 
CIRCLE OF THE WITCH

By

GEORGE STRAATMAN

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 George Straatman

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other Smashwords Titles by George Straatman

THE CONVERGING

THE CONVERGING: MARK OF THE DEMON

THE CONVERGING: CLOSURES IN BLOOD

JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND OF SHADES

ABJECTION ALONG THE ROAD TO APOTHEOSIS (JOURNEY BOOK 2)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Steve Efondo of Sefdesign for his work in providing the stunning cover graphic for this novel. The cover design for this novel is particularly beautiful. I would also like to thank Leonard Clark for providing the second pair of eyes during the finishing stages of this daunting project. I dedicate this novel to my wife Louise who has had to live with my creative angst over the many years it's taken to bring this story to fruition.

For more on these titles visit www.georgestraatman.com

Prologue

A battered 35 Ford Flatbed trundled along the dirt road, bouncing unceremoniously to and fro, as it picked its way through the maze of ruts. During the winter, months this stretch of road would have been nothing more than an impassable morass. However, on this inferno of a night, as July turned on the hinge of time to become August, the bone white surface was as hard and white as a kiln-baked brick. Everything, from people to trees, seemed to have wilted beneath the unrelenting downbeat of the July sun.

The Ford negotiated a tight bend, its lights cutting a swathe through the inky darkness. The left front wheel plunged into a deep rut with a bone-jarring thud. In the cab, the thud jolted the driver, almost causing him to lose his grip on the wheel. The shotgun passenger was propelled out of his seat, hitting his head on the roof with a dull, flat thud. He uttered a tiny exclamation of pain, followed by a low curse. To his own ears, his voice sounded brittle and papery so he lapsed back into an anxious silence. The driver, who had been the organizer of this bit of nocturnal lunacy, heard the muffled protests of the four other passengers. He could clearly picture them clinging desperately to the horizontal slots that enclosed the flatbed...each praying fervently that the next bump wouldn't pitch them out on their ass.

On a normal evening, the driver might have derived a great deal of pleasure from such an image, but amusement was a lost commodity on a wild night such as this one promised to be. He doubted if he had even cracked a smile in the past two weeks.

' _Nothing much funny tonight, boyo,_ ' he thought grimly as he squinted through the dust-covered windshield.

Thump! The impact jolted the truck. The road was getting worse. He gritted his teeth in anticipation of the next jolt, hoping that it would not be the one that would snap the axles like wooden matchsticks.

"What's the time?" he demanded of his passenger, hating the tremulous quality of his usually gruff voice. The passenger's head snapped around as if he had just been addressed by a ghost. In the gloom of the cab, his eyes were faintly luminescent saucers.

' _He's scared shitless_ ,' the driver realized as the other man fumbled in the folds of his brown vest and produced a large, silver pocket watch. With trembling fingers, he unsnapped the clasp and tilted the face towards the window. "It's coming on twenty-five to twelve."

"Damn!" the driver cursed miserably. Time was slipping by like quick silver. He depressed the accelerator as much as he dared, understanding the chance that he was taking, but spurred on by an undeniable sense of urgency. Fear, cold and clinging, caught him in its embrace, clutching at his insides like icy pincers.

Despite the blast furnace heat the driver could feel cold beads of sweat forming on his brow and in the small hollow of his lower back. Fear gnawed at his resolve...a virulent, debilitating cancer running rampant in his heart.

Beyond the truck's windshield, the night air had assumed an eerie substantiality. The darkness had congealed into tangible clots that hung in the night sky...poison grapes on the devil's vine. Out of that ugly mass, came gruesome faces that capered and leered, darting forward with baleful yellow eyes and a gaping maw. Those hellish mouths would have yellow, curving teeth set in black, cankerous gums. That mouth would open impossibly wide, reeking like the pits of hell, ready to swallow a man whole. You would hear your own scream racketing uselessly in your ears as the thing set to tearing into you with cruel deliberation. You would feel...

The truck strayed into another hole. The driver's head jerked back hard enough to clamp his teeth down on his tongue. An instant later, the salty taste of his own blood filled his mouth. He yelped and spit a glut of bloody saliva out of the side window. The wind lapped it up greedily.

The burgeoning stench of fear had invaded the hot confines of the cab, growing stronger as they approached their destination. His terror mixed with the fear of the others until the stench of it overcame the scent of the pines and the not-too-distant ocean. God, he was afraid. It was an emasculating kind of fear that crawled up and down his backbone, turning it to jelly. He wanted nothing better than to throw the truck into reverse and go scurrying back to the safety of home and hearth. Only lunatics and devils ventured out on a night such as this. He was neither, so why was he here?

Feeling the dismal weight of obligation settle firmly onto his shoulders, he shook his head ruefully. While simply turning back was an attractive thought, its comfort would be short-lived and superficial. Try as he might, he was not the kind of man who could ignore the things that he had discovered, no matter how disturbing or terrible those things were. He was not capable of such shallow self-deception. Irreversible processes were being set in motion and somewhere between this world and the next, long-dormant horrors were being roused from their slumber. Of this, the driver had no real concrete proof...only glimpses very much like the odd reflections seen in a funhouse mirror...the kind of mirrors that bend and distort normal things into grotesque shapes.

No, he could not turn away from this nightmare. It had become a part of him. He had been drawn to this moment as though he was a piece of iron being inexorably drawn towards an invisible magnet. He had first glimpsed the monster lurking beneath the veil only two weeks before, at the Pendelton boy's funeral. He had strove diligently to banish it from is mind, to convince himself that it had been nothing more than an aberration manifested through shock and grief, but he was far too pragmatic to ever accept such delusion. He had seen what he had seen and no amount of second rate rationalization was going to change that. The events of the subsequent two weeks had served to confirm even his darkest conjecture. Seen from this perverse perspective, everything that had happened in this little town assumed a black logic.

The memory of that first encounter evoked a convulsive shudder that ran through his chest like a hell-bound freight train. That moment had led to this, each day forging a link in an unbreakable chain. Now as he and five other of the town's most prominent citizens embarked on this journey into madness, Mordecai Crane wondered if any of this was real. Perhaps he was at home, tossing and turning in his own bed, caught in the grip of a particularly vivid nightmare. If this was nothing but a dream, he didn't want to be around for the climax.

"Wake up," he murmured to himself, but the fabric of the world around him refused to dissolve. The lingering stench of fear and the cold sweat told him that he was here and this moment was all too real.

A small opening in the trees loomed ahead on the left. Crane pulled the Ford off to the side of the road and shut down the engine, relieved that the bone-jarring rollercoaster ride had come to an end. He closed his eyes and gripped the wheel, knuckles turning white on the leather casing. Despite the driving imperative...the certainty that this thing must be stopped...Crane didn't know if he was capable of doing what the old Indian had insisted must be done.

"It's quarter to," the passenger prompted anxiously. Mordecai nodded and climbed out of the cab, just as the other four disembarked from the rear of the truck, all wobbling from the affects of the ride. They gathered around him, waiting for instructions...waiting for the mystical incantation that would grant them the courage that he, himself, did not actually feel. They were ordinary people after all and this...this was lunacy of the blackest kind.

Something howled in the trees off to their right, causing the six to flinch as one. One man actually uttered a thin, reedy shriek. There was an undeniable electric current coalescing in the air as the midnight hour approached.

The Witching Hour.

Mordecia swallowed with a dry, audible click. They were wasting time...and time was their enemy. If midnight struck and the deed remained undone, the door would open and there would be hell to pay.

"You men know what it is that we have to do. You heard it spelled out plain by the old Indian. If there is one of you that don't think he can do it, then, by Jesus, say so now. We've got to be swift about this and cold feet are only going to slow us up." He cast a severe gaze from man to man, but they remained stationary. He sighed softly and felt the pace of his heart fall back a notch. Frightened as they might be, they were convinced. Their total acceptance shone in their eyes in the blinding hue of fear. Something in the sultry night air had succeeded where the most passionate of arguments had not in the bright light of day.

"All right, let's get to her then and be quick because we haven't got much time," he instructed. The six hurried to the rear of the truck and retrieved their prescribed implements. The old Indian had given Mordecai thorough instructions as to what they needed and how it should be put to use. As he reached into the truck, Crane felt the comforting weight of the Colt pistol against his chest. The cold steel restored a portion of his confidence, though he could not entirely allay that feeling that he had strayed perilously out of his element.

Tools in hand, the six started up the path on a dead run, hunched over like infantry men on a night raid. They carried an odd assortment of things...a two pound bag of rail spikes, a ten pound sledge, four five-gallon cans of gasoline, two vials of Holy Water, a box of sacrament wafers and a double-blade axe.

As if to set the proper ambiance, the night seemed to gather around the group, becoming palpably more intense. The wind abruptly tore through the trees in booming gusts. Heavy purple clouds lumbered in from the Pacific, promising the torrential downpour that would finally put an end to the maddening heat. The six hurried along, glancing about as if they expected to see Lucifer himself appear before them in a cloud of red mist. Mordecai was grateful for the cover of darkness. Its macabre thickness unnerved him, but at least it helped to conceal his fear from the others. It was expected that he be the strong one, that he set the example. If they were to see just how frightened he really was, they would most likely bolt like horses from a burning barn.

Mordecai came to the head of the path that opened onto a fairly small clearing at the center of which stood a small, squat building. In the purple gloom, the house looked more like a shed than an actual house. There was something distinctly forbidding about its flat roof and severe, straight lines. Even had he not known what he did, Crane suspected he still would have found this place unsettling...obscurely menacing. The towering pines pressed around the house like sentinels, their impassive silhouettes mocking the six.

" _Go home, Mordecai. You don't want to do this. You don't want to be here,_ " shouted the voice of reason, imploring him to behave like a man of light and not a medieval witch hunter. He closed his ears and mind to it, knowing that there could be no turning away. He could feel her like a bleeding ulcer in the pit of his guts. She was waiting.

Bending over, he crossed the lawn to the house. Once there, he pressed himself against the white wash wall. It felt cool and slimy against his hot skin. He gestured the others over with an impatient wave of his hand. The perception of impending disaster was stronger here. Proximity to the source had accentuated the sense that horrors were about to be birthed into the world. This was a place of death, despair and decay...a repository of unmitigated evil.

The last of the group was halfway across the unkempt lawn when a brilliant bolt of blue lightening ripped through the night sky, framing the man in a ghostly celestial spotlight. Startled, he cried out and threw himself to the grass. Each man held his breath and seconds passed. They had not been seen. Mordecai drew a shaky breath, exchanged a glass-eyed glance with the man next to him, and then began moving around the building. All of the windows on the southern exposure of the building were dark. They glared out into the night like sightless eyes. The east side of the building had neither doors nor windows.

"There's no one here," someone whispered hopefully. Mordecai shook his head in a vigorous dismissal. Such childish notions were the stuff of fairytales. She was here. He could smell the high, eldritch stench of corruption and knew that they had found their way to an ungodly place. Continuing along the building, he turned a corner and found himself staring at a dancing, spectral orange and red light that cavorted over the rear lawn...an animated light devil composed of shifting colors. He motioned to the others to remain where they were, then crept forward to see what was generating the light devils. They streamed through the set of double doors as if the owner had captured a piece of a dying sun and hung it like a chandelier. The eerie light appeared to gutter and swell in apparent syncopation with an unheard melody...a symphony both dark and powerful to herald what was to follow. With his left hand, Crane drew the Colt. It no longer inspired the sense of confidence that it had back in the truck. Still, he clutched it as if it were a jaded talisman.

Clinging to the wall, Mordecai crawled along the grass over to the double doors, where he knelt beside a dying rosebush. Heart skidding painfully in his chest, he leaned forward and peered through the glass. Part of him was still hoping for a reprieve, still praying that he would see nothing other than a well lit room.

"Good Christ!" he muttered. Within the room, a tableau of insanity was unfolding before his disbelieving eyes. His lower jaw unhinged and the flesh at the base of his spine began to crawl and rise into great hackles. All of his instincts urged him to rebel against the strident insistence of his own senses before the horror drove him into the cold comfort of insanity. He became aware of a hand tugging frantically at his sleeve. He shook it off with a savage jerk.

Mordecai fell away from the window. His limbs felt rubbery and his head light. Someone brushed by him, eager for a glimpse. Time had slowed to a crawl. Mordecai imagined that he could hear an internal clock inexorably ticking in the recesses of his mind. In an instant of crystalline clarity, Crane understood that it was all true. He thought that he had accepted it and at least intellectually, he had. Now he realized that a more atavistic part of his mind had shied away from the notion that this world was anything other than light, concrete and steel. He was profoundly shaken to discover that all of his deepest fears had proven true. Even the wildest of the Indian's speculations could not begin to describe what he was witnessing.

Inside, the ritual of evocation was well along. The Sabbat of Lamas was being uttered in with a ceremony of dark splendor and infernal pageantry. Mordecai closed his eyes and the Indian's warning sprung unbidden to his mind. "Should the clock strike twelve and the witch still lives, it will be too late to intervene. The past and the present, this world and its dark twin shall become one."

Without allowing the false luxury of further delay, Crane rose to his feet and pulled Father Crimmon away from the glass. Ducking his head and raising his arms to shield his face from the coming impact, he hurled himself through the glass doors. Glass exploded everywhere, showering the hardwood floor with a million tiny diamonds that caught fire beneath the vast array of burning candles. Crane landed heavily amidst the scattering of broken glass. Rising to his feet, he became obliquely conscious of the warm blood running freely over his brow and the sharp stinging in his right palm. Bits of glass winked like jewels from the torn flesh. The free-flowing blood seemed unimportant as did the pain that accompanied it. He could only gaze around the room, both repulsed and enthralled by what he saw. He could still appreciate the deadly and meticulous precision to the arrangement. It seemed to leer up at the group, mocking them with its unholy mystery.

And of course, she was there. She knelt at the heart of the pentagram that had been burned into the hardwood floor.

' _Not drawn,_ ' Mordecia's horror-dazed mind confirmed. The configuration had actually been burned into the hardwood. The perimeter circles and interior triangles had been painstakingly embossed in inch-deep grooves. Mordecai could hardly conceive of the nefarious dark sorcery that had gone into creating this elaborate construction. As his eyes adjusted to the pulsing light, he realized that the grooves were serving as runnels for a dark, glistening liquid, just as it was equally apparent that this liquid could only be blood. Through glassy eyes, he peered at the woman kneeling at the pentagram's heart. She gave no indication that she was cognizant of the intruder's presence, nor did she seem especially disturbed by Crane's dramatic entrance.

In her arms, she held the shredded remains of a child, torn and mangled beyond recognition. She held it in the manner of a penitent proffering a sacrifice to gain the favor of some primitive and powerful god. On her torso and thighs, dark blood shimmered like a glossy paint. As gruesome and repulsive as this obscenity was, Crane found his eyes being dragged to the thing taking shape at the apex of the ancient star.

' _Giving birth to horrors'_...he recalled his analogy and saw that it had proven most appropriate. Impossibly, the air at the point of the star had become semi-solid and elastic. It tented outward as though it were a sheet of plastic being stretched to its limits by a vague form that was struggling mightily to break free. Crane was reminded of a large and hideous placental sac. Through the distorted air, he could make out a fuzzy shadow straining and pushing against the film. It came upon him like a storm, the certitude that he would just collapse. Perhaps that would not have been such a bad thing. It would blot this nightmare out with merciful swiftness.

The thought was so tempting...so seductive that he could feel himself begin to slip. Savagely, he clamped down on his already wounded tongue. White pain tore him out of his spiral. If he was to die, he would not die as a coward.

In his morbid fascination, he was unknowingly allowing precious time to slip by. He had to act and fast. It was growing late. Perhaps it was too late even now. He was accosted by a sinking feeling of despair and inadequacy as he glanced down at his forgotten Colt revolver. From somewhere in the distance, there came a hysterical whimpering. He was only mildly surprised to find that it was coming from his own lips. Kneeling in the presence of such an immense evil, Crane felt small and inconsequential. Who was he to assume that he could vanquish something so wicked...something with the requisite power to conjure the abomination growing before him? This was work more suited to angels and saints. He was neither. He remembered the final expression that had stolen over the old Indian's face just before they had left him. In retrospect, had that expression perhaps been one of pity?

Father Crimmon clamped a large, meaty paw down on Crane's sagging shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was frantic, almost desperate. "Time is wastin' man. It's almost midnight and we've yet to put a stop to this."

Crane glanced dumbly up at the Priest. His expression gave no indication of comprehension, nor did he make any move to comply. Crimmon saw exactly how it was for the other man. Crane was paralyzed, possibly by fear or possibly by disbelief. The reasons were moot. Crane would be of no further help to them. Crimmon spat a curse of disgust and turned away.

Within the circle, the witch's rhythmic chanting droned on, seemingly unmindful of the confusion around her. Her incantations grew louder in volume and higher in pitch. Though Crane could not decipher the alien language, he guessed that the ritual was approaching its climax. Nor did he doubt that this climax would coincide with the clock's chiming of the witching hour. Undoubtedly, the new day would herald the birth of whatever lay behind that shimmering curtain of distorted air. He was certain of all of this. Convinced, and still he could not will himself to move to prevent it.

Father Crimmon gathered all of this in the space of seconds and barked his cry of disdain before turning to face the abomination. Unlike Crane, he was not stricken with the tetanus of fear and dark wonder. His body virtually shook and danced with an energy that was very similar to rapture. For the first time since they had made their dramatic entrance, the witch averted her attention from the birthing. Her coal black eyes flicked contemptuously over the group. To a man they all flinched as if they had been lashed by an invisible switch. There was an undeniable power in the impenetrable depths of those eyes. They came to rest on the priest, perhaps viewing him as her most worthy adversary. Couched deep in that insolent smile lay an open invitation, an unspoken challenge to come forth and do battle, faith against faith, dark magic against white. Hers were the eyes of one who believes in their own invulnerability. Her expression was an ugly blend of loathing and arrogance.

"Come then, holy man; enter this sacred circle if you dare. Challenge me as a sign of faith in your God," she taunted. Her words flowed with a disquieting, seductive lilt. They stroked the priest's ears like the tantalizing whisper of soft velvet being drawn over smooth, bare flesh.

Crimmon offered a rather odd little smile and raised his crucifix before him. The cross was an exquisitely crafted piece of art, made of dark oak and inlaid with gleaming white gold that had been polished to a glossy luster. The witch glowered at the symbol with an undisguised enmity. Crimmon fancied that he had caught a tiny flicker of fear in the darkness of those malevolent eyes. He came forward, responding to the challenge as if he had been invested with the power of the Holy One. The four others huddled around the fallen Crane...all braying cries of admonition. The cries fell on deaf ears. Mordecia could only gaze about with the dazed expression of a man who has just wandered into the midst of a particularly unpleasant dark conflict. With the cross out before him, the priest glided forward on a carpet of his own euphoria. A thin sheen of perspiration covered his face and his eyes glistened zealously in the subdued ebb and flow of the candlelight. He came forward like a man in a somnambulist's trance, unaware of nothing other than the odious woman kneeling in the protective circle.

So the moment was to be his. He could hear their warnings. Their concern was well-meant but misguided. He was not afraid. He could feel the divine powers of God fortifying him against this vile enemy. He had been forged his whole life in preparation for a moment such as this. Since he had been a child...since he had first set foot into the Seminary...he had been possessed by the certitude that he was destined to be a crusader of the light. While others had viewed the priesthood as a nothing more than the mouthing of time-worn platitudes and theological rhetoric, Crimmon had gathered his strength, steeling himself for the moment that he knew must inevitably come. In time, he would rise to slay giants and tumble walls. He would demolish the edifices of evil as though he was the hammer of God. Pulsing with the grandeur of his own vision, Crimmon approached the pentagram.

"Suffer not the witch!" he declared solemnly. Then he began to recite the twenty-third Psalm.

He managed to get as far as, the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, when the out-thrust cross broke the vertical plane of the circle's perimeter. As though suddenly animated by some belligerent power, the blood in the runnels flashed into flame, leaping towards the ceiling with an angry hiss. Father Crimmon's expression of invulnerability dissolved into a comical expression of shock and then terror. He screeched and attempted to pull away, but reacted too slowly to avoid the spit of the flames. Burning white hot, they found purchase on the cuff of his jacket, igniting the cloth on contact. Seconds later, there followed the sound that Mordecai Crane would never forget...the sharp, distinctive crackle of flesh being consumed by fire like bacon fat exploding in a skillet.

"Oh help me! Sweet Mother of Jesus, somebody please help me!" the beleaguered priest wailed wretchedly as he flailed his arms about in a futile attempt to extinguish the flames. He cast a reproachful glance towards the heavens, as though seeking an explanation for why he had been forsaken by his beloved God. Over his agonized screeching, there rose the rich, throaty sound of derisive laughter. Mordecai saw that the blood-spattered witch was reveling in the priest's torment.

Crimmon staggered and went down...still wailing, still burning. The acrid stench of burning flesh filled the room, exacerbated by the equally nauseating reek of boiling blood.

The charred remains of Crimmon's crucifix lay forgotten near the outside edge of the circle. Two of the other men raced past Mordecai, both going to the priest's aid. Their faces were branded with identical expressions of fear and revulsion. They had gotten more than they had bargained for. All of them had gotten more than they had bargained for.

From Crane's vantage point, the priest appeared to topple over in slow motion, hitting the ground like a collapsed gantry. The dull, meaty thud resounded impossibly loud in Mordecai's ears. The sound broke the paralysis that had immobilized Crane. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to the two men who stood motionless behind him. They gaped at him from huge, pallid faces that were knotted by a miserable disbelief. In Crane's head, that internal time clock resumed its ticking...now more exigent than ever.

"The gas cans," Crane exclaimed, pointing to the four cans that stood forgotten near the doors. "Start pouring the gas over the floors and the walls."

The two hesitated for a moment and then went to fetch the two cans, carrying them in the direction of the still-screaming Crimmon. Before they could compound the madness with stupidity, Crane cried out, "Not near the priest, you damned fools...pour it over the other walls."

Understanding the foolishness of what they had been about to do, the two lowered their heads in embarrassment and shuffled to the other side of the long, narrow room. They unscrewed the nozzles of the two cans and began to douse the floor and walls with gasoline. The pungent vapors filled the room in a matter of seconds, making the air less breathable than it had been. Had the perimeter of the pentagram still been aflame, the house would have likely erupted into a huge, orange fireball. Luckily, the curtain of fire had ebbed the moment that Crimmon had withdrawn his hands. One of Crane's strongest assets was his ability to grasp the salient realities of any given situation and now, he immediately gleaned the intended function of the curtain of flame. It had been the reason that the witch had seemed so unconcerned by their intrusion. The blood-filled runnels were serving as a defensive barrier. Anyone attempting to cross that barrier would be turned into a gruesome human torch in the span of a heart beat.

Crane studied the pentagram, hoping to find a way to breech its perimeter. In the heart of Solomon's circle, the witch had resumed her chanting, evidently having decided that this group of fools would pose no further threat to her ritual. The lump of flesh in her arms began to bubble and swell as if it were being subjected to a tremendous internal pressure. The developing aberration had congealed into a translucent jelly. It was roughly the shape and size of a crude door. Something was pushing against that door in apparent response to the witch's evocation, stretching the skin of this particular reality to the limits of its endurance. Though not a particularly imaginative man, Crane was perceptive enough to understand that the things behind that curtain would run rampant through this world like an avalanche down a mountainside. He further realized that, as inadequate as they might be, he and the others were the last and only line of defense between the unsuspecting town of Quinsett and the evil that this hateful bitch was about to unleash.

Not disposed to metaphysical solutions, Mordecai resorted to the only course of action that he could understand. He raised the Colt Pistol and fired three times in rapid succession. Tongues of fire lapped the first two bullets out of the air much in the way that a frog will snatch a fly in of mid flight. Somehow the third bullet passed through the flames unscathed. The hot chunk of led caught the woman in the forehead, about one half inch above her right eye. It ripped a jagged channel through the flesh, sheering off an eighth of an inch of bone, before imbedding itself in the opposite wall.

The wound, though not fatal, poured forth blood in a shocking torrent. The witch shrieked, more out of incredulity than actual pain. She dropped the offering and pressed both hands to her face as if trying to staunch the flow of blood. Mordecai bellowed a whoop of triumph and fired again, this time aiming for her heart. Adrenalin ruined his aim and the bullet struck her high in the right shoulder, gouging muscle from the bone in a bloody spray. With a guttural grunt, the witch collapsed onto her left side and lay twitching on the hardwood floor. Her feet beat a spastic tattoo against the polished wood. Mordecai felt the rumble pass beneath him as if the earth of this wicked place was churning in a convulsive death shudder. In the next heart beat, Crane knew that they had won. A huge gust of cool wind swept through the doors behind them. Like the breath of a giant, it extinguished all of the room's innumerable candles. Then, an odd assortment of strange smells permeated the room...blood, burnt flesh, cordite, and most distinctive of all, the cloying smell of gasoline. Later, Crane would reflect that it had been fortunate that the entire house had not been blown into kindling, considering the gas vapors and open flames. As the candles went out to a last one, the room was plunged into an eerie twilight. There arose a distant, muted scream of negation. The opaque distortion faded and then was gone with an elastic snap. The doorway had been closed.

' _It's over,'_ he thought with a weary sigh. He cautiously made his way over to the prone, unmoving figure of the fallen witch. Recalling what the old Indian had told him, he amended his last thought. Not quite over yet. Still one hideous task remained. His stomach wrenched into a painful knot at the notion.

"I'm not a fucking barbarian!" he moaned wretchedly, almost as if he were pleading for someone to release him from this wicked duty. Yet the old Indian had been adamant in his warning. True, they had succeeded in closing the door, but that was not enough. Grizzly measures would have to be taken to insure that the door stayed closed. Swallowing, he placed his hand on her right arm, careful to avoid touching the gaping wound, and gingerly rolled her over onto her back. The right side of her face was obscured by a thick coating of blood that had already begun to congeal. At the heart of that wound, Crane could see a tiny fleck of bone, a stark grey against the bright red gore.

He hoped that she would be dead, thus sparing him from having to perform the next part of the ritual. Much to his consternation, he found her to be very much alive, just as the Indian had predicted she would be. She glowered up at him through hauntingly beautiful brown eyes. She appeared oddly unaffected by the ruination of her scheme. Though muddied by pain, those eyes were as insolent as always. When she spoke, her words made a liquid trill in her chest. "Enjoy your little victory, Mordecai."

With an immense effort, the witch raised herself to her elbows and spat a glut of bloody saliva into his face. Her head fell back to the hardwood floor and she began to laugh contemptuously. Mordecai wiped frantically at his face as if it had been spattered by acid. A towering rage swept through Crane. With a shaking hand, he trained the Colt on a spot just below her left breast. A thundering silence had descended upon the room. All of the others had ceased what they had been doing and were staring fixedly at the two with a horrified fascination. Even Father Crimmon had been able to momentarily subjugate his consuming agony.

Through a mask of blood, the witch glared up at Crane. A smirk of contempt had formed around her grimace of pain. Something about Mordecai's rage secretly pleased her.

"Go on then, pull the trigger...or are you too cowardly to do even that?" she taunted. "You haven't the courage...have you? You are a weak, vacillating fool. All of you are fools. That is why I will emerge the victor, if not tonight, then on some other night." She began to laugh then. It was not the weak, papery chuckle of the dying, but a robust, feral howl that drove cold needles into the base of Crane's spine.

' _You must do precisely as I have told you, if you are to appease the spirits and put an end to this,'_ the Shaman's voice echoed in Mordecia's skull. The voice was emphatic and grave. It was the voice of prudence and Crane had no reason to doubt it, not after what he had experienced tonight. There were strict procedures to be adhered to...he was cognizant of that in a small, still lucid corner of his mind.

' _She cannot die this way,'_ he castigated himself and yet even as he did, Crane pulled the trigger. He heard the tiny click of the falling hammer and then the silence of the room was shredded by the roar of the pistol. The slug found home, tearing flesh and splintering bone, before bursting the heart like a balloon. Heart blood, the color of red wine, spewed forth and began to pool on the hardwood floor.

Something in the air of the room changed then, disseminating like a mist before a breeze. That thick, cloying sensation of ubiquitous evil gradually diminished, heralded by a distant laughter, which grew faint...fainter...gone. The air then felt purer, more breathable. None of the others had as much as moved a muscle. Mordecai shot the group a quick, sheepish look and then bowed his head. Hot shame flushed his face. He had eschewed the inviolable edict and allowed his towering anger to goad him into making a monumental blunder.

"Crane, you weren't supposed to kill her...not that way at least," one of the group remarked.

Crane frowned and shrugged his shoulders defensively. "What the hell is the difference? We can still do what the old Indian told us. Dead or not, it will still amount to the same thing."

Perhaps they accepted this and perhaps they did not, but Crane harbored no illusions that he had made a critical error in judgment. She had escaped with a draw and though divested of a physical body, her spirit had not been destroyed. The instant that the witch had died, Crane had felt something hot and rank brush by him. If he were to look up into the shadowy corners of the room, he suspected he would see it leering back at him with cold malevolent eyes. He cursed his stupidity, hiding it from the others with a burst of irritated instructions. "All right, let's get this damnable business over with. Cruthers, help Father Crimmon place his wafers. The rest of you help me get this bitch into place."

The man named Cruthers guided the priest through the shattered doors and out into the back yard. While Crimmon intoned a solemn prayer through pain twisted lips, Cruthers bent down and planted a piece of wafer into the ground, approximately one foot out from the foot of the building. They repeated this process at ten foot intervals until they had traversed the entire building and returned to the set of double doors. This was all part of a carefully conceived ritual designed to confine the witch's soul to this one small patch of infernal ground. It found its root in both Christian and Pagan theology, though it was unlikely that any modern Church would ever have sanctioned tonight's killing. The planted wafers would serve as a boundary, a barrier through which the woman's disembodied soul could not pass. Or so they fervently hoped.

Inside, the four had dragged the body to the center of the pentagram and arranged it in a spread eagle position. Crane carried a bag of rail spikes over to the body and knelt down beside it. He removed a single spike from the bag and laid it beside the witch's left hand. He did this three more times...laying an iron spike beside her other hand and both of her feet. Taking one of the bottles of Holy Water, Crane removed the cap and poured a tiny amount over one of the spikes. Behind him, he could hear the priest murmur a snippet of obscure scripture. He was also aware of the fact that the others had drifted away from the pentagram and experienced a momentary flash of resentment. It passed quickly. He had been the one who had organized this thing and it was only fitting that this final distasteful burden would fall upon his shoulders.

' _You're also the one who royally fucked things up,'_ he reminded himself. _'Yes, but at least she won't scream.'_

Crane picked up the spike near her left hand and placed the point against the flat of her palm. Then he reached for the ten-pound sledgehammer and raised it above his head. He hesitated for a moment, drew a breath, and let the hammer fall. There was a metallic clink, followed by the pointed sound of splintering bone. Seconds later, blood began to trickle listlessly from the wound around the spike. Crane felt his stomach begin to rise and swallowed grimly to keep it down. Trying to block out all thought, he went about finishing the job. When he had driven the last spike, the witch was staked to the floor. He rose on trembling legs and looked to the others. They all sported identical expressions of sick horror.

' _God, did we really do this?'_ he asked himself.

Feeling hollow, he began to stumble in the direction of the ruined doorway, when one of the others placed a hand upon his shoulders. Crane looked at the man numbly. The man's face was compassionate but firm.

"Finish it, Mordecai," he said softly, gently ushering the man back towards the body. Crane shook his head pleadingly. He couldn't do it. He had done enough, more than enough. He looked from man to man, seeking reprieve. There was none to be found. Their eyes said the same thing...he had been the one to start this and he must be the one to finish it. Resigned, he trudged back to the circle and picked up the double-blade axe.

He poured the entire contents of the remaining vial of Holy Water over the axe head, while trying to block out all of the emotions that would naturally accompany the act. Instead, he turned his mind to the mechanics of the act. He envisioned a Redwood. Standing to the right of the body, with his back deliberately turned towards the others, he spread his legs for better leverage. He hefted the axe experimentally. It was well-balanced and lethal. The axe was as familiar to Crane's hand as his wife's breast. He brought the axe up and over his head, holding it there while he focused upon the tiny area of white throat. This was to be the spot where he would make his cut. If he had been able to see his face at that act moment, he would have seen a lunatic's grin, the lips compressed together until they had become a thin, bloodless slash. With a grunt, Crane brought the axe whistling down in a deadly arc. It sliced effortlessly through the flesh, burying itself in the wood beneath. Unassisted by a beating heart, blood began to flow from the neck in indolent waves.

Still holding the axe, Crane stepped back and turned away from his handy work. "That puts paid to her. Let's get the hell out of here."

The five started for the opening, but Crimmon had gone only a few steps when his knees buckled and he pitched forward like a felled tree.

"He's fainted!" one of the men exclaimed, and it was true. The trauma of his burns had finally taken their toll. Gently, the four lifted the priest and carried him out into the cool night air, where the first drops of rain had begun to fall. Above them, the clouds had swollen into a deep, angry purple which promised to unleash a fierce storm before much longer. Crane followed the others out and instructed, "Get the Father back to the truck and wait for me. I won't be but a few minutes. I'm going to lay down the rest of the gas and set this place to the light. As soon as I see that the fire is gonna catch, I'll be right behind you and we can get out of this miserable fucking place."

The four nodded and began to move away, but Crane called them back. "What we've done here, tonight, stays between us. Not one of you can say a word of this to anyone. No matter what we were to tell, people just wouldn't understand this sort of thing. I want all of you to swear on your soul that this will stay between us."

He fixed each man with the hard, withering stare that had made Crane one of the most formidable lumber barons in the country. One after the other, each man took a solemn oath never to reveal what had taken place on this deserted stretch of country road.

Crane nodded and sent them off, knowing that, as earnest as their promises may have been, sooner or later each would breech that promise. Crane had always believed that secrets stay in the pit of the human soul, weighing on it like a stone in a kidney. Either those secrets must be passed or they would poison their keeper. In the long haul it really wouldn't matter anyway and that was his particularly bitter secret. He had lost his composure and allowed her to slip away.

Mordecai returned to the house and began to pour gasoline over the floor and walls. He avoided looking at the disembodied head or the staked corpse. When the last of the gasoline had been spilled, Crane hurried to the opening and removed a small container from his breast pocket. Unscrewing the top, he pulled out a match and struck it against a tiny strip of sandpaper that had been glued to the container's bottom. Crane had always hated fire. It was the single most deadly enemy of his livelihood. Watching the match burn, he prayed that it would be his ally just this once. He pitched it through the air, watching it tumble end over end and land in a puddle of gasoline. Brilliant tongues of flame leaped up, racing along the floor and up the walls. In less than sixty seconds, the entire structure was aglow with light and heat.

Crane raised his arms to shield his eyes from the harsh glare. The rain, which had been threatening all day, began to fall with a vengeance. Though he was drenched to the skin within seconds, the cold water didn't even register in his dazed thoughts.

"No!" came his vehement wail of denial. He rolled the single word over and over upon his tongue like something repulsive. His eyes bulged from their sockets like twin moons. "No, not yet. Not now!"

Beyond the double doors, a gap had opened in the solid walls of flame. Though it had been thoroughly drenched with gasoline, the interior of the pentagram remained unscathed by the raging flames. Mordecai's eyes were fastened upon the head. It lay upon its side, facing him, and as he watched, the eyes flew open. In life they had been so brown as to appear black. Now they burned luminous silver. Crane tried to scream, attempted to move, but found that he was unable to do either. He found himself compelled to look upon the wicked thing.

And then it spoke.

The corners of the mouth curled into a hideous parody of a grin and then the lips began to move. "You've lost, Crane. I will live again and I will extract a terrible price for what you have done to me. I will come for you and the others, but you will never know when or where. As you sit and wait for the day of retribution, remember that it was within your power to vanquish me for good but for the lack of fortitude. I curse you, Mordecai Crane. I curse all of the others, for they are known to me. I curse your spawn, for they will also bear the burden of your failure."

Then the horrible silver eyes closed. Crane could sense the invisible pull weakening. He could have run then, but forced himself to linger. He had done this. The failure was wholly his and he felt obligated to learn just what price his weakness would levy upon the others.

It began to chant in a low, rhythmic voice that struck Crane like dead roses and graveyards. His gaze was jerked to the body, which had started to twitch and tremble violently.

' _It's going to get up,'_ he marveled, again trying to will himself away from this madness. Outside, the storm escalated into a series of titanic rumbles that shook the heavens. Bolts of forked lightening illuminated the night in ghostly blue and white flashes. The witch's right hand tore free of the rail spike and lifted towards the ceiling in an oddly evocative gesture. Crane shrieked, but his cry was lost beneath the tumult. The chanting had become a droning buzz. The hand waved to the ceiling and then the fingers hooked into claws and plunged into the flesh of the witch's left breast. Crane stood transfixed, as the nails tore through the firm flesh like the gnashing teeth of a wild beast. Scraps of bloodless flesh flew in all directions, as the probing fingers ripped their way to bare bone. Crane had unknowingly raised his hands to his face and was dragging his nails along the pallid flesh hard enough to bring blood running in three scarlet ribbons on each cheek.

The body arched upward while the hand dug ever deeper, at last clasping the dormant heart. With a mighty tug, the hand tore the organ from its moorings and brandished it defiantly at the heavens. Crane averted his eyes and the entire content of his tortured stomach came rocketing up. Over the cacophonous thunder of the storm and the pounding of the blood in his temples, Crane could hear the monstrosity raving hysterically.

"Preserve my heart, so that it may beat again to do your will. Cast it in fire until it has become a black diamond, a sacred jewel in your crown. Invest this, my loyal heart, with the spirit of your might so that it might yet pump the blood of your order and strike down those who conspire against you. Inure this vessel so that it may be resurrected to your service and bring a curse upon the enemies who have defied your mantle as the one true God." The hand thrust the heart to the heavens and opened the fist. There was a massive peel of thunder, followed by a searing bolt of white lightening that arced down from the bowels of a huge, seemingly malignant thunderhead. It struck the shingled roof with a roar, sending huge splinters of wood flying in all directions. The bolt struck the proffered heart, seeking it out as if it had been a huge copper conductor. As Crane watched through eyes made vapid with wonder, the body gave one last convulsive flop, stiffened, and simply blew apart before the onslaught of the immeasurable power of electricity. Crane caught the flicker of movement as something was swept up through the gaping hole in the roof and carried into the darkness of the stormy night. As years passed, Crane would come to wonder if he had really seen the shape or whether it had been the creation of an over-taxed mind. The silver eyes were upon him again and the mouth stretched into a horrible grin. "I know you, Crane. I know the others. You may tell them that. Someday I will be back for all of you."

Her words became howls of laughter that seemed to grow louder and louder, until it sounded as if the entire world must surely hear it. Then Mordecai realized that it was not laughter that he was hearing but a cannonade of the thunder. The rift in the wall of flames closed, abruptly cutting off the view of the gruesome speaking daemon.

On legs as stiff and unresponsive as frozen clay, Crane began to stumble towards his truck and the others, knowing that this nightmare was not over and understanding that he was responsible.

Chapter One

1

Andy Carlson had expected to make it to Quinsett well before four o'clock, but about thirty miles outside of the town of Queets, the long-ailing carburetor of his Hyundai Pony had finally given up the ghost. The car had died with a mournful wheeze and a cough and then ground to a rolling halt, leaving him stranded half way between hoot and holler. He judged that Quinsett was still another fifteen miles along highway 101, just about eight miles south of the Hoh Indian reserve.

Carlson had cursed the traitorous Pony, kicked in the front headlight for good measure, and began trudging heavily along the state highway. He tilted a nervous eye towards the July sky, distressed by the heavy clouds that were slowly making their way east from the Pacific Ocean, and guessed...quite correctly as ill fortune would have it...that his chances of hitching a ride any time soon were dismally slim. The bad luck, while ill-timed, was not especially surprising to Andy, who had grown accustomed to those random and hostile turns in the road over the past few years.

It was going on 9:30 when the Redwood Cab pulled into the rear parking lot of the renowned Toppers Stop Hotel, located on the east end of Burgess Avenue. The driver spat an angry string of epithets at the hotel owner as his cab picked its way through the cratered parking lot. Carlson couldn't decide if the pitted asphalt resembled a World War One battlefield or the scarred visage of a giant, whose cheeks had been scourged by runaway acne. Andy paid the driver, withdrew his battered suitcase from the rear seat, and stood in the gloom of the July twilight, staring up at the back of the hotel, which was gradually sinking deeper and deeper into despair. He estimated the odds at better than even that the majority of the hotel's occupants would sport more than two legs, living in the walls and not between them. In a rare moment of reflection, Andy considered the twists and turns of his thirty-two years of life that had led him to this decaying, flea-box of a hotel on a rundown street in a piss-ant town. As he stood on the northwest corner of the world, rain began to fall in dime-sized drops, turning the dust-coated asphalt dark.

Carlson lifted the case over his head and began hurrying along the building towards the street and the main entrance. As he rounded the corner, Andy came to a dead halt with his heart thudding painfully in his chest. It was gone! He was certain of that because he could no longer feel it. Frantic now, he dropped the case and pulled open the rumpled flaps of his sports jacket. He thrust his hand down into the inner pocket. His hand closed upon the smooth, imitation leather surface of the notebook and Andy breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. He withdrew the notebook and regarded it with an expression of unmitigated love and something that might have been religious awe. A single elastic band was wound around the cover to keep the book closed. For a brief moment, Carlson feared that he would start to cry. Looking at the sum total of an entire life, condensed into a three hundred page note book, could easily provoke such a distraught reaction. For Andy Carlson, losing this notebook would be akin to having six years of his life suddenly and irretrievably erased from his memory.

He proceeded to the front of the hotel, coming to the stairs just in time to witness the dubious spectacle of two bleary-eyed patrons attempting to make their way down the four stone steps. Through the luck of the inebriated, the pair actually managed to make it to the sidewalk without mishap. Carlson watched in wonder as they staggered off into the thickening night, taking long looping steps as they went. Shaking his head, he mounted the steps and pushed through the doors. His lungs and nostrils were assailed by a thick cloud of smoke and the obligatory stench of stale beer. A lone man sat at a small table, near the rear of the room. A pitcher of draft had been placed on the table before him. With a touch of pity, Carlson noted that a second glass had been set before an empty chair. The man's invisible companion had evidently made some inflammatory remark because the old man scowled and pounded his fist on the table. Feeling suddenly depressed, Carlson glanced away and headed for the bar. Seeing such things reminded him of his own tenuous grip upon sanity and the shambles into which his life had fallen.

