, "Finch."

"Yeah?"

"I've read some files. I know about Mason. Shit, I probably know as much if not more about your boss than you do. So, don't be coy, okay? The more you level with me, the better the kid's chances that he'll come out of this relatively unscarred."

Finch's grip tightened on the wheel, ten jointed snakes squeezing. "Okay."

"So, the kid possessed or what?" Calvin zeroed on the big man's face, its stress points.

"Yes." A tear popped over the inside corner of Finch's right eye, ran down the side of his nose and sluiced into a laugh line. His expression didn't change and he didn't seem to be aware of it. "You know about all the tests and shit they did?" Finch asked.

"Yes."

"You know about how the kid was before and how he is now?"

"Some."

Another crystal welled at the rim of Finch's eye, but this time he absently wiped it away before it could run. He put on a turn signal and sailed the Lincoln toward an exit, the tires hissing on the wet pavement. "You know about Sinclair?" he asked.

"The one the boy killed. Another bodyguard." Calvin glanced away. "Like you."

Finch's voice was steady, maybe by force of will alone, but the tears came freely now. He didn't even attempt to wipe them away. Twin lines of saltwater ran down his cheeks. "You know how he died?"

"Not all the details, no. I understand the boy did it. That it was bad."

"I've seen a lot of bad stuff, Father. I've done a lot of bad stuff... to people, you know?" Hell, the Father'd read some file, right? He knew what was up. Could be he was just bullshitting, but Finch didn't get the idea that this priest was your normal everyday clergy. Matter of fact, Finch kind of got the feeling he was talking with another made guy when he was talking with the padre. Like he knew stuff about the hard parts of life that a normal priest wouldn't know, shouldn't know. Like from the vantage point of someone who made life hard instead of someone who listened to the poor saps with a bad time.

"I've messed some people up in real bad ways," Finch said. "You follow me?"

"I follow."

"I even helped torture a guy for somethin' like three days. You couldn't hardly tell it was him when we was all through. But I ain't never, ever seen anything like the thing with Sinclair."

Calvin turned to face Finch full on. "Listen up, man," he said. "I don't know exactly what you saw or what it did to you. I don't think I even need to know, but I'm sure of one thing: you better get your shit together in a hurry."

Finch lifted an eyebrow and threw a look at Calvin. Most people talked to him like this, they got a good smack upside the head. Minimum. In Calvin's case Finch kept quiet.

"Everything you've seen," Calvin sighed. He rubbed his eyes. "It'll get worse."

FORTY MINUTES SLID by under the Lincoln's black wheels. Most of it in silence. Calvin gazed through the windshield as they pulled past the gates at the head of Mason's driveway, the tires popping over gravel. The house loomed. They pulled up at the front door and Finch keyed off the engine. Calvin could hear it ticking behind the dashboard, powerful and hot. Finch stared out at a window on the upper floor of the east wing. Calvin dropped his head a little so he could look at what held Finch's attention.

"That his room?" Calvin asked.

"Yeah."

"How long have you known the boy, Mr. Finch?"

"Few years. Mr. Mason brought me on a while back. I used to be in trucking."

"Driver?"

"Distribution."

"Right," Calvin sighed. "The kid, um, doing anything special?"

Finch turned. "You fuckin' kiddin' me?"

Calvin smiled. "I mean, other than the talking in strange voices and the messy bathroom stuff. Has he done anything that would count as...I don't know, supernatural?"

"Does making stuff move without touching it count as supernatural?"

Calvin's eyebrows lifted off. "Whew," he whistled. "Yes, it does."

"He's strong, too."

"That's to be expected."

"No," Finch said, putting a damp hand on the seat between himself and Calvin. "I mean it. He's really strong. Sinclair's a—was a big guy. One time, before he, uh, died, the kid tossed him across the room like a stuffed animal or somethin'."

"Drugs?"

"I don't think he coulda' been hopped on anything."

"No, I mean has he been sedated since the aberrations began?"

"I don't, uh..."

"Have they got him doped up, to quiet him?"

"Oh, yeah." Finch said, his eyes growing. "They got him on all kinds of shit. Thorazine and somethin' else, Emma said."

"The nurse?"

"Yeah, she's kept him doped to the gills, but it only works sometimes."

Calvin watched Finch, nodded for him to continue.

"It's like sometimes the kid'll be asleep, or look like he's sleepin'."

"Faking it."

"Yeah."

"I'll watch myself."

Finch looked at Calvin for a minute, running a scan of his own. "You're not a regular priest, are you, Father?"

"If you mean, do I work in a big building with uncomfortable bench seating and candles? No."

"So, you're like a what, a missionary?"

Flash of the Ute boy in Calvin's memory, the rattle of pit vipers. The dream. "In a sense, I guess you could call me that. I travel around and do special assignments."

"So you ever do anything like this before?"

"Like what?" Calvin said quickly. "Save a kid?" He looked up at Jeremy's window. The curtain was drawn, the glass threw a blank white reflection. "I have."

That wasn't what he meant, but Finch wasn't sure how much he should ask. Most likely, he'd already gone too far and would hear about it from Mr. Mason later, but his curiosity was just too much. This priest, this special priest had something about him. Maybe they'd get through this. Maybe everything would go back to normal in a little while.

"C'mon, Father," Finch said, popping the auto-locks. "Mr. Mason's waitin' for you."

Finch offered to carry Calvin's bag again and was again refused. He shrugged and led the way into the house. Calvin stepped into the slate foyer and stopped. He looked down at the hairs on his arm as they stood like grass shoots growing in a stop-motion film. The air was charged. Finch felt it too and both men stood, silent. Up the sweeping oak staircase, deep into the house, a monster waited. Calvin could feel its smile.

"It's, uh, this way, Father," Finch said and led Calvin toward what he guessed was the back of the house. They moved through a hallway, enclosed on one side with exposed brick and on the other with multi-paned glass. The windowed hall looked out on a private garden, complete with a bronze replica of the Venus di Milo. The damp clung to her skin and dripped like crystal milk from her tarnished nipples. Finch stopped at a wooden door that reminded Calvin of the men's lounges you find in expensive country clubs.

"Go on in, father."

Calvin stepped past and put a hand on the doorknob. "Mr. Finch," he said, looking over his shoulder. "Answer me honestly. No bullshit. Can I count on your help through this?"

"Of course, Father," Finch said.

Calvin nodded and turned away. He wasn't so sure. He pushed open the door to the smell of rubber and bright fluorescent lights. Two men in white leggings and jackets faced off on a raised platform. The larger of the two men might have glanced at Calvin. It was difficult to tell as their faces were obscured by mesh helmets, but Calvin thought the big guy had automatically registered his presence. In the instant he did, the other man lunged forward and pressed a furious attack. The blades scraped and clicked, echoing in the vaulted space. Almost as soon as it began the larger man fell back a step and swore.

"That's match, Horton."

"Good hit, Mr. Mason." Horton slipped off his helmet, his bald head gleaming with sweat. "Looks like your guest is here, sir."

Frank Mason left his helmet on and turned toward Calvin. "Father Calvin," he said. "Thank you for coming."

"I go where I'm assigned, Mr. Mason."

Mason said nothing. He let Calvin wonder what his face might be up to behind the mask for a moment, then asked, "You have any experience with this kind of thing?"

Calvin glanced at Horton, took in his stance, the distribution of his weight. He gave the impression of a fierce hawk tethered to his master by an invisible cord. This one was trained. Calvin looked back at Mason, the blank mask, and said, "The file said you'd been working with Doctor Riley."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mason. I thought you knew." Calvin frowned. "I guess you could consider me patient zero."

Mason pulled off the helmet. His dark hair stood out in sweaty locks, but still managed to look styled. He hopped down off the runway and walked up to Calvin. "You're the boy? From Riley's story?"

Calvin made eye contact, held it. "I was." Emptiness behind Mason's eyes. Calvin had martyred a woman off Cape Town two years ago. About a minute after he'd dumped the body off the boat a Great White had broken the surface and ripped into the corpse. It's eyes were like Mason's, singular, robotic. "But that was a long time ago," Calvin said.

"But you're qualified to handle our problem."

"That's why they sent me."

Mason smiled. "When this is over, you'll have to give my regards to Thom Neary. It's been a long time."

Calvin also showed his teeth. He nearly asked how Mason and His Eminence knew each other but let it go. Some back alley dealing in which the Church required a certain touch, most likely. He'd get the details from Neary some other time if it came up. If there was another time.

"Mr. Mason," Calvin said. "Before I take a look at Jeremy I'd like to talk with you about the boy, get some background."

"That might be a problem right now," Mason said. Using his teeth he stripped his fencing glove and shot his wrist out. He glanced at the revealed platinum Rolex. "I've got an appointment that can't be missed." Mason glanced backward over his shoulder. "Mr. Horton?"

"Sir." Horton hopped down off the platform.

"Please make sure Father Calvin is set up in one of the guest rooms and then answer any questions he might have."

"Certainly," Horton said, registering the meaning underneath Mason's expression. Don't tell him anything he doesn't need to know.

Mason turned back to Calvin. "Mr. Horton is in charge of security for my son. He can give you all the background you require. This little indulgence of mine," he grinned and slashed the air with his foil, "has already cost me more time than I have, or I would see to you myself, of course."

"Of course."

Mason gave a sharp nod. "Right then." He strode toward the door and stopped, turned. "You fence, Father?"

Images of his hand-to-hand and blade training flashed in Calvin's memory. Insertion points for efficient killing, tactical moves. "Not with swords."

"You have rapier wit, father." Mason gave a chuckle that didn't reach his eyes.

Calvin smiled. Rapier wit. Jesus.

Mason closed the door with a resounding bang. Calvin could almost feel the man receding into the house as if he put off some kind of field. Mason was a sociopath, pure and simple. The rest of the world and its inhabitants were little more than actors in his story, characters in an arcade game that only Mason could play.

Calvin had met his type before, but Mason stood out from the usual profile. He might be a dangerous psycho, but he was a highly functional dangerous psycho. Most sociopaths and their particular disconnect from reality fuck themselves in the end because the real world is not composed of hollow players but of willful individuals. Mason had survived a long time in a complicated and violent game. He might not have believed that the rest of humanity had any intrinsic value, but he wasn't foolish enough to completely underestimate it either.

"Neither will I," Calvin muttered.

"Scuse me, father?"

Calvin turned around, faced Horton. "Nothing, Mr.," he stuck out his hand, "Horton, right?"

"S'right," Horton said, giving Calvin's hand a solid pump. "Would you like to follow me to your room?"

"Actually," he said, "I'm a little thirsty. Can we hit the kitchen? Do a beer? 'Less you wanna' grab a shower after that workout with Mr. Mason."

Horton smiled. This guy was good. He had altered his delivery to mimic Horton's own personal style. It was something salesmen did. And cops. It was going to be interesting to see just who this Father Calvin turned out to be.

"Nah, I don't need a shower."

Calvin raised an eyebrow. "Not much of a workout to stand around and let the boss score off you, is it?"

Before he could stop it, Horton smiled again. The feel of those muscles and their particular pull on his face was noteworthy. It had been a while since he'd had reason to smile. "Even if I tried all that hard," he said, "Mr. Mason'd still beat the pants offa' me."

"Yeah?"

"Hell, yeah. I know a thing or two about fighting..."

Calvin smiled, nodded.

"...and Mr. Mason's no one you'd want to fuck with." Horton's bald dome flushed crimson. "Sorry, Father."

"Doesn't bother me. I'm gonna' hear enough of it from Jeremy in the very near future I suspect."

Horton shook his head. "You won't believe some of the sh—stuff you hear comin' from that kid these days. Blow your mind, Father."

"You'd be surprised."

"Yeah?"

Calvin nodded, his smile fading. "Lets go get that beer."

CALVIN AND HORTON sat at a butcher-block bar in the kitchen under bright, clean lights. There were plenty of spaces in the house more graciously appointed. Mason had a miniature cigar bar installed in the basement level, complete with walk-in humidor. While the kitchen stools might not be as sumptuous as the hand-tooled Italian leather arm chairs in the cigar bar, they were far more comfortable to men like Calvin and Horton.

Calvin took a sip of imported Hefeweissen and clunked the bottle down. "That's damn good. Supposed to count as a lite beer in Europe."

Horton took a hit himself, smacked his lips. "Not supposed to drink this from the bottle, I guess. Mr. Mason's got special glasses just for beer."

"It's all glass, right?" Calvin said and took another drink. Thank Christ he was at least Catholic. A lot of the other faiths didn't let clergy have a drop. Calvin put the bottle down and looked at Horton. "How long have you been Jeremy's security?"

"'Bout a year," Horton said. "Used to front for Mr. Mason, but I got hurt. When I healed up he asked me to watch the kid."

Calvin watched a bead of water slide down the outside of his bottle. "Got hurt?"

Horton studied his own bottle, remembering. That red helmet, the pop-pop-pop. "Took a hit in the chest."

"Nine milli?"

Horton's head popped up. "What?"

"What gauge was the slug?"

"Nine millimeter, yeah." Horton chuckled. "You, uh, into firearms, Padre?"

"Not usually, no. Too impersonal. Too hard to be sure."

Horton sat up straight. What the hell kind of priest had they sent? "Why you tellin' me this?"

Calvin sighed and took a swig of cold beer. The carbonation and liquid contrasted cold and hot in his throat. He looked at the label on the bottle, Ayinger, noted it, put it down.

"After three minutes of conversation with Mason," Calvin said. "I could tell the man knows shit about his own son. Not anything past his own requirements of the kid, anyway. I need to know about Jeremy without any bullshit getting in the way." He looked at Horton full on. "I'm dropping my own bullshit. I'm hoping you'll do the same."

Horton stared at Calvin for what would be longer than polite in an everyday conversation. The priest was young, early thirties, but much older underneath. He'd seen things, done things that most men hope only to have nightmares about. It was all over him now that he'd dropped the good salesman façade. Horton hoisted his beer and nodded for Calvin to do the same. Horton clicked his bottle against Calvin's. "Deal," he said, smiling. "You go first, though."

"What do you want to know?"

"How 'bout you clue me into how you know about ballistics? You sound like you maybe fired a shot or two in your time."

"Not much anymore."

"Too impersonal, right?"

Calvin's right hand, resting on his thigh, twitched. "Yeah."

Horton sat back on his stool, crossed his massive arms. "What the fuck kind of priest are you, Padre?"

Calvin sighed. How to explain himself to someone outside of the order? "I'm something of a problem solver for the corporate offices in Rome."

"Problem solver? You mean you're a fuckin' cleaner?"

"Yeah, pretty much." A corner of Calvin's mouth bent upward. "I'm a little better trained than most, though."

Horton uncrossed his arms, leaned in. "What kinda training?"

Calvin felt strange, light-headed. He looked at this enormous thug, slouching at the kitchen table in white fencing gear, the track lighting reflected on his perfect head. Calvin got it. He felt unburdened. Forgive me, Horton, for I have sinned. Fuck it then, he let it go and opened up. "Military at first, but then more specialized stuff. Hand to hand, poisoning, blade work. You know, the personal touch."

Horton grinned like a kid. "How long you been doin' this?"

Calvin smiled at the excitement in Horton's voice, his incredulity. "For about fifteen years."

"How many problems you solved?"

"Enough. More than enough. In fact, I've been thinking about calling it a career."

Horton got quiet for moment. "Back in the gym you said something about being 'patient zero.'"

"Uh-huh."

"So, like, this happened to you before? What's happening to Jeremy. That's why they called you in for this instead of a regular priest? 'Cause you've been, uh..."

Calvin's eyebrows lifted. "Host to a demon from hell?"

"Yeah."

"That and your boss seems to be acquainted with my boss."

Horton thought about that one for second. He didn't pretend to know much about Mr. Mason's affairs outside of his boy's security, but he knew Mason was deep into a lot of heavy shit. Since he'd started watching over Jeremy full time, Horton was somewhat out of the loop, but he'd learned plenty during his tenure as Mason's own bodyguard. He had accompanied Mason into more than a few corporate headquarters and even onto a military base a few years back. The man was into everything. He made the usual over-boss look like a pickpocket. It wasn't hard to believe that he would be in bed with the Vatican as well. Horton shook his head slowly. "Quite a life we lead ain't it, Father?"

Calvin smiled. "That it is, Mr. Horton." He took a sip of beer, a little sad now that the bottle was growing light. He wanted another one, but needed to stay frosty for now. "Your turn. How'd you get into this life we lead?"

Horton had more questions, but the good father was finished with his limited biography. "I was a cop if you can believe it," Horton said.

"I can."

"Yeah? What gave me away?"

"Way you stand," Calvin said, waving a hand up and down. "I figured you had some sort of martial training. Thought you might be military."

Horton nodded. "Hmm." He'd have to remember that one, the way he stood. "Anyway, I was summarily dismissed."

Calvin waited for it.

"I was on the take. Kickbacks from corner pushers." Horton's eyes went far away and he shook his head. "Long damn time ago."

"How'd they bust you?"

"I was already under investigation on a brutality deal, so I.A. already had a wild hair up their asses for me. Thought I knew where all my tails were, but I missed one and he got pics of me doin' a hand-off."

"Do any time?"

"Not much. Plea bargained my way out of it. I rolled over on a few mid-level dealers and three other cops who were in it with me." Horton sighed. "I was in for eighteen months."

"Hard time?"

Horton thought of a rival from inside and his unfortunate end brought on by a sudden hemorrhage at the end of a shiv. "Not for me."

Calvin smiled. He wasn't in the business of liking people as a general practice. It just wasn't practical, but he liked Horton. "How'd you end up working for Mason? One of his boys inside with you or what?"

"Nope." Horton took a long drink. "Few months after I got out," he smiled, "—good behavior—one of the street punks I'd testified against got it in his head that it would be a good idea to step up with a little payback."

"He was apparently unsuccessful."

Horton rolled up his sleeve, revealing a cord of shining scar tissue along his forearm. "It always blows me away how many guys'll just freeze up if you block a blade with your arm." He rolled his sleeve down. "Anyway, I got it away from him and showed him how to block a knife with his fuckin' eyeball. Turns out he worked for one of Mr. Mason's distributors. Word got back about who I was and what I'd done."

"And Mason offered you a job?"

Horton smiled and spread his palms face up. Voila.

"So you started out as his personal security?"

"Hell no," Horton said. "Had to prove myself first. Solve a problem." He winked. "Punk who gave me this," he slapped his forearm. "Looked like a pirate when I met up with him again, eye-patch an' all. He was sSeungming. I mean, no big deal right? Everybody sSeungs, but this moron was way over the top."

Calvin leaned in. "How'd you do it?"

"I got a bigger knife and put it through his other eye. Just pushed a little harder."

Okay, Calvin definitely liked Horton.

"Mr. Mason gave me a few more jobs and I took care of 'em well enough to get promoted, I guess you'd call it." He rubbed his chest absently. "The rest you know. I took a hit and Mr. Mason decided he wanted me to look after the kid." Horton's smile faded.

They were quiet for a while, each man's thoughts roaming over private oceans. Calvin lowered his voice. "He a good kid?"

Horton looked at Calvin. "The best. If my life had gone different, you know? I'd a been a happy man to have kid like Jeremy. He's amazing."

"You miss him, don't you."

Horton looked away. It was funny, he spent most of his time sitting at the bedside of what everyone still called "Jeremy," but he hadn't seen the real boy in weeks. "I really do, Father. I mean, I know that I haven't done enough good in this life to deserve it, but I wonder if I was some kinda' saint in another life to get to be with this kid now."

"I'll be straight with you, Horton," Calvin said. "I don't know if I can get him back."

Horton looked at the table. "I don't like hearin' that."

"I don't like saying it, man. But we're not bullshitting, right?"

Horton nodded. "Yeah, okay. Whaddya need to know, you know, to increase the chances?" Horton balled his fists. "I mean, how is this shit supposed to work? I can't believe I'm even havin' this fucking conversation, you know? I can't believe I'm talking to a fucking exorcist for chrissake." He rubbed his eyes, his voice growing low and soft. "Feels like I'm going crazy sometimes in this house."

"How long since you got any decent sleep?"

"Dunno'. Two or three days." He looked at Calvin, his eyes large. "Last time I really crashed hard, fuckin' Sinclair got gutted. I just..." He trailed off.

Calvin gave him a minute to get it together. Horton was going to be his main line of information on the boy, Calvin needed to be on his good side. He wasn't going to get there by psychologically smacking him around like he had Finch. After it appeared Horton had shaken off the worst of it, Calvin asked, "You okay to keep talking about this?"

"Yeah," Horton sniffed. "I'm good. Mr. Mason said you got some kind of file on everything, right? You already know all the basic stuff, I guess?"

"What I really need to know is something about Jeremy that he'll respond to."

"Jeremy, the real Jeremy, won't respond to shit," Horton said. "He's just gone."

"No he's not," Calvin said quietly. "He's in there."

Horton didn't want to think about what that meant.

Calvin sat up straight at the table. "Hell with it," he said with a smile that was a little too bright for Horton's liking. "Let's just go get acquainted."

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# SIXTEEN

HORTON LED CALVIN further into the house, down the dim hall sentried by closed doors. When they stood outside of Jeremy's bedroom door Calvin realized he had no memory of their short trip from the kitchen. It was as if he had been in the light and comfort of that warm room one moment and now stood here the next with no time in between. He couldn't even remember thinking about anything on the way. Calvin stared at the door. It was like standing at the foot of some dark mountain, waiting for it to fall.

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here," he said.

"You'd make a hell of a cheerleader, Padre," Horton muttered.

Calvin made a noise that was almost a snicker, an aborted laugh. He reached out and put a damp hand on the doorknob, his sweat liquid nitrogen on the ornate brass. For a moment he just stood, trying to feel the thing on the other side through the door, trying to see the future through a couple of inches of imported wood. He jumped when Horton spoke.

"You, uh...," Horton didn't know how to put it. "I was wonderin' what it was like. If you remember an' all."

Calvin half-looked over his shoulder. "When it was in me, you mean?"

"Yeah."

Calvin faced the door. "Like floating inside the guts of a storm that has a mind," he said. His grip tightened on the greasy knob. "Like it's been raging all thunder and lightning and wind and hail, rain, like it's been shouting forever at the ground and wants to stop." He opened the door. "But can't."

"Templar."

Calvin felt his teeth slide past his lips. He always smiled like a wolf when terrified. His breath shook with it, the fear, and something else, something warm that gave him what he needed to take a step into the room. His eyes locked on the warped, wrinkled creature strapped to the bed. He understood it was the boy he'd seen in the file, that same super-bright kid with the physics club trophy, but it might as well have been a mirror to the past. He'd worn that twisted costume himself not so long ago. "Hello, you fuck."

"Is that any manner in which to address an old friend?"

Calvin's fists clenched and unclenched. The fear turning his guts soupy was the only impediment to his lurching over the floor to clamp hands around the monster's throat. The part of his psyche trained always to float just outside of the situation found the sensation curious. He was halved, one self rushing across the room to take vengeance on the greatest purveyor of pain he had ever known, the other fleeing in terror, weeping like a beaten child. He hadn't expected to lose his cool so early. Calvin barely registered Horton coming in behind him.

The demon's eyes darted over Calvin's shoulder. "Close the door, bondsman," it crooned.

And that was enough. The moment its eyes left Calvin's the spell was broken. He took a breath and relaxed his fists. The cold calculus of his trained will took hold and he felt at home in his own skin again. At least enough to speak without much of a tremor.

"What do you want with the boy?"

It smiled, one eye rolling around the room, the other fixed on Calvin.

"I said what do you want with the boy?"

Both eyes rolled up, revealing the jaundiced whites, red lids flickering. It's voice dropped into a dungeon and rasped, "There is no boy."

Calvin didn't move any further into the room, but asked, "Where is he, then?"

It's eyes snapped back at Calvin, the left pupil a huge black marble, the right a pinprick. "We ate him."

"Well," Calvin said. He felt giddy, as if he were about to go sky diving without lessons. "Any good?"

The stench of old decay gassed into the room and a slow gout of black sludge oozed over the boy's lower teeth. "Delicious."

Calvin heard Horton gag. He was glad of it. Someone else losing his shit in the immediate vicinity made it easier for Calvin to hold onto his. "Any chance I can get you cough him up?"

The troll grunted laughter through tubercular lungs. "We just did."

Horton put a hand on the wall to steady himself. The sleep deprivation, the smell and the scene were getting to him.

"You should not have crossed swords with your master on so little sleep," the demon remonstrated, managing somehow through the twisted lines of its face to show concern. "Here, bondsman," the chair next to the bed, the one to which Sinclair's corpse had so recently been tied, slid across the floorboards with a wooden moan, "rest yourself."

Horton stood back from the chair as if it might bite him. His voice rose in a harsh semi-whisper. "See! See! He fucking did that!"

The demon looked back at Calvin. "This has been very difficult for the bondsman."

"Why not give him a break, then?"

The troll focused on Horton again and favored him with a look of sweetest compassion. A dry snap punctuated the room and Horton clutched his left hand to his chest, sucking a breath past his teeth with a hiss.

Calvin moved over to him. "You okay?"

Horton spoke through clenched teeth, afraid to look over Calvin's shoulder at the monster on the bed. "Broke my pinky finger. God damn, that hurts."

"We could grant the bondsman an even bigger break if you like, Templar," the demon said. "Perhaps an embolism would facilitate the length of rest he requires."

Calvin grabbed Horton by the shirt and reached for the doorknob with the intention of thrusting him out into the hall, but the knob turned in his hand. The door wrenched open and a large woman filled the frame. She carried a small steel tray with a hypodermic needle and a labeled glass vail. Calvin stared, startled into a freeze.

"You must be the witch doctor then," she said and walked right past him. She thudded over to the bedside and grabbed the boy's restrained wrist with the thumb and forefinger of her free hand. The boy stared up at her, an adoring smile on his ruined face. "Cunt."

"That's nice, dear." She let his wrist go and picked up the hypo, flicking the tip to dislodge any bubbles. With a scowl of professional concentration she inserted the needle into a rubber port attached to the saline tube running into Jeremy's arm. "I'm Nurse Grouwe," she said, not looking at Calvin. "You can call me, Emma." She pushed the plunger on the hypo and pulled out the needle. She smiled down at Jeremy, his eyes already drooping. "Night, sweetie."

"Rot, whore."

"Whores get more action," she said and turned to the two men. "Here now," she said, pointing at Horton. "What's the matter with your hand? You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"

"Jesus, Emma, like what?" Horton asked. "Try to feed it to him? He fucking broke my finger from way over there." He indicated the chair with his elbow, afraid to loosen his grip on his wounded hand. "And he moved this right across the floor."

"Uh-huh."

Horton looked at Calvin, old exasperation on his face. "She never believes us."

"I don't know what you and that other lummox, Finch, are always trying to pull with me, but I don't appreciate that kind of joking around a sick boy."

"You think he's sick?" Calvin asked in a low voice.

Emma turned toward him, looming, "And what else could he be, Father...?"

"Calvin."

She put a pair of large red-knuckled hands on her hips. "And you're here for the exorcism, is that right?" She sighed. "Can't believe I've said it."

"You think the kid could what," Calvin glanced over at the bed. The boy was out cold, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow swells. A thick reek still hung in the air. "Benefit from Prozac and some therapy?"

Emma sighed, obviously a fighter on this side of the argument for some time now. "You, Mr. Mason, and Dr. Riley may all believe that what the boy needs is some kind of voodoo ceremony to shock him out of his psychosis, but I'm of a different mind. Jeremy is a very sick boy. He needs six months to a year under observation in a long term facility, not some antiquated religious rite that will most likely exacerbate the situation. I've stated my case time and time again with Mr. Mason and Dr. Riley, but no one wants to hear from me. Let's all just forget that I've been a psychiatric nurse for over twenty years."

A quiet moan escaped Horton.

Calvin pointed to the chair. "You mean you haven't seen anything strange, no evidence of something other than a medical explanation. No telekinesis, precognition, anything like that?"

She crossed her freckled forearms, a vein pressed out against the muscle. "Are you quite finished?"

Calvin restrained the urge to smile. For whatever reason, the demon had kept Emma Grouwe in the dark. Lucky her. "Yeah, I'm finished," Calvin said, nodding toward Horton. "Can you take care of Mr. Horton please, Ms. Grouwe?"

"Emma."

"Right," he smiled. "Emma."

She walked over to Horton and yanked his hand away from his chest. "What'd you do?" she growled under her breath.

Horton deadpanned, "It spontaneously shattered."

"Cute, baldy." She dropped the hand. "Broken. C'mon let's go get it taped up."

Horton caught Calvin's eye as he and Emma walked out. "Thorazine," he said, tossing his head at boy, "but watch your ass, ya' know?"

"Finch mentioned."

"Just don't get too close."

Calvin thought about the chair and Horton's finger. "What exactly would that be?"

"There's a call buzzer on the floor by the bed," he said and was gone, closing the door behind him.

Calvin turned around, half expecting the boy to be sitting up wide awake and staring. He grabbed the chair and dragged it over to bedside. Too close, sure. He mused about the telekinetic range a demon might have. Was outside of the door far enough away, or could it get you on the dark side of the moon if it wanted? Calvin looked at the boy's purple eyelids, the orbs beneath roving back and forth. "Don't suppose you'd just tell me, would you?"

The eyes stopped, the eyelids peeled back. "We'll answer any question you pose, Templar." Slowly, so as not to scare Calvin away from the bedside, the troll sat up. It rotated its head to face him. A complicated tracery of veins leapt into relief along the boy's forehead, at his temples and contouring his cheeks. A blood vessel burst in his right eye and his whole body began to shiver with minute tremors. Calvin watched frozen for less than a minute, then two lines of thick, clear liquid pulsed from the corners of the boy's eyes and ran down his face. He stopped shaking and the veins fell back into place. "Poison spoils the meat."

Calvin wasn't sure if what he had just witnessed was medically possible. He supposed if it could move a chair with a thought it could perform feats of telekinesis that required more—.

"Finesse. Yes, of course we can."

Calvin sat back, remembered to breathe, willing himself to be more interested than terrified. "And you read minds too?"

"Not as a matter of course."

"Why not? It seems so much more efficient."

"We find it rude."

Calvin stared at the drying gore on the boy's chin. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Language, Father Calvin."

Calvin looked at the demon and tried to see the boy underneath. Horton had asked him what it had been like for him. Truth be told, he didn't have many clear memories of his own experience in Jeremy's position. Images, knowledge, almost everything had faded scant hours after the demon had released him. He'd been left with memories of emotion and an ancient loneliness that never seemed to fade at all. In fact, he'd kept that feeling of solitude close, he'd been able to identify with it. Calvin squinted at the monster's face, trying to look past it. Pointless, he wouldn't know the kid even if he did see him.

Calvin sighed, switched tracks. "When we were...together."

"Ah?"

"Where was I? You were on the outside, but where did you keep me?"

The distinct sound of voiding bowels and the accompanying odor slapped Calvin's senses. The demon raised its broken eyebrows.

Calvin pushed back in the chair. "Fuck you, then."

The demon frowned, mocked pity. "It won't work the way you think it will, boy."

Calvin wasn't sure what it meant. "The Roman Ritual? No, it's just another spell isn't it." He looked at the floor. "I'll try it anyway."

"Good."

Calvin's own brows lifted. "Good? You want me to try to remove you?"

Jeremy looked away from Calvin, focusing on an invisible point in the middle of the room. For a long time, the boy started off into nothing. Calvin sat, his hands in his lap, the knuckles intertwined. This is the church, this is the steeple. After what seemed like several minutes, the demon spoke again, eyes still far away. This time it was a voice Calvin knew.

"They ain't never gonna' find his body." Flat Southwestern accent. "I had a dream and came back the next day to cover them tire tracks."

Calvin's eyes went wide for a moment. Jesus, what a magic show. He kept it as cool as he could. "Nathaniel, right?"

"Yeah. I went back and stared at it for a while." The demon's face was frozen, without expression. The cracked mouth was the only feature that moved. It was like watching someone with a Botox overdose, or an animatronic latex dummy from some amusement park ride. "The snakes were all gone the next day, but there was flies all over 'im."

"You said you had a dream."

"Yeah," from the speaker-face, "this little white boy in pajamas took me out to the desert and told me I hadda help cover your tracks. It was weird. When I woke up, I'd pissed the bed."

Calvin wondered, was this a trick, or had the demon actually tapped into the Ute boy? He had a thought and his skin crawled. "You okay, Nathaniel. You're not dead are you?"

"Sleepin'."

A shout leapt from Calvin's mouth before he even knew it was coming. "You let that one alone!"

The demon's face animated and grinned at Calvin. "Why 'this one', Templar?"

"He's been through enough," Calvin answered, voice low and quiet. He sat up a little straighter. "Why'd you help me with the body? Why'd you do that?"

"What do you mean, kid?" This time the voice was Thom Neary's Bronx core with Italian edges. "I've always been on your side. Been helping you for years, Johnny."

"You're not Thom Neary," Calvin spat, his hands balled into fists. "Thom Neary got rid of you. He cast you out."

"So dramatic," the demon's own cracked, high/low, growl/song voice returned. "Cast us out," it mused. "That old cocksucker is the only one who believes that." It sat up a little straighter. "You knew that didn't you, Templar? Your precious bishop likes to choke on a stiff rod from time to time. It's why he sought you out."

"You're disgusting."

A yellow, thrushy tongue slid from the child's mouth and writhed like a worm. Calvin gaped. It was far longer than a human tongue should be. The probing tip found a blood caked nostril and began to penetrate, the demon moaning with pleasure. Calvin looked away.

"You said you'd been helping me," Calvin said to the wall. And if that didn't work he'd ask it about the damn weather. Anything to get rid of that tongue. "What'd you mean by that?"

"Templar?"

Calvin looked back and grimaced. "Oh, good lord."

The boy's tongue had pushed deep into one nostril, stretching it out of size. The furred tip teased from the other.

Calvin knew what he was seeing couldn't be possible. Couldn't be. There was no way the kid had enough tongue, possessed or not, to thread it up one nostril, through his sinuses and out the other. He remembered an obscure portion of his training in which Thom Neary had taught him to function even when poisoned or drugged. Under potent doses of pentathol and LSD, Calvin drove a car at speed and had even navigated complicated computer programs. He'd learned not to fight the impossibilities his mind had thrown at him, but accept them and move on. Calm flowed over him like warm water. The demon had gotten into his head and was manipulating his perceptions. It didn't mean his mind was gone or that what he saw was real.

Calvin stared at the insanity in front of him, the tip of that obscene tongue now wiggled from the boy's left ear. "That's a neat trick, kid. Can you tie the stem of a cherry in a knot too?"

Calvin blinked and the illusion was gone. The demon smiled and wagged a tongue, still furred and yellowed, but of normal length.

"You going to answer my question?" Calvin pressed. "You said you'd answer any question I posed."

Jeremy closed his eyes, his head lolled to one side. A line of thin bile leaked from the corner of his mouth. A stream of quiet muttering fluttered over his lips. Calvin couldn't make it out, but it had the cadence of a heated argument minus the emotion. He was reminded of street people he'd seen having conversations within their delusions. Jeremy appeared to have fallen into some sort of drugged burnout. Perhaps the scene with the expulsion of the Thorazine had also been an illusion and it had finally kicked in.

Calvin leaned in close to hear better and whispered, "How'd you help me?"

The demon reared up. It's eyes were giant black saucers, devoid of iris, pupil or whites. Calvin could see his face reflected in them. The demon's mouth yawned, the teeth a hundred serrated triangles. It roared. "WE SENT THE SHARK!"

Calvin slammed back in the chair, blinking, heart trip-hammering.

The demon's eyes changed again. This time they were a complicated mix of green and brown, again without white, but split by huge vertical irises. It's tongue slipped out, forked and dripping. It hissed loud as a gale through tree bows, "WE WERE THE VIPERS!"

Calvin covered his face with his hands and squeezed his eyes closed. Flares erupted in the dark and he tried to breathe. The demon was laughing, contented, easy.

Calvin opened his eyes and saw Thom Neary's head atop Jeremy's wasted little boy frame. He blinked again and this time it was the Ute boy, Nathaniel. Again, and Matthew Katey, black and swollen, glowered at him. Again, and Calvin's own face as it had been when the demon first found him. It winked.

Calvin made a strangled noise that hurt his throat. He jumped from the chair and bolted for the door. His fingers scrabbled at the doorknob, and just as he was yanking it open, a quiet voice froze him solid.

"Please."

Calvin's put his forehead on the doorframe and shuttered. He didn't need to turn around to know who's voice it was.

"Please, it hurts."

Without turning Father John Calvin said, "I know, kid. I'm sorry," and walked out of the room.