The barkeep was a big hulking fellow, who had been muscular once but was now running to fat. His face was rough and sported a perpetual scowl that could have been either irritation or disgust. Andy had seen this man a hundred other times, in a hundred other places very much like this one. They were ill-tempered and as unpredictable as a junkyard dog. In their presence, Andy had learned that it was best to proceed with caution. In his best I'm-an-average-guy voice, Carlson inquired, "Hi. I was wondering if there are any vacancies?"

The bartender regarded him sourly. In a rasping voice, he replied, "No buddy, the Republican Convention is in town and we're all booked up for the next month. What the fuck do you think wiseass?"

"I see," Carlson replied meekly, appearing suitably chastened. The barkeep's expression softened, if only a little. "Okay, so how much is a room?"

"Twelve bucks a night. The first night is paid in advance. If ya take 'er for a full week, the room is only sixty bucks."

Carlson pondered this for a few seconds and then withdrew his billfold and doled out the required sixty dollars. The wallet had become alarmingly thin, but Carlson did not find this particularly worrisome. Quinsett was the end of the line. If he did not find what he was looking for here, he would be forced to concede that he would never find it. If so, then money would prove to be the least of his concerns. Beyond Quinsett there was either epiphany or the void.

The bartender accepted the money. Carlson watched as the bills disappeared beneath the counter and a small silver key appeared in its place. The man dropped the key into Andy's upturned palm, while looking closely into the man's eyes. There was something about the gleam in those pale blue eyes that Art Burlander didn't at all like. Art had been a bartender for over seventeen years and had come to place the highest of trust in his instincts. Intuition strongly suggested that this rather nondescript sop of a man could spell big trouble. He was about to read Carlson the Burlander version of the riot act, a most shriveling lecture indeed, when the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to the pool table. One of the players had made a vociferous objection to the other's interpretation of game rules and had promptly received the butt end of a pool cue in the stomach for his efforts. He went down with a wheezing curse, bringing a glass and bottle-filled table with him.

"Shit!" Burlander muttered bitterly and began to move around the bar. Just before he went, Carlson had noticed the glint of perverse delight that had registered in the big man's eyes. Andy saw that this man would derive a secret pleasure from dropping the hammer upon would-be troublemakers.

Not bothering to wait around and see how the fistic festivities would be resolved, Carlson picked up his bag and headed for the stairs.

2

Andy had fully expected the room to be done in the traditional flop house decor and he was not disappointed. It was remotely possible that the sheets had been changed at least once during the past decade. There were three pieces of furniture in the closet of a room. The first was an ancient dresser, which was so badly scarred and faded that it was impossible to determine its original color. Near the window sat a small writing desk that was in much the same condition as the dresser. Set in the far wall was a door which led to a bathroom and a standup shower. Carlson didn't judge himself up to exploring that just yet. Taking stock of himself, he found that he was both exhausted and hungry. He decided to lie down, reasoning that finding something to eat would require a great deal more effort. He put his case down near the dresser and crossed over to the bed. The mattress was a lumpy ruin, through which springs poked at the most uncomfortable of places. Ignoring the discomfort, Carlson laid down, grateful to be off of his feet.

"Quinsett." He uttered the name softly in the darkness. It was a name more suited to a quaint village set in the remote English countryside...the kind of rustic setting suited to a Victorian mystery novel than the sad bit of melodrama into which his life had devolved. For the past six years of his life, he had been little more than an itinerant wandering along a bizarre road that had ultimately led him to this place. Quinsett...could this truly be the crossroads? He could not deny that he had felt something, a low level energy that had grown steadily more pronounced as he had approached the town. Whether that emotion was the faint traces of some long dead evil or something dormant and waiting, he could not say. He had felt something and that was at least the cause for some optimism.

He had been close before. Not long ago, in the small town of Semelar, he had been certain that he had located a source. He had broken into a vacant mansion, on the outskirts of town, believing that he had stumbled upon a gateway. As he crept through the deserted rooms, he skin had begun to crawl with an electric anticipation. Something indescribably horrible had lingered between these walls. Evil radiated from every inch, screamed from the wood and plaster. To his disappointment, he came to see that whatever had dwelt here was now gone. Only a pale psychic residue remained to mark its ever having been here.

Thoroughly discouraged, Andy soon after had happened upon whispers of a place called Quinsett and the things that may have happened there. As he drifted down into sleep, Andy's final coherent thought was that he had at last reached the place where fated had intended him to be.

3

Possibly the one thing that best characterized Andrew John Carlson during his first eighteen years of life, in Rapid City, South Dakota, had been blandness. As he grew, Andy inadvertently perfected the Chameleon's art of blending into his surroundings until most people were totally oblivious to his presence. Everything about Andy suggested mediocrity. His height, his looks and his naturally reserved manner granted him a kind of colorlessness that made him easy to ignore. At times, even his own parents seemed to forget that he was a living, breathing person and not just another piece of the furniture. Surprisingly, Andy was never distressed by his obscurity. On the contrary, he enjoyed his anonymity. Beneath the mask of reticence, there existed a wealth of unfocused ambition that even as a boy, Andy intuited could never be realized in the backwaters of South Dakota.

When his day of deliverance finally arrived, it would not be difficult for Andy to burn his bridges. His status as a non-person guaranteed that he would have no bridges to burn.

An introspective boy, Andy was drawn to the world of print. He consumed the written word with an appetite that bordered on addiction. He enjoyed not only the stories, but the way in which they were told. By the time that he had entered high school, Andy had already developed a good fundamental grasp of the mechanics of writing. There was something enchanting about the tools of the craft. Similes, metaphors and allegories were things that he viewed with religious awe. It might have been expected that Andy would select fiction as his favorite quarter of the literary field...he was, after all, a dreamer and an introvert. Oddly enough, he found himself more attracted to the gritty world of realism. When the day finally came for Andy to leave for college, he waved goodbye to his parents knowing full well that he would never see them or Rapid City again. He had long since resolved to walk away from the vacuum of his early years and never look back again. It proved to be one of the few resolutions that he was destined to keep.

As a Journalism major in Chicago, Carlson came to discover, much to his chagrin, that the world was full of people with exactly the same aspiration as his. More disconcerting and humbling still was the further revelation that many of these people were far more talented than he could ever hope to be. Andy would graduate seventeenth in his class, having been labeled a methodical but uninspired writer by his professors. That evaluation cut Andy to the quick, but he was pragmatic enough to understand that it was at least partially true. Appraising his prospects after graduation, Andy concluded that the best that he could realistically hope for was the position of a staff writer on one of the second-rate newspapers. The notion of watching others excel while he languished in copy and editing rooms twisted his stomach and his dreams into tight, painful knots. He cursed his inability to turn the eloquent flow of his thoughts into hard, flawless copy. He could feel the raw talent churning within him like molten lava, but could not find the key to give it voice.

Andy Carlson needed something to rekindle the creative fire that had first ignited when he had been a child and had been extinguished during college. As he saw it, he had lost the intimate relationship with his personal source of creativity. He considered it unlikely that it could ever be reacquired by trying to craft shop worn political rhetoric and vapid platitudes into something of meaning and consequence. Thus convinced, he decided to eschew the world of _hard_ journalism...for the less constrained fringes of the newspaper world.

When he allowed himself the opportunity to reflect upon it, Andy understood that his descent into his present world of obsessive madness had begun upon the day that he had accepted a job as a field reporter with the Astral Inquirer. The Inquirer was a pulp paper that specialized in stories about aliens and otherworldly spirits among the living. The job would certainly afford him the opportunity to be creative and if most of what he wrote was fabrication of the most ridiculous extreme, he viewed the paper as nothing more than a harmless, comedic satire. Surely no rational living being could believe any of the rubbish which made its way onto its pages? His inventiveness impressed his editors and, for the first few months at least, Andy had felt no sense of guilt or compromise over the _articles_ that he had submitted for printing. After a time, Carlson's name became a household name amongst the people who purchased their literature at the supermarket checkout counter. Since his byline was also accompanied by a picture, people began to approach him on the street, complimenting him on his _honest telling_ of the real news, not like them phony big newspaper reporters. His mailbox grew swamped by an endless deluge of letters from a new legion of admiring and admittedly frightening and obsessive fans.

In this way, Andy Carlson was rapidly disabused of his self-serving deception that the Astral Inquirer was nothing more than a humorous sham. The day finally came when Andy saw the paper for exactly what it was...a cheap, unscrupulous fraud being perpetrated upon a pathetic group of people in desperate need of some escape from the insipid monotony of their lives. If this were not enough, he could no longer turn a blind eye to the many scams that were either advertised in the paper or ran by the paper itself. There were courses on the benefits and mechanics of Astral Projection and other out-of-body experiences. For the low fee of thirty dollars, the reader could have one of the paper's contract psychics do a detailed fortune. Of course, it was recommended that the reader submit a personal item to enhance the readability of the psychic aura. Naturally, watches and other jewelry were suggested as the best _conductors_ and of course, due to the high cost of postage, these items could not be returned. Andy had been absolutely flabbergasted by the response that this fraudulent scheme had inspired. He began to look upon himself and his _paper_ as a particularly loathsome pariah. For a man with even the smallest sense of conscience, preying off of the slow-witted and the despondent left a disgusting and filthy taste in the mouth.

Along with this bitter sense of disillusionment, there came another startling revelation, though this one was more subtle and disquieting. He began to discern abstract patterns in some of the stories that he was sent to investigate, like pieces of an obscure and disturbing puzzle.

It had been this discovery that had prevented him from simply quitting and thus disassociating himself from the entire shabby pulp journalism spectacle. The vast majority of his stories had been based on shameless fabrication. Most of the people who submitted accounts of alien encounters were looking to gain a quick buck and a tiny sliver of notoriety. Near the end of his tenure with the Astral Inquirer, Carlson found that he was barely able to conceal his disdain for these people. They made him feel as though he were a party to a cheap conspiracy.

In as much as he came to abhor his job and a great many of the people it exposed him to, Andy found himself intrigued by certain tales of genuinely inexplicable phenomena. Among the sham and fabrication, there were a small percentage of the paper's contributors, perhaps as few as one in five hundred, who appeared to truly believe the stories that they told. Unlike the knowing hoaxers, these people displayed neither the guile nor the contemptuous smirk that the frauds seemed unable to keep from their faces. Initially, Andy dismissed these as members of the true lunatic fringe who willingly subscribed to any superstitious belief, no matter how bizarre or fatuous. Yet, with the passing of time, he found himself plagued by an uncomfortable certainty that he had been too hasty, that his cursory dismissal had been imprudent. His sarcasm made no allowance for that odd glint in the eye of each teller. This glint denied madness. Gradually he came to recognize that glint as the dark light of mortal terror...too pervasive and deeply engrained to be feigned. He developed an irrepressible itch to explore and understand the source of that terror. It grew in the pit of his guts and would give him no peace.

Sitting in his office one November night, as winter held icy court beyond his window, Carlson made his first attempt to assemble these abstract pieces. He poured over articles, listened to yards of audio tape, watched videotape, studying the faces, voices and words for the single thread which would resolve the lot into some intelligible picture. It was then that he made his first cast for the trail that would, in time, lead him to Quinsett.

What had Andy seen or heard?

There had been intimations of things which would ignite the fires of imagination and tumble him into the spiral of lunacy. Vague shadows drew him to an obsessive quest for answers which could only be found on the night side of the universe. Like a dark undercurrent, flowing against the grain in a river of light, Carlson had glimpsed images that implied the existence of a bleak reality that paralleled our own. In the incredible stories, he had detected the faint echoes of a powerful and chaotic symphony; strains of an anthem that promised death, desolation and the permanent end to all hope and light. Somewhere, at a distance that could not be measured in terms of time or space, there existed a shadow world, where unadulterated and unconstrained evil held dominion.

Though none of the people whom Andy had interviewed had actually claimed to have seen this parallel world, Carlson was given an extremely vivid impression of a black and blighted land. The descriptions gave rise to notions of scouring winds, pushing the stench of desiccation over barren and lifeless rock. There, signs of fealty would be given in the currencies of hot blood and cold flesh. Who or what, he had asked, would inhabit such a nightmarish and pointless dominion? Though expressed in different terms, every answer had been virtually identical in content...the nether world would serve as a home for every conceivable incarnation of evil that had ever existed, whether real or imagined.

Was this not hell, he had asked? No, not Hell, but a place of exile for every vanquished miscreant and despoiler who had ever attempted to ascend to power on the vulturous wings of evil. These were the consumers of light, hope and innocence. To a one, they had fallen to the light and had been relegated to a barren, dimensionless perdition. In this cadaverous wasteland, there would be no quarry save for their own kind.

Merely hearing the telling of such a tale...stories of a requiem for failed merchants of destruction...had provoked a tiny, primitive place in Andy's heart to quail with fright. As dreadful as these portraits were, they were incapable of rivaling the dread that he had experienced when told of the attempts to extricate these beings from their prison. As staggering and incomprehensible as it seemed, Andy discovered that there were entire cults that devoted their energies to the bridging of the intangible gap that existed between the two dimensions. As the howling wind wailed its cryptic and forlorn message to its winter children, Carlson had sat in his office and pondered the improbability of such a place. As he gazed over the scattering of information upon his desk, Andy was struck by the distinct impression that it was extending him a subtle invitation to come and explore the night side of the human psyche.

"What am I doing here?" he had demanded of himself, suddenly bemused and a little uneasy. He was alone in the office, deep in the cradle of a stormy night, with no other company than the benign ticking of the electric clock. _'Is there something wrong with you, Andy? Do you really believe any of this?'_ Unaccountably, he did. Deep down in the place where his motivations and actions were forged, Carlson found that he embraced all of this with the conviction of the lifelong zealot. In that moment, Andy crossed over the line from normalcy to the twilight zone, diving into the dark river in search of forbidden wonders.

Ironically, Andy's conversion caused a rekindling of his journalistic fire. As he dedicated himself to the task of pursuing his dark mystery and seeking out those who would dare to bridge the forbidden gulfs, he honed his instincts and skills to a sharp and cutting edge. Despite his tenacious efforts, the cults and the conjurors eluded him. His bosses at the Inquirer either appeared not to or chose not to notice his increasing fixation with this nether world. As he delved deeper into its mysteries, he sought out the witches, sorcerers and psychics who populated the lunatic fringes of a world that was insane by its very definition. His editors didn't really care. After all, these lunatics provided great copy for a paper, whose motto was: invention is the mother of increased circulation and profits.

Andy's fixation might have escaped notice entirely had it not been for a July incident in which Andy had tried to explain the lofty implications of his puzzle to the paper's chief editor. Carlson had gathered up the sum collection of his research material and went in search of Clifford Webb, positive that the package could convince the most cynical of skeptics that a grave danger threatened the world of light. Webb had perused the material, unmindful of the strange light that glittered in Carlson's eyes. Without glancing up, Webb reached into his drawer and took out a red felt marker. As he reread the text, he began to delete and insert, searching for the delicate balance of outrageous fabrication and 'gritty realism' that so mesmerized the paper's readers.

Andy had watched Webb labor over the copy for a few moments and when he could no longer contain his agitation, had blurted out, "Mr. Webb, what exactly are you doing?"

"Don't fret, Andy. It's perfect. All that it requires is a little touch up here and there. These things on the other side, let's identify them. Hitler, Jack the Ripper, people like that. We also need photographs of this ritual, though that shouldn't be too hard to arrange." As Webb went on, growing more enthusiastic with each newly-conceived embellishment, Andy began to tremble where he stood. Not simply a mild case of the shakes this...Carlson started to bobble and jive as if he were about to break into some frenetic boogie. He felt is cheeks grow hot and flushed and a dull thumping pounded at his temples. He realized that this odious man was about to reduce his work to absurdity. He had to make him see the immense danger described within this collection of tales. He just had to!

Trying to put a rein on his rampant emotions, Andy leaned across the desk and began to speak in a deliberately soft voice. "Mr. Webb, I don't think that you understand. This article has to be printed exactly as it is. These things that I've described," Carlson pointed a shaking finger at the marred copy, "these things are out there and we have to bring the danger to the public's attention. A way has to be found to close these doors permanently and to expose the people who are trying to open them. It's all right here, all laid out for the readers. We can't reduce it to a...a sham."

As he spoke, Carlson's voice rose, becoming shrill and tremulous. Clifford Webb was forced to look at him for the first time. A naturally perceptive, albeit cynical man, Webb immediately recognized just how it was for Andy Carlson. The telltale signs of madness were spelled out in the disheveled clothes, the tousled hair and the three day growth of sandy, brown stubble. As he studied Andy, Webb's mouth opened and his eyes narrowed into speculative slits. The usual hooded expression was replaced by one of bafflement and then dawning comprehension. Then the mask of neutrality slipped back into place like a drawn shade. The expression had rippled across the editor's face like a breeze over still waters, but Andy had seen it and had interpreted it perfectly.

"You think that I'm crazy, don't you?" he protested, feeling both ire and a desperate helplessness. "This story is real and the people who told it are not crazy. I can bring some of them to you. Listen to them, look into their eyes and tell me if they're insane. There's another place. Something like a shadow of our own world and the real lunatics are trying to find a way of reaching it."

"Why would they want to do that, Andy?" Webb interjected in voice of reason and patience.

"Who can say for certain? It's likely that they believe that they can control these things, manipulate them. You can't rationalize a thing like this. Listen, you've fed people a steady diet of nonsensical bullshit for twenty years now. You are obligated to do something important for once in your parasitic life. Someone has got to make people aware of the danger that we are all facing. This is the story and, God damn it, you are not going to change it." Carlson stopped, simply running out of momentum. He lapsed into a disconsolate silence. Webb considered the gasping reporter in a thoughtful silence, as if he had happened upon a new and fascinating species of insect...one that was unpredictable and perhaps even dangerous.

He pursed his lips and frowned, then spread his arms in a gesture of conciliation. Smiling broadly, he declared, "All right Andy, we'll do it your way. Gather up all of your material and bring it to me. I'll go through it and then we can talk some more."

Webb smiled an ingenuous smile and Carlson breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as though a huge burden had been eased from his shoulders. Later, he would be amazed and disgusted by his own stupidity, but at that moment, he truly believed that Webb was being sincere. Within the week Andy Carlson, reporter for the esteemed Astral Enquirer became Andy Carlson, former Astral Enquirer reporter. Only then did he realize that Webb's smile had been one reserved for the humoring of the seriously deranged.

The next issue of the Astral Enquirer featured a story bearing the strident admonition:

NAZIS LOOK TO OCCULT TO RESSURRECT HITLER

The article was accompanied by a grainy photograph which showed a provocatively dressed woman kneeling in the center of an elaborate pentagram, around which stood several men dressed in the uniform of the Nazi SS. Carlson had been struck by a towering rage so consuming that he had trashed everything in his tiny apartment. Sitting numbly amidst the wreckage, Andy was struck by two startling revelations. No matter how incontrovertible the proof, he would never be able to convince anyone that a shadow world existed. Why? The average man was incapable of accepting something that so brutally and thoroughly ripped apart the foundations or their trenchant beliefs. Allowing for the existence of another dimension...one that could not be defined within the normal framework of time and space...would require a radical re-evaluation of everything that defined the parameters of one's life. Andy knew of few people who possessed the unassailable stability to subject themselves to such a cataclysmic upheaval. It was better to ignore the things that moved under the cover of shadow and hope that these things appeased their hunger elsewhere.

In the shards of broken glass and plastic wood there hid an ideogram for Andy to decipher. Time passed while he pondered its arcane mystery, though he had no concept of how much. With a bang, the puzzle resolved itself. His life was an empty shambles and his attempts to convince others of the imminent danger had proven futile. Again, why? The answer was glaringly obvious...Andy had looked to others for help and in so doing, had missed the one salient truth. From the beginning he had felt compelled to dig deeper into the mystery, to trace its roots. In the last several months he had moved like a man being drawn inexorably towards something, as if his own volition were of no consequence. By destroying his possessions, he had severed the last of his ties with his old life and was now entirely free to pursue the formless specters that would give him no peace. In a dazzling flash of crystalline insight, he saw that this voiceless summons was the source of the restlessness that had plagued him since childhood.

It was all so perfectly simple...so infallibly logical...he was the chosen one.

Be it by design or by chance, Andy Carlson was the one destined to seek out and stop those who strove to open doorways in the fabric of reality. He had been invested with a great and solemn responsibility. It explained so much. It explained why he had never been able to build a life for himself, or why he had been unable to develop attachments to the people around him. The euphoria of discovery was intoxicating. He was to be a champion and at last he had come to know his cause.

Over the next six years Andy stumbled through a Byzantine labyrinth, fluctuating between muddied lucidity and a functional sort of lunacy. Viewing the _everyday_ _world_ only peripherally, he trudged through the back rooms of the occult subculture, desperately searching for the other dimension and those who aspired to it. His search took him to every corner of the country, from the cities to the nameless nooks where the outsiders hovered on the shadowed periphery of life. In the course of his excursions, he was witness to wonders that his mind simply could not credit...gazed upon events that defied all natural laws. Gradually, he came to the unsettling conclusion that, beneath the neon glitter of modern civilization, there lurked an esoteric and zealous society entirely devoted to the preservation and ascendancy of the darkness. Most of these deviants were powerless, demented lunatics, who would have been totally harmless had it not been for the fervor with which they pursued their deranged convictions. They could shed no light upon the other dimension, nor did they possess the knowledge of the powers required to summon its inhabitants. He dismissed them all as a simple waste of his time.

Among this horde of pretenders Carlson stumbled upon a few men and women who seemed genuinely familiar with this other world and past efforts to reach it. Through misdirection and outright deception, Andy was able to gather a deeper understanding of this fabled purgatory. Occasionally, one of these special people would furnish him with the name of a place where a ritual of evocation had been attempted. He would travel to these places in hopes of learning more of the dark art. Invariably he would find nothing other that the faint yet harrowing echoes of past rituals that had failed by immeasurably minute fractions. Never was he able to perceive any lingering danger. The evil that he sensed was only the weak residue of some past nightmare.

Time passed. Andy wrote in his journal with the meticulous devotion of the obsessed. With ink, paper and a fervent imagination, Carlson meticulously constructed a portrait of the parallel world and its nature, both terrified and mesmerized by his own creation. Yet, despite the passion and conviction with which he wrote, the man was still coherent enough to discern that he had come no further along the road toward proving any of his conjecture. He had only whispers and obscure riddles. Where a saner man might well have reneged, Andy pushed on with a stolid determination. Spurred by an immutable inner voice, he labored along the ambiguous trail in search of the one piece of irrefutable evidence that would unlock the maddening mystery.

As the search entered its sixth year it assumed the air of a romantic quest with all of the classic elements of looming despair and an indomitable will to persevere. Andy's sense that he was destined to fail was balanced by an unaccountable urgency, an intimation that a door was about to be opened.

That gnawing exigency drove him like a dirty addiction. It pushed him past exhaustion and any concern for his own health and sanity. It led him to a sanitarium in Olympia and to an eighty-two year old, former priest named James Crimmon. In Crimmon, Andy recognized a fraternal partner in the same fixation. After boiling inside of him like a poison for decades, Crimmon recounted the tale of that long ago night, like a man vomiting up the rancid meat of past sins. Sparing no detail, he told Andy of Jeniah Lightcrusher and the gruesome fate that had befallen her on that August night, nearly fifty years before...a catastrophe averted by the barest of margins.

Of course, there were things that even Crimmon did not know.

Like forged links in a chain, Andy's odyssey had led him to Olympia and James Crimmon. Crimmon's gruesome tale of evil and vigilante justice had led Andy Carlson to the end of his road; Quinsett.

4

He slept for some hours and when he finally did wake, the room was pitched in complete darkness. It must have been late because the pounding tumult of the jukebox had ceased from below him. There had been many moments of waking just like this one...when his eyes had snapped open, heart thundering painfully in his chest, and he had lay staring, wild and disoriented, into the unfamiliar darkness. It usually took several seconds for this sensation to pass, leaving him feeling restless and frightened. This time, however, there was something subtly different. It took several moments for Andy to identify what that something was.

Dripping.

From somewhere within the thick shadow of his room there came the unreasonably loud ping of falling water. It sounded as if giant droplets of water were falling into a metal tub, the type which had not been seen since the frontier days. Andy recalled that there was no tub in the bathroom, only a shower stall and a rusty sink. He listened closely, making no attempt to climb out of the bed. The sound came again, drip after monotonous drip. A defective faucet he reasoned, but that could not explain how the sound could possibly be so loud.

From somewhere to his left, a tiny metallic click echoed in the darkness. This was followed by an almost inaudible whir of machinery being prompted into motion. Andy gave a start, unaware that he had drawn the covers up around his neck.

"Who's there?" he inquired anxiously. Outside, a slow, rather languorous rain began to fall.

He was no longer alone.

That was ridiculous of course. As always, he had bolted the door before going to bed and had taken an extra precaution of placing a chair beneath the door handle. He could not recall how he had developed his paranoid attitude towards security. It had simply evolved gradually over the past six years. No one could have gotten through the door without literally knocking the bloody thing down. Still, someone was here.

As if in affirmation of his fear, a disembodied voice spoke then, "You've done well to find me, Andy."

Carlson uttered a small cry and reached for the lamp switch. In his haste, he overreached and sent the gaudy lamp clattering to the floor. Behind him, someone laughed in a low and gruff voice that sounded remotely familiar.

"There's really no need for the nervous reaction. I'm your friend. You've spent the better part of the past six years searching for me. If nothing else, I admire your persistence." The voice, while sensuous and compelling, touched Andy as both disdainful and menacing. Suddenly, he had reached the pinnacle, but felt a burgeoning terror instead of the euphoria that he had long anticipated. The light, he needed the comfort of the light. "Let me see you."

"Ah, as much as I would like to, I regret that I don't possess that particular faculty at this moment. It's unfortunate because I'm sure that you would love a...glimpse. In time perhaps..."

"Am I dreaming this?" Andy inquired, more to himself than to whatever entity that appeared to be sharing this disjointed moment. If it was a dream, it was especially lucid. He could still hear the dripping of water and feel the clammy, cold sweat gathering on his brow. In the six years that he had spent searching for the elusive _other world,_ Carlson had never experienced anything like this. When the visitor again spoke, its voice was edged with mild irritation. "Even you would doubt me? It truly disappoints me that you could not accept me as a matter of faith. What a cynical world this has become. I suppose that I must offer even you some irrefutable proof."

The speaker fell silent while Andy waited breathlessly for whatever was to follow. Perspiration began to trickle slowly down his face. Absently, he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Gradually an iridescent light began to illuminate the room as though daylight was beginning to filter into the outside sky. Glancing to the window, Carlson could see nothing other than a forbidding and impenetrable darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the diffused glow, Carlson realized that there was someone sitting on the scarred wooden chair, next to the writing table. Andy's jaw dropped like an anvil. He knew this man, although he had not spared him a thought in nearly four years. He had last seen him lying lifelessly upon a satin pillow.

Raymond Carlson sat watching his son. His father, dead and in his grave for some five years now, was actually looking at him through the all-too-familiar baleful blue eyes. The disembodied voice came again, cool and contemptuous, "Well Andy, aren't you happy to see your father? I've had him resurrected just for this occasion. It may be difficult for you to appreciate, but it takes a great deal of work."

With great effort Andy managed to drag his eyes from the specter of his dead father. On the writing desk, next to his journal, there sat a small, silver Sony tape recorder. The voice was coming through the speaker of the recorder.

"Show yourself," Carlson insisted, hoping to disguise his fear with vehemence.

"I told you that I cannot, you thick-skulled imbecile. I would have thought that you'd understand that by now!" The recorder shrieked, screeching static and venom. Andy cringed as if he had been struck.

"Why can't you?" Andy persisted quietly. If this was a dream, he didn't like it. Not one bit. The maniacal edge in that voice was as sharp and terrifying as a razor.

"Because I've been temporarily imprisoned here and I can only dispatch others to do my bidding. Others like Raymond here."

Andy's eyes flicked back to the deceased Carlson, who favored him with a rather sinister smirk. "You fooled me boy. I must admit that I never thought that you'd ever amount to a pile of shit. There was a time when I even thought that you might be a queer. When you left, I told your mother that it was a grand day and good riddance to ya'. How you ever managed to luck into company the likes of this is beyond me."

Carlson scrutinized the old man as best as the dull light would allow, searching for some flaw or obvious deception. He saw nothing other than the customary gray workpants and the dull, listless blue eyes that he had always remembered. If this was not Raymond Carlson then it was an amazingly precise duplicate. Andy was gripped by the shakes then. Something that was capable of this was most formidable indeed. The very fact that it had selected Raymond Carlson as its emissary clearly indicated that it had nothing but evil intentions for his son. "Why are you here? What do you want with me?"

"I am here because it is coming around to my time in this world again. In a short time, my season shall be born and these walls of my prison shall crumble into dust. What do I want of you? I could very well ask the same question of you, though I am aware of exactly why you are here. I have heard the ponderous rumbles of your approach. Your bumbling and stumbling could not help but attract my notice. So, you are here and I have come to satiate your curiosity and have you carry my message to those who have understanding. You have sacrificed your position, your health, and your very sanity in search of the doorway and some intimation of those things that may lie beyond it. Tonight, I intend to reward you for your diligence. Tonight you shall be given all of the answers. Surely this must please you, Andy?"

Carlson was struck speechless. This voice...this decidedly feminine voice...belonged to one of them. At last he had found one of the deviants. The lunatic priest had been right after all. Quinsett was indeed a point of coincidence, the name that Andy had bestowed upon those places where the worlds had touched. Excitement rapidly replaced fear. Never in the wildest of his speculations had he ever imagined that he would actually be able to hold discourse with one of its inhabitants. Thoughts racing, he leaned closer to the recorder. In his distraction, he did not notice that the specter of his dead father had slipped out of the chair and was furtively approaching him from the side. "You said that I am to carry your message to those who have understanding? What specifically does that mean?"

"There are those in your world who know of me and have awaited my coming for generations. I dare say that their wait has not been without its share of trepidation. You will have the honor of heralding my return. In return for that small service, a world of wonder and splendor shall be revealed exclusively for your eyes. You, Andy, will be afforded a rare glimpse into another realm...a darker reality."

"You will answer all of my questions?" Carlson asked incredulously. This was the fruition of everything that he had lived for. It was even possible that he would walk away from this night with incontrovertible proof of the other world's existence...evidence that even the most inured of cynics could not ignore.

"Yes, I shall provide answers to all of your questions. Better yet, you will be granted a first hand view of your world's shadowy twin. Now...what would you have me tell you?"

Carlson gaped, astounded by such an unconditional offer of disclosure. Flustered, he groped for the question that would first unlock the door.

"Who are you?" he stammered at last, grasping at the first exigent question that came to mind.

"I'm certain that you know. A mutual acquaintance spoke of me when last you met. Of course, his knowledge was only a tiny sliver of the reality of what I am."

"Are you saying that you are Jeniah Lightcrusher, the Indian that Crimmon told me about?"

"If that is a name that suits you, then it will suffice," the thing replied coyly. Carlson was reporter enough to sense the guile in the other's voice. He cautioned himself not to place too much faith in anything that this entity told him. "Who are these people who are to receive you and why have you chosen them?"

"Ah, but you are an inquisitive one, aren't you?" the thing laughed indulgently. "I refuse to speak their names for the mere sound fills me with such profound disgust that I am unable to control my own actions. Still, you should know their names. Look to the wall above this instrument and watch."

Andy did as he had been instructed and for a brief instant, saw nothing other a grimy wall. Then, even before his brain could assimilate what his eyes told him to be true, droplets of blood began to form upon the surface of the faded and peeling wallpaper. Carlson sat transfixed, both fascinated and repelled by the display. Here, in the inchoate formation of bloody letters, was the conclusive proof that powers beyond the scope of normal human comprehension did exist. Slowly, inexorably, six names took shape upon the dirty wall. Five he did not recognize, while the other was the name of the half-mad priest who had first told him of the evil that had once visited Quinsett. The letters of each name were imperfectly formed, with streams of blood trailing down from each letter. Andy committed the names to memory, drawing the automatic association between these names and the other members of the mob that had killed Jeniah. Humbled in the face of such power, Carlson found he was grateful that he was not one of these people. "These men are my sworn enemies, Andy. They had the audacity to interfere in my ritual of evocation. I have sworn that I shall extract vengeance from them and their spawn. For fifty years I have patiently awaited the moment when the time of retribution would come to hand. That moment is now!"

"Your world, you promised to tell me about your world," Andy reminded the unseen presence hungrily. There was a slight, considered pause. Andy imagined that he could actually hear the entity pondering his request.

"Very well, Andy. You wish to look behind the veil and so you shall." Andy shuddered, even as his face twisted into a lunatic's grin of euphoria. From out of nowhere there came a gentle breeze that softly brushed over his skin, caressing his face like a whisper of satin. Without warning, there followed a sharp, piercing pain and then something was inside of his head. Not an image as such, but an actual physical presence that had imposed itself upon the frayed fabric of his mind.

He saw everything then.

With more clarity than God had ever intended man to see, Andy Carlson beheld the sowing, the germination and the growth of the evil seed from which all things vile and abhorrent had sprung. He gagged on the stench of desiccating flesh. He heard the horrible and unbearable cries of the suffering intermingled with the cackling laughter of the wicked. Image after agonizing image assaulted his senses until Andy clutched his hands to his head and pleaded for the barrage to stop. Unmindful of his cries, the visions went on. Huge, grotesquely deformed shapes lifted from the slime of putrescent pools...eyes gummed to blindness by every conceivable manner of corruption, they snatched at the slinking forms that cowered nearby. Above this madness, a deafening wind howled an incessant shriek of protest that was both piteous and futile. In this world mercy and compassion were lost commodities. Here, nothing would matter, save for the rending of flesh and the inflicting of pain and suffering.

Unable to endure more, Carlson began to howl for an end to the damnable flood of raw misery. If this was the night world, then he wanted no part of it or its inhabitants. As quickly as it had entered, the presence withdrew, leaving Andy pale and shaken. The thing that claimed to be Jeniah laughed gaily. "Rather disturbing, isn't it. Don't be embarrassed by your reaction, it is not an uncommon one. There are few in this world that could gaze on this requiem of torment and not be thus affected."

It was several moments before Carlson regained sufficient composure to speak. "Are you speaking to me from that place?"

"Perhaps...perhaps not, but where I am is really quite unimportant. What is of consequence is where I soon intend to be. In that matter, you shall be my agent. I require that you pave the way for my imminent return."

Carlson shook his head in negation. He refused to be a party to anything that this...this demon might devise. He waved his hands in a gesture of dismissal, reverting to his original hope that this was all an especially disturbing nightmare.

"Andy," the thing purred mischievously, "I'm afraid that there was something that I forgot to tell you. Rather thoughtless of me, but I neglected to tell you that no one who has seen the other side may be allowed to live to tell the tale. I'm afraid that it's one of those regulations that must be stringently observed."

For the first time, Andy grasped that he was in peril of losing more than just his sanity. This thing had no intention of letting him leave this room alive. Before Carlson was able to react to his new insight, a hand seized him by the throat, crushing his larynx in a vice grip. Andy managed a thin squeak and nothing more. The thing that had first appeared as his father had become nothing more than a rotting, bloated corpse. Only its eyes possessed an awful vitality. It twisted Andy's face towards its own. Looking into those eyes was like gazing into the very pits of Hell. The thing pivoted and carried the flailing Carlson toward the room's single window. Blood flowed onto the colorless carpets in sheets. Through his curtain of pain and desperation, Carlson heard the entity make its final declaration, "You will better serve my ends in death. Take some small consolation in having the distinction of being the first to fall to my hand. Your demise will carry a proclamation to those who have interfered with my work in the past...Jeniah Lightcrusher, Princess of thorn and ash, has returned to claim her realm."

This said, the shambling monstrosity pitched Carlson through the window. Outside, the rain and the winds were the only things to bear witness to the reporter's parting from this world. He fell with a soundless scream. His shoulder struck the darkened bar sign, shattering his collar bone in three places. Andy fell another fifteen feet, landing directly on the top of his head. His neck gave with a sickening snap.

Seconds passed and a pool of blood began to spread about the body, only to be washed away by the rushing water that swept through the gutters.

The news of the world had been written in blood and that news was stark and terrifying. Only a hand full of men could have any inkling just how bleak it was or how bad it was destined to become.

Chapter Two

1

Today was to be the end of it.

Later, in the protracted and agonizing light of reflection, he would decide that there had been no premonition of that final moment. Fate could be fickle and endings could be as random as the collision of atoms. True, there had always been the possibility that any day could be the final one, but that was only an abstract, fleeting thing, brought into focus only by moments of real and chilling terror. In such moments, he had glimpsed the large and looming end, the terminal collision in graphically colorful terms. He had always emerged from each such moment unscathed and those images had faded like old photographs.

Today was to be different. Today was to be the end.

Looking absently through the window of the unmarked Caprice classic, Raymond Saddler observed how the city of LA appeared wilted and listless, as if the eight days of savage heat had drained it of all of its fabled glitter and vitality. If there were any hidden profundity in that observation, it was lost upon Saddler. He had neither the energy nor the nature to engage in such philosophical contemplations. Time had slowly strangled his need to understand.

Beside him, his partner, Ruben Serrano, talked on and on as he maneuvered the car through the moderate afternoon traffic. Serrano was providing Saddler with an impassioned recount of the previous night's ballgame, which had seen the Dodgers absorb a fearful pounding at the hands of the woeful Atlanta Braves. He remarked that perhaps Mr. Valenzuela's lamentable performance could be attributed to his renowned propensity for enchiladas as opposed to pitching mechanics. Ray listened silently, not really minding the endless monologues and only half hearing them. There was something decidedly pleasant and surreal about these long, dreamy LA afternoons. As Ruben rambled on, the ghost of an amused grin spread over Ray's face. Nothing betrayed any of what was to follow. It seemed possible that this day would go on and on and that he and Serrano would cruise the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles for an eternity, forever discussing life and the plight of Ruben's beloved Dodgers. The prospect was not without its casual attraction.

Like turbulence out of a tranquil sky, all of that changed in the beat of a heart. This was to be a day of endings for the two of them. They were destined to move in entirely different directions, but this single bit of time and space was to be a hinge upon which everything that was to follow would turn.

They had just turned off of Crenshaw, heading east along Wilshire Boulevard, when the two-way disrupted Serrano's monologue. "Attention all cars in the vicinity of Wilshire and Western...officer needs assistance on a 2-11. Shots have been exchanged and there are possible civilian casualties."

Saddler had been jolted out of his reverie by the first terse utterance. The controlled urgency sounded like a premonition of doom to his ears. "Respond Ruben and let's roll on it."

Minutes later, Serrano pulled the car to an idle near the front of a liquor store. A squad car was parked some fifty feet up the street, but there was no sign of its officer. A crowd of some thirty people had gathered near the front of the store, telling Saddler that whatever had transpired within was now over. Both he and Ruben pushed quickly out of the car and crossed over to the entrance. Neither man drew his gun, though Ray was cognizant of its reassuring weight against his chest. His mind had made the rapid transition from his surreal state to one of total alertness. Cautiously, he entered the store, now drawing his weapon as he did. On the sidewalk, Ruben instructed the gore crows to move away from the door and window and then followed his partner inside. The reek of cordite hung in the air, along with the less obtrusive odor of spilled blood.

It took Saddler less than thirty seconds to draw all of the salient conclusions that really mattered...shots had been fired and people had died. As he proceeded up the center isle, he came upon a middle-aged black woman lying sprawled in a pile of Iron City beer cans. The front of her blue blouse was gone as was most of the chest beneath it. Around her, an incredibly large pool of blood was spreading lazily over the tiled floor. In his adrenalin-charged state, Saddler could actually hear the tiny hiss and crackle of bubbles as beer foamed out of the perforated beer cans. He averted his eyes from the carnage, feeling his stomach clench into a tight, painful knot at the sorry spectacle of squandered humanity.

Just then, the officer bobbed up from behind the counter. His frazzled demeanor told Saddler that this was not a hardened veteran. It was obvious that he had not yet been galvanized against the spectacle of blood and death. His face was pale and sweaty and his eyes glowed with a mixture of revulsion and confused anger.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

Saddler raised both of his hands, not wanting to make any sudden moves which might set this kid off. "I'm part of the help that you requested...Detective Saddler, Wilshire homicide."

The cop nodded and could not prevent himself from breathing a sigh of relief. All through the academy, he had insisted that he was prepared to deal with all of the ugliness that LA could dole out in apparently endless measure. This afternoon had quickly disabused him of such happy horseshit. He flashed Saddler a look that said that he wanted no further part in this mess. Saddler had seen that particular expression often enough and moved to assume control of the situation. "All right Officer..."

"Wilkins."

"Officer Wilkins, what exactly happened here?"

"As best as I can tell, someone came into the store and held the place up at gunpoint. It's probable that there was only one perpetrator. It looks like the owner, Virgil Quint, tried to play the hero."

"And where is Mr. Quint now?" Ray inquired, half knowing the answer before the question had even been posed. Wilkins glanced down to a spot behind the counter. Saddler noticed the shadow of disgust which flickered across his face.

Gesturing down, the patrolman simply replied, "Down here."

Pocketing his badge, Saddler came around the end of the counter, raising the hinged board as he went. His eyes fell upon what was left of Mr. Quint and felt an immediate empathy for Wilkins' revulsion. The perpetrator had caught the big man just above the right eye, gouging away a good portion of the top of his head. The floor behind the counter had been done in a soft gray carpet, possibly to cushion the strain of standing all day. Now blood and cerebral fluids soaked deep into the matting.

' _Never gonna get that one out,'_ Saddler thought and flinched at the irreverence of the thought. He had tried to fortify himself against the cynicism, but had found that it was a necessary defense mechanism if a cop were to have any staying power. He had at least succeeded in keeping that cynicism from warping the way in which he perceived the world around him. That was a small triumph of sorts. Without looking up, he asked, "You didn't see anyone?"

"No, when I arrived the store was empty except for these two of course."

Saddler had temporarily forgotten about the other woman, who had so recently taken her final tumble into a pyramid of Iron City Beer cans. Almost to himself, he remarked, "I suppose that she was a bystander who happened to be in the wrong place when Quint decided to play Dirty Harry."

"It looks that way," Wilkins muttered glumly. Saddler cursed the storeowner for being so foolish and taking an innocent with him. The public always heard about the occasions when the brave shopkeeper subdued the robber. Ray acknowledged that the heroism involved was truly admirable. Unfortunately, Saddler knew that most attempts to play the hero ended with a dead storekeeper and very often, any number of dead bystanders as well. He turned and faced Wilkins. He saw that Serrano had joined the pair and was gazing down at the recently deceased Quint.

"Did anyone question the people out there? Maybe one of them saw the bastard who did this."

Wilkins grimaced and looked sheepishly down at his feet. Ray frowned, realizing that Wilkins had made the rudimentary error of staying with the dead body and not attempting to learn more about the actual crime. Ray decided against making any comment. The cop's chastened expression told him that he had absorbed this lesson well. "Okay, the three of us can do it now."

Someone spoke from behind the trio. "I saw who did it and I know which way he went."

Saddler spun around to see a man standing in the middle isle, staring down at the black woman with a fascinated curiosity that bordered on the morbid. Even as he spoke, he could not seem to drag his gaze from the body. "I heard three shots from the sidewalk. Couple seconds later, a kid comes tearin' out of the front doors like he's got Satan running up his ass. I suppose that he did at that. Anyway, he ran down the street and turns into the maze of alleys beside the furniture store."

"How long ago was that?" Serrano asked anxiously.

"Maybe eight to ten minutes ago."

"Damn," Serrano muttered, knowing that the kid could be halfway to San Diego by now.

The witness appeared to sense Serrano's frustration because he added quickly, "I wouldn't be too upset by that though. Those alleys are nothing but a series of mazes, but this is the only way out. I watched the whole time and the murdering fuck never did come back out."

Saddler and Serrano exchanged glances. Saddler nodded and Serrano was racing out the door. Turning quickly to Wilkins, he instructed, "Take this man's statement and then call for more backup. We'll need at least one ambulance, but more probably two. Tell dispatch that two people are dead and that the suspect is armed and still in at large."

Wilkins nodded. Saddler was about to leave, but something caused him to spare Quint's body one last glance. His gaze settled upon the ruined head and a voice spoke clearly in his mind.

' _There will be two more.'_ It was a calm and reasoned voice, though not one he recognized. Its message gave him a radiating chill that originated at the base of his spine and spread out to shake his whole body. He blinked twice and then exigency sent him sprinting for the door. Only after did he reflect that he had been visited by the clearest presentiment of his entire life. He concluded that it had not been meant as a warning for him, but a bald and incontrovertible statement of the inevitable.

Saddler hurried out into the sweltering LA heat, gun drawn and perspiration running in rivers down his face. How many times had he been thrust into this situation over the course of his career? What unseen charm had protected him then and would it be with him today? These questions flashed through his mind in the blink of an eye. He had survived every trip into the fire, but no man's allotment of good fortune is without limit. Each brush would bring Saddler closer to the day when he would become a casualty in this endless war.

As he approached the entrance to the alley, he saw that a group of about ten people had gathered there. He waved his arms and shouted for them to move away from the entrance. The all looked to him and seeing the drawn gun, quickly scurried away from the possible line of fire. "Move back and stay the Hell out of the way," he warned. "If anyone, other than me, tries to come out of this alley, give them a wide birth and don't try to stop them."

Warnings issued, Ray rounded the corner and plunged into the mouth of the alley. The buildings that bounded the alley were tall and bathed the twenty foot wide alley in cool shadow. As Saddler's eyes adjusted to the gloom, the report of a gun tore the afternoon silence. Someone cried out twice, the first time in surprise and the second time in obvious pain. Then everything fell into brooding, expectant silence. Ray pressed against the wall of the first building and proceeded with more caution. The alley had suddenly expanded to encompass the entire world. Nothing mattered beyond the bounds of this litter-strewn alley and the things that would happen here. He reached the first intersection and pushed around the corner. There, he came face to face with what his heart already feared might be true.

Ruben Serrano lay sprawled in a heap of moldering cardboard boxes, blood running in lazy streams from the corners of his mouth. His glazed eyes stared sightlessly at the thin ribbon of blue sky above him.

Saddler stifled a cry of despair. There was no time for grief. Whoever had done this was still waiting for him somewhere down this alley. Knowing what he did about the layout of this particular alley, prudence dictated that he withdraw and wait for assistance. For Raymond Saddler, seventeen year veteran with the L.A.P.D., withdrawal was not a viable alternative. The voice had told him that there were to be two more deaths. He did not know if the fourth was to be his or the killer's, but he felt strangely obligated to find out. To do anything less felt akin to moral cowardice.

"All right you motherfucker, let's find out who draws the ace of spades," he whispered. Clasping his gun in both hands, he slowly continued down the alley, perceiving threat in every pool of shadow.

Further up the alley, a boy named Miguel Deleon crouched behind a discarded wooden crate. In his drug and adrenalin heightened state, he could hear footsteps coming slowly, but inexorably in his direction. He was twelve years old and had already killed three people so far today.

Miguel clutched the Smith and Wesson 38 to his chest. He had stolen the gun from beneath his older brother's bed earlier this morning. Miguel had hoped to have the gun back in place before his brother returned from his shift at the garage, but in light of the way that things had turned out, all that seemed to have lost its overriding importance. Nothing mattered much except for the crack-induced buzz that raged in his head like a hurricane. When he was raging along on crack, the colors in his head and the ones in the world beyond it seemed to blend together in perfect synchronicity. However, when the inevitable comedown finally arrived (and even for twelve year olds that comedown always did) his head would erupt into a savage frenzy that reminded him of a nest of enraged hornets. Those hornets were now buzzing, incensed and full of venom. Their noise blotted out everything and made it virtually impossible to think, an exercise in which young Miguel did not particularly care to indulge at the best of times. He did know that he didn't really want to kill anyone. He was certain of that. Only, Julio had told him that business was a little slower than usual and he would not need him to run the crack tubes around the neighborhood this week.

' _Economy and that sort of shit,'_ Julio had laughed. It was unlikely that he had the human sensibilities to see the desperate look in Miguel's eyes. It was even less likely that he would have given a sweet shit even if he had. The bottom line was that Miguel couldn't earn his daily pittance of crack. After the descent shakes, the hornets had come with a vengeance and he had taken the gun from beneath Rodrigo's bed. All of that had led directly to this. His only priority was to get out and find a chunk of the stuff that would make the hellish buzzing go away...if only for awhile.

Saddler had begun to sweat rivers. The killer was close. He could feel his proximity the way that a sheep must surely feel the presence of the rogue wolf. The shadows were pooled and ominous, each one providing potential cover for the killer.

Something stirred off to his left. Ray dropped to his knee and trained his gun on the source of the sound...nothing.

That particular bit of misdirection proved to be his salvation. Miguel could hear the big man's approach. He was a gringo with sandy brown hair and a salt and pepper sports jacket. Miguel knew only that he had to find a way out of this damnable alley. In the best tradition of his brother's street gang, Miguel let out a combative bellow and came out firing.

Saddler detected the movement a fraction of a second before he heard the scream. He cursed himself and the distraction that had left him vulnerable. The report of the gun seemed thunderous in the narrow confines of the alley. The shot brushed by his ear, missing by no more than a quarter of an inch.

' _I heard the shot go by,'_ he marveled. ' _I actually heard the shot go by._ ' He fell away to his left, swinging his gun to the right as he went down. He saw only a hint of a shadow and fired without further thought. Surprisingly, there was only a small whistle of anguish and the figure slumped to the ground next to a large wooden packing crate. Drawing aim on the unmoving form, Saddler held his breath and waited. When no further sound or movement was forthcoming he understood that there would be no further shooting. He recalled the voice of augury had declared, "There will be two more."

Ray crossed over to the packing crate and gazed down on the fallen body. What he saw there caused him to shiver so violently that he was forced to lean against the packing crate for fear that his legs would buckle like a rotten foundation. Agonized, he moaned, "Sweet Mother of Jesus, don't let it be true."

He closed his eyes and held them shut, hoping that it was nothing other than a horrible hallucination. When he opened his eyes, the body was still there...the body of a dead child. Saddler could not stifle the groan that escaped his lips like stale air from a long-dead cellar. He dropped the gun, fortunate that the thing didn't discharge upon impact with the pavement. Heartsick, he buried his face in his hands and fought not to weep for fear that if he should start, he would not be able to stop.

"Don't waste your tears gringo," spat a contemptuous voice from beneath him. Saddler opened his eyes with a start. The boy was now gazing up at him with eyes that were not brown but metallic silver. His mouth was twisted into a sardonic grin. "You killed me today, pale ass, but I'll be back. When I do, I'm going to carve my name in your fucking ass!"

Saddler recoiled in horror, raising his hand in an unconscious warding off gesture. The thing watched him retreat, braying high childish laughter as he did. Saddler could feel the cry of negation welling up in his chest. He opened his mouth and...

2

His eyes at the same time. Around him, everything was submerged in a horrible blackness. He bit the scream off, but lay breathing in hoarse, rasping breathes. Gradually terror gave way to disorientation and then a limp sort of comprehension of where he was and what had happened.

"A dream," he murmured. He had suffered through this dream often enough, but never had it been quite as terrible or vivid as it had been tonight. Never had it ended with that harrowing moment of resurrection, leaving his torso slick with perspiration and his heart yammering a protest against all of the anxiety. Still shaking, Ray threw back the covers and swung his legs out of bed. He knew from past experience that it would be a long while before he would be able to fall back to sleep.

Saddler fumbled for his slippers and groped his way out to the patio doors that led out onto the rear balcony. Before going out, he stopped and glanced back at the indistinct shape of his sleeping wife, who had not been awakened by his anxious thrashing. Veronica Ashcott, now Ronnie Saddler, slept on...an unflappable pillar of stability even in sleep. If it had not been for her, it was unlikely that Ray would have survived that horrible afternoon as anything more than a permanently damaged emotional cripple. He was damaged...there could be little doubt of that, but at least he was able to function and keep his pain locked in deep chambers, only to be brought out on long nights such as this one. It had been over a year since he had shot and killed a twelve year old boy named Miguel Deleon. Still the dreams came with a bewildering frequency, though never with tonight's horror novel twist.

Not once had the Deleon boy suddenly returned to life like a creation out of a Stephen King novel. Was this only a new manifestation of the same old nightmare or did the ominous return of the dead boy hold some implied portent. Watching his wife sleep, Raymond Saddler was assailed by a sense of foreshadowing and elemental dread so intense that he was afraid he might actually collapse to the carpet.

To prevent this, he threw open the patio doors and plunged out onto the balcony. A damp chill hung in the night air, causing Ray to shiver. He wrapped his arms around his bare upper torso and hugged himself until the sensation passed. Evidently, it had rained earlier in the night but now the clouds had begun to pass from the sky, promising the kind of lovely day that would be most appropriate for a new beginning. He had been an LA cop for the better part of seventeen years, but that life had been irretrievably lost the day that he had fired that fatal shot. He had become as dead to that life as Ruben Serrano had become to his...though in ways much more nuanced and subtle.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, there had been a coroner's inquest into the shooting at the request of an outraged Hispanic League. The inquest had revealed that the boy's system was polluted with crack. The coroner had expressed his amazement that the boy had even been able to function. Though exonerated of all blame, Saddler had become depressed and miserable. Deleon had been a victim, just as all of the others had been victims. Four innocent people had died and he had managed to walk away without as much as a physical scratch. Though he had never expressed this to anyone, Saddler viewed his survival as intrinsically wrong, almost obscene. In the moment of crystalline clarity, Ray saw that he could never allow himself to be put into such a situation again. He could shoot rapists, murders and big-time dope pushers without compunction, but could not take part in a war that required the shooting of children. Such a war was too dirty, the line between good and evil too nebulous and the lingering sensibilities too bitter and debasing.

He had requested reassignment and had been given a desk job. Eventually, he had begun to notice the pitying stares. The message had been clear enough. _'He's burnt out. Saddler is finished as a cop.'_

After seven months of languishing behind a desk, Ray was forced to admit that he was indeed finished...at least, finished in terms of the L.A.P.D. As he moped about, struggling vainly to decide what he should do next, Ronnie had come up with the idea that seemed an ideal solution. "Look Ray, you're a policeman to the core. Trying to pretend that you could ever feel fulfilled as anything else would be a ridiculous self-delusion."

"Okay, but what do I do then?" he had asked, genuinely disheartened by his seemingly limited options.

"Well, I've been thinking about just that. You can't be a cop in L.A. anymore, but perhaps that doesn't mean that you couldn't still be one somewhere else."

He glanced at her in bemused wonder, as though she had just suggested it might be possible to teleport himself into another dimension. The notion of leaving the city had simply never occurred to Saddler. Primarily because he had never believed that she would be willing to relocate. He searched her face carefully, but could detect no hint of reservation or self-sacrifice. At that moment he came to love her more than he would have thought himself capable of loving anything. "But your business, your family, they're all here. Your whole life is in L.A."

She shook her head emphatically. "No, my whole life is you and the children. My business can be run without my daily immediate attention and my parents are certainly of an age where they can survive on their own. There are small towns where the outrage and the filth haven't yet ruined the kind of life that I want my family to live. You would be perfect for a town like that." She gave a small shiver just then. "I think of what happened to that boy...of what just as easily could have happened to you, and I've decided that maybe I don't want my children growing up here after all."

The matter had been decided then and there. Veronica Ashcott, only daughter of the L.A. Ashcotts, had taken to the task of pulling Saddler out of his malaise with the same indefatigable drive with which she did everything else. If she had harbored any reservations about the trauma of a move from L.A., she had managed to keep them well concealed. Saddler had commenced his search in the Southern California region and had eventually branched out. By chance, he had come across news of an anticipated vacancy in a small Washington town named Quinsett. They had driven up in early April. All throughout the entire ride, Saddler had been possessed by the certainty that Ronnie would take one look at the remote town and go scurrying back to safety of the L.A. chic. Her initial reaction to the small town had both surprised him and left him feeling guilty. Standing on the town square and enjoying the first of the spring blooms, she had declared, "Oh Ray, it really is lovely. This whole town looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting."

Saddler could not dispute that the town did possess a certain rustic charm, a quaintness that was at once delightful and strangely refreshing. Small town American charm aside, he still had some misgivings about locating his family to the isolated wilds of Central Washington...and a blue collar town at that.

He had met several times with the panel of town selectman and the outgoing sheriff, Albert Huxley. They had given the impression of being satisfied with his wealth of experience. He in turn, had become more comfortable with the notion of becoming the town's chief law man. Five weeks ago the council had formally offered him the position and after a weekend of intense soul searching, he had accepted the job. A week later he had resigned from the L.A.P.D. After nearly seventeen years of service. Surprisingly, he had felt very little sorrow or regret at the parting. On the contrary, Ray had experienced a lifting of a tremendous burden...a profound relief that was liberating.

He had left the task of finding a new home entirely in the capable hands of Veronica. His only constraint was that their new house should be within the means of his salary, matched by an equivalent portion of her substantially larger salary. This had long been a sensitive issue with Saddler, who had always been privately intimidated by her wealth, background and breeding. To ward against this insecurity, he had promised himself that he would never rely on her personal wealth and although she had regarded this as a foolish constraint, she had respected his desire, grasping his need to feel independent. He had never told her about his clash of wills with Arthur Ashcott, or how her father had attempted to banish him away from his precious daughter. He swore that he never would, regardless of how much acrimony might exist between the two men. The episode had angered and hurt Saddler and from it had emerged the inviolable maxim...we will live off a portion of her salary and mine, but what has come to her by way of her dear old dad shall remain first and forever hers.

He had been ready to be angry when she had first shown him the house on Ringgold Lane. It was a five bedroom, two car garage structure, styled in the colonial period which had never failed to remind Saddler of the Salem Witch Hunts. Unnerving allusions aside, he had loved the house even more so because of its serene yellow stucco exterior.

"Ronnie, this has to cost more than we can afford," he had told her, making his displeasure as apparent as he was able. For a complex variety of reasons, Ray had always found it difficult to deny her anything. She had glanced at him sharply, her expression saying that she had been stung by his implied reproof. Ray flushed and knew that he had misjudged. He had never ceased to be amazed by her ability to wither him with an intense flash of those bewitching green eyes. With only the slightest hint of smug satisfaction, she had quoted him the selling price.

"Good God, what's wrong with the place?" he had exclaimed.

"Nothing. It's as thoroughly charming as it appears to be. It even has its own dark little history," she'd informed him in an oddly conspiratorial whisper. Not this place specifically, but a place that once stood just up the lane. Something happened there. Something nasty I gather, but the real estate agent was reluctant to talk about it. Evidently, it's frightened off more than one potential buyer in the past. Anyway, this place has stood vacant for a fair while and the owner is anxious to be rid of it. Just our good fortune, the ghosts have driven off all of the other buyers. You aren't afraid of ghosts, are you Ray?" She had burst into laughter and then thrown her arms around him, obviously delighted by the house and the prospect of shaping it to her own exquisite taste. In her own excitement, she had failed to notice that Saddler had neither answered her question nor had he joined in her happy laughter. For the second time in his life, Saddler had been touched by the icy fingers of presentiment. In the sinister flicker of black on gray, he had been allowed a glimpse of a future that held forth the discouraging prospect of unimaginable horror. In one of life's rare moments of perfect certitude, Ray understood that he hovered on the brink of something ineffably terrible, though he could not perceive its specific form. The move, the job, this house and even his wife's enthusiasm were symptomatic of an obscure but malign design. Perhaps design was not precisely accurate, but it was the first word that came to mind. He could feel it clamoring to inculcate itself into his consciousness like a black parasite with a ravenous appetite for destruction.

She must have felt his disquiet because she pushed him back to arms length and fixed him with a hard, penetrating stare. Ray had wanted to squirm and jive beneath its palpable weight. There was something about the way that she was looking at him that was so atypical...so contrary to the normal expression of the woman he knew. Her eyes were infinitely deeper and more severe, almost menacing. He blinked and the image vanished. Slowly, and with a rather peculiar emphasis, she asked again, "You aren't really afraid of ghosts are you, Ray?"

He felt desperately compelled to say yes. Part of his life...the night part anyway...was now populated by nothing but restless ghosts. He understood all too well how these spirits worked on their victims, eroding sanity like water on stone. His keenly honed sense of self-preservation admonished Saddler that there was something intrinsically wrong with the circumstances surrounding this house purchase...that there was something slightly off center here. His intuition was too subtle and jumbled to express in words without sounding completely crazy. Haltingly, he replied, "No, Ronnie, I don't believe in ghosts."

She flashed a radiant smile and for a fraction of a second he was certain that he had seen relief cross her face, though surely that had been a trick of the afternoon sunlight. _'What the hell is wrong with you Saddler?'_ he demanded of himself. ' _You've got to stop this shit RIGHT FUCKING NOW!'_

"I think that it's a bargain price for a lovely house. I've been through it from top to bottom and it's structurally sound. The plumbing is in good condition, even if it is dated. Oh Ray, I don't know why, but my instincts tell me that we could be really happy here...you and me and the kids. I'm asking you to trust me on this one." She stopped and waited for his response. Her eyes were large and pleading saucers. He could not recall her ever seeming to want something so badly. Nor could he recall her ever being quite so lovely or appealing as she was at that moment.

"Well, if you like it that much..." he mumbled tentatively.

"I do, I really do!" she exclaimed, sensing that he was about to accede to her need.

Sweeping aside his apprehensions, he said, "Well then I think we'll just have to go for it young lady."

She let out a yelp and then threw herself against him, hugging him so tightly that he could hardly catch his breath. She was laughing with all the abandon of a child, but he could only stare into the deep pool of shadows which had formed in the upper floor hallway. Something in their velvety thickness struck him as decidedly sinister. At last she pushed away from him.

Something mischievous had crept into her green eyes. "I'm sure you noticed that the real estate lady is no where to be seen. I didn't want anyone hanging over our shoulder, so I twisted her arm into giving me the key. She didn't want to, but there are times when it's advantageous to be an Ashcott"

Ray grimaced and she quickly added, "Not to mention the town Sheriff's wife."

"I'm not the Sheriff yet ma'am" he cautioned, doing a woeful Gary Cooper impression. The position had not been officially offered to him yet, but he was confident that it was only a matter of time.

"Ah, but it will be," she replied with implacable confidence. "We'll live in this house. The children will go to school here and we'll all be happier than we'd ever have thought possible." Her tone was so adamant, so fiercely determined, that he could only nod his head in agreement. Then that adamant expression was gone and the teasing smirk was back upon her face. "Like I was saying, we're alone. No kids. No telephones. Nothing but you, me and this big, empty house. Give you any ideas, Mr. Policeman?"

Though he was a full grown adult, Veronica's uncharacteristically wanton antics actually caused Saddler to blush. She saw it and smiled, though that smile never touched her eyes. "Let's consummate this deal Mr. Saddler." she intoned huskily. "A hand shake would do, but I had something a little more intimate in mind."

She took a step away from him and slowly, seductively undid the buttons of her blouse. She shrugged her shoulders and it fell to the floor with a whisper. She wore no bra and her large, firm breasts beckoned invitingly. Soon after, the black slacks joined the blouse and she stood before him naked and enticing. A fiery challenge burned in her dark green eyes. Slowly, she backed against the wall and inclined her head to one side.

"It's impolite to keep a lady waiting," she murmured. Even as he went to her, Saddler thought that perhaps this was not his wife. The notion was foolish of course, but not without its darkly erotic appeal. She had never behaved like this, nor had she acquired this particular trick of slick and irresistible seduction in her private finishing school. Something cold tugged at the fringes of his consciousness, but then he dipped his mouth to her rigid nipple and everything ceased to matter for awhile.

3

He came back to himself with a shiver-induced jolt. Gradually, he realized that he was standing barefoot and topless on the patio overlooking his backyard. Clutching his arms to his chest, Saddler could feel the unpleasant rise of gooseflesh along the length of his arms. The night was cool and silent save for the barely perceptible gurgle of the stream which meandered through the back field. Ray retreated into the warmth of his bedroom and drew the sliding doors closed. He turned and looked out again, compelled by the primitive and mysterious beauty of the ageless night. As he watched, a shadow, all speed and stealth, tore through the back yard. Ray squinted to get a better look, but the thing was long gone.

' _Probably Smucky,'_ he thought. Smucky was the family tom and resident soldier of the night. Like the rest of the family, Smucky was adjusting to the new environment.

The luminous red display of the digital clock informed him that it was closing in upon four o'clock.

' _Christ, you were out there woolgathering for over forty minutes,'_ he realized with a mixture of exasperation and disquiet. The dislocation disturbed him in ways that he could not fully explain. He had spared no previous thought to that long, pleasant afternoon and wondered why he would come to be so preoccupied by his wife's behavior at this most unusual of times. More perplexing still was the way in which his mind insisted upon casting a shadow of menace over the entire episode.

"Because something was wrong that day and you missed it," he whispered aloud. _'It was something minor perhaps, but it's been nagging at you ever since. Down in that black pit that we call the subconscious it's been festering like a sore. Now it's got you up in the middle of the night.'_ Saddler shook his head in honest bewilderment. The words had come unbidden like pus spewing out of a pustule. This was crazy. What the hell was he doing thinking this hooky shit? If Veronica had seemed a little different that day it would not be illogical to attribute her behavior to excitement over the prospects of the move. After all, they were rearranging their entire lives. Moving from LA to Quinsett was the rough equivalent of moving from Quinsett to the dark side of the moon.

' _It was more than that though. Her whole personality, her actions, they were so...contrived,'_ the niggling voice persisted. For some unfathomable reason his mind was not going to allow him to ascribe that strange incident to a case of the relocation anxiety. He suddenly glanced back to the skies as though there was an explanation there, blazing in great letters of ghost fire. There was nothing but the infinite darkness and a few winking dots of light...mutely indifferent to the misgivings of one small man.

"There's nothing to this nonsense either," he snapped petulantly. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was the embodiment of stability, a trait he would be forced to concede that she had inherited from her father. _'This isn't about Ronnie. It's about me. I'm the weak link in this equation.'_

Tomorrow was to be his first day as the Quinsett Sheriff. LA had forever disabused him of the notion that he was infallible. This absurd nocturnal excursion into the twilight zone had nothing to do with a behavioral quirk. It was motivated by self-doubt. His head told him that he could still be a good cop, but in his heart and guts...the places where good cops are made or ruined...Ray Saddler was no longer so certain.

He smiled to himself, satisfied that he had come upon the root cause of _his_ aberrant behavior. Instinct tried to warn him against such perfunctory conclusions, but he told the gloom and doom prophet to shut the fuck up. It was only natural that he would be anxious. Feeling relieved, if not actually less anxious, Ray silently crossed the room and slipped back into bed, hoping that he wouldn't wake Ronnie. She didn't stir and, several minutes later, he had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep.

He never noticed the green eyes that continued to watch him long after he passed into the darkness.

4

Several miles away, the soon-to-be ex-sheriff, Albert Huxley, stood staring fixedly at the names which had been scrawled upon the dirty, yellow walls. He had been in this position for several minutes and his eyes had taken on the glazed look of catatonia. Finally, he blinked several times in rapid succession, hoping that the letters would disappear or resolve themselves into something else.

"Why the hell did this have to happen now?" he demanded petulantly. His tone was more suited to a child who was just learning about the intransigence of fortune than to a sixty year old man. "Why could it not have waited another week, or another year...or another ten years?"

Outside, he could make out faint traces of commotion below. The ambulance had arrived bringing a clamor from the small group of people who had gathered around the as yet unidentified corpse. He could also hear his deputy, Orlin Feldman, doing his best to represent the voice of authority. His high, reedy screech missed the mark by a good margin. The sound reached Huxley's ears as though through a filter, as though they were on one side of reality and he was on the other. There was nothing on his side but himself, this shit box of a hotel room in the fuckin' Topper's Stop motel, and those damnable names on the wall. Huxley cursed again and shook his head in consternation. He had still been up, watching the late movie, when he had received the call from the night dispatcher. Someone had taken a swan dive from the top of the Burlander dive. That had been bad. Actually, it had been little more than a damned nuisance. Knowing the caliber of the crowd that frequented the Topper's, the jumper had probably done the world a favor by leaping out of it.

All of that had changed when he had broken open this door. This fucking list of names had thrown a pall over everything, complicating matters in ways he could only guess at.

Albert Huxley had lived his entire life in Quinsett and he had heard all of the old morbid tales. As a child, they had been intriguing and a made for a good scary yarn on those wild campfire nights. He had completely forgotten about them by the age of thirty...or so he had thought...until tonight. The old tales came back without the romantic colorations of childhood myth.

Had the list of names been slightly different, or had one of these names been omitted, he would have felt none of this coppery fear that was tightening around his throat like a garrote. They were all there, just as the stories had claimed...each name rendered in blood very much like an accusation.

"Who was that shit raiser?" he murmured. The silence provided no answer, but his eyes were drawn to the battered journal, that still lay on the table near the wall. Reluctantly, he crossed over to the table and picked it up. The worn leather cover felt hot and repulsive to the touch, reminding Huxley of an infected wound. He grimaced and resisted the urge to throw it down.

Footsteps sounded outside of the door. Huxley hid the book behind his back, without having any real idea of why he had done so. Before the person could enter the room, he barked, "Stay the fuck out!"

He listened as the footsteps retreated. Breathing a sigh of relief, he opened the journal and began to thumb quickly through the pages, pausing to read sections that caught his eye. The majority of what he read struck him as unintelligible gibberish and he was beginning to think that the book held no clue as to what had transpired here or why.

Then he came across the name; Crimmon...Father Crimmon. He scanned the text and then let out a grunt that sounded like a deflated balloon. ' _Holy shit, it's all true. The senile old fucker spilled every bloody word of it.'_

Bemused, Huxley drew his hand over his sweaty brow. Those named were amongst the most powerful in Quinsett, or the bloody state of Washington for that matter. The immensity of what he had unwittingly stumbled into caused his head to throb dully. He looked up at the list of names. Trailers of blood had begun to run down the wall, distorting some of the letters. That distortion led Albert Huxley to make his decision. Starting with the beginning of Father Crimmon's tale, Huxley carefully tore the pages from the journal and folded them into his rear pocket. Then he wiped the leather cover across his pant leg and replaced it upon the table. His conscience insisted that what he had just done was not only unethical but illegal. For the first time in his thirty years as a lawman, he ignored his conscience. There was a much larger issue here than mere legality. The people on that wall had a right to be protected. Protected from what? He could not be precisely sure. He would tell the families discreetly and afford them the opportunity to take their own actions.

Orlin came through the door then, gazing about in his seemingly apologetic manner. For once, Huxley was glad that he had Orlin along on a call. If his plan was to succeed a tight lid would have to be clamped down on what had actually happened in this room. Dragging his eyes away from the wall, the Deputy reported, "He's dead. Probably died before he hit the ground, judging by the dent in the bar sign."

"Any idea who he is?" Huxley asked, already knowing the name from the inside cover of the journal.

"His name is Andrew Carlson. There were some old press cards in his wallet that say he's some kind of reporter," Feldman answered in his grating, reedy voice. Huxley groaned silently. His day of parting was just determined not to be a pleasant one. Feldman had resumed his scrutiny of the wall. Huxley could almost hear his mind churning away.

"Why do you suppose that he wrote those names on the wall? Where did the blood come from? It would have taken a lot of blood to spell those names out and there are no other traces of blood anywhere else in the room. There's no container for that matter." Feldman was too engrossed in his own running commentary to notice the sour expression that had come over Huxley's fleshy face. The questions were pointed and disturbing...exactly the ones that he was hoping to avoid. Although Feldman was patently ill-suited to the vocation, he did possess a sharp, analytical mind.

Huxley decided that it was time to come down upon him with both feet. "Orlin, do you like your job. Do you enjoy living in this town?"

Orlin glanced at Huxley in open bewilderment, his eyes conveying his confusion. Clearly, Feldman had no idea what Huxley was talking about and that suited Albert just fine. "Yes Sheriff, of course I do."

"That's good Orlin. That's real good. Now I want you to shut your mouth and open your ears. Something happened here tonight and I'm gonna tell you just what that something was. This drifter comes into town and he decides to take a header out of the front window of these here luxurious accommodations. He may have done it because he was drunk or he may have done it because he was higher than a kite. He may have done it because he was crazier than a fuckin' loon. I don't give a tin shit why he did it. This was a suicide, plain and simple. Am I makin' myself perfectly clear, Orlin?" Orlin saw the hard glint in Huxley's eyes and could only nod. He had worked for Huxley for the better part of nine years and knew that he was a formidable man and not one to be crossed. The best he could manage was a feeble nod.

"Now the names up on that wall, I'm sure that you know who they all are and just what they mean to this town. This is some sick fuck's joke and we wouldn't want to be upsetting these kinds of people over this kind of craziness, would we?" The Sheriff nodded that indeed they would not. Feldman took a step away from the older man. There was something wild in his eyes, something obscurely wicked. That light frightened Orlin, just as Huxley had anticipated that it would. The Sheriff continued his assault, boring in with his eyes and his voice. "If a word of this ever got around it would cause these good people a spell of difficulty and I'll be damned if I want that to happen. I want you to go down the hall and fetch a bucket full of hot water and a rag. Then I'm going to stand outside of the door while you wash that shit off of the wall. There'll be no mention of it in your report or no photograph for the police records. Do you follow the train of thought that I'm riding?"

Orlin nodded bleakly. He felt a strong urge to vomit and restrained that urge only with the greatest of efforts. Something was drastically wrong here...more had happened in this room than just a transient suicide. He knew it and Huxley knew it as well.

"I'll get that bucket of water now," he mumbled. He started to leave, but Huxley caught a hold of his left arm. "Just in case you get the notion of tellin' this to someone, say the new Sheriff, a week or a month from now, there's something that I'd be thinking on. I'm just an old fart that's about to be put out to pasture, but those people on that wall own this town. If they were to find out that you been spreading nasty stories about them, you'd be as welcome here as a weasel in a chicken coup. You and I are the only ones who know about those names and if anyone else were to find out, I'd know that you were the one who told."

Orlin's complexion had gone a pasty white and he looked as if he might well faint. Intimidating a man like Feldman left a sour taste in Huxley's mouth. He prayed that he was doing the right thing, but he was accosted by doubt. Feldman almost ran from the room, so anxious was he to be out of the other man's presence. Huxley remained motionless, staring at the obscenity upon the wall.

Outside, Orlin rushed to comply with the Sheriff's order. He could not recall ever seeing the man so wound up. As he let the hot water run into the plastic bucket, he came to an even more startling realization.

He could not recall ever having seen Huxley so frightened either.

Chapter Three

1

Saddler opened his eyes at a little past seven-thirty on the morning that he was to assume his duties as the Sheriff of Quinsett. He winced against the brightness and quickly closed them again. Morning sunlight streamed through the sliding doors, bathing the room with a cheer that was often especially irritating to those who have just rejoined the living. Below, he could hear the bustle of the morning breakfast ritual already in progress. Groaning slightly, Ray pushed himself out of bed and stumbled in the general direction of the shower, feeling something that bordered on outright trepidation in his heart. This was really it. He was going back to work and there was just no respectable way to back out now. The memory of the Deleon boy's small, lifeless body wanted to impose itself upon his thoughts, but he managed to hold it at bay.

He stepped into the shower cubicle and turned the water to the cold position. The first frigid blast hit him like an arctic spray. He yelped but he did not withdraw. After he had returned to his bed, his sleep had been uneasy and fitful. He had been assailed by a series of disturbing dreams that he now simply could not recall in the light of day. The icy spray blasted the cobwebs away and after a few more seconds, he gradually turned the faucet onto the hot setting.

As he came down the stairs, they all gazed up at him and his three year old son, Danny, proclaimed, "Poppy!"

Ray smiled back fondly and replied, "Morning my man, got a big day planned?"

Danny clucked and grinned his endearing little grin before going back to munching up his sugar crisps. His daughter Wendy had reached the ripe old age of eight and could not violate the rules of decorum. She said simply, "Good Morning, Father."

Saddler frowned. He feared that she had inherited some of her Grandfather's stodginess. He looked questioningly to Ronnie, who could only shrug her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. Then she smiled and crossed over to where he stood. Encircling his waist with her left arm, she brushed his lips with hers and whispered, "Morning lover."

"Morning young lady," he replied with mock stiffness. Inwardly, he beamed. He lived for the little moments like this one, the times that he shared with his family. He supposed that they were not the classic moments that great memories were made of, not wildly passionate or romantic, but they were the kind of pleasant fillers that tipped the balance between a happy life and an empty one.

Turning away from him, Veronica asked, "So, is our fearless hero set to go forth and defend his public?"

"As ready as I'll ever be I guess," Saddler replied quite seriously. It was indeed the fifty dollar question and although there had been little discussion on the subject, it had been constantly on both of their minds over the past few weeks. "How did you sleep last night Ray?"

"It was a little rough. I was up once and was afraid that I would wake you. You didn't hear me stumbling around, did you?"

She turned quickly and looked at him closely, as if his query held some vast and esoteric significance. With a strange insistence, she replied, "No, I didn't hear a sound. In fact, I slept like a log."

Ray offered her a puzzled nod, perplexed by her intense tone. She watched him closely for a further moment and then turned back to the table. With a lavish wave of her hand, she declared, "In honor of your first day, your clan has prepared you breakfast fit for a king...but don't get used to it."

She giggled and pulled back the metal tray to uncover what was indeed a regal spread. There were three crepes, three sausages, a mound of scrambled eggs (still steaming) and three slices of toast. Saddler rolled his eyes, clutched his stomach and groaned, "Do you really expect me to eat all of that? What will the townspeople think if I come rolling into the office like a stuffed pig on my first day. If I eat this, I could end up looking up like Albert Huxley."

"I happen to think that Albert Huxley is cute," Veronica countered teasingly. Saddler laughed and sat down, attacking his food with a zeal that had not seemed possible only minutes before. Last night's misgivings and that pervasive sense of wrongness were all but forgotten as the family huddled around the breakfast table, sharing one of Raymond Saddler's precious special moments. Though he had no way of knowing it then, there would be very few such moments left to him.

"What are you and the brood planning to do while I'm off protecting the weak and the weary?" he asked conversationally, all the while shoveling forks full of food into his waiting mouth. Ronnie peered down into her steaming cup and replied, "There are a few calls that I have to make...arrangements for the galleries and the like. After that, I thought that I might take the kids for a ride and see what the town is like. Maybe we'll pack a lunch."

"Sounds fantastic," Saddler commented, mildly disappointed that he would be unable to join the crew for the festivities. _'Still, it's time that you got back to your doings, Ray.'_

That was true. Everything about him intimated that he had stumbled about for the past year like a lost puppy. It was high past time for picking up the pieces.

Veronica was speaking again. Saddler looked up at her questioningly. "Sorry Ronnie, I was woolgathering."

"I was just saying that I might take the kids up to the Hoh Indian reserve. Evidently there is a whole variety of Indian artifacts for sale and display there. I thought that the reservation might well be worth a look."

"Some people are lucky, some are not. Speaking of artifacts, when are you planning your first trip back to the gallery?"

Veronica had acquired three galleries in the greater Los Angeles area. The galleries had developed an extensive clientele among the L.A. chic. Saddler had always sardonically referred to them as art snobs, but Ronnie had frowned her disapproval and countered, "Those art snobs keep me in milk and cookie money, dear...and a great deal of it if we're being perfectly candid."

Over the years of their marriage, Ray had attended a few of her more important premiers and each of her gallery openings. During these events, he had encountered people who were more affected and pretentious than he had ever imagined a human being could be. Perhaps Ronnie had sensed some of his aversion to _patrons of the art world_ because she had never cajoled him into attending any of the functions that he really didn't wish to...a simple arrangement, but one that had been vital to the success of their marriage. Saddler understood that the galleries were an integral part of her self-identity and sense of independence. Ray had privately harbored the fear that being apart from her work would place a serious strain upon their relationship. His decision to take this job had been contingent upon her promise never to hesitate in attending to her business. She, in turn, had been positive that she would be able to accommodate both without too much difficulty. Knowing Ronnie as he did, Ray didn't doubt that she could do exactly that.

"I'll be flying out on Friday morning and probably be back by Sunday, just in time for dinner."

"Just in time for Chef Ray to whip up one of his culinary delights to celebrate your return," he declared in an outrageously horrid French accent. Ronnie made a gagging sound and stuck her tongue out. "In that case, I think that I'll have supper in L.A. and catch a later flight back."

Saddler pretended to make a move to come after her. She squealed and skipped nimbly out of his range. She began to giggle then, her beguiling green eyes twinkling in the morning sunlight. Watching her, Ray wondered how he had ever stumbled upon something so precious. The two exchanged small talk for a few moments longer and then it was time for him to go. Ray inhaled deeply and rose to his feet. He had decided to dawn civilian clothing today, believing that Albert Huxley deserved his last day as town Sheriff without having to share the spotlight. The changing of the guard was often a painful and poignant thing and Ray intended to afford Huxley all of the courtesy that he was able. He walked to the kitchen door and paused to allow his wife to follow. Placing a hand upon his shoulder she bent forward and whispered into his ear, "Go slow, Ray. Assimilate. If you take the time to settle into things, everything should be just fine."

"I'll try." he promised earnestly. She held him at arms length and searched his face. Evidently having found what she had been looking for, she smiled and kissed him. Then she propelled him gently down the steps and began to wave frantically. Soon Danny and Wendy had come to join her and the three of them gave him a send-off worthy of a transoceanic voyager. He waved back with equal vigor, imagining how ridiculous the four of them must look and not giving a damn. Then he was off to town, with Ronnie's final thought held firmly in mind...assimilate.

2

Mariam Carter watched the man approach her desk, studying him with all of the subtly and thoroughness that marked an accomplished people watcher. Naturally she had read his personnel file (something that would be severely frowned upon by the powers that be) and had absorbed all of the vitals concerning the man who was to be her new boss. He was a tall man and a reasonably attractive one if Miriam did say so herself. Still, he wore a slightly pinched expression that was in keeping with some of the things that she had read in his file. This Raymond Saddler had the appearance of a man who was plagued by a mild headache and had been for so long that he was only dimly aware of it. Only his limpid blue eyes conveyed some of the grief that he might have endured. Mariam, who had been with the Sheriff's office since time out of mind, had not failed to notice and had understood perfectly, possibly even better than Saddler himself. This man presented a solid appearance, but his vaguely trouble expression betrayed what could possibly be a worrisome instability.

He made his way to her desk and she greeted him with a broad smile. "Good morning Mr. Saddler...or should I say, Sheriff Saddler."

Ray offered her a twisted grin. "Good morning Mariam, is Sheriff Huxley in yet?"

"Actually, he's been in his office for the better part of the night. Seems that there was a spot of trouble down at Topper's Hotel and Albert...Sheriff Huxley has been looking after it ever since."

As she watched him, his expression underwent a subtle transition. Though he himself was unaware of it, the slightest hint of trouble had always evoked a focusing of his concentration. It was as though some internal machinery had been switched on, deep in the dreary sub-basement of his skull, electrifying his senses to a preternatural sharpness. Even through the bleakness of the past year, the natural instinct that made him a good cop had not deserted him. It came back to him now in the blink of an eye. "Could you tell Sheriff Huxley that I'm here, Mariam?"

"Oh, he's been expecting you Sheriff, so go right in."

Saddler nodded and headed towards Huxley's office. Mariam watched him thoughtfully, trying to decide what she would and wouldn't share with her circle of friends. Her first impressions were inconclusive, but he was a man who bore watching.

As he crossed the open office, Ray observed that the Quinsett Police station was remarkably modern, considering the town's size and out-of-the-way location. From his preliminary meetings with the selectmen, Ray had learned that his cadre of deputies would consist of four men and one woman. Evidently affirmative action had reached even this tiny hamlet of male chauvinism. There were also three dispatchers on the payroll. This struck Saddler as a disproportionately large staff for a town of just over eight thousand. Throughout the office, he could see four computer stations, printers, two teletype machines and a fax machine which looked as if it had just been taken out of the packing case. Along the back wall there were three offices and a set of stairs which descended into the holding cell area. Two of the offices would be locked at all times. One would hold an array of weapons and the other would house the matching ammunition. Ray was satisfied with both the layout and the modernization.

The other office afforded the only privacy in the building and it belonged to Albert Huxley.

' _Actually, as of nine o'clock this morning, it belongs to you,'_ he amended. Again, Saddler was touched by the dawning reality of his new situation. He was in this thing and there could be no backing out. He hesitated for a second and then knocked on the frosted glass window. From beyond the glass, a muffled voice bid him to enter.

Ray opened the door to find Huxley sitting behind his desk, staring down at an open file folder and scribbling onto a small pad. As Ray entered, Huxley glanced up and offered him a tired grin. The first few times that Saddler had met Huxley, the older man had seemed spry and virile for his age. Now he looked as though forty years had suddenly dropped onto his shoulders overnight. His blue eyes were watery and red-rimmed, underscored by dark smudges which resembled angry bruises. "Morning. How's Quinsett's new top dog lawman?"

"Not bad, a little nervous perhaps, but not bad other than that. You look as though you might have had a pretty full night though," Saddler observed.