#

#

# SEVENTEEN

EVENING DRIFTED OVER the grounds like a cosmic afterthought, warm with a touch of breeze. Cicadas droned, biomechanical sirens in the trees along the garden path. The sky slid from Oriental cornflower to Occidental cobalt and Mars hung like a single drop of blood over the shoulder of a spreading oak. The moon swam the depths below the horizon. Tiesha skipped from flagstone to flagstone, crossing a pond of Kentucky bluegrass on frozen lily pads.

Strictly speaking she wasn't allowed to walk the grounds of the massa's grand estate, but after he'd done his business with her earlier that afternoon, Mason had attended to business elsewhere. So, while the cat was away, his pretty mouse would go wherever she damn well wanted. He never came out here anyway. Said the outdoors didn't much appeal to his sense of—she squinted up at Mars, thinking—cleanliness. That was it. Like Mason couldn't control nature enough, so he just stayed out of it altogether. Tie swung her bare arms through the humid air, a strap of her white sundress slipped from one round shoulder. Hell with it, hers was not to question why. Hers was but to blow the boss and die.

"Sometimes I wonder why I don't disgust myself more," she mused aloud.

A low voice came from just off the path. "Sounds familiar."

Tie spun and tried to make out the speaker. If one of Mason's goons caught her outside of his rooms, she'd be in deep shit. Especially if it was Finch. That sludgy bastard hated her. 'Course she did have a tendency to tease him as much as was humanly possible. Now, if it was Sinclair lurking over there in the dark, she'd be okay. Quickie on the bench and he'd never tell. It'd worked before. But she hadn't seen him around in a while.

"Who's that?" she said, and then took a quick step back as a man she'd never seen before stepped onto the path. "Who're you? You don't work for Mr. Mason, do you?"

"In a sense," Calvin said. "I'm kind of on loan from another company right now." He caught sight of her feet and was surprised by a tremor in his chest. The toes were painted white to match the dress. Little pieces of perfection on the flagstone walk. Too much ugliness had increased his sensitivity to beauty. It's what had driven him out here in the first place. After his first encounter with Jeremy, Calvin had needed to get away and get his mind degreased.

He didn't recognize this girl from any of the files. He supposed she could be part of the housekeeping staff, but something in her stance didn't fit with that. She was rough, but regal at the same time. Calvin decided it was the length of her neck and the manner in which she held her head. Then he got it. "Do you work for Mr. Mason?"

"I waitress at his restaurant. Mancy's? You been there?"

"No," he said. "Any good?"

"I guess," she said, unconsciously peering into the dark, looking for a point in his eyes she could lock onto. "It costs enough. I s'pose it's good." She put her hand on her hip. If she stood in front of a light source her entire body would be visible through the gossamer fabric. Calvin sent a tiny prayer to the moon.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Father Calvin."

He caught a flash of the white around her eyes. "Shit, you a priest? What you doin' for Mr. Mason?"

"His boy's sick. I'm trying to help out."

She sighed, shifted her center of gravity, looked away. "Yeah, kid's been sick a while now. What's the deal anyway? He got polio or some shit?"

Calvin chuckled. She obviously wasn't privy to much intel from her employer outside of bedroom talk. "He's had something of a breakdown."

"What, like he nuts?"

Calvin didn't say anything for moment, then nodded. "Something like that."

Tie tipped her head to one side. "What you doing out here? Almost nobody but me ever come out here."

Calvin looked up at the sky. A smattering of stars had joined Mars. "I just needed to clear my head, do a little thinking."

"Yeah," Tie said, not listening. "So, what's the kid like?"

"You've never met?"

She pursed her lips and blew a dismissive sound. "I don't think his daddy wants to take the risk of dirtyin' his pretty little prince with the likes a' me."

Calvin was too tired to keep pussy footing. "So what else do you for Mason? Other than waitressing, I mean."

Tie found his eyes, pinned them. "Anything he wants."

"You and I are a lot a like."

She smirked, threw a hip to one side. "Think so, Father?"

Somewhere off the path, a cicada peeled high and faded slow, a sonic shooting star.

"What's your name?"

"Tiesha."

Calvin extended his hand. Tie eyed it for an instant before taking it in her own. Their skin sang against each other in the gloom. Calvin held her hand just long enough to force her to focus on him. "Don't go upstairs, Tiesha." He dropped her hand.

She took a step back. "Why not?"

"It's dangerous. The boy's dangerous. Someone's already been...hurt."

"Sinclair?" she asked. "It was, wasn't it?"

"Think so?"

"Ain't seen him 'round for a while." She looked at her feet, the ivory toenails looked like teeth. "He dead?"

"Think it's a good idea, askin' me that?" Jesus, he was doing it again, matching his verbal expression to hers.

She squinted. "Where you from?"

A wrought-iron gas lamp flickered to hissing life a few feet down the path, outlining the bench beneath it. Calvin glanced at the flame, orange and blue, upside-down liquid. It cast a cozy pool of light and chased shadows from the bench. He imagined himself and Tiesha, or someone like her, sitting there, holding hands. What would it have taken, to move his life in that direction instead of the one in which he found himself, sitting under the light instead of standing in the dark outside it?

"Hello?"

He looked back at her. "Sorry, wool gathering. I'm tired. What'd you ask?"

Her voice softened. "Where you from?"

Twenty different cities and twenty different accents presented themselves in Calvin's mental holding pattern. He panicked for a moment. Shit, he'd forgotten who he was supposed to be today, and then it came back. He was being himself. He sighed and it turned into a yawn.

"Detroit," he managed.e Hep

"You?"

"Toledo 'riginally."

"You like it here? Think it's a nice town?"

"My daddy thinks so."

"But not you."

She smiled. "It's okay if you like boring as hell." A dream flashed behind her eyes. "Art museum's good."

Calvin kept his smile to himself. Everyone had a secret. Tiesha, waitress and mob concubine was a closet art lover. "Who's your favorite?"

"Matisse." No hesitation. She caught his expression and the blood rushed to her face. "What, a nigger can't dig on no high paintin', right?"

He held up a hand. "Relax."

She crossed her arms. "What then?"

"Nothing," Calvin said, feeling sloppy for offending her. "I really hate Matisse is all."

"Oh." Tie rolled her eyes at herself. "Sorry."

"S'alright."

She brightened. "I think his stuff's so pretty. Like if the way I felt about things could come outta' my body and be colorful, they'd look like his paintings." Her face clouded and she looked at the ground. "Maybe not so pretty, though." Another thought and her eyes narrowed, sparked. "Maybe sometimes."

"How'd you end up here?" Calvin blurted. Maybe it was because he was exhausted or due to the continual slippage of his mental grip, but the question got past his lips before he could think to clamp them shut. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by that."

"Yeah you did," she said. "You meant how's a black waitress slash 'ho end up with a taste in fine arts and deep thinkin'."

"Not like that," he said. "I just meant..."

She glared at him.

"I think I just meant that you seem out of place." He looked up at Mars. "Better than this."

Tie reached out and grabbed his left wrist. Calvin killed a nanosecond impulse to shatter the bridge of her nose with the edge of his right hand. She was just looking at his watch. She smelled like lilacs and something warmer, her own. There were a few strands of silver-white in her black hair. She dropped his wrist and made eye contact before stepping back.

"It's late. Mr. Mason'll get home soon." She didn't actually believe that, but the priest made her nervous. He was so intense. Tie realized that in their entire conversation he had not lied to her once. She could just tell. She had the feeling that this man could convince the devil to sell his own soul, but he hadn't used any of that shuck and jive with her. Tie got the idea he wasn't used to not putting on a front. More than anything, she needed to get away from him because he drew her. That was something she wasn't used to. Tie went to the men she sensed were drawn to her, the reverse had yet to happen.

It wasn't attraction, just curiosity mixed with a sense of safety. Maybe it was just that he was a man of the cloth and spawned some kind of shame in her. Except, she didn't feel bad. She didn't know what was going on in her head right now. She glanced over at the bench, the little pool of light. She wanted to sit there with him and ask more questions.

"I gotta' go," Tie said.

Calvin looked at his watch, nearly nine-thirty. He could feel potential spin out beneath his feet. Meeting Tiesha had created a schism in his life, another strange path.

"Would you like to talk about art sometime?" he stammered. "With me?"

Ridiculous, how difficult that had been. Had he been in character, on an assignment when procuring a few hours of her time in the near future was requisite to completing his objectives, it would have been child's play. But he was trapped in himself now, and John Calvin's palms had grown damp. He'd been trained to be anyone at a moment's notice, anyone except himself. "Maybe even later tonight?" he added.

Tie's head tipped to one side. He wasn't hitting on her. She would have smelled that one already. She couldn't quite pin it down. "You lonely?" she asked, saw his expression. "Not that way. Just...lonely."

"Tonight I am."

"Why you wanna' talk with me?" she said, baiting him for the insult that would release her. "You gon' save my soul, preacher?"

Calvin looked at his feet. "You're the first true person I've met in a while." His shoes were dirty. When he looked back up she was smiling at him. He smiled too, couldn't help it. "I don't really know what that means," he brushed off.

"S'okay," she said. "Think I do."

"You'll come?"

"No."

"Oh." His shoes were really dirty. "Listen, I didn't mean anything—"

"I won't come tonight, Father. And not here. There's a coffee house across from the University. It's near the school building looks like a big a church tower. You know what one a' those looks like, right?" She half-turned, threw a look over her shoulder, the strap still askew. "You meet me there tomorrow afternoon and we can talk about art."

Calvin wondered for a second what kind of schedule one kept around an exorcism. Hell with it, he wasn't billing by the hour. "Three o'clock work for you?"

"That's fine," she said and turned back to face him. "You know better 'n to say nothin' 'bout meetin' me, right?"

"'Course."

She stared at him, small and fierce. "He'll hurt me, you get that?"

"Never saw you."

She nodded, turned, and ran down the path. Calvin watched her feet, the soles flashing like wings as she receded into the gloom.

He'll hurt me...

Calvin imagined a movie with the sound muted: Mason would stand over Tiesha, gesturing wildly, his face all sharp angles, his lips peeled back, his eyes dead. He would strike her with the back of his hand, her fine cheekbone snapping like a wet stick where his ring struck. She would go down. Calvin's blood pounded in his hands so hard his fingernails pulsed.

He shook his head to clear it and walked over to the iron bench, settling himself in the cozy glow of the gas lamp. Two weeks ago he'd been in peak mental condition, a human weapon working the will of its master without fear or remorse, without question. Now, here he was pretending at being a regular priest, and doing a rather poor job of it. And what was this shit he was feeling for the girl? Was this a crush for Christ's sake?

"Jesus," he said, pushing his face into his hands. "I really am losing it."

Footsteps thudded down the path from the house.

Calvin was up and fading into the shadows out of habit before he heard the shout.

"Father Calvin! Father? Father Calvin! You gotta' come quick! You out here, Father?"

Horton plowed from the darkness. Calvin stepped into the circle of light from the gas lamp. "There you are!" Horton panted. "You gotta' come like right fucking now, Padre. Finch's lost it."

They started running for the house and Calvin asked, "What's happened?"

"He tried to quit," Horton barked between gulping breaths. "Mr. Mason said...he was in too deep for that." He sucked wind. "That he knew...too much."

Calvin's pulse skipped. "Mason's home?" Tiesha. "How long?"

"Never left...been in his office the whole time. Finch just busted in on him."

Maybe he didn't know she'd been away then. Maybe. "Let's go," Calvin said and put on a little speed.

* * *

"STEP AWAY FROM my son, Mr. Finch."

Calvin and Horton came up behind Mr. Mason as he stood in the doorway of Jeremy's room. Mason heard them pound up behind him in the hall and made way, revealing the scene.

Finch, red faced and wide-eyed, stood next to the bed, the barrel of an enormous nine-millimeter pistol an inch from the boy's temple. "You gotta' let me go," he whimpered at Mason. Tears painted glycerin tracks down his face. "I can't work for you no more."

Mason's voice was black ice. "We talked about that, Mr. Finch."

"I won't say nothin' to nobody, Mr. Mason. I fuckin' swear to God I won't."

Mason smiled. "I know you won't, Finch."

Finch caught sight of Horton and Calvin in the hall, and pressed his gun into Jeremy's temple. "You toss your fucking piece, Horton. You get rid of that fucker right now or the kid's gone."

Horton flicked a glance at Jeremy who writhed with glee and mouthed Templar, tipping a wink at Calvin. Horton stepped into the room next to Mason. "Listen, Ian." he put his palms up, "You don't need to do this, man. We can go it another way."

Finch wiped his eyes with his free hand. His lips shook. "You ditch your piece."

"Now, Mr. Horton," Mason said without looking at his man.

Horton sighed and reached around behind him.

"Slow! Slow!" Finch shouted.

Horton nodded and removed a Glock-9, slick and flat black, from the back of his pants. He held it by the barrel and took a step toward Finch, holding the gun out for him to take.

Finch barked a screamy laugh, "Give me a fuckin' break, Bruce Lee. Come a step closer and I'll waste this...," he glanced at Jeremy, "...this... I'll fuckin' kill it. Kick it under the bed."

Horton knelt and placed the Glock by the toe of his shoe.

"The .38 too, you slippery fuck."

Horton pulled his pants leg up and pulled a snub nose automatic from an ankle holster. He kicked the guns over the hardwood like a pair of hockey pucks and they clattered under the bed. "Good enough, Ian?" Horton said. "C'mon man, let's talk."

"Tried that already," Finch choked. His nasal passages were clogged. "I asked the boss all neat n' clean, didn't I Mr. Mason?" Finch let loose with another of those shattered laughs. "I even gave 'im two weeks notice."

"Release my son, now." Mason said.

Finch cringed at Mason's voice, faced him. "Or what? You'll kill me? You'll fuckin' kill me anyway. Think I don' know who I work for? Think I don' know that?" He squeezed his moist eyes shut, loosing a fresh run of tears down his cheeks. "I don't know what to do now. Don't know what to do. I cuh-can't keep working around here."

"You don't—," Horton started.

Finch's eyes flew open. "I don't what? What? I tried to quit all fair n' professional and everything, but this scary motherfucker said he'd off me if I tried to leave." Finch leveled the gun at Mason.

Horton pulled an impromptu James Brown, sliding across the waxed floorboards in a wide side-step to block Finch's aim.

Mason grinned over Horton's shoulder. "That's right, Finch. Release my boy immediately and I'll make sure you end your employment with relative ease. Or, I can draw out your dismissal for an uncomfortably long time. It's up to you."

Finch's eyes flicked back and forth between Mason and Horton. The corners of his mouth began to twitch.

Calvin stepped into the room. "Hello, Finch."

There were too many people in the room for Finch's fragile grip. His small eyes flicked off each man, then back to Calvin. Finch's tendons tightened on the gun. "Sorry 'bout all this, Father."

"What are you going to do, Mr. Finch?" Calvin asked, making sure not to look at the demon. It hadn't done anything more than enjoy the ride thus far. He wasn't about to egg it on to some new horror by making eye contact. Damn thing was likely to set off Finch just for the fun of splattering the kid's brains on the wall in front of Calvin. He was aware of it watching him, bright eyes floating in his lower peripheral vision like an alligator lurking under the surface.

"I'm...I'm, ah, I'm not sure what to do, Father." Finch flicked the gun off Jeremy's temple. "I could kill him?" he asked as if Calvin might approve the decision.

"Why would you want to do that?" Calvin said.

Finch felt a gentle pressure on the gun and looked down. Jeremy had turned his head to one side and was fellating the barrel, tonguing the exit hole. Finch jerked the gun away, his face wrinkling, withering back. He looked at Calvin. "Why?" He looked back at Jeremy who now faced Calvin, expectant. "Are you fuckin' kiddin' me, Father?"

"He's just a boy, Mr. Finch." Calvin said.

"He's my boy," Mason growled. "This is growing tiresome."

Calvin kept his eyes on Finch. "You're not helping things, Mr. Mason."

Mason turned his head so fast his neck cracked. "The fuck you think you are?"

"Shut up, Mason." Calvin said. "I'm trying to save your servant."

Jeremy giggled.

"What?" Mason demanded, peering from behind his wall of bodyguard. "What did you just say to me? This is my house and my son, and you work for me. And what's this servant crap?" He was almost surging out from behind Horton like flood water escaping a damn. "What are you talking about?"

Servant? Had Calvin said that? "I meant, son," he said. "I'm trying to save your son and you're not making my job any easier. Besides," he added. "you're in danger here too, sir. It would be wiser if you and Mr. Horton made your exit. I'll take care of things."

"He's right, sir," Horton said over his shoulder. "We should go, Mr. Mason."

Mason glared at Calvin and then at the back of Horton's head with such venom that had Horton burst into flame, it would not have been much of a surprise. Not much was anymore. Finch kept looking from Mason to Calvin and back. The gun now visibly shaking with the rest of him. If Calvin didn't get Finch some breathing room soon he was going to pop.

Calvin formed the thought, This is beneath you, Mr. Mason, to prime his voice, then said, "I can take care of this for you, sir. It's not the kind of thing you should worry about."

Mason squinted at Calvin and then shoved Horton away from him. "You disgust me," he said and stormed out of the room, but not before throwing a look at Jeremy as if the whole situation were his fault. His footsteps and voice faded down the hall. "You all fucking disgust me."

"Go with him, Horton," Calvin said. "Smooth it over."

"Gone," Horton said and moved after his boss.

Calvin faced Finch. "Better?"

Finch seemed less frantic but the light still quivered off the barrel of the gun. "Doesn't matter," he said. "I can't get outta' here."

Calvin took a step forward, stopped. "Yes, you can."

"You don't know Mason, Padre. He's totally out of his mind, sick." Finch lowered his voice. "Evil maybe."

Jeremy raised a mangy eyebrow.

"I do know, Mr. Finch." Calvin sighed and looked at the floor. "I'm not suggesting that you can make it out of this alive." He looked up, held Finch's puffy eyes with his own. "But you already knew that."

"What're you...?"

"You knew what Mason would do if you told him you wanted to quit. You've worked for him long enough to know what he's capable of. You knew where this was headed when you walked through his office door."

"What're you sayin', Padre?"

"You can get out of this on your own steam. Mason'll take his time with you if you let him." Calvin nodded toward the gun. "Spare yourself that, Finch."

Finch looked at the gun, squeezing it in his squishy fingers. "You talkin' cappin' myself, Father? Suicides is supposed to go to hell, though, right?"

"That why you set up this whole scene, isn't it?" Calvin waved a hand around the room. "You're afraid of going to hell for taking your own life, so you thought you could maybe goad Mason into doing it for you. Except you didn't think it all the way through, did you? Just thought he'd have Horton do you and that'd be that, right?"

Finch was mute, listening to truths he'd not been consciously aware of a minute ago. The Father was right. He'd been wanting to check out ever since they found Sinclair, ever since the demon had kissed him.

"Suicides go to hell, though. I ain't been to church in a long time, father, but I remember that much."

Calvin shook his head. "If you got a ticket for hell, Mr. Finch, you bought it a long time ago. This isn't gonna' make any difference one way or another."

Finch flushed and jammed the gun into Jeremy's face. "I could take this, this thing with me."

The boy moaned, delighted.

"No, Finch."

He turned his face to Calvin, pleading. "Why not? This thing deserves a bullet as much as anyone."

"That's what it wants," Calvin said. "Don't help it anymore than you already have."

Finch backed away from the bed, shaking his head back and forth. The sound of the big man's fleshy neck rubbing against his starched shirt collar was stark. He backed into the bedside chair and sunk into it, staring at the gun in his lap. "I don't think I can, Father."

The demon tracked Calvin as he moved across the room and squatted down next to Finch. Calvin put a hand on Finch's shoulder. It heaved with automatic sobs. Heat and body odor radiated through Finch's suit. "Pray with me a minute, Mr. Finch."

The demon snorted.

Calvin flung a look at it, and squeezed Finch's shoulder. "Ignore it. Just pray with me."

"I don't remember any prayers, Father."

"Just listen then," Calvin said and began to mumble under his breath. After a minute he nodded. "Amen," he said, and held out his hand. "Give me your gun, Finch."

Finch, eyes still squeezed shut in prayer, gave over the pistol. Calvin stood and moved around behind Finch, shoving the gun in his hip pocket. He could feel the heat and sweat from the grip through the fabric. Calvin leaned in and reached across Finch's chest from behind, placing his right hand on Finch's left shoulder. Finch touched the priest's arm, accepting the one-armed hug. Calvin brought his mouth close to Finch's ear and caressed his jaw with the flat of his left hand.

"Absolvo," he whispered and yanked both of his arms back with explosive force, shearing Finch's spinal column just below the medulla oblongata. Finch pitched forward in the chair, dead before his great bulk even hit the floor. His weight settled and released a rattle of air from his lungs.

"Beautiful, Templar," Jeremy croaked. "You make us proud."

Calvin straightened and wiped his palms on his shirt front. He looked at the boy strapped to the bed, a monster wearing a child like an elaborate Halloween get-up. If he could just love Jeremy enough... That's what Neary had said. If Calvin could love the child enough he could save him. Foulness poured into the air as the Demon voided its bowels into the bed linens.

"Pack your bags," Calvin said. "Cork's going back on the bottle." He stepped over Finch's corpse and walked out of the room.

#####

#####

##### EIGHTEEN

CALVIN STEPPED INTO a fog of silence in the hall outside of what had to be Mason's office door. He'd expected to draw up behind the massive slab of mahogany and hear raised voices from the other side. Not quite right—he'd expected to hear Mason's raised voice and Horton's low murmur, doing his best to soothe the savage boss. The only sound was the quiet push of the air conditioning through an ornate brass vent set into the baseboard at Calvin's feet.

How long would it have taken Horton to cool Mason out? It had taken Calvin a few minutes of wandering the corridors just to find Mason's office, and he'd had several minutes in Jeremy's room before leaving. Still, it didn't seem like enough time had gone by to hush the temper of a man like Mason. Was there ever enough time for someone like that? The wood grain swirled in the door before him. Calvin took a breath and patted Finch's gun, still in his hip pocket.

He knocked.

"Come in, Father."

Mason sat behind his desk, an amber splash of light filtered through the half-empty tumbler of bourbon on the blotter. He waved Calvin into the room as if the priest had interrupted nothing more important than a discussion about golf. Horton sat with his back to the door in one of two chairs across from Mason's desk. Calvin tensed. For a moment, it looked as if Horton might be too still but he turned and smiled. It reached his eyes, but the flesh underneath was dark.

Mason put his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward. "Drink, father?"

Calvin held up a hand. "No, thanks." He glanced at Horton.

"Nice job in there, Padre." Horton took a sip from a tumbler of his own.

Calvin raised an eyebrow.

"Have a seat," Mason offered.

Calvin walked over and was just leaning back into the chair next to Horton's when the bodyguard said, "I got to ask you for that stupid bastard's gun, Padre." Calvin suppressed a smile as he pulled the pistol from his pocket and handed it over. He faced Mason and asked, "Camera?"

"Every room except this one," Mason said and picked up a stainless steel remote control from the corner of his desk. Two large sections of bookcase hummed back to reveal a four foot TV monitor. Several small images marched around the perimeter of the screen, ringing a large, central image: Jeremy's room. The picture offered a crystal perfect shot of the boy from above. Finch's body was just out of frame, his arm, the top of his head and left shoulder edged in from the side. Calvin let his mind fall back to the room. He hadn't seen a lens but remembered a strand of hair blowing from his forehead. "Ceiling fan."

Horton smiled into his drink.

Calvin got up and studied the screen. The smaller images rotated through the different corners of the house, but some of them were blacked out. "What's with the dark ones?"

"Servants' quarters," Horton said. "They get up early."

Mason clicked a button and the darkened squares glowed gray-green, revealing beds and a few slumbering forms, dark hair on light pillow cases. Calvin peered in at Emma Grouwe's room. Her bed was empty. Horton caught his stare. "Night off," he said.

Calvin thew a look over his shoulder at Mason. "Good thing, huh?"

Mason motioned with the remote, "Jeremy's watching. He always knows when I've got him on."

Indeed, the demon stared up from the bed, through the screen as if it could see right into the room. The boy's gaze shifted just enough to make it appear as if he were catching Calvin's eye. Jeremy smiled and nodded. Calvin's stomach tightened and he focused on the other rooms. Tiesha was nowhere in evidence. Mason's office wasn't the only room without a camera then. Either that or he had his own bedroom blacked out. Calvin ran a hand along the edge of the retractable bookcase façade. It worked like a set of garage doors that opened from the side instead of the top, or like a roll-top desk where the spines of the fake books were the individual panels. "Very Bruce Wayne," he said and sat back down.

Mason clicked the remote and the panels slid shut over the monitor. "Friend of mine in the NSA set me up with this."

Calvin offered a polite smile and thought of all the gadgetry he'd seen in the basements of the Vatican. NSA were a bunch of amateurs. "One can never have enough surveillance."

Mason took a sip of his bourbon, the ice clinking. "That was a rather effective solution you provided with Finch." He put the glass down and pantomimed Calvin's deadly move. "Crack! I loved it. You teach Horton how to pull that one?"

Calvin readied himself. He needed to get it out of the way. He looked down just like a good doggie and said, "I'm sorry I spoke to you the way I did back in the boy's room, Mr. Mason." He made eye contact, shark eyes. We sent the shark. "I was worried for your safety, sir."

Mason nodded. "Bullshit." He pushed back in his chair. "You did it because you were afraid I was going to set off Finch and that he would shoot my son."

Calvin blinked. He hadn't believed Mason was capable of admitting a mistake. Calvin burned a mental note: Mason was not to be underestimated again. He might be a sociopath, but his intelligence seemed to be at least on par with his personality disorder. Only made sense. People as crazy as Mason didn't go as far in life as he had without the smarts to temper themselves when it really mattered.

"Still," Calvin said. "I owe you an apology for my tone."

Mason waved a hand. "It's done."

Calvin smiled. "Thank you." He was on Mason's eternal shit list and he knew it.

"What would you like to do with Mr. Finch, sir?" Horton asked.

Mason frowned and explained to Calvin, "Finch was our resident cleaner, I'm afraid. My own disposal skills are a bit rusty, and Horton's expertise in that arena is somewhat...?" Mason looked at the bodyguard, eyebrows up.

"Rough, sir?"

Calvin offered, "If you have a large washtub or bathtub you're not partial to, I can take care of it with stuff you probably have around the house." Calvin scowled down a the carpet for a moment. "File said you and your men ditched your old surnames, that correct?"

Mason nodded.

"That'll make things easier. Horton, can you lend me a hand with Mr. Finch?"

"'Course."

Mason sat back in his chair, arms behind his head. "Very good, then." A pair of sweat stains darkened his shirt. Calvin hid his surprise. He figured Mason would have somehow intimidated his own glands into compliance with his ultra-clean aesthetic. Calvin imagined Mason glaring at his own armpits in the mirror every morning. Looked like the ice-king was a bit more concerned for the life of his only son than he'd let on.

"Sir," Calvin began. "I'd like to talk with you a bit about the exorcism."

Mason sipped his drink.

"I'm going to need a few things before I begin."

"Of course," Mason said. "Horton'll get you anything you need."

"Actually, I'd rather do my own shopping if that's all right with you."

Mason flashed his teeth and said, "Fine," a little too quickly. "We'll provide you with a car. You do drive?"

A rich man's question. Calvin was qualified to operate everything from a pair of roller blades to a Black Hawk helicopter. "Something inconspicuous would be best," he said. "But if not, I can always get a rental."

Horton sat up. "We have a plain old Dodge cargo van we used to use for—"

Mason glanced at Horton.

"—deliveries every now and again."

"Perfect," Calvin said. He was quiet a moment then, "Mr. Mason, I'm going to have to ask you for something else, and I wonder how I can put this so as not to offend you."

"I want my boy back, father. What do you need?"

Calvin exhaled. "You trust Thom Neary."

"Implicitly."

"I need you to extend that trust to me and stay out of my way." Calvin gave Mason a moment, and when he didn't object Calvin went on. "Exorcisms take time. My own...experience took two weeks and that was with nothing fueling the demon."

"What do you mean 'fueling'?" Mason asked.

"I had no family or friends," Calvin said. " No one the demon could use. I believe your presence—even the smallest contact—would only spur the damn thing on. I've come across accounts of possession that have taken years to reverse." Calvin lowered his voice. "Then there are those exorcisms that are never successful."

"Not successful?" Horton said. "What the fuck does that mean?"

Calvin turned in his seat to face the bodyguard, noting the lines in his face, the twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was too bad the kid couldn't have picked his own father. "It could mean a couple of things. In my research, I've read stories of victims who end up gibbering away in a corner for the rest of their lives."

"The others?" Mason asked.

"They're luckier. They just die from the physical stresses. Those tend to be the adults. Children last longer because their bodies can put up with more abuse."

"Jeremy will not die," Mason said.

Calvin sat forward in his chair. "That's just why we can't have you around, Mr. Mason. Demon's are efficient. The targets of their possessions are people who are loved and valued, most likely to hurt those around them. In many ways, a possession isn't about the possessed person at all. It's about how many people the demon can hurt through that person."

"That's why it's kids so much of the time," Horton said. "Like in the movies?"

"Exactly," Calvin nodded. "And exactly why we can't have you in the room, Mr. Mason. The demon knows how important Jeremy is to you. Your feelings for your son," Calvin couldn't bring himself to use the word love, "are the demon's food."

Mason sat back in his chair, deflating. "Fine, then. We'll starve the fucking thing. I'll stay out of your way." He grabbed his drink and drained it. "Just get it out of him."

"I'll do my shopping tomorrow then start the exorcism in the evening." Calvin said then turned to Horton. "Tonight, I think you and I have a little cleaning to do."

Mason stared at his desk, his eyes frozen on some point in space an inch above his bourbon glass. Calvin shot a look at Horton, who nodded and rose. Calvin followed and was just pulling the door shut behind him when Mason's voice reached out and jabbed him in the back.

"I want you to hurt it."

Calvin turned around.

"Make sure that cock-sucker is punished."

Calvin nodded and closed the door. If Mason knew Calvin's plan, he might not have expressed the sentiment.

* * *

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Calvin and Horton stood sweating under a bare lightbulb in the basement, staring into the bottom half of a rusting dumpster. The top had been removed with a cutting torch, and the remaining tub welded tight at the seams. The body of the former Mr. Finch slumped against an inside wall, his head at an angle that went beyond healthy relaxation. His left hand flopped into one corner, the index finger smearing a glob of cream colored grease. Calvin was pretty sure it wasn't Crisco. An odor tinted the air that reminded him of a chemistry class.

"We're in luck with this container," Calvin said.

"I hate comin' in here," Horton said. "This was Finch's deal, all this shit." He waved a hand at a set of metal shelves, populated by rows of industrial-size bottles, some plastic and a few brown glass. "I got an idea of what he did in here, but I'm no expert. It's like Mr. Mason said. Finch was the cleaner. If we had a problem, he'd take em' in here and poof, problem solved, right?"

Calvin smirked and walked over to the shelving. "Yeah, roaches check in, they don't check out," he said, scrutinizing the smudged labels. "Don't worry, I got an idea of what his methods probably were." The largest glass bottle didn't have a label. Brushing the metal cap with the tips of his fingers as if it might be hot, Calvin twisted it off and waved it around a couple of feet below his nose. He squinted and jerked his head away. Calvin capped the bottle and looked over the shelves, murmuring "Where? Where?" as he checked between the bottles. "Here we go," he said and pulled on a pair of heavy rubber gloves that extended to the elbow. He carried the bottle back to the dumpster and looked down at the body.

It had been a while since he'd done anything like this. Cleaning was required only when you had to be certain the identity of the dirty person was never discovered. Most of his martyrs were made for dual purpose: to solve the problem the martyr created, and to serve as a message to future trouble makers.

"You squeamish?" Calvin asked.

Horton, already a bit green, nodded. "A little."

"If you're going to throw up, make sure you turn away. If your puke hits this stuff and splashes back, one or both of us is going to have a real bad day."

"What is that anyway? Smells like a forty year old rotten egg."

"Sulfuric acid." Calvin squinted into the container. "Reach in there and face his left hand out. Yeah, good. The right one's already okay. Yank his shoes off. Now, stand back."

Calvin dumped acid over the dead man's feet, then his fingers and palms. He stopped long enough to check for a suitable reaction, nodded, and poured a gout into Finch's open mouth, splashing over his eyes and face. Within moments, the room was filled with the hiss of countless particles destabilizing along their molecular bonds. Calvin stared down, a faraway smile on his face. Had his life followed a different track, he could have been a scientist. "Flip that switch by the door," Calvin said. "I'm pretty sure it's an exhaust fan."

Horton didn't answer.

Calvin looked up to find the bodyguard screwed into a dark corner of the room, his massive back and shoulders rounded and gripped by periodic convulsions. Calvin looked back at Mr. Finch, or rather, back at what had become Mr. Identified-not-even-with-dental-records. Once the acid oxidized all they would have to do was dump the slush.

Horton heaved and splashed.

Calvin sighed. It was going to be a long fucking night.

* * *

WHEN FINCH'S CORPSE and Horton's stomach had both stabilized, Calvin sent Horton out into the night. Horton had explained that while that night had been his first introduction into the exact methods of cleaning, he was old hat at taking out the trash.

"I knew a guy who worked at this factory before they closed it down," he'd said. "Used to make parts for the machines that extrude plastic for dildos and shit. Anyways, there's a swampy part out behind it."

"Used it before?" Calvin asked as they loaded the considerably lighter Mr. Finch into the trunk of Horton's car.

"Let's just say that when archeologists from the future find this spot, it'll look like those tar pits in California."

"La Brea."

"Yeah, those ones."

Now, as Calvin sat in bed—finally in bed—in his guest room down the hall from Jeremy's bedroom, he wondered what those archeologists would make of scores of human bones, some with cement shoes no doubt, interspersed with defective dildos and silicon labiae. "They'll judge us by our trash," he said into the empty room. "That's fair."

The laptop balanced across his legs chimed and he looked down to see the files he'd requested had been uploaded to his hard drive. As his plane had been touching down in Detroit, Calvin had asked for the data through Thom Neary who had forwarded the request onto the research team at the Vatican. Calvin chuckled at the short note Neary had appended to the file: You joining a different company, kid? They might have wilder parties, but we have a better dental plan. Calvin clicked on the attachment icon and began to read about the mechanics of possession as practiced in Voodoo.

Voodoo had originated as an animist religion in ancient Africa, based on a pantheon of gods called Loa. When the slave trade ripped the Africans from their homeland, they brought their religion with them. Over the next couple of hundred years of its evolution Voodoo ingested and incorporated several aspects of other faiths, including Catholicism. While many ceremonial and iconoclastic similarities existed between the two, Voodoo still relied on the old ways to commune with the spirit world. Possession was key.

Calvin read account after account of the faithful enacting ceremonies designed to open their bodies so the Loa could "ride" them. The dogma stated that the only manner by which to truly appreciate, commune with, and pray to the gods was to allow them complete access to and mastery of one's body. The file even contained several pictures and the language required to call the Loa. During possession, the worshippers were capable of supernatural abilities. Incidents of telekinesis and telepathy as well as knowledge of past and future events unknown to the possessed individual were well-documented.

Expulsion of the Loa was not covered. It appeared that because possession was so desirable, there was no need to find a way to keep the Loa out. They seemed to leave the faithful whenever they saw fit, sometimes after a few minutes, at most a couple of days. The whole point was to attract and hold the Loa, to merge fully in a spiritual symbiosis. The Loa got to experience the flesh, gorging themselves on dance, sex, food, adrenaline, life. The faithful got the "ride" of their lives from their beloved gods.

After an hour of scrolling text, a huge yawn rolled through Calvin's body and yanked at his eyelids. He checked the clock in the corner of the screen, 3:48 AM. He was still on West Coast time, two hours earlier, but it had been a hell of a hard day and he had another one planned for tomorrow, or today, as it was.

He had just about all the information he could use. The data demonstrated how to call a spirit and meld with it, but did not provide the final bytes of information required to bring his plan to fruition. Calvin had the idea that he would have to write that verse himself and just hope that it would work.

He powered down the computer and pulled it off his lap. He noticed the warmth from the little machine now that it was gone. It was amazing the things you didn't notice as long as they crept up on you. The best chefs were said to cook lobsters in slowly heating water. The doomed arthropods don't feel a thing even as the temperature rises and they're boiled alive, leaving the meat untainted by fear and pain-fueled adrenaline.

Calvin switched off the light and snuggled down into bed, left arm bent over his head. He thought of the hot water into which he'd been thrown and wondered who was turning up the heat. He closed his eyes and thought of the verse he would have to create, the ritual designed to ultimately expel a spirit rider.

He slid into sleep and found himself walking up the aisle at St. Michael's Cathedral. Finch sat on the altar, juggling a couple of crucifixes and a dildo. His face was paraffin, the features melting and running into each other. He opened a mouth that was little more than a dark recess in which Calvin could just make out the stump of a tongue and said, "Legba."