Huxley grimaced and replied sourly, "Well this wasn't exactly how I was hoping that my last day would go. Ah shit, maybe it's a good thing. I'm getting old and it's high past time to put me out to pasture. A night like this helps to stave off the regrets...for awhile anyways."

"Mariam said that there was a bit of trouble at one of the local hotels last night." Saddler prompted cautiously.

Huxley glanced to the door and nodded absently. "Ray, I hope you don't mind if I give you a spot of advice. Mariam Carter is as good at her job as you can get, but I'd be mighty careful what I discussed when she was around. She can spread information faster than that bloody fax machine is what I'm trying to tell you. What she don't know, she's apt to make up."

Ray nodded dutifully and Huxley shrugged and went on. "Last night someone decided to end it all by taking a nose dive out of a second floor window at the Topper's hotel. The guy was a transient named Andrew Carlson. As far as I can tell, the man was as crazy as a loon."

"So it's a definite suicide then?" Saddler asked, the old intensity creeping into both his eyes and his voice. Huxley looked at him closely for a second. Saddler thought that there was something unaccountably sly in that look, but recalling his previous night's paranoid episode, dismissed that as foolishness.

"That's how I'm putting it down in my preliminary. The door was locked and Carlson had wedged a chair under the handle, which suggests that he didn't want to be interrupted. Besides that, the guy had nothing worth stealing. He had less than a hundred dollars in cash and a suitcase full of Salvation Army clothes."

"What makes you think that this Carlson may have been disturbed?" Saddler had always been intrigued and dismayed by suicide. The act was like a perplexing puzzle that most people, especially cops, preferred not to explore. For Ray the concept of willingly taking ones own life held a morbid fascination. Most times, suicide was the final desperate expression of a hopelessly troubled mind. Other times the act signified something altogether different.

"The stuff that's in this book." As he spoke, Huxley reached into the top drawer of his desk and produced a small, leather-bound journal. The cover might have been a rich brown at one time, but now it was a cracked and worn white. Huxley slid the book across the desk in the manner of a man handling something which he finds to be slightly repulsive. "That book is full of the craziest kind of horseshit you could ever imagine. Some of that stuff I can't make heads or tails of, but the majority of it is about some kind of supernatural hocus-pocus."

Ray opened the book and quickly scanned several of the pages. Huxley's assessment had been accurate. Much of this did indeed read like sheer lunacy. What gripped Ray's attention was not what had been written so much as the _manner_ in which it had been written. The script was consistently neat, but appeared as though it had been carved onto the pages as opposed to written on them. The words seemed as though they were screaming up from the yellowing paper. Saddler's mind formulated the vivid image of a man hunched over his letters, scribbling frantically by candlelight in the dead of night. The disturbing portrait left him with the impression of a man fanatically, almost religiously, obsessed by what he had written.

"This stuff certainly does suggest that this guy may not have been playing with a full deck," Saddler remarked. "Does make you wonder what he may have been doing in Quinsett. Do you have any idea who or what this guy was?"

Huxley shook his head. "No. There was a press card in his wallet that says he was with a pulp rag called the Astral Inquirer. That's one of them supermarket tabloids and it sort of goes along with the garbage that he's written in that book. I think that I'll leave the follow up to you." He offered Ray a wry grin. "Kind of gives you something to sink your teeth into right off."

Saddler nodded absently. His head was abuzz with a host of questions, but he did his best to contain them until he had the time to pursue the answers on his own. Huxley was gazing out of the window. There was a reflective, melancholy glint in his eyes and Ray could tell that he was reluctant to leave. He felt a sharp pang of sadness for the man. It was clear that he loved both his job and his town. Now he was losing both. Albert sighed and pushed himself to his feet. Just then someone knocked on the office door. The two men exchanged glances and then Huxley called for the person to enter. A short, stocky man entered and stood by the door...looking rather ponderous and confused.

"Ray, this here is Deputy Timmy Holland. Timmy, this is your new boss." Saddler stood and shook the man's hand. The deputy looked uncomfortably from one man to the other, evidently uncertain who he should give his report to.

"What's on your mind Timmy?" Huxley prompted. The deputy looked back to Huxley, relieved to be back on familiar ground. "We've just got a call from Lars Ingstrom. He's screaming blue murder over some damage that was done to his farm last night. I told him that we'd send a deputy right away, but he told me that he wouldn't settle for anybody but you."

Huxley muttered a curse. "Okay Timmy, tell the old bastard that the sheriff will be there in a few minutes."

Holland nodded and then left the room. Saddler looked inquiringly to Huxley, who still sported his expression of consternation. "I'm sorry about cuttin' in on you, Sheriff. Timmy's a good man, but he's what you might call a bit of a plodder. It's best not to confuse him. Anyway, the man that he was talking about, Lars Ingstrom, is one irascible old coot. Actually, one proper son-of-a-bitch is what he is. He has a stump farm about three miles north of town. Most of the town folk avoid the place like the plague, but every now and then a few of the braver kids decide that they're gonna play the devil on him. They'll cut his fences or flatten his tries. It's nothing more than malicious nuisance stuff, really. Thing is, it infuriates old Lars, and he is likely to kill 'em if he was to catch them doing it. Every time it happens, he demands a federal investigation for Christ sakes. I go out and poke around personally. That always seems to quiet him down. There are down sides to every job and this is one of them. Take my advice and go out and see the man. It will save you a pile of trouble in the long run."

"I think that I might just go along with you on that one. You know the waters and something tells me that I could use all the help that I can get." Saddler was not merely being deferential. Things were different here and this man would be able to help him identify many of the differences.

"If you don't mind the company, I'd like to tag along on this one. Sort of like one last trip to the plate for old times sake. This Ingstrom is one piece of work and having me along might smooth things out a bit." Was there the tiniest hint of pleading in the tired blue eyes? Ray thought that there was. It touched a fraternal part of his heart in ways that were painful and complicated. Without speaking, he agreed and the two men left the office, one for the first time and the other for his last time.

3

Lars Ingstrom's farm was located about three miles northeast of town and was about the only thing along Winder road other than the Eternal Lights Cemetery. The two completed the drive in silence, Huxley lost in thought and Saddler respecting the other man's need for silent reflection. The sky was a hard, cobalt blue and though it was just past nine o'clock in the morning, the temperature had already hit seventy-two degrees. The asphalt gave way to dirt just past the cemetery and clouds of white dust hung in the air to mark the cruiser's passing.

As they rounded a long right curve, a large, neglected house loomed up on the right. Saddler noted that the only thing that appeared well maintained was the three strand barbwire fence. Its silver barbs gleamed ugly and dangerous in the brilliant morning light. They said as much about the character of the man who owned the place as anything that Huxley could have told him.

Saddler turned the cruiser into the long dirt driveway and headed up towards the old house. It had originally been painted white, but time and indifference had turned it to a peeling gray. As the cruiser pulled to a halt, a man emerged onto the front porch. It took only one glimpse at Lars Ingstrom to know that he would not be an easy man to deal with. He had a wiry frame and a weathered face that was dominated by mean, contentious eyes. On this day they appeared to whirl and twirl with a lunatic light.

' _The man is on the fuming edge,'_ Saddler realized at once. _'No, he's beyond that. He's livid...the kind of man who's ready to explode at the slightest provocation.'_ Dressed in blue coveralls and engineer's boots, Ingstrom charged down the steps and began his tirade before Huxley and Saddler had even managed to climb out of the car.

Huxley raised his arms in a placating gesture and said, "Now just simmer down, Lars. I'm here, so just tell me what's got you in such a bloody uproar."

Ingstrom glared at Ray and demanded, "Who the hell is he?"

"Well, this is the man that you're going to be dealing with from now on. Sheriff Raymond Saddler."

"Mr. Ingstrom," Ray nodded amiably, extending his hand. Lars only regarded it for a few moments and then sort of tipped his head. Saddler dropped his hand and shrugged, not allowing Ingstrom the satisfaction of thinking that he had been offended by the affront.

"Well it doesn't matter who the hell he is as long as I get some action. These hell raisin' little bastards have gone too far this time and I want you people to nail their skinny little asses to the cross!" As he spoke, his voice escalated through the octaves until he was screaming like a strangled chicken. Even Huxley appeared somewhat nonplussed by his tirade. The man had always been ill-tempered, but now he was incensed.

"Listen Lars, why don't you start by telling us what exactly happened?" Huxley suggested, still trying to calm the angry farmer down to some level of coherency. Ray felt an admiration for the way he deftly handled the farmer. He suspected that Huxley was a very good cop indeed.

"Piss on telling you, I'll show you what the little fuckers did," Ingstrom raved, before wheeling about and stomping off in the general direction of the barn. The two men exchanged quizzical glances and then followed the farmer. Watching the farmer's muscles work beneath the denim, Saddler was struck by the impression that something especially terrible had happened here.

As things would turn out, he was not to be disappointed.

The rear pasture was entirely fenced in and had been used to house cattle. Its interior now resembled the floor of a poorly maintained slaughterhouse. A quick count tallied fifteen animals spread throughout the pasture. Each one of the cattle had been horribly mutilated and completely eviscerated. The yellow grass was muddy with dark red blood, and the air was alive with the buzzing of thousands of flies as they feasted on the dead animals. Saddler was forced to recall his extravagant breakfast and prayed that he could hold his roiling stomach at bay. He stole a quick glance at Huxley, who wore an identical expression of revulsion.

"Look at what they've done. Just look at what they've done!" Ingstrom insisted frantically, his voice quivering with outrage. Saddler and Huxley forced themselves to enter the pen and examine the animals.

"All right Lars, maybe we'll do just that," Huxley remarked in a subdued voice. Streamers of perspiration had cropped up on his brow and temple. Ray attributed this to the mounting heat and a natural reaction to the bloody carnage, but Huxley was experiencing something closer to atavistic dread. There was something about the dead animals, about the way in which they were neatly arranged, that was both ominous and portentous.

Ingstrom led the two policemen into the pen. The humid morning air was redolent with the odor of blood. Some of the larger patches of blood had yet to dry. Saddler crossed to the nearest animal, noting every detail as he approached it. Careful to avoid kneeling in the blood, he squatted down to examine the animal's wounds. What he saw defied all logic. This slaughter was definitely not the work of savage teenagers and from a quick visual examination of the wounds, neither was it the work of rogue animals. The wounds, particularly those around the abdomen, were not crude or jagged. Quite the contrary, each wound looked as if it had been inflicted with a precision instrument such as a large scalpel. Ray glanced at Huxley, who offered a barely perceptible shrug. Evidently, he had reached the same conclusion, but had decided against sharing it with Ingstrom...at least for the time being.

"Look at what the fucking butcher's did to my cattle. Those are prime fucking beef cows and now they ain't worth a fart in a wind storm. I don't give a shit what you have to do, but I want the fuckers that did this found!" Ingstrom's cheeks had gone a high, hectic red.

Ray stood up and looked the farmer in the eyes. Saddler understood that Ingstrom would never be an easy man to like, but nothing could justify what had been done here. "Mr. Ingstrom, we will find who did this and they will be charged. You have my personal guarantee on that."

Ingstrom looked from Huxley to Saddler and then down at his hands. Though he said nothing, something in his eyes implied that he at least believed that Saddler would make good on his oath. Saddler would. Whatever had happened here had not been motivated by twisted vandalism, or even ugly animosity. This slaughter had been the work of a seriously deranged mind working to a very specific agenda. Anyone capable of doing this was capable of even more extreme acts of evil. The demand for urgency screamed up from the butchered carcasses. "Was there more?"

"As if this wasn't enough, but yes, there was more," Ingstrom grunted and then spit onto the ground. "Come around the back of the barn and see for yourself."

Again the farmer led the two men across the dirt yard, in the direction of the large barn that had housed his cattle. The barn was a cavernous wooden structure that had been better maintained than the house. Evidently, Ingstrom thought more of his cattle than he did of himself. The front of the barn was dominated by two doors that faced due west. The hinges were designed in such a way as to enable both doors to swing inward as well as outward. Inside, several heads of cattle could be heard chewing contentedly upon loose hay, unmindful of the gruesome fate which had befallen their less fortunate sisters.

The north wall of the barn was unbroken by either doors or windows. It took several seconds for either Saddler or Huxley to make any sense out of what they were seeing. Huxley blinked and murmured, "What the hell is it?"

For the space of several seconds, Ray was simply too astounded to speak. He was baffled to silence not so much by the what as by the how.

' _That's impossible,'_ his mind insisted, and on the heels of that, _'what the hell have we stumbled upon?'_

Huxley stepped closer to Saddler. The other man's dismay was a palpable weight against his skin. Then Ingstrom uttered the question that plagued everyone present. "What the hell could have done something like that?"

Saddler shook his head distractedly, continuing to gape at the farmer's barn. It was a work of graffiti, but graffiti the likes of which Saddler had never before seen and coming from LA, he could have sworn that he had seen it all. If it had simply been painted on, its size would have still made it extraordinary, but this particular pattern appeared to have been literally burned into the wood. Mesmerized, Saddler wandered over to the barn and ran his fingers over the rough wood. The blackened grooves were at least a quarter of an inch deep. Ingstrom stared impatiently from one man to the other, expecting some explanation to be proposed. Instead, he was confronted by two men whose equanimity had been shattered by an eerie spectacle that should have been inconceivable by any rational standard.

"Well, how did the little bastards do it?" he demanded in a peevish tone.

Huxley ignored the farmer. Speaking to Saddler, he asked, "Does that pattern make any sense to you?"

"It doesn't, but the thing is so big that it may be distorted from this distance." Huxley concurred. From this close, the pattern looked to be nothing more than an abstract and convoluted jumble of lines and shapes. An idea struck Ray and he moved off into the north pasture. The other two men followed him curiously. About thirty yards into the pasture, Ray stopped and turned back to the north wall of the barn.

"I knew it!" he whispered. Behind him, someone emitted a shrill gasp, though he had no way of knowing if it had been Ingstrom or Huxley. From this perspective, the shape had resolved itself to reveal a complex intaglio that was abstract but vaguely menacing. Amidst the confusion of occult symbols, Ray recognized the distinct outline of a pentagram.

"I thought that somebody had been at my barn with a fucking torch, trying to burn it down maybe, but this shit looks as if it's supposed to mean something." A thread of fear had softened Ingstrom's normally belligerent tone.

"Not a torch. That would have burned the whole thing down. This looks like it might have been done by a giant woodworking tool," Huxley remarked in an unusually flat voice. Saddler glanced at the old man sharply deducing that his observations had been astute. Ray's father had given him a kit for his fifteenth birthday. The impressions that the iron had left on the wood had been precisely like the one on the side of Ingstrom's barn. Only the scale was different. Ray reached into his pocket and drew out a handkerchief. He mopped his brow, rather surprised by how profusely he was perspiring.

There was something drastically wrong with all of this. He could hear its inherent improbability mocking him from just beyond the edges of clarity. The heat was making it virtually impossible to think clearly. He turned away from the disquieting intaglio and gazed out over the north pasture. Gradually his composure returned, as if the emblem had the power to supplant the process of logical thought...just from being looked upon for any length of time.

With an impatient snort of dismissal, Ingstrom started to walk back to the barn. After a moment, the two policemen set out after him. Ray could see that the man's shoulders were trembling slightly. "There's one last thing that I'd like you boys to see."

The three men entered the barn, which felt deliciously cool after the relentless downbeat of the morning sun. Ingstrom merely pointed to something on the barn floor, his jaws tightened into angry knots.

There, on the dirty barn floor, the intestines which had been removed from the dead cattle, were arranged into a threatening, albeit cryptic message.

That message consisted of three words: IT HAS BEGUN.

4

They sat in Ingstrom's kitchen and for a time, none of the three spoke. Questions buzzed in Saddler's mind like a horde of ravenous mosquitoes. He seized upon the most persistent one that came to mind. "Were you here last night Mr. Ingstrom?"

The farmer wagged his head. This was the part that he found the most distressing. "Never left the bloody place. About nine or so I went out to check the barn, just as I do every night. The thing was locked up tight and everything was fine in the pasture. When I went out this morning, that," He hesitated, confounded by the sheer lunacy of what he had discovered, "that is what I found."

"Why were some of cattle out in the pasture and not in the barn?"

"I don't have the space for the bloody things. Each night I let about ten or twenty of them stay out in the holding pen."

"And you never heard a sound during the night?" It was Huxley who had posed this question. The farmer's bewildered expression spoke of a man who has come face to face with something he doesn't recognize and which scares him shitless. "Not a damned thing. If I'd have heard anything, you guys would be out here picking up stiffs."

The truculent glare was back on the old man's face. He faced the two and demanded, "What the hell happened out there? The thing on my barn, that wasn't done by kids...was it?"

Saddler shook his head. "No, Mr. Ingstrom, I don't believe that it was. I'm going to be candid and say that I don't think that this was a simple act of vandalism. Wouldn't you agree, Sheriff Huxley?"

Albert nodded somewhat reluctantly. His conscience was demanding that he take Saddler aside and come clean with him, but another part of him refused to succumb to the temptation. Huxley did not fully comprehend all of the things that motivated him to hold his tongue, but he elected not to question them. He contented himself with remaining silent and seeing where Saddler's train of logic would lead him. This man was an obvious professional and it was not inconceivable that he would draw the correct conclusions about what had happened here and its possible connections with the previous night's suicide.

Saddler continued to speak to the old farmer in a straight forward, earnest voice that the old man was unaccustomed to hearing in his presence. His contentious expression softened somewhat. Beneath the harsh exterior, Ray caught a glimpse of the badly shaken man that he really was. "It's not my intention to frighten you, but it's imperative that you listen to what I'm going to tell you. Whoever did this is quite obviously seriously disturbed and very dangerous. I'm tempted to operate from the premise that the perpetrator is carrying an obsessive grudge against you. I'm going to order a running patrol along Winder road. A squad car will swing by every few hours just to make sure that there's no recurrence of this kind of butchery. If you should hear or see anything out of the ordinary, do not investigate on your own. Call the office and someone will be along in a hurry. Will you do that, Mr. Ingstrom?"

The old man considered all that Saddler had said for several moments and then nodded. It had evidently never occurred to him that this could have been motivated by a personal grudge. Huxley shook his head in wonder.

' _People seldom see themselves for what they truly are. If I was to look at myself, what would I see?'_ Huxley forced the thought into the cellar of his consciousness. He had carved his path and all the bullshit introspection in the world couldn't undo what he had done. He studied Saddler and Ingstrom. Though old man was clearly nervous now, which had no doubt been Saddler's intention all along.

"Now, we'll need some pictures of the barn and the things in your field. I'll call for someone to come out at once. In the meantime, please don't touch anything until all of the deputies have done their work." Ray glanced at Huxley and the two men stood up to leave. Ingstrom walked them back to the squad car. In spite of his inherent dislike for the man, Huxley found himself pitying the bewildered man. As cantankerous as he was, this farm was his work and his home. Both had been brutally violated and the resulting pain was reflected on the old man's leathery face.

As Huxley and Saddler climbed into the sedan, Ingstrom leaned through the window and spoke in a voice that was uncharacteristically subdued and a little frightened. "Catch the people that done this, sheriff."

Ray nodded and then drove off, leaving Ingstrom standing motionlessly in the center of his dusty barnyard.

5

There was little conversation as they drove back towards town. Saddler could not speak, grappling instead with the improbability of the things that he had witnessed back in the old man's pasture. Beside him, Huxley gazed out of the window and tried to determine what he should do next. They descended a small hill that marked the eastern extremity of the Eternal Lights Cemetery. A stream meandered across the road, bridged by a single lane, wooden structure. As they crossed the bridge, Huxley motioned for Saddler to pull over. Ray complied, thankful for the shade of a stand of Redwoods.

"I thought this climate was supposed to be moderate, but his heat's murder," Saddler muttered, wiping at his soaking brow.

Huxley nodded distantly. "This isn't LA, but the humidity can drain you like a sieve."

"What's on your mind, Albert?" Ray asked. Huxley had seemed preoccupied ever since Ingstrom had first shown them the engraving on the barn.

Huxley did not reply at once, only continued to stare out at the row upon row of granite memorials to people whom Saddler had never known and never would. At last he said, "My old man is buried here. My mother is too. Just about everyone who was anything in this town is buried right here in this bone yard. It's like a kind of archive of town history. Most of the town's people begin their lives at the Crane Memorial and end 'em right here. Point I'm trying to make is that people spend their whole lives in Quinsett as though there were no other place for them to go...and no other place they'd want to go."

Huxley suddenly looked directly into Saddler's eyes, fixing him with a hard, appraising gaze. Sensing an obscure, yet significant test, Ray met that gaze unflinchingly. "You did great with old man Ingstrom. You put the fear of God into the old bugger and that's just what he needs right now. I've been a cop here for a long time. I've seen some things that can't be explained away with normal light-of-day reasoning. A town drunk, Norlin Roscoe, got run down right in the road in front of Beaumont's Texaco. He was buried on the Welfare role right in this very cemetery. Three days after they put old Norlin in the ground, I saw him walking along the road that leads to the old Lodger's mill. I pulled up beside him with my heart beating like a marching drum, and says kind of casual, 'what you been up to Norlin?' Well he looks at me and his eyes are big and blank, and he's got this smile on his face. That grin scared the shit out of me and I damned near put her in reverse and floored it the hell out of there, but he says, _'I'm out getting a bit of fresh air before I go on.'_ "

"That happened maybe ten years ago and I never told a soul about it. Not even my wife."

He lapsed into a contemplative silence. Saddler contemplated his hands. Did Huxley really expect him to believe such nonsense? Still, Huxley didn't strike Saddler as the kind of man who told ridiculous ghost stories like a backwoods hick. "Why are you telling me this, Albert?"

"I believe that I saw a ghost that night. What I saw today was worse, because I can't concoct a single sensible explanation for how it might have happened."

Saddler winced. Huxley had given voice to the conclusion that he, himself, had reached the instant that Ingstrom had told him that he had never left the house. Regardless, Ray was a pragmatist. He had no intention of turning to the paranormal any more than he would buy into Huxley tale of strolling shades. Yes, there were occultists, but they were sick minds possessed by warped delusions. His was a world of progressive logic...one in which a rational explanation could eventually be found for anything, no matter how bizarre. This lent a new challenge to the concept, but he felt confident that time would bare his theory out.

He stole a quick glance at Huxley, who was scrutinizing him closely. Saddler averted his eyes to the rows of marble headstones...monuments of death set against the green vitality of the cemetery's well-kept grounds. The place was certainly appropriate for any discussion of the things that had occurred at Ingstrom's farm.

' _You don't believe that,'_ he reprimanded himself. _'You can't believe it.'_

Watching him, Albert drew a silent sigh of relief. It was evident that Saddler would never allow himself to be drawn into the kind of offbeat side roads that were now circling his own thoughts like a flock of hungry vultures. That was good. It would give him time to set things straight. The town was his sanctuary and Albert owed it an indefinable debt. He could never allow his town to be turned into a carnival attraction for people such as Carlson.

"Apart from the intaglio on the barn, the thing that really perplexes me is the slaughter of the cattle," Saddler went on. "How could a person or even a small group of people have managed to kill all of those animals without rousing Ingstrom? Those pens are fairly close to the house and being a paranoid person by nature, it's probable that he would have come running at the first sound. That means that the perpetrator took the animals out without making a sound."

"Drugs might have done it," Huxley offered, "something in the feed or water perhaps. It would have had to have been a tranquilizer that works gradually. The cows wandered around, getting less and less spirited. Then they just keel over. When Lars takes his nightly stroll, some are still standing and some are down. Everything looks normal and he goes back inside and starts watching the tube again."

Ray nodded in agreement. Huxley's theory was plausible.

Drugging would have enabled the killer to work silently. Saddler allowed himself a slight grin, thinking that he had found the first strand in the web. "If it was drugs, then there would have to be traces in all of that blood. It would have taken a tremendous quantity of drugs to put out that many cattle. There can only be so many outlets for that type of product in the area. There would be records of purchase and those records would be traceable. It's a start, if nothing else."

"It's worth checking into," Albert remarked. "Still, guttin' a cow is no easy task and guttin' a whole shit load of them takes time. The fuckers must have worked all night to set up that little exhibit. It would have taken a lot of balls to do something like that, what with old Lars sleepin' not seventy feet away."

Saddler considered this. Balls? Not necessarily. "Whoever did this wouldn't have had any reservations about making Ingstrom part of the display had he discovered them in the act."

"Christ, I never really looked at it that way," Huxley murmured. "Maybe old Lars is fortunate that he didn't have a bout of insomnia last night."

"I've got to collar the lunatic that did this Albert. My instinct keeps telling me that this was staged as some type of warning. Like a herald for something. Don't ask me what, because I really haven't any idea. I keep seeing that cryptic message: It has begun...what has begun?"

Saddler's face twisted in a moue of revulsion as the image of the still-dripping intestines spawned in his mind. He absently wiped at the streams of sweat that coursed down his jaws. The heat was impeding his ability to think. Though he did not know how he knew, Saddler reasoned that the keys to the whys and wherefores of this mystery lay in solving the mystery of that cryptic puzzle. Huxley, on the other hand, was a considerable distance down the road to solving the mystery, but it was a road over which he had no real desire to travel. Unlike Saddler, he had no cynical preconceptions about the existence of the dark side. His encounter with Norlin had blown away his misgivings like chaff from a wheat plant. There were many things for which he could produce no plausible answers, but he had his suspicions about where those answers could be found.

Huxley shrugged dismissively. "I must have sounded like a real basket case with all of that talk about ghosts and the like. I guess that I'm really getting old. What happened out there probably has a simple explanation. Ingstrom is the kind of man who didn't have to labor too hard to rub people the wrong way. He had a God given talent for making enemies. More likely than not he's gone and crossed someone with a devious mind and a strange taste for gettin' even. Tracing the drug angle sounds like a good step in unearthing just who that someone might be."

Ray spared the bone yard one final glance. "It's all that I have to go on for now. I hope that this is the end of the vendetta, if that's what it is," Ray uttered an uneasy chuckle. "Ronnie...that's my wife, she advised me to just kind of ease into things. Suicide and a seemingly unworkable act of vandalism all in one morning...hardly a smooth start."

Huxley grunted and gave Ray an amiable clap on the shoulder. "It sounds to me like your wife is a pretty sharp woman. You did sort of ease into it. It's just that the skids were greased when you did it."

The two men shared a moment of laughter in the brilliant morning sunlight.

6

That feeling of shared camaraderie had dissipated by the time they had reached the station. Ray dropped Huxley off near his truck which was still parked in the station lot. Saddler could sense the other man's reluctance and sorrow like a physical touch. He appeared somehow diminished. His broad shoulders slumped as if only responsibility had kept them erect and square. In Albert's weathered face, Ray could clearly see distant echoes of the man that he was destined to become. Huxley climbed heavily out of the cruiser and leaned back through the window. He could not hide his dejection. "I'm glad that Quinsett has found a man like you to be lookin' out for it. It's a good town, with good people, and they deserve to be looked after. When the selectmen finally came to a decision about you, I began to feel that I could walk away from this job and not feel that I was doing the town a disservice."

"Thank you, Albert. You have no way of knowing how important that vote of confidence is to me right now," Saddler managed solemnly.

"I think that maybe I do, Ray," Huxley replied knowingly. Saddler said nothing. Huxley stood up and sighed wearily. Reaching into his jacket, he produced his service weapon and holster and handed these to Saddler with a stiff formality. Huxley gazed off into the distance, fighting hard to halter his emotions. "I guess that just about puts paid to her then. You know, life has a way of doubling back on you, sort of like looking through a telescope. When you're young and casting out for what it is that you'd like to make of yourself, everything looks so damned large and bright. Years slip by, like they have a way of doing, and one day you're peering down the wrong end of the barrel, wondering when the hell everything got turned around on you. It can be lonely feeling so remote from them young man's dreams and how it felt to dream 'em."

Wanting to avoid embarrassment, the man who had represented law and order in Quinsett for over three decades turned and walked over to his car. Saddler watched him go, trying to picture his reaction to the same inevitable final scene when his time came. The moment seemed to require something more, so Ray called out, "What will you do now, Albert?"

"Go fishin', what else?" Huxley called back absently. Saddler smiled affectionately and watched as the old man drove away. It was several moments before he realized that he was staring absently at the vacant spot where the old man's car had been.

Finally, beset by conflicting emotions, Saddler went in to assume his new responsibilities.

7

He immersed himself in the task of becoming acquainted with his new command. As he did, it occurred to him that a good portion of his time would be devoted to administrative paperwork...such necessary yet thoroughly boring chores as requisition and re-supply. At least the duty roster was in order and Ray saw little point in rearranging it. He decided that he wouldn't tamper with established operating procedure unless changes appeared warranted. Go slow had been Ronnie's advice and that was prudent advice which he was determined to follow.

Examining the general file, Saddler had been pleasantly surprised to discover that Albert had been meticulous in maintaining concise and accurate accounts of the day to day operations of the department. Huxley's relaxed demeanor might have suggested that he would view the obligatory paperwork as one royal pain in the ass, but evidently that impression had been a false one. Ray smiled. This only served to confirm his long-held belief that drawing quick conclusions about a man's character was a flawed and sometimes dangerous proposition.

Just after eleven-thirty, Deputy Art Silver walked into his office and filed a verbal report on the progress of the Ingstrom preliminary investigation. Silver was a man of average appearance, but there was a glint of something in his eyes which suggested a deceptively keen mind.

"Were you able to collect a blood sample?" Ray asked hopefully.

"Christ yes. There was enough blood in that pasture to fill a fifty gallon drum," Silver intoned thickly, his tone suggesting that the carnage had affected him profoundly indeed.

"Where are the samples normally delivered?" Saddler was loath to grope this way, but there was much that he did not know about standard operating procedure.

"Usually the county M.E. does the workup right in the hospital. If something complex was required, Albert would have them sent to Seattle."

Ray mulled this over for a moment and then instructed Silver to have them delivered to the county M.E., along with an A.S.A.P. designation. Back in L.A., a homicide-generated blood sample would have been processed in hours. Ray wondered how long such a work-up would require here in Quinsett. Very often, if a crime was to be solved at all, a quick solution was imperative. Rapid processing of forensic and M.E. work-ups were instrumental in procuring convictions if the killer hadn't been found with a death gleam in his eye and a bloody cleaver in his hand. Recalling the sickening arrangement of intestines, Ray understood that time could well be his greatest enemy here.

"Art, would you bring me the photos of the barn, once they've been developed." That intaglio fascinated Saddler. If he could identify it, decipher its mystery, and then perhaps he would understand more of what had inspired the slaughter at the farm. Silver produced a folder and laid out several photos on Ray's desk. The sheriff grinned sheepishly, again scolding himself for having underestimated his predecessor."

"We don't have a professional photographer on staff obviously, so we take all of our photos with a Polaroid." Gesturing to the number of pictures, he added, "What we lack in skill, we make up for in sheer volume." Ray smiled and rifled briefly through the photos.

"I'd like you to make a pass along Winder road once every two or three hours. Tonight, I'll have the patrol swing by every hour. I'm concerned that this may have been a personal thing and I want to shut it down before it can escalate beyond vandalism and willful destruction of property."

Silver acknowledged the order and then moved towards the door. He paused with a hand on the handle and glanced back at the man who was to be his boss. He wore a quizzical frown. "Sheriff, what the hell could have burned that pattern into the barn? It's so...intricate and large."

Ray shook his head. The presence of that pentagram added yet another cryptic element to this entire incident. Ray did not want to classify it as inexplicable, but all bullshit aside, that was just what it was...plain impossible. Silver seemed to want to pursue the matter, but sensed his boss' reluctance and withdrew.

Saddler returned to his perusal of the general file, turning his mind from the improbabilities and implications of the things in the Polaroid photos. If he ignored them long enough, he thought wishfully, perhaps they might simply vanish like those bowel-loosening lumps that you might find in your arm pit.

The pictures sat on his desk and glared up at him with a mindless patience.

Chapter Four

1

Huxley did not return to his house on Milford Street. Even if he didn't have business to attend to, he probably would have found a reason to avoid going there. The side split stood as a monument to the pervasive emptiness which had overcome his life. Cora, Albert's late wife, had died eight years before and he simply lacked the will to find another woman with whom to share what was left of his life. He had clung to his job the way a drowning man will cling to a life preserver. Now that job was gone and he found he could not go home. Between those walls, the empty silence would mock him like derisive laughter. He had often considered selling the house, which was much too large for a single person, but found the prospect of turning over _their house_ to strangers both insufferable and traitorous.

With the mid-morning sun reflecting blindingly off of the truck's hood, Huxley drove east along the SCP road. He had to congratulate himself on disguising his emotions from Saddler throughout the entire strange episode at Ingstrom's farm. Still, this new man was incisive and might make his way to the same conclusions that Albert had reached.

' _And just what is it that you believe anyway, Albert?'_

The thought caused him to blink. He hadn't taken the process beyond a certain point because there were things lurking in the shadows of that road which he didn't really care to see. The transient's suicide (if it had been a suicide, and Albert was no longer so certain) and the business at the farm were quite possibly connected in some abstruse way. After all of this time, the town's black secret was coming back to haunt the sleepy little burg. Despite the sticky heat, Huxley found himself shivering and bone cold.

The Seattle Central Paper Mill was located about twenty miles east of Quinsett. Any traveler along this road would smell its malodorous presence long before he actually saw it. Huxley had been out this way several times over the years, but he had never gotten accustomed to the acrid stench that hung in the air like a pall. He had always come away from the place feeling nauseous. As he pulled into the visitor's parking area, Huxley inhaled the noxious air, exacerbated by the oppressive humidity which seemed to shove it down Albert's throat. Gazing up at the large stacks which spewed yellow-white smoke into the defenseless sky, Albert wondered if he had not made a mistake in deciding to handle this on his own. If things were to get out of hand, he would be the one to shoulder the brunt of the blame.

"You made your bed now, old man. You've got no choice but to lie down in it," he told himself as he approached the security gate. The guard slid the glass panel open and peered inquiringly at the former sheriff.

"What brings you out this way, Sheriff?" the guard asked in a brothers-in-arms tone that Albert had always found amusing. Now, with his old life behind him, Albert found that the old joke had lost much of its luster.

"Like to talk to the big boss man," he announced grimly. From somewhere within the yard came the sound of logs being conveyed to the mill.

The guard nodded and turned to his phone console. After a pause, he spoke into the handset, "Hello Marie. Sheriff Huxley is here to see Mr. Crane."

As Albert crossed the parking lot, he recalled some of his previous encounters with Stuart Crane. Most had come in the course of some social function and all had left Huxley with an impression that Crane was a condescending and guardedly cynical man who did not hold the world around him in especially high regard. It was impossible to escape the sense that the inheritor of the Crane Empire was driven by the need to live up to grandfather's legend. Stuart sported a smile like glinting razor blades that eloquently declared that the effort had not been without its price.

Crane ran the SCP with an iron fist and a miserly clutch on corporate purse strings. Never a people person, he was widely despised and feared by those who toiled under his dictatorial management. Hadn't he fired old Buddy Jerue for sleeping on the night shift? Jerue had worked for SCP for seventeen years, but Crane had given him his walking papers without blinking an eye. Albert did not particularly relish the prospect of bringing this particular news to Crane, but realized that this man could best deal with this situation...whatever it might prove to be. Warning delivered, Huxley could wash his hands of the affair with a clean conscience.

The administrative suites were incredibly Spartan for a company the size of Seattle Central Paper. While the office equipment was state of the art, the furnishing was utilitarian at best. The bare bones decor was a further reflection of Crane's corporate philosophy; his employees were here to work and their comfort was simply not a priority. Marie Harlander greeted Huxley with a warm smile. Her naturally vivacious smile added warmth to an otherwise dismal environment. "Good morning, Sheriff Huxley. Mr. Crane is waiting in his office."

Huxley smiled, not bothering to correct her misnomer. Marie came around the desk and ushered him into the director's office. He was heartened to see that he was not too old to notice the inviting flash of thigh as her side split parted. It took Albert several seconds to adjust to the gloom of the room's interior. This allowed Crane several seconds to appraise his guest unnoticed and Huxley correctly surmised that this had been his intention to begin with. Albert stood still, fearing that he would stumble were he to move, and waited to be received. Stuart Crane stood and gestured for the former sheriff to be seated. Crane was a small, waspish man with a face that seemed incapable of conveying any emotion other than irritation and disdain. Despite the July heat, Crane was attired in a black suit and red tie. "Sheriff Huxley, what a pleasant surprise."

"Plain old Albert will do, I guess," Huxley offered, deciding to dispense with the sham.

Crane frowned and raised his two index fingers to his lips. "Ah yes, you were scheduled to step down as the town's sheriff. I take it that your replacement has taken up his duties then?"

"Yes."

Huxley's response signaled a subtle change in Crane's demeanor. The guise of concerned citizen disappeared, to be replaced by a distracted expression that announced; _I have no time for trivialities, so come to the point and be gone._ "What brings you out this way...Albert?"

"A man killed himself last night. He jumped out of the window down to the Toppers hotel," Huxley plunged in.

Crane blinked and then spread his manicured hands, "Most lamentable, but how does this concern me?"

Huxley reached into his back pocket and retrieved the pages that he had torn from Carlson's journal. Unfolding them, he silently laid them on the polished surface of Stuart's desk. Crane looked questioningly from the sheets to Huxley. Albert flicked his eyes at the sheets and said, "I took those out of a journal that was found in the dead man's room. If you take a minute to read them, I think you'll find some pretty interesting stuff there."

Crane sighed elaborately, but picked up the sheets and began to read. As he did, his annoyance gave way to disbelief and then dismay. He inhaled and pushed the sheets to one side. Huxley bent forward and reclaimed them. "I'll take those if you don't mind. The way that I got a hold of them wasn't exactly legal."

"Why are you wasting my time with this drivel?" Stuart rasped harshly.

"Maybe because I don't think that it's all drivel. This story, or one just like it, has been circulating around the town for the better part of fifty years. Most people ignore it because every town's got its tall tales. This is different. This is right out of Crimmon's mouth and he was supposed to have been there."

"Crimmon is nothing but a senile old fool, languishing away in a home for demented priests. More to the point, this is a second hand story from a man who has since committed suicide...hardly an unimpeachable collection of sources." Huxley heard the biting sarcasm in the other man's voice and felt his own anger stir.

"The man looked as if he killed himself, but looks can be deceiving, can't they?" Huxley retorted.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"He may have killed himself, but maybe he didn't. Maybe he was thrown out of that window. You say that this doesn't mean a thing to you, but you look like a man who is perilously close to shittin' himself." Huxley allowed himself a moment of silent satisfaction over Crane's nonplussed reaction.

"What is this about, Huxley? If this is some misguided attempt to blackmail me or smear the family name..."

"Shut the hell up, you pompous ass!" Huxley erupted, suddenly furious with this officious little bastard. "I risked my pension and my reputation to keep this from becoming a matter of record. I expect a little gratitude. I expect you to come clean with me."

Crane was about to release a scathing retort, but thought the better of it. He settled into a sober silence and then said, "Very well, Albert. If, as you've said, you've kept this from the record, then I'm indebted to you, though I'm still unclear as to what you expect of me or why you feel the need to bring this to my attention."

"There were names on the wall of Carlson's hotel room. They were written in blood. I can't be positive, but I'd offer that the blood did not come from Carlson's veins. Your grandfather's name was up there and so was Crimmon's along with all of the others who were supposed to have been there."

"Good Christ!" Crane exclaimed, visibly shaken for the first time. "Did anyone see these names?"

Huxley shook his head. "No, that was taken care of as well."

There was a momentary flicker of relief in Crane's eyes, there and gone in an instant, then his usual expression rippled back into place like a breeze over still water. "You've done well, Albert. There is nothing to be gained by propagating that kind of trash, is there? If Crimmon's senile ravings were to become a matter of public record, some of Quinsett's most affluent families...families that played a major role in building this community, would be subjected to unnecessary harassment and scandal. You've done the town a commendable service."

Huxley regarded Stuart as if he were looking at a reptile...a repulsive and ingratiating reptile at that. Crane reminded Huxley of a chameleon; one might be able to see through him and recognize him for the self-serving prick that he was, but his thoughts and his emotions would always remain inscrutable. Albert suspected that Crane would not have taken offense to his particular characterization. "Stuart, I don't give a tin shit for the way that the big shots might be handled by the gossip mill."

"Then why exactly are you here?" Crane snapped querulously.

"I want you to tell me what your grandpa and the others got themselves into that time. No glossing it over, just the pure and honest truth, if you're capable of such a thing. Then I'll tell you the rest of my story...if I'm satisfied that you've come clean with me."

Crane attempted to wither Huxley with a baleful glare, though he was confronted with the one thing that could not be bent by intimidation; a man who just doesn't give a shit about consequences. Eventually, Crane dropped his eyes and shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of capitulation. He did not speak at once. Instead, he came out from behind his desk and crossed over to the portrait of the patriarch of the Crane family. Stuart stared wordlessly at the picture, and as Albert watched him, a storm of conflicting emotions blew across his pinched face. A brass lamp cast a muted yellow glow over the old man's stern likeness, its subdued light doing little to attenuate his severity. His was an imposing presence that had not lost its power to chill a room, even in death.

"My grandfather was a formidable man, Mr. Huxley," Stuart began gravely. Albert could not be certain if the man spoke out of adoration or enmity, and decided that there was probably a measure of both in his monologue. "He was never formally educated, yet he possessed a business acuity that would have shamed most Harvard graduates. More to the point, he was a driven man, who refused to have his ambitions defeated or deflected by obstacles. He built his company on the foundations of dogged determination and guts. His life could well stand as a testimony to the soundness of the American dream. If a man has the vision and courage, he may well achieve anything within the realm of his imagination. These are values which my grandfather instilled in me. Quinsett owes an incalculable debt to Mordecai Crane. It's all fine and well to declare that you don't care about his reputation, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand by and allow his memory to be sullied by vapid nonsense."

Crane looked hard at Huxley for a moment and then let his gaze drift away. Albert had heard his own accounts of the elder Crane's life. They had not been nearly as generous. True, the old man had played a major role in laying the groundwork for this town, but he had done so with the ruthless and unfeeling sensibilities of a jackal. Albert was sure that Stuart harbored no real illusions about the old man, but in his strange sense of decorum, Crane would rather lie than appear to be an ingrate. After all, Mordecia's fortune had allowed him to become what he was today...officious prick and all. After a moment, the younger Crane resumed his narrative. "More than anything else, he was a pragmatist. Practicality governed his every action and thought. That is why I find his tale of that night so...disturbing and perplexing."

Stuart lapsed into a troubled reverie...consternation was clearly visible upon his face. "Some years before he had finally died, possibly two years after I had assumed the directorship of this company, Mordecia summoned me to the family house. Even then, it was apparent that he was fighting the cancer with every last ounce of tenacity. Through the pain, he told me the story of what had happened with that Indian woman. Naturally, I had already heard all of the malicious rumors, but this was the first time that he had ever deigned to speak of the incident. As things turned out, it was also the last. There had been a series of disappearances in Quinsett that year. Somehow, he and the other influential citizens of the town established that the Indian woman, this Jeniah something or other, was the one responsible. He told me that they could produce no tangible evidence against her and he told me why, but I choose to keep that bit of information private."

Huxley started to object, but Stuart raised a forestalling hand. "This group of prominent citizens came to a decision about what should be done about this woman. Strictly speaking, what they did was a criminal act, but these were men of initiative."

"In other words, they murdered her," Huxley intoned flatly.

Stuart grimaced and hissed, "They did as they felt the situation warranted. As it turned out, their actions were justified; the murders and disappearances stopped."

"There's more, Stuart. No point in trying to deny that. I'm familiar with all of the old stories." Huxley persisted.

Crane sighed, as if he had been forced to personally carry the burden of this family pall. "Mordecia was not well by this time. He was a stoic man, but could not hide the fact of his incessant pain. Constant pain will muddle even the sharpest of minds given time. He told me that this Jeniah was a witch...shaman was the exact word that he used. He told me that she had used witchcraft to dispose of her victims, all in preparation for some grand ritual. He insisted that she possessed a host of supernatural abilities...shape shifting and that sort of rubbish. It was particularly painful to witness such a keen mind reduced to such absurdity. He deserves better than to have his memory profaned by old stories that are better left forgotten. I know precisely what you think of me, Huxley, and I could candidly care less, but it you possess any sense of honor then you'll keep this child's tale from the public ear."

"If I'd have had any other intention, then I wouldn't have wasted my time coming here," Huxley replied thinly. The notion that his unscrupulous bastard would appeal to his sense of honor was laughable, but Huxley decided to let it go. His mind was buzzing with other questions to be asked and vague connections which were yet to be made. There was a maddening pattern to all of this, but it refused to crystallize. "When did this execution take place?"

"It will have been fifty years ago come this August first."

There was a flare of something, a brief resolution of an elusive puzzle, but it was there and gone before Huxley could grasp its form and definition. He silently cursed its defiance and his own inability to drag it forth from the shadows.

"Why are you so concerned with the specifics?" Crane demanded. "What's done is done. With the exception of Crimmon, all of the participants are dead. Dredging up the past can only accomplish the defamation of good family names."

"You're wrong about that," Huxley corrected, deciding that the time was right to blow this bastard out of the water. "Last night, somebody decided to redecorate old Lars Ingstrom's barn. They also slaughtered fifteen of his cows in the bargain. The guts were used to spell out a nasty little message...it has begun. It may be nothing more than a sick joke, or a personal grudge against the old bugger, but I'm inclined to think that it's more than just that. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

Stuart pursed his lips and tented his fingers in what Huxley had come to recognize as his contemplative gesture. "You're implying that what happened at the farm is related to the reporter's death?"

"I'm not implying anything. I'm telling you flat out. There was some kind of occult symbol burned right into the side of that damned barn. This happens on the same night that Carlson takes a nose dive out of the hotel window. He just happens to be here to dig up dirt on your grandfather's shenanigans. It could be a coincidence, but I wouldn't bet my pension on it."

"If it's not a coincidence, then what precisely do you think that it is?" There was just enough of nuanced sarcasm in Crane's voice to convince Huxley that he would never accept what he was thinking.

"Sometimes, when you kill people, you just might piss off one of their relatives. It doesn't matter if that person was a saint, or the fucking devil himself, you're apt to leave behind someone itching for a little retribution. Maybe one of Jeniah's family members has decided to come looking for a little payback."

"You think of this as a possible act of vengeance?" Crane struggled to keep a straight face, but failed miserably.

The prospect of personal danger had captured his full attention, just as Huxley had hoped that it would. The image of the eviscerated cattle returned to Huxley's mind, raw and disturbing. How far would someone capable of such butchery go to satisfy a craving for revenge? Huxley was loath to consider it. "It's possible. I can't give you an answer without knowing more about what happened both to the reporter and the incident out at the farm. I'm not in a position to get those answers anymore. I came here to warn you to be careful. It may well be that this is just a twisted joke or a warped desire to see some big shots squirm. That's most likely what it is, but there is also a chance that someone out there has a serious hard on for your ass. If that is the case, then I'd tread very softly if I were you. These two incidents were the work of someone who is seriously and violently deranged...the kind of person who would be capable of just about anything."

Crane mulled over this advice for a long time and then nodded almost timidly. Then he shook his head and looked at his watch, a curt signal that Huxley's time was up. The dismissal vexed Huxley, but this too he let pass. He had conveyed what he had considered to be the last of his duties. Let this officious little prick watch out for his own ass. Crane threw him a sardonic and dismissive token of gratitude. "I appreciate you bringing this to my attention before any damage could be done."

Huxley stood up and asked, "I assume that you'll be speaking to the others?"

"Yes, I'll convey your concerns to the others," Crane replied brusquely.

Huxley could not resist the opportunity to take one final shot. "Will you go and see Cameron, or would you rather I do it?"

Crane's face tightened at the mention of his estranged brother's name and he glowered at the former sheriff. "I'll speak to Cameron. Goodbye, Mr. Huxley."

The two men regarded each other in a rare moment of frank empathy, which only passes between people who either love or hate each other profoundly...and even then only rarely. Then Huxley turned and sauntered out, not bothering to close the door behind him. Stuart had always disliked that despicable boor of a man, who had the gall to mention Cameron's name in his presence. Ah, but his tactless barb would not be forgotten. Huxley had mentioned revenge... an institution in which the Cranes held great personal stock. They lived by a simple creed...no affront was forgotten and no slight was ever forgiven...or unpunished.

After a time, Stuart's consternation at Huxley's impertinence gave way to consideration of the things that the former Sheriff had imparted. Crane had never believed any of his grandfather's occult nonsense regarding Jeniah's death. His account of Mordecai's mental state near the end did not convey the full extent of the man's deterioration. He had become obsessed with the occult, vehemently insisting that the ghost of this Indian woman would rise like a vindictive storm and seek retribution for all that had been done to her. He spent the final years of his life in constant fear of a memory that time had distorted beyond all semblance of reality or rationality.

Jeniah had been a murderer...that much was true. A group of the town's elite had removed her, perhaps with a little more enthusiasm than the situation warranted, but they did, after all, have an obligation to the community. Not to mention their own interests.

The group. Very few people in the town of Quinsett knew of the existence of the group. It was Mordecai Crane who had come up with the concept of bringing the fledgling town's business leaders into a cartel. The cartel had been formed to protect those mutual interests, which at the time, had been the breaking of the infant, but militant unions. That particular effort had unfortunately been met with failure, but there had been other beneficial aspects to the association. The liquidation of the Indian woman had been one of the group's more selfless efforts. Five families...five groups of men who had secured a stranglehold on the area's lucrative business community. A Crane had always been the informal chairman of this esoteric cartel and it now fell to Stuart to decide how best to utilize Huxley's information.

He placed four calls, each extending a summons to an impromptu meeting of the five families. Each had been curious about the nature of that summons and each had been told that Stuart was not in a position to divulge information without the group present as a whole. Once the group meeting had been arranged, Stuart placed a final call to a man named Vincent Scallari. Scallari owned and operated a chain of used car dealerships in the greater Seattle area, though the majority of his wealth had been accrued through other, less legitimate ventures.

"Scallari," a gruff voice announced when Crane's connection was finally made. Crane conjured up a picture of the man who went with the voice, knowing that the two were well matched. "Hello, Vincent. It's Stuart Crane."

"Ah, Stuart. It's been some time. How is business?" Scallari inquired, his tone warming perceptibly at the sound of Crane's voice.

Despite his aversion to all things vulgar, Crane was forced to concede that this man possessed a certain brute charm when the mood moved him. That charm camouflaged a brutal, merciless heart which Crane had had the occasion to witness over the course of their association. "Business is well. I trust that you can say the same?"

"The money comes in from one source or the other, Stuart. You know how it is," Scallari replied casually. Crane offered how he did, in fact, know how it was. Amenities dispensed with, Scallari got right down to business, another trait that Crane greatly admired. "Perhaps there is a matter other than business that has you taking time out of your busy work day to call your old friend."

"Actually, there is a matter that I'd like to discuss with you. It's a rather delicate matter and best spoken of in person. Could I impose upon you to pay our little group a personal visit, possibly in the neighborhood of twelve tonight at the mill board room?"

Crane heard the rifling of pages. "Yes, Stuart. I'll be there."

The two men exchange trivialities for a few moments, each speaking of things that held no real importance for the other. Crane rang off and sat back to consider all that had passed in the last few hours. There was something soothing about Scallari. He exuded a deadly competence that had never failed to put Crane at ease whenever their destinies crossed. If, as Huxley had theorized, the group was about to be victimized, Scallari was the ideal man to deal with the situation. Placated, Stuart smiled and dismissed the matter from his mind. He had a business to run after all, and old ghosts could be set aside...at least until the witching hour.

2

Huxley's appraisal of Raymond Saddler had been remarkably precise. Whatever Saddler's shortcomings might be, police work did not rank among them. He was a reserved, thoughtful man by nature, who took time to ponder matters through before he expressed any grand opinion. He approached an investigation the way one might approach an animal that he has never encountered before, not committing himself to any one perspective, opinion or course of action until every possible avenue had been explored. At a cursory glance, his methods might be categorized as plodding, but beneath the slow, methodical exterior there existed a keen and incisive mind that could isolate and seize upon every minute and obscure detail. Saddler had discovered early in his career that it was easy to overlook the minutia, especially if it tended to contradict whatever tangent you happened to be running along at the time.

His first morning as the Quinsett Sheriff gave way to afternoon, while Saddler waded through the station's general files and familiarized himself with the few open investigations. He was pleased that most of these were nothing more than petty break and enters...a missing four wheel dirt bike, a stolen boat and motor, and a fiberglass canoe. Ray wondered what drove people to steal recreational _toys_. Envy, he supposed. And then there were several instances of the all-time favorite and significantly darker small town affliction...missing kids. These were comprised of teenagers who, rather than decay in a dead end backwater, chose to cast their fates on the wind of chance and let it sweep them where it may. In L.A., he had experienced the reverse and realized that these cases were virtually unsolvable. There was a dark side to this phenomenon of course. Every now and then, some hunter would stumble across a half-rotted corpse or a set of moldering bones as he was rooting out grouse in cool October air. Theirs would be a story where the ending had been written but the whys and wherefores would remain forever a mystery.

It was a little after one o'clock when Ray decided to break for an abbreviated lunch. As he wolfed down his coffee and muffin, he contemplated calling Ronnie, but decided against it. If he were to call her, he just might slip into a discussion of the morning's events which she might interpret this as the first sign of burgeoning stress. Yes, it would be best if she knew nothing of the suicide or the inexplicable vandalism at the Ingstrom farm. Ronnie had viewed Quinsett as a placid little enclave of Americana and Ray could see no gain in disabusing her of that notion so soon. He had pledged that he would emerge from the lethargy that had gripped him after that day in the alley. As poignant as it had been, Saddler wanted his opportunity to feel that sense of loss that had been clearly engrained in Huxley's face as they had stood in the parking lot this morning. Tonight would be time enough for a recount of day one. Beside, he had an engagement with a file and a set of Polaroids.

Returning to his office, he faced the files the way combatants will confront each other just before a big title fight. They sat upon his desk like a silent reprimand and Saddler was suddenly forced to admit that he had been avoiding them. Something seemed to caper around the unseen edges of the pictures, lurking in the background with the contemptuous smirk of a serpent. Feeling unaccountably tense, he sat down and opened the folder containing Huxley's preliminary report on the suicide. The initial account left him with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. There was a myriad of unanswered questions surrounding the man's death. This Carlson was an enigma and his suicide...a label he still did not entirely accept...had spawned a legacy of confusing contradictions. The hotel owner, Burlander was his name, had confirmed that Carlson had checked in only the night before and had paid the room for a full week. That odd bit of information yielded two obvious questions.

Why had Carlson come to Quinsett, a town where he had evidently never before been, just to throw himself out of a window? If the suicide had been premeditated, why had he bothered to pay the room for a week in advance?

Desultory answers could be produced for either question, but he had learned to be wary of trite explanations and Carlson's actions were not consistent with a man who intended to commit suicide. Why had he come here? Ray was tempted to conclude that the man had come with some specific purpose in mind. Quinsett was the end of the line, literally, and very few people happened here by chance. If he were to understand the motivations behind Carlson's death leap, Ray would have to learn more about the man himself. Carlson's personal effects had contained only two things that might help paint a partial portrait of their owner. The first had been a battered journal and the second had been his Astral Inquirer Press card.

Ray retrieved the card from the file and turned it over in his hands. Its faded and wrinkled condition spoke of years and much handling. Since there were no more recent cards in the file, Ray surmised that Andy had not worked for the paper for quite some time. Still, it was a beginning and every road, regardless of how long, had its first step. Ray picked up the phone and punched Mariam's number.

"Yes, Sheriff Saddler?"

"Mariam, I'd like you to place the following call for me." He gave her the complete number and waited for the connection to be made, while absently tapping a pencil on the faded card. He could hear the faint beeps and boops as he waited for the correct circuitry to click into place. As he did, he was struck by a nearly overwhelming sense of foreboding. ' _Hang the phone up. Do it now. Leave well enough alone and call the thing a suicide. Nobody's going to give a damn about a transient._ '

The voice was shrill with an apprehension that bordered on outright panic. Still, the notion was not without its compelling appeal. What was the old axiom about sleeping dogs? He was still wondering what all of this formless trepidation was about, when a female voice filled the line. "Good Morning, you've reached the offices of the Astral Inquirer. How may I help you?"

"Yes, I'd like to speak to Mr. er..." He fumbled for the name. "Webb. Clifford Webb. I believe that he is the editor?"

"Yes, he is the editor. Who may I say is calling?" Saddler smiled. A hint of suspicion had crept into the receptionist's tone. He suspected that a paper such as the Inquirer must receive an inordinate number of crazy phone calls. One of this receptionist's primary functions must be screening them out.

"Would you please tell him that Sheriff Saddler, of Quinsett Washington, would like to have a word with him? It is official business." Ray waited for the second time, hoping that his tone had carried enough credibility to satisfy this watchdog. There was a brief silence and then the receptionist said, "If you'll hold the line for a moment, I'll see if Mr. Webb is available."

Saddler's ear was accosted by the syrupy-sweet sounds of musak, mindless and numbing over the miles of fiber-optic wire. Andy Carlson had come to Quinsett for a reason, and Saddler was virtually certain that it had not been to commit suicide. The music was abruptly terminated and then Clifford Webb was speaking to him in the guarded tones of the habitually distrustful. "Hello Sheriff, how can I help you today?"

"I'd like some information concerning a former employee of yours, Andy Carlson. I'm only assuming that he is a former employee."

There was a weighty silence on the other end. Saddler could not be sure if Webb was trying to remember Carlson or trying to decide whether or not he should impart this information to a voice on the telephone. "All right, Andy worked for the paper for a little over two years, but that must have been five or six years ago."

Saddler had not been surprised by this response. Judging by his personal effects, Carlson was a step or two from outright vagrancy. "Can you give me some idea what Carlson was like, or why he left your paper?"

Again the considering silence. "Andy could best be described as stolid. He was a diligent, but introverted man. That may seem like a detrimental quality to a reporter, but he was rather good at his job...at least initially."

"I take it that he changed?"

"Yes. If you're familiar with our paper, then you know that we deal with issues involving the paranormal and the occult. Andy became obsessed with witchcraft. He became fixated with the notion that there was a conspiracy to resurrect ancient evils among the covens. In the end, his obsession became so pervasive that he could no longer focus upon his job and I was forced to let him go. Philosophical differences were what it came down to."

"Do you have any idea what he might have done after his dismissal?" Saddler inquired without much hope.

"Not really. I recall seeing his name on a few bylines, mostly freelance stuff for a few of the smaller papers."

"Mr. Webb, this might seem like a strange question, but would you say that he became unstable to the point of becoming a hazard to himself?"

"I would say that he was as crazy as a loon...even then. If he persisted in his delusions, then I can only imagine what he's like now." Webb hesitated. Saddler could almost hear his thoughts whirring away. "Would you mind telling me why a Washington Sheriff is so interested in Andrew Carlson's state of mind?"

"Andy died in my town last night. It appears as though he committed suicide by jumping out of a window of his hotel room." There was a long pause.

Saddler was sad to think that this small silence would have to serve as this man's final eulogy. "I'm sorry to hear that sheriff, but I'm frankly not surprised. Andy was a prime candidate for exactly that kind of ending. He lived alone, had no family or interests outside of his work. He seemed to shun all connections with the normal world. His only acquaintances were the people who he would meet in the course of researching a story. You can probably imagine that they were not among the most inherently stable people, themselves. Some people are born with a self-destruct mechanism built into them. Inevitably, something will set them off. In Andy's case, it was probably this fixation with the occult. Eventually, it had to lead him to an end like this." He paused, "Or one just like it."

Saddler blinked, not following Webb's implication.

"I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say," he remarked guardedly.

"Sheriff Saddler, the majority of the people who Carlson dealt with were ingenuous. They were just misguided people looking for some distraction to fill the void of boring, empty lives. However, there was a small faction that could be very dangerous. I'm not sure how you feel about witchcraft, and I suppose that it's irrelevant anyway, but the people who practice black witchcraft take it very seriously. Given the right circumstance, these people can be a very deadly bunch to deal with. There are certain practices in the occult that practitioners would not wish to become common knowledge...primarily because they are illegal. I'm talking about ritual rape and immolation, and just about every other type of perversion imaginable. These were precisely the type of people that Andy wanted to seek out...genuine psychotics who would not hesitate to eliminate any perceived threats to their privacy. Chances are that Andy threw himself out of the window, but it's also conceivable that he was a little too close to unearthing people who just don't like the light."

"Do you believe in Witchcraft, Mr. Webb?" Saddler had no real intention of asking that question, but found that it rose unbidden to his lips.

After a protracted silence, Webb replied, "I think that just maybe I do."

3

Saddler hung up the phone and stared blankly at the two folders on his desk blotter. Each seemed to sit in a natural juxtaposition to the other. He picked up the Polaroid of the farmer's barn and studied it closely. Though he could not divine its meaning, the intaglio was almost certainly some type of occult device. The pentagram told him that much. It occurred to him that Clifford Webb could very likely identify the symbol, but Ray was reluctant to enlist the aid of a man who sold twilight zone stories for a living. Webb's last remark had certainly been thought provoking. It wasn't far-fetched to entertain the notion that Carlson had been dealing with the wrong elements of the lunatic fringe and just perhaps they had taken vigilant measures to insure his permanent silence.

' _But the door was bolted from the inside,'_ his mind insisted, as had been the access door to the upper floor. This did not necessarily preclude outside entry. There was always the roof, but there was no immediate access from the street or the roof...unless of course, the perpetrator had been Spiderman. Suicide was still the most logical conclusion to be reached, but the incident at the Ingstrom farm nagged at Saddler like a rotten tooth. There was a connection between the two incidents, however obscure. His policeman's instinct hung on that thought with the tenacity of a pit bull. Andy Carlson arrives in Quinsett. He was a man consumed by a driving obsession with black witchcraft. Less than eight hours after his arrival, he is found lying dead in the street. At approximately the same time, there was an incredible, essentially soundless slaughter of cattle at a farm four miles away. A large pentagram is found burned into the side of the barn. A mere coincidence? Perhaps, but maybe it could best be described as a juncture of coincidental events though the specific relationship between the two incidents continued to elude him.

"What brought you here?" Ray demanded of the file in an oddly peevish voice. Of course, there was no reply, only a mocking silence. His gaze fell upon the journal. He had briefly scanned sections of Carlson's testimonial earlier in the morning. Most of the diatribe could only be described as the seemingly pointless meanderings of a seriously deranged man.

Be that as it may, Ray had no other way to unlock the mystery of Andy Carlson. Settling back into his chair, he opened the journal to the first page and began to read. The passages constructed a written portrait of a man harboring the most exotic delusions of grandeur (I am a champion, the white knight on a field of darkness) and a thoroughly developed paranoia (the world is infested by the ignoble, posing in the guise of the mediocre and the inconspicuous. I now fear that they know my name). Through every page, it became apparent that Andy Carlson was gradually sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of obsessive madness.

Over the space of six years, the diary provided a detailed account of Carlson's encounters with the inhabitants of the occult sub-culture. Despite the ubiquitous madness that screamed from the page, Andy's writing was surprisingly concise and analytical when it came to these meetings. Several of the passages were devoted to discrediting charlatans who were widely purported to be true witches. Andy tore into these charlatans with a vitriol that revealed his growing frustration...no, desperation would have been a more succinct term. Andy Carlson was a man who could see that everything that he had devoted his life to might well prove to be nothing more than a facile deception. Still, he dug ever deeper as if to validate not only his obsession, but his own existence.

Intersperse with these exposes of the fraudulent were interviews with people, whom Carlson declared were legitimate practitioners of the black arts. The specifics of their power had been ambiguous, but Carlson's narrative was charged with an eerie mixture of dread and exaltation. Through all of this, Ray gradually gained an understanding of exactly what it was that Andy was hoping to find. That discovery left Ray with little doubt that Andy had succumbed to insidious madness.

It took Ray three hours to wade through the journal. The final entry was dated 23/04, described Andy's meeting with a Ms. Z.W. and beyond that, several pages had been torn from the journal. They had not been ripped out, but had been neatly removed as though they had been kept and not discarded. The absence of these pages troubled Ray. It was not in keeping with the pattern that had been established in the first part of the diary. At different points throughout the journal, Carlson had crossed out various words and even entire passages. Some of these had been re-written, while others had been deleted. Not once had pages been removed from the book.

Not until the final entries.

' _Let it go, Ray,_ ' the voice reiterated. He wanted to. Quite badly in fact, but found that he simply couldn't ignore the faint cry of incongruity that surrounded Carlson's death. Nor could he have explained why it felt so vitally and personally important to unearth these answers.

The missing pages plagued him like a silent reproach. Saddler knew enough about psychology to understand that the majority of obsessive individuals adhere to strict behavioral patterns...as bizarre as they might seem to others. Carlson viewed his work with biblical reverence. Removing these pages was inconsistent with this kind of personality. Ray was aware of the perils and pitfalls of playing amateur psychologist, but he generally trusted his instincts, which insisted unequivocally that Carlson would not have removed these pages. Unless...unless it had not been Carlson who had removed the pages from the journal! ' _Ah, but once you stepped into that labyrinth of possibilities, everything assumed a new perspective and shading. What had Webb said? These people can be a very deadly bunch indeed._ '

What if Carlson had stumbled across something that posed a direct threat to one of these lunatics and they had killed him for it? The notion was plausible enough, even in a town the size of Quinsett.

"Andy Carlson was murdered," he declared to the clean florescent light of his office. The tone surprised Saddler by the sheer force of its conviction. Ray sighed and ran his fingers through his thick hair. Questions. Each question begat another, and that, in turn, opened the door on a whole host of others, none of which could be convincingly answered until he could produce a concrete answer for the first question...what had brought Andy Carlson, obsessed paranormal investigator at large, to the backwater town of Quinsett?

Ray pushed the file aside, deciding that Carlson's death would be listed as unexplained and not a clear cut suicide.

Nothing more could be accomplished by going over the files again, so Ray gathered up the folders and the Polaroid collection and slid them into his desk. He would have to exercise some patience until the results of the blood work came in. Saddler heard a hail of greetings as the second shift came in, and rose to meet his new deputies.

Ray had hoped that his first day would have proven a little less eventful, but he had still managed to survive more or less unscathed. All in all, it was good to be back in a role that fit him as comfortably as a pair of old slippers, despite the intrigue. When seven o'clock arrived, Saddler found that he was looking forward to going home to his wife and children.

As he walked to his car, Ray was unaware of the way that he drew his collar up like a man who subconsciously senses the approach of an apocalyptic storm.

Chapter Five

1

Veronica Ashcott-Saddler watched her husband until his car had disappeared over the rise in the road. She had managed to hide her inchoate anxiety all through breakfast, but as she watched him leave, her mouth twisted into a thin white slash of concern. She supposed that her anxiety was natural enough. After all, this was the first day of their new life. Veronica doubted that any of Ray's friends or associates had grasped just how profoundly the shooting of the Deleon boy had affected her husband. There had been many occasions over the past year, when she had privately despaired his ever overcoming the trauma of the shooting...feared that his shame and sense of failure would simply drag him down like a millstone. Then this job had appeared like a life line, but she could not shake off her persisting doubts. Ray was a good man and a capable one, but only exposure to whatever stress might be associated with the position of small town sheriff would reveal just how deeply he had been scarred. If this didn't work out...she cut the thought off savagely. It would work out. She would see to it.

When he had passed out of sight, she returned to the house, where Danny was finishing the last of his breakfast. He glanced up from his breakfast and favored her with a charming, toothless grin. Then Wendy met her mother's eyes and Ronnie's misgivings flooded back. The girl was precocious and almost unnaturally perceptive for a girl of her age. There were times (such as this one, for instance) when Veronica found her manner to be exasperating. "Why the long face, Wen?"

"Do you think daddy is going to be all right?" the girl asked gravely.

Veronica frowned. Both she and Ray had worked diligently to insulate Wendy from her father's trauma, but children seemed to possess some sixth sense that warned them of any potential trouble that might be looming on the horizon of family life. She could have brushed the question off, but with Wendy, a trite dismissal would never do. With equal gravity, she replied, "Daddy is going to be just great."

Wendy watched her mother closely for several seconds and then nodded, evidently convinced of her mother's sincerity. Just then, Smucky leapt onto the counter and began to meow out a plea for affection. Dutifully, Wendy went to the cat and draped it over her shoulder. She caressed its back and murmured in its ear. Veronica observed that, while holding the cat, her daughter seemed more like the little girl she was. Still holding Smucky, Wendy pushed through the kitchen door and out into the humid morning air, leaving a bemused mother to stare after her. Shaking her head, Ronnie set about clearing the breakfast table.

Her thoughts kept straying back to her husband. She had first met Raymond Saddler at a police charity function. He had been conspicuously _every day_ amongst the glitz of the L.A. chic and the L.A.P.D. brass. He had a reserved manner of speech that was so different from the mile-a-minute clatter of the social butterflies, or the inebriated mumblings of the other police officers. Despite this almost forbidding stoicism, Veronica had felt herself drawn to him for no specific reason that she could pinpoint. It had been she who had set out to seduce him in the finest tradition of the Ashcott's aggressive character. It was little surprise that she had captivated him with her combination of beauty and elegance. Initially, Saddler had been wary of both the name and the wealth which it represented, but she had labored to make both as incidental as possible. Still, winning him had been a complex and surprisingly protracted affair. It had been seven months before she had managed to entice him into her bed. Dispensing with the false modesty, she believed that her physical beauty had intimidated him. There had been times when he had all but flinched at the sudden flash of her beguiling green eyes or the toss of her red mane. Again, she had helped him to overcome his discomfort through persistent tenderness and reassurance, but part of her was secretly delighted by the power that she held over him. Gradually, he had come to see the difference in their backgrounds as just that...differences and not insurmountable obstacles.

There remained only one serious roadblock to their relationship...her father. It might well have seemed ridiculous that Arthur Ashcott would still try to exercise a dictatorial control over his twenty-three year old daughter's life, but the man had grown accustomed to having his own way and had grown accustomed to the automatic subservience of everyone around him. He thought it only fitting that this dominance would extend to his own family. Ashcott was to discover that his daughter possessed a fierce independence that rivaled his need to dominate. When he had learned of her relationship with a mere L.A.P.D. sergeant, there had ensued a titanic clash of wills that might have sent the city of angels crumbling into the Pacific.

He had expressly forbid her to see this Saddler with the tone of a man who expects immediate and unquestioning compliance.

She had told him that she would see whomever she pleased and that he could take his domineering, overbearing attitude and stuff it. The two massive wills clashed together like steel on granite. Ashcott had raved, implored, cajoled, and finally pleaded, but Veronica had refused to relent. She had won the contest, as she had known that she inevitably would because she was his jewel and he could deny her nothing. Seeing that this was going to be one instance where his imposing manner wasn't going to hold sway, Ashcott had resorted to making scathing predictions about their doleful future together. "Fine, if you must have your middle class toy, go ahead. I feel compelled to warn you that the day will come when you'll grow tired of the beer and bowling parties and the weekend outings at Burger King. Then you'll realize how I've tried to protect your best interests."

"Actually, I've always fancied Burger King," she had retorted sardonically. "Who's to say, maybe I'll apply for the Belair franchise rights." He had thrown up his hands in consternation and the two had forged an uneasy truce. Her father had never missed an opportunity to remind Ray of his good fortune in marrying an Ashcott.

On the outside, Saddler had bore these attacks with grim stoicism, but Veronica knew that he was not impervious to Ashcott's disdain. It was folly to think that her father would ever accept a lowly policeman as her husband, but she doubted if anyone could meet his lofty expectations for her.

Never one to be daunted, Veronica had made it clear to Saddler that she wanted him both as a lover and a husband. They had been married and Ashcott had attended, though he had sported a rueful frown through out the entire ceremony.

Even now, eight years after, many of her closest friends and associates were baffled by her attraction to the man. In their company, Ray seemed to retreat into a shell of polite reticence. Nor had she been able to express her attraction in terms that could be easily understood. Though pleasing to look at, Ray Saddler was not a handsome man when compared to the almost eerily beautiful men who haunted the rarified upper stratum of LA society. His appeal could not be defined in any concrete physical terms, yet she was more attracted to him than any man that she had ever met. Perhaps the root of that attraction lay in the intensity of his devotion to her, and later the children. Or possibly it was rooted in the way that he had managed to avoid insufferable cynicism in the face of the ugliness that confronted him day in and day out. Anyway, it was an elusive quality and she suspected that she would never fully understand it. He made her feel special in ways that went beyond mere physical beauty, upbringing and wealth. Saddler possessed a gift of making her feel wanted on the merits of her own individuality.

And now she was afraid.

Afraid for her marriage and for a man for whom she felt a genuine and unremitting love. Then there was another, less admirable part of her fear. Part of her could never bear to face her father if Saddler were to fail in Quinsett. The humiliation of having to concede that he may have been right would be more than her ego could tolerate. She had always abhorred that selfish part of her personality, but could no more purge it than a leopard could change its spots.

Veronica inhaled deeply. Ray would not fail. This move would prove to everyone's advantage. She would do all that was necessary to ensure that. She would keep this family afloat on the foundations of her strength and determination, attributes which she believed herself to possess in limitless abundance. She was, after all, an Ashcott.

The front doorbell rang. Veronica knew that it would be the housekeeper. Temporarily pushing aside her misgivings, Veronica swept Danny up into her arms and went off to answer the door.

2

She was working in her study when it began...when the fateful call came. She started as the phone's discordant buzz shattered the silence. She laid the flat of her palm upon her chest to feel her heart beating like a trip hammer. Closing her eyes, she willed herself to calm down. The phone continued to ring, but she still did not move to pick it up. The clock, on the upper left hand corner of the computer's screen, informed her that it was closing in upon noon. It would be Ray calling and she should have been anxious to know how his first day was going, but she had the crazy impulse to simply let the phone ring and hide here in the dark like a kid under the covers in the dead of night.

It brayed again and she snatched it up.

"Hello," she breathed in an absurdly tremulous voice, wondering why she was behaving like a flighty heroine in an old Victorian novel.

There was a momentary pause and then a voice, that Veronica did not recognize, announced, "Hello, I've been waiting."

Ronnie blinked. Yes, the speaker was unfamiliar, but her tone hinted at a long-standing intimacy. Somewhat flustered, she stammered, "I'm sorry, you seem to have me at a disadvantage."

"I trust that you've settled into the new house," the caller inquired. The voice was definitely feminine...rich and husky, it caressed the ear like velvet. Veronica gripped the receiver with bloodless fingers. The overwhelming need to hang up returned, now stronger than ever. This unknown caller held a mysterious allure which posed some vague threat to Veronica. She started to hang up, but her muscles refused to comply and she could only sit up and listen.

"I really don't know you," she whispered. A throaty laughter filled the line, eliciting a visceral, almost sexual response from Veronica. Her back stiffened as alternating waves of chill and warmth coursed along her spine in frantic waves. Her nipples had risen into tight, electric knots that poked boldly through the thin material of her blouse. The receiver felt as if it was vibrating in her hand.

"Of course you know me. It was I who brought you here."

"I'm going to hang up," Veronica gasped, beginning to feel afraid, but she knew that she was incapable of even releasing the telephone.

"No, you won't," the caller asserted quietly, as though Ronnie's defiance was not even a consideration. "You will listen to me and act at my direction. Circumstances do not enable us to meet as yet. There are preparations that you must first attend to, but we shall come together more intimately than any two people have ever done."

Veronica began to shake...fear, boiling like acid and tasting like copper, welled up from the pit of her stomach, making it an arduous task simply to breathe. As always, anger followed fear in close proximity. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler detested being afraid, hated the humiliation of being bent like a mindless animal. Through clenched teeth, she rasped back. "I don't know who you are, but obviously you're one crazy bitch. I want you to get the off my line and never call this number again..."

"Shut your insolent mouth!" the caller exploded, stunning Veronica into silence. The voice held a hysterical edge that reminded Ronnie of an enraged animal. "You require an object lesson on which of us shall wield control in this relationship? Very well, you shall have it."

An acute, incisive pain drilled into her right ear as though a needle had been jabbed out of the receiver and into her head. She attempted to scream, but her jaws locked shut, strangling the cry in her throat. She blinked and gazed about wildly, waiting for the nauseating pain to abate. Something had insinuated itself into her beleaguered mind. Veronica could sense its hot, malign presence like a dirty infection. The usurper had seized control of her body and forced her into the role of bystander in her own mind.

She balked at the notion of such a monstrous violation, but was powerless to resist it. The invader began to move her eyes, rapidly scanning the things on the desk. Her gaze settled on a letter opener with an ornamental pearl handle. Her free hand reached out with the graceless, mechanical precision of a robot and snatched up the holder. Slowly, the hand reversed the opener, until the sharp end was pointed at her chest. Veronica watched, wide-eyed and helpless, as that menacing tip began to inch toward her.

"You will come to grasp the importance of obedience. Your desires and needs are of no consequences. I demand the promise of unquestioning and unflagging devotion," the caller intoned flatly. Tears welled up from Veronica's green eyes, running as hot as lava over the aristocratic ridges of her high cheekbones.

The hand holding the knife twisted the blade and slipped it into the gap in her blouse. She was dimly aware of Wendy calling for her cat from somewhere in the side yard. The blade jerked first up and then down. The small gold buttons came free of the material and bounced onto the desk with a distinct click. Her hand continued to maneuver the handle along the length of the blouse, detaching buttons one after the other. Now Veronica began to whimper. The folds of the blouse were pushed back to reveal heavy breasts supported by a stylish flesh-toned bra. There was a flash of cold metal and the material parted in two flaps. The opener flicked the ruined garment out of the way, exposing but not touching the bare flesh beneath.

"Will is a most curious thing," the stranger remarked in tones that were more instructional than angered. "The stronger it is, the less able it is to bend and accommodate. Your will is most formidable...and since it will not bend, it must be broken."

Veronica watched in horrified fascination as her own hand gently moved the opener's blade along the swell of her right breast and over the turgid pink nipple. The cold steel teased the sensitive flesh playfully until it stood erect. Then the opener withdrew a distance of three inches, swiveled once again and began to close on the heaving globes. It moved with a languid casualness that demonstrated no concern for the terror it evoked or the damage it threatened to inflict. Her hand moved more like a mindless, mechanical apparatus than an organic extension of her own body and mind.

Two inches.

One inch.

Ronnie again attempted to scream, but she was no more than an observer in her own house, helpless and vulnerable to the caprices of this terrifying interloper.

There came the first cold sting of pressure as the sharp point dimpled the skin two inches below and to the left of the pink nipple. The firm, creamy skin began to yield grudgingly. The voice of the caller remained light, unaffected by Veronica's paralyzing terror. "Perhaps this will help you fathom the salient truths of the situation in which you now find yourself. Your flesh has rebelled against you. It is indifferent to your wealth, your name or your beauty. It responds only to my bidding."

Veronica began to feel faint and welcomed the possibility as a reprieve from this madness. This was a dream. It was the only plausible explanation. Soon, she would awake to find her head resting on her forearms as she had dozed at her desk. This had to be something induced from the strain and anxiety of the move and everything that stood at risk. She seized upon the notion, but before the merciful darkness could claim her, a ripping pain erupted deep in her cerebral cortex, radiating outward until her entire body writhed in white agony. The flesh of her upper torso broke out in a heavy sweat that covered her in a sheen of oily perspiration. Veronica was obliquely aware of a soft sigh issuing from the receiver. The sound was a ripe expression of sexual pleasure as though Veronica's suffering provided the caller with a sort of elemental delight. As if in confirmation, the caller breathed, "I feel all that you feel. You fail to see that pain is the purest of all physical experiences. Unconstrained by emotion or desire, only pain can lift us to the highest level of epiphany...of pure insight. Only exquisite pain can teach us the truth."

Despite the wracking spasms, the offending hand never faltered. Now it resumed its forward motion, digging and twisting as it went. Blood welled up from the breast and dripped onto the flat of her abdomen. The droplets glittered like rubies against the white flesh.

"And what has your pain taught you, my jewel?" the intruder inquired sweetly. Mesmerized by the flow of blood from the small wound, Veronica felt her jaws unclenched. She considered crying for help, but only for a fleeting moment. Thinking that she had regained the faculty of speech, she opened her mouth and cried, "It teaches me to listen!"

No sound came from her lips, but the words reverberated in her skull like a detonating artillery shell, and Ronnie knew that she had been heard. There was a momentary silence and then the intruder replied. Her voice suggested regret and ire and that frightened Veronica more than any tirade might have. "You mouth the words, but they lack conviction."

The hand brandished the opener, now moving it to head level and starting it towards Veronica's face. "You are exquisite. Your beauty is the source of a secret vanity. You revel in it; hold it forth for worship, but what if it was to be marred? Could your pride withstand the trauma of disfigurement?"

Ronnie screamed until it felt as though her throat and lungs would burst. The room remained deathly silent. The tip homed in on one lovely green eye. "Who would waste a glance on you if I were to pluck out this bewitching emerald and in its place, leave a gaping, empty socket?"

Veronica was visited by a vivid image of the excruciating hell such a wound would rouse and could feel the gush of fluids from the punctured eyeball before the point could even reach her face. How far could the point penetrate into her brain before death rescued her from this horror?

By maddeningly small increments, the opener crept ever closer, until her eyes could no longer focus on the gleaming tip. "Please," she whimpered. "I'll listen...do whatever it is that you want."

The indifferent silence persisted. Veronica's mental pleas degenerated into a series of inarticulate wails. In the instant before it appeared certain that the opener would pierce her eyeball, her arm went limp and the hand opened. The opener fell harmlessly to the carpet. It was several seconds before the reality of what had occurred filtered through her terror. Relief was followed by a wave of convulsive sobs that wracked her taut body. The dispassionate voice began to speak again, though Ronnie had lost her grip on the receiver. Apparently no longer requiring the medium, the voice resonated through the chambers of her mind like a November wind...a foretaste of death and withering. "I believe that I've made my point. Yours is a formidable will. I feared that it would have been necessary to mar you before you would yield to me. Fortunately, your stubbornness has not eclipsed your reason. It would have been a genuine shame to vandalize such exquisite beauty."

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice was a tremulous whisper now, but Veronica was grateful that she could speak once again.

The intruder elected to ignore her question. "This indoctrination was unavoidable. If you are to be of use to me, you must be...conditioned. It is not only pain that I am able to inflict upon you... I can also do this." Veronica winced, bracing herself for some new variation of torture which she feared she lacked the mettle to endure. Instead, pleasant warmth began to spread, rolling through her terror-constricted muscles in a soothing wave. It coursed through her veins, carrying with it a placating sense of contentment. The wave reached the extremities of her body and then rebounded back toward her center, gaining intensity as it rushed along the internal alleyways of her body. There, in the secret, feminine depths, that spark became a raging flame. Even as she closed her eyes and arched her back, Veronica recognized that floating state of euphoria and like an explosion, her body convulsed beneath jolt after delicious jolt of vibration and contraction. Through the mist of her pleasure, Ronnie was vaguely aware of the other's exclamations of abandon. Part of her was repulsed by this shared intimacy. It was a small part really, and held no sway over her trembling body, which could appreciate nothing beyond its own lustful needs.

Veronica cried out. The silence remained unscathed, though she felt certain that the walls must crumble from the raw, visceral power of her ecstasy. She had no sooner regained some semblance of self-control, when she was again being borne upward. This time, her muscles lost all resistance and she slid to the carpet in a boneless sprawl, conscious of nothing other than the thousands of invisible fingers dancing lightly over her insides. The titillation went on for an interminable length of time. Veronica had never imaged that such a pinnacle of pleasure could be so sustained. When the contractions finally ceased, Veronica had been reduced to a quivering mass of sensitive flesh who could do nothing other than listen.

Satisfied that she had completely captured the woman's attention, the intruder began to speak in earnest. Mesmerized, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler absorbed every word.

Eventually, she began to smile.

3

After a long period of disconnection, consciousness filtered through the numbing fog, pulling Veronica back into her physical surroundings. She stared blankly about, blinking very much like a woman who has just awoken from a deep and profound sleep. There had been a subtle shift in the room, but she could not immediately identify the change. Then she glanced down and gasped. The exhalation was flat and ugly, the sound that a punctured tire might make.

Her blouse hung open. Blood spattered her slacks in quarter-sized droplets. She stood quickly, but the swift reaction nearly toppled her to the floor of her office. Disturbing stirrings of a frightful nightmare mocked her from the vault of her sub-conscious. It was then that she first noticed the letter opener lying on the carpet near the leg of the desk. It winked obscenely in the subdued light of the office. She swept the opener under the desk with her foot, not understanding her action or the complex mixture of terror and anger that inspired it. The strident buzzing of the forgotten telephone captured her attention, its mindless screech reminding her of a cloud of angry wasps. She should have picked it up, replaced it in the cradle, but she found herself backing away from it as though it represented some vague, yet sinister threat.