Dressed like the Pope himself, Thom Neary stood up from a front row pew and began to alternately toss crucifixes and dildos to Finch, calling, "Hup! Hup!" like a circus performer. On the other side of the isle, Tiesha sat robed in deep blue, a laptop computer open on her knees. She winked at Calvin and said, "I dig what you done with the place, Padre."

Calvin looked back at the melted juggler, noting the white tips of bone where the fingers should have been. His arms blurred as he kept up with Bishop Neary's cocks and crosses. Finch opened that nightmare orifice again. "Legba kissed me," he gurgled. "But he's in love with you."

NINETEEN

TIESHA'S LIPS PURSED at the edge of her cup, her eyes squinting through the steam as she blew over the black circle of Jamaican Blue Mountain. She sat on a donated couch, pocked with cigarette burns and mismatched patches, and stared through the plate glass window. Across the street, the campus commons mellowed in the afternoon sun. It would be a few weeks yet before the students returned, then the wide lawn between buildings would boil with activity. She took a sip, tasted wood and earth, a hint of smoke.

A cargo van pulled up to the curb and whited-out her view. Tie sat up. She knew that van, recognized the rust spot by the left rear wheel. Horton used it from time to time. Tie had seen that van roll down the long drive at all hours on more than one occasion during her visits to Mason's. When Hisself wanted Tie, he sent one of his boys to fetch her at Mancy's restaurant. What the hell was Chrome Dome the Wonder Thug doing here? Tie exhaled and settled back into her seat as the driver slammed the door and walked around the front of the van.

Calvin was unmistakable in his black pants and matching shirt, the white tooth at his neck. He wore what Tie thought of as the "workin' preacher" uniform today. A black short-sleeved button-down revealed the end of a thick vein running over his biceps and branching out over a wiry forearm. He carried a black satchel that appeared empty from the way he swung it as he walked across the street and ducked into the campus chapel. A few minutes passed on the street—blue sedan, black coupe, bicycle and pretty blond rider—and Calvin emerged from the chapel clutching the satchel, but holding it down by his side, the muscles in his forearm rippling with the weight. He trotted across the street to the coffee shop.

A clutch of bells jangled overhead as Calvin pushed through the front door. He spotted Tiesha at once. She wore a pair of faded jeans, the knees completely ripped out, with a snug wifebeater tank top. The straps of a black bra contrasted with the straps of the tank top. Calvin had a sudden worry that he would trip as he made his way over to her. She made eye contact and smiled, looked away, then back.

"Sorry I'm late," he said.

Tie glanced at her naked, elegant wrist as if she wore a watch. "Hadn't noticed."

Calvin put the satchel down and sat in a beaten armchair on a diagonal from her. He pointed to a paperback on the coffee table in front of them. "Yours?" he asked, and picked it up. "No Exit and Other Plays."

"Yeah," she said, her voice soft. "I heard this quote from one of the plays in there and kinda' wanted to see where it came from."

Calvin flipped open to The Flies, scanned a few lines. "What was the quote?" he asked without looking up.

"Hell is other people."

"No Exit, that's my favorite," Calvin said. "You believe that? Hell is other people?"

Tie slid forward on the couch. "S'pose if I got stuck in a locked room with a bunch of jackasses for the rest of forever I would." She looked out the window. "Even if you liked someone, after a while no matter who they was, they'd get on your last nerve. Don't you think that would be bad, never being able to get a moment away for yourself? Lots of people talk about how heaven would be boring, just hanging out on a cloud. But sometimes I think that would be wonderful, you know? Being all alone like that in the middle of the sky."

Calvin couldn't remember much about his own possession. All he had was the vaguest sense of falling down a well, black and forever. "Huh," he breathed. "I think hell would be just that. The lack of other people."

"What's the matter, father, you don't dig on your own company?"

A sketch of a cello, rough waves of white pastel scratched on a charcoal-blackened background, hung on the exposed brick over Tiesha's head. "That's a nice piece," Calvin said, taking a moment to look around the rest of the coffee shop. Sketches and paintings in various styles covered the walls. A sign above the counter proclaimed the establishment as HOLY GROUNDS. Calvin nodded toward another sketch. "Students do these, I guess?"

"Some of them."

"You did the one with the cello, right?"

Tie's lips curled at the corners and she took a sip of her coffee. "You like it?"

"What're you doing with Mason?"

Tie stared at his collar. "Everybody's gotta' belong to somebody."

"Why'd you agree to meet with me, Tiesha?"

"Tie. Only my daddy calls me Tiesha." Mason did, too but she didn't want to tell him that for some reason.

"Fine. Tie," Calvin said. "Why are you with Mason? You're obviously intelligent, very attractive..." He couldn't think of anything to say after that. The way she looked at him. Damn this. He didn't know what he was doing here. "I mean, you could do anything you wanted."

"You'd be surprised how little a black woman can do, whether she wants to or not."

"Bullshit," Calvin said. "Sure, you have to deal with limitations that may not be forced on a white woman, or a woman from old money or something, but falling back on the whole race thing to explain—,"

"Whoa, cool out, Father Superior." Tie held up her hands. "All right, all right. So, it's bullshit. I could be doin' something other than playin' mistress to a mobster."

"Then why?"

"Why's anybody do what they do?" she said. "Why you doin' what you doin'? Life just ended up pointin' me this way." She waved a hand up and down his frame. "What's with this costume and all that shit? Don't tell me it's some kinda' calling, PAH-dre. You about as godly as I am ladylike."

"I think you're ladylike."

Tie's cheeks warmed. "Whatever," she blurted. "How'd you end up a priest, anyway?"

Calvin chuckled. "I was sort of adopted by the church."

"I was sort of adopted by Mason."

"What's your father think of your adoptive parent?"

"He's fine with me workin' at Mason's restaurant."

"You know that's not what I mean."

Tie rolled her eyes. "He'd probably get himself killed tryin' to lay some smack down on Mason if he ever found out."

"Sounds reasonable."

Silence enveloped them a moment. Calvin rose. "I'm getting a coffee, you want something?" She held up her steaming cup and he walked away. Tie watched him give his order to the barista, then scan the other works of art, the menu, everything he could not to turn around and look at her. Standing there so severe in his black clothing, he looked more undertaker than priest. What the hell was she doing here, talking to this man, this stranger? She never should have talked to him in the garden in the first place, should just get up and walk out. He came back with his drink and Tie had to restrict a grin.

Girl you need to get a hold of yourself.

Calvin sat down, inhaling the steam from his cinnamon coffee. "What're you thinking about?"

She thought fast. "Just wondering what you had in the bag."

Calvin darkened. "I don't think you want to know about that."

"It's for the kid, right? His problem?"

Calvin nodded. Took a sip and grimaced. Jesus, they just couldn't do coffee in the states like they could overseas.

"Somethin' wrong with your drink?"

Calvin smiled. "It's fine. I'm just being a snob."

Tie tipped her head to one side. "What's the best cup a coffee you ever had?"

Tough question. Great question. Led him back through some of the more enjoyable corridors in the labyrinth of his memory. Calvin's face drifted away with his recollections. After nearly half a minute he pronounced, "Collioure."

"Cull-your?"

"Close enough. It's a little town in the southwest of France." Warm memory bloomed across his features. "I was there off-season, so I didn't have to deal with all the touristy stuff."

Tie settled back, watched his face and imagined what he saw.

"The town's situated at the base of the Pyrenees Mountains. A bunch of famous impressionists used to work there just for the light. Anyway, I ended up on this marble plaza that went right down to the harbor. It was about an hour before sunrise. All the cafes were still closed, but this older gentleman was loading up his fishing boat for the day's work and he was roasting coffee over a fire on the beach next to the dock. He offered me a cup and we watched the sun come up."

Tie sighed. "Sounds incredible."

Calvin was quiet a moment, a shadow flickering across his face. "It was."

"My best cup was from a Dunkin' Donuts in Windsor, Ontario. A bunch of us drove up there to gamble in a boosted car when we were like nineteen. You could drink in Canada if you were nineteen then. I don't know if they still do it like that, though. We ended up losing all our scratch after like ten minutes and just wandering around town talking all night. The coffee really wasn't all that good, now that I think about it. It was just the way I felt. Grown up and free. Happy." Tie laughed, like light from a sparkler. "Not quite as fabulous as your story."

"Not bad, though. Sometimes I wish..." He didn't finish.

Tie stared at him for a long time, watching his face. She leaned forward and asked, "What's wrong with the kid?"

Calvin stared at her for a moment, trying to guess her thoughts, gauging how much she could handle. Fuck it. Let's see what she does. "Jeremy's possessed. He's dangerous. That's why I told you not to go upstairs. I'm performing the exorcism later tonight." He sat back and waited for it.

Tie studied him for a moment, her attention flicking from his left eye to his right. "You're not kidding me, are you."

"No."

"So, the bag is full of what? Bibles an' shit, or....?"

"Holy water and some other stuff I got today."

Tie started off into space then snap-focused back on Calvin. "You're really not fuckin' with me? He's possessed? Like by the devil?"

"I don't think it's the devil per se." Calvin sat back, releasing a long sigh. "Hell, maybe it is. What do I fuckin' know?"

"You're scared."

"You know what?" he said, staring hard at her eyes, seeing his own reflection. "I've gone through most of my adult life with very little fear of anything. And now, yeah, I'm scared out of my mind. It's not going to work the normal way, and I'm afraid of what I'm going to have to do to help this kid."

"Normal way?"

Calvin waved a hand as if he were performing a Vegas magic trick. "The usual biblical mumbo jumbo from the Roman Ritual just isn't going to cut it this time. I have to get creative, do something it won't expect."

"It? Like what, you mean the devil thing, the demon?"

"Yeah, that 'it'," Calvin said and sipped his coffee.

For a long while they sat in silence as the world passed by, muted by the plate glass. A grungy teenager in baggy pants and no shirt rolled by on a skate board. A tattoo scrawled across his shoulder blades in angular Gothic font read "SK8ORDIE". A ladybug, brilliant as a drop of blood, trundled along the caulking at the base of the window. It paused, stretched it wings and buzzed away. A young woman waddled along the other side of the street, her face buried in what could only be a textbook. She had short cropped hair and scrunched features. Tie watched her go and wondered what she was studying so hard.

She looked at Calvin. He seemed so sad, and that confused the hell out of her. Not because she cared about what made him sad—she did—but that wasn't what was throwing her. Tie was wrenched by the urge to do anything she could to make him happy. She wanted to see him laugh and brush that wavy hair off his forehead, to smile at her and take her hand. Tie had no reason to believe that she'd ever been in love with anyone in her life. She'd never wanted to be in love, thought it was impractical and expensive. Not to mention that women always seemed to get the short end of that particular stick anyway. Her mother had seen it that way, evaporating when Tie was only three, turning the tables on Tie's father before he could leave her.

Calvin felt her eyes on him and looked over. She didn't turn away. He didn't say anything. They just stared, caught in something huge, tidal. Calvin's heart pounded. He allowed himself to break eye contact and roam over her body, attempting to understand and record her musculature and skin. He was as obvious and open about it as if she had given him verbal permission. Tie watched his dark eyes and the lines around them. Her skin felt very warm.

"I think we're in trouble," she said.

He nodded. For the first time in weeks his nebulous doubts and worries faded. The world crystallized around this coffee shop, this corner by the window, this woman. The only other sensation he'd ever experienced that even came close to this feeling was the cone of silence that had accompanied the demon earlier. Calvin thought he had been afraid before. Now he was terrified. "I've never had anything to lose before," he said.

Tie smiled and stared. Her breath came fast. "I, um—," she started, then had to look away, but then the eye contact was broken and she had to look back. "Jesus, this is weird."

"For me too," he said. Father John Calvin didn't believe in any kind of anthropomorphic God, some white-haired iconographic splice of Santa Clause and Zeus, but the only way he could explain his feelings was to say it felt as if a great hand were pushing him toward this woman.

Tie reached forward and took his hand. Both of their palms were moist, but neither of them minded. "This is going to sound kinda' funny," she said. "But what're you doing after the exorcism?"

Calvin smiled and a laugh burst from his chest. "I hadn't thought about it all that much." That was almost true. He had only planned his life up through that evening. By the time the sun was down an hour, he might be dead. Now, however, he had reason to create a contingency plan. Like those neural pathways and muscle groups that had been trained to react before he could think, the part of Calvin's mind responsible for manipulating logistics on the fly kicked into overdrive. He squeezed her hand as his eyes began to tick off her lips, nostrils, hairline, the cup of coffee still steaming on the table next to her, the rip in her jeans and the wedge of skin it revealed.

"You're away from the mansion during the week, right?"

She squinted at him, "Yeah, why?"

"Can you be there tonight?" he asked, his eyes zipping around again, then centering on her. "I think I can get it all settled by around midnight."

Giddiness shook through Tie's body. She felt like she was planning to sneak out with a high school boyfriend. Except, if they got caught, Mason was likely to do a little more than ground them. "This is fucking crazy," she said, grinning like a kid.

Calvin's brow drew down. "I know it, but I'm getting pretty used to feeling crazy. This is the first time I've felt okay about it, though, so I'm going with it."

"Where do I meet you?"

"End of the driveway and be ready 'cause we're going fast."

"Midnight? If he catches us..."

"I know. He won't."

"Where're we goin'?"

"You like the woods?"

"I never been out of the city any farther than the 'burbs," she said.

"You'll love it," he gave her fingers a squeeze and stood up. The world spun and for a moment Calvin thought he might fall right over. His knees were shaking. Nothing was going fast enough. He had to get out of here and get started. He stopped and looked down into eyes that made him feel encompassed. "Tie, this is going be awful."

She half-turned her head away. "What do you mean?"

"I can't tell you all of it now," he said. "I don't even know everything myself yet, but saving this kid is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. The ugliest."

"You need my help?" she asked. "I'll help."

"Twelve o'clock, Tie."

TWENTY

HORTON SAT SENTRY by the bedroom door and waited for the priest. The demon sat up in bed, it's arms still restrained for all the good it did. It stared at Horton, its head tilted to one side, face focused on the bodyguard. Horton kept his eyes on the floor, but he could feel it looking at him, waiting for him to engage. It was hard enough just being this close to the damn thing, let alone by himself. He glanced at his taped-up pinky finger.

Its attention was palpable.

Horton gave in and glared at Jeremy, the familiar tug of pity in his chest cooling the disgust and anger. Poor kid, all scratched up and sick. It just looked like it hurt so much in there.

"The meat will bleed all the more if the Templar has his way," the demon croaked.

"Fuck you keep callin' him that?" Horton spat. "Templar? What's that about?"

"Loosen these restraints and we'll enlighten you."

Horton blew a short raspberry. "Do it yourself, Houdini."

Jeremy's eyes twinkled. "The Templar will try to take the Master's whore. He dreams of fucking her so she can shit his piglets."

Horton knew better, but he just couldn't keep himself together. He was exhausted and every time the damn thing talked at him he wanted to hit a wall. Talking back was the only way to vent at least some of his frustration. "Okay, I'll bite. Who're you babbling about now?"

"You're perfect for your position, bondsman. Loyal as a good sword and witless as the metal from which it's forged. Perhaps his lordship will mount you over the fireplace. Perhaps, once his whore is gone, he'll just mount you." Jeremy leaned forward. "Is that particular duty part of your job description?"

Horton looked away. "Eat shit," he said and immediately regretted it as the aroma of fresh excrement stained the air. His nose wrinkled and he coughed. "You've got a real sick sense of humor."

Sadness rippled through Jeremy's torn face, almost softening it. "Ignorance your shield."

"That's me, dumb as a hunk of metal, right?" Horton's brow rose. "Fuck you. I can't wait until the Templar gets here, so we can commence to kicking your ass out of my boy."

"Your boy?"

Horton sat up. "Well, I meant..."

"The meat has no love for you, bondsman. No more feeling than he has for the family car."

Horton looked at the floor, his cheeks flushed.

"Does that smack of betrayal?" the demon asked. "Shall we punish the meat for you?"

"No!" Horton held up his hands, the tops of his thighs tensed. "No, just...don't."

As if animated by invisible hands, one of the leather restraining cuffs began to undo itself. Eyes locked on Horton, the goblin-boy yanked a hand free and held it out for Horton's inspection. The nails were splintered and split back to the quick, the tissue beneath blue-black. The demon cramped the fingers into a talon. "Hmm?" it mused. "What would befit a proper punishment for the meat's lack of feeling for such a loyal servant?" It brought the claw toward its face. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. You believe in vengeance, bondsman, yes? An eye for an eye?"

Horton tried to stand and found he couldn't. His legs wouldn't work. He couldn't even feel them. "Lemme' up."

The demon fingered its own scabby brow. "Which eye will it be, then?"

Horton shook his head back and forth. "Don't," he begged. Sweat slicked his head and popped out against his skin as his body trembled against the demon's force. Horton's voice broke. "Why can't you leave him alone?"

"Just think of what you can do with the extra hole."

Horton gave up and slumped back in the chair. "He's only a little boy. Just little..."

"Perhaps you could use it as a paper weight."

Horton slammed forward against the force of the demon's will and shouted, "Take mine! You can have mine! LEAVE THE BOY ALONE!" He collapsed forward, wracked with silent sobs.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Horton bucked out of the chair and sprawled on the floor. Emma Grouwe stood over him holding a stainless steel tray of medication. Her eyebrows bent, "What's all this shouting about?"

Horton looked over at Jeremy, the boy lay back in bed, the restraints clamped tight around his wrists. Both eyes were shut and motionless behind thin eyelids. Gentle breaths puffed between his parted lips. Were it not for his sallow coloring and the scratches, he would have appeared to be a normal child in the warm clutches of a deep sleep. Horton got to his feet and mumbled something about a nightmare.

Emma made a sound that at once conveyed annoyance and apathy, then busied herself with administering Jeremy's evening meds. When she was done, she checked his vitals then left the room without a second look at Horton who mumbled a lame "Thanks," as she closed the door.

The bodyguard slumped up against the door and put his face in his hands. He felt the demon staring at him and peered through his fingers like a kid hiding from a horror movie. Jeremy wore a look of deepest concern and shook his head back and forth. Horton squeezed his eyes shut. Helpless remorse draped over his shoulders like a lead coat. Hot tears welled and ran over his face. "God," he whispered. "Help me."

"God," the demon said. "Ignores."

Horton looked into the bleeding face of despair and knew it told the truth.

The demon's own gaze shone bright and triumphant through the ragged boy's eyes as a soft knock came on the bedroom door.

"Finally," it whispered.

Horton opened the door and exhaled. "Father. Man, am I glad you're here." He squinted at what appeared to be a chicken's claw hanging from a knotted cord around Calvin's neck like a bizarre pendant. "The hell is that?"

"Hungry?"  
"Huh?" Horton's whole world was spinning. He flinched as if struck as the demon roared behind him.

"TEMPLARRRRR!!"

Calvin flicked an annoyed glance over the bodyguard's shoulder. "Shaddup a minute, okay?" He pulled Horton out into the hall and slammed the door. "Jesus, that fucker gets on my last nerve."

"What's with the chicken foot?"

Calvin smiled at Horton and for a moment the bodyguard was overcome with a feeling he'd not experienced in some time. Buoyancy filled his sagging muscles like helium and he stood up straighter. Outside the lair of a monster that had eaten a little boy and wore his skin like a coat, outside in the darkened halls of the evil master's house, Father John Calvin glowed. His eyes shone with inner metal. Horton looked the priest up and down. Save for the strange medallion, Calvin fit his station to a tee: black suit, white collar, dark leather book clutched to his chest.

"Something's different about you," Horton said. "You get laid or something?"

Calvin laughed. "You studied martial arts; what do you know about Zen?"

"Not much. I mean, I read a little about it and I had an instructor used to fuckin' go on and on about it, but..." He looked over his shoulder at the closed door, then back at Calvin. "What's this got to do with our problem?"

"I'll give you the simplest crash course on Zen you ever heard," Calvin said. "Ready?"

"Go."

"Zen's about letting go." Calvin paused, thought. "Okay, some of Zen's about letting go. If you align yourself with the target, aim, and then give up at the instant before you fire, you can't miss."

"What are you fucking talking about?"

Calvin put a warm hand on Horton's cinder block shoulder. "In a minute I'm going to go in that room and perform a magic act the world has probably never seen before. I have very little idea if it's going to work or not. In so doing I'm probably going to piss off a demon." Calvin squeezed Horton's shoulder. "Let that one sink in, okay? I'm going to go piss off a demon."

Horton held the priest's eyes. Calvin had a look that Horton had seen before, but he couldn't quite place it. No, that wasn't right. Horton had seen men get close to that look. It was abandon. He'd seen it in the eyes of a junkie who'd charged his gun when he was still on the beat. The kid had watched Horton pull his piece, aim it straight at his chest, and then the punk had smiled. He'd been so sure the bullets would just bounce off, and they had. The hollow point slugs had bounced off his breast bone and rib cage, fragmenting and shredding his insides as if he'd swallowed a swarm of metal hornets. And now Calvin radiated that same abandon, but with even more intensity; born of soul not PCP.

"You ain't scared?"

Calvin's mouth twitched. "I think I'm past it. I've got something...else, now. I've got something that's more important than this. If this doesn't work, I mean."

Horton wondered if Calvin was talking about God or—he glanced again at the chicken foot—something. Fuck it, he didn't need to understand what was going on with the quarterback to follow his lead on the play. "Okay," Horton said. "What do you need me to do?"

Calvin gave Horton's shoulder one more squeeze and let his hand fall. "Where's mister Mason right now?"

"I'm pretty sure he's in his office."

Calvin thought of the camera in the ceiling fan in Jeremy's room. "Box seats for the big event, huh? I want you to join him then. And Horton, whatever you do, whatever you hear or see, I need you to make sure you keep his eyes off those fucking cameras. Don't let him get in my way, you get me? It could mean everything."

"I don't know if I can—"

Calvin stared. "Jeremy."

"Yeah, okay." Horton nodded. "Done."

"Get moving, then." Calvin said.

Horton walked on down the hall and stopped as he heard the doorknob on Jeremy's room click. He turned and caught Calvin before he could open the door. "Don't matter what happens anymore," he said. "Just save the boy."

Calvin spared the bodyguard a last look, willing Horton's image into the deepest parts of his memory as if he were a rare bird worth cataloguing. A trace of sadness tinted the edges of Calvin's mood. If his wild plan worked, part of the boy would be beyond salvation forever. Perhaps the best part. He pushed into room, into the stench, into an atmosphere charged. Bishop Thom Neary lay on the bed, frowning at him.

"What are you doin', boyo?"

Calvin closed his eyes and breathed. It wasn't Thom Neary; it couldn't change itself into a shark or turn its tongue into a roller coaster ride that ran through a bunch of tunnels in its head. What it could do was get inside Calvin's head and make him see things. No matter what it said or what he thought he saw, he had to keep on top of himself. Calvin opened his eyes and exhaled. "Smoke and mirrors," he said.

Neary turned his head half to the side and held up his jeweled hand. "Kiss the ring, Father Calvin."

"Kiss my ass, motherfucker."

"Oh, Johnny, such language."

Calvin glanced down at his watch. He'd give Horton a good ten minutes to get set in Mason's office. "Whatever," he said. "You're not Thom Neary, so you might as well," Calvin waved his hands back and forth, "do what you do and morph back into some other Power Ranger or whatever. This shit isn't gonna' do it." Calvin blinked and Neary was replaced by the boy again. Scarred and monstrous, but the boy. Calvin sighed. "I'd say that was better, but you look like shit."

The demon smiled and inclined its head.

"Listen," Calvin asked, leaning up against the door. "What's the deal with possession anyway? I mean, I realize the whole point is to try and make everyone around the victim feel awful and lose faith and everything, but after that...what? Is it just evil for evil's sake?"

Jeremy squinted, the corners of his eyes wiggling. He let go with a violent sneeze and sprayed the bedclothes with greenish phlegm and blood.

"That some kind of symbolic answer or are you just allergic to poultry?" Calvin waggled the chicken claw. He waited for it to answer, but the demon boy just glared over a huge grin. Calvin switched tracks. "You've really freaked out Horton, you know? I don't think he's ever going to be okay after this."

"Shame."

Calvin's left eyebrow folded up. "You mean that?"

"We do," it said. "We respect the bondsman's loyalty."

"Weirdest goddamn thing, isn't it? Considering."

"Considering...?"

"Can't you guess? I mean, can't you read my mind and figure out what I'm talking about?"

Jeremy spat a wad of yellow bile at Calvin's head with the accuracy of a cobra. The priest ducked and the sputum splashed against the wall, a phosphorescent streak against the white paint. Calvin recovered and checked his shoulder for any splashback. "I bet you're good at flipping cards into a top hat, huh?"

"The slave princess already has a master, Templar." The boy writhed under the sheets, thrusting his pelvis and grinding. "He sodomizes her as we speak."

A random memory flew into Calvin's mind and he said, "I once stood on an old woman's chest, pinned her down in the middle of the street in the Balkans back in '91. Fired a Desert Eagle with hydra-tips dead into her nose. What was left looked like a perfect red halo."

The demon's smile faded and it looked away.

Calvin's heart pounded. It hadn't been expecting that. He might actually be able to pull this off. Calvin checked his watch. Almost time. He walked over to the side of the bed and sat down. The demon eyed him, it's head turned slightly. "You know what happened to the last one who tried to touch the meat. The boy cunt is mine, Templar."

"Yeah, Sinclair. You bit his dork clean off. Saved it for Finch," Calvin nodded. "It was kind of you to share like that."

The demon grinned. Its features started to melt into themselves, rearrange. Calvin's gut lurched at the sight, but he kept himself together. Just smoke and mirrors. But still, it was hell trying to keep his cool watching the little boy's scabby face whirl into that of a pretty young black woman. "It won't work, honey," she said, her eyes bright and cruel. "You know you can't have me. I don' go with faggot priests, Johnny."

Calvin laughed and sat back. Better all the time.

The demon swam back to the surface, erasing the Tie mask. "Something amuses you, Templar?"

"Yeah," he said. "I never told her my first name. Kind of makes it hard to pass off the lie if you make mistakes like that."

The demon scowled, focused. Pain skewered the back of Calvin's hand as a blood vessel burst just under the skin. He restrained his reflexive flinch, breathing a measured exhale and holding the demon's eyes with his own. After several silent moments, Calvin looked down at his hand. A splotch of darkness about the size of a quarter stained the back of his hand below the middle finger.

"That could have happened within the confines of your diminutive cranium, Templar."

Calvin nodded, and checked his watch again. Time enough. He got up, walked toward the door then stopped.

"Giving up so soon, priest?"

Calvin's upper lip bent to the side. "Just arranging for more privacy," he muttered, pulling out a small can of black spray paint from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He shook it, the interior mixing ball clacking against the metal, and raised it up to the ceiling fan. "'Night, Gracie," he said and began to spray every bump and opening in the motor housing. Anything that might be or conceal a lens got a healthy coating of Krylon Midnight Black. The scent of petrochemicals cut the air, but anything was an improvement over the demon's bodily discharges.

Calvin faced Jeremy and closed his eyes. This was it. Place your bets, high-rollers. He let himself and his situation go, allowing the world and its dangers to fall away as emptiness flowed into every corner of his mind like cool water. What came next would be the hardest part, convincing himself that what he was about to do was viable, real. If he believed, the demon might believe as well. If he had faith, the magic could work. Every spell, every prayer, every ceremony were all just guides for the mind, molds for reality. The only way to fly...

"Is to forget you're falling," he said and opened his eyes.

The demon cocked its head.

"Adagime ooeeh nist surt oowhat neuhaverse rooeeh ahvesss." Calvin mumbled, his voice far away, his throat open and low. He shoved the spray can back into his pocket and removed an old-fashioned hip flask. He unscrewed the cap and repeated, "Adagime ooeeh nist surt oowhat neuhaverse rooeeh ahvesss." Calvin took a pull off the flask. It was warm and tasted like iron and diluted salt. His face wrinkled, but he held the liquid in his mouth and walked closer to the boy.

"What game is this, Templar?"

Calvin leaned down and spat a mixture of chicken blood and holy water in the boy's face. "Adagime ooeeh nist surt oowhat neuhaverse rooeeh ahvesss."

The demon sputtered and cried, "Hurts! Hurtsss!" It sat up and shook its head to clear its eyes. "Bastard! Cocksucker!"

Calvin placed his thumb over the opening in the flask and sprinkled the bed with the blood-water in a circle around the boy. He winked. "Oh, I'm just gettin' started." He took another mouthful and spat into his own hand. "Adagime ooeeh nist surt oowhat neuhaverse rooeeh ahvesss." Calvin pressed his dripping palm onto each of his own cheeks, printing them with red hand marks like war paint. He drew a rough cross on his forehead, and stepped back, stopping at the foot of the bed. He turned three hundred and sixty degrees, dribbling the boundaries of a circle around himself, careful to save a little liquid for the rest of the ceremony. He faced the hissing, spitting demon child. "With this circle, I describe the boundaries of dark and light. I bind you to your side and me to mine."

The demon screamed. "Insolence! Arrogance!" It glared, eyes like ingots. "This is your end, Templar."

Calvin held his breath and waited for it, the telekinetic death blow, the stroke or aneurysm, the heart attack. Maybe Jeremy would just stop his lungs and watch him flop around like a fish out of water as he suffocated. The demon squinted at him, focusing all its rage...and nothing. A moment passed, another.

"What is this?" the demon growled.

Calvin's mouth dropped open. "Holy shit," he said. "It worked."

* * *

MASON SURGED UP from his chair as the image of his son's room went dark on the monitor. He bulled his way around the desk, barking his hip on the sharp corner, but not registering the pain. He stood in front of the surveillance center and touched the area on the screen that should have shown Jeremy's room as if his very presence would somehow clear up the image. "Did that sonofabitch do what I think he just did?"

Horton stood by the door, arms crossed. He stared at the floor.

Mason's voice iced across the room. "I'm talking to you, Horton."

"Yes, sir," Horton said. "Spray paint, looked like."

The blood drained from Mason's face save for two burning spots on his cheekbones. He took a shaking step toward the door. A muscle in Horton's back twitched, but he didn't think Mason had caught it. It was like facing off with an angry dog; don't move, don't run. Mason stopped and put his hand on the back of one of the leather chairs facing his desk. His fingers squeaked into the cured hide.

He had agreed to the priest's request that he stay away from the exorcism, but he hadn't said anything about not watching. Now, that bastard had taken away his eyes. His audacity was unacceptable. Mason would have eliminated any other man for all Calvin had said and done thus far. There would be a reckoning when this was over and he had his son back.

"Go back in there and clean off the camera, Horton."

The mellow office light office hummed off Horton's head as he shook it from side to side. "Can't do it, sir."

Mason cupped his ear. "Excuse me?" Electricity edged his voice. "Didn't quite get you."

"It's what's best for Jeremy, sir."

"I promised not to get in the way. I didn't say anything about not watching. Now, get in that fucking room, and clean off that fucking camera, right fucking now, Mr. Horton."

"No, sir."

Mason's voice blackened. "You're about fifteen seconds away from a column inch in the obits."

Horton had never seen Mr. Mason this animated. He had always been the iceman, the killer robot king. This loose grip on himself was new ground. Horton could only hope he was bluffing. "Sir, I would never get in your face normally. You know that. But Father Calvin said that if you get involved in any way the, ah, thing could use it against us. It could hurt Jeremy."

Mason stabbed a finger at the monitor. "How is watching getting involved? Huh, how? Explain that to me quick, Horton."

The bodyguard glanced over at the blank square. It floated in the midst of the other images from the remaining house cameras like an eye patch. He might not be able to see into the kid's room, but he could feel the boy and priest in there. Like anyone who makes his living through violence, he could feel the fight raging even behind the blind. An image of the troll-boy smilin' pretty for the camera surfaced in his memory. "It'll know if you're watching, Mr. Mason."

Mason stared off. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "You're right." He looked up and took a deep breath. "Of course, you're right, Horton. I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"No problem, sir, of course. You're just being a concerned parent." He let his arms drop, casual as could be, and squared his footing.

Mason began to turn back toward the desk, "It's just that I—." He exploded at Horton, shoulder thrown forward like a battering ram.

Horton had seen it coming a mile off. Concerned parent his ass. He allowed Mason to enter his physical sphere, a boundary of personal space about six feet in diameter, then redirected Mason's charge with a simple twist of the hips, guiding his employer around and depositing him in a chair with little more than a grunt. Horton leaned down and put his hands on the arms of the chair, locking his boss into the seat.

Mason burned up at Horton, a vein in his temple pulsed.

"I'm going to turn the cameras off now, sir," Horton measured each word slow and easy. "Then I'm going to fix us both very strong drinks. We're going to sit and drink and talk about what we have in common until the Padre comes and gets us."

Mason's eyes flashed. "We have nothing in common," he said, his voice gray as deadwood.

"We both love your son, Frank." Or at least, Horton thought, I do and God help us both if you try to go through me again.

Mason shoved Horton out of his face and stood up, but moved toward the bar not the door. He stared for another moment at the monitors, then clicked the power off. "I'll fix my own goddamn drink." He'd seen a decision behind Horton's face. One that required Mason to make a decision of his own. The bodyguard wasn't his anymore. Horton belonged to the boy. There would indeed be one serious fucking reckoning.

Mason clinked ice into a tumbler and asked over his shoulder, "Horton?"

"Sir?"

"You ever call me Frank again and I'll have your tongue charbroiled in front of you, okay?"

Horton wiped the smile off his face so it wouldn't tint his voice. "Understood, Mr. Mason."

* * *

THE DEMON EXPLODED with a pyroclast of obscenities as it jerked at the restraints. It split the room with the howls of dying animals and screams that would eclipse a Visigoth war cry. It thrashed like a netted game fish, extremities a foam of motion and tangled bedding. Every so often it would cease and focus on Calvin, eyes gleaming like illuminated sapphires. Calvin would steel himself for the telekinetic hit, but when none came the demon would once again launch itself into a blizzard of hysterical strength and struggle.

After nearly fifteen minutes, it slumped back against the pillow, panting. "What have you done, Templar, fucking faggot, cocksucker, goat fucker? What have you done?"

For a moment, Calvin was sure it would recommence the panicked spasms, but it finally seemed to have exhausted the body's reserves. "I gave you want you wanted."

The boy looked around the room with wide, feverish eyes, as if searching for help from an absent party. "We don't understand."

"Bet you haven't said that in a long time, huh?"

It glared, a low growl swelled its throat.

"I've bound you," Calvin explained. "You're a part of Jeremy now." He interlaced his fingers. "Locked in, so to speak."

"Lies," it hissed.

"You'd know about that wouldn't you? 'Course, all you have to do is read my mind to know whether or not I'm telling the truth, right?" Mock realization dawned across his features. "Oh wait, you can't read my mind anymore, can you? Can't do any of your nasty little magic tricks. You're stuck all the way inside that kid now. If Jeremy can't do it, neither can you. That must be tough for you," Calvin mused. "Like having one of your senses cut off or something."

"Release us, Templar."

"Or what? No really, I'm interested."

"Unimaginable—"

"Give it a rest," Calvin said and walked over to the bed. He grabbed the boy's wrist and counted off the pulse. Steady. Jesus, kids were incredible. Made out of Kevlar or something. Calvin just hoped Jeremy's mind would be as resilient as his body.

"Remove your filthy hands from our meat."

Calvin stared at the boy, attempting to see past the rage and indignation of the invader to the frightened child within. He sighed. "I'm sorry as hell about this next part, kid," he said and struck the boy's face with a back handed slap that resounded like a whip crack. The demon's eyes squinted shut with the blow then peeled open slow and huge.

"That's a new one, huh?" Calvin asked. "Never felt physical pain before, have you?"

A single tear slid from Jeremy's left eye. "There will be no more warnings, Templar."

Calvin slapped the boy again, opening a couple of old scratches. They began to seep as the handprint below blushed in. The demon loosed a jarring roar. Calvin struck Jeremy's forehead with the heel of his hand, driving the boy's head back into the pillow like an abusive older brother. It had the desired effect.

"We'll have no more of that," Calvin said.

"Stop, Templar. Stop, priest. On your life, stop. We'll spend eternity eating your soul and shitting you out."

Calvin leaned in, grabbing the demon's eyes with his own. "You get out of the boy, and I'll stop." He snatched a lock of Jeremy's fine hair. "Otherwise...," Calvin yanked and the demon howled.

"Kill the meat," it panted. "We'll kill the meat!"

"Oh, I doubt that. Killing that kid will evict you. If it comes down to it, I'll kill Jeremy myself to get him away from you."

"Never would." It shook its head back and forth. "You never would."

Calvin pulled a single razor blade from the cuff of his jacket and held it up so the light could run the steel. "I'll make sure it hurts."

The boy's eyes followed the razor as Calvin moved it back and forth. "Help! Help me! He's gonna' cut me!" the demon shouted in Jeremy's voice. "Dad, daddy!" The boy's eyes narrowed and he screamed, "Nurse Grouwe, help me please!"

Calvin slipped the razor back into his sleeve and tipped a wink at the boy. "Thanks," he said, just as the door banged open and Emma Grouwe barged into the room in a pink house coat, her hair lose and flowing.

"What's going on? Here now, what are you doing?"

Jeremy strained against his bonds. "He's got a razor blade. Said he was gonna' hurt me."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Everything all right, Father?"

"Yeah," Calvin gave her a tired smile. "He told me that Mr. Horton was going to bite him a little while ago." He shook his head back and forth.

"Poor dear," Emma said. "He's just so..." She looked at the boy. "You'll feel better soon, sweetheart."

"Cut me!" Jeremy screeched. "He said he would hurt me!"

Emma turned to Calvin. "Well, I'm up now. Need anything?"

"Surprised you can sleep through any of this with all the yelling."

Emma's lip twisted up at the corner. Calvin figured it might be the closest expression to a smile the woman knew. "When you've worked in residence as psychiatric facilities for as long as I have, you learn to sleep through just about everything."

"I'll bet."

"Yep." She sighed and glanced at Jeremy.

"Pig cunt."

Emma blew him a kiss. "Well, last call. Get you anything, Father?"

"Actually, if you're going to the kitchen, I'd love a glass of milk."

Emma nodded. "Sure thing."

As she turned, the smile melted off Calvin's face. He rose on silent feet and reflexively calculated the distance to Emma's skull and the force required. He made a fist with the knuckles of the first and second fingers protruding, then pistoned into the back of Emma Grouwe's head. She exhaled a surprised, "Buh!" and crumpled. Calvin bent and checked her pulse, glad that he wouldn't be around when she woke up. She wouldn't remember what had happened, but he didn't dig the prospect of spending time around a hard ass like Emma Grouwe as she nursed what would probably be the worst headache of her life. Calvin stepped over her and into the hall.

Emma's room was the first on the right. He pushed through the door and found the object of his search right away. A large black medical bag sat gleaming on the night stand. Calvin cracked it open and rifled the contents. There were enough thorazine and first aid supplies to last for at least a week, although he didn't plan on doping the boy much. Just enough to shut him up for the next few hours.

A minute later, the demon recoiled against the headboard as a priest with a huge grin advanced across the room, a dripping syringe in his hand. A moment later, Calvin stood up and watched Jeremy blur as he slid under the influence of the drug.

Calvin waggled his fingers. "'Night, sweet prince."

TWENTY ONE

HIDING IN THE shadows behind a brick gatepost at the end of Massa's driveway, Tie wondered if this was the stupidest thing she had ever done. She shifted the straps of her backpack, crammed full of toiletries, some fresh shirts, and a few wadded-up pairs of panties. Calvin had said the woods and that was like camping she figured, so better to pack light. Not that she'd ever been camping or anything, but it seemed like good sense. Calvin. An image of his face rolled behind her eyes, hard and a bit bewildered, like he was always a little confused about something. The corners of her lips pursed into a smile.

"Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man," she whispered to the crickets. Tie felt like she had to pee, but knew she didn't really. She'd made sure to take care of that before leaving her apartment. She'd stood in the door and stared into her tiny home, wondering if she would ever see any of it again. The Matisse prints ripped from a calendar tacked to the drywall, the IKEA bookshelves, the broken TV—this was what a job as a waitress in a mob-owned steakhouse and the occasional fuck with the boss could buy. She'd left the light on and forgotten to lock the door.

Now, she stood in the dark and thought about the only other time in her life she'd felt this mix of fear and exhilaration: the first time Mason had called her over to his table. He'd been laughing and smoking cigars with some of his boys—Sinclair had been there and maybe Finch. Mason had waved her over. He and his crew were not at a table in her section, but she knew who he was and got over to his table quick. All the girls knew him.

One of Tie's co-workers, a trashy little thing named Stephie, had been rumored to have dated Mr. Mason for a while. Stephie and Tie hadn't been close, but Tie had liked Stephie's voice, a high-end sandpaper, sexy-sweet-tough. And Stephie had been friendly, not open, but easy to be around. She didn't show up for work one day and when Tie had asked the manager about it, he'd told her to shut the fuck up and get back to work. No one had talked about Stephie any more after that. So when Mason smiled and called Tie over to his table, she had just about tripped over her own feet. The following morning she'd found herself in his bed. She'd woken up with a sense of finality, like a sale had closed, but she wasn't the one who'd done the buying or the selling. She'd been the product.

No more. Not with Calvin. When she met the priest (A goddamn priest! She was never going to get over that.) it was the first time Tie felt that someone else had become a part of her life instead of her becoming a part of someone else's. She felt added on to instead of subtracted from. And the way he looked at her... Tie smiled like the Cheshire Cat, her cheeks burned.

Something was coming down the drive. She cocked her head, screened out the chirping of crickets and caught the sound of gravel popping under tires. Had to be, but there was no engine noise. Tie risked a look around the brick pillar just as the white cargo van rolled into view around a bend in the drive. "Oh man, oh man, oh man." She clenched her fists. Now she really did have to pee. The van cleared the pillars and stopped.

Calvin's amplified whisper scratched through the air. "Tie? You here? Tie!"

"Here," she said and jumped into the van as Calvin reached over and pushed open the passenger door. He keyed the engine and hit the gas before both of Tie's feet were even on the floor. The heavy door slammed shut. "Whoa!"

"Sorry," Calvin said, gunning the engine and roaring off onto a dark road. "I don't know how much of a lead we have over them. Might be a few minutes, or...not sure."

Tie squinted through the windshield at the rushing night. "Don't you need your lights?" She pushed the heels of her hands into the seat and dug in her nails as Calvin took a sharp corner.

"Not yet," he said. "He'll be able to see our lights from the house. We need to go another quarter mile."

They sat in silence for a minute more then Calvin rounded another turn and braked as the road deadheaded into a perpendicular stretch that would lead them to the highway. He turned to Tie and allowed himself to see her for the first time that night. His chest warmed and his blood felt clean, light. He wasn't sad, but his eyes were hot. She wore a red baseball cap turned around backward with Toledo Mudhens sewn in white thread. The cap did it. He was in love with her. They'd never even kissed.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi." It was all he had at the moment.

"You, uh, gonna' get us moving here, Father?"

"Huh? Yeah, no, right. Of course." He scowled, remembering what he'd meant to ask her. "How'd you get to the house?"

"Cab."

"When was that?"

Tie blushed in the dark. She'd gotten to Mason's driveway a full hour earlier than she'd needed to. She'd just been so excited. "'Round eleven."

"You waited in the dark all that time?"

She smacked his thigh. "Shut up and drive, white boy."

Gravel rained up against the undercarriage as Calvin put his foot down. He hit the headlights and the world extended in twin fans for about a hundred feet. Tie watched Calvin's eyes flick off points in the road. He blinked and squinted. She followed his gaze and startled at the pair of red eyes floating just off the shoulder. "Deer," she gasped.

"You'll see a lot more of those in the next few days."

"Yeah? Where're we goin'? You said the woods." She smiled at her own voice. She was like a little girl on an adventure.

"The Upper Peninsula," Calvin said. "There's a retreat up there the Society uses from time to time. It's really just a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but it ought to be safe for a while."

"Society?"

"Jesuits. Call themselves the Society of Jesus."

"Sounds kinda' hippyish or something. Society of Jesus," Tie said, tasting it. "You a Jesuit then?"

"No. I'm Catholic like they are, but different. In fact, there's only a couple of people in my order."

"Including you? Sounds more like a cult."

Calvin snorted a laugh. "That's more apt than you know."

"There's a lot I don't know about you. Only thing I know is you're a priest, but not really, and that you work for a mobster." Tie remembered her seat belt and pulled it tight between her breasts. "Well, not anymore. You realize the kind of trouble you're in, runnin' off with me?"

Calvin smirked and laid his wrist across the wheel, his hand dangling. "You're not the only thing I stole from Frank Mason."

"I'm not a thing."

"No," Calvin said, "No, you're not, Tie. I'm sorry I put it like that."

"S'okay." Tie looked out the window; the world flashed by in muted night colors through her reflection. "What else you take?"

Calvin jerked his head over his shoulder. Tie turned in her seat so she could look into the back of the van. She whipped back forward and stared through the windshield. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

Tie forced herself to ask it. "He dead?"

"Drugged."

She exhaled, faced Calvin. The light from the dashboard and the oncoming cars gave his skin a luminescence that made Tie think of horror movies. "What's your first name?"

Calvin laughed.

"What's so funny? You got a stupid name or somethin'?"

"I'm Johnny."

Tie laughed.

"What?" Calvin asked. "That a stupid name?"

"No," she said. "Doesn't fit you is all. Father Johnny. Just don't work."

"You can call me whatever you want," Calvin said. "Only one other person ever calls me Johnny anyway."

"Who's that? The other member of your little cult?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"You gonna' tell me about that, 'bout you?" Tie asked. "What's the name of this deal you're in, Church of the Kidnapping Super-Freaks?"

"Actually, it's the New Church of the Kidnapping Super-Freaks." Calvin glanced over in search of a smile. He got a jump from looking at her again, but Tie's face, while still soft and open, was serious. Calvin faced front. He'd already gotten them both killed by taking her with him. Whatever else he told her now didn't matter. Calvin took a breath and let it go. "You ever hear of the Knights Templar?"

"Indiana Jones," Tie said. "Third movie. The one with that old James Bond guy."

"Old James Bond guy? Roger Moore?"

"Naw, the other one."

"Sean Connery?"

"Him, yeah. Anyway, there was this really old guy in the end, like a thousand years old. Not Sean Connery, though. He was the protector for the Holy Grail. He was s'posed to be one of the temple guys you just said."

"Guarding the Holy Grail was only part of it."

Tie turned in her seat, the vinyl squeaking under her. "What? You mean like this shit is for real?"

"Not all of it," Calvin said. "There was a Cup of Christ that was used to catch his blood, but the real Grail was something else entirely. There're a lot of theories about it, but no one really knows if it existed like in the movies. Some people think the Grail was a metaphor for a person, that holding the blood of Christ really means someone who was descended from Jesus."

"Descended? What, you mean like he had kids?"

"Like I said, there were a lot of theories." Calvin slewed up an entrance ramp to the highway and they merged with the light flow of late night traffic. "There was supposed to be a treasure trove of documents under the original Temple of Solomon that gave the bloodlines of Christ down through the centuries. One duty of the Knights Templar was to protect the Temple of Solomon. From that base, they evolved into a very powerful, very influential society."

"How come they're not around today if they was such hot shit?"

"Well, what it comes down to is that they got a little too powerful for the Vatican to stay comfortable with it."

"Wait," Tie said, "weren't they part of the Vatican?"

"Yeah, a very special part."

"You keep saying that. What's the deal?"

"Know what tithing is?"

"In church, when they pass the plate for collections?"

"That's right, and religious doctrine as well as state law—remember, back then they were one and the same—stated that a person could only tithe within the walls of the church. Except, for the Templars, and that's what gave them all their power."

"So they could like fundraise anywhere they wanted?" Tie said. "So? So what? I don't get why that would make them such a big deal."

Calvin sighed and screwed up his forehead. "Okay," he said. "Imagine it like this: a group of armed men on horseback, in the finest armor and clothing money could buy, come riding into your town, demanding money in the name of God. In exchange, they offer divine salvation and the favor of the church."

"Okay."

"Now, imagine what that would look like today."

"What like guys on horses rollin' up main street?"

Calvin shook his head. "No, future 'em up. Not suits of armor, but Armani suits. And not swords, but—"

"Guns," Tie finished, her eyes widening. "You're talkin' 'bout protection money like with the Mafia!"

"Dead on." Calvin said. "But imagine a Mafia that had the backing of the cops and government. Not the under-wraps backing they've got today, but out-in-public backing. Imagine how rich they'd get, how powerful."

"Make Al Capone look small-time," Tie said. "So the big boys at the Vatican felt all threatened and all, right? So, they broke up the Knights?"

"After they got a little too big for their britches, one of the Popes declared the Templars heretics. They were hunted down and nearly wiped out. There was a lot more getting burned at the stake than witches in those days."

"Damn," Tie whispered. "Talk about a corporate fuckover."

"That's great," Calvin said, nodding and laughing. "I like that."

"So, but wait—you said that you and this other dude were Templars, right?"

"The last two."

"Does the Vatican know about you?"

"Oh, they fund us. We work for them."

"Doin' what? I know it ain't fundraising."

Calvin glanced over at her. "Try contract killing."

She was quiet a moment. "You're serious. You kill people for the Vatican."

"I used to. I'm done now, Tie. I'm retired."

Her eyebrow rose. "They let you retire from something like that? You, uh, get a pension, Father?"

Calvin stuck out his lower jaw and exhaled. "No and no."

"Mason's the least of your worries, ain't he?'

"Probably."

"How'd you get in with him, anyway?"

"He knows my boss, that other dude."

"One who calls you Johnny?"

"Him."

"Why'd they send you to take care of the kid?" Tie asked. "I know you a priest and all, but aren't there ones that are a little more," she searched for the right word, "specialized for that kind of deal?"

Calvin gripped the wheel. "I'm the only one who can do it. At least my boss thinks so."

"Why?"

Calvin thought about the child in the back and the demon he'd highjacked into riding him like a cowboy tied to the saddle. Once again, he tried to remember his own time in the belly of the beast, and came away with a sense of darkness and falling but no concrete memory. "Something happened to me when I was a kid, just a little older than Jeremy."

"Jeremy," Tie repeated. "I keep forgetting his name."

"Mason wasn't big on making you part of the family unit, huh?"

"You could say that." She waved away the tangent. "What happened? When you were a kid, I mean."

"I was possessed." He tried to sound easy about it. They were already electrified, running from Mason, he didn't want to juice her anymore.

"Jesus, Johnny. What was that like?"

Tie's use of his name set Calvin's bones buzzing for a second. "I don't remember any of it, really," he said. "But my boss thinks that because I'm a priest and it also happened to me, that I'm the right guy."

Tie yawned, her words stretching and rounded. "Are you?"

Calvin had taken the two prize possessions of one of the world's most dangerous men and in a few hours they would pull into a rundown cabin in the middle of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Once settled, Calvin would put them both through a torture neither would ever forget if they survived. All to save a boy. And she wanted to know if he was the right guy for the job.

"Hell if I know," Calvin said with a flash of teeth.

Tie couldn't tell if it was a smile. She looked out the window and watched the distance increase between her old life and the unknown ahead. One thing was for certain in all this calamity and rough change: she was free. Tie closed her eyes and let the rush of the tires pull her under.

###### TWENTY TWO

HORTON'S HEAD HURT. He stared into the bathroom mirror at the ruin of his face. His left eye was swollen shut and he had a burning cut on his right cheek. He'd only got the fucking thing to stop gushing by pushing the wound together and dabbing the overlapping skin with Super Glue. Stung like hell, but it worked in a pinch. A friend from Horton's days on the force always carried a tube of the stuff; he'd been a carpenter in his spare time or something. "They say it's supposed to be carcinogenic or whatever, but hell with it," he'd said, coughing around a Lucky Strike. Horton had liked that guy. Sergeant...sergeant...shit, he couldn't remember his name now. He touched a plum-colored bruise on the bald expanse of his head and winced. Miracle he could remember anything after the pasting he'd just taken.

Horton had the training and strength to tear off Frank Mason's arms and beat him to death with them if he felt like it, but when they'd discovered that the Father had snatched the kid, he'd just laid back and taken his medicine. He knew it was the only way to achieve what had become his single driving purpose: Survive long enough to get Jeremy back—from the priest, from the demon, maybe even from his father.

They'd been waiting in the den for several hours with no word from Calvin. Horton had hoped to keep his boss sedate through the administration of one bourbon on the rocks after another, but Mason was a careful drinker. He'd only gotten half-way through his third cocktail when the flying pendulum clock on the bookshelf had rung out one in the morning. Horton had looked over at the clock and when he'd looked back Mason was holding a .38.

"Through fucking around, Mr. Horton," he'd said, voice dead-empty. "Let's go check on my boy."

Horton hadn't argued. Some of it had been because he was exhausted, but most of the reason was because he'd grown convinced in the passage of those dark hours that Jeremy had killed the priest. When they got to the boy's room and discovered Emma Grouwe snoring peacefully face down on the floor, instead of Jeremy raving and spitting in the bed, Mason had exploded. With an expert flip of the wrist, he'd turned the pistol around and smashed it into Horton's face. Graying in and out of consciousness, Horton had reigned in his reflexes and let Mason nail him again. There'd been no shouts or curses, just the sound of blows and harsh respiration. Mason's fury and Horton's shame had muted them both.

When he'd finished, Mason pulled Horton up by the ear so he could own the bodyguard's eyes. "You do what you need to do to find my boy. Get cleaned up and get started. I'll drive this tub of guts," he'd toed Emma Grouwe's bulk, "to the hospital." Bleeding and stumbling, Horton had helped Mason wrestle Emma into the back of the Town Car. Mason had spoken through the window before driving to the emergency room, "No pigs, Horton."

"Sir? Police resources could—."

"You think I'm the only boss who's hired from the Gendarmes, jackass?" Mason had said, a twitchy little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "My enemies could have people on the force and those people can't be allowed to know of my present vulnerability. Do you follow me, Mr. Horton? Make me feel better, tell me you're five-by and all that other shit."

Horton had nodded. "Five-by-five, sir." The shaky smile had scared him. Mason was barely holding his shit together. But it hadn't been just that—he was right. There were plenty of dirty cops on the greater metro police force. It would be hard enough for Horton to track and retrieve the kid from a professional like Father Calvin, let alone do so with a small army of hitters on the trail with him. "No police."

"You need to be gone by the time I'm back, Mr. Horton. You need to be on the road. I can feel the distance between myself and my child increasing. Glue yourself to your cellular. I want reports every other fucking second." He'd roared the Lincoln down the drive before Horton could acknowledge. Didn't matter, acknowledgement was implied. After all, failure to comply would spell forfeiture of Horton's life.

Now, Horton stared at himself in the mirror and tried to burn the fog off his mind. But where to start? What did he have other than Emma Grouwe, unconscious on the floor? It was likely that she wouldn't know anything anyway. The simple fact that she continued to draw breath was enough to show that Calvin hadn't thought her a liability. Horton had nothing.

Better to just move, he decided. He used Mason's return to the house as his deadline and started by throwing a couple of changes of clothes into a black gym bag. He jogged downstairs to the bar room and into the walk-in humidor, the heady aroma of cured tobacco enveloping him. Facing the south wall, he stuck his finger out and counted off four shelves down and three sections over. "Lucky seven," Horton whispered and grabbed a cigar that had been laid out of sync with its brethren, the label at the top instead of the bottom. A sensor tripped and the wall slid back, revealing a small utility room. Instead of tools and cleaners hanging from the pegboard walls, an arsenal of firearms and surveillance equipment threw a leaden gleam. Horton jammed a few choice pieces into a hard-sided case and left, the wall of cigars sliding closed behind him. He rushed toward the glass door of the humidor, paused, then grabbed a handful of fragrant Cubans. If he got through this with the boy safe and sound he'd call them his finder's fee.

Three minutes later he stood in the garage staring at an oil stain on the cement. The cargo van was gone. Now he had a place to start. The good Padre had used a company car and all of Mr. Mason's vehicles had a little something extra installed under the hood. Horton had insisted on the upgrade when Mason hired him. Horton grinned then winced as the muscles around his cut tried to pull it open. He hissed and touched the wound with the tips of his fingers, but the super-glue was holding. He shook his head and walked over to the only other car left in the company fleet. Mason would be pissed as hell, but what else was Horton supposed to do? The boss had taken the Lincoln and there was no time to waste with a rental.

Horton set the "tool box" in the small trunk and tossed his gym bag on top. He laid in behind the wheel and keyed the engine. Mr. Mason's prized ride purred into life and Horton threw the onyx custom Lotus Espirit Turbo into reverse. He tapped the gas and the Lotus leapt from its cage. Horton smiled, the cut hurt, but he couldn't help it. This car could do sixty going backward. He slewed it through a gentle J-turn and floated down the drive, his backside four inches off the ground.

Horton pulled the Lotus to a gravel-crunching stop at the end of the drive, the halogens flooding across the road and into a weedy ditch like bolts of blue gas. He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. After a few clicking brrrs, a woman perked, "OnStar, this is Courtney. How may I assist you?" Horton grinned into the dark.

TWENTY THREE

TIESHA SLEPT HARD, and dreamed deep.

She stood in the shadowed foyer of Mason's house, the grand stairs swept up like a commissioned waterfall, frozen in mahogany. Tie felt the walls of the Massa's house push in at her shoulders and cheeks, the very air dense with greed and crowding. But that wasn't the worst of it. A gollum dressed in dirty pajamas stood at the top of the stairs and peered at her with twinkling curiosity. The light was low, as if the house lay under a brownout, but she could make out the glimmer from the troll's moist eyes and grinning teeth.

A wet shiver ran through her flesh. She thought of the door behind her, the outside. Instead, Tie took a step forward and demanded, "What you lookin' at?"

The troll's grin stretched, too wide for human facial muscles, too many teeth for a human jaw. It hunched down a step, bobbing its neck like a monitor lizard. "Smell you," it whisper-hissed. "Smell your insides."

Tie's face wrinkled in toward her pert nose. "Smell you, too," she said. "Didn't quite get past potty trainin', huh?"

It answered with a wet ripping noise followed a moment later by a stench like a blow. "Oh!" she waved her hand in front of her face and backed away a step. "For the love a'."

"Of God?" it asked, head weaving around on its neck like a bud in the breeze. "God doesn't love you, Tiesha." Its head stopped, pinned her where she stood. "Just like your mother."

She looked away, waved him off, but her eyes were hot. "What do you know, lil' boy?"

It hopped down another three risers, now only sixteen steps away from touching her. Suddenly she grew cold, as if a wall of winter had pushed into her. "I know why she left you."

Tie crossed her arms, hoping it wouldn't see her shiver. She couldn't let it know she was afraid, couldn't let anyone know. A tear burned a track down the side of her face, but she kept her head turned away so it wouldn't see. The troll was a capering blur in the corner of her eye. She wanted to throw some back in this twisted little honky's face, tell him that he didn't know shit about Tie's mama, that he ought to worry about whether his own daddy loved him or not and leave her be. All she could manage was a choked squeak and cursed herself for it as another tear spilled and rolled. "Dammit," she whispered.

"Left because she didn't love you...or him." Now its voice flowed deep and even, almost gentle, an authority figure with bad news. "It's all right, girl. Your slut mama left mostly because of him. After she figured out what she wanted from life, your mama was reborn. He couldn't give it to her. You were just the afterbirth of her revelation."

A great screeching Shut up! boiled in Tie's throat but died at the back of her mouth, a dry rag. She looked at her feet as the cold rolled over her shoulders like brine.

The troll slipped another few steps closer and now its breath blushed up against her cheek, even from across the room. Burning garbage and old diapers. She swayed on her feet a little and moaned. "But you understand her leaving him, don't you, girl? You know what it means to leave your father."

She shook her head from side to side, but the motion was weak, like moving in frigid water. Her father had never been anything but good, solid. He'd never touched her in anger or darkness of any kind. He'd always worked his fingers to the bone so she wouldn't have to. And he'd never made her pay for it with a single cent of emotional currency. His love had been free.

And she had left. Just like her mother.

"Because you hated him," it croaked in toneless finality.

Tie put her hands over her face and sobbed. "No, he was so good to me. Daddy..."

"Because she left, you hated him."

A wave of frozen dread and ancient pain rose up around her like bile in a quivering throat. Hidden from herself for so long, this demon boy had shown her the truth. Her head tipped back and she wailed. Arms limp at her sides and shoulders hitching, she pealed a long empty note into the dark house. After a long time, the dream breath ran out and Tie was left swaying on her feet. She opened her eyes and the demon stood before her.

"Smell your insides," it said. "Like rotten milk."

"Why?" she asked, dredged, exhausted. "Why'd you make me look at it?"

It threw a mocking pout. "So sorry, our time is up."

* * *

"TIME TO GET up." Far away, foggy.

She mumbled, sleep smeared. "Don' wanna' look 'nymore."

"C'mon, Tie." A gentle hand on her shoulder. A warm squeeze of strong fingers.

"Daddy?" She opened her eyes. Father. Not hers, Calvin. The world and where she stood in it rushed back. "Hey," she said and stretched, her long legs fetching up under the dashboard. "We there?"

"Nope," Calvin said. "I need you to stay with the van while I do a little maintenance."

A little more of their situation flowed to the foreground. They were parked next to a pair of peeling red gas pumps outside a low cinderblock building. The station was either closed for the night or for the foreseeable forever. A glance into stretching fields and a distant horizontal ribbon of light that must have been the highway gave her the impression it was the latter. She twisted in the seat. Jeremy was a lump in the back of the van, but Tie thought she had a better idea now of what really lay sleeping beneath those blankets. "He, uh, okay?" she asked.

"You'll be fine," Calvin said, catching the note of unease in her voice. "He's got enough juice in him to keep him down for another day, day and half."

Tie looked at Calvin.

"He's trussed up like a spring lamb, for Christ's sake. You're fine for a minute." He squeezed her shoulder again. "I'll be right back." Calvin leaned down and popped the hood. He opened his door and cool, fresh air washed into the van. Tie's eyes were big in the dark. "We're all right," he said and lay his hand on her thigh.

The contact, the most intimate they'd shared, ran up her leg and heated her. But all she could manage was a weak smile, the warmth from his touch flaming out, curdled. She watched Calvin slip out into the crisp night and shivered.

The dream clung to her, a sweater knit of slime and rotten sticks. She wasn't like her mama, she wasn't. A lot of children didn't get along all that well with their parents. Wasn't a wonderful fact of life, but it wasn't uncommon either. She didn't hate her father, she just—well, she just didn't think about him all that much.

Just like your mama.

Fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck that little bastard in the back. Her eyes grew hot. Tie punched herself in the shoulder and the pain dumped some ice back into her veins. Her tears retreated for now.

Calvin walked around the front of the Van and lifted the hood. He should have checked this before they ran, but it hadn't occurred to him. Stupid. He really was losing his edge. Whether that was from falling in love or the constant adrenaline buzz from being on the run with the possessed child of a mobster, he wasn't sure. Probably both. Either way, he needed to slow down and get frosty, or he'd make a mistake that would get them killed. Peering into the engine, he wondered if it was already too late.

The grease-slicked intestines of the Dodge radiated warmth back at him. Where was the damn thing? They hid these things so you couldn't do what he was attempting. Like an exploring surgeon, he reached into the block and began to feel around, mindful of the super-heated areas. His eyebrows rose. That'd be it. It wouldn't be close to anything too hot. Where was the coolest part of an engine? Calvin yanked his hand out and dropped to the ground next to the passenger side tire. He wiggled his head and shoulders under the van and looked up into the engine block from below. There! Between the oil pan and the dark recesses that held the water pump, a tiny red light pulsed. Had it been daylight, or if they'd parked under a street lamp, he never would have been able to see it. But the gas station was dark and the sky was covered with misty cataracts.

He stood up, his knees popping. Felt good after the long drive, but there was a lot more road to eat up before they were done. Calvin walked around to the back of the van, gently tapping the glass of Tie's window, offering her a wink as he passed. He startled her out of some morose reverie, but the corners of her lips bent up, little arrows of flesh forming at the sides. She brushed her fingers along the inside of the glass, he felt a blast of warmth in his chest, and then her face was gone as he moved around the back.

It was like that now, every time they shared a glance or the smallest touch, a spark spanned some gap in his head and a great, dusty machine jumped into whirring life in his solar plexus. Now, that he had admitted it to himself, his feelings for Tie were amplifying like some giddy chain reaction. He wondered if was like that for her too, and thought of the little dimples next to her mouth. That had been a good smile, a deep one, a real one.

Calvin stood in front of the double doors at the back of the van and whispered, "God, I..." but trailed off, unsure as to where he'd been headed with that. Was he about to compose a prayer to a deity in whose name he made a living from killing? Was he about to ask for something from that God? "I hope you're not as bad as I think you are," he muttered and opened the doors.

The kid slept. Oh, let's be honest, Padre, shall we? The kid was in an anti-psychotic drug-induced coma. Calvin leaned in, head cocked. Okay, the kid was breathing fine. Once again, he marveled at the boy's strength. Even a healthy man would have succumbed to the myriad physical stresses Jeremy's body had endured. Children were fucking amazing; little Teflon people.

After he'd administered the thorazine to the confused and shrieking demon, Calvin had bound his wrists and ankles with leather restraining cuffs bought earlier that day on his little pre-exorcism junket. He'd rolled the child up in an army blanket, a sweating, stinking eggroll, and carried him down the stairs. The Dodge had been waiting right outside the front door, parked where he left it. He'd tossed the boy in the back and coasted down the drive.

Calvin reached over and grabbed a toolkit bungee-cabled to the side wall. He was close enough to get a good noseful of the reek Jeremy exuded, but something had changed. The boy still smelled horrible, open sewers and ancient sick-rooms, but the stink of death was off him. He was ripe, but he wasn't dying anymore. Poor kid was dehydrated as hell, though. His lips were puffed and cracking like a pastry left in the sun. Calvin checked Jeremy's pulse. Still strong, in fact a little too rapid for his tastes considering the amount of trank he'd dosed the kid with, but beggars can't be choosers and all that anxious, penitent crap.

Calvin began to pull the toolkit out, but it caught on something. He squinted and realized it was stuck on the edge of a blocky flashlight, also attached to the side of the van. This sucker was outfitted for some serious work. What had Mason's boys used it for? Calvin's mind summoned a montage of shiny Italian suits, shovels, body parts, and wild laughter flung into deep woods. He tested the light, his face a momentary goblin in the purple night, then popped the lens-bulb assembly off the top. The blocky twelve-volt battery was just what he needed. "The Good Lord provides," he said and closed the doors.

Fifteen minutes later, Tie was just beginning to wonder what in the hell he was up to under the van—she'd been able to hear him clunking around under her seat, at once unnerving and little exciting—when Calvin popped up next to her window.

"Got it!" he said, holding up a black plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes like a hard-won kill. A couple of wires, one red, one black or blue—hard to tell in the low light—sprang from the side.

Tie rolled down her window. "What is that?"

"A soon to be repentant thief. Here, hold this." He placed the box in her left hand. She marveled that such a small thing would be so heavy. "And this," he said, plopping the even heavier flashlight battery down into the open palm of her other hand. "Hold them steady for me a minute."

She watched fascinated as Calvin wired the black box to the battery. He took a half-step back, scowled, and reversed the wires on the battery terminals. A dim red light she hadn't noticed before winked into life on the top of the box like an electronic eye. She jumped a little and almost dropped it. "Huh," Calvin said. "I wasn't entirely sure that would work."

He took the strange box and battery from her and walked over to a trash barrel next to the empty garage. He bent over the can and lay the blinking package on the bottom. Tie watched, as he straightened and pulled something from his back pocket. After he tore off a page, she realized it was a small spiral bound notebook, the kind you use for shopping lists or writing down thoughts. Calvin dropped whatever he'd scrawled into the can and jogged back to the Dodge. A minute later they pulled away from the gas station.

They traveled along a secondary road, empty save for its own fading lines and bordered by scrub woods and forgotten fields. Tie left her window down, the rush and roar of the night air was like bathing her mind in spring water. That and the stink from the kid was getting pretty bad. She watched the little gas station and its two flaking pumps shrink in the side rearview mirror. That feeling of adventure and release was beginning to steal over her again. Nightmare or not, the nap had done the trick.

"What was that thing?" she asked. "What'd you mean a 'soon to be repentant thief'."

"That little box was a time-thief," Calvin said. "Maybe a life-thief as well. Now, if it works, it's going to give us back some of what's its stolen."

"Time-thief," Tie mused, liking the way the words made her thoughts crackle. "You're a poet, Padre." And quick as a flash of moon from behind a cloud, she leaned over the seat and kissed his cheek.

That machine in Calvin's chest skipped a gear. His pants were instantly too tight in the crotch and he was nervous as a teenager that she would see. Another part of him was desperate for her to see, and more. "Thanks," he muttered, cheeks flushed. "I just hope it works."

"What was that you were writing?"

"Nothing. Just a little howdy-do," Calvin smirked through the windshield into the rushing night.

###### TWENTY FOUR

EMMA GROUWE HAD witnessed her share of tragic cases in her twenty-five odd years of nursing the mentally unstable. The most pathetic had been a pretty young woman, happily married with a shining career, who had one day started crying and not been able to stop. She and her handsome young husband had been viewing Casablanca on DVD for what was possibly the third time just that year, when her drippy tears—a routine part of watching her favorite movie—swelled into steady crying and finally exploded into wracking sobs. She'd stayed on Nurse Grouwe's ward at St. Vincent's for three years before Emma transferred, always crying, hair turning brittle, falling out. The most horrific had been the fifty-seven year old grandfather. He'd been baby-sitting his fourteen month-old grand daughter while her parents enjoyed a rare night out. Grandpa' had been a successful mechanical engineer and held patents on a few integral parts of most modern industrial grade HVAC units. He'd loved his children and their new baby daughter, but some silent worm had twitched in his mind that night. When his daughter and son-in-law had come bustling through the front door, flushed and laughing, smelling of restaurant food, they found him standing in the little kitchen, his mouth open, a quicksilver line of drool stretching almost to the floor. They'd rushed over to him and asked after the baby. "Dishwasher," was all he'd said. It had just finished its final "Heated Dry" cycle. Those were the last words he'd ever say. Emma had watched him sink deeper and deeper into a catatonic mire until there was nothing left but a fleshy shell. A career as a psychiatric nurse had brought her all manner of patients with all manner of troubles, but Emma had never seen anything like the monsters that marched behind Frank Mason's eyes.

When she came to, the first thing she saw was his head eclipsing the dome light of the Lincoln. Her head, where Calvin had sapped her, sang an unbroken harmonic of leaden pain. Her vision cleared a bit and she began to understand where she was. She was a big woman, nearly six foot and a square one seventy-five, but Mason had managed to squeeze her into the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car and climb in on top of her. His breath came in hot and stale on her face, a Santa Ana wind blown over a swamp.

"Helloooh, nurse!" Mason sang.

"Whas ah...Missr Mason?" she slurred. Mason jammed his .44 into the crotch of her jeans and everything focused as if a cheese cloth had been pulled from her perceptions. She jerked and tried to sit up, but he bore down on her. The stark click of a the pistol's hammer silenced her struggles in spite of the pain. She breathed, hard and fast, confusion blotted out by terror. To hell with where she was, the fact that she was in mortal danger was clear enough. She'd had her intuitions about her employer's mental stability, but now she didn't need her years of experience to verify that Frank Mason was a total fucking loon.

He pushed harder with the gun and she let out a little whimper of pain, frozen in terror, but still managing a little self-loathing at the note of helplessness in her own voice. Mason's face bloomed into a wide smile. Not at her little sound of protest, but at the look on her face after she'd made it. The bastard was happy that she'd disgusted herself. Her fear was backlit with anger now. If she could have, Emma would have pissed on his gun.

"You a dyke, nurse Grouwe? Lotta big girls're dykes."

She turned her face away. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and pooled, hot and slippery, against her face and the leather seat.

He prodded her. "No, no, up here Emma. Good, thank you." Mason leaned in even closer, a planet-killer meteorite blocking out the sun. His smile vanished. "Where's my son, you bitch?"

"I don't—"

Mason pulled the trigger again and again and again.

FRANK MASON PULLED the Lincoln into his garage and turned the engine off. For a long time, he sat there with his fingers still wrapped around the wheel, the Lincoln's big power plant ticking as it cooled. The remains of Emma Grouwe also cooled, but did not tick. Her bones might tick and creak as the flesh fell from them over time, but that was about all the movement he expected out of her.

Mason put his right hand on the passenger seat headrest and craned around to survey his handiwork. He'd once read a book about Whitechapel's most promising son, Jack T. Ripper, complete with old police photographs of his victims. Jacky had taken his time with the third victim, sequestering her away in a tenement. Police accounts described the body as having been peeled open, the internals yanked out. Emma Grouwe looked a bit like that: head and limbs intact, but the trunk appeared to have exploded. Well, it made sense. His eyes scanned the interior of the car. Bits of Emma textured nearly every inch of the once gleaming leather and dried in the creases of Mason's knuckles and in his hair.

He faced forward and let out a long, slow sigh. In retrospect, it probably hadn't been the most practical thing, blowing Emma to smithereens. She might have known something about his son's whereabouts. He'd lost himself when she began to answer in the negative, his rage cresting and taking over. Oh well. Hindsight, twenty-twenty and all that.