She stumbled to the door and was about to leave the study, when she remembered that her ruined blouse was hanging open. With the understanding came a debilitating panic. What had happened? How had she come to find herself in this frantic state, with her clothes ripped and blood stains on her slacks? She attempted to recall events of the last hour, but found herself confronted by a stubborn confusion that defeated her efforts. She had been working on agreements and contract documents and then...then something had happened though, as to what the nature of that _something_ might be, she couldn't recall. The incident was occluded by a strange, disorienting fog. She only knew that it had left her feeling violated and obscenely dirty.

"You're being ridiculous. Ray had called. You remember answering the phone, don't you?" She spoke in the slightly vexed tone of an exasperated mother to an errant child.

For several moments she stood motionless by the door, trying to unravel the mystery of those lost moments. Gradually, a state of calm settled over Veronica, working to assuage her anxiety and quell her mounting panic. There were, after all, things to be done...things of great consequence. The inquisitive part of her mind fell silent as an abstract, but exigent need assumed control of her actions.

Veronica moved back into the center of the room. Picking up the receiver, she replaced it in the cradle and then crawled under the desk to retrieve the letter opener. She held it up to the light and saw that the tip was smeared red. In her burgeoning state of calm, she didn't think to draw any connections between this and the blood on her slacks. At any rate, such considerations would have struck her as pointless and wasteful. There were arrangements to be made...paths to be cleared, and she could ill afford to waste precious time pondering trivialities. Instinct warned her that she had best get about her business before her husband returned home. She did not know why it was imperative that Ray knew nothing of what she was about to do, but armed with her new sense of purpose, Veronica did not question this intuition.

Satisfied that the study was in order, she left the room and crept to the stairs. She could hear Mrs. Quilling laboring in the kitchen, humming tunelessly as she worked. She mounted the stairs as lightly as possible, not wanting to attract the attention of either her housekeeper or her inquisitive daughter (snoopy brat, was what she actually had thought, though she had no notion of where this rancor found its origins). If she was discovered in this state there was bound to be a barrage of questions that she was unable and unwilling to answer. No, better to do what must be done and avoid all unnecessary complications. She made her way to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Stripping off the torn blouse and bra, she examined herself in the full length mirror. The wound on her breast brought a perplexed frown to her lips.

' _How had that happened?'_ she wondered uneasily. Already the memory of the blood-tipped opener had faded. Gingerly, she probed the wound with the tip of her index finger. It was puffy and red and extremely tender to the touch. Opening the medicine cabinet, Veronica took down a box of cotton swabs and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She applied several drops of the liquid and watched, mesmerized, as the disinfectant bubbled like lava. After a moment, she added a layer of liquid bandage.

The unaccountable wound kept trying to demand her attention, but something succeeded in stifling that demand. She peeled off her bloody slacks and panties, which were oddly wet, and stuffed them into the laundry chute as she returned to the master bedroom. There was a graceless, mechanical aspect to her actions that was reminiscent of a poorly choreographed dance. Something or someone felt as though it was impeding all thought, instead demanding movement towards an ineffable end. Relegated to an uncustomary role of obsequious subservient, Veronica made no effort to examine this persisting sense of being driven. Entering the walk-in closet, she rummaged through her extensive wardrobe, not sure what she was searching for, but oddly certain that she would recognize it once she found it. After a moment, she pulled down a powder blue set of sweats and quickly pulled them on, before again heading down the stairs.

Pausing at the entrance to the kitchen, she announced, "Mrs. Quilling, I'll be going out for about an hour. I expect to be back before my husband gets home."

"That's fine, love," the house-keeper replied without glancing up from her work. The sickeningly sweet old woman's voice annoyed Veronica to no end, but she allowed it to pass. As she emerged into the side yard, that quizzical imperative once again assumed control of her actions. Without knowing precisely why, Veronica crossed the yard and went into the tool shed, which had that musty, closed-in feeling. Gazing around owlishly, she spent several moments scanning the neatly hung selection of tools arrayed on three of the walls, finally selecting a short-handled spade. She did not hesitate for an instant and in the next moment, was heading for the second garage. In her haste, she did not notice that her daughter was watching her from the shadows with a rather bemused expression set on her face. Wendy wanted to approach her mother and ask what she was up to, but there was a flat, graceless aspect to the older woman's movement. It occurred to Wendy that her mother might be in a somnambulist's trance. That was ridiculous of course, but Wendy still could not bring herself to approach her mother.

Veronica threw the spade roughly into the passenger seat of her Spyder and carefully pulled the small car out of the garage. Seconds later, she was zipping north along Ringgold Lane with no precise idea why or what her intended destination might be.

"Veronica, just what exactly are you doing?" she demanded of herself. Though the question seemed reasonable enough, she made no effort to consider it. She had something to do. Questioning the particulars could be...dangerous, so she decided to act, not to think. The sense of being _directed_ intensified as she drove north.

Ringgold Lane was a gravel road that was only sporadically maintained once north of the Saddler home. It had been more than a month since the road had been graded and the neglect had created a washboard that bounced the small car like a rubber ball. The similarity between her ride and the one that Mordecai Crane and his _associates_ had taken almost fifty years before would have been lost upon Veronica. Even as the car was jolted by a series of deep ruts, she was barely cognizant of the beating that her prized possession was absorbing. With her mouth slightly open and her head slightly tilted to one side, it appeared as though she was listening to an invisible companion...fixated by its unspoken message.

A few miles north of her house, the branches of the tall trees extended across the road to each other, creating a natural canopy and plunging the roadway into gloom and shadow. Here, she shifted down and slowed the car to a virtual crawl. Whatever it was that had compelled her to come here, she was growing very close to its source. Glancing down, she discovered that the flesh along her forearms had risen into great hackles. As she rounded a sharp curve, a small opening appeared in the trees off to her left. Her heart began to race and she knew instinctively that she had reached her prescribed destination. Without even bothering to pull off of the traveled portion, Veronica ground the car to a halt and jumped out. She stood next to the car in that strange listening posture, then reached in and retrieved the spade. After a slight pause, she started out for the opening in the trees.

The previous night's downpour had left the leaves soaking wet and pushing through the tangle of branches brought a shower of cool water down upon her. Veronica was oblivious to this, just as she was unmindful of the way the saturated ground sucked at her sneakers like a repulsive mouth. A short way into the wet forest, the trees opened onto a roughly symmetrical clearing. It had once been a perfect rectangle, but with time weeds and underbrush had encroached upon the yard's perimeter. She stood poised on the clearing's edge. This small, overgrown bit of land held the answer for why she had been guided here. There was a ubiquitous presence hanging in the air along with the oppressive humidity. She should have been frightened...not only of this bizarre place, but by her odd state of robotic disconnection. Instead of terror, she experienced a profound sense of exhilaration that one normally associates with a new and anticipated beginning. Within this clearing was a doorway that would lead not so much to any one specific place as it would to an amazing personal apotheosis.

As she examined the area more closely, Veronica noticed that there were fingers of moldering brick protruding through the clusters of weeds and bushes.

A building had stood here at one time. Her mind conjured a vision of an exquisite gothic mansion. This had been a grand and glorious place. Who could say what marvels had unfolded here, or what insidious evil had caused the downfall of a splendid edifice?

It was in this euphoric state of mind that Ronnie moved into the clearing. She had proceeded only a short distance, when she encountered a baffling resistance. Frowning, she attempting to push forward, but the resistance increased in direct proportion to her forward effort with every step she took. Finally, resistance equaled forward momentum and she was unceremoniously thrown back, tripping over a stump and landing hard on her firm derriere. She scrambled to her feet, spurred on by irritation, and charged the invisible wall, only to be met with the same humiliating result. Elbow perched on a stump; she regarded the middle of the clearing with the puzzled consternation of one who has just tripped over a paint mark on the pavement.

"It doesn't want to grant you entry," a voice informed her. It echoed in her mind, ominously familiar.

"I have no idea what you mean. What doesn't want me to go through?" Veronica demanded, unmindful of the fact that she was conversing with an unseen presence that had evidently taken up residence in her mind.

Her voice came out flat and alien in the humid afternoon air. Somewhere in the upper boughs of one of the nearby trees, a robin chirped a cry of alarm. The internal voice returned, elaborating on just what she had encountered and how she would surmount it. She closed her eyes and listened intently. Her joggers were caked with black muck as were her tracks and sweat top. Rivers of perspiration flowed freely over her face and she absently brushed the stinging sweat away with a filthy sleeve. She was powerless to do anything other than listen...and heed. The voice was hypnotic...and it seemed that beneath its beguiling lilt, Veronica could perceive the slightest intimation of violence. When the instructions had been issued, she stood and moved to comply like a marionette on a string.

Grasping the shovel in both hands, she strode to the point where she had met the initial resistance. She probed the invisible barrier and felt, but did not see a transparent wall or field. Her first impression had proven correct...someone or something had erected a barrier to keep her out.

' _Or to keep something in,'_ her mind amended quickly. There was a sudden flare of argent pain in her temples which drove the offending thought from her mind. ' _Don't think, just act,'_ she cautioned herself. With this, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler stepped back and planted her feet in the loose soil. Drawing back the spade, she swung in a tight, savage arc. There was a deafening hiss and she again found herself being propelled backward through the air. A smoking object whizzed within inches of her face and she realized that it had been the spade. She scrambled to retrieve the shovel as if it was a lost weapon.

About her, shrill cries of negation tore the air. The sheer despair in the sound made her wince and want to run away. Instead she extended the spade before her as though it was a warding talisman, and then slowly advanced. She tensed in anticipation as she approached the spot where she had first encountered the barrier, but there was nothing...only clear, ordinary air.

An electric current reverberated through her muscles, warm and mildly erotic. Veronica began to smile, sensing that she had accomplished something extraordinary...feeling that she had pleased someone, whose favor was critically important.

At various points throughout the clearing tendrils of smoke drifted up in lazy billows from the tangle of weeds. Veronica spared a brief thought for the source of the mysterious smoke, having no way of knowing that it came from the moldering and blackened remains of Father Crimmon's wafers. Until the moment that she had shattered the barrier, the wafers had been as well preserved as the day that the priest had planted them in the ground. Even had she been able to grasp any of this, the knowledge would have done little to deter her from her course...the sensation...the warmth was simply too elemental to be denied.

She ventured deeper into the clearing, stepping over the foundations of the witch's building. The moss-slimed brick had faded with age, becoming a uniform, lackluster gray that reminded Veronica of moldering bones. Even that stark metaphor could not penetrate her new-found state of tranquility. She had come to this place, guided by an unseen presence, for a great and secret purpose. The very fibers of her being vibrated with the immutable conviction that this was a crossroads of sorts and no matter which path she was to choose, her life would be forever altered. In truth, there was only one path open to her as her volition had been surrendered the instant she's answered the forgotten phone call. Veronica, however, was oblivious to this essential truth.

"Come my pretty one," she spoke loud, though in a voice that was not her own. Falling to her hands and knees, she began to scramble around in the dirt. Her movements assumed the disquieting appearance of an alien ritual. She would press her palms flat to the ground and then pause, mouth set in a slash of intense concentration. After several seconds, she would move on and repeat the process on another patch of ground. Finally, she came to a spot at the approximate center of the space within the foundation. She stiffened abruptly and sat up on her haunches.

Had that been a mild vibration? Indeed, she thought that there had.

Trying to steady her trembling hands, Veronica carefully laid both hands upon the spot. For a second there was nothing, and she experienced a rush of intense disappointment. Then a surge of energy burst up from the ground like an invisible geyser, suffusing her with more power than she had ever imagined.

"Finally, I shall be free!" she exclaimed, voice cracking on the edge of hysterical euphoria. In that moment, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was gone, reduced to an empty vessel waiting to receive an old and ineffable evil. Darkness poured forth from the ground like hot bile. Veronica's eyes rolled back in her head and she screamed, giving inarticulate voice to every dark pleasure that the ever-inventive human mind had contrived in its long fall from innocence.

Miles away, a man lay in an uneasy slumber. He awoke, screaming into the darkness of his bedroom. Bewildered, he gazed about the room, trying fruitlessly to remember what it had been that had frightened him so badly.

Like fleshy garden implements, Veronica hooked her fingers into claws and began to tear at the ground. Clods of dirt flew in all directions as she attacked the loose earth with a frenetic energy that bordered on savagery. She paid no mind to the cracking nails and the flow of blood from the torn flesh. Nothing could supplant the urgent need to dig down and down.

Finally, she struck something hard. Brushing at the dirt, she saw that the object was metallic silver. Further digging revealed it to be a box. Eyes gleaming, face twisted into an indecipherable grin, she carefully lifted the box out of the hole and held it up to the afternoon sun. Now it was clear that the smile was one of derision and contempt as if she meant to mock the heavens with her deed. The silver gleamed wickedly in the sunlight amazingly untarnished by its long years of interment in the earth. Each side bore a complex intaglio that was an enigma to Veronica, but would have been shockingly familiar to her husband. The intruder offered a reverent smile at the symbols of preservation and rebirth.

"How long, I have waited for this moment, child. For a half a century I have been entombed in limbo, waiting for your coming. Now you have freed me. Your recompense shall be power and unbridled pleasure beyond the limits of your imagination. I give you my very heart as a symbol of my gratitude. Open the box and partake of my soul."

For a moment, Veronica hesitated, her defiant nature remembered, but there followed an irresistible pressure upon the walls of her mind and that resistance quickly wilted. It was what she secretly craved after all...power. To attain and wield tremendous power, that had always been her secret ambition. With this box, she would realize that ambition to limits she would not have even conceived of only short hours before. She worked her injured finger tips over the smooth surface, probing for the sensitive spot which would unlock the box's mystery. With an abrupt snap, the lid sprang open. There was a noxious rush of gas which caused Veronica to recoil, choking and gagging.

She did not surrender her death grip upon the silver box.

When her coughing fit had subsided, she was startled to discover that the box was gone. In her palm there lay a perfectly preserved human heart. As she watched in a trance of incredulity, it twitched and began to beat in her palm, pumping in a slow, even rhythm. She could not scream, nor could she throw it down. She could only hold it and feel its repulsive vitality against her skin.

"This is my gift to you," the interloper intoned solemnly. "You shall be the beneficiary of everything that I have become...the recipient of my power and knowledge. I shall cloak you in the mantle of the dark angel. Our shadow will grow and all about you shall tremble at the mere mention of our name."

Veronica had begun to tremble, her body quivering in syncopation with the thing that she held in her hands. In a voice made breathless with agitation, she inquired, "And what will you have me do?"

"I think that you know," came the soft reply, as light and delicate as a feather's fall. Peering inward, Veronica was surprised to discover that yes...she did know what the interloper required. She was even more astounded to realize that the notion neither shocked nor appalled her. Raising the still beating heart to her lips, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler began to eat. She tore a ragged chunk from the still-beating vessel and swallowed. The meat was tender, the flavor indescribably rich, and it continued to twitch even as she swallowed it. It occurred to her that she had never experienced anything so absolutely delightful in her life.

4

Wendy was kicking aimlessly about the back yard when she heard her mother's Spyder turn into the long drive. A serious, introspective child by nature, she had never been given to wild displays of emotion...no fit pitching to obtain a coveted toy or get her way. Though he would have been loath to admit it, Saddler had noticed a lot of her grandfather's mannerisms in his daughter's behavior. He feared mightily that this reserve could well evolve into cold reticence as she grew.

For the time being, she was simply a quiet, sort of shy little girl who kept a remarkably tight rein on her emotions. She did not run around the house to the garage upon her mother's return, but she did go quickly. She had been inexplicably anxious all afternoon. Though there was no rational reason for feeling this way, she had been troubled by her mother's absence. Thoughts of how her mother had looked...that strange fixed gleam in her eyes just before she had driven off, kept intruding on Wendy's thoughts. She looked as if she was...was in a trance of some sort.

As Wendy came around the corner of the house, she saw Veronica removing the spade from her two-seater. Even from the rear view, her mother's appearance startled Wendy. Her Nikes were caked with red mud and black top soil, and her tracks were a stained ruin as though she had been rolling in the dirt. Even as a child, Wendy was conscious of her mother's vanity over her appearance. Veronica was one of those women who could manage to look fashionable and lovely in a burlap sack, given the right accessories. Wendy did not entirely understand the concept of vanity, but she knew that her mother was extremely proud of her physical beauty, even if Veronica, herself, was reluctant to admit it. Seeing her mother in such a shabby state affected Wendy in the same way as if she had come upon Veronica doing the _naughty thing_ with another man.

Those offending dirt stains filled the girl with a formless dread.

Veronica must have gleaned her daughter's presence because she wheeled around as though she had been caught in a criminal act. If Wendy had been dismayed by the condition of her Mother's clothes then she was staggered by her mother's face. The eyes blazed like wild green fire running rampant in a California canyon. The mouth was a tight, bloodless slash that conveyed an emotion that could have been either surprise or fury. Mud slicked Veronica's chin and cheeks, but Wendy's gaze was drawn to the flecks of glistening pink that ringed her mother's mouth.

The girl took two hesitant steps backwards, suddenly gauging the distance to the front porch.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Veronica snapped in a voice that resembled the hiss of boiling water. The girl nearly bolted then. The voice was so atypical of her mother's melodic tone...the timber deep and harsh. Ronnie took a step away from the car, her hands clenching and unclenching on the shaft of the spade. Her eyes bulged in their sockets as if she was about to explode. "Wendy, you answer your mother when she speaks to you."

The girl stopped, obedient as ever, though she could still not bring herself to speak. If she had been a different type of child, she would have probably burst into tears. She became aware of just how hot it was in the open yard. She desperately wished that daddy would return or that Mrs. Quilling would come out onto the veranda. Anything was preferable to being alone with this woman who resembled her mother, but appeared so alien and hostile. This terrifying new incarnation of Veronica appeared as though she were capable of anything.

Hoping to conceal her anxiety, the girl managed to ask, "Mom, what...where have you been?"

Veronica's eyes narrowed suspiciously. When she spoke, her voice was shrill, yet grated by a scratchy quality that suggested a long period of non-use. Wendy was reminded of the harsh crunching sound that dead leaves will make in November. "So what's this now? Do I have to keep you informed of my comings and goings?"

Veronica's voice traversed the octaves until Wendy wanted to clamp her hands to her ears just to block out the maddening whine. She had watched the movie 'Mommy Dearest' once (much to Veronica's horrified chagrin). Veronica reminded her of Joan Crawford now. "Did I teach you to answer a question with a question? Did I teach you to ignore your mother when she's speaking to you?"

Now Veronica was advancing upon her daughter, still brandishing the spade in a way that Wendy didn't at all care for.

"Mommy I...it's just that you look so...grubby," she whispered, hoping that any kind of answer might diffuse that wild light in those eyes...lovely emerald eyes now muddied by snaps of red and brown. Veronica came to a jerky halt. Her mouth stretched into a feral snarl as though she had never imagined such impudence.

Wendy would have turned on heel and fled at that moment had it not been for the distinct crunch of tires on gravel that signified her father's return. An expression of pure gratitude flashed across her pretty face as she saw her father's car pull into the yard.

Chapter Six

1

As Saddler drove through town after that first day, he experienced the stirring of a rather unexpected sense of contentment. True, there was a body in the county morgue and a baffling case of malicious vandalism on the books, but Ray found himself in a more serene state than any he had in a long time...perhaps even years. Part of that could be attributed to the ease with which he had settled back into the role of lawman. It was much the same way that a veteran ball player must feel after he has hit his first home run at the start of another new season. It was that, yes, but it was more complex than that...it was the town itself.

Quinsett.

Indeed, the town had been so named because its founders had evidently considered it the perfect location for the _quintessential American small town_. The place where the moral fabric of the American way would be faithfully held in tact, preserved religiously by good, decent folk. Driving through the streets at what the locals referred to a rush hour, it was easy to believe that the forefathers had not been far off the mark. Quinsett was the very embodiment of peacefulness and placidity.

Gangs of disillusioned youths did not stand on the corners and greet his patrol car with glowering, contemptuous glares or catcalls. Nor were you likely to see the hardcore addicts shambling along the garbage-strewn streets with pinched, vacuous expression branded onto their faces. There were no decaying, derelict buildings sporting the sardonic witticisms of the chronically jaded and cynical. In a place like Quinsett, one might even regain their faith in humanity. There had not been a murder here in over five years.

' _If you chose to ignore Carlson,_ ' his mind amended maliciously.

True, Quinsett had not been entirely immune to the vapid nastiness that was running rampant in the major urban centers like a cancer. Nonetheless, one could still walk the streets of Quinsett at any time during the night or day and not go in fear of their lives.

' _Complacency is a cop's worst enemy,_ ' his keeper lectured sternly. Ray sighed as he came to a stop at a red light, one of only three in the entire town. His internal monitor was just bursting with reassuring pearls of wisdom today. Shop-worn platitudes aside, Quinsett would provide Ray with the ideal setting in which to reconstruct his shattered sense of self-worth.

' _Nothing drastically wrong could ever happen in a sleepy little widening in the road like Quinsett,'_ he thought. He derived a certain security from that notion. He would have occasion to reflect upon that particular thought over the course of the next two weeks.

There was something else that accounted for Saddler's sudden sense of contentment, something obscure and not easily articulated. He felt welcome here, as though he had finally come to the place where he was destined to be. That made absolutely no sense, of course, but it was precisely how he felt. Quinsett was like the moon to the sun when compared to L.A. and he had been rooted in the concrete and insipient despair that had defined the City of Angels. Coming to a rural community, Ray had expected to be as conspicuous as an extraterrestrial and received with about as much suspicion and reservation. Instead, everyone had made him feel welcome. He understood that in the inflexible protocol of hometown America, he would never be considered a Quinsettian...not if he lived here for the next hundred years.

Ah but he did feel that unmistakable silent greeting in every gaze that he met...from the people gathered around the counter down at Francine's Diner to the boys sitting around on the wooden benches in front of Landers drug store. It was crazy, but he recognized their knowing glances and the clear sentiment that lay behind them.

' _We know you. More important, we know what's happened to you and we don't hold it against you. This is a different time and a different place. You're here because, someday soon, we're going to need you. So make this humble little place your home and welcome, stranger.'_

He smiled at his own perceived whimsy. Things did have a way of becoming public knowledge quickly enough, but he doubted that anyone on the council of selectmen would have been so unethical as to make the details of his LA _problems_ a matter of public record. Still, the feeling that his coming here was not a chance occurrence persisted as did that unaccountable state of well-being.

2

The cobalt sky seemed hard and incredibly remote as Saddler drove west and then north on Ringgold Lane. In the face of such a sky, the concept of infinity became more believable. Even in the air-conditioned interior of his car, he could feel the whisper of heat. The sun was a blinding ball of fire that did not so much shine as it did glare at the world. Weather like this, Saddler knew, signified the onset of certain trends that did little to make a cop's life easier. The heat and humidity aggravated those it assailed. The usually mild became short-tempered and the chronically cantankerous became downright violent. There were likely to be more flare-ups over trivialities and more bar brawls over the finer points of pool. If the climatic condition persisted, people's tolerance level could reach flashpoint at the slightest provocation, imagined or otherwise.

Pulling into his own driveway, he found corroboration of his theory in the most unexpected source. Veronica stood near her prized Spyder (which was mud-spattered), looking as if she had come out the loser in a mud wrestling match. More distressing yet, she was slowly advancing on Wendy while waving a gardening spade. Ray blinked his eyes several times, sure that the heat had robbed him of his reason. Seeing Wendy's face convinced him that he wasn't suffering from some heat-induced hallucination. Fear hung over her like a corona.

He braked hard and laid his hands upon the horn, thinking that he had just driven out of the real world and into a parallel nightmare. Veronica twirled to face him and Wendy used the opportunity to slip swiftly around the side of the house. He shut down the engine and, somewhat reluctantly, opened the door and pushed into the side yard.

His wife's appearance stunned him into both silence and immobility. She held the spade out before her like a jousting lance, her blazing eyes conveying an unrecognizable emotion. Then her face trembled and shimmered, and that strange light was gone. Ray had witnessed it happen as if something had retreated from the surface of her consciousness the way one might see the shadow of a fish in a pond recede into deeper water.

"Ronnie?" he offered tentatively. It took every ounce of self-restrain just to suppress the urge to draw his service revolver. Her face began to work again and she relinquished her hold on the spade. It fell to the gravel with a muffled crunch. Ray could see that it was covered with the same reddish-black muck that stained her clothes.

' _Good God, what have you been up to,'_ he wondered, thoroughly flummoxed by her appearance.

Then the fall of tears began, and she rushed to him. His arms opened automatically and he caught her in his grasp. She crushed herself to him as though he were a life preserver in a raging storm. The extent of her distress alarmed Saddler. He could imagine nothing that would reduce Veronica Ashcott-Ashcott to a fit of uncontrollable tears.

She buried her face in his neck and uttered a garbled stream of unintelligible remarks. From around the corner of the house, Wendy reappeared looking like a farmer emerging from his tornado shelter just after the storm...shaken and ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. He looked at her questioningly and she returned his glance with a severe expression of reproach that only added to his confusion. Then she crossed the yard to the front porch, giving Veronica a wide birth.

He pushed his distraught wife away, holding her at arms length. "Ronnie, what in the name of Christ happened?"

She shook her head vigorously and he thought that she would simply decline to speak. Tears, mingled with perspiration, cut tracks through the mud on her face. She wiped them away with an absent gesture that smeared mud onto her top.

"Everything went wrong." Then to his eternal amazement and consternation, she pivoted and kicked the door of her beloved car.

"Fucking car!" she snarled, and delivered another kick for good measure. Feeling like man who has just wandered blithely into a mine field, Ray gently ushered his wife away from the defenseless car. Part of him wondered if she had intended to vent her frustration upon their daughter with the spade. The thought was just too improbable and he rejected it out of hand. He waited patiently and finally she seemed to bring herself under some semblance of control. The story came out in fits and starts. It sounded plausible enough, but he didn't believe it from the first word. The terror in Wendy's eyes refuted every word that Veronica spoke. "I decided to take a drive up Ringgold Lane, the afternoon was so lovely and I'd finished the agenda. The road to the north gets rough, and I suppose that I should have turned back, but the scenery is so lovely...so wild. I kept going and the damned Spyder blew a flat."

She began to cry again, her tears coming in a furious torrent. "I was jerked off the road and into a mud bog. Christ, I fell and...and...look at me!"

He wanted to ask her how she happened to come by the spade and why Wendy had been so frightened by her. He wanted to ask her all of these things, but instead he held her and consoled her, fearing that his questions might sound too much like an accusation. Instinct admonished him that he was making a critical mistake, but he decided to ignore his well-honed instinct just this once. In her volatile state, the slightest implicit criticism was apt to set her off and there weren't too many people who would care to confront Veronica in a full gale of fury.

He led her into the house, leaving the forgotten spade lying in the gravel.

3

The rest of the evening assumed the air of a scripted television drama about a family suffering through the tense aftermath of a traumatic incident. At the supper table, there was little conversation and almost no direct eye contact, though Ray noticed that both his wife and daughter would steal furtive glances at the other. The meal's end was almost a mercy. Veronica carried the dishes into the kitchen and Wendy left the table the way that one might expect a prisoner to leave his long-time confinement. Saddler sat sipping his coffee and trying to make some sense out of the scene that he had come upon that afternoon.

Near eight o'clock, Saddler was sitting in front of the Sony, staring absently at another informative episode of Entertainment Tonight. Mary Hart was discussing the trials and tribulations of stardom with Julia Roberts, both looking as though they were addressing the misery of terminal brain cancer. Veronica came into the room and announced that it was past Wendy's bed time. Ray noticed that his daughter cringed and said, "Come on, Wen. Dad will tuck you in tonight."

His daughter shot him a look of pure gratitude, while his wife glowered. Shaking her head in vexation, she turned and stalked off into the kitchen.

Ray turned down the sheets and scooped Wendy up, twirled her around and set her down. Usually, she would object to such child-like treatment, but tonight she bore it stoically. Saddler handed her the stuffed Garfield toy and knelt down beside the bed. With Wendy, the best approach had always been the direct one, and so he plunged right in. "Wendy, were you frightened by mommy this afternoon?"

Wendy's nose wrinkled and she turned her eyes upon his...eyes that were so like her mother's. She considered him for a moment and then nodded. "Yes."

"Why?"

She glanced away, pulling Garfield closer and shivering imperceptibly. "It's hard to explain. It's like she was someone else...someone scary."

Ray's brow furrowed. _'Someone else?'_ "Wendy, do you think that mommy might have hit you with that spade or might have tried to hurt you?"

She did not answer for a long time. Her eyes were closed and, listening to the shallow rise and fall of her breathing, Ray thought that she had fallen asleep. Suddenly, her eyes sprang opened...large glistening pools reflecting torment and incomprehension.

"Yes," she whispered. "Good night, daddy." Then she turned away from him and fled into sleep. Ray watched her for several minutes and then rose and crept from the room. He could hear his wife moving about in the den and briefly entertained the notion of confronting her, but decided that there was something else that he should do first.

He stood in the side yard for several moments as if it were possible to absorb some faint, residual echo of what had transpired here earlier in the day. He could discern nothing other than the wilting heat and a flawless night sky. Bemused, Ray proceeded to the garage. He felt a degree of guilt at sneaking about behind Veronica's back, knowing how she would react if she was to discover what he was doing and why, but he couldn't afford to ignore the stark terror in his daughter's eyes.

Feeling like a thief, Saddler drew the blind and flipped on the interior light. The Spyder sat near the far wall, looking forlorn and abandoned beneath its coat of dried mud.

' _You don't want to do this, Ray,'_ a voice advised and to some extent, that was true. Doubting his wife and rifling through her private possessions did nothing to bolster his self-esteem. Once you opened this particular box of mistrust and suspicion, it was nearly impossible to close the lid again. Seen through the jaundiced eye of doubt, everything...every action became conspiratorial and deceitful. No, he didn't want to examine the Spyder. He wanted to go back in the house and talk candidly to his wife. Even as he thought this, Ray crossed the garage and knelt down near the car's front bumper. Veronica had said that she had veered off of the road and gotten bogged down in the mud. There was nothing but a thin patina of road dirt on the bottom of the car. He ran his hands along the underside of the bumper and over the inside of the wheel wells...nothing...not a single trace of mud or top soil.

Perplexed, her stood up and circled to the back of the Spyder, trailing his hand over its sleek lines. So there was no mud. That was hardly incontrovertible proof that she'd been lying. Little cars had a tendency to become stuck in only inches of loose or slick material. She had gotten a flat and claimed that she had gone off the road. If he was to prove or repudiate her story, his answer would be found in the trunk. With the spare set of keys that he had taken from the pegboard in the kitchen, Saddler unlocked the trunk and flipped it up. He was about to reach in, when something stirred behind him. His heart leaped and he stood up too quickly, banging his head on the latch. Huge black flowers bloomed before his eyes and he struggled to retain his balance. When the pain had abated, he saw Smucky regarding him from atop a stack of cartons. Surely it was his imagination, but the cat appeared to be wearing a frown of disapproval. He waved a hand in its direction and the cat vanished with a rare hiss of ill temper.

Saddler bent into the trunk and snapped the clips that held the false floor in place. He was surprised to find that his heart was rattling like a snare drum. He pulled back the mat and peered inside.

"Ronnie?" he groaned and settled against the rear fender, heart skidding painfully in his chest.

The spare was in perfect condition...much as it had been the day the car had been purchased. His wife had lied. A whole myriad of questions reared their ugly heads, but he refused to consider them. Restoring the false floor, he closed the trunk and quickly left the garage. He plunged out into the night and stood gasping against the south wall. That feeling of having inadvertently strayed into a mine field returned...now more vehement than ever. His wife had told a deliberate lie. She had also frightened Wendy in a way that Ray couldn't begin to comprehend.

' _It was like she was someone else.'_ That rather peculiar observation revisited him and he stood staring up at the house for a long time.

4

The other side of midnight found Saddler in the fitful embrace of an uncomfortable doze. Beside him, Veronica watched him intently, green eyes shining with strange effulgence. He had spoken to the child. She knew this, just as she had known that he had snooped around her car. The other had told her, allowing her to see everything through the fish-eyed lens of her own mind. His guile infuriated her and to think that he would doubt her and actually go behind her back. A black rage overcame her then, one so profound and intense that she could have well slit his throat with a razor had it not been for the intervention of the other. The other spoke to her in soft, placating tones. If she wished to take his life, that pleasure would be hers eventually, but to do so now would only attract unwanted attention...complicate delicate matters.

Why had he not confronted her with her obvious deception? He had been into the Spyder's trunk and must have discovered that she had lied about having a flat.

There were ways to extract that sort of information of course, subtle manipulations that could penetrate the subconscious without ever being noticed. The ancients had learned of this divining technique and she had perfected it over the course of her long life, but employing it was not without its innate dangers. A simple matter of laying an index finger against the junction of the brain stem and the spine, but often the subject would be left a pale shadow of what they had once been should the extraction go awry.

He was a complex man, this one. It would be prudent to let the matter rest and keep him under close scrutiny. The whelp had infuriated her today, nearly forcing her to commit a colossal blunder. She would have to regain the child's confidence if she were to deflect Saddler's attention. She promised herself to do exactly that this very morning.

She bent forward and kissed his shoulder. Saddler stirred in his sleep and turned towards her. She smiled the predacious smile of the carnivore. "I think, darling, that you'll soon be much too preoccupied to spend any time wondering about your dear wife's little fib."

She kissed his cheek and snuggled contentedly against him, delighting in the chaos that she was about to unleash upon him and his unsuspecting little town.

Chapter Seven

1

One need only consider the collection of vehicles assembled in the parking lot of Seattle Central Paper to know that this was to be a gathering of the most affluent citizen's that Quinsett had to offer. Here was a Rolls Royce Corniche, next to which sat a Porsche 926 and two Jaguars. As if to guarantee that the source of this wealth would not go unnoticed, each car had been adorned with a personalized plate. Vincent Scallari noted all of these things as he negotiated his nondescript Buick Century into a slot in the visitor's parking lot, which was unusually full for just past midnight. He scoffed at the imprudent flaunting of wealth. The need to be conspicuous, to be assertive over one's material triumphs, amused and irritated him in turns.

He parked the car and crossed the darkened lot, the heels of his meticulously polished leather shoes ringing in the warm night air. He wondered how men such as those who awaited his arrival could be so shrewd in matters of business and yet display such poor judgment in matters of life. How could they not know that their brazen exhibitions could not help but attract all sorts of undue attention from those who had the avarice and the envy to attain the same station, but not the requisite talent? He shook his head as he approached the gate, where the guard simply waved him in.

Vincent Scallari was probably as wealthy as any of the men with whom he would be _meeting_ tonight, yet he looked like a typical, struggling middle class businessman. He had learned early that, if one wished to pursue certain business ventures, it was shrewd to maintain a low profile. Wretched excess...it was the primary reason why so many of his peers had ended up either in a federal penitentiary or as a food source for the marine population. Even with his obsession with discretion, Scallari had developed a _reputation_...three arrests, one for fencing of stolen goods and two for racketeering, and no convictions. As far as the federal authorities had been able to establish, Vincent Scallari owned and operated a chain of marginally successful used car dealerships. Some years had been better than others, but such were the fortunes of life and business.

He eschewed the elevator for the four flights of stairs. Lean and hungry was another policy to which Vincenzo Scallari strictly adhered. Climbing the flights of stairs, Vincent had to confess that he was most curious about his sudden summons. He had known Stuart Crane for the better part of twelve years and had engaged in mutually beneficial, if not entirely legal, ventures together. Crane had helped Scallari launder funds from his various _business interests_ and Vincent had reciprocated by making certain union problems vanish when one of the larger pulp and paper workers unions had tried to move in on SCP in the early eighties. Though Stuart had in all probability never known it, Scallari had gotten the better of the deal. Had not Crane agreed to launder those funds, Vincent would have been buried beneath an avalanche of IRS inquiries. On the other hand, the Italian believed that unions could be likened to trained dogs...they were an advantageous thing to have, but they occasionally required a good, swift kick to remind them of their role in the grand scheme of things. Scallari had derived no small amount of pleasure from administering that kick from time to time.

There was something about Crane that both perplexed and disturbed Vincent. He was a shark disguised in the thin vestments of civility, yet Scallari sensed insecurity in the man that made him most unpredictable. In candor, Scallari did not especially like Stuart Crane or his pompous collection of associates, but he was not a man to let personal dislikes prejudice his business sense. It was not always easy to ignore the cloak of hypocritical sanctimony that surrounded group. Scallari knew that they viewed him as a distasteful, yet necessary, type of subservient...one who could be trusted to do the dirty work that they would not sully their own hands with. He was prepared to let them harbor their little self-serving delusion as long as he derived some benefit from the relationship.

He paused at the double oak doors that led to the executive board rooms. "Very well, Mr. Crane, your crude Dago has arrived, brimming with curiosity."

He knocked and was ushered in by a voice from the other side. He opened the door and stepped into the subdued light of the board room's interior. Dark woods and muted yellow lighting created a deceptively sedate atmosphere that was characteristic of the men who had fashioned it.

None of the five rose. They sat, each wearing identical somber expressions, regarding the tall man with fashionable gray hair as he approached the opposite end of the table. He nodded to the group, but waited for Crane to commence. A thick, brooding tension had gathered in the room, alerting Scallari to the seriousness of the matter under discussion. His curiosity grew in leaps and bounds but he forced himself to remain patient.

"Vincent, we're all grateful that you could join us at such short notice," Crane began, determined to play the gracious host to the end. Vincent replied with an oddly formal nod and gesture of dismissal. "Of course you know the others."

Scallari nodded again and offered them a neutral smile. Each returned the gesture with a slight wave of the hand or a distracted nod. Yes, it was apparent that something or someone had set this little group alight with agitation...the anxiety reflected in every gesture and pinched expression.

' _The upper stratum,'_ he thought, and smiled to himself. Morley Cruthers was a middle-aged business man who resembled the Herb Tarlick character on that old sitcom...ever resplendent in retina-frying blazers, the comic persona disguised a calculating mind that was unfettered by any sense of conscience. Then there was Raymond Dwyer, the Mick lawyer, who had accrued a fortune on opportunistic land speculation. The silver-haired Ira Silver, a lawyer and Quinsett's first selectman, possessed a sense of decorum to rival Crane's, but Scallari wouldn't have trusted him with his grandmother's pension check. Ah, and then there was Judith Ranzman. Diminutive, beautiful and irreverently frank, Judith struck Scallari as the very embodiment of the ball-butchering bitch that threatened to ruin this country. They watched him, frowning ruefully to a one, as if they had gleaned some of his contempt. _'Ah Stuart, how could you surround yourself with such a collection of dolts?'_ Vincent wondered, the smile never leaving his lips. Surely something bound them together, some agreement from which Crane could not disentangle himself.

"Well, Stuart, I've come, but I must confess that I'm quite curious about what would bring the lot of you out in the dead of night."

Stuart stood and turned toward the large windows that overlooked his yards. Huge spotlights had been erected to illuminate the work place. Without turning to face the group, Crane began to speak. "I've never really told you about how our group came to be, have I, Vincent?"

"No," Vincent replied evenly, perceiving some unease amongst the others. Judith frowned at Crane's back and then shot a smoldering glance at Scallari, who returned a lecherous wink. Crane began to stalk around the conference room, either not perceiving or choosing to ignore his fellow member's discomfort. "This group...all of us...is composed of third and second generation descendants of the men who formed this association. It is neither formal nor registered. There are those who would assert that it is neither ethical or on occasions, even legal in its pursuits. I'm sure that you understand, Vincent."

Scallari nodded that he did, in fact, understand. They had the most interesting way of squeezing out the upstarts; everything from credit freezes to changes in the zoning regulations. Scallari might have employed slightly different methods to obtain the same results. Judith stood up, her generous breasts thrust forward in haughty indignation. In full bloom, this woman was formidable and now she brought the full weight of her personality to bear on Crane. Scallari quickly realized that his presence had not been met by unanimous approval. "Stuart, I want everyone to know that I think this is a serious mistake. If we do have an actual problem, it should be handled through legitimate channels and not by..." Judith gestured at Scallari without actually sparing him a glance, "a common hoodlum."

Scallari only continued to smile, silently invoking every Sicilian curse and aspersion that his mind could concoct on the condescending slut. Crane sighed and waved her off. "Judith, your objection is noted. I've decided that Vincent is the man to handle this _situation_. If you do have lingering objections, please feel free to find your own solution."

They locked eyes over the table. After several seconds, Judith tossed her black mane to signify her disgust and then sat down. Crane resumed his explanation of his sudden summons. "Fifty years ago, our Grandfathers did something that brought them together in a loose affiliation. There had been a rash of murders and disappearances over the course of that year. My grandfather, Mordecia, became convinced that he knew who was responsible. The particulars are not important, but let it suffice to say that the circumstances are most unusual. The group came together and decided to take action."

"They killed this person, then?" Scallari asked, gaining a greater respect for the older Crane.

Stuart nodded. "Yes. You see, my grandfather decided that it would be impossible to convict this woman of the purported crimes."

"Woman?" Scallari interrupted, raising an eyebrow and casting a meaningful glance at Judith Ranzman.

"The woman was an Indian, though that is incidental as far as I'm concerned. That action laid the groundwork for this loose collaboration." He paused and picked at his cuff. "The townspeople were tacit about the killing, especially when the murders of the children stopped, but it has been the persistent subject of gossip ever since."

Scallari pursed his lips, sensing that Crane was approaching the crux of the matter. He felt an electric prickle of excitement tickle his spine and realized that the room had grown eerily quiet. Crane leaned forward, staring intently at the Italian. "There was an aspect of the bizarre to this whole affair. The woman was reputed to be a witch. My grandfather believed this and so did the others. I find it personally painful to think that otherwise pragmatic men could subscribe to such nonsense, but they did. Consequently, they killed the woman in a particularly repulsive way, all in the name of some ludicrous occult tradition."

Stuart shook his head in disdain and Scallari frowned.

"And this has some bearing on why you called me?"

"The man is incisive, isn't he?" Judith remarked sardonically.

Silver touched her forearm and she fell into a brooding silence. Crane shook his head in exasperation. "Vincent, you'll have to forgive Ms. Ranzman. She believes that we're making a mountain out of a molehill. To answer your question, yes, I think there is a connection between that and what has occurred here of late."

Crane went on to provide Scallari with a detailed account of everything that Huxley had reported to him, including Albert's suspicions for a possible motive. "Our major concern is avoiding a scandalous dredging up of the past. I don't think that there is a single person in this room who would care to face a legion of scandal rag reporters prowling through their personal lives."

He turned a smoldering glance at Judith then, and Scallari saw just how much animosity existed between the two.