Things were not proceeding according to plan. Not that he strictly adhered to any one plan. The people and events of his life had always seemed to unfurl around him like petals around the complicated bud of a rose. Now, it was as if some of his petals had broken off and were attempting to create flowers of their own. That didn't make sense to Frank. And while his mind couldn't quite wrap itself around the idea of his people as independent entities from himself, he understood that it was a very bad thing. If someone was apart from him, he couldn't control them.

"Unacceptable," he muttered.

First it was the boy, stolen from him. Then it was Sinclair, also stolen and by the very same brash thief. And Finch, who had attempted to steal Jeremy even farther away, had not succeeded but was himself stolen. Then the not so good Father Calvin, the reverse savior, came in and set events in motion to trim another petal from Frank Mason's rose. He couldn't even be sure Horton belonged to him any longer. And Tiesha, his fine tract of fleshy land, now seemed to be missing as well. He'd called her apartment on his cell phone only to be assaulted by repetitive rings. They were hollow, empty. She was gone. He could feel it.

He'd find them. That was all there was to it. He'd find them and bring them back under his reign. It wasn't as if this was the first time petals had fallen away from him. The boy's mother had fallen away, then fallen overboard. He'd watched her face, white and stark, surprised, as it sank into the deep black. Her memory, held fast in Mason's mind, was all that remained of her. A memory that was part of him, internal and under control. And if he had to kill them all to bring them back—he mused this was most likely the way to go—then so be it. His mind was a big house with plenty of empty rooms yet to decorate.

An absence in the corner of his eye asserted itself and he looked over to where the Lotus should have been sitting, a loyal, metallic beast. Gone. Well, Horton obviously. Sure, that made sense. Mason had taken the other car. Perhaps when Mr. Horton returned with his son, Frank would position Horton beneath the rear wheels and spin the skin from that shiny bald head of his.

Mason stared through his own reflection in the window, gore solidifying in the car and on his person. He thought about nothing, listening to his own footfalls as he roamed the empty rooms of his mind. He would furnish it with their bodies, a quiet, pliant corpse for every room. After two hours, a cramp from his bladder shook him loose and he walked into the house.

Mason moved through the darkened mansion, his own mental house superimposing itself over his vision like a transparency. Here in the front hall, atop his mahogany foyer table would rest Mister Horton's skull. Perhaps Mason would remove the top and use the cranial cavity as the base for a floral arrangement. Daisies might work. Be the kind of the thing Tiesha would know about, but of course, she'd be little use once her corpse was spread in front of the fireplace in his bedroom. He liked that idea, spread her out naked, like a safari kill. That's what you were supposed to do with game from Africa. Okay, so she was from Toledo, but Tie was a jungle bunny so it was kind of the same. He passed the library where Calvin's skin would serve as binding for several rare editions of the bible and pushed into the kitchen.

Mason surprised Rosario, his only remaining live-in servant, as she heated a glass of milk. She cried out and almost dropped the glass, her heart a crazed bird in her chest. At her age, a scare like that could do a woman in. Dios mio, it wasn't as if she were a spry young thing anymore. Of course, working for a man like Senior Mason tended to age a person that much faster. She dredged up a smile and tossed off an offer to make him a midnight snack before she noticed the coat of viscera flaking off him. Starting with her eyes and dripping down her face like tallow, her smile melted into a terror mask.

Mason took three big steps toward her, yanking a metal crab mallet off the counter as he closed the distance. The blank expression on his face never even flickered as he brought the mallet down on the top of her head. Her skull cracked and she thudded to the floor, an almost mournful sigh slipping from her lungs. Mason knelt and continued to strike with the mallet until Rosario was effectively beheaded. His pants filled with hot water as his bladder let go, but he didn't notice. He was daydreaming about how he might be able to turn his son's skeleton into a high art wall hanging for the office. Finch could do that for him, use those chemicals of his. Wait, Finch was dead.

Mason stopped pounding and sat back on his soggy haunches. Every one of his closest people was either dead or missing and soon to be dead. He held the end of the crab mallet between his thumb and forefinger and set it to swing like a dripping pendulum. Tick tock, tick tock.

"I'll have to put an ad in the help wanted section," he said and frowned as his stomach grumbled. Damn, he could have used a snack after all. His face blanked out again as his mind emptied. Mason's head tipped to one side, his mouth open a sliver. He leaned over and grabbed Rosario's left hand. He fanned the pudgy fingers out and proceeded to flatten each one with the mallet. He started singing under his breath to the steady, smashing rhythm.

"If I had a ham-mer. I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening. Hmm, huh-hmmm, hm."

TWENTY FIVE

THE SUN STAYED down that morning, or at least to Tie, it seemed to. The scud of clouds that had blotted out the stars earlier that night descended on them over the miles, the hours. By morning, acid dawn ate away the dark, but there was no golden sun, just gray illumination that reminded Tie of office jobs.

She hadn't been able to drift back off to sleep after their stop at the old gas station, her excitement and fear their own strong coffee. Try the new Scared-a-Latte from Starbucks. She almost laughed, yawned instead. The woman in the passenger side mirror looked like shit. Tired. Really freakin' tired, but too wired to keep her eyelids down. In leaving—and oh, let's be straight up, Tiesha, honey—and becoming an accessory in the kidnapping of Frank Mason's only son and heir, she had helped light a fuse. The explosion would happen when that crazy spark caught up with them. She could feel it, him, behind them.

They passed exit signs for the Michigan/Ontario Bridge/Sault St. Marie, Canada. Calvin guided the van onto a side road. He seemed to know when the turns would appear out of the mist. How many times had he been up here, Tie wondered. She wished she could see better. There were so many trees up here; they created deep tunnels of green that slipped off the roadside. They beckoned and warned. Slip down my cool throat and I'll show you... What? Tie shivered, smiling. She would go for walks and take deep breaths of earth and green in those tunnels. She'd discover what was hidden in those vermilion shades. Maybe paint some paintings of what she found.

"We almost there yet?"

"You sound like a little kid," Calvin said, squeezing her knee.

"Hey!" she jerked and slapped at his hand. "That tickles."

"Careful now, you'll get us into an accident. Leave the driver be."

She eyed him from the side. "You wait 'till you not behind the wheel anymore, white boy. Then we'll see some real ticklin'."

"Promise?"

"Promise." She winked.

Calvin's heart thudded.

"Straight up," she said. "How much farther? If I don't stretch my legs soon, I'm gonna' go nuts."

"Is that a lady-like request for a urination break?"

Tie straightened up and tented the tips of her fingers on her knees. "Darling? If I have to urinate I'll just ask you to pull over so I can take a leak, dig?"

"Dig," he said. "You're so demure."

She really was. Tie could spew forth a tirade in truckereze and still sound like Ms. Manners. Calvin found it arousing. He'd always gotten a charge from a woman who could display a typically male trait and maintain her femininity. Not that women didn't cuss. It was just the way Tie did it, rougher somehow, but sweet. On assignment near a West Bank settlement in the early 90's, Calvin had watched a Red Cross worker disarm an Israeli border guard. The guard had grabbed her ass and she'd taken him out with a mule kick a Kung-Fu master would have been proud of. It had turned him on for days.

"So?" she prodded.

"Oh, sorry. Woolgathering. I'm about done in."

"S'okay, sug."

"We're almost there, though. See that sign?"

Tie read the reflective lettering as they passed. "Desperats?"

Calvin snorted. "Pronounced like the name Deborah. French Canadian. They have sort of a different take on the language."

"You speak it?"

"Oui, ma petite choux," he said, his accent so flawless it was as if he'd taken on another personality instead of just another language. Tie looked at him with scary wonder. Even his facial set had changed. "Of course," Calvin said, sliding back to English and himself, "I have a better take on regular French than the Canadian stuff.."

"How many languages you speak?"

Calvin had to think about it for a second. "Twelve. No, sorry, thirteen. I can pass for a native speaker in six of them and out of those I can only write in four."

"How come you can't write in so many of them?"

"It's the way I learned them. Phonetic infusion, it's called. You learn sounds and how to associate them with objects and ideas, but not really how spell. I'd get that too, given enough time, I suppose, but I'm not in any one place long enough usually."

"You lead a hell of a life, John."

He put his hand on her knee. She tensed for the tickle, but softened. This was a different touch. She warmed beneath him. "I wasn't happy until just a few hours ago," he said.

Tie looked at his face, the dark flesh beneath red eyes, the stubble, the unruly lock of hair over his forehead. "You must have been happy some time before," she said, doubting the words even as they fell over her lips.

"If I was," he said, staring through the windshield, looking for something, not finding it, "I have no memory of it."

He took a crackling turn onto a gravel road that ran up into the woods. Tie stared ahead as the trees closed in, protective and thick. "Strange way to be," she whispered. It seemed right to keep her voice low, as if they were in a cathedral.

They drove down the gravel track for close to a mile, the rough paving retreating and the greenery and weeds growing up between the ruts in the ground. A flash of brilliant blue streaked past Tie's window. She craned her neck just in time to watch the jay bluster into the woods. The blue jays in the city weren't so vibrant, she was sure of it. When she looked back they rounded a bend and large log cabin came into view.

It was perfect! Like a honeymoon or vacation, something she never imagined she would experience. Tie turned a radiant grin on Calvin, but the look on his face turned her cold. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple.

"We're here," he said.

A chuckle, starting low and building into a high, liquid giggle, slimed from the back of the van.

* * *

DAWN LIGHT INFUSED the air around the black Lotus, but there was no sun. Horton sat behind the wheel and surveyed the old, peeling gas pumps, the empty garage. The coordinates relayed by the oh-so-chipper Courtney at On-Star put the cargo van here. Horton had told her that he had a wayward teenager who'd taken the van without permission...again. No, involving the police hadn't been necessary. Sure, she'd understood how kids could be, and had given him the location, guiding him over the phone as he ran his finger along a map. But the van wasn't here.

"Courtney," Horton muttered. "You're fired." The "fired" drew out in a long, wavering note as a huge yawn ran through him. Jee-sus, he was tired. He checked the cut on his face in the rearview mirror. A multichromatic bruise bloomed around the dark line of coagulated blood. It was knitting up under the Superglue, but still throbbed like a bastard. He needed about twelve hours' sleep and some quality time with an attractive woman of dubious moral fiber. Maybe Courtney needed a new job now that he'd canned her.

Seriously, though, kids. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? The On-Star tracking system had been his only lead on Calvin and Jeremy. It wasn't like he could just slip the Lotus back into Mason's garage, apologize for his failure and hope for little more than harsh language. There was a real good chance that even if he did find Jeremy, Mason would kill him. Horton had crossed a line back in Mason's office and it was too late to retrace his steps. He closed his eyes and lay his head back against the seat. "I'm so completely fucked."

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the car, deep black like everything else in this ride. It was like driving a sliver of death. He liked that. A high-tech version of the Reaper's horse. Hi-tech... How the fuck had Calvin screwed with the On-Star? And why was it sending a signal from here? Horton looked out the window again. What was here? A garage, a couple of old gas pumps and a trash barrel...

"Fuck me."

He jumped out of the car and ran over to the trash barrel. Sure enough, staring up at him from the depths was a blinking red eye. He reached in and hefted the black box and the flashlight battery Calvin had wired to it. Horton smiled, couldn't help it. "Oh, you slick bastard." He was still going to have to kill Father John Calvin, but he wasn't going to like it much. The Padre was just plain cool, that's all there was to it.

He yanked one of the wires and the red eye winked out. Of course, he wouldn't even get the chance to feel bad about wasting Calvin if he never found him. Square one, again, and it sucked. Horton turned the black box over in his hand. A piece of folded paper was affixed to the bottom. He pulled it off with a stretch of pink chewing gum and unfolded the note. Horton's eyes grew large. "I can't believe this shit."

Howdy Officer,

It would be useless to instruct you not to follow. Bloodhounds do that for which they are bred, and you are a police dog through and through. Just know: I've done what I've done for the sake of the Innocent. Don't ruin it by showing up too soon. I don't think you will be able to find me without the help of your little toy, anyway. Just in case you do get the scent, however, I must ask you to keep your distance until I've finished my work. When it's over, if we survive, I'll contact you and tell you where to find him...

Remember: Jesus died for his own sins, not mine. (Saw that on a T-shirt for a band called the Crucifux)

PS.

Don't give the Innocent back to the Master. It's just another prison term. In some ways, worse than the one he's in now.

Horton frowned down at the note, re-read it, then crumpled it up and stuck it in his pocket. He wasn't sure why he kept it, Calvin had been careful not use to names or designations that might help if Horton got the police involved. It just made him feel better, as if he'd collected a clue, a breadcrumb.

He walked back to the Lotus and spread a large folding map of the Northern United States and Canada across the hood. He located his position in the upper-middle of the Michigan mitten and wondered how far ahead Calvin could be, where he could be going. After a minute of searching, his face crumpled and he slammed an open palm down on the map, the metal beneath throwing a loud bang! into the quiet morning. He had nothing to go on. But he knew who might. Horton flipped open his cell phone and dialed.

Miles away, a cellular phone rang in the pocket of a monster dozing against the wall in a darkened kitchen. It rubbed its eyes, brushing away the sleep crumbs and dried gore that tried to glue its eyelashes shut. Its clothes were spattered with bits of bone and gobbets of flesh. Its skin was pale white where not covered with tacky, brown blood. It scowled at the insistent chirp of the phone and considered striking its own hip pocket with the encrusted crab mallet that lay next to it on the floor. Then it remembered its identity and the circumstances under which it now operated. The monster pulled the phone out of its pocket and flipped it open. A strip of flesh dropped from the corner of its mouth. Its face was dead, an emotionless slab, but its voice was creamy-dreamy.

"Frank Mason—hello?"

He listened, face as blank as a computer screen in "power-save" mode, but his mind processed, processed. He responded in the appropriate blanks with grunts, affirmatives, negatives. When Horton finished bringing him up to speed, Mason said, "Check into a motel or something and get some sleep. I'll make some inquiries. Wait for my instructions." Mason thumbed the "end" button and stared at the screen of his phone, the blue glow casting his face in a corpse light that was just too perfect a fit. He activated the phone's memory and keyed in the letters "G" "O" and "D". After a full three minutes of dead air, no clicks or ringing, a filtered, sexless voice answered.

"Pronto?"

"This is Mason. Give me a relay."

"Si," the voice answered and the phone went dead.

Mason stood up and shoved the cell phone back into his pocket. He eased his way around the Jackson Pollock that had once been his housekeeper and exited the kitchen. He'd deal with that mess later. Now, he had to wait for the call. It was their only chance. If his special contacts couldn't help him now, there was no way to catch up with Calvin and his son. He could activate every single member of his domestic business network, both legit and otherwise, instructing them to keep an eye out for his son and the bastard priest, but that would likely do little more than alert Mason's enemies and potential pretenders to the thrown of his vulnerability.

Mason made his way through the house, leaving a trail of dark drips on the hardwood floors and footprints on the hand-carved oriental carpets. He clomped up the stairs, a graceless automaton. The sun's first rays slanted in diagonal gold bars through the windows in the upstairs hallway. Mason walked through them, light then dark then light, the horrors of his features outlined then blurred, outlined, blurred. He settled into his office chair, reached out and placed his right hand on the phone. Mason was still. Mason waited.

######

######

###### TWENTY SIX

THE DEMON CHILD was awake and waiting for them with a big, toothy grin when Calvin and Tiesha opened the back door of the van. It had managed to sit up, legs crossed like a kid hanging out in front of the boob-tube. Really the only differences were the thatch of dark scratches on its face, the wild roving eyes and the stench. Tie tried not to wrinkle up her face, but it wasn't easy. Once, when she was a kid, she and her daddy had been part of a volunteer group cleaning up a neighborhood park. She'd found a sick pile of human feces at the bottom of a garbage can. The kid kind of smelled like that. It greased its eyes up and down Tie and ran a sandpaper tongue over cracked lips.

"Man," Tie gasped. She waved a hand in front of her nose.

"Interesting," Calvin noted. "Didn't smell that bad in the van." He leaned in a little closer, a zoo patron scrutinizing, "I think he can influence the odor intensity."

The demon-boy just stared, smiling, proud.

"He was drugged in the van," Calvin said. "But now that's he's awake, he can control it again."

"How's that possible?" Tie asked, breathing through her mouth.

"Not sure," Calvin said. "I've got a lot of theories, but I want to get inside first." He raised the black medical bag he'd taken from Emma Grouwe. "You gonna' play it cool, Linda Blair, or do we need to shoot you another fix?"

"We'll walk," the demon rasped, then blew a kiss to Tie.

She recoiled as if jabbed her in the face. "Oh, man. Komodo Dragon morning breath."

Calvin and the demon both burst out laughing. They stopped and stared at one another. The demon winked.

"Get up, then," Calvin said. "C'mon, let's go." He stood back as the boy scooted over to the edge of the bumper. "Stop," Calvin commanded. The demon looked at him. "You fuck with me even a little and I'll make you sorry for it."

The demon's head tipped to one side. "With your drugs? A lancet for a sword, paladin?"

Calvin's left hand, dangling easy at his side, whip-cracked off the side of the boy's face. The demon loosed a muti-layered cry: surprise, pain, rage. Calvin waited for it to stop, counted to three, then hit him again. Tie's hand flew up to her mouth, but she kept quiet. A large red palm print filled in on the boy's cheek and tears spilled over his face. Calvin looked at the boy as if he faced nothing more than a piece of stone, a worthless hunk of shale. He slowly raised his hand for another blow, giving the demon a moment or two to consider the new sensation it was feeling and whether it wanted to feel more. It didn't need much time. "Please," it blurted, squinting, a deep shame dragged at its features.

"Let's go then."

It slid the rest of the way out of the van and stood. Calvin marveled at the strength in that wasted body. That Jeremy had enough juice left in him to stand after all the abuse he'd sustained at the hands of the demon was remarkable, but Calvin wasn't taking any chances. Even the weakest person can summon hysterical strength. The demon seemed to be able to call on any of Jeremy's bodily functions at will. Father Calvin didn't feel like being hoisted off his feet by the balls today. He walked behind Jeremy and kept Tie behind him a few paces.

"Stop," he said. The boy stopped, his bony shoulders rose, expecting the blow. Calvin smiled. It was a fast learner. Good. "Tie?" Calvin said. "The key should be in a little iron frog sitting in the planter on the porch."

"Gotcha'," she said and trotted up the front steps, giving Jeremy a wide berth.

The demon emitted a pleasurable rumble as she passed. Calvin cuffed it on the back of the head. The boy grated around to face Calvin.

"Time," it promised, then turned around, eyes on the ground.

Calvin smirked. "Indeed," he said, but his palms were damp. "Get moving."

They entered a two story great room paneled in hand-hued wood, the well-oiled walls glowing. A fieldstone fireplace hulked mammoth on the north wall. Two doors that Tie guessed were bedrooms squatted on either side. A small kitchen backed the cabin, separated from the main room by a breakfast bar. Had they not been running from a murderous psychopath and dealing with his demon-possessed son, Tie thought it would have made a perfect vacation spot.

"Nice," she said.

The demon birthed a popping flatulence in reply. Calvin thought about striking it again, but hell, he'd been holding one in for a while too, so he ignored the infraction. He and Tie might well be awash in a sea of love-at-first-sight pheromones, but they weren't quite to the "Honey, pull my finger" point in their relationship.

"Tie," he asked, "Could you please go to the van and get the big black duffel and my valise? I need to get started."

"Sure," she started to say, the word dissolving into a yawn. "Sorry, yeah. Don't you want to get some sleep, though? You've been up for how many hours?"

"Don't worry about it."

She looked at the boy-troll and left the room.

Calvin pushed the demon into the bedroom on the right of the fireplace. The room was little more than a monk's cell, perfect for meditation, or exorcism, Calvin mused. The bed was simple but solid; a twin mattress and an iron frame. There were no windows. He told the demon to sit down.

Calvin flicked on a light switch, only a little surprised when the bulb glowed into life on the ceiling. The Jesuits, it seemed, paid their utility bills on time. He closed the door and leaned against it, his arms crossed.

The demon's left eyebrow rose.

"Now that you're locked in the kid's body, you seem to have lost some of your more super-natural abilities. If Jeremy can't do it, you can't do it. Would that be a correct assumption?"

It grinned. "Eat shit."

"Fair enough," Calvin said. "Since you can't tell the future anymore I'll lay out the next couple of days for you. Or," he ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "couple of months. It's all up to you." He stared down at the boy, tried hard not to see the child in the shell, just the monster, and said, "I'm going to torture you until you leave."

It blinked. "You won't, Templar. You won't hurt the child."

Calvin showed his teeth, white and square. He leaned forward a little. "I don't give a shit about some mobster's brat. This is about me and you. If the kid survives, I'll consider it a bonus."

"Why not simply kill the child yourself, speed us into darkness?"

Calvin looked thoughtful. "There's a good chance that'll happen anyway. I don't know how much more the kid's body can take." He shrugged. "Sometimes you gotta' gamble, though, right? In any event, I want you to live for a while at least. There's so much I have to pay you back for. I could fill a book with the fun n' games I've got planned."

The demon's eyes shifted for an instant to a shadow below the crack of the door, then locked back on Calvin's. It allowed a note of fear into its voice. "You truly plan to hurt this poor child to roust us from the meat?"

"Like I said, if it happens at the end of all of this that I get you out of the kid, then yeah, that's beautiful, but mostly I'm doing this just to hurt you."

"But why, Templar?"

"You're fucking kidding me?"

It tipped it's head to one side, a child's gesture of open curiosity.

"You ruined what life I had left. I was a street kid, dying—no check that—I was fucking dead." Calvin slashed the air with his hand. "Then you grabbed me back and proceeded to use my body to hurt people. I don't remember what you did to me in the process, but I'm sure as hell willing to bet there's a reason for that repression."

"But we delivered you to your benefactor."

"Yeah, you indirectly got me recruited into the Pope's ninja army. What? I'm supposed to thank you for throwing me into a life of one calculated murder after another?"

"But you excel in your good works."

"I'm good at wasting people, but I can't have a home, or a family..."

"You can now, Johnny."

Calvin took a step toward the scabby boy on the bed and raised his hand. The demon cringed. "Don't you use my name. Don't you do it."

The demon peeked out from behind its raised hands and dealt a plain blow. "If you torture the boy, the woman will leave you."

Calvin's face drained. He lowered his hand.

* * *

TIE STOOD OUTSIDE the cabin, holding Calvin's duffel bag and valise, and tried to get her head clear. All the factors of her situation swirled around her like silken ghosts, brushing her face and hands, but impossible to wrap her fingers around. She was in trouble. She was happy. She was in mortal danger. She was in love. She was with a killer. She was safe. She was with a demon. She was with a priest. She was with a dragon. She was with a knight.

Tie took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. A fountain of emerald aromas flash-cleaned her sinuses, her mind. The coffee tones of rich earth and ancient stones filled her head and rooted her feet. A bird sang a tune unfamiliar to her urban ears: a trickle of three simple notes, high, middle, low. "La, la—laaah," she sang back to it.

She blushed, half expecting someone to chide her for her foolishness. But there was no one around. She could do as she pleased. The only person she needed to consider was the man in that cabin, the one who loved her. He did. She could feel it as surely as she felt her own love for him. It came off him in waves with every little shared touch.

She looked around the little clearing in which the cabin hunkered. Great oaks and what might be elms arched over the roof. A tree that made her think of giant neurons lifted from the ground in a reverse shot of frozen lightning, violent white. Tie wondered what you called those. She almost knew, almost. John Calvin would know. John. Johnny.

Without warning, an image of Mason sweating over her, pushing at her from behind invaded her mind. She shook her head. No, he wouldn't find them. Not here. It was too far and Johnny was smart, some kind of James Bond smart. He'd take care of her. Tie shivered the image away. It didn't belong here in her church of green.

She walked back into the cabin, ready to ask Calvin what the name of that big white tree was when she heard the voices. Tie lowered the bags to the floor and padded over to listen on the other side of the closed door. Her cheeks reddened a bit in knee-jerk shame, but she was an eavesdropper of old; a habit her daddy had tried to break her of, but with little success. Besides, on the run like they were and with a possessed kid, hell, she needed to know everything that was going on. Be foolish not to. She pressed her ear against the door and caught the familiar dual-toned rasp of the demon...

"You truly plan to hurt this poor child to roust us from the meat?"

Tie squinted, and held her breath so she could hear better as Calvin spoke.

"Like I said, if it happens at the end of all of this that I get you out of the kid, then yeah, that's beautiful, but mostly I'm doing this just to hurt you."

Tie pulled back from the door an inch. Was she hearing right? Was Johnny going to...?

"You ruined what life I had left. I was a street kid, dying—no check that—I was fucking dead. Then you grabbed me back and used my body to hurt people. I don't remember what you did to me in the process, but I'm sure as hell willing to bet there's a reason for that repression."

As the rest of their conversation spun out, Tie's eyes grew wide. Calvin was going to literally beat the devil out of the kid. He was going to take some poor ten-year old, already been through God knew what, and pain him some more. But it wasn't just that. He said he was going to do it, not for the boy, for Jeremy, but for his own vengeance. Tie put her palms against the wood, warm now from where Calvin had been leaning on the other side. She lowered her head as the familiar sadness and cynicism rose like bile. Calvin was like all the others she'd chosen in her life, sick and wrong. Very quietly, she turned.

And something—if it'd had a sound, would have been like a single clear voice in a cathedral—wrapped around her heart and reminded her. Tie stopped. "Oh yeah," she sighed and turned back toward the door. She shook her head at herself and put her hand on the doorknob. It had just been so long since she'd trusted anyone.

"If you torture the boy the woman will leave you."

Calvin lowered his hand.

Tie pushed into the room.

Calvin spun, looked at her. "Tie, I—"

"Hush," she put a finger to his lips, then looked at the demon. She spoke to Calvin, but kept her eyes on the boy. "I was listening at the door and heard most of it, I think." Her eyes narrowed. "What can I do to help?"

The smile melted off the demon's face.

For a moment, Calvin's own face was a happy question, then he nodded. "Help me strap him down. Then we'll talk and I'll explain."

###### TWENTY SEVEN

THOM NEARY LOVED tending his garden. It was simple, honest work before God and a hell of a lot less complicated than his other duties. He was down on his hands and knees in the dirt, seeing to a patch of dandelions that had sprung up overnight. Once, he'd led a medium-sized congregation in a Brooklyn church; now the beans and carrots, the fresh herbs were his flock. He'd been happy in his work back in the States before being recruited by the order. St. Mark's in Brooklyn, a big old brownstone mass of singing and hard accents, incense, funerals, weddings, a long procession of Sunday services: they'd taken all that away from him on the day he witnessed the assassination.

Father Thom Neary—a parish priest then—had been waiting in line at a book signing. The author, a professor of ethics and theology at Catholic University in Washington, DC, had captured young Neary's imagination with his radical—some said dangerous—ideas of doing away with the church altogether because Christ's true church resided within the human heart. It was a gorgeous April morning in New York, the kind that put one in the mood to smile and wink after giving a fellow New Yorker the finger. The bookstore had the author positioned at a table on the sidewalk. Neary was within three places of him in line, gearing himself up to ask a question about the professor's view on missionary work, when he happened to turn and look up. There was no reason for it, no flapping of pigeon wings or voice from above to grab his attention. Father Neary just looked at the third floor window of the hotel across the street in time to catch the muzzle flash. There was no sound but the stunned silence from the rest of the line, then the screams. When Neary turned around again, the professor's career as a dangerous idea man was over, his idea-generator half sheared away by the shooter's bullet.

Father Neary just stared. Later, in the safety and quiet of the rectory study he would think that he should have rushed forward, given the last rites, provided comfort to the rest of the crowd, done something. All he could do was stand and stare at the corpse with half a face. He could see the man's stark white teeth on the side the bullet had torn through. He had a silver filling in one of his molars, his tongue reminded Neary of a moist, pink salamander. All he could do was look, and think, I was meant to see that.

Neary gave a statement to the police along with several other witnesses, a statement that amounted to very little. He'd seen a flash and the professor was dead. Okay, thanks, Father, you can go. But the fact that Neary had seen very little wasn't as important as the fact that the shooter had seen much. The shooter had seen him. He showed up on Neary's doorstep later that evening, a middle-aged man with a twisting scar on his chin and a Roman collar at his neck. Neary invited him in and they talked long into the night.

The older priest was a Bishop, but with no diocese. He was the single member of an ancient and secret order. And he was dying. Neary had a simple choice, now that had seen, now that he knew: he could join the order or become its next martyr. Even without the threat, Neary had been sold. To be a true solider of the Church, to take up the fight as a man of action instead of a man of words—it was a quick decision for him.

The cancer held off for five years, long enough for the Bishop to give Neary the training of ways old and new. Neary, like the rest of the Knights Templar before him, honed his skill over the years, adding tricks and traits to his portfolio. It was an evolution, sword and horse to M-16 and amphibious assault vehicle and everything in between.

So many years gone by, so much of the Lord's good work done in the name of Holy Mother Church. Bishop Neary leaned forward on his haunches and thumbed the head off a dandelion before yanking it out by the roots. He thought of a martyr he'd made in America the better part of two decades ago. A trafficker of human flesh from the Balkans to the tenements of Chicago. Most of these refugees had been barely out of their teens. After a short stay in Detroit, many of them had stopped aging entirely. But the martyr was well connected to Rome and so Holy Mother Church had decided to take care of its own.

Neary engineered an exchange program for clergy at the Catholic hospital where the martyr was scheduled to undergo a procedure for gallstones. He made certain the anesthesia ear-marked for the operation was re-labeled and the IV drip delivered several CC's of purified nicotine instead of a synthetic opiate. He'd been on his way out, pulling yet another disappearing act, when he stumbled upon the teenage boy held hostage by a demon. The Lord had provided Neary with a human tabula rasa upon which to scribble as he saw fit. It was providence, plain and simple. A few years of intensive training and the Knight Templar became the Knights Templar.

Neary had taught that boy everything he'd ever known about killing. Even better, he taught Calvin how to learn on his own, how to invent and transmogrify as the situation demanded. Calvin became twice the killer Neary had ever been. Cold and smart. An empty cartridge that could fill itself at will with whatever the circumstance might call for. And the speed with which the boy had learned was frightening. By the time he was nineteen and ready to go into the world as an ordained priest and consecrated Templar, Calvin had mastered every skill Neary had sought to teach him and created a few of his own.

Neary sat back on his hams for a moment in the strong Mediterranean sun; a white-haired, overweight old bible thumper with sweat stains in a weedy patch of vegetables. His back gave a twinge and he winced. The Bishop was not a young man anymore. Soon he'd have to retire in earnest, even giving up his role as coordinator and dispatcher for Calvin. He'd turn over the reins to Johnny and maybe help the kid teach his own apprentice when he found one. Johnny was such a maverick, maybe he'd take on a girl, a nun with a couple of .38s hidden beneath her habit, a pistol strapped to each creamy thigh. A smile shivered Neary's jowls.

All this stuff about losing his mind and needing to retire was bullshit. Johnny was just feeling sensitive. He'd never been a big fan of the Church, but for all his blasphemy and misdirected anger he was still a man of God. Neary had seen to that. Had it not been for God the Father, that boy would have wasted away within the confines of his own skin, a demon riding him down into the very depths of Hell. It was the reason Neary selected Calvin in the first place. Was there anyone more suited, more motivated to battle the Devil's work on earth than a man who'd suffered at the hands of a demon?

When the call had come through from his contacts in Rome about another possessed child, Neary had leapt at the opportunity to assign Calvin. It was the perfect object lesson, the perfect reminder for Johnny. In saving the child, Calvin would be brought back into the arms of faith while scoring points with one of the Church's oldest and most valued business partners. Rome and the Mason family went back a lot longer than Neary himself. Again, it was divine providence. Could there be another explanation?

"Thanks be to God," Neary gasped, wrenching a potato-sized stone from the dry earth. He lifted his head into the cooling afternoon breeze as the phone rang through the kitchen window. His brow creased. The phone rang again and Neary grunted as he stood, his knees cracking like rifle shots. Something on the back of his hand tickled. Neary absently brushed at it, knocking an amber scorpion to the ground. It scuttled back into the garden, looking for another cool place to hide now that its rock had been pulled away. It slipped into the shadows at the base of Neary's favorite sunflower as the Bishop himself slipped into the shadows of his study.

Neary panted into his study and waited a moment to catch his breath—took longer every day—before answering the phone. He winced away from the handset as a series of beeps, followed by one long fading tone pierced his ear. Relay code. While understanding the need for total security and secrecy, he still hated this crap. Couldn't a man just pick up the blessed blower anymore? He waited until the final tone faded all the way down then punched in a series of numbers. Neary hung up and plopped down in his worn leather chair. He reached for a decanter and poured himself a three finger glass of single malt. He held it up to the light and waited.

Five minutes later, the whiskey nothing more than a warm sensation under his solar plexus, the phone rang.

Neary sighed, "Si?"

"My son's gone." Mason, voice flat as glass.

Neary sat up.

"Mr. Mason we talked about this at the beginning. You were not to initiate a relay to me unless under the most dire circumstance."

"Gone, you choirboy-groping, fuck. Your boy's got my son."

"Father Calvin took your son? You mean he kidnapped..." Neary's heart sank. Johnny's complaints of going over the edge hadn't been bullshit after all. "Mr. Mason, you're sure of this?"

"Killed one of my men too. Broke his neck. The nurse I hired's missing too. And he took one of my vehicles. Your special solution's a goddamn psychopath, Neary." Mason fell silent. The digital clicks and hums of the secured line were audible just below the dead air.

Neary's mind raced. What in God's name had Johnny done? Had he really snapped and taken the boy? Was this some kind of psychological transference; Calvin projecting his childhood self onto Mason's boy? Neary's mouth set in a straight line. The whiskey blush drained from his cheeks and forehead. "Have you informed the authorities?"

Mason sighed. "No, I figured I'd save time and call some of the smaller families direct, tell 'em my kid was out in the open for anyone to waste or hold for ransom. I like to be helpful like that."

Neary ignored the sarcasm. Mason was an ass, but he wasn't wrong. Informing the police would complicate matters. Johnny would have expected that, which meant he was counting Mason and his resources as the only flight factor. He would have put more emphasis on speed of escape than on covering his identity in transit. Neary's eyebrows rose like arched clouds.

"But you do have someone looking for them?"

"Of course," Mason said. "My best man's on that fucker's back, but he's run out of leads."

"Mr. Mason, I've got an idea how to find your son. Do you have a number where I can reach your man?"

"No, I'll deal with my own people."

Neary sighed. "Mr. Mason, your son gets farther away from you with each...passing...second. Giving me direct access to your man in the field will simply save time. Now, the number, please."

Mason let the silence spin out until it was obvious that it was his choice to answer, then spat Horton's cell phone number.

"Fine," Neary said. "I'll call you in a few hours."

Neary heard Mason's intake of breath, but hung up before he could speak. He didn't have time to play customer service to a mobster no matter how well connected he was. The important thing was finding Johnny. If Neary could recover Mason's brat as well, then God be praised, but more was at stake than a prince of Babylon.

Neary got up and moved to his small writing desk. He leaned over with a squeak of chair springs and pulled a leatherbound bible, thick as a telephone directory, from the bookshelf. Neary placed it on the desk with the spine facing away from him and opened the cover, revealing a screen and keyboard. "En nomine Patri," he said. The hidden laptop heard him and the screen glowed into life. He said a silent prayer that Calvin wasn't using the computer Neary had sent to him in Vegas—if Calvin was on-line, he'd know what Neary was up to—and entered a series of commands. A moment later, a map of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan glowed before him, a blinking dot revealed the location of his wayward lamb.

Neary squinted at the screen and nodded. He should have guessed Johnny would head to familiar ground. The Jesuit retreat just south of the Canadian border was only a day's drive from Mason's house and a perfect hiding place. "Ah, that takes me back," Neary sighed. The Jesuit cabin was where he'd begun Johnny's education. The first lessons had been camouflage and concealment. Thom Neary warmed at the memory of a skinny fifteen year-old materializing from a pile of leaf litter and tagging his teacher with a rubber training knife. Gotcha', Thom! , he'd shouted, joyful.

Neary put his finger on the glowing dot. "That you did, boyo."

THREE HOURS LATER, Bishop Thomas Neary felt the deep ka-thunk of retracting landing gear in his tail bone as the plane yanked itself free of the earth's pull. He stared out of the window, Italy shrinking, receding, and wondered if he would have the strength to do what God asked of him when the time came. It was all so biblical. Someone's son would have to die. He hoped it wouldn't have to be his.

TWENTY EIGHT

CALVIN WALKED THROUGH his dreams. It was his first opportunity to sleep in nearly twenty-four hours, and in spite of his fatigue the dreams were vivid, hyper-real. He moved across desert sands under a sky crazy with stars, wheeling as if the clock of heaven had slipped a gear and ran at twenty-times speed. It was important to move in these dreams, not away or toward, just to stay in motion. If he stopped, he would have to face It and then the truth would come out.

Demon: one who knows.

The voice was his own, but the thoughts belonged to another. Calvin kept his head down and trudged. The wind fluted through an ancient skull half-buried in the sand at his feet. He didn't stop long enough to discern whether it was animal or otherwise.

Templar?

Fuck off. I'm not turning around.

Templar?

He kept moving, kept his pace. This was how it had worked his entire life: one foot down in front of the other, head lowered, mind on the motion. Stopping to think meant hesitation and hesitation meant death.

Templar?

FINE!

He planted a bare heel and spun, grinding the sand against the thick pad of dead skin on the bottom of his foot. The dream wastes spread out before him, a land of stark blue and white, star-thrown shadows. A ball of Russian Thistle caught against a stone quivered, struggling against the night wind to resume its wanderings. A towering saguaro held up its triple-pronged hand. But there was no demon.

Over his shoulder. Templar?

Calvin whirled, throwing a roundhouse kick that would break the neck of anyone standing where his dream ears told him the speaker must be. Instead, his heel slammed into the silver frame of a large mirror. It hummed with the force of his blow, as did the bones in his foot. The glass shivered, but did not break. Calvin let out of rush of breath. His foot would have been little more than a flesh bag filled with bone shards had this been real.

In what reality would you find a free standing mirror in the desert, Templar?

The mirror reflected back in time, showing Calvin as he was when the demon cavorted within him so many years ago. The reflection stood with lanky arms at its side, piranha grin on its face. Each meatless rib was drawn in the harsh starlight. The icepick wound seeped with dark, colorless blood. The demon's hair clumped and hung, a filthy nest of dead snakes.

No reality. This is a dream, Calvin answered, or thought. He couldn't be sure if his mouth was moving.

And do you think it any less important for being so, Johnny?

I told you not to use my name. You can't have that.

And you can't hurt us here, Johnny.

Calvin sighed and his shoulders unwound a bit. It was just a dream after all. He was asleep in a bed far away from danger. Jeremy was strapped down in a locked room, and Tie was taking a shift watching him. If the demon was going to interrupt his slumber anyway, he might as well just relax and deal with it.

Might even learn something, he said.

The reflection winked. Might.

Calvin thought for a second, then said, Lemme' ask you a question.

Yes?

What are you, anyway? Fallen angel, some sort of a being from another level of consciousness or dimension? What?

It's rude to answer a question with another, we know, but...

Calvin twirled his hand in a winding gesture. S'okay, go ahead.

Do you know why you have no memory of our time together?

Calvin grimaced. Our time together? You make it sound like it was therapy or romance or something.

It was. The reflection traced its ragged nails up and down its ribcage, tickling. Calvin could feel the ghost of that touch on his own skin and broke out in gooseflesh, his testicles hauled for cover. But why no memory, knight?

I'll bite, why?

What little mind you have is not enough to contain the truth of what we are. Should we pour the information into that shallow bowl balanced on top of your neck, it would run over as a never-ending stream of babble from your lips. You don't remember, because we spared you that understanding.

Gee, thanks, Calvin said, barely suppressing the urge to flip the bird. So, if you're so big, or infinite, or whatever you're trying to tell me you are, why can't you find a way to explain so a dumbass like me can understand?

What is time, Templar? What is age?

You know, I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and grocked it pretty well, so you could at least give me a shot here, ya' smug bastard.

The demon seemed to consider its response, looking off over Calvin's head and scratching absently at a scab on its neck. The scratching became a picking. Calvin pursed his lips and half turned his face away. The demon had opened a ragged gash and was flicking away little bits of flesh and tendon, scrabbling at its neck with thick, sharpened nails. After a minute, its head hung from a mere strip of flesh and muscle. With a moist, Velcro-like ripping, it yanked off its own head and held it out for Calvin's inspection.

The demon gripped its head by the dreadlocked hair with one hand and made a fist with the other. It knocked on the skull three times, a great booming thunder roll for each impact, and the jaw dropped open. A pearl the size of a golf ball, shiny with saliva, clicked past its teeth. It fell through the mirror, like a pebble through the surface of a pond, and plopped into the sand at Calvin's feet. Calvin picked it up, expecting the pearl to be warm. He threw it to the ground. Cold!

The disembodied head whispered, Wisdom always is.

Calvin could feel the freeze flowing off the pearl onto his bare foot, as if he were standing next to an open thermos of liquid nitrogen.

In Eden, the demon offered, the apple's chill was such that Eve lost three fingers to frost-bite and Adam broke his teeth.

Calvin stared at the pearl. But they still ate it.

Yes.

Calvin bent and snatched the pearl from the sand. His nerves cried out as ingots of leaden pain laced his hand. The agony was so great, so final, that Calvin's bones felt a kind of sadness. The sky, the sand, the whole of the dream world seemed to be screaming. The reflection of the demon had vanished and left Calvin staring at himself: a barefoot priest, clutching a tiny, frozen dwarf star, his eyes and mouth agape. The screams were his. Awash in fear and paralyzing cold, Calvin watched the man in the mirror bring the pearl toward his open, wailing mouth. In the end, it proved bitter.

John Calvin awoke with his eyes already open, the reality of the wood-paneled walls and window with its shifting forest view swapping for the blue/white desert of his dream. He was sitting at the edge of the bed, naked and shivering. The feeling that he was choking to death on a chunk of ice from one of Saturn's rings faded with his dream. His head swiveled on his neck a second before the door opened.

Tiesha exploded into the room, "Johnny! You okay? You were screamin' like somebody set your ass on fire." She sat down next to him on the bed, aware of his muscle and sinew, his angular man shapes, but tabling the bolts of excitement they roused within her for the moment. She put her arm around his shoulders. "Christ!" she said. "You're so cold."

Calvin's skin gratefully accepted Tie's warmth, her humanity and life. It washed through him and melted the frost away, leaving just the man and the knowledge he'd brought back. He turned his eyes on hers—flecks of gold shone in her deeper brown.

"I remember everything," he said. "Backward and forward."

Tie smiled. She couldn't help it. This close to him, this close to his body, her heart was slamming. She couldn't ignore it. "Whatcha' talkin' about?" Her breath was hot in her throat, her voice low. She looked at his mouth.

He caught her gaze. "I know how to win," Calvin said. "I know what to do." He shook his head and ran a rough palm over his face. "God, I feel like I know everything."

She opened her mouth, perhaps to reply, perhaps not. Calvin decided for her with his kiss. She rolled on top of him and he pulled her into the tangle of covers. Their hands grew quick and her clothes peeled away in a flurry of fabrics, something tore. He cupped her breast and pushed his thickness against her thigh. She groaned, aching, and sank her teeth into the meat of his shoulder. Tie reached down, shifted, and they plunged into each other. Their rhythms merged along with their bodies and the big, wordless promises were exchanged on the backs of their breath. Tie's cries were a fluid of weeping and shouts, her contractions fierce enough to bring a deep soreness.

For a long time after he stayed inside her, hard even after his orgasm. His movements were slow, minute, not driving, just stroking. They stared into one another's faces, memorizing lines. She trailed her languid hand back and forth, up and down his spine, his skin slick and shining. He rocked just so and her eyes closed, her lips turning up at the corners. Calvin pushed faster. Her eyes flew open, burned. "Forever," she said. "Yes," he answered, but a splinter of night at the back of his mind made him question just how long forever might be.

IN THE BEDROOM across the hall Jeremy rotted inside his own skin, his soul turning on a spit over flames of Kelvin frigidity. The demon sat astride the boy's soul, rotating through the tortures with him now that Calvin had welded it into the child's body. The pain was necessary, all of it. The demon had always known, and now Calvin did too. From the depths of his wasted chest, his wasted spirit, a desperate sob welled and escaped the boy's cracked lips. The demon whispered, "Take heart, boy. Even time ends."

TWENTY NINE

HORTON WATCHED THE head moving up and down in his lap, and marveled that some women could leave the house under dye jobs as bad as this one's. He knew she was just an economy street-walker, but even cheap whores should have some professional pride. Sure, she was passing good at giving head—she'd only nipped him twice—but he wasn't even close to coming. She took him too deep and gagged, stopping to cough. The air filled with the odor of sour stomachs and ancient ashtrays. She cleared her throat and was about to recommence, but Horton stopped her.

"Okay, honey, that's fine."

She looked up and threw him a snaggled grin. One of her front teeth—what Horton's mamma had always called "Rabbit Teeth"—was stained caramel brown. "You sure?" she asked. Her lipstick was the color of rotted plums, some of it smeared across her swollen lips, some marked Horton's wilting pride. She gripped the base of his penis as if it might get away should she let go. "It costs the same whether ya' cum or not."

"Get off me."

"Whatever," she said, and squeaked over to the edge of the motel bed. She pushed breasts reminiscent of used teabags back into her halter. She stood up and walked to the mirror over the dresser, adjusting her hair. Her belly melted over the waistband of cracked leatherette pants.

Horton zipped himself up and pulled out a twenty. Had he really been hard up enough to rent the services of this...? God, he could hardly even think of her as a hooker. His experience with whores since his employ with Mason's organization was of a higher caliber than Miss DyeJob. It's what he got for being desperate in a shit-hole town like this one. The blip on the map named the burg where he finally fetched up as Forge, Home of the County Champion Girl's Jr. Varsity Swim Team. Go Ingots! Horton put the twenty on the nightstand and pulled out a pack of smokes.

"You swim?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth as he lit the cigarette.

"Huh?" DyeJob looked past herself in the mirror at the bald faggot on the bed. The ones she couldn't get off were all fags. They just didn't know it about themselves. Not that she had anything against fags. It was like she said, costs the same one way or another. In fact, she liked fags. They were funny. And that straight guy make-over show with those cute little Queers from New York? Gawd, she freakin' loved that show. She winked at Horton. "Didn't getcha', hon. Whadya' say?"

"Nothing." Horton blew smoke. "We said twenty, right?"

She showed him her teeth again. "Yep." She stuck out a hip. "'Less you wanna' try again. Maybe," she gave herself a pat on one leatherette butt cheek, "you're into something a little kinkier?"

"Maybe you should just leave it."

"Whatever." She walked over to the bed, the twenty made a crinkling sound and disappeared.

Horton sighed smoke and watched her gather up her bag then slip on her spike heels. He glanced at the clock; 3:03AM. Man, when had he picked her up? Felt like a week ago.

His head had dented the pillow ten minutes after he had first walked into the motel room, and he'd even managed to sleep for a few hours, before the dream sped him into consciousness again. He'd been going at it with Mr. Mason's sometime bed warmer, that black chick from the restaurant, but it wasn't really him. He was just hitching a ride inside Calvin's body. When Horton woke up he had a hard-on like a steel spike (Go Ingots!) and a certainty: Calvin had taken Mason's woman as well as his son. Horton didn't believe in any of that psychic-friend bullshit—used to laugh his ass off when Robbery-Homicide would give up and bring in one of those horoscope writers to help them find a missing person—but when he opened his eyes, he knew what he knew. Hell, he hadn't believed in demons or possession either.

Horton had given up on trying to sleep and decided to do something about his psychic stiffy. He'd slid the Lotus through the burned-out streets of Forge until he found the right stretch and opened the door to the first pro who'd offered.

Now, he couldn't wait for her to leave.

"You a dealer?"

Horton looked up.

"I mean with that slick ride. You, um..." She trailed off, eyes jigging around the room, settling on one point or another, then taking off like she was tracking a fly. Horton kept his mouth shut. He knew what was coming. "Cuss' I could really use a fix, you know?" She spoke to his crotch. "I could try to get you off again, if you're holding."

He stubbed out his smoke. Cheap hookers were not his favorite people. Cheap hookers who were also shucking, jiving junkies scored even lower on his personal worth meter. She had started that bopping back and forth from one foot to the other routine they always fell into, like she was some little kid who had to go pee-pee.

"Please," she begged his crotch. "If you're holding you could do whatever you wanted to me." She shoved her hand into the front pocket of her pants and pulled out the twenty. "I'd even pay you." She held out the bill. "With this."

Officer Horton had seen a thousand women like this. He'd even shaken down his fair share of their pimps in his day, the girls watching from the corners, half-smiles quivering the herpes sores at the corners of their mouths. He knew them well. They were mean-spirited, craven, like you'd imagine a crow or some kind of scavenger would be. Do anything it took to get a shiny, to get a fix. He was a little surprised DyeJob had lasted this long. Most of the street crows expired early in life.

"How old are you?" he asked.

She blinked. "Huh?"

"How old are you? You know, think back to the year your mother pushed you out and try to guess how many years have passed since then."

"Huh?"

"Oye." He rubbed a hand over his head. He needed a shave up there, people would start thinking he was a fucking jarhead. "Listen... What's your name?"

"Del."

"Real name or street name?"

"Real." When they asked for her name it meant they were getting personal and maybe that meant he liked her. He wasn't such a bad faggot after all, maybe. "Short for Delilah."

Horton was about to use her name in telling her to get the fuck out of his sight—old cop trick, using a person's name usually had more of a punch—when something changed. It was the way she'd said it, Delilah. Like her hair had become cleaner, or she'd stopped the junkie dance for a second; come into focus as a human being. Horton pulled out another twenty and handed it to her. "I'm not holding, but here." He turned his back on her. "Maybe you can score off that."

Horton heard the twenties crinkle as they went back into her pants pocket. She muttered something, might have been "thanks". Could as easily have been "fuck you." He listened to the doorknob work and the squeak of the hinges.

"Jesus!" Del blurted.

Horton spun around. An older man, probably big once, but now just big around the guts, darkened the door in a black suit. He chuckled. "Just his humble servant, young lady."

Del flicked a glance off the white square at his wrinkled adam's apple and stopped. She blushed, awash in confusion. "Sorry," she said and pushed past him into the hall, out of Horton's life forever.

Bishop Thom Neary stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He glowered at Horton. "Saint Magdalene she was not."

Horton offered a huge, disarming grin.

"You have five seconds to tell me who you are," he said.

Neary's eyes were deeply bloodshot. They flashed. "That implies a negative reaction should I fail to meet your deadline."

"Time's up." Horton took his eyes off Neary just long enough to yank his Glock out from between the mattress and boxspring. When he turned back Neary was aiming a pistol the size of a railgun at Horton's head. Horton stuck out his lower lip and nodded. "Desert Eagle," he said. "You win." He dropped the Glock and sat down on the bed. "I'll go out on a limb and guess that you're a friend of Father Calvin's."

"Good guess," Neary said. "You haven't got the slightest notion of where he is, do you?"

Horton, completely at sea, decided not to give much of a shit about what happened from here on out. He just hadn't had enough sleep over the past few days to be canny. "I lost him on a farm road about twenty miles north of here."

Neary lowered the gun, but held it at his side, a dull gleam. "Would you like to know where he is?"

Horton sat up straight. "You know?" He shook his head. "Wait. Who the fuck are you, man?"

"I work with Father Calvin. Your employer told me how to find you."

" Mr. Mason?"

"You work for anyone else?"

"No, I mean... No." Horton rubbed his face with his hands. They smelled like nicotine and Del's hairspray. "How'd you find him?"

"Doesn't matter," Neary took a step backward and rested his backside against the dresser. "You want to get the kid back for your boss?"

"I want to find Jeremy, yeah."

"Then your job description just changed a bit, Mr. Horton." Neary thumbed the hammer on the pistol to safe and clunked the big gun down on the dresser. "You'll be my assistant until we retrieve young master Mason."

"What about his father?"

"He can have you back when I'm done with you."

"The fuck does that mean? And are you ever going to tell me who the hell you are, or just hit me again with obvious stuff I already know?"

Neary considered for a moment. If he told Horton his actual name it meant that Horton would have to die. While Neary didn't expect the bodyguard would survive the coming ordeal, he didn't want to kill him outright either. Neary would need his help, at least at the beginning. And the big galoot hadn't shit himself at the sight of Neary's Desert Eagle. Retaining one's composure in the face of a .50 caliber handgun had to count for something in this world, or why get up in the morning? Neary bet Calvin had liked this guy too.

"You can call me Father Bob if you like." He nodded. Yes, that would do fine. "As for Frank Mason, he's a benefactor of great importance, but he's also a loose cannon. I don't need him storming in with a goomba squad and blowing everything to Hades. You may call and inform him that I have acquired your services for the time being and that I expect to have his son returned to him in less than forty-eight hours. You may not inform him as to our location. Is that clear, Mr. Horton?"

"Fine." It was so not fine.

"Good."

"You said you know where Jeremy is? When do we go?"

Neary blinked, squinted at his watch. "Four hours from now."

Horton stood up. "Why? If you know where they are...?

"Because I've just had a long flight followed by a drive through ugly country and I want a nap." Neary picked up his pistol and moved toward the door. "I'm in the next room. Be ready to go in four hours. You're driving."

Horton nodded at the gun. He was never going to get used to the sight of a priest in uniform holding a gat. "How'd you get that on a plane?"

"It'd scare you shitless if you knew how easy it was. Four hours, Mr. Horton. Perhaps you should use the time to get some sleep yourself. You appear to need it."

"Fuck you, Father Bob."

Neary tossed a wink over his shoulder as he left the room. "God bless."

* * *

FRANK MASON EXISTED in a state of perfect patience. He sat at his desk, still clad in the crusted remains of the recently exploded Emma Grouwe and lately concussed Rosario. As he hadn't taken any nourishment since the episode in the kitchen (where he'd voided his bladder while hammering his house keeper), he was empty, comfortable. It was an expensive office chair. A masterwork of ergonomics and classic style. Only the best for Frank Mason. He stared straight ahead, the waves of stink emanating from his gore-coat warped the air like heat off blacktop. Every now and then his stomach rumbled, but he failed to register its complaints. Had he noticed, Mason might have plunged his brass letter opener into his own belly to silence it. But he was consumed. He was waiting.

It was a not altogether unpleasant state of being, this place between information and action. It was new, curious. In his adult memory, Frank couldn't recall a time in which he'd had so little control over a situation. There was nothing for him to do but wait; there were no people, no circumstances, nothing over which he could exert his will except his own body.

The phone rang. Mason let it ring twice more before extending his arm and wrapping his fingers around the handset. He cleared his throat. "Hello?"

"It's Horton, sir."

"Mr. Horton," Mason's other hand began to flex in and out of a fist. Dried bits of tissue flaked off the back of his hand onto the desk blotter. "Do you have anything new to report?"

"I've had a visit from one of Father Calvin's friends."

"Ah," Mason said. "Our friend the Bishop."

"Bishop? He looked like a regular... He said you gave him my location, sir."

"I did."

"He said that he could have Jeremy back to you in less than forty-eight hours if I agreed to help him."

"Well then," Mason's flexing left hand began to throb, burn. He ignored it. "He must have access to information we don't. I'm glad you came to me earlier, Mr. Horton, when your own resources were at their end. It seems it was the right choice to enlist the Bishop's aid."

"Yes, sir."

"What is it, Horton?"

"I don't trust him, Mr. Mason. I don't feel right about going up against Father Calvin with this guy at my back. They're on the same team or whatever."

"Are you sure you're not being paranoid, Mr. Horton?" A twist flashed over Mason's lips. "We've all been through a great deal lately. Do you have anything concrete to base your feelings on?"

"He told me not to tell you where we were going. Said you were a 'loose cannon', sir. I didn't much like hearing that."

Mason's hand froze in mid-flex, the muscles screaming painful gratitude for the respite.

"Sir?"

"I'm here, Horton."

"Sir, I need some help. I want you to come up here and back me up. If this guy from Our Lady of the Sacred Bazooka is on the level, then fine, we take out Calvin, get Jeremy back and everything's copacetic. If they're in this together..."

"Where are you, Horton?"

"Right now I'm at the motel I called you from the last time we talked. Father Bob—"

"Who?"

"He told me to call him that."

"Fine. You can leave it at that. His name doesn't matter and it would probably keep you safer not to know it for now. Go on."

"We're leaving to find Calvin and your boy in about another three and a half hours, but I don't know where we're going and I can't call you while we're en route cuz' he's gonna be right next to me the whole time."

"Then how will I find you?"

"Sir, you remember the OnStar systems I insisted on installing in all your cars? I've got the Lotus—I'm sorry for taking it, sir, but it was the only set of wheels left, and I had to move fast."

"Forgiven, of course, Mr. Horton." An image of the skin burning from Horton's skull as the Lotus' back tire shredded it flashed through Mason's head. "Your priorities, as usual, were correct. Now what about it?"

Horton explained to Mason how he could obtain the car's location in real time and gave him the number for the OnStar customer service line. "Ask for Courtney. She's very helpful. Just tell her it's that damn 'wayward teenager' again and she'll sort you out. You should rent a car with an in-dash G.P.S map. Something high-end ought to come with that standard. If you get started now, sir, you'll be able to stay relatively close to our trails. It's messy, Mr. Mason, I know."

"But it's what we have. You're a good man, Horton." Mason paused for effect. "Don't worry son, I'll get your back."

Mason thumbed the flash button on the handset and Horton beeped out. Mason's car rental agency was on speed dial. Five minutes later, a cheerful young man—his name was Allen and how could he help you today—ensured Mr. Mason that he would personally deliver the rental car to his front door within the hour. Of course, it was no problem. Frank Mason was a Titanium Level Club Member.

He had been right to wait. The petals of his rose had already begun to return. He had Horton back under his influence and with the information the bodyguard had provided, Mason now had a situation in which to be active. When he caught up to all of them it would become a situation he could control, and he would control the hell out of it. He could move again. Mason stood up, the joints in his hips and knees crackling as if they were filled with bubble wrap.

He walked on down the hall.

Mason paid a visit to the "tool room" hidden in his walk-in cigar humidor. The absence of a handful of his prized Cubans was like a missing tooth in an otherwise perfect brown smile. Mr. Horton had helped himself to more than Mason's car. Well, perhaps he could have a few of Horton's fingers wrapped in tobacco leaves to replace the missing stogies.

Thirty minutes later, Mason stood just inside the open front door waiting for his car. The "tools" he'd selected leaned against the coat rack like deadly umbrellas. He did not move. Even when the flies droned in to explore and feast on his gore-coat, he remained a study in stillness. Until the car arrived, he again found himself in that in-between place. Tires popped over the gravel drive and a gleaming blue BMW 330i purred into the turnaround.

A tall, bespectacled go-getter in his mid-twenties hopped from the driver's seat and trotted around toward the front door. He caught sight of Mason's silhouette and stopped, squinting into the gloom. "Mr. Mason?" The shadow didn't answer. Allen blinked as the shadow's head suddenly went blurry for a moment. A distinct buzzing sound floated on the warm afternoon air. "Hello?"

Mason smiled, the movement of his facial muscles arousing a small cloud of flies around his head. He reached to the side. "Allen? Hiya! Looks like you brought me one heck of a nice ride."

"Yes, sir," Allen swelled. "It sure is." He turned around and placed his hands on his hips: a man looking over a prize piece of horse flesh. The custom Bimmer was his company's pride and joy, reserved for special club members like Mr. Mason. The Royal Blue lacquer paint job refracted the sun like a pool of Mediterranean water. Allen'd had that color mixed special. A fat black fly lazed by his face. He waved it away and wrinkled his nose. Oh man, something had died around here. Allen turned, saying, "I think you're really going to like the way she han—." Mason was standing six inches away from him. Allen screamed only once before Mason took his breath away.

* * *

HORTON HUNG UP, closed his eyes and let out a long, shaking breath. Playing Mason had been tough. Horton's time on the force had honed his internal lie detector but he would never be a great liar himself. Having to lie meant that you were in deep shit; the lie itself was just a way to move the confrontation with said shit a little further down the line. He didn't believe in his own magic bullshit dust and it made lying hard. He thought it might be all right. Hoped it would. Mason had sounded calm and collected, like he'd bought everything Horton had said. Hell, Mason had sounded nice. And that, of course, got Horton's lie detector going off like the alarm bells in Mission Control during a launch fuck-up.

"I'll get your back," Horton muttered into the empty motel room. He grabbed a smoke off the night table, lit up and dragged, listening to the tobacco crackle. He imagined Mason at his back and wondered what it would feel like to take a slug or a blade in the spinal column. And Mason favored that enormous .44. Thing had a bore like a train tunnel. Even if he only clipped the bodyguard's back, Horton'd end up needing someone else to wipe his ass for him. Mason had called him "son". And had it come from anyone else, Horton, even with his cop issue lie detector, would have believed it. Jesus, what a load. Horton exhaled dirty blue. "Frosty the fucking psycho."

But he'd done it. He'd thrown a chess move and could only hope that the Mason play would work when it all came down. In another—he checked his watch—couple hours he was going to drive a professional hitter to meet another professional hitter. They might make nice and give Horton the boy. They might go Wild Bunch on each other and anyone else in the vicinity. Or they could join up and take the boy, and if they pulled that, it was all over. Horton was confident in his abilities, but he wasn't good enough to take on both priests. And he wasn't counting on the first option. Calvin wasn't just going to give up the kid. But in the back of his mind, like a stupid, hateful itch you know better than to scratch, Horton held the hope that Calvin might.

That was fool's gold and he knew it. Horton wasn't about to count on something so tenuous. Any way you looked at it, he was out-gunned. And as far as information was concerned, he was unarmed. He didn't know where they were going, or what they would find when they got there. He needed a piranha and that's where Mason came in.

Four years ago, Horton, Sinclair and Finch had been sent to lean on a business partner of Mr. Mason's. The guy was a Cubano raft-jockey who'd made good in the U.S.A. through an exotic fish business. Or rather, he'd made good by using his exotic fish business as a cover for moving a few keys of China White every now and then for Mason. Unfortunately, when Mason performed a surprise audit on El Cubano's black books, he'd uncovered some serious sSeung. It had ended in a cluster fuck.

They stood in a warehouse, Sinclair and Finch indistinct in the shadows under an elevated display tank, Horton off by the door and everyone pointing guns. One guy covered another guy covered another like a Quentin Tarantino movie, except everyone was ready to piss himself and no one was dressed all that well. El Cubano and his boys had been waiting for them. (How they had known Mason's men were coming Horton never figured out.) For what was probably less than half a minute, but what felt like an hour, they stood that way, six hair-triggers away from a very messy domino effect.

El Cubano had taken a huge gamble then. Later Horton would remember the man with admiration. The raft-jockey-made-good lifted his arms in the universal "Okay, you got me" gesture, and in the instant it took for everyone to process what was going on, he fired. The slug smashed through the big fish tank, spilling its contents all over the floor... and all over Sinclair and Finch. Horton never took his eyes off his man and unloaded as soon as he heard the shot. He retrained his gun on El Cubano as a bullet cut the air past his left ear. Horton opened up again and there was one less Castro-hating-raft-jockey-made-good. Sinclair got the last guy with a wild shot. He was busy spinning around like a man-shaped tornado, throwing random lead until his gun clicked dry. Finch was rolling around on the floor like he was trying to extinguish himself. Each man was clothed in a jacket of snapping piranhas.

That's what Horton needed now, a piranha, a wild card. Horton had no idea if Mason would go nuts in a way that would make matters better or worse. His only certainty was that Mason would go nuts, and perhaps in the ensuing chaos, Horton would be able to catch a break. The last time someone had played the piranha card, Horton was the only one to end up without a mark. He hoped it would be the same this time. But then, the man who'd played the wild card before had wound up dead.

Horton stubbed out his cigarette and stared at the wall. Through those eight inches of drywall and lumber Father Bob was catching some blessed beauty sleep.

"Hope you like fish, motherfucker," Horton whispered. And oh, wasn't that perfect? A slow smile settled on his face as he realized what day it was—Friday.

THIRTY

JEREMY HAD ONCE been a boy. A child of uncanny brilliance and potential to be sure, but a normal child in the ways that matter. Now, he was a cored-out shell, a suit of nerve endings, skin and muscle fiber—a play costume for a demon. The boy that had been Jeremy Mason existed in a state between dream and consciousness. From time to time he would connect with the reality in which his abused frame existed, the bedroom wavering into focus just long enough for him to feel excruciating pain. Then it was gone as he fled back to the dream. It didn't hurt there. At least, not physically.

He walked over a moonscape of blasted, friable rock skimming the edges of slag-rimmed craters so deep he lost the bottoms in a haze. The Abyss was at the bottom of those canyon-like holes. He knew that quote about staring into the abyss too long and having it stare back. That was Nietze. Neet-zuh or Neechy, he still wasn't sure how to say that guy's name. He had written Mensch unt Ubermensch. Man and Superman. Jeremy had given that one a try last year but put it down. Philosophy was pretty neat, but not as cool as physics. Boy, what he wouldn't give to be Superman right now. He could just fly right off this dead place, this skin stretched over the Abyss.

It wasn't that he was lonely, or really even all that scared. He was scared. Shitting bricks, if you wanted to be honest. It was just that he was used to it. His regular life was one big study in scary most of the time. This nightmare wasn't any worse than that. In fact, it was kind of better. Jeremy didn't have to worry about his father, or school, or bullies in this place. It was more like a big waiting area here, like being stuck between rooms. He did miss Rosario and watching Star Trek Next Gen. And he missed Mr. Horton. When Jeremy woke up he would have to tell Mr. Horton all about this. It was the strangest nightmare he'd ever had. If he could just get over the feeling that he was walking on top of a big lake of emptiness everything would be okay. Well, if he could get rid of that and the dead woman.

She had been following him for the past... Jeremy stopped and stared at his dirty feet. How long had he been here anyway? He had no concept of the passage of time here in the waiting room. It was actually one of the nicer features. The dead woman had been with him almost from the start, though, he was pretty sure about that.

Jeremy attempted a casual glance over his right shoulder, brushing his face against his shirt like he was just scratching his cheek. There she was: a woman with light hair and a kind face. Her skin was shark-colored and puffy, stretching against her bones in some places, sort of pooling in others. Her sundress clung to her, the dye long since bled away. A small puddle of water gleamed at her feet. She caught him looking and winked.

Jeremy started walking again. It felt better if he was moving. The dead woman hadn't tried to talk to him or touch him or anything, but it was really icky to have her back there like that. Whenever he turned around to check she'd be there just hanging out, keeping tabs. He'd tried to talk to her once, screwing up his courage and saying "Hi." The dead woman had smiled, her head tipped to one side and her eyes bright with tears. It might have been water, he couldn't be sure because he freaked and turned back around too soon. When she'd smiled a whole bunch of black water had trickled from her nose.

Jeremy didn't think she was there to hurt him or anything. Kind of the opposite really. It felt like she was his guardian angel or whatever. Pretty lame-ass guardian angel, he knew, a soaking-wet dead lady. He glanced back again and she gave him a small wave. Definitely lame-ass, but still, there was something familiar about her. Safe. And safety was something he was fresh out of.

Jeremy wondered what this place was all about. Was it a parallel dimension? Einstein had talked about there being something like twenty-six different dimensions and that human beings lived in just the third. And Hawking, oh boy, he talked about the possibility of infinite dimensions. That was all quantum mechanics and had something to do with potentiality. Jeremy had been reading A Brief History of Time when whatever was happening to him started, and he'd stuck on that part of the book. He'd gone over it and over it, the concept of parallel dimensions branching off from every single moment hummed for him.

As far as he could wrap his mind around it, the deal was like someone running into a fork in the road: the person goes left and sets off a chain of events. But it doesn't stop there. Another person, or the quantum potential of another person—this is where it got kind of hard—goes to the right fork setting off a whole bunch of consequences too. And every single one of those consequences branches off into other quantum potentialities and it just keeps going. So what you end up with is the idea that all things that can happen do happen no matter how improbable, and that we experience what we experience because we choose to do so, like picking out a series of events because they make sense.

Jeremy had been reading under his favorite oak tree at school when he'd reached that conclusion. He wondered if you could choose an alternate experience.

Jeremy had stared hard at three boys who were over by the fence doing their best to hide a shared cigarette. Could he choose to experience the reality in which these kids had tufts of grass growing out of their heads instead of hair? He squinted his eyes and balled up his fists. Nothing had happened, but he didn't give it up. He'd looked skyward, trying to make the clouds break up, and thought that maybe he was making headway, but that maybe it was also just wishful thinking. Jeremy wondered then if there people walking around who had mastered the ability to choose, if they were hiding among the rest of us.

It was around then—as he thought more and more of the people who might be hiding, choosing their realities—that he'd found himself wandering the broken fields of the waiting room. Could this place have something to do with alternate reality and choice?

Jeremy stopped. He checked over his shoulder for the dead woman. Yep, there she was, head to one side, expectant. He looked forward again and exhaled. He set his mouth and faced her. The dead woman looked at him with what might have been a species of pride. It was hard to read her water-logged features. Jeremy took a deep breath and raised his voice.

"I choose for you to speak."

The dead woman opened her mouth and coughed a gout of brackish fluid. She bent over at the waist and hacked for what seemed like a long time, more dark liquid splashing her fishy white feet. When her retching finally ceased, she straightened and stood, a little wobbly, with her hands on her hips. She turned her head to the side, hawked and spat a glorious wad of something Jeremy could go the rest of his life never seeing again and be perfectly happy about it.

"Thank you," she said, her voice clear and warm. "That was driving me crazy. I've been wanting to talk to you for so long, Jeremy." Now her pride in him was unmistakable. "I knew you'd start to figure it out."

Jeremy felt himself starting to smile but caught it. "Thanks," he said, standing up a little straighter. "Now, that I've decided you can talk, I have some questions for you."

Her eyes sparkled "Shoot."

"Where are we?"

"Your head."

"Huh?"

"You never left Kansas, Dorothy."

"Huh?"

"You're good at that one, know any others?"

Jeremy stared, blinked. "Okay, wait, so..." he swept his arm across the landscape. "You're saying that this is a dream or something?"

She nodded. "Or something."

"So it's not a dream."

"I didn't say that. It's whatever you want it to be, Jeremy."

"I don't understand."

"Yes," she said. "You do. Or rather, you can if you want to. If you choose to."

Jeremy's face lit, his eyes sly. "Ohhhh, so this is like, what? Quantum Land?"

"If that's what you say it is."

He frowned. "That's annoying."

She smiled with maddening serenity. "It's whatever you want it to be. If you want me to be annoying, I'm annoying."

"You're not real, are you? None of this is."

"Care to define 'real', quantum boy?"

Jeremy squinted at the dead woman, trying to find the live person under that pale tissue. "I know you from somewhere."

"You do. That's right," she said. "But you never saw me like this." She plucked at her sundress, leaving a pucker of wet fabric. "I'm what you know deep down happened to me."

"I don't get it."

"On some level you do." She grew stern. "Leave it alone, though, Jeremy. You don't need to unearth me any more than you already have. It wouldn't be healthy for you. You're in enough trouble already."

"What's going on?" he whined. He hated how he sounded, but he was just a scared kid. Dammit, he was allowed to whine a little wasn't he?

"Whine all you want. Just make sure you're brave when the time comes, that you make the right choice."

"Hey! I didn't say that." He took a step back. "You can read my mind."

"I am your mind."

"I still don't—"

"You're here because you want to be. Someone gave you the choice and this is the path you decided to walk down."

"But I didn't choose anything."

The dead woman looked at her feet. "Then what are you doing here?"

"I don't want this!" Jeremy shouted.

She made as if to reach out to him, to place her hand on his shoulder and pull him to her breast, but pulled back, fingers wilting. "Oh, sweetie, when that's true you'll be able to leave."

Tears warmed his cheeks. "How long 'til that happens?" The weight of his sadness pressed Jeremy's head down, his chin almost on his boney, little boy's chest. He sobbed. "I can't take much more of this."

"Then it shouldn't be long," the dead woman promised. "Just make the right choice."

Jeremy looked up, his eyes huge and wet. "How will I know what that is?"

"That's the easy part," she said. "It'll be the one that hurts the most."

Jeremy closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't understand," he whispered. When the dead woman didn't answer, Jeremy opened his eyes. Two wet footprints darkened the gray rock, but she was gone.

Jeremy turned all the way around, twirling almost like a kid trying to make himself dizzy, but all he found was the ragged, rolling landscape. "Hey!" he called. "Dead lady!"

Nothing. Not even an echo.

Jeremy sniffed and wiped at his nose. Some lame-ass guardian angel she was. Talking to her had been like talking with the Night of the Living Dead version of Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. He kicked a piece of rock with his toe and watched it skitter across the hard ground. The fragment smacked into a small boulder and flaked into dust. Jeremy moped over and sat down. The rock was warm, but not warmer than his skin, as if the ground and his body shared the same temperature. "Yuck," he muttered, but sitting felt good so he put up with it. He squinted down at his rock tuffet and sneered. "You start talkin' like her and I'll fart on you."

The rock did not talk.