"Perhaps, you'd do well not to dismiss this Huxley's other theories so quickly." Scallari began to elaborate, noting that he had captured his audience's undivided attention. "If someone had resorted to murder to silence this reporter, it means that they're serious about their business. Blackmail is a definite possibility, but that display at the farm might indicate something else...something more sinister." He paused, allowing the ominous suggestion to linger for a moment.

"Don't be coy," Dwyer whined. "If you've got something to say, just say it."

Scallari offered the man an indulgent grin. This was one tightly wound bunch indeed. "If one intends to blackmail someone, they aren't likely to risk exposing their edge."

"I don't follow," Morley Cruthers remarked, eliciting a disgusted snort from Ranzman. Vincent raised his hand. "Once the blackmailer has divulged the goods, so to speak, he no longer has a basis for blackmail. If the perpetrator wishes you to purchase his silence, an ostentatious display is hardly a way to achieve this end. The incident at the farm makes me think that this is about something else."

"That the two events are connected is pure speculation," Silver interjected. Scallari shrugged as though to suggest that he cared little, one way or the other.

Crane had being watching the exchange quietly, privately delighted by the casual ease with which Scallari handled his overblown cohorts. "As our esteemed first selectman has said, much of this is conjecture. My point, Vincent, is that I wish to protect this group from scandal...or something potentially worse."

"And you'd like my help," Scallari finished.

"Yes. I'd like some discreet, and I emphasize the word discreet, inquiries made. I want to find who is responsible for this, whatever it might be, and put a stop to it before it can become the subject of public fodder," Crane concluded and watched the man expectantly. Scallari propped an elbow in his other palm and went into a contemplative study. "Very well, Stuart. I think that I can help. Personally, I'm due for a little vacation from the business. What better place to spend it than in a relaxing town like Quinsett."

Crane allowed himself a thin smile, which served as a perfect counterpoint to Judith's scowl. "I think that concludes our business for the night."

The others stood to leave, but Scallari requested that they remained seated for a moment longer. "Stuart, if I should discover who is behind this bit of devilry, what would you have me do about it?"

Scallari's dark eyes glinted like bit of anthracite beneath the muted glow of the overhead lighting. The group was allowed a brief glimpse of the man that Crane had solicited to protect their interests. It was difficult to say if any of the five could take comfort in the notion, so disconcerting was this glimpse of the man before them. Crane cleared his throat. "It depends, Vincent. Let's just see if we can find out who they are and what they want."

Scallari flashed his deceptively casual grin and that menacing glint was gone. "Stuart, if there is something to find, I'll find it."

2

Judith Ranzman was absolutely fuming. She drove her Rolls Corniche with the absent-minded abandon of a woman who is accustomed to functioning from the depths of black rages.

"That pompous little asshole!" she shrieked, taking the turn onto the Lodger Mill road at better than sixty miles per hour. The target of her asperity was Stuart Crane and his adamant refusal to reconsider bringing that boorish goon into private group matters.

Privacy was the pivotal element that governed Judith's life and anything that posed a threat to that revered state quickly brought the volatile Ranzman to a boil. She had accrued a spectacular fortune and created a tri-state realty corporation, but had remained virtually anonymous...no small feat in a country where wealth aroused nearly obsessive curiosity. Yet, at thirty-seven, Judith Ranzman was a beautiful, enigmatic hieroglyph about whom virtually nothing was known beyond what she elected to reveal.

She raced along the old Mill road, oblivious to the beating that the Corniche was absorbing at the hands of the rutted asphalt. Everything, after all, was replaceable and the steady flow of income made her indifferent to material possession...everything except one's privacy. Once that had been violated it was irretrievably lost. She pounded her fist down on the leather wheel. The cool wind that streamed through the open window did nothing to placate her anger.

The Colonial Mansion loomed up on the right, and she maneuvered the Rolls onto the brick drive, narrowly avoiding slamming into the heavy wrought iron gates. She recalled what awaited her on the other side of those gates, and her anger underwent a subtle transformation.

Judith punched the control and the gates slowly swung open to allow her ingress. She was the sole resident of the Lodger's road home...a condition that she had worked mightily to preserve. The mansion was surrounded by an eight foot high wrought iron, electrified fence, adorned by barb wire. The grounds, themselves, were protected by a state of the art security system, which if triggered, would release a kennel full of attack-trained dogs. The system was fully automated, which was exactly the way that Judith preferred it.

The motivation for this extraordinarily elaborate and outrageously expensive effort to secure her privacy had oft been the source of discussion amongst the locals. Only a limited number of people had ever been allowed beyond those imposing gates, and they came away with no clear understanding of what it was that Judith intended to protect. They also left with a vague, but disturbing sense of wrongness for which they would have been hard-pressed to produce any logical explanation. She conducted her business and controlled her empire from an office in Quinsett. Her staff, all long time employees, knew nothing of Judith's personal life...a subject which they understood was anathema to the boss woman.

Only Judith knew of the source of her obsession. She had discovered her addiction at the age of seventeen and had descended into a world of dissolution and sexual decadence that would have staggered the most shameless of whores. Even at that early age, Judith had been enough of a pragmatist not to question the root causes of her perversion and further discerned that she had been blessed with the resources to indulge it to the extreme. She had also discovered three salient truths that would govern her reality; she was exceptionally beautiful...her family was obscenely wealthy and her parents were completely mesmerized by their only daughter, who was infallible in their eyes.

She parked the car in the farthest of the four bays, and sat in the darkness, lost in the recollection of the night when she had totally surrendered to the dark angels of her nature.

They'd been lounging in the hot tub, chattering like mindless little birds, when she had come to them. Her father simply stared in silence and her mother had risen to protest the fact that she was wearing _her_ favorite silk Kimono.

The vacuous, complaisant bitch; how Judith had despised her. "Very well, mother," she had retorted sweetly. "I'll take it off if you like."

She had shed the robe to reveal a flawless body, bursting with ripe sexuality. Her mother had uttered a gasp, but her father had only continued to stare, a dark and hungry gleam dawning in his furtive brown eyes. She had descended into the tub as her father's prick rose to greet her. Moments later, she lay on the edge of the tub, as her father thrust into her with hypnotized abandon. Her mother had watched, her mouth lolling open in total disbelief, as Judith's full breasts reflected the ardor of her husband's lust. Then Judith's beguiling dark eyes had fastened upon her mother's pliable gray ones. Whatever resistance her mother had mustered dissolved and soon she found herself sucking feverishly at her daughter's erect nipples, while exhorting her husband to intensify his ministrations. The ugly perversion of this incestuous moment held no sway over the three participants.

That night signified the beginning of her complete domination over her parents...a domination that would continue until they both drowned in the miasma of their own decadence. While guilt and shame had eroded their sanity and health, Judith grew stronger in the acceptance of her true nature...unencumbered by the guilt and shame that had destroyed her parents.

She was in her home now, walking through the sacred halls and pondering the intolerable prospect of having her personal life presented for public ridicule. Judith marched down the long hallways, her spiked heels ringing on the tiled floors which had been polished to a blinding high gloss. She glanced down and saw her reflection. The notion pleased her in some inexplicable way, as though it were a confirmation of her continued existence.

"I'm home," she bellowed, her voice echoing in the mansion's cavernous interior. As she approached the master bedroom, Judith began to shed her clothing, casually discarding each piece as she went. Shoes, a red suede blazer and matching pants; all of these things littered the halls in the wake of her passing.

She threw open the double doors and crossed the threshold, a diminutive beauty clad only in a lavender bra and panties. It delighted her to think that no one could have begun to suspect the depth of her depravity. He lay there just as she had left him, manacled to the four corner posts of a king-sized brass bed. The man (it was the only way in which she ever thought of him and indeed, she would have had some difficulty recalling his name.) was completely naked, except for a black thong. He greeted her with a barely perceptible nod. His dark eyes regarded her impassively, consuming the poetic lines of her body with undisguised hunger.

She smiled. He was a pliable toy, one whom she had gone to great lengths and expense to procure...a man willing to thoroughly subjugate his identity to her insatiable need for domination. She had employed him ostensibly as a servant, but he could have been more precisely described as a slave, subservient to her compulsive quest for dark gratification.

Judith came to the bed and looked down upon him, wondering briefly what turn of thought might lurk behind the rugged features and impenetrable brown eyes.

"I'm angry," she announced simply, flashing her indigo eyes like the thrust of a rapier. An indecipherable emotion rippled briefly across the man's face. She reached down and tore away the briefs, exposing a generous length of flaccid penis. Incorrigible in her selfish desire, Judith saw this as another extension of her own inexhaustible wealth of sexual contrivances. A small ring of keys lay on the night table near the bed. She collected these and inserted one into the cuff on his right hand. Then she stepped back and commanded, "I want that thing ready by the time that I've taken off the rest of these."

Ever stoic, he nodded and moved to comply. Taking his penis in hand, the man began to caress it length in a slow, almost indolent rhythm. Watching his swelling organ with keen anticipation, Judith considered the concept of power and its true meaning. Accumulation of money and material possessions were poor substitutes for the power that she had consolidated. She had supplanted his will, thoroughly and unequivocally, with her own. He was, so she adamantly believed, as inescapably trapped by her addiction as she was. His submission to sexual slavery and abuse was not contingent upon money and the standard of living which she had provided. Perhaps it had been at first, but now he would be unable to leave...again so she theorized...even if she were to feed him a steady diet of dog food and attire him in pauper's rags.

When his penis had reached its full glory, Judith returned his right hand to its bond. Then she gazed down upon him for a moment, preparing to unleash the aggression that had built up during the course of Crane's annoying meeting.

She caressed his chest gently, murmuring as she did. Abruptly, that caress became a raking claw that she dragged down his torso, leaving angry red lines in the bronze flesh. He bore this indignity as stoically as always. This feeling, this euphoria transcended the twisted limits of mere bondage or domination. She was a goddess who could evoke his emotional and physical responses to heighten her own joy.

Yet, it was not only this that Crane had so unwittingly threatened to undo. True, she could never have endured the outrageous indignity of having her private world thrown up for public scrutiny and ridicule. She was certain to be crucified by the puritanical hypocrites, who were so chaffed by their own repression that they would gleefully destroy anyone who had the courage to reconcile their dark fantasies with reality.

Even that was not the worst of it. As she stroked his erection and tantalized him with a full breast, her thoughts turned to his predecessors. She had procured others (not all of whom had been men) to fill the void left by her parents death. Once she grew tired of these _trinkets_ , it became necessary to dispose of them, in the name of discretion. Still others had succumbed to her excesses, dying in storms of blind rage. They had all been assigned honored resting places within the walls of these very grounds.

"Stupid bastard!" Judith spat venomously. His hired hoodlum was capable of inflicting more damage upon her than an army of occultist lunatics. She released the man and strode about the room, appearing like an enrage bull in search of something upon which to vent its wraith. The man watched her closely, increasingly worried by her mounting agitation. He had been witness to such states on mercifully few occasions and had been fortunate to survive those. Judith unleashed was a Judith capable of the most unspeakable acts of brutality. He was not a psychologist (indeed he couldn't recall what he had been before he had been seduced into this nightmare), but he suspected that having to function under a facade of normalcy only aggravated Judith's unstable nature.

She stopped suddenly, turning her eyes upon him. They flashed like a striking rapier. He felt something cold touch his heart, though his erection continued to blaze as vigorously as ever.

"What are you looking at?" she growled ominously.

The man knew that tone all too well and braced himself for the inevitable onslaught. "Judith?"

She literally ran across the large room, somehow shedding her remaining clothing as she came. Then she was towering over him like a human vessel of fury. Her breasts heaved and her voice trembled, when she spoke. "Did I give you permission to speak? Have you taken it upon yourself to _think_ now?"

When she gazed down, she saw that it wasn't the man lying there at all, but Stuart Crane, looking pallid, apprehensive and vulnerable. He was clearly terrified by her imposing presence and her monumental anger. She wondered briefly how he had come by the profusion of white, puckered scars that criss-crossed his torso and legs. She had often dreamt of exactly such a moment and now the sanctimonious, condescending prick was here. The prospect of humbling him to her insatiable needs transformed her pink nipples into hyper-sensitive bullets and set her muscular thighs to tremble.

Magically, a riding crop appeared in her hand. Its tip was adorned with a thin lash of nickel and silver. She smiled wickedly and promised, "Now, you'll listen."

The night became a kaleidoscope of pain, blood and twisted ecstasy.

3

Like all cities and towns the world over, Quinsett was not without its repository for the irretrievably hopeless and the chronically apathetic. Here, the gray people were left to exist, until the will to continue finally deserted them. Topper's, where the late Andy Carlson had made his escape from a seemingly meaningless existence, lay in the approximate center of this dumping ground. 11th Avenue was probably the most decrepit and neglected of the streets in Quinsett. The asphalt was cracked, and in some cases, gone altogether. Weeds grew unchecked through the gaping cracks in the sidewalk and the houses were suffering through the final stages of decay that prefaced a municipal condemning order.

In the back bedroom of a small clapboard house, a man tossed in the troubled embrace of a fitful sleep. His thrashing had thrown the covers to the floor in a tangle. The room was stiflingly hot and the pervasive odor of sweat and fear hung in the air.

The man groaned in despair and turned his face to the wall.

The dream was always the same. He had suffered through it, or some like variation, for the better part of the past sixteen years. They had been circling through this nondescript patch of jungle for the better part of seven hours, and were finally forced to admit that they were hopelessly lost. Ratchet took out a dirty bandana and mopped his sopping forehead. Then he turned his exhausted gaze upon the three others, who perceived that beneath his weariness, there lingered a barely restrained panic. They had become separated from the rest of the patrol and had spent the day casting about for some recognizable land mark. The problem was that everything seemed eerily familiar in his wretched jungle, and so they were stranded in the most unforgiving hell on the planet.

Something moved in the foliage and the four threw themselves to the ground as one. Minutes passed and the sound did not come again. Wire looked questioningly to Ratchet, who nodded and glanced about. He gestured in the direction of a gap in the undergrowth about fifty feet ahead. The other three signaled their agreement and the group set off. Ratchet was the soldier of rank and so he took point, followed by wire and Chambers. Cameron followed the group at a distance of about twenty feet, trying to detect any trailing movement.

The dream had added a new, torturous element to the nightmare, because Cameron knew what was to follow, but was powerless to forestall it. The years had not colored the horror in numbing, sepia tones, but had added a sickening clarity to an experience that was already much too graphic for the human mind to absorb.

The trip wire had been meticulously covered by the ground vegetation. There was a low whoosh, protracted by the sadistic mechanics of the nightmare, and then Ratchet was twisting soundlessly on a rack of Pongee sticks, blood spouting from his mouth in a torrent. The wire rushed forward and Cameron recalled seeing him propelled straight into the air, legs reduced to bloody stumps in a plume of gray smoke.

Chambers stood absolutely still as if he had been transformed into a piece of living statuary. Then a gaping hole opened in his chest and he toppled into the grass. His death had been the most perplexing. Cameron had subjected himself to endless, agonizing reflection on the moment and yet Chambers' death remained a mystery.

Cameron had survived, and that was the monumental injustice of it all. He should have died and been spared this recurring hell. Nonetheless, he had lived. When the three had fallen, Cameron found himself incapable of movement. He had stayed in the middle of the narrow path, fully expecting to be cut down by a VC sniper. Moments passed and that odd tranquility had slipped over the jungle. Cameron came to understand that he had been given a reprieve. The group had blundered into an un-manned booby trap.

It had been several moments before he could compel himself to leave the reproachful, vacant stares. They spoke to him in that unfathomable way that the dead have of communicating with the living. ' _You have no right to be alive. You should be here with us_.'

There had been a darkly attractive moment, when Cameron had nearly succumbed to the siren song of his service revolver, but a more exigent need summoned him back from the brink. He had turned and fled back the way that they had come.

And now came the part that troubled Cameron the most, and threatened to drive him around the rim, into simpering madness. Though he had never been able to reconstruct exactly what had transpired, surely this dream version was closer to a lunatic's rambling than reality.

He had run blindly, until heat and exhaustion had consumed the last of his energy. Drained, Cameron had collapsed into unconsciousness. He would never know how he came to be in the cave, where they would finally find him three days later...sobbing and raving about the restive dead.

Coming out of his faint, Cameron became aware that he was no longer lying on the jungle path. He could feel cool stone against his cheek and make out the sound of running water somewhere in the immediate background. He raised himself on trembling arms and discerned the presence of another person. The shadow stood near the entrance to the cave. Cameron traced the gentle curves and litheness of stance and knew this was a woman.

"Are you real?" he inquired of the silhouette. She responded with a husky laughter that aroused chills in the ailing soldier.

"Quite," she responded with obvious amusement.

"How long have I been here?" he asked, trying to rise but finding that he was not equal to the task.

"For nearly thirty years," the woman replied, some cryptic nuance coloring her response. Crane winced, thinking that he was still unconscious and dreaming. Something flew out of the darkness and landed near his feet with a dull thud. Cameron bent forward, trying to conjure an image out of the gloom. He saw, and then screamed, scrambling back from the horror. Ratchet's head lay on the ground, staring up at him through glazed, insensate eyes.

The faceless woman retreated deeper into the cave, holding two heads aloft as though they were lanterns. Her voice echoed with a malicious mirth. "I brought these along. Admittedly, they're gruesome, but it somehow just didn't seem appropriate to leave them as a feast for the tigers."

She threw the two heads simultaneously. One struck Cameron in the chest and bounced off into the blackness. Cameron began to scream and thrash wildly (both in his dream and on his creaking bed).

"Who are you?" he shrieked.

"I'm a nameless observer. I've followed your life with great interest, Cameron. I suspect that I have you at the disadvantage, but you will come to know me. Perhaps you think that your survival was in some way fortuitous, that you were lucky to live while the rest of your comrades died. Being righteous to a fault, I would hazard that you feel a certain amount of guilt as well. Don't despair, Cameron. You have survived here, because I have a special enclave of hell awaiting you...one that will make sudden, violent death seem a tender mercy in comparison."

She began to laugh then, her voice rising through the octaves until the very stone around him vibrated. Cameron clamped his hands to his ears and rolled onto his side, but the piercing whine was inescapable. The nightmare had assumed a new, ominous direction on this occasion in the form of an apocalyptic booming that served as a counterpoint to the shrill laughter.

It was several seconds before Cameron's beleaguered mind could grasp the fact that the booming was coming from beyond the edges of his tormented sleep. His eyes snapped open and he gazed wildly about the dark room, the stark nightmare still fresh in his thundering head.

Someone was pounding insistently upon his front door, rattling the rickety frame and shaking the loose panes of glass.

"Just one moment," he called thickly and began to fumble for his pants in the darkness. The knocker fell silent for a moment and then resumed their impatient pounding. For Cameron Crane to receive a visitor was a rarity, but for that visitor to make an appearance on the witch's side of midnight was unheard of.

' _Cameron, what ever it is, you don't want any part of it. Just let it go!_ ' There was a certain craven appeal in that advice. He could simply sit here in the dark, cowering in his run down shack, until the caller grew frustrated and went away. It would certainly be the safe thing to do, but he had wallowed on the muddied edges of neurosis for far too long. If he was to eschew all contact with the world around him, he was bound to lose his tenuous grip on what little reason remained to him.

He stumbled to the back door, slipping on his pants as he went. "All right, I'm coming. I'm coming."

He flipped on the light switch and the room filled with a sickly yellow light from a single bare bulb. Cameron swung open the door. The sight of his visitor shocked him to unmoving silence.

Stuart Crane stood on his crumbling door step. Crane's face blanched at the rush of stale air that belched out when the door swung open. "Well, Cameron, aren't you going to invite your brother in?"

4

It was some minutes before Cameron Crane's shock subsided and he was able to believe that, yes, this was really his estranged brother, Stuart, sitting across from him. The two had not seen or spoken to each other for over ten years. Crane's father had disowned Cameron after he had announced his intentions of going to Viet Nam. Once Stuart had inherited the mantle of leadership in the family business, he had also disassociated himself from his older brother, who had become an embarrassment by this time.

Stuart gazed about the ramshackle house with an expression of unconcealed distaste, yet Cameron thought that he could discern something else...a certain measure of satisfaction.

"This could be one of the great understatements of our time, but I'm surprised to see you here." The two men met each other's gaze over the scarred wooden table, much of the old rancor and resentment surfacing in Stuart's eyes. Cameron was such a pathetic, inauspicious man, yet Stuart had always felt an uncomfortable envy in his presence, as though he, Cameron, possessed something that Stuart had always wanted but could never have. He suddenly wanted to dispense with this obligation and be away from this wretched place.

"Something's happened, and I've come to tell you about it...to warn you, as it were."

Cameron frowned. There was almost nothing of mutual interest that the brothers could discuss. Cameron cared nothing for the family business and harbored no illusions about Stuart's concern for his wellbeing. "What is this about, Stuart?"

"Grandfather and his damnable tale," Crane replied irritably. There was little point in being circumspect. Despite their alienation, the two men were among the few who knew the details of what had transpired that long-ago July night. Cameron winced and stood to disguise his agitation. The persistent drip of the faucet suddenly seemed impossibly loud.

"Something's happened, then." it was more of a statement than a question. Stuart nodded and went on to recount everything that had Huxley had told him. He deliberately elected not to tell him about Scallari. When Stuart was finished, Cameron placed his hands over his face and sighed deeply. Crane took the opportunity to assess the condition of his older brother. He had grown thin, but the years had not touched his face, which remained young and strangely guileless. Only his slate grey eyes conveyed any hint of the turmoil that perpetually plagued Cameron.

"You never did believe grandfather, did you Stuart?" he asked at last. Crane pursed his lips in exasperation. He had given no thought to the substance of the old stories. They were incidental after all. Metaphysics was utter rubbish and not really the point here. Cameron nodded. "I didn't think that you had."

"What happened fifty years ago isn't the issue here. Someone is trying to use it to hurt us...to hurt the group," Stuart intoned patiently as if he were explaining some rudimentary concept to a small and not particularly intelligent child.

"I think you're wrong, Stuart," Cameron interjected. "Mordecai was the most lucid man that I've ever met. He had no interest in anything that he couldn't experience with his five senses. That's why he had absolutely no respect for anything that wasn't tangible. They all did something that night, something that went beyond simply killing a murderess. She vowed vengeance."

"You really are crazy, aren't you Cameron?" Stuart retorted caustically. "It amazes me that the only thing that grandfather ever said, which you could take seriously, was some fatuous nonsense about witchcraft."

"Maybe that's because it was the only thing that he ever said that wasn't tainted with greed," Cameron replied without rancor.

Stuart glared at his brother for a moment and then stood. "You were always so gullible, always so willing to allow yourself to be influenced by the most ludicrous bullshit. You had to prove your contempt for the entire family by going to Viet Nam. Look what it has gotten you."

Crane swept the room with an encompassing gesture. The walls were faded and yellow, the furniture, a collection of barely functional junk. Cameron followed his gaze and shrugged. "I've made my peace with what I am and you have what you've always coveted. In a way, things worked out well for the both of us."

Stuart's face contorted, and for just a moment, Cameron thought that he could detect some of the raw misery and despair behind the mask. Then Crane grimaced and the moment was lost. "I promised grandfather that I would warn you, if any hint of his old trouble ever resurfaced. I think that someone is trying to blackmail the group, in which case this whole affair will be of no concern to you. There is a slight chance that it's something more threatening than blackmail and so I've kept my promise. You've been told. Do as you like."

He rose to leave. Cameron watched him for a second and then moved to follow. He caught hold of the cuff of Stuart's coat. Crane whirled about and pulled his arm away. The gesture signified the extent of Stuart's revulsion towards his brother.

"What?" he hissed as he backed out onto the stoop. Cameron considered telling him about the dreams that he had suffered through for the past ten years, including the apocalyptic warning. The baleful glare in the other man's eyes made it eminently clear that the effort would prove futile. The men were separated by a gulf too vast to ever bridge with mere words.

"Perhaps, you should follow your own advice," Cameron remarked, and then closed the door.

Chapter Eight

1

Ray awoke feeling hollow-eyed and disoriented, wondering what version of world he could expect to be confronted with today. He had been plagued by a myriad of deeply disturbing dreams, of which he could recall unintelligible bits and fragments. He went through his morning cleansing ritual in a state of total distraction.

He donned his Sheriff's uniform for the first time that morning, but the act had been cheated of its symbolism by other preoccupations.

Only when Saddler descended the stairs, did he feel the cold knot loosen in his chest. The clean, reassuring sounds of laughter issued from the kitchen, both his wife's and daughter's. Taking his seat in the breakfast nook, Ray had a brief thought that perhaps he had stepped back in time. Veronica turned to face him and the thought dissolved in the radiance of her smile. He considered her attire with a measure of amazement. She noticed his scrutiny, and her eyes narrowed. "And just what are you gawking at?"

Ray chuckled. His wife wore hiking boots, jeans, a checked shirt, and a red down-filed vest. "Oh, if only Beverly Hills Chic could only see you now."

Then he went off into a protracted fit of giggling that was spurred more by relief than actual amusement. She looked down at her clothing and then glared at her husband, before breaking down herself. "So you're saying that this might be a touch overdone?"

"Assimilate, Ronnie," he sputtered and went off into another peel of laughter

That pervasive warmth had returned and by the time breakfast was over, Saddler had begun to think that yesterday's behavior had been an ugly aberration.

"Okay Wendy," Veronica said casually. "Would you like to come to town with me, or stay here and play with your brother?" There was a tense moment, and Ray could sense the struggle behind his daughter's disconcertingly adult eyes. Veronica noticed the hesitation as well. Her expression became unreadable and then she was kneeling beside her daughter. She took her hand and gazed into Wendy's eyes, who met her mother's substantial gaze with an unflinching openness that few adults could have managed. "Wendy, I'm so sorry that I scared you yesterday. I love you as much as anything in my life. You know that, don't you?"

Wendy nodded slowly. Veronica nodded as well. Watching his daughter, Ray could see that she was nearly hypnotized. Saddler could empathize with the girl. When she so desired, Ronnie had the ability to mesmerize nearly anyone with the sheer force of her personality. For some inexplicable reason, his mind associated this particular scene with the day that she had persuaded him that they should purchase this house. As his wife went on speaking, Saddler's discomfiture grew.

"Wendy, sometimes adult's aren't very smart. We have bad days and things happen that make us very angry. That anger builds up inside of us and we just let it go at the first person we see. It's a terrible thing to do, because most often that person is someone who we love very much. That kind of behavior is an ugly, bad part of people." Veronica wrapped her long fingers around Wendy's thin arms and leaned forward, boring into the girl with an intensity that was almost frightening. "I promise that I'll never...never do anything like that again, Wendy. Please forgive mommy, because I'm so sorry."

There was a glint of tears; a diffusion of green light that was at once both irresistible and irrefutable. Close to tears herself, Wendy nodded and fell into her mother's embrace. Veronica pushed the child to arm's length after a moment and said, "Go and get ready, and we'll go to town later, okay?"

The girl nodded and ran off. Veronica sighed and placed her face in her hands. Seconds later she looked up and offered him a rather wan smile. "Did I do okay?"

Ray nodded, but the question struck him as decidedly odd. She walked him to the car, and leaned through the window. "You know, you do make one hell of a handsome sheriff."

"And you are one gorgeous country wife," he replied with a broad grin. She punched his shoulders and then kissed him passionately, the full weight of her firm breasts against his shoulder making him dizzy. Then she withdrew to the porch, where she watched him pull out onto Ringgold Lane. Ray made the drive into town with two insistent thoughts buzzing about in his mind...her explanation did not solve the mystery of her lie, and her performance, while compelling, had been contrived.

2

Had Raymond Saddler caught a glimpse of his wife's expression, as she watched him drive through the trees, his anxiety might have grown geometrically. Her smile had congealed into a contemptuous sneer. She had fooled them both, not a spectacular feat, considering just how gullible they really were. The vessel had proven a most expedient choice indeed. The obvious beauty alone would have proven most useful, but Jeniah had never anticipated this woman's ability to control and manipulate. She need merely implant a notion in Veronica's mind and the woman went forward with a tenacity and craft that even Jeniah could not help but admire.

The interloper retreated, allowing the host to re-emerge.

Veronica came back to herself with a start. The world swam and she was forced to clutch onto the railing to prevent from falling over. She had risen with only a vague recollection of what had happened yesterday. For some unfathomable reason, she had decided to take a drive along Ringgold Lane. She remembered the front, right tire blowing out and the car veering off into the soft earth. The specifics of changing the flat or getting the car unstuck eluded her totally. Likewise, she could vaguely recall having lost her temper at her daughter, but would have laughed hysterically had someone suggested that she had actually threatened the girl with a spade.

Normally, these lapses of memory and episodes of disconnection would have terrified her. Instead, she found that she was only mildly curious, because, despite these rather ominous occurrences, Veronica felt more at ease than she had in over a year. She inhaled deeply. The air carried a fragrance and vitality that suffused her body with the energy of some grand and secret purpose.

Veronica smiled and turned her face into the warm sunshine. Then she hugged her shoulders and twirled gracefully about the porch. Anyone happening upon this scene might have wondered if the statuesque beauty was waltzing with a shade. Her laughter and the poetry of her movements spoke of the wealth of hidden passion.

Abruptly, Veronica dropped her hands, gazed about with a puzzled expression and walked into the house.

3

Ray was privately relieved to find that the night had passed smoothly in the town. Orlin Feldman was just about to go off shift, when Saddler walked into the office. Ray's first impression of Feldman was that of a man who seems amazed by the temerity of his own existence. Thin to the point of frailty, Orlin seemed totally incongruous with the role of a lawman. The man appeared to flinch as Saddler approached him. "Orlin, how were things along the Winder road during the night?"

Orlin's eyes darted to Ray's and then off to the street, where the morning traffic was streaming through the rising heat. "Pretty Calm, Sheriff. The Ingstrom place was as calm as the Eternal Lights. Do you want me to patrol on the hour again tonight?"

"I think that it might be wise. I hope that this was a one time thing, but it might be a good idea not to count on it," Ray instructed. Orlin nodded and then fled the station house, grateful to be away from the job. Ray watched his deputy as he headed towards the parking lot. Then he shook his head and turned towards his office. Mariam intercepted him at the door and handed him a report from the county M.E.

Saddler tore open the Manila envelopes and drew out the sheets. The first report came from the coroner. Carlson had not been under the influence at the time of his death. That did not particularly surprise Saddler. The reporter had been under the pall of his own special addiction that would have rendered drugs and alcohol redundant. The second report contained the results of the blood work on Ingstrom's cattle.

Ray stared at the printed matter for several minutes, a thousand imponderables crowding his thoughts. Like Carlson, the cattle's blood showed no sign of contamination. However they had been murdered in silence, drugs had not been an agent. Saddler closed the files and laid them to one side. Like the photographs, they were the source of further unanswerable questions. Ray retrieved the photographs and spread them out on his desk. The pentacle glared up from the picture like an insolent smirk, mocking his inability to decipher its riddle.

An idea occurred to Saddler and he buzzed Mariam, instructing her to place the first of several long-distance phone calls.

4

Wendy's apprehensions had totally dissipated by the time that she and her mother had reached Hogan's Market. They maneuvered the badly balanced cart up one isle and down the next with Veronica delivering a running monologue that kept her daughter in stitches. Everyone in the store stole glances at the tall, beautiful redhead and her pretty daughter. Most of the locals knew that they were the family of the new sheriff. Some even knew that she was the daughter of a rich industrialist.

Their presence in the market ignited brushfire of whispered chatter, but the pair circulated through the store as though they were alone.

Veronica was in the midst of describing the kind of delicacies one could expect to find this far from civilization (pickled beaver quarters and barbecued gopher strips), when she first noticed the man in the faded combat fatigues. He was a tall, thin man with impossibly vital brown hair. Though he was turned partially away from her, Veronica could see that his was a handsome face comprised of finely proportioned features. His complexion was almost milky, but he seemed young in spite of his odd pallor.

Wendy had been startled when her mother had broken off in mid-sentence. She tugged at the sleeve of her checked shirt, but her mother's attention was consumed by something down the next isle. The girl leaned around her mother to see what might be there. The isle was empty except for a strangely-dressed man.

"Mother?" Wendy inquired, again pulling at the sleeve. Veronica's head snapped around. Her expression shifted and closed as though she were trying to conceal her preoccupation. "Wendy, I think we should pick up another box of Cocoa Bears. You know how your little brother goes through them."

Wendy nodded and returned her mother's smile. "For every one he eats, he showers with ten others."

Veronica smiled and turned her daughter toward the cereal isle, then gave her a gentle push in that direction. "Go on, honey."

Wendy watched her mother for a moment, and then headed toward the cereal isle. When the girl had turned the corner, Veronica resumed her scrutiny of the man. She had no clear idea of why she felt drawn to this man, but her reaction was undeniably visceral...almost sexual. She could feel her heart beating and beneath her blouse, her nipples had grown painfully erect.

He held two cans in his hand and was looking from one to the other as though choosing between the two had presented him with the gravest of dilemmas. She shrunk back against the rows of canned goods, aware of how ridiculous she must look, but powerless to desist. Glancing down, she noticed that her hands were shaking as they gripped the shopping cart.

The man finally selected one of the cans and replaced the other on the shelf. He was in the process of reaching for a bottle of relish, when he sensed that someone was watching him, and glanced back over his shoulder. Veronica winced when she saw that she'd been caught.

' _And just what were you caught doing, Veronica?'_ a little voice inquired sweetly.

His gaze found hers, glanced back to the bottle that he was holding and then snapped back to meet hers. His eyes were the slate gray of winter snow clouds, and achingly familiar in a way that Ronnie could not credit. There was an air of detachment to those eyes, as though the man behind them had insulated himself from the world behind thick walls of reticence.

Upon first setting eyes on Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, Cameron's well-constructed mantle of reserve cracked like an eggshell. The splendid green jewels blazed at him from above the cruel ridges of those cheek bones. They regarded him with a mixture of wonder and something else that might have been either profound love or intense hatred. The sheer magnitude of her beauty touched him in way that he would have thought impossible only seconds before.

Her exquisite lips formed some unspoken word. Watching this stranger, Cameron had broken out in a profuse sweat. The hand which held the relish bottle had contracted, and now the bottle slipped through his fingers. Instead of falling directly to the floor, the bottle squirted forward and toppled a display of similar bottles. Suddenly Cameron was standing in an avalanche of falling relish bottles, most of which shattered upon impact.

Veronica glanced down to the mess and then up at the strange man, who appeared both sheepish and uncomfortable. A curse arouse from somewhere in the store and an elderly man, in an impeccably pressed blue apron, came around the far end of the isle.

"Damnation, I should have known that it'd be you," the man cried in disgust. Cameron turned to meet the angry approach and the moment was broken. Veronica felt compelled to stay, to try and decipher the mystery of the attraction.

Cameron looked from the man to the green sludge and broken bottles, his face conveying a grim resignation. Veronica was shocked when the storekeeper actually grabbed the man by the lapel of his camouflage vest and began to jerk him back and forth. His discourtesy shocked her and she fully expected an angry counter from the man in the military fatigues. It further surprised her to find that she would have applauded had he thrown the old man into the pyramid of Dinty Moore stew cans.

"We don't need no lunatics in here," the storekeeper rasped, his face red with rage. His livid reaction was out of all proportion with what had happened. He punctuated each phrase by shaking the man as if he was a rag doll. Cameron bore this assault stoically and passively.

"Didn't I tell you not to come in here?" the man demanded. His tirade grew with every word and Veronica feared that he would strike the man before much longer. Wendy had rejoined her and regarded the exchange with a mixture of distaste and confusion. She tugged at Veronica's arm and looked up questioningly. Gazing around, Ronnie realized that a crowd of about fifteen people had gathered to watch the dubious festivities. To her dismay, she saw that every face bore the suggestion of amusement.

The storekeeper had begun to drag Cameron...who went without resistance, toward the door. Without fully knowing what she intended to do, Veronica strode forward and placed her hand on the man's shoulder. "I don't think there's any need to behave this way."

The man pivoted around and nearly stumbled. It was apparent that he hadn't anticipated any intervention. In a moment of revelation, she realized that this man was the butt of frequent episodes of similar humiliation. The man in the fatigues was regarding her with a cryptic expression. The storekeeper stepped away from the pair, clearly intimidated by the beautiful woman. He couldn't recall ever having seen her in his store before. There was something in her green eyes that filled him with vague disquiet.

"Look at what he's done," he whined, reminding Veronica of a petulant child. She glanced down to the ruins of the relish jars and then to the man, who had averted his eyes to tiled floor. His remoteness angered her and she suddenly wondered why she had allowed herself to become embroiled in this nonsense. She turned to her shopping cart and retrieved her purse. Facing the storekeeper, she withdrew her billfold and asked, "How much for the damage?"

The old man appeared stricken. He hadn't really cared about the relish display. The fact was that the relish was a new product and was being test-marketed throughout the state. He had been gearing up for the pleasure of kicking the town dog, when this woman had pounced on him like a hawk. He had the mind to tell her that this was his store and she could damned well follow the other nut out the door if she didn't care for the way that he conducted business. Tempted as he was, Marv Hogan found himself tongue-tied in the face of her imposing presence.

"That's not necessary," Marv muttered thickly, desperately wanting this to be over.

"Neither is the way that you treated this man," Veronica intoned coldly. She turned her attention to Cameron for the first time. There was a clean, guileless look to the man that she clearly liked, though his timidity baffled her. "Will you pay for the damage?"

Cameron stole a glance at the woman and then nodded. He had come to accept his role in Quinsett. This odd deviation from the norm made him uncomfortable in ways that he could not completely understand. Cameron had absorbed years of such abuse as if it was somehow warranted and this unexpected intervention seemed entirely undeserved.

Veronica turned back to Marv, who had taken on the look of a whipped dog. "I would think that should settle the matter. What you did today is grounds for an assault charge. In the future, you might be wise to consider your actions a little more carefully before laying your hands on the customers."

"I want him out," Marv rasped, trying to salvage something of his dignity. To Veronica's chagrin, the man began to move toward the door. Looking about, she saw that the expressions of amusement had changed to a sort of cheated resentment...resentment which was clearly directed against her.

"Very well, if he goes, then I'll go as well." She closed her purse and took Wendy by the hand. "Let's go, hon. There isn't anything here we need."

As she brushed past some of the onlookers, the sound of whispering came clearly to her ears, particularly the phrase, _'meddling bitch.'_ Incensed, Veronica's head snapped back to the isle where the group stood. Her eyes had narrowed into slits and her face contracted into grim lines of concentration. She murmured five words. There was a high-pitched scream and all of the bottles along both sets of shelves, suddenly exploded in a burst of liquid and glass.

People screamed as shards of glass rained down upon them from all directions. A confusing rush of panic resulted, as the bleeding, terrified mob ran for the exits like stampeding cattle.

An incredulous Marvin Hogan surveyed the damage and then looked to the woman. She stood...legs slightly apart in a combative stance, as though daring the man to speak. They remained this way for several seconds and then Veronica strode from the store with Wendy in tow.

The mid-morning heat was tremendous beneath another flawless blue sky. Veronica squinted against the glare and caught sight of the man about two blocks east of the market. He walked along with a strange, shambling gait, occasionally stopping to peer into windows. She noticed that most of the people whom he encountered gave him a wide birth as though he was a bearer of the plague. She continued to watch him until he disappeared around a corner.

Only then did she notice that Wendy was crying. She knelt down beside her daughter. "Honey, don't cry? Everything is all right now."

Wendy seemed unable to stem the flow of her tears. Veronica was somewhat alarmed to discover that the girl was shaking. "Mommy, why did that storekeeper treat that man like he did? And how did all of those bottles break?"

The question of the shattered bottles perplexed Veronica. She could not recall precisely what had happened...only that she had become infuriated by some passing remark. She felt her daughter's perceptive gaze upon her face and fumbled for some explanation. "Sometimes, certain people treat other people badly because they think that they have the right to be mean to them. It's like what happens at school. There always seems to be one person in every class who is a target for all of the meanness. Do you understand, Wendy?"

The daughter nodded through her tears, which had now subsided to sniffles. "What about the way those bottles all broke at the same time. Just before it happened, I felt something brush past me. It felt hot and...and bad."

A slight blink of her right eye was the only external manifestation of the confusion that Ronnie felt. She had experienced no such sensation, but the girl's tears made it plain that her terror was earnest. "I don't know how to explain that, Wendy," she mumbled lamely. "We're both okay and that's all that matters. What do you say we find a cool place to share the ultimate banana split?"

The girl's face brightened somewhat, and Veronica breathed a sigh of relief. She tried to put the episode out of her mind, but the encounter with the man and all that had followed, kept worming its way back into her thoughts. Through the confusing cascade of questions came the unshakeable certitude that she would see the man again, and he would have some monumental role to play in her immediate future.

5

Vincent Scallari had been sitting behind the wheel of his car, which had been parked across from the market, when a rush of agitated people tore through the double doors as though they had been shot from a cannon. He could see that many of the group had suffered superficial cuts, some of which were bleeding profusely. He glanced to the man in the army fatigues, who had come out of the store only seconds before the confusion had erupted. Indecision gripped Scallari. Should he follow the man or should he wait and see what had caused the confusion here. The man would be easy enough to locate, he reasoned and so decided to remain where he was.

A few seconds later, a strikingly beautiful redhead emerged from the market and stood on the sidewalk. She looked in both directions, as though searching for something or someone, and then her gaze settled on a man in the distance. Scallari saw that it was the very man, whom he had come to watch. She followed his movements with extreme interest. Only when the man had disappeared from sight did she turn her attention to the child at her side.

"My, my, my, just what have we here?" Scallari whispered to himself. He watched the woman for a moment longer and then put the car in drive. Pulling away from the curb, he spared her another glance. God, but she was beautiful. Why was she so interested in a sad sack like Cameron Crane? This latest anomaly was just another piece in a puzzle that was proving to be most intriguing indeed.

Despite whatever strange affliction might possess Judith Ranzman, she had been correct in at least one thing...unleashing Scallari was a path fraught with hidden dangers. After the meeting had broken up, Scallari had decided that it might be worth while to delve deeper into the background of the members of Stuart's informal cabal. While Ranzman, with her hostile demeanor and vociferous objections, seemed like the best place to start, Scallari had decided to follow Stuart.

Though he had chosen not to share his belief, Vincent had long subscribed to the theory that if a group is threatened, it is oft better to scrutinize the inside before seeking outside enemies. This had been an edict that had governed all of his business dealings. It had proven particularly useful on an occasion or two over the years.