Jeremy giggled. A fart joke was still a fart joke no matter what dimension you're stuck in. He sighed. The laugh dried up the last of his tears, but he was still here. He sat up straight and slapped the tops of his thighs. Okay, where was here? The dead woman had said that here was wherever he wanted it to be. He looked around at the rock and bleak sky. The rim of one of those craters puckered on the near horizon. The air was sterile. He wanted this? This sucked.

Maybe he wasn't seeing all of it, though.

Jeremy looked at the tops of his smooth hands and concentrated. What else was this place? Maybe it was more than what it was. Maybe what he wanted was what this place wasn't. His eyes opened wide, the thought thrumming a string of truth in his head. This place wasn't school, or bullies, and it wasn't home with his scary, double-edged father.

Jeremy had never lived under the illusion that Frank Mason was a warm man, but lately he had begun to feel that his father thought of him more as a tool to some end rather than an actual human being. Sometimes like a tool that didn't do what it was supposed to do. When Frank Mason looked at his son like that, Jeremy got a squirmy feeling in his stomach. And if his father looked at him like that before bedtime, Jeremy often had trouble sleeping. It didn't feel safe to close his eyes.

There had been times when Jeremy had woken up, as if disturbed by a ribbon of cold across his exposed brow, to find a silhouette standing in his bedroom door. He knew who it was, but not what he wanted. Jeremy would have given just about anything to satisfy his father. He'd worked hard at school, skipping through grades until his teachers and assignments conformed to him instead of he to them. He was silent as a mouse in his own room, so as not to disturb or arouse. He always answered questions, snapping to like a dutiful drummer boy. And he never asked questions, even the one he longed most to have answered: What do you want from me?

If what the dead woman had said was true about him choosing this place, then he must have done it because it was safe. "Jeez, you'd a thought I would pick something a little more like Disney Land or somewhere." Jeremy looked up and his breath caught.

Someone was standing on the rim of the crater.

It wasn't the dead woman. Even at this distance he would have been able to make out the dress and the long hair. Besides, the silhouette was a different height—Jeremy's height. The figure on the rim had seen him, it was staring in his direction. Jeremy thought about calling out and began to lift his hand in a wave.

He stopped.

Goosebumps gripped his scalp with cold claws. Something was very wrong. This person wasn't a part of him like the dead woman had said she was. A python of cold air wound around Jeremy's ankles. It was flowing off the person on the rim. He didn't know how he could know that, but he did. He knew something else too. No choice of his would affect this newcomer. It belonged to itself.

It beckoned, "Come here, boy," its voice a whisper but clear and strong, as if it were standing right next to him.

Running at this point would be good. Running made a lot of sense. Jeremy's feet were freezing. How much colder would it be ten feet closer to this thing, or even touching it? Jeremy took a half step backward, eyes locked on the newcomer, ready to bolt.

Then he got it. His shoulders slumped. It was giving him a choice: come closer or run. Now, he had to make the right choice. Which one was that?

"The one that hurts the most," he whimpered. "Crap."

The thing on the rim chuckled, a fall of pebbles in a dry wash.

Jeremy clenched his jaw and his fists. Sooner or later he was going to run out of courage. Jesus, he was just a kid. This was too much. Sooner or later he was going to have to do what other kids are allowed to do and just sit down and cry. He took a step forward, the first step toward the hardest choice of his life.

###### THIRTY ONE

HORTON ARRIVED AT two conclusions as he and "Father Bob" slipped over the highway in the black Lotus. First, that the good Father underestimated his intelligence, which was good. Second, Horton was now positive that the priest was going kill him, which was not good. Horton had never been one for small talk, but after almost a hundred miles of silence, crammed into the cockpit of the sports car, he couldn't stand it any longer.

"How do you like the ride, Father?"

Neary made a show of looking around the interior, checking out the starship dashboard and running his open palm over the leather. "Very nice."

"You have a little bit of an accent. Is it Greek, or what?"

"Bronx."

Horton chuckled. "No, I mean over that."

"Italian. I've been living near Rome for several years."

"Good cars."

"Excuse me?"

Horton smiled. "I mean they make good cars in Italy," he said, pronouncing it It-ly. "Ferrari and all those."

"Of course." Neary's jowls bulged. "Although, I've not had occasion to experience their particular driving pleasure."

Another well-placed chuckle. "You sound like a commercial."

Neary made a sound that at once communicated polite good humor and the request that Horton engage in auto-buggery.

"Guess being a priest and all, you don't get the kind of green it takes to get behind the wheel of much more than a... What kinda' car you got, Father?"

"I don't."

"Got a driver, huh? I do that for Mr. Mason a lot."

The scenery blurred past the windows, gray-green and brown, rained-soaked. Neary was quiet. The tires exhaled endless, constricted breaths.

Horton threw another hook. "You, uh, work for some special branch of the Church, right? Father Calvin told me a little. Said you 'solve problems'."

Calvin had told him what? It took every last bit of Neary's experience and control to keep the surprise from showing. "Really? And did Father Calvin describe the type of problems we solve?"

"He said something about cleaning up other people's messes, that kind of thing. He didn't go too far into it, but I thought he was maybe talking about some sort of corporate espionage type stuff. Like maybe the big V has to make sure someone gets its back."

"The big V?"

"You know, Father. The Vatican."

"Right. Of course." Neary laughed. "That's very clever. The big V."

"So tell me. I mean we're working together now an' all. Is it like making sure the money's clean and the media's quiet? That kinda' shit?"

"Actually," Neary turned toward him. "I give Father Calvin the names and locations of problem individuals and he murders them."

Horton had been waiting for that. It was the test. He decided before they left the motel that if he could get Father Bob to give him the skinny on the wet work Calvin had already laid down for him it could only mean one thing: Horton was a dead man. There was no way a man like Father Bob would let an outsider know his dirty little secret and then allow said outsider to draw many more breaths. Horton had played it stupid and chatty, a dumb-ass Mafia hood with a big mouth, and Father Bob had bought it. At least he knew what he was up against.

"Wow, that's some heavy shit, Padre." Horton laughed and shrugged it off. "Course, if Mr. Mason hands me the name and location of a problem individual, I guess I do the same thing." Would Father Bob believe his nonchalance? Horton wanted to look over at the other man, gauge him, but didn't dare. He had already stretched his limited ability at fiction to the breaking point. Now, it was just a matter of figuring out how much time he had left before the priest decided his usefulness was at an end.

"How much longer?" Horton asked.

"What?"

"Till we get there, I mean. You still haven't told me where we're going."

Neary pulled the Michigan Road Atlas they'd bought at a gas station out of the door pocket, and flipped through it. "What was that last exit number?"

"Seventeen."

Neary straightened a bit in his seat. "Not much further." He arched an eyebrow. "Are you so anxious to get there?"

Not to have you and your buddy put a slug in my noggin. "I just want to get Jeremy back," Horton said and gripped the wheel. One of his machine bolt knuckles cracked. "You know the kid's sick, right?"

"Sick?" Neary said. "Is that what we're calling it?"

"Well, I mean..." Of course, he knew. Father Bob was Calvin's boss. He'd sent the younger priest out to Mason's in the first place. "You've dealt with this kind of thing before, I guess is what I'm asking."

Neary expanded, a great puffer fish in a black suit. "Indeed I have and don't worry, Mr. Horton." He pierced the windshield with his gaze. "The Lord and I will deliver us from evil."

Horton increased the pressure on the gas and the Lotus slashed through the heavy air. The Lord and I will deliver us. Horton didn't know blasphemy from belching, but man, this priest was seriously arrogant. He flexed his healing pinky—the one the demon had snapped with its fucking mind—and winced. "I hope you're right, Father."

"The Lord and I will prevail, my son."

Horton swallowed his laughter. He wondered if the Lord also packed a Desert Eagle.

* * *

"ON-STAR, CUSTOMER SERVICE, this is Courtney, how can I help you?"

Mason's empty face pressed against the cell phone. "Hi, Courtney. It's Frank Mason again. We spoke about an hour ago?" His voice was all exasperation and concern, an over-indulgent father with a wayward teenager and missing car.

"Sure, Mr. Mason," Courtney chirped. "What can I help you with?"

"It's just," he apologized. Darn wayward teenager. "Can you do another one of those—what'd you call it—needle points?"

"Pinpoints."

"Pinpoints, right."

"Certainly, sir. Just go ahead and give me that account number and password again."

Mason pretended to fumble for a moment, his face a slab. "Here we go." He gave her the numbers Horton had given him, an account number and the tracking number for the Lotus. "Can you give it to me like you did before, the map coordinates and all?"

"Of course, Mr. Mason." Sound of peach-nail polished finger tips over black plastic keys. "Here were are," she said. "Are you ready, sir?"

"Just give me one little sec," Mason said, pulling the BMW off the highway, the soft shoulder scratching and popping beneath the wide custom tires. He needed to concentrate on the map screen for this. "Okay, Courtney."

She paused.

A splinter of concern flickered through Mason's eyes. "Courtney?"

"Sir, are you sure you wouldn't like me to inform the police?"

Mason's fingers, splayed across his thigh, dug into the muscle. "Oh, that's sweet of you but I'd really rather handle this myself."

"But the police could maybe—."

"Courtney," Mason said, embarrassment flowing into his voice, "I, uh," he sighed. "Shoot, I'll just tell you. My son's been in some trouble with the police. Nothing serious, just prep-school shenanigans. He and some other boys broke into an empty house in our community and threw a rather wild party. There were some damages and well..." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "He's got a record now."

"And you'd rather it wasn't added to," Courtney said. "I understand, Mr. Mason. I was a little wild when I was a teenager too." She read him the grid numbers.

"Thank you so much, Courtney. I am really embarrassed about all this, and you've been perfect about the whole thing."

"It's my pleasure, sir. If your son's moved on by the time you get there give me another call and we'll get you another pinpoint."

"Again, my deepest thanks. Oh hey now, what's your supervisor's extension? I'd like to put in a good word about you if I could."

"That's not necessary, sir, really—."

"No, no. I'm the customer," he laughed, his eyes twin paper weights. "You have to do as I ask."

She chuckled and gave him the name and number of her boss.

"Thanks again, Courtney. You're the best."

"Good luck finding your son. And Mr. Mason?"

"Yes?"

"I wish my daddy had looked after me as well as you do with your son. Bye now, sir."

"Buh-bye, Courtney."

Mason powered up the BMW's windows. He'd been driving with them down and since stopping had already drawn a couple of flies. One of them, fat and iridescent green, went to work on his forehead, tasting a fragment of Rosario's frontal lobe before skittering over to an adjacent flap of Emma Grouwe's duodenum. Mason ignored it, entering the grid numbers into the BMW's GPS map reader. A moment later, the car's micro-processors plotted the fastest course, complete with mileage. Mason scooted the Bimmer back onto the highway. He had to go look after his son.

###### THIRTY TWO

JOHN CALVIN KNEW what he had to do, but that didn't make it easy. He stood over the scratched bag of bones that had once been Jeremy Mason and looked for the will to begin. In his right hand he held a medical lancet, a three inch needle with a plastic grip on one end. They were used for healing, for draining infection and bringing single drops of blood for tests. A simple thing. A small thing. With his extensive knowledge of the human nervous system, Calvin could use the lancet to turn the boy's nerve endings on and off in combinations that would plunge the boy into a symphony of pain.

The demon slitted its jaundiced eyes at Calvin. "Don't do this, priest," it croaked. "We will vacate the meat in due time."

Calvin rolled the lancet between thumb and forefinger. "Leave now."

"You won't hurt that which you've come to save."

"I already told you, I couldn't give two shits about some gangster's brat."

The demon ran its sandpaper tongue over cracked lips making a sound like a newt scampering through leaf litter. "Lies," it said, gyrating. "We smell your lies."

Calvin took a deep breath. He might as well get started. "Smell this." He leaned in and snatched the boy's wrist, manacled to the bed post. The demon roared like the lowing of a buffalo run backward through a tape recorder, and the room filled with foulness from all of its orifices. Calvin ignored the show and pinned the boy's hand against his own chest. He held the lancet poised above Jeremy's wiggling fingers. "Last chance."

"Your punishment will be worse than a thousand—"

"Uh-huh." He inserted the lancet between the first and second fingers where they joined the palm.

The demon shrieked, a wolf with its throat being torn out.

Calvin twisted the needle, grinding it between the finger bones. Closing his mind to the demon's noise, he concentrated on its face. The boy's eyes fell back in his head, the whites a rolling mass of capillaries. The boy's screeching finally ran out after what seemed an impossible exhalation for so small a chest. Calvin removed the lancet and checked the wound. A tiny pink hole was the only evidence of his attack. It wasn't even bleeding. Calvin dropped the hand and stepped back.

"You ready to leave yet?"

Tie burst into the room, all eyes and panting. "I know you told me to stay out, but..."

The boy tried to sit up, his voice reverted back to that of a frightened child. "Help me, lady! He's crazy! Stuck me with a needle!"

"Tie." Calvin went to her, moved her out of the room. He pulled the door shut behind them as the demon began to weep. "Listen, you've got to stay away."

"I know you said," she started, her eyebrows almost comically bent, "but..." She held out her palm, those sounds.

"I know." He took her hand and held it. "It's bullshit, though. The kid's not in there. That voice might have come from his mouth, but that's not Jeremy Mason. Whatever's in him is just trying to mess with your head. You can't listen. And every time you come in there, you're giving it more ammunition, making it easier for it to stay."

She put her head against his chest. "I know, but it's just so hard to hear." She buried her face in him, muffling her voice. "Makes me feel like I'm goin' crazy."

Calvin wrapped his arms around her, careful not to stick himself with the lancet he was palming. Her hair smelled like lilacs and warm dust. And just then, he wanted to take her back into the other bedroom. But this had to happen first. He had to teach the demon that Jeremy's body was no longer its suit of play clothes. "Would it help if I told you that nothing I'm doing will cause any permanent damage?"

She sniffed. "Not really."

Calvin chuckled and gently pushed her back a step. He made eye contact. "Go for a walk, Tie." He squeezed her shoulders. "Get out of the cabin for a couple of hours. There's all kinds of trails and paths around here. By the time you come back it might all be over."

"Might?"

"Depends on how quick a learner this thing is."

"And how much it can take, right? How much pain?"

"Yes."

"I hate this. You dig me? This is the worse thing ever."

"No shit."

Tie nodded and leaned up on her toes. "Be careful, okay?" She said, and whispered a kiss onto his cheek.

"I won't really hurt him." Calvin lied.

"I mean be careful with yourself, Johnny."

He smiled. "Take off."

* * *

TIE CLUMPED DOWN the front steps of the cabin into afternoon sun the color of tangerines, warm on her shoulders. She walked through the small clearing that served the cabin as front yard and parking area and made for an open mouth of trail at the other side. She stopped at the trail head, a line of espresso dirt and roots tracing through undergrowth and snaking between sentinel trees. Tie turned and looked at the cabin, thinking that small dwellings often seemed to have faces. For a moment, she studied the empty window eyes and front door mouth. The cabin screamed, an inhuman, tortured shriek. Tie jumped and whipped back around.

She plunged into gloom and shifting orange rays. Secret air painted her sinuses emerald, the humidity moving up behind her eyes, cooling her mind. She moved without thinking, taking quick steps. Her sneakers thudded over the path, and soon she couldn't hear the cabin or its horrible song. After what could have been twenty minutes or an hour of slanting greens and rushing, peripheral depth, Tie stopped. The trail ran into the biggest tree she had ever seen. Tie was a city kid, sure, but damn. It would take three of her to hug that thing all the way around. She wasn't exactly an authority on the matter but this had to be an oak. Other than one of them Giant Redwoods from California, only an oak tree could get this big. Least, she thought so anyway.

Tie took a cast to her face that would've put a department store detective on edge. She looked over her shoulder and saw nothing but the dark line of the path and multiphasic forest, slipping in and out of shadow, whispering on the wind. She was alone. No one would see her.

She stepped up on a huge foot of root and splayed her hands against the rough bark. Tie wrapped her arms as far around the trunk as she could and gave a gentle squeeze. She looked up along the pillar of wood into the canopy, a vast array of branches spreading like elegant crystal. The world was big and old and made mostly of good things. Sometimes, most times, they just weren't as easy to find as the bad. They weren't as noisy, but they were there. You just had to walk down the right path.

Tie closed her eyes and hugged the oak, resting her cheek against its hide. She imagined she could feel its warmth and wisdom. God, she must be like a gnat to an ancient thing like this. What would her heart feel like to a being whose pulse was measured in year-long thunder beats? She remembered an old TV science show she used to love as a kid, 321 Contact! Once, they'd hooked up an ultrasound microphone to a tiny brown bat. It's pulse had been a single, steady hum. She hoped the tree could feel her heart.

Tie breathed in the good, ancient scent of the oak and sighed, "Hello, old man."

A lazy fly droned past her ear.

"Hello, bitch."

Tie stopped breathing and turned around.

* * *

CALVIN TOOK VITALS. The demon lay pressed into the bed, a pool of sweat and urine mixing into the sheets, but no blood. Father Calvin was careful that there be no bleeding and no marks other than the stippling of tiny pink holes along strategic nerve clusters, in joints, genitals. The pulse was strong. He pulled his fingers from beside the boy's throat. The demon had ceased its infernal wailing in response to Calvin's administrations of the lancet and had fallen into a stupor. It had been a couple of hours since Tie had left and Calvin wanted this done before she got back. It was time to give the demon another chance to leave. Calvin snapped his fingers in front of its eyes.

"C'mon, wake up."

It moaned, head thrashing weakly.

Calvin slapped it hard across the face. The demon's eyes, hate-lasers, focused on his own. "There we go," Calvin said. "Enough?"

"Stupid, limited, pig-fucking—"

Calvin vaulted onto the bed, straddling the boy's heaving chest. He sat down hard on the small body and crushed its head to the pillow with an open palm against the forehead. He brought the lancet—its business end now dark—to within an inch of one wide, staring eye and stopped.

"Tearduct."

"No! No more! Templar, please!"

"Get out."

The demon wailed, no longer menacing and putrid, but terrified and small, small as a child. "We want to leave. We do! We swear on your own God! But we cannot leave. There is nowhere to go."

Calvin waggled the lancet. "Then go nowhere."

"We would, we would, but we can't. Nowhere will not have us back. The door is closed. The door is closed to us!"

"I don't believe you," Calvin said. "I think you're..." He trailed off, head cocked to one side. Calvin leapt off the bed. The demon whooshed a breath.

"Shut up."

"Templar, you have won. We will leave if—."

Calvin pressed a hand down on the boy's mouth, careful of teeth. "Stop making noise right now or you piss steel, understand?" He took his hand away. The demon nodded, eyes on the lancet. "Good." Calvin hooked an arm through the straps of the medical bag and disappeared through the bedroom door.

The priest shoved through the front door and leapt the porch steps, shifting his center of gravity in mid-flight. He landed to one side of the flagstones, his feet betraying no sound. He'd been talking, flapping his fucking gums, when the sound reached his ears. He wasn't even sure what it had been because he'd been too busy playing Dirty Harry, but whatever had slipped into his mind below the sound of his own voice triggered an alarm. Father Calvin had learned to trust his senses. He may not know what it was, but something was wrong. He ran into the middle of the door-yard/clearing and froze, head cocked.

Nothing.

He waited. A breeze wafted above his head, shivering the trees. The air in the yard below was glass. He exhaled and closed his eyes, the lines in his face dissolved. Leaves rustled, late afternoon sighs exchanging breath with the oncoming evening. A crow called, scolding from its perch in the wood. Calvin's eyes opened. The crow squawked again. It was pissed. Calvin turned toward the dark slash of path at the other end of the clearing. His feet hushed over the grass toward the woods. The gloom rolled over his shoulders.

Calvin stuttered down the path: a few yards of silent sprint, a halt and listen, a few more yards. He stopped again and opened his other senses. Calvin flared his nostrils, hoping for a hint of Tie's perfume. The breeze shifted and Calvin almost gagged on what it brought him. Decay, rot, death. The crow warned again from directly over Calvin's head. He shot a glance into the boughs of the silvered maple overhead. Twenty-five seconds later, he was crouching on a thick branch two stories above the trail.

It had been a long time since he'd shimmied up a tree. That had been almost ten years ago and he'd had the strap of a .223 over his shoulder instead of a medical bag. The skin on Calvin's inner thighs and knees was abraded. He'd have preferred denim to the thin black fabric of his priest's garb. He could feel spots of blood soaking through the fabric like sweat after a long run. The pain was manageable. All pain was manageable. All physical pain.

Someone was coming up the trail below him. Calvin slowed his breathing and peered through a break in the fractal-edged canopy. Tie walked into his field of vision. She moved like a sleepwalker, her eyes blank and straight ahead. Tear tracks printed her cheeks, but her chest was calm, her shoulders didn't heave and Seungk with sobs. Calvin squinted. She was furious. A moment later, Calvin knew why. Frank Mason emerged from the shadows behind her, a handgun pointed at the back of her head. He held the pistol like a marksman, left hand supporting the right, body turned to the side. Mason crab-walked—one forward step with his right, his left sliding quick to catch up—to maintain a perfect firing stance. One eye was squinted shut. He had her dead-bang.

Calvin's breath hitched. Mason knew he was up against hard odds and he wasn't taking any chances on someone getting the drop on him. Calvin couldn't see it from his perch, but he was certain Mason's index finger was wrapped around the trigger of that gun. He had set himself so that if someone even ripped a loud fart he would still get the shot off. Calvin imagined the single metallic bang from the pistol and Tie's head exploding in a burst of pink. The droplets would hang in the sunlight, a fine glowing mist over her body as it slumped to the ground.

Rawk!

Calvin hunched his shoulders. He tracked the noise to the fat black crow, gripping the branch not three feet away from him.

Rawk-rawk! Hell outta' my tree!

Calvin looked back down at the ground.

Frank Mason was staring straight up at him, his gun still trained on Tie. She kept walking. Mason's voice slicked out and flicked her ear. "Stop, cunt." Tie stopped, her fingers clenched into fists. Mason stared up into the tree, something was in there. He squinted, trying to penetrate the dense screen of summer leaves and shadow. The cloud of flies buzzing around his head made it difficult to see. Something was watching.

Calvin couldn't move. If he took his hands off the branch he'd have to shift his footing as well or he would lose it and come crashing down at Mason's feet. If he shifted his footing the branch would shake more than was strictly necessary for the movement of a bird, even one as big and fucking bothersome as this piece of shit crow. It hopped closer, now only a foot away. It cocked its head, flinty eyes flicking sparks of stupid malice. A mosquito, a half visible blur of legs and shadow, quivered over the crow's back. Calvin's own eyes widened. Could crows get rabies? Or maybe it was West Nile.

Rawk!

Mason retrained the gun into the canopy and fired a tight volley, the .44's reports crashing off the trees like focused thunder claps. Tie tensed, her head attempting to disappear into her shoulder-blades. Mason jerked taut as something rustled and thudded down through the branches. A second later, the body of a large crow spread its broken wings over the roots of the maple. "Got you, fucker," Mason croaked and put the gun back on Tie. "Move."

Three minutes later they were out of sight of the maple tree, walking toward the cabin. John Calvin rebalanced on the branch so he could use his left hand to wipe the gore and feathers off his mouth. A bloody smile floated up like a methane bubble from the depths of a peat bog. If there was a god, it had a sick sense of irony. Calvin spat and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Birds were filthy animals, the taste of pepper and iron, mold and dust coated his mouth. Could you get West Nile from getting crow blood in your mouth? Probably. Least of his worries, though.

How the fuck had Mason found them? Calvin supposed it was possible that there was more than one On-Star locator in the van but that seemed unlikely. Mason would have caught up with them sooner than this if there had been. No, he'd had help and there was only one person who knew of the empty Jesuit retreat: Thom Neary. But Calvin could have taken Tie and the boy anywhere. Had Neary just gone with his best guess? It was possible. Calvin shook his head. Bullshit. Thom Neary didn't flail around. He was more patient than that, thorough. Thom Neary gathered information, collated data, then pounced. No, he had somehow known exactly where Calvin was.

Calvin made his way down the tree, the medical bag swung over his shoulder. He gripped the trunk in a full body hug, the tenderized skin on his inner thighs burning as he pressed it against the rough bark. A minute later, he craned a look behind him, aimed, then hopped off the trunk a couple of feet above the roots, landing on the crow with a satisfying crunch. It was like treading on a bag of moist twigs. "Mouthy fucking bird," he muttered.

Calvin stepped off the path and moved off into the woods. He would circle around and make his way back to the cabin by way of the rutted tracks that lead from the road. He needed time to plan. Mason had him in a tight spot. While the implements in the medical bag provided several methods by which a man of Calvin's education could dispatch another human being, he would have to get close to use them. Easy enough when the target wasn't expecting a hit, but Mason would have his back to the wall and his gun either on Tie or the door. And if Mason decided to leave with Tie and Jeremy, he would have to drive out past Calvin.

Calvin floated like a ghost over the forest floor, making no more sound than a breath of breeze or a busy squirrel. Years ago, Thom Neary had taught young Johnny how to move in these woods. It wasn't possible to progress over twigs and leaves without making any sound at all, just like it was impossible to become invisible. But you could camouflage the sound of your feet to blend into the natural sounds of the environment, just as you could darken your face and alter your clothing to match the surrounding foliage and undergrowth.

How could Neary have done it to him? He'd been more than mentor to Calvin, a father. They had bonded in the sea of blood spilled together over the years. It had been just the two of them against the evils of the world. Well, against the evils of the world as Holy Mother Church had perceived them. But even if their superiors at the Vatican dispatched the last Templar Knights on errands wholly political in nature, their work often produced positive results beyond the machiavellian scope of Rome. Calvin thought of a labyrinth of old stone in the desert, the footsteps of lost children and the Native American boy whose voice had not been engulfed by those gloomy canyons. Between the lines, the bones, Bishop Neary and Father Calvin had sometimes done good.

Neary and his little house in the olive grove had been the only safe place. Calvin remembered mornings spent in the little kitchen, the window open to vent the heat from cooking breakfast. Thom always asked Johnny to make pancakes. They'd work in the garden together sometimes. Calvin would laugh at Neary's pathetic attempts to yank tomatoes from the chalky soil, the older man's ample rear pointed toward heaven, his hands scrabbling in the dirt. Those tomatoes popped up every summer: tiny green pods, tough and sour. No matter what new type of method or fertilizer Neary might try, they were always bloody awful. You couldn't even make sauce out of them. There had been the evening arguments over politics, theology, ethics. Two assassin priests, sipping smoky whiskey in a tiny study. Calvin with his constant demands of logic and explanation for a god he couldn't understand or accept. Neary's easy smile and far away eyes, his head nodding to Calvin's sometimes volcanic blasphemy, his faith in his God and himself a granite wall. Neary's peace had cooled the fires in Calvin's chest for years. Where god and church had failed him time and again, his teacher, his friend, Thom Neary had borne Calvin's faith.

About a quarter-mile away from the cabin, the setting sun winked through the undergrowth. Calvin peered through a tangle of scrub brush. Whatever he could say about Mason and his people, he had to give them their taste in cars. A Lotus Espirit hovered like a slice of midnight on the double wheel ruts leading to the cabin. Calvin winced, they must have torn the shit out of the low-slung undercarriage to get it this far into the woods. A royal blue BMW cozied up behind the Lotus, its driver-side door flung wide as if the driver had leapt from the car without giving it a second thought. A female voice, high-priced receptionist or escort, wafted from the BMW's interior. "The door is ajar. The door is ajar. The door is—."

The keys dangled from the ignition. Calvin yanked them and closed the door but not before getting a whiff of the flyblown interior. Mason's car. Had to be. Calvin didn't know what the hell the man had been rolling in, but he smelled like the killing floor of a Missouri slaughterhouse in high summer. He'd come alone. No one could have possibly endured his company without a biohazard suit and an oxygen supply. Calvin turned his attention to the Lotus and was about to look through the window when it spoke to him.

"Please move away from the vehicle."

Calvin dropped the medical bag, blood pounding through his veins hard enough to hurt. Fucking talking car. Whatever happened to just plain beeping? He took a step back to appease the car's anti-theft proximity sensor and assessed the situation. The Lotus could only carry two. Probably Mr. Horton in the driver's seat and who else? Neary?

Calvin crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. He could have been a customer in a high-end automobile showroom, wracked with indecision over which toy to chose. The Bimmer would go great with my new Armani. But that Lotus is a fuck machine. Decisions. Decisions. Instead, he mulled the tactical implications of the situation: a sociopathic mobster, an armed bodyguard, an expert assassin, the love of his life, a demon and the boy it rode. Calvin's head reeled with the variables. Had this been an assignment he would have aborted a long time ago.

Calvin thought about it. He could just go. He had the keys to the BMW and the expertise to disappear, become anyone he wanted, anywhere he wanted. His eye roved up the grassy wheel ruts toward the cabin. What was keeping him here, Tie? Some woman he'd just met and convinced himself he was in love with? A gangster's fuck-bunny? Besides, she didn't love him, not really. It was the trauma inherent in the situation. He'd studied psychology just as he'd studied martial arts and weapons use. People—predictable little monkeys—pair-bonded during crisis situations. It happened all the time, but after the flames died down and the bullets stopped flying, it never lasted. If he didn't walk out on her, she would just take off on him. It was inevitable. Besides, why would a woman like her want anything to do with him? A priest, a killer.

Calvin let his head fall back. The sky ran a blue ribbon between the trees where they parted over the road. A single evening star glowed. He named it, "Venus," and laughed, not caring how the sound carried or who might hear it. It had been Mars overhead when he and Tie had first met in the garden behind Mason's house. Calvin dropped his head, shaking it side to side. "All's fair, right?" He gritted his teeth and hissed, "Fuck."

Calvin began jogging up the path. He tossed the BMW's key into the undergrowth at the base of a triple-pronged beech tree. The Bimmer would have a security system too, the kind that wouldn't allow the car to start unless it sensed the computer chip in the key. And if the BMW wouldn't start there was no way to drive the ultra-low Lotus through the brush to get around it. No one would get out of here in a car unless Calvin came out on top. No one would get away.

THIRTY THREE

JEREMY STOOD NEXT to himself on the rim of the abyss. He slid a glance over to his doppelganger: same hair, but greasy and clumped; same pajamas, but stained and stinking; same face, but scarred and wild. The demon caught him and winked a burning, jaundiced eye.

"We wear you well, don't we child?"

Jeremy's guts felt like tubes of water held together by magnetic fields, but he kept his footing. He'd made his choice. He wouldn't run. Still, he was terrified. In the queer sense of detachment that pervaded him in this place he wondered if he could wet himself. The demon tilted its head and smirked. "Look," it said, pointing at the flowing stain on the crotch of its pajamas.

"You're me, then?" Jeremy asked.

"We are us."

Jeremy turned away and faced over the edge of the crater. A swirling wind blew grit around his bare ankles. He squinted. "It's not as dark as I thought it would be."

The demon chuckled. "Keep looking."

"Why," Jeremy looked away. "What's down there?"

"Pain, the truth, the end of some things, the beginning of others."

Jeremy sighed. Why couldn't anyone around here give him a straight answer? He held his breath and looked into the crater. For a moment, all he could see was a faint mist, gray and iridescent. There was something else, something under it. Jeremy strained, his eyes slits of concentration. Vague shapes undulated, rolled in and out of each other, dissipated, crystallized and puffed out of existence again. "I don't see..." Jeremy trailed off. "Waaaait." The mist cleared and instead of one deep pit, Jeremy stared into two. The top of the crater formed a single rough circle but bottomed out into two distinct holes. The writhing mist cleared and Jeremy sucked in a breath.

He reeled on the edge of the pit, momentary vertigo flooding his inner ear. Everything appeared sideways. He was looking down into a room, but from the vantage of someone within the room. After a moment, he got his bearings. Thinking of it like a couple of round movie screens on the floor helped. "Whoa."

"Look child."

Jeremy studied what he could see. The bottom of his binocular view was composed of a dune-scape of blankets and sheets. A leg protruded from the bed clothes, a child's leg, bruised black and yellow along the blade of its shin. The walls around the room were simple wood panel, broken by one door. Jeremy's attention stayed on that leg. The pajamas had rucked up to the knee. There was a crescent shaped scar just under the kneecap. He'd fallen at the beach when he was two. A nasty shell had stuck up from the sand...

"Hey," Jeremy said. "Is that me?" He looked at the demon.

It showed huge cannibal teeth.

"I'm seeing through my body, right? This is where I really am right now?"

"If you choose."

"Oh, shit."

The demon laughed.

"So I have to make another choice," Jeremy said. "I have to wanna' be back there instead of here. Is that what you're saying? I just have to want it?"

The other Jeremy's head tilted, "Do you want that, child?" It pointed. "Look."

The door to the room opened. A big man with steel-gray hair dressed in a dark suit filled the door. His mouth moved, but Jeremy couldn't tell what he was saying. There was no sound with this picture. He looked funny though, pissed-off, but kind of satisfied, like he expected or knew something. He walked into the room, still talking, revealing another person in the door.

"Horton!" Jeremy dropped to his hands and knees, peering over the rim of the crater as if he could get closer by bending down. Tears immediately sprang to his eyes. His lips quivered. A terrible longing whipped through him, exhausting and exhilarating. "Oh, man, Horton," he whispered, then shouted, "Hey! Mr. Horton! I'm here!"

Horton, who appeared to have been keeping his eyes away from the boy in the bed with a fair amount of concentration, now looked over, his eyebrows drawing up.

"Hey," Jeremy said. "Can he hear me? He can hear me! Horton!" He cupped his hands around his mouth, a boy on his knees shouting into the ground, "Yo! Come in, Mr. Horton! It's moon base Jeremy, I'm right here!"

Horton stared through the twin holes at the bottom of the deep pit, his face a mask. He turned away and said something to the other man.

"Horton?" Jeremy said. "Horton!" His shoulders fell. "He can't hear me." He looked to his double. "Okay, I wanna' go back. What do I do?"

"Certain, child?"

Jeremy looked back once more. In the second or two that his head had been turned away the scene had changed considerably. The room was suddenly full of people and almost all of them were pointing guns.

* * *

HORTON COULDN'T LOOK at the kid when they walked into the room. He'd caught a glance of him as "Father Bob" moved out of the door, prone and empty-eyed in the bed. Jeremy actually looked a little better, like maybe he had put on a little weight, was more substantial. But it still wasn't him in there and that made the slight recovery all the worse. Horton couldn't afford the treacherous match flare of hope in his chest. This situation was going to get ugly soon and he had to stay focused, detached.

He kept his eyes on the good Father, not listening to the diatribe of pompous bullshit he began spouting as soon as they'd opened the door. He'd actually started with, "So, my old foe, we meet again," before Horton tuned him out. It was embarrassing, like playing sidekick to a comic book hero from the 40's. Priestman was doing his best to loom over the bed, saying something about "driving you back to the depths" when Horton heard another voice.

Jeremy.

Horton looked at the bed. It was impossible. The kid couldn't talk, he was totally out of it. Looked like he was deep within the throws of a Thorazine dream, his eyes fever-bright slits between puffy red lids. Horton scrutinized the boy's chapped lips, seeking the slightest hint of movement. A fine web of dried saliva in a corner of his mouth shivered in his respiration, but nothing else. Except... Except he heard it again. His name? Something about mooning? The hell? Forget it. He was going crazy, paranoid. Or, it could be another trick from the thing that was in kid. If it had been able to break Horton's little finger from across the room, it stood that it could get into his head and make noise.

"Hey," Horton nodded at Neary. "You might want to watch what you say. That thing can do nasty tricks when it's pissed."

Neary closed his eyes and inhaled a long breath through flared nostrils. "Mr. Horton," he began.

Horton rolled his eyes.

Neary opened his. "The process of exorcism is more than just..." He trailed off, no use explaining complex theologic principles to a simple-minded thug. "Listen," he offered. "Why don't you go outside and keep watch in case Father Calvin returns? We need to handle this situation very carefully, and I'm afraid he's apt to react somewhat defensively if he comes back and finds us. We'll have to subdue him, I think, and then we can talk, calmly, peacefully. Perhaps, he'll even take our view of the picture without much of a fuss if we have the chance to explain everything. In any case, we can't afford to let him take the initiative, get the drop on us, if you will."

A voice from the bedroom door. "I'd say it's a little late for that, boys."

Horton and Neary spun to find Tiesha in the doorframe. Before either man could react, the bore of a large pistol peeked from behind her right ear. Mason appeared behind his human shield. Even with Tiesha blocking most of his face and body, the rotting gore-coat was plenty visible. He moved the .44 back and forth between Horton and Thom Neary.

"Either of you moves and it's over."

Horton didn't need to be told twice. From the look and the smell of it, Mason had waded through a few bodies to get here. He made eye contact and Horton got a strange sense of doubling. Like father, like son. Mason's peepers were a couple of empty fishbowls. And look at that, Horton had been right about Tiesha being here. Well, he'd just have to move to Venice Beach and open up a fortune telling stand.

Neary, the amiable salesman, spread his meaty palms. "Mr. Mason? I'm so glad you—"

Tie winced as Mason pulled the hammer back on his pistol and leveled it Neary's crotch. "One more word," he said. "Okay, Padre? Just one."

Horton was seized with the urge to stick out his tongue at "Father Bob." At least they were on the same ground now: equally fucked.

"Mr. Horton," Mason said, eyes sliding over to bodyguard.

"Sir?"

"You have a gun, yes?"

"Uh-huh."

"Put one in the good Father's left kneecap would you?"

Tie gasped, "Oh, shit."

Mason and Horton both looked over. Neary had drawn his piece and had it against Jeremy's left temple.

Mason sighed. "You could have told me he was packing, Mr. Horton."

"Didn't know, sir," Horton lied.

Mason raised his pistol to bear on Neary's eye.

Horton hauled his own gun out and aimed at Mason. "Don't do it, sir! You shoot and he'll kill Jeremy."

Mason glared at Neary who betrayed only excited interest in the situation. "Some losses," Mason said. "Are unavoidable."

Horton pulled his hammer. "Sir, please."

"You haven't got a clear shot." Mason shook Tie's shoulder. "You'll hit this silly whore before you hit me."

"Teflon-coated, Frank." Horton said.

Neary grunted in appreciation. "Rip right through your reluctant young lady and into you, I'm afraid, Mr. Mason." He threw a nod at the bodyguard. "Nice choice."

"Eat a dick."

Neary ignored him and appraised the situation. He had control over what everyone in the equation wanted: the boy. Except for the woman. He had no knowledge of her priorities. Although, from the look of it, they were not in line with those of her captor. Her face, probably quite attractive under lighter circumstances, was tear-streaked and distant. She was limp in Mason's grasp, defeated. Neary gave her a zero threat rating.

"Now," he said. "Mr. Mason, we can all still get what we want, but you'll have to start by putting down your weapon."

Mason tipped his head to one side and smiled. "Okay," he said and kept the gun trained on Neary's head.

Horton snickered. He couldn't help it.

"I'm sure," Neary tried again, "that we're all interested in what's best for the boy. If we could only talk about this like rational human beings..." He sighed. Mason was about the farthest from rational that he had ever seen a person. Well, there had been this one time when Neary had extracted some information from an uncooperative enemy of the Church with a mixture of pentathol and PCP. That man had looked slightly more wild than did Frank Mason. In any event, peaceful discourse still seemed unlikely.

Horton's arm was beginning to shake. The triangle was the most stable shape in geometry. Someone had to think of something to break this one. For a second he entertained the notion that if he was careful he could shoot Neary's cannon out of his hand. Bullshit. He wasn't a cowboy. He was an ex-cop turned wiseguy. Neary's gun would go off, or he would miss. Either way, it meant a headless ten-year-old. Horton had planned to insert Mason as the wild card to break up the situation in case something like this happened, but his intention had backfired. Horton needed another piranha.

Tie started to giggle. Little triplets of hm, hm, hm's blipped past her pressed lips.

"Shut up, bitch," Mason ordered.

She was obviously trying to shut it off, her lips turning white with the effort, but it was getting the best of her. Her shoulders began to shake, the laughter a randy cat bashing around inside her torso.

"Lady," Horton warned. "Maybe you should chill it out." He widened his eyes and nodded at Mason. "I don't think Mr. Mason's in the mood right now."

"BAH! Ha, ha, ha!" She responded, doubling over and holding her stomach.

Mason yanked her back up by the hair. "I said shut up!"

Tie wiped a tear, her laughter slowing a little. "Oh, man," she said. "It's just so funny, though."

Mason thought about biting her ear off, but his curiosity was piqued. "What's so fucking funny?"

"You are, sweatmeat."

He gave her hair a hard jerk. "What?"

She winced with the pain, but her smile returned the next second. "Oh, I'm sorry, but you actin' all high n' mighty, bein' yo badass scary self, then it hit me. You got nothin'. You a closet monster, Francis."

"A what? What am I? I own your ass, bitch. When you're dead I'll use it for a—."

"I used to have night terrors," she interrupted, explaining smooth and even. "When I was little, after my mama took off, I couldn't go to sleep at night 'cause of the closet monster. Shit, I was afraid to go into my room during the day sometimes."

Mason's mouth hung open but nothing came out. His grip on Tie's hair slackened. His mind, already acid-burned by the ferocity of its own illness, could not comprehend. He owned her. He had the control for fuck's sake, but here she was acting like he didn't have a thing. It was like walking outside one morning to find that gravity had reversed. Frank Mason couldn't process it.

Neary and Horton watched in silence. Both men waiting for any variable they might turn to their advantage. The girl was going to get herself killed, but Mason would have to take the gun off Neary to do it.

Tie continued. "When I started to go crazy from lack of sleep, my daddy sat me down and explained about closet monsters. 'Oh, they real' he told me, but they only got power over you if you let 'em . You laugh in the face of the monster and it'll just dry right up.'"

"Everybody you used to have power over don't give a tin shit for yo' gray ass, Francis. Lookit," she threw a nod at Horton. "Even Kojack over there's ready to bus' a cap in ya'. And he was your main bitch-boy."

"Watch it, honey," Horton said.

She winked. "Sorry, sugar."

Horton smiled in spite of himself. It was an incredibly sexy wink. Tiesha might be about a second away from getting a bullet in the skull, but she had power over herself and it showed. She was strong and it was beautiful. She was right, too, Mason's whole world had gone to hell. He was one of the most powerful men in America, in the world, but he didn't own anything real. And as Horton watched a twitch flicker over Mason's face, he realized that the big man himself knew it. "You're done, Frank," Horton said. "Put your piece away."

Mason jerked the gun over at Horton, his voice flat. "I can still control you, Horton. I can control you right into the ground."

Neary spoke up, running with thread. "No, you can't. Even if you dispatch Mr. Horton, it'll be because he chose the option of going to his death, walking into your bullet, if you will." Neary shook his head. "Even your son is no longer yours. You have nothing."

Mason's mind blurred and spun. His world was built upon the sociopathic premise that it was all for him, that no one truly existed outside of the sphere of himself. But these people that had once been a part of him, petals that he manipulated as effortlessly as his own limbs, no longer paid him any heed. The logic clicked home and the life drained from his face. His pistol clunked to the floorboard. Frank Mason's emptiness was complete.

Tiesha stepped away and turned back to look at the closet monster. Mason stood, covered in the crust of his latest victims, an automaton, now as empty of mind and will as he had always been of soul. His arms hung limp at his sides. A fly buzzed around his head and settled at the corner of his eye, probing for moisture. He didn't even blink. Tie waved her hand in front of his face and the fly lifted off. "What's wrong with him?" she said.

Calvin appeared in the door. "He's catatonic," he said, side-stepping into the room around Mason.

Tie beamed, "Johnny!" and pounced. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed like a vice. He grabbed her around the waist with his left arm—he still grasped the medical bag in his right—and lifted her an inch off the floor. They held each other, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Tie smelled of saline tears and the adrenaline of her emotion. It pulsed off her in delicious feminine waves. Calvin smelled of the forest and sweat and the evening air.

"Taken a holiday from your vows, Father Calvin?"

Calvin sighed and with eyes still shut said, "Hi, Thom." He opened his eyes, kissed Tie on the forehead and pulled away. "That was one of things I wanted to talk with you about. It's time I retired."

Horton had shifted his gun from the now drooling shell that had been his employer to Father Calvin. "What's in the bag, Padre?"

"Hey, Horton. How hangs it?"

"Fuck you, okay? What's in the bag?"

"Just some medical stuff. Syringes and Thorazine mostly." He dropped the bag.

"And what," Neary wanted to know, "were you going to do with it?"

Calvin poked a finger at Mason's shoulder, rocking him back and forth like a gentle breeze. "Thought I might be able to use some of it on Mr. Mason to chill him out, or to take down you or Bishop Neary here if I had to." Calvin stared hard at Neary and nodded at the .50 cal he had pointed at Jeremy's head. "Do I have to, Thom?"

"That depends very much on your intentions from this point out, Johnny."

"What do you need from me, Thom?"

"Your return to the service of the Lord."

Calvin rubbed his forehead. He and Thom both knew exactly what that meant in the immediate context. It had all gone much too far, too many laymen knew too much about the operations of the last Templar Knights; they would have to kill everyone in the room. "C'mon Thom, we're corporate hit men for the largest non-profit on earth. Service of the Lord? I'm just not buyin' it anymore. The fucking Yakuza have higher ethical standards than we do."

Horton chortled, but steadied his aim on Calvin. It really blew that he was going to have to kill this guy.

"Then we could start over," Neary said. "We could reform our order. Maybe you're right, Johnny. Maybe it's time to modernize our little corner of the Church. Heck, they say Mass in English now. Maybe we could make some changes of our own."

"Thom," Calvin said. "I can't do it anymore. Besides, see this woman? I'm in heavy love with this woman and would really like to keep her. It's not you Thom, it's me. I need some space."

Tie laughed.

Neary's Sweet Old Man act disappeared like a patch of snow melting away to reveal a corpse. "Shut up whore," he spat.

Tie squinted at him and nodded. This one she'd keep quiet for. He had more of his marbles and one hell of a big gun.

"How could you choose this," Neary held his hand out in Tie's direction, fumbling for a description vile enough, "this unclean thing over me and the Church? I found you, Johnny. I saved you." He shoved the handgun into Jeremy's temple. "I saved you from this."

Calvin looked at the floor, ashamed of the mixture of arrogance and wanton need on Neary's face. "I'm done, Thom."

Neary stared at his pupil, his wayward lamb. "May the Lord forgive you, Johnny. I never will."

Calvin raised his eyes. "What're you going to do, Thom?"

Neary shook his head. "I'll just go." He swiped his eye with his free hand. "Try to start over again."

Calvin nodded, readied himself.

Horton shifted his aim to Neary. "Then do it, Bob. Get the fuck outta' here."

"You think me foolish enough to turn around and walk away? You'll put a bullet in my back the moment I've relinquished my cover of the boy."

"Put the gun away, Horton," Calvin said. "Let him go."

"Otherwise I'll kill the boy," Neary threatened. "You're checkmated, Mr. Horton. You want two things: the boy's safety and my absence. I can give them both to you, but you must allow me to do it."

Horton considered, eyes hopping from Neary to Jeremy to Calvin and Tie. "Ah, fuck it," he growled and shoved his pistol back into its shoulder holster.

Neary sighed. "Thank you, Mr. Horton." He flashed the barrel of his gun away from Jeremy's head and pointed it at Horton.

"The fuck you doing?" Horton shouted, his bald head glowing. "You lying motherfucker."

Neary kept his eyes on the bodyguard and spoke to Calvin. "Johnny, go stand next to Mr. Horton. You too, young lady." He glanced at Mason. A line of saliva silvered from his lower lip and the thirsty fly had returned to his eye, joined now by several buzzing kinsmen.

Calvin nudged Tie over to stand next to Horton. Heat and the dry mustard stink of anger boiled off the big man. When the three of them were grouped in the corner, Neary began to dance the sight of his gun from one face to another.

"Would any of you like to make a confession?" he asked.

"Oh, fuck you," Horton answered, then aside to Calvin, "He any good with that?"

"Taught me."

"Oh."

Tie intertwined her fingers with Calvin's.

"I have something to say, Thom," Calvin said.

Neary smiled, triumphant. "If anyone needs to cleanse his soul, I suppose it's you, Johnny."

"Thanks." Calvin crossed himself.

"That's backward, Johnny," Neary admonished. "Still blaspheming at a time like this?"

"Shit, Thom, I'm a little freaked. Cut me a some slack, okay?"

"Just get on with it, Father Calvin."

Calvin faced Jeremy. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. He opened his mind and thought of the desert and the bowl of stars over the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He thought of all the magic he'd experienced in his life, both light and dark, and of the greatest trick of all: Faith. Father John Calvin never had much faith in the Church or the precepts of its elders, but he believed in his connections with the liminal world and those who dwelled within it. An image of two boys standing on the edge of a great abyss glowed into life behind his eyes. He didn't know where the image came from, but he'd learned to trust his inner eye. Calvin's face crinkled in concentration as he thought, Jump, kid! Jump! The image faded.

John Calvin opened his eyes and spoke in a clear, loud voice. "Return, Legba. Return, Papa Loa. Return, Great Rider. Unseat your horse."

Jeremy sat bolt upright and sighed deep and long in a voice that issued from one mouth but spoke for a legion. "Ahhhhh."

Neary took a step toward Calvin, pointing the handgun like an accusing finger. "What was that? What have you done?"

Horton scrutinized the child. Jeremy fell back into the pillows, his breath came in even, dreamy gasps. He looked like a kid asleep after a hard day at play, long lashes against his cheeks. Horton's breath caught. That was his boy there. His boy was in the bed and he was just sleeping like a little guy was supposed to do. His boy. His good boy. A sob ran up Horton's throat and snagged behind his teeth. He couldn't quite tear his eyes off Jeremy's face as he addressed Calvin in a voice roughened by tears, "Yeah, man, what'd you do?"

Calvin smiled. It had worked and it was all he had left. He'd played his last card and hoped it would be enough. "I let it go," he said.

Neary stared at the boy a moment. It was true. Jeremy was still scratched and sallow, but something underneath was different. It was like staring at a wound that has been thoroughly cleaned. Shame that when he was finished with the adults, Neary would have to take care of the boy as well. At least Calvin had freed the poor child's soul. Neary centered the gun on Calvin's forehead. "Perhaps you'll make it to the Kingdom of Heaven after all," Neary said.

"Priest?"

Neary spun, his breath gone.

Frank Mason grinned with a hundred triangle teeth, his eyes dull black saucers. A voice that harmonized between male and female, young and ancient, rasped from his shark's mouth. "Do you want to make a confession?" The air turned cold and a stench fouler than the gore coat wrapping Mason's shoulders filled the room. Tie gagged and threw up in the corner. Calvin instinctively put his arms out in front of her and Mr. Horton like a parent bracing a child for impact in a passenger seat. The demon was free of Calvin's binding, and from the look of it, in full force. Neary stared, transfixed by those eyes and the sheer enormity of rage they held. Twin black holes punched in the fabric of space time focused on him. It was like looking into the eyes of God Himself and finding nothing.

Mason's face fell in on itself, rearranging. The eyes were now more like those of a man, but still alive with terrible knowledge and the glee of the truly insane; a salesman's grin. "Shove your rosary up your ass, Neary, and we'll say each bead together."

Bishop Neary came back to himself with that last remark. It hit him like a slap in the face, petulant and low-browed. But of course, what should he expect from this: the foulest creation, an abomination to the dignity and righteousness of Holy Mother Church. He raised the handgun. "Your time on this earth is at an end, filth." Neary squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, clamping down with all his might on the trigger. It wasn't the gun, it was him. His index finger wouldn't move. "What?" he said. "No. No!"

The demon chuckled. It turned Mason's head to one side and gave a roguish wink.

There was a loud, moist crack and Neary screamed. (Horton winced and involuntarily flexed his healing finger.) The demon winked again and again. The room filled with Neary's shrieks and the sound of wet twigs snapping under foot as Neary's finger bones splintered one after another. The old man stood with his arms out to either side, the gun tangled up and dangling from his right hand, the fingers branching off in unnatural directions.

Calvin, Tie and Horton could only watch from their corner of the room. Horton and Tie wore identical slack-jawed expressions. Calvin's face was expectant and wary. It could go anywhere from here. He and the demon had made a deal: Calvin had laid off the torture treatment and the demon had gotten out of the boy. He had put it through agonies that must have rivaled its experiences in the bowels of Hell. But would it think they were even?

The demon halted its attack on Bishop Neary. "Are you ready to meet your god, priest?"

Neary wailed. He held his ruined hands out to the figure of Mason, pleading for his life. He could only shake his head back and forth, his mouth a gaping frown. The demon stepped forward and placed a hand over the old killer's heart. It brought its stinking maw in close and licked the line of Neary's tears. Neary's gorge rose, he moaned in protest, but remained frozen to the spot. For a long moment, the demon stared into Neary's face, searching. It shook its head and muttered, "Nothing," in its multi-note voice. Neary's eyes popped wide. He clutched his chest and fell over the bed, laying across Jeremy's legs.

The demon stood over Neary's prone body as if listening, its eyes far away. For what seemed like a long time it waited. Just when it looked as though Mason might have slipped back into his catatonic state, the demon snatched a claw at the air above the bed. It lifted its fist over its head and squeezed, its tendons shaking. Dark blood pushed from between its fingers and pattered down into its waiting mouth. It licked its lips, spreading rancor like hastily applied lipstick. The demon faced John Calvin and the others.

"It's over," Calvin said, voice shaking. "We had a deal and it's done."

"Our business is far from concluded, Templar."

"No!" Calvin shouted, sticking his hand out like a traffic cop. "No, I said I would let up if you got out of the kid. I gave you the chance to leave and now it's done. You can fucking have Mason."

The demon gave a stiff little half bow, arching Mason's eyebrows. "We want you, Templar. We want your life."

Tie stepped forward, her heart hammering her ribs. "Sorry," she said. "The Templar's spoken for."

Mason shifted his attention. "Your father's dead, Tiesha."

Tie's heart slowed. "You lyin'."

"Here's in the meat with us. Mason had him killed. The bondsman did it."

"Hell I did!" Horton blurted. "Don't you believe that sonofabitch, lady."

"Followed him home from the hospital."

"It's lying, Tie," Calvin soothed, reaching for her hand. His fingers wrapped around her fist, a ball of hard ice. "S'okay, babe. Don't buy any of it."

The demon chuckled. "The bondsman followed him home and cut his old cock off, fed it to him."

Horton drew his pistol, thumbed the hammer back and screamed as the demon broke his arm at the elbow from across the room. It hadn't even blinked. The big man crumbled to the floor, holding his savaged limb at a sickening angle. Tie dropped to her knees, her hands fluttering uselessly around Horton's shoulders. Horton clenched his jaw, the muscles bunching like bags of rock under his skin, and yelled through his teeth. "Don't touch it!" he hissed. "Oh, God dammit that hurts."

Calvin spared a look at Tie. "Okay," he said. "You take me, then."

Tie's face drained. "No, no!" Her mouth worked and a great racking sob broke her. The demon was the closet monster for real. There was nothing anyone could do. She made to get up, but Calvin put a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was warm through the fabric of her shirt. That one curl of dark hair fell across his forehead. She remembered his breath in her ear when they had made love. Calvin blurred with her tears and she was grateful.

He leaned in and kissed her forehead. "Bye, babe."

She couldn't speak, just shook her head and looked at the floor.

Calvin tipped his chin at Horton. "Sorry 'bout this, man. I was kind of hoping things would work out better than this."

Horton's skin had gone a cheesy non-color. He grimaced and spoke through the pain. "I'm glad I didn't have to kill you."

"Templar." Mason held his arms out as if to embrace Calvin. "Come to me."

Calvin glanced back at Tie just once. This was the only chance she had. Maybe the demon would be satisfied with his sacrifice and leave her alone. They were all dead if he didn't. He sighed and put his head down. John Calvin took a step toward the open arms of his first father. When the toes of Mason's shoes came into view he stopped and raised his face. He would go with his head up, dammit. Time glaciated as John Calvin looked into the eyes of endless rage.

Silence.

As before, Calvin was engulfed by a quiet where he could hear only his breathing and heart beat. This was it, the beginning of his end. It seemed right somehow that there should be no noise, as if the moment itself were sacred space, a cathedral event. The demon beamed at him, the altar in the church of his death. Calvin tensed.

Mason's face warped out of shape, his skull imploding on one side and exploding out the other. Calvin blinked. A quick finger of blood sketched from Mason's right nostril. Another second drew out and the top of Mason's skull lifted off and fragmented. Calvin blinked again, focused still on those eyes, radioactive crystals of betrayal and surprise. An instant later, and what was left of Mason's head was wiped from the stem of his neck. Calvin's face was wet and warm, coated. He blinked again as Mason's body hit the floor with a resounding thud.

Jeremy was sitting up in bed, Neary's handgun quivering at the end of his skinny arms. His child's fingers could barely encompass the grip. A line of blue smoke drifted from the barrel, the breath of a tiny metal dragon. Wheels of dark fatigue ringed the boy's eyes, but they sparked with a flint of character strange in the face of a ten year old. He let out a long breath and lowered the gun. Jeremy Mason leveled his gaze on John Calvin.

"I jumped," he said.

THIRTY FOUR

THIN NOVEMBER SUNSHINE washed over Mr. Horton, warming his shoulders and winking off his head. He wrapped his arms a little tighter around his midsection and scooted his butt over an inch on the bleachers overlooking the soccer field. He was sitting on a screw or something. Horton sighed a puff of steam and wondered if Jeremy was warm enough out there in just his soccer togs. Just then Jeremy shot down the field, a blur of green and gold (his new school colors), running to meet an advancing opponent. Horton laughed at himself. Stupid to worry about the boy. Look at him, already a head taller than last year and the fastest sprinter on the team. The kid was invincible.

Jeremy took the ball away from the other boy with a graceful slash and stop. Without hesitating, he nailed it over to a teammate in better position to move the ball back down the field. Jeremy jogged back into position and coiled for another attack.

"That your boy?"

Horton craned his neck back at the woman seated a couple of feet away and one riser up. She was wrapped in a puffy green coat. A bundle of yarn and a couple of knitting needles sprouted from her lap. Blonde curls slipped like vines from beneath her watch cap. Her nose was red and her eyes bright in the clean sun. "That one," she said, flipping a nod at the field, "number seven? He your son?"

"What makes you think he's mine?" Horton asked. "See a resemblance?"

She laughed. "Nope. But whenever he gets near the ball you look like you're trying to keep from doing the wave."

Horton chuckled. "He's good, isn't he? I'm not his father, though. Well, not yet anyway."

One of her eyebrows raised. "Oh, going after his mother are you?"

Horton felt his head blushing. Chick was pushy. He liked her. "Nothing like that," he said. "I'm trying to adopt him." And before she could ask another question, "Which one's yours?"

"Guess."

Horton took a second to record the soccer mom's features then looked back at the field. He was just in time to catch Jeremy bolting down the field with the ball, making straight for the other team's goal. Horton clenched his fists and felt the urge to shout welling up behind his teeth. Jeremy dodged around a final defender and gave the ball a vicious kick. It slammed through the air and into the waiting arms of the goalie. Jeremy snapped his fingers and winced. He turned his back and trotted back down the field. Horton checked the goalie. She had a blonde pony tail and coltish legs. Quick as a gecko, she stuck her tongue out at Jeremy's back.

Horton turned back to the soccer mom. "The goalie."

She smiled down into her knitting. "That's my Sally, the next Mia Hamm." She looked up from her lap and squinted down at her daughter. "Better keep her damn shirt on, though."

"Brandy Chastaine's the one you're thinking of." Horton laughed and shook his head. "I'll never get used to these co-ed teams."

"Oh, you think girls aren't good enough to go up against boys?"

"Not after the catch your daughter just made. Naw, I'm just old fashioned a little I guess. Speaking of which," he stood and extended a hand back and up to her. "I'm Terry Horton."

She barked a laugh. "That's funny," taking his hand and giving a good squeeze. Not the kind of over-hard clamp that said she was worried he might think she was weak, but strong and natural. "Teri's my name, too."

Horton's pate blushed a little deeper. It was the only part of being bald he disliked, the emotional billboard of his scalp. "Most people just call me Horton."

"You ever hear a 'Who'?"

"Hey clever," he smirked, voice flat. "Never heard that one before."

"C'mon up here and sit with me, Horton. You won't have to break your neck to talk. I could use the distraction. I love my Sal, but it gets boring as hell between saves."

Horton settled down next to her. "Your knitting doesn't keep you busy?"

She gazed into the tangle of yarn and steel in her lap. "Suppose it would, but I'm really bad at it. I used to have one of those Rubix Cubes—you remember those?—but I could never get more than a couple of sides and it drove me nuts." She put the knitting aside. "Sally can do it though. It's crazy. She can just pick it up and have it back to you in about ten minutes, all perfect and solved."

Horton stared across the field, sized up the girl. He tried to put himself in the mind of an eleven or twelve-year-old boy. Yeah, she was cute. He glanced over and caught Jeremy staring at her. "She smart? She must be with the cube and all."

Teri straightened. "Brilliant actually. I had her tested over the summer and she's got this thing with pattern recognition. Sometimes she's so smart it's a little scary."

I get that." Horton nodded. "Jeremy's like that too, you know? He, uh," Horton contemplated a passing cloud, "he knows stuff that kids probably shouldn't be able to figure out. I'm pretty sure he's a genius, like an Einstein or that Hawkins guy."

"Hawking."

"Hawking, yeah." Horton shook his head. "Jeremy reads that stuff, but I can't get my head around it really."

"Me neither," she said. "Sally's father was brilliant, too." She broke off and laughed ruefully. "Except for emotional intelligence, that's for damn sure." She watched Jeremy sprint over with the rest of the kids to huddle by the coach, a jumbled pile of color and bruised shins, power. "Where're his parents?"

"Dead," Horton said. A memory of collecting Mason's teeth—as many as he could find—and setting up the body in the driver's seat of the BMW. Calvin had spent a few minutes under the car and then they had aimed it at a tree. The explosion had been volcanic. "His mom drowned when he was just a baby and his father died last year in a car accident."

Teri was quiet a moment, looking at the boy and wondering. Someone in the huddle told a joke and the music of Jeremy's laugh blew across the field to them. She let out a breath. "He's doing okay."

"For the most part. He has dreams sometimes."

"Yeah," she said. "Sal had nightmares after the divorce. Still does. But you're in the adoption process now for him, or what? You an uncle, or...?"

"I worked for his dad for a long time and me an' Jeremy got pretty close. I don't know if it's ever going to feel like he's really my son, or anything. It's just that..."

"What?"

Horton smiled at his sentimentality. He had become a big old softy and it never ceased to amaze him. "I guess I think of it like this: if I could choose what my kid would be like, I would choose Jeremy."

The soccer stars were walking back toward the bleachers to collect their parents. Horton and Teri each raised a hand to their respective kid at the same time and laughed. Jeremy and Sally caught their respective adults and threw sidelong glances at one another. Teri turned in her seat and put out her hand. Horton took it and she held on for a second.

"Be my bleacher buddy at next practice, Horton?"

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Sounds real nice. Maybe talking to you will keep my from doing the wave and embarrassing this guy."

Jeremy and Sally came up, she eyeing Horton, he eyeing Teri. "Hi," they said in unison and turned equal shades of scarlet.

HORTON COULDN'T HOLD on for more than a block out of the parking lot before saying something. "That goalie's pretty good."

Jeremy looked out the car window. "Whatever."

"Yeah, whatever." Horton watched the road. "She, uh, she's cute too, huh?"

"I guess."

"You guess."

"Saw you talkin' to her mom."

Horton's scalp went off. "Yeah, she's a nice woman. Funny."

"She, uh, she's cute, too, huh?"

"Okay, okay, Mr. Cool." Horton patted Jeremy's knee. "You got me, but I have a question for you."

Jeremy tensed, a shaky smile quivering his lips. "No! Quit it, Horton. C'mon, man!" He laughed and grabbed Horton's wrist but his hand was like a piece of steel.

Horton grinned, evil and gleeful, "How's a crow sit on a fence?" he asked and squeezed, sending the boy into a storm of tickle doom.

A few minutes and miles later—talk of goalies and their mothers out of the way for the time being—they pulled up in the parking lot of a squat brick building with tinted windows, the kind of business rental space that shared several offices. Linowes & Monroe Attorney's at Law gleamed from a brass sign on the corner. Horton threw the transmission in park and turned toward Jeremy.

"You ready for this, kid? You still want to do it? I mean, I don't want to force you into anything that don't feel right to you. If this is too weird, you just let me know and we don't have—"

Jeremy nodded gravely through most of Horton's nervous deluge then started smiling. Horton always cracked him up when he was trying to be all sensitive. It was like watching a tiger play with a ball of string or something. "It's cool, Horton," Jeremy said. "But before we do this I have to make sure of something."

"What's that, kid?"

"I have to ask you something."

Horton steeled himself. Jeremy knew a lot about what his father had been up to and where their money came from. After all, the kid had inherited enough to buy a small country. But Horton could go his whole life without giving Jeremy the details of the darker stuff. With the help of the lawyers and some of his own contacts from his days on the force, Horton had severed ties with the criminal elements of Mason's empire. They had been all too happy to get out from under Mason's control, but still feared the man's shadow enough never to come calling. The future was open before them now, clean and bright, but if Jeremy needed some piece of knowledge about the past, Horton had made up his mind a long time ago to give it to him. It was truth or nothing.

He took a quick breath. "Okay, kid. What do you want to know?"

"Just this," Jeremy said and clamped his hand around Horton's knee. "How's a crow sit on a fence?"

THIRTY FIVE

TIESHA'S HANDS BLED. The blisters from the damn double-oar were fierce, but she was paddling the damn kayak around the entire damn island this time. No more putting ashore and resting when she ran out of steam. They'd been on Cooper for almost a year and it was time she showed the island who was boss. It was one continuous go-around this time or she'd lean over the side and let the 'cudas have her.

Cooper Island rose from the ocean like a giant's shoulder to the right. The pregnant swell of Virgin Gorda floated off her left. Or should it be port? Was her little boat big enough to merit a port and starboard? Tie eased her stinging hands in the salt water then picked up her oar. Her back had gone a polished mahogany from sun. She gritted her teeth and dug into the cobalt surf, her muscles rolling like the small waves upon which she rode. Cooper was a tiny island, really just a hill sticking out of the ocean—one and a half miles long by half a mile wide—but big enough so that by the time Tie pulled the kayak onto shore she was spent.

She collapsed on the sand, not even bothering to fix the wedgie from her bikini bottoms. The sand gritted into the side of her face and smelled like sun and salt. The water lapped and shushed. If she wasn't careful she'd fall asleep like this and get even worse sun burn than the last time. That, and if she stayed out past sundown, the skeeters would make Swiss cheese out of her black behind. A shadow fell across her back, cooling.

"Now this is a wonderful sight," said the shadow thrower. "Prone, almost naked...perfect."

She squinted one eye open at the shirtless beach bum. He'd changed a lot over a year. His hair had gone sandy and was too long but that one curl still got in his face. His skin had darkened and he needed a shave. He looked wonderful. He looked like himself. "Unnnh," Tie answered, blowing a puff of sand.

"You get all the way around without stopping?" Calvin asked.

Tie closed her eye. "Cooper Island is my bitch."

"Thought I was your bitch."

"Emmm," she stretched like a great cat on the warm sand. "Can't have too many bitches."

Calvin squatted down on his hams, stared over the domes of her bottom and out into the winking blue. "That a fact."

"Not if you wanna' be a playa."

"You a playa then?" He scooped up a handful of sand and dumped it on her left butt cheek.

"What," she said without moving or opening her eyes, "are you doing, white man?"

"Preserving your ass for future generations." He dumped another handful on her other cheek. "It would be a travesty to let an ass like this go unappreciated."

Light footsteps threaded through the sand and into Tie's ear. She opened one eye and watched as a woman in her middle-sixties moved up the beach. She resembled an enormous mushroom, a spreading straw hat protecting her whip-thin frame. Even with that puddle of shadow to walk around in, she was still pink as a new strawberry. "Comes Miss Jean."

Calvin continued burying Tie's rump. He had it mostly covered and now drew a small smiley face on the left mound. He'd been aware of Cooper's only other year-round resident for some time now. She lived on the other side of the island, near a seasonal beach club and restaurant; had bought one of their bungalows. Miss Jean walked the circumference of the island every day at the same time like the hand of a grand, organic clock. Calvin lifted a hand and called, "Afternoon, Miss Jean."

Tie purred, "Hi, Miss Jean."

"Hello, you two," Miss Jean said, the ghost of Gloucester cornering off her words. "Make it all the way around this time, Tiesha?"

"Island's my bitch."

"Good girl," Miss Jean said without breaking stride.

"Dinner at the club tonight?" Calvin called after her.

Miss Jean's hand rose up next to her head and flapped. Calvin smiled. Yeah, that was the right way to do things down here. Flap, maybe, flap, maybe not. The biggest decision their life on the island presented was whether to order the jerk chicken or the mahi-mahi. Calvin and Tie were done. They'd earned a retirement for all they'd seen and those they'd saved.

Money wasn't a problem. Holy Mama Church had taken good care of her last Templar Knights, transferring monies to an off-shore account in the name of Bishop Thomas Neary for years. Thom had made certain that if anything ever happened to him, Calvin would be granted power of attorney. He and Tie could live comfortably for the rest of their lives without worry. Calvin inhaled an endless breath of sea air and let it out forever. Nothing would ever darken his brow again.

Tie rolled over and looked up at him. "You ever think about Jeremy?"

Almost nothing.

"I try not to," he said, scooping up a pile of sand and dumping it on her belly button. "I love your outie."

Tie folded her arms behind her head. "We never really talked about it." She locked eyes with him. "Even right after."

"Never wanted to." He dumped more sand on her stomach and drew the circle for another face, poked a couple of eyes, but left the mouth out. "You want to talk about it now?"

She was quiet for a second. "Yes."

"What do you—I mean, is there something...?"

"You'd trapped it, right? With the Voodoo stuff—so it couldn't get out of the kid, or like use its telepathy?"

"Telekinesis."

"That, yeah, whatever. You made it so it couldn't jump around, then at the right time you let it go."

"Pretty much. I hadn't really planned that. Just sort of felt like it was the last thing I could do. The only thing left to do." He drew a frown on the sand face on Tie's tummy. "It was either that or Thom was going to waste all of us."

"How'd you know it would work?"

"I didn't know," Calvin said. "To be honest, I'm surprised any of it worked at all. And, in fact..." He trailed off, looking at the ocean. The shadow of the island stretched out over the little bay, inking the crystal water.

Tie searched his face. "In fact, what?"

He looked down at her. "I don't think it ever worked at all."

Tie propped up on her elbows. "Whachoo' talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

"I mean, I think that Voodoo stuff didn't work at all. I think it could have jumped out of the kid whenever it wanted." Calvin's voice was beginning to shake. The fishhooks of these suspicions had yanked at him from the start, and now that he had worried one free, it all wanted to come out in a rush. His eyes brightened and for a second, Tie remember what it was like to be a little afraid of John Calvin, of the things he'd seen and the marks they'd left on him. "I think," he said, "that the demon, whatever it was, engineered everything that happened from the very first."

"You mean it picked Jeremy for a reason?"

"Yes, but even more than that. When I say 'from the first', I mean it knew what it wanted when it found me all those years ago. It was the reason I ended up with Thom Neary."

The sand was warm, but now Tie's skin pricked with cold. "What'd it want?"

"I think it wanted to do a job, like a hitter. Like I used to be."

"Mason," Tie said.

"Mason, yeah," Calvin nodded. "But Neary, too, I think. It couldn't just take them for some reason, so it set events in motion almost two decades in the making."

Tie blinked. "Jesus."

"Like a chess move on a geological scale."

They were silent. The sun moved. A gull cried. Something splashed by a rock, the late afternoon light calling out streamlined hunters. The temperature dipped a degree and a light breeze dried the sweat on Tie's forehead.

"You think it's finished?" she asked.

Calvin stood and pulled Tie up by her hands. "We are," he said. "I know that much."

"Yeah?" she said, and seeing his face, she answered for him. "Yeah." Tie leaned in and gave Calvin's stubbled cheek a loud smooch. Her energy had returned, the warmth of the sand finding its way back into her muscles. "I feel like running," she said.

"See you at home." Calvin winked. "Lose the bikini."

Tie threw a leer over her shoulder and sprinted down the beach in a burst of clean speed, all legs and floating grace. Her vitality and power filled Calvin with an ease he never believed he would feel. The world wasn't just a place of darkness and pain. They were there, like anchors, reminders of life and struggle, but they weren't all there was. There was warmth and running and sun. There was hot skin and cool water. Calvin watched Tie pound over the sand.

"Get thee behind me," John Calvin whispered and turned his back on the deep blue sea.

The End

Washington, DC

December 25th, 2006

A  Washington, D.C. native, John Richmond wrote his first piece of horror fiction at the tender age of eight and has been hooked ever since. After winning awards for fiction in high school and a scholarship for creative writing to Beloit College, Richmond cut his professional teeth as a copy writer for a Toledo, Ohio advertising agency. He traveled the back roads of southern Michigan in a beat-up Ford Escort purchased for a dollar, interviewing locals and harvesting real-life stories for a multi-media advertising campaign that earned two awards. At present, Richmond divides his time between work as a novelist and a full time job in advertising at the Washington Post newspaper. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Leila.