From the meeting, Crane had driven directly to a small shack on the other side of Quinsett. Scallari had parked some blocks away and had watched through binoculars. Stuart had spent some fifteen minutes inside the house and had emerged wearing an angry, distracted expression. Vincent had driven to his hotel room and a few hours of sleep. Earlier this morning, he was back in the slums, patiently watching the shack. When a derelict of a man, dressed in combat fatigues and boots, had come stumbling out and headed towards town, Scallari had made a few discreet inquires of the neighbors.

Wonder of wonders, the man living in the tumbledown was none other than Cameron Crane, Stuart's only brother. One of the richest industrialists in the State and here was his brother living in utter penury less than three miles from the family estate. Vincent couldn't begin to imagine what bizarre twist of circumstances could have engineered that particular oddity. Curiosity aside, Cameron had to be considered a suspect in any attempt to extort money from the group. Certainly any man living in such abject poverty could not help be resentful of a brother who lived in opulence. If matters were stripped to the bare and nasty bone, Scallari wouldn't be surprised if Cameron didn't wish to inflict a lot more damage than simple extortion.

Vincent shook his head and mopped a handkerchief across his brow. This July was proving to be one of the hottest and most uncomfortable on record. Like Saddler, Scallari knew that heat could make people do crazy things that they normally wouldn't even consider.

"Stuart, my friend, just maybe the source of your trouble is sitting right under your nose," Scallari intoned somberly.

He turned right at Markham Street and spotted Cameron about a hundred and fifty yards ahead. He walked with his head down and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. His posture spoke of a man lost deep in thought. The man did not look frightening in the least, but Vincent understood all too well that appearances were superficial and all too often...deceiving.

He pulled to the curb and idled, watching Crane until he had disappeared around another corner. Something told him that this sleepy little hollow was on the verge of eruption. A thin smile broke over Scallari's leathery face. It was just possible that this little adventure was going to be no small amount of fun.

6

By late afternoon, the news of what had transpired in Hogan's Market spread over the Quinsett's informal hotline like a runaway brush fire. The chatter and hum became so intense that it must surely have scorched the talons of every crow from Milford Stream to Riley's lumber yard. Like many things in a small town, the episode was examined in an air of dark conspiracy.

Snatches of telephone conversation might have sounded like this:

"And she walked right up and pulled him away."

"A real head turner, she was."

"Hogan took to lookin' like a whipped dog."

"I wonder who she is."

"Those bottles, they blew apart as if they'd been loaded with shot."

"Myra Johnson said she was that new Sheriff's wife."

"And how could everything just blow apart like that?"

And so the debate raged, while the crows sat impassively absorbing the conversations, fact and fiction alike, through their talons.

Chapter Nine

1

Though Alma Riesen knew nothing of the incident at Hogan's Market, it was probable, had she known, that she might have offered a more cogent explanation for the violent anomaly than any of those who had been present.

Instead, she was curled up in her beloved window seat, watching Knox Severn tinker with his ancient Yamaha. A capricious girl by nature and not given to serious introspection, Alma might have been surprised to discover just how much time she had spent engaged in exactly this activity.

Concealed behind a gauzy curtain, she sat clad only in bra and panties, absently distracted by the humid blanket of heat. With the onset of the maddening hot spell had come a disquieting impression that something extraordinary was about to come befall her.

' _It's hard to believe that this wondrous event (whatever it might prove to be) might occur right here...in the sleepy hollow of Quinsett,'_ she marveled as she watched Severn labour in the heat.

She stood up and wondered aimlessly about the room, occasionally applying an ice pack to her forehead. At seventeen, Alma Riesen was a tall, pretty girl who was genuinely unaware of her own attractiveness. Clothes and fashion bored her, though she somehow managed to avoid looking frumpy. Makeup was a tool reserved for the most solemn of occasions. It had been her good fortune to have been blessed with a complexion that required very little enhancement. She wore her hair long and with its natural curl, it too proved to be only a minor nuisance.

There were times when standing on the brink of womanhood struck Alma as nothing other than an annoyance. The time spent in pursuit of vanity could be put to much better use. Despite that natural blessing of prettiness, there had been many a night when a restive Alma had wished that she could have been born a man. Men had no need to feign helplessness or to defer simply because of their sex. They could turn to vulgar displays of power simply to appease their own egos. Not that Alma cared about power or ego. Still, there were not many situations when being a man would not prove advantageous to being a woman.

She sighed and sat the ice pack down on her dresser. She was much too innocent to have discovered the hidden powers of subtle manipulation and sex (unlike Judith Ranzman, who had mastered such things at exactly Alma's age).

One need only examine the contents of Alma's room to realize that the girl was not a typical seventeen year old. Three different decks of Tarot Cards could be found on the writing desk next to the door. A set of runes, partially arrayed, could also be found on the desk. Alma had made another frustrating and unsuccessful attempt to divine the nature of the approaching changes. She had gained nothing other than vague and abstract whispers in a pervasive fog of confusion that had been as disturbing as it had been frustrating.

Several bottles and jars lined the edges of her makeup table, but only one contained a recognizable fragrance. The others all held the strangest blends of herbs, roots and gelatinous pastes...an alchemist's guide to white magic.

The walls held other clues to the rather eccentric nature of the girl who lived between them. Posters of Paula Abdul or Guns and Roses were conspicuously absent. A large reproduction of 'Lilith and Satan', by Fay Pomerance, dominated an entire wall. Several other renderings of the dark domains adorned the walls of the room. Along with these the posters, books and miniature statues...all pertaining to the occult and ritual magic, filled most of the available space. Alma's mother, Sarah, had adamantly refused to even clean the room while the junk remained.

Alma's father had only shaken his head in bemused show of distaste. His daughter was so alien, so remote, that he could hardly bring himself to look her in the eye. This alienation had no outward affect on Alma. Though she harbored no antipathy towards her parents, neither did she see them as anything more than incidental in her life. They were the fixtures who provided her with the comforts she needed, but they were incapable of touching her on a more fundamental emotional level.

She wandered over to a table near her closet and carefully picked up a small porcelain statue of Hecate, who the Greeks proclaimed the Queen of Hell. The mythical figure felt more real, more tangible, than her parents ever had. Carrying the statue, she crossed the room and stood by the window. Since coming to Quinsett from her old home in Portland, Alma had not made a single friend and had done nothing to establish even the most casual of relationships. Nothing here seemed worthy of interest...nothing except Knox Severn.

She continued to watch the boy for several seconds and then came to an abrupt decision. Rummaging through her wardrobe, she selected a pair of light cotton harem pants and a matching cinnamon vest. Placing the figurine back in its ordained spot, she quickly left the room.

The three-headed demon viewed her departure through cold, impassive eyes.

2

The object of Alma's covert scrutiny gave another half-hearted tug on the seized bolt and then threw the socket wrench over his shoulder. It clattered off of the pavement and came to rest on the neatly manicured lawn.

Knox cursed and wiped his hands on the grease rag, then ran his fingers through his hair. They came away soaking with perspiration.

"Shit," he muttered dejectedly and leaned in for a closer look, not wanting to concede that the bike was truly fucked and he could look forward to the dubious pleasure of walking everywhere this summer. A quick assessment of the damaged tolled in at two hundred dollars...minimum. With no summer job, his only possible source of salvation would be a shell-out from the old man...an event as likely as the second coming. It had been some years since the pair had exchanged a sentence that didn't include some spiteful obscenity and Knox wasn't about to give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing that he needed his help.

Depressed by the immensity of his predicament, he closed his eyes and clamped his eyes shut as though the bike's demise could be reversed by will alone. Thus preoccupied, he didn't notice the shadow that fell across his shoulder. When he opened his eyes, the other presence brought a startled gasp from his lips. He turned, and still kneeling, squinted up into the bright glare of the afternoon sun. Though the face was obscured by shadow, the shape was distinctly and pleasingly female.

"Hello," she said simply, and stood there waiting for some response.

After a few seconds, Knox recognized her as the girl who lived across the street. Though he could not say precisely why, her sudden and unexpected appearance evoked a strange sense of anxiety in Severn. Stealing a glance down at his arms, he realized that his flesh had risen into a range of hackles.

Oblivious to his discomfort, she inquired, "You're Knox, right?"

Then she extended her hand in an oddly formal gesture that Knox might have found amusing had it not been for the odd bit of tension that her presence aroused. He had seen her around, of course. Pretty girls did not go long unnoticed in a burg like Quinsett. She was appealing enough to have prompted him to make a few inquiries, but she remained a completely arcane figure. Being an introverted girl, Knox suspected that she would remain a hieroglyph until school started come September.

And now she was here, standing in his driveway with her hand stuck out like a Goddamn mime.

' _Maybe this isn't going to be such a bad day after all,'_ he reconsidered. As he stood up, Knox wiped his hands across his faded Levis and drank in the lines of her body with a practiced lecher's eye. The gesture had been meant to unbalance her but she only stared back with a vague smile playing at her generous lips.

Shrugging slightly, he took her hand and shook it, feeling both absurd and anxious. "I'm Knox."

"I know," she murmured and shifted her gaze to his bike. "You spend a lot of time tinkering with that thing."

He threw the Yamaha a baleful glare and muttered, "I won't be tinkering for a while, I guess. Hey, how did you know my name?"

She granted him a rather quizzical smile, which he correctly surmised to be her standard response to questions she preferred not to answer. "My name's Alma Riesen. I live across the street. We're new to town and I don't know anyone yet."

Had there been a couched invitation in that last remark? Knox thought that maybe there had. "Well, you know someone now."

She uttered a light laugh and turned towards his house.

"Nice. What does your dad do?"

Knox snorted in disgust. "The old man is a foreman at the SCP mill...a big man, my dad. He's got his head so far up Crane's ass that he wouldn't know fresh air if he could smell it."

Alma's pretty eyes twinkled, the distracted smile never leaving her face. Knox wondered if she had even heard what he had said. It would have been easy to dismiss this girl as a hopeless airhead, but instinct warned Severn against such a cursory judgment. When she spoke of her parents, Alma's eyes grew remote as though she were reciting a prepared statement. "My dad's an accountant and my mom's a teacher. Dad got a job here and mom was lucky enough to land a position at the elementary school on Venerman Street."

Knox nodded, not really giving a shit, but wondering if the swell of her breasts were as promising as they seemed. She wandered over to his bike and ran her hand over the chrome and leather. Watching her, he could almost believe that she had forgotten that he was even there. "What's wrong with this thing, anyway?"

"Seized bearings," he said, hardly able to suppress his irritation.

"Where exactly? I wouldn't know a bearing from a barstool." Knox really didn't want to dwell on his traitorous bike, but there seemed to be a point to her curiosity, so he came and showed her the offending area. She studied it intently and then placed the flat of her palm on the bike. She closed her eyes and then murmured a string of unintelligible phrases.

' _This chick is really far gone,'_ Knox thought to himself as he watched her. Her posture reminded him of a popular television evangelist. After several seconds, Alma suddenly stiffened and opened her eyes as though she had received a sudden electrical jolt. Then she dropped her hands and straightened her legs, the distracted smile back on her face. "Try it now. I think it will go."

"Look Alma, the bearings are seized. The only way to get them off would be to blow them off, and this bike won't move until they've been changed." Her eyes darkened with an intensity that made Knox flinch.

She placed her hand on his forearm and spoke in a low, exigent voice. "Just try it, please."

Knox shook his head in exasperation. Nonetheless, he mounted the bike. He had heard that it was sometimes expedient to indulge crazy people. Besides, her cool touch had ignited his hot skin like a fire. He positioned the kick start, jumped up and came down hard. To his absolute disbelief, the bike roared into life. The engine sounded primed and lethal as though it had just come from the factory. The phenomenon had such a profound effect on Severn that he was momentarily tempted to jump off of the bike and run into the house. Only her reassuringly benign smile stayed his flight. He regarded her as if she might be a deity who had blazed to life in an argent flame. "How...how did you do that?"

"There are some questions that are better left unanswered, Knox." Her uncharacteristically sober reply forestalled any further queries. "Listen, what do people do for fun in a place like Quinsett?"

She was looking at him in that open, speculative manner again and he decided to wade right in. Despite his swagger and his confidence, Knox Severn was in truth, a loner, a condition brought about more by circumstance than design. His rebel-without-a-cause character had led him to fall out of favor with the good townspeople, most of whom would rather have seen their daughters date Axl Rose than Knox Severn. There had been a time when Knox had enjoyed his bad boy label, but lately he had discovered that isolation was not a pleasant thing and small town labels were not so easily discarded. He couldn't remember the last time that a girl had looked at him with anything other than a smirk or revulsion. "There's the drive-in out along highway 101, but that's only open on weekends. There are the bars, but getting in is not all that easy. Most of the kids just hang and cruise. You know, they get whatever kicks they can."

Alma nodded absently, the smile fading just a little.

"I don't care about bars, and movies just bore me."

Knox frowned, the extent of his dismay eliciting a chuckle from Alma. "Cruising can be fun, and you do have something to cruise with."

There was a mischievous note in her voice that surprised Knox and got his temperature moving upward again. She leaned against the bike and folded her arm against her chest. She placed a finger to her lips in a pensive gesture that conveyed the impression of age and wisdom. Then she turned to him, that disconcerting intensity surfacing again. "Knox, what's the scariest place in Quinsett?"

Severn blinked, having no idea why she would want to know something like that. He was about to laugh the question off, but her expression dissuaded him. He had never paid much attention to Quinsett mythology, having no consuming interest in the town or its history. Searching his memory, he could produce only one event. "A long time ago, a bunch of men from town killed an Indian woman. They said she was a witch or something. Her house was burned to the ground that night."

"Where is it?" she asked almost fiercely. Knox frowned and she sighed, understanding that he didn't know. He was about to ask why she would be so fascinated by town ghost stories, when he recalled something. Almost triumphantly, he blurted, "I do know that she was buried at the Eternal Lights Cemetery."

Alma's face brightened perceptibly and a strange light blazed into life in her eyes. "Take me there."

She clutched his arm, her nails digging crescents into the bronze flesh. She leaned forward, imploring him into acquiescence with the sheer force of her personality...not to mention the firm press of her pert breasts.

"When?" he stammered, part of him not caring for the helplessness that he felt before her insistence.

"Tonight, once the sun goes down...you can take me on your bike." He nodded and she reverted back to her usual dreamy disposition, leaving Knox with the unsettling notion that he had just been speaking with a completely separate person...one whose motivations were hidden and not necessarily amiable.

A Chrysler Lebaron signaled and glided into the driveway of the Riesen house. Alma watched her father climb out of the vehicle, an undefined emotion touching her eyes. He glanced in her direction, but made no gesture of acknowledgement. Knox saw Alma's expression darken and correctly surmised that there were striking similarities between their respective home environments.

"I suppose that I'll go back," she sighed. She did not relish the prospect of another supper around an emotionally sterile family table while sitting in the company of two parents who viewed her as a constant source of aggravation. "I'll meet you at around ten-thirty. If I'm not here at the exact time, wait."

She smiled briefly, providing Knox with a glimpse of the girl locked beneath the whimsical exterior. There was an intense passion there and perhaps something that was a good deal more sinister. Then she turned and trudged back across the street, moving with the enthusiasm of a person on her final stroll to the gallows.

When she had disappeared into the house, Knox looked back at his Yamaha, wondering by what act of magic the girl had breathed life into the formerly unyielding metal. Retrieving his ratchet, he felt compelled to attempt to loosen the bolts which had been seized. They came free with only the slightest exertion.

"What did you do?" he whispered.

' _There are questions that are better left unanswered.'_ There was a forbidding aspect to that bit of evasion. It was true enough, especially when the answers were so profoundly disturbing. He shook his head and backed away from his bike very much in the same way that a man might back away from a pet snake that he has discovered just might be dangerous...even to him.

Bewilderment became outright dismay when he realized that he had just made an assignation to escort her to the graveyard. He looked down to find that his hands were shaking slightly. Why?

He could scarcely understand what lay behind his own quickness to accede, much less speculate upon her motivations. Normally he might have passed her request off as a perverse fascination with death, but something had passed between them in the course of their brief exchange. Her display with his bike had only been a tantalizing prelude, like a salesman's sampler. Her trick struck him as a bit of glitter that held the promise that tonight there be a fulfillment of everything that her act had hinted at.

And through all of this intrigue came the sense that he was being led...a condition to which Knox Severn had a strong aversion. He hadn't a clue what the enigmatic Alma hoped to find at the Eternal Lights Cemetery, but he had the distinct impression that it was nothing he cared to be a part of.

Even as he concluded that it might be in his best interest to break this rather bizarre date, Knox need only picture the seductive sway of her hips to know where he would be when darkness fell.

3

Just as Knox was consumed with thoughts of a woman, so too was Cameron Crane. Yet, while Knox tried to comprehend Alma's eccentricity, Cameron found himself trying to understand the complex emotions which her unexpected appearance and subsequent intervention had aroused.

Never once did he notice the gray sedan that had been following him since he had left the market. Scallari had been particularly discreet, but Cameron probably wouldn't have detected the surveillance even if Vincent had driven up on the sidewalk and trailed him like a shadow. Lost in thought, he bounded up the crumbling wooden steps and let himself into his house. The interior seemed unrelentingly dreary in contrast to the brilliant afternoon sunshine.

Throwing off his perspiration-soaked jacket, Cameron settled onto the old couch and put his hands over his eyes. Immediately, images of the exceptionally beautiful redhead flooded his mind. He struggled to reconstruct the precise nature of his thoughts in the moments before the uproar had commenced. Improbably, his mind had intimated some manner of association between the woman and the specter from the cave. Her truculent intervention on his behalf perplexed him even further. When Hogan had launched into his tirade, Cameron had stolen a brief glance at the woman. There had been a reproachful gleam in her green eyes, as though she were disgusted by his passivity.

There had been something else, hadn't there? Upon reflection, Cameron became convinced that those beguiling eyes had been imploring him to lash out, to strike back. For one incredible moment, Crane had experience the uncharacteristic and alien desire to shrug off his resignation and smash old man Hogan's face in...to beat his head against the floor until cerebral fluids and blood drenched the industrial tiling.

That unspoken communication had flowed between them like physical touch, but the moment had passed and Cameron had done nothing. Then she had gone forth to deal with Hogan in her own way. The experience had left him so shaken that he had been forced to flee the store without even offering her some manner of thanks. In truth, he would have been unable to express his gratitude anyway.

What had he felt in that moment when he had come perilously close to striking the store keeper? Had it not been something akin to euphoria? There had been an invigorating rush...a brief second when it appeared possible that he could regain control of his own destiny and reverse the stolid advance of the decay and disenfranchisement that characterized his life.

In a rare moment of absolute lucidity, Crane recognized that this feeling of euphoria was false. From Viet Nam, Cameron had developed the notion that any imagined bliss one might gain through violence was ultimately self-defeating. Violence was the first step down the road to devolution and killing was the agent of spiritual decay. The woman's exhortation to violence had touched Cameron's mind. It had not been imagined, further evidence of his relentless mental decay, but incontrovertibly real.

There was still more, because the intense flash in those lovely eyes implied recognition and all of these things, once combined, had turned Crane's thoughts back to the cave and the admonition that had been delivered there. It warned him that there was a tangible connection between the witch and the woman in the market.

"That's crazy," he muttered morosely, falling back on his tendency to doubt his own logic. That was one of the great tragedies of the troubled mind. It became increasingly difficult to distinguish between distorted perceptions and logical thought. He would have succumbed to his own self-doubt had it not been for Stuart's late night visit. Not for an instant did Cameron believe that extortion was the motivation behind the things that had happened at the farm or in the hotel. Somehow, the witch had regained her power and had returned in search of retribution. A person more firmly rooted in the soil of logic might have dismissed the idea as fatuous, but Cameron saw resurrection as not only possible, but highly probable.

There were two places where his suspicions might be confirmed or refuted. The old house on Ringgold Lane and the beggar's plot where Jeniah's body had been interred. The clock on the scarred side table announced that it was already one o'clock. It was a good three hour walk to the ruins on Ringgold Lane and he wasn't likely to reach the cemetery until late this evening.

He rose from the couch and went into the bedroom to change his shirt. Opening the battered wardrobe, Cameron considered the dozens of shirts and tee shirts, all standard issue, and decided on a short sleeve. Then he found a camouflage jacket and headed for the street. If one dispensed with the pre-disposed notions about what was and wasn't possible, it became so much easier to see just how perfectly logical the concept of Jeniah's return seemed. If her spirit had returned, then there would be some sign of disturbance at one of the two sites where she had worked her evil and left her memory. Under Cameron's unique brand of logic, if life must end with the grave, then surely resurrection must spring forth from that same final resting place.

Cameron started off for Ringgold lane, driven with the thought that time was of the essence. In his gray sedan, Scallari butted his Marlboro into the ashtray and slowly moved to follow.

4

"Why are we going to a graveyard?" Knox asked, trying to sound flippant, but missing the mark by a wide margin. They stood beneath the street light in front of the Severn house.

Alma rummaged through her pack sack, which was burdened by an assortment of jars and metal objects that clinked together every time she rearranged the bag. When she glanced up, her eyes gleamed in the dull light. "There's something I want to show you...a surprise."

"I'm not sure I'm going to like this surprise," Severn commented quietly.

She regarded him closely for a moment and then returned to inventory of the packsack's contents. "Oh, I'm quite certain that you'll like this one." She hesitated and then added, "If it works of course."

Severn grunted and tried to peer into the bag, but the contents were lost in shadow. There was something inherently wrong with this whole adventure and he knew that he was being led more by his prick than by good sense. Alma looked simply delectable in her denim work shirt and faded blue jeans. Still, Knox could not quite banish his disquiet. True, he liked to raise hell...a few beers and a bit of tear-assing on his motorcycle had always been a tremendous adrenalin rush, but late night excursions into the local bone yard would never have graced his list of thrilling entertainment. It was down right weird when you actually thought about it.

She stood up and swung the pack over her shoulder, evidently satisfied that its contents were all present and accounted for. There was a certain look in her eyes, a wild and focused expression that Knox had not recalled seeing during their last encounter. That light frightened Knox and he suddenly found himself wanting to be down to Graceon's Texaco, maybe tipping a few Iron City beers with the gang there. His pride and the possibility that he might be rewarded should he play along with this bit of strangeness rendered that option untenable. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to make one last effort to persuade her that there were more pleasant distractions for two healthy, horny teenagers. "You know, the local cops don't take too kindly to finding a couple of kids playing strange games in the graveyard."

Alma stiffened and turned to face him. Knox was surprised by the degree of anger and reproach on her face. "I don't play strange games."

Severn frowned, nonplussed by the vitriol in her voice. "I just mean that we could be violating some damned ordinance. The town groups treat that graveyard as though it were Arlington, for Christ sakes."

"Since when did Knox Severn give a shit about what the towners think?" she challenged as though she were intimately familiar with his personal life.

He considered the idea for a moment, and then smiled. "Okay, let's go play in the headstones."

5

Cameron's clothes were saturated with sweat by the time he reached the outskirts of town. The sweat ran hot and cold in alternate waves, driven partly by heat and partly by apprehension. He had jogged the last quarter of a mile, desperate to be off the main road before the sun set.

He had been right. The truth clutched at his heart with the icy fingers of certitude and fear. A long dormant evil had been roused from its uneasy slumber and was stalking the small town. Thirsty and hot, he had reached the location of the old ruins by late afternoon. He had went there on several previous occasions, and had been struck by a sense that the over grown patch of land held some recumbent force within its neglected confines. It festered there, the way that poison might fester in a wound. When standing on the site of the witch's hovel, Cameron had found it difficult to draw air into his lungs, as though the air had been congealed by malice. He had always come away from the spot feeling both relieved to be away and apprehensive for the uncertain future.

Standing beneath the glaring sun, Cameron felt none of those things. To his dismay, the air felt distinctly flat, almost empty, and he knew that whatever had been imprisoned here had been liberated. To further confirm his fear there were signs of disruption everywhere...footprints in the red soil and what appeared to be claw marks in the dirt. He had even found a three foot hole where someone had evidently been digging with a small shovel or spade. Cameron had nearly tripped over the twisted piece of blackened metal that had been discarded near the hole. He had tried to pick it up, but it was inexplicably hot and repulsive in his hands, the very essence of filth and corruption. He had thrown it away with a disgusted grunt.

As he passed the Topper's hotel, Cameron briefly entertained the idea of calling his brother. After all, Crane had set aside his enmity long enough to warn Cameron that _something_ had happened. It was only fair that he should reciprocate.

Only right perhaps, but futile nonetheless. What would he possibly tell his brother? ' _By the way, Stuart, I took a stroll by the old Indian's land and it looks as though something had dug its way out of the ground._ '

Cameron smiled to himself, picturing Stuart's inevitable sardonic reaction. Deluded and tottering along the path to instability he might be, but even Cameron did not believe that he could succeed in convincing anyone that Jeniah had managed to cross the threshold from death.

He continued east, passing his own house without as much as a casual glance. Before anyone would even entertain the possibility of Jeniah's return, they would have to be shown conclusive evidence. Even if he were to produce such proof, Cameron knew that there were those who would continue to doubt...even if she was to materialize on the town common with the hounds of hell snarling at her heels.

The late afternoon sun beat down like a cudgel. Cameron drew a trembling breath and tried to quicken his pace despite the protests from his rapidly tiring legs. His youthful appearance often belied his true age, but at forty three, Cameron was beginning to hear the first mocking chuckles of age.

It was still a good four miles to the Eternal Lights Cemetery and it was already after six. Ignoring his thirst and mounting exhaustion, Crane pushed ahead, fueled by the exigent conviction that both his life and the town around him, were teetering on the brink of catastrophe.

6

Veronica sat in the darkness of her den, listening to the drone of the Sony in the family room. The sound seemed very distant, as though originating from somewhere down a long corridor. The trite dialogue and canned laughter melted together into an unintelligible drone. She began to tremble violently and hugged herself tightly, while her mood swung from fear to confusion like a pendulum. Somehow she had managed to confine her terror to a silent weeping. Tears ran freely over her cheeks as she began to rock back and forth.

She had been in the process of finishing the last of the supper dishes when the first spasm had taken her. The vision assaulted her senses like a sledge, causing her to utter a weak cry. There had been an instant of acute tetanus and the casserole dish had slipped through her fingers and exploded on the tiles.

Veronica had experienced a moment of dislocation, as though her soul was being forcibly evicted from her physical body, and then the familiar surroundings of her kitchen had vanished. When awareness had returned, she found herself standing in a clearing. Though she was certain she had never been there, the bright dull mud and profusion of choking weeds appeared familiar.

Veronica glanced down at her feet, shocked to discover that her body had assumed a state of translucency. When she again looked up, Veronica saw that a man had stepped through the undergrowth and seemed to be searching for something in the tangle of weeds and moldering brick.

As he turned to face her, she recognized him as the man from the market. Though she stood in the open, he was evidently unaware of her presence. From somewhere behind her, a woman spoke in a conspiratorial whisper, "So, he's found the place. Ah, but he is an incisive one."

Veronica actually glanced over her shoulder before she realized that the voice was speaking from within the confines of her own mind.

"Where is this place, and why am I here?" she heard herself ask.

The response was at once coy and shockingly enlightening. "You know the answer to both of those questions."

And, as though some invisible veil had been lifted, Veronica gleaned that she did know precisely where she was and why she had come to be here. In a moment of absolute and brutal epiphany, the events of the past two days resolved themselves into one horrifying flood of images. With a hellish lucidity, she again felt the sting of the opener and the tart taste of the flesh that she had consumed in this very spot.

Panic seized her then and she attempted to flee from the memories, but swiftly came to see that she lacked the faculties to escape. She struggled to eject the malign presence in her mind, but the interloper was impervious to her efforts. "We are one now, my jewel. Your resistance is futile."

Veronica could sense the truth of that, could feel the duality of spirit that now occupied her single mind. She also deduced that this interloper, this usurper was something beyond her capacity to evict. The enormity of her plight dwarfed her into utter stillness. The collapse of Veronica's defiance seemed to please the interloper, who laughed and turned Veronica's sight upon the man in the clearing. "Mark this man well. It falls to you to entice him to our service. He is the building block upon which all of my machinations are founded."

She returned her attention to the man in the clearing. Exertion had painted his face a hectic red and dark patches of perspiration stained his clothes. He wore his agitation like a stigmatism. Stooping down, the man retrieved the remnants of the box that had held Jeniah's heart.

"He knows!" Jeniah exclaimed, displaying not dismay, but a strange fascination. "And he believes." Veronica watched the man as he threw the twisted metal aside. His gaze surveyed the clearing one final time and then abruptly strode back towards the road.

"We must exercise caution in our approach to this man," the intruder advised. Her familiar tone suggested that she was speaking with a willing conspirator.

To her eternal amazement, Veronica heard herself respond, "Nobody will ever believe him. The townspeople regard him as the village moron."

"Indeed," Jeniah agreed, clearly delighted that Veronica was displaying the first signs of willing participation that declared the proximity of her spirit's demise.

And then the vision had terminated with the same alacrity with which it had begun. Veronica found herself staring down at the jagged shards of the casserole dish. Through the door came the cries of alarm and concern. She looked up in time to see Ray rush through the swinging door that connected the kitchen to the dining area.

"Ronnie?" he inquired, his concern quelling her unease to a manageable level. His gaze shifted from her face to the broken crockery on the kitchen floor and then back to his wife. Through his anxious expression, she discerned a tiny spark of suspicion and felt a twinge of anger. On the heels of that came a soothing calm. The intruder spoke, instructed her that she must do nothing to arouse curiosity.

"Silly klutz," she muttered and offered him a brief, apologetic smile and then stooped to collect the pieces of the broken dish. He was beside her in an instant, ever the sensitive and dutiful husband. As he gingerly picked up the jagged bits, Ray stole furtive glances at his wife. Eventually, she sensed his scrutiny and knew that she would not be allowed to escape without offering some explanation. "It just slipped through my fingers."

Saddler rose and carried the glass to the trash container. He dropped the glass into the metal can and stared after it for several seconds, obviously wrestling with a question that begged asking. Finally he turned to her.

"Ronnie, how have you been feeling? I mean the move and the worry about me and this job. The burden of holding this family together has been placed squarely on your shoulders. I know that you've had no support and I just wonder if it's been too much." he trailed off into a dismal silence.

Shame, self-condemnation and repressed guilt; all of these things rippled across Saddler's face. For a brief moment, one which was destined never to recur, Veronica was tempted to confess everything that she had suffered in the past two days. The plea for help to expel the intruder even took shape in the back of her throat, but the thought of how fatuous it all would sound held her tongue. Instead she mouthed the cursory words of reassurance that might serve to dispel his doubt. "Ray, whatever has been wrong with me has nothing to do with you. It's just this damned heat." She waved her arms about in an encapsulating gesture to indicate the pervasive blanket. "This isn't like LA. This humidity is going to take some getting use to."

"You're here because of me," he reminded her, still not willing to absolve himself of responsibility.

She shook her head adamantly. "Ray, I've been tired. Coming here was as much my idea as yours, probably more so. The strain of setting up house and determining how to best manage my business at a distance, has just taken more of a toll on me than I'd thought, but the worst part is over now. Just a little rest and I'll turn this town upside down."

She came across the kitchen floor with her long arms extended and her beguiling green eyes flashing. Ray drew her to him and held her tightly. He considered broaching the subject of her disconcerting deception of the previous day, but he felt a convulsive shudder run through her body and decided to hold his questions for another moment.

After several moments she disengaged herself and offered him a deliberately wan smile. "Ray, I think I'm just going to go into the den and steal a nap on the sofa. Maybe later we can watch the news with a cup of tea."

Now she sat in the dark, trying to gain a mastery over her terror and some understanding of the thing that now afflicted her. Gradually, her fear spent itself, replaced by a numbing exhaustion. Velvety fingers of sleep reached up and caressed her, tenderly enticing her to succumb to its embrace. She didn't want to sleep, intuiting that she must confront her terror while it was still vivid in her mind. Yet her eyelids grew heavy and the fiber felt as though it had drained from her body. She plunged into sleep as if she had been sucked into a vortex.

Her last conscious thought, as sleep took her, was that she must find the man in the clearing if she was to extricate herself from the interloper's grasp.

Chapter Ten

1

Orlin Feldman drove with the wide-eyed concentration of a man who has suffered through prolonged sleep deprivation and was functioning on the last of his energy. He reached across the seat and turned up the volume on his portable compact disk player. Having the player in his car was strictly prohibited by department policy, but Orlin knew that he would require this little act of defiance if he was to make it through this long, hot night. Hopefully, the night would bring with it overwhelming exhaustion and blissful oblivion, when the morning came.

In the last two days, he had managed to sleep just a little more than four hours combined. He had tried to sleep, but each time that he closed his eyes, the nightmares reclaimed him...each more horrifying and graphic than the last. He would snap awake, heart pounding like a hare's and eyes wide and panic-stricken, unable to draw together the precise substance of the dream that had so badly frightened him.

Finally, dreading a recurrence, Orlin had fought sleep with a fanatical desperation, consuming coffee and a quantity of the white pills that Dr. Hearnandon had proscribed to help him through the night shifts. Cruising down Winder road, in a chemically-induced state of wakefulness, Feldman tried in vain to distract his thoughts from the things that had transpired in that filthy matchbox of a hotel room.

When he had heard about the mutilations and vandalism at the Ingstrom farm, Felman's thoughts had automatically turned to the names that he had effaced from the wall. He knew the names and the association which they suggested were the stuff of legend in Quinsett. Orlin rolled down the car's window and let the breeze wash over his perspiration-soaked skin.

Then there was the matter of the new Sheriff to consider. Orlin anticipated Saddler would be a source of real concern. Feldman had never been an especially adroit liar and this Saddler impressed him as a man who would seldom be deceived, and not for long when he was. If the sheriff was to raise the subject of the Carlson investigation, Feldman feared that he would be compelled to expose Huxley's cover-up.

As the asphalt gave way to dirt, Orlin found himself torn between the fearful vow that he had made and a sense of guilt over his complicity in suppressing evidence. Just contemplating the way he had become embroiled in Huxley's deception caused Orlin to groan aloud. His original decision to become a cop had been a defiant rebellion against his own timid nature. He was not and had never been, a man who could conform well to the geometry of corners. Somehow, he had been fortunate in avoiding serious confrontational situations which were mercifully rare in Quinsett.

Orlin steered his way around the curve just in time to miss seeing Knox Severn's headlight cut a dull swathe through the night.

2

"I don't think that they'd leave the gate unlocked," Knox called over his shoulder.

"Is there another way in?" she cried, yelling to be heard over the guttural roar of the Yamaha's engine. Severn nodded and directed his bike onto the gravel shoulder. A path had been worn into the grass around the perimeter of the fence. He maneuvered the bike onto the path and cut his speed to a crawl. The dizzying crush of Alma's breasts against his back and the tightness with which she clung to him made his initial misgivings seem less important.

He traversed the perimeter, finally coming upon a place where he and Alma could easily climb over the fence. She nimbly dismounted the cycle the instant it had stopped moving and shouldered her pack. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the fence and Knox. She reminded him of a caged panther that he had seen in a zoo once. She stopped before the eight foot fence, considering the safest way to reach the other side.

"I'll help you over," he called, thinking that chivalry could have its eventual rewards.

She glanced back over her shoulder and smiled. "I'll be fine."

Then she clutched the spikes and vaulted over with a lithesome grace that astounded Knox. She landed on the balls of her feet and impatiently signaled for him to follow. Excitement radiated from her flesh like a palpable aura. He scrambled over the fence, clumsily hoisting his legs over the spikes, which did not appear nearly so benign when seen from this perspective.

She moved up beside him and touched his right arm.

"Where is the grave?"

Knox considered her for a moment. Her eyes twinkled brightly and on her face there was the flush of secret anticipation. Severn drew a shaky breath and glanced about, trying to establish his bearings in the near total darkness. It had been years since he had last stepped foot into the Eternal Lights Cemetery. His last visit had been made to pay final homage to an uncle whose face he could no longer recall.

The graveyard was a meticulously maintained monument to the dead. As had been the case in life, the disparity between the haves and the have-nots had transcended the bounds of death. The plots had been arranged in roughly concentric circles, pushing ever outward as new inhabitants were granted entry. As diligent as the forefathers had been in keeping the grounds, their sense of long term planning had left a great deal to be desired. The original portion of land had been parceled on the top of a natural plateau, but as the circles grew, the land sloped off into the swamps and marshes of the Milford stream system.

The worst saturation could be found in the northeast quarter and it was here the indigent had been consigned to the earth. Knox guided Alma through the circles of engraved granite, his feeling of foreboding mounting with each step. Brilliant golden moonlight illuminated the night, making their passage easier. Knox noticed that some of the flat markers were beginning to display the effects of long term weathering.

"Damn," Knox muttered as he shifted his beam from one marker to the next. This close to Milford Stream, many of the markers were illegible. Discerning his agitation, Alma inquired, "Are you going to be able to find it?"

Severn shrugged and moved further into the graveyard. They descended a slight slope and came upon a single plot that was conspicuous by its neglect. As he approached the simple stone, Severn began to feel his heart accelerate. There was something fundamentally wrong with their being here that went far beyond violating any civic ordinances.

He shone the light on the stone to reveal the tacit inscription that had been chiseled there. It read:

Jeniah Lightcrusher

? - 1936

"Is it the one?" she breathed anxiously. For an instant, Knox was tempted to lie and steer her away, tell her that he couldn't find the exact location and they had best find their thrills in a more conventional way. Then she was beside him, bearing down upon him with that absent sexuality that precluded any logical objection. The electricity of that contact made the notion of deception seem ludicrous.

"Yeah, this is it," he replied, his voice small and scarcely recognizable. She clapped her hands and uttered a small cry of delight or triumph. Knox could not be certain which, but either emotion only exacerbated his own apprehension. She set her satchel down and strolled around the grave, peering down at it with an expression that resemble reverence.

Throwing her arms about her shoulders, she pivoted toward Knox and sighed, "Yes, this is the place."

"For what?" Severn demanded. "Why did you want to come here and see this stupid grave?"

She dismissed his question with a preoccupied wave. "Tell me about the person who was buried here. Who was she and why was she killed?"

Severn threw up his hands, but finally answered her questions. "Like I said, the story goes that she killed a bunch of people, mostly kids I guess. People say that she was some kind of a witch."

Alma exhaled sharply, this particular revelation apparently delighting her. "A witch!" she echoed as though from the depths of a hypnotist's trance. "That would explain why the aura is so powerful here."

"What the hell are you talking about?" he snapped, his anger diluted by the conviction in the enigmatic girl's voice. She looked at Knox and though her face was partially obscured by shadow, he imagined that he could see an intense, frightening light blazing in her eyes. Gone was the capricious, wistful girl whom he had met earlier that afternoon. The girl before him was virtually bursting with a dark vitality and purpose...a purpose which Knox realized for the first time, might not be in his best interest.

"I'm talking about this place. There's a power here, Knox. It's dormant now, but there are traces of it everywhere. Look at the other graves," she instructed, pointing to the other pauper's plots. He followed her hand and saw that this was the only grave that had been so badly neglected. She went on to provide the mystified Severn with her explanation as to why. "This grave radiates an aura of the person who has been buried here. When the groundskeeper came to trim the grass, I'd bet that he felt an icy chill or a sudden cold wind on a hot day. He'd have no idea why of course, only the initiated could understand, but he would hurry away without even cutting the weeds. I'd even bet that he would go back to the shop and wash his hands as though he'd been touching something repulsive."

"Alma, you're talking crazy. There ain't anybody here but dead people."

Alma replied with a sardonic smile that conveyed her contempt for his naiveté.

"Are you frightened?" she taunted, instinctively surmising that this would be a devious way of manipulating him to her ends. Knox snorted, bristling at the notion. Frightened? What was there to be frightened of? Dead was unequivocally dead. Her remark prompted him to scoff at his own disquiet.

Severn had no real idea of what her intentions were, but he felt really confident that he understood the two operative facts that really mattered...there was nothing threatening in this deserted bone yard, and Alma Riesen, regardless of her macabre propensities, was one sexy bitch who could prove nothing but good news, if he played along with her macabre charade.

On both counts, Knox Severn was to be proven dead wrong.

3

The distant rumble of an approaching vehicle reached his ears, and a tired Cameron Crane made a stumbling run for the bush. He scrambled up the slope and very nearly slid back into the stagnant water which sat three inches deep in the ditch bottom. Bent low and ignoring the screaming protest of his exhausted legs, he managed to make it to the undergrowth just as Orlin Feldman cruised past in his squad car.

Crane drew a shaky breath and allowed his head to settle into the cradle of his elbow. Exhaustion welled up to sweep him into oblivion, but Cameron pushed himself to his feet and shambled off toward the cemetery. He decided that it might be prudent to stick to the tree line, though the ground here was spongy and even more taxing.

Yet, despite the constant pain in his legs and the bone-deep weariness, Crane never once considered the notion of turning back. The night was alive...expectant. If he listened closely, Cameron thought that he could hear faint whispers of some dark undercurrent...an admonition that Quinsett's customary tranquility was about to be emphatically shattered.

A squad car had been dispatched to patrol Winder road, no doubt in response to the mutilations at the Ingstrom farm. The Sheriff's department was being vigilant and that was good, but Crane knew that they could not even begin to suspect the direction from which the danger threatened. He, of all people, was the only one who knew and believed. The feeling of isolation only served to exacerbate his discomfort.

A screech startled Cameron. He glanced up in time to see a large owl sail through the moonlight. Continuing to move forward as he charted the bird's progress, his foot became ensnared in a protruding root. He went down hard, rolling into the ditch in a blur of arms and legs. The owl greeted his plunge with another, more frantic cry of alarm, before flying off into the trees.

Cursing, Crane climbed to his feet and brushed some of the foul-smelling muck from his clothes. His mind renewed its clamor to relent so Crane decided to hurry on before he succumbed to good sense and went home.

4

Watching Alma work, Knox found that he was drifting into a lethargic reverie, as though her movements held a beguiling poetry.

"What do you want me to do?" he murmured

"Nothing. Just watch." She surveyed the grounds and pointed to an erect headstone. "Sit there. There's something that I want you to see. I can't promise that it's going to work. I mean, I've never attempted anything this complex before, but I've read a lot about it."

"Read about what?" The anxiety was gone now. Watching those fluid movements could anneal the wildest of apprehensions. Knox felt an intense curiosity that was born as much from lust as from any great concern for whatever charade Alma was enacting. He settled against the cool granite and focused upon the girl.

She stood before the weed-choked grave of the witch as though it were a holy shrine. After a moment, she declared, "About evocation."

"Evocation?"

"A ritual performed to summon spirits, or wandering souls of the dead," she remarked casually as though she were instructing him on the most menial of tasks. Knox wanted to laugh and restrained himself only by thinking that she might be offended and not put out when this nonsense was done.

"There are certain practices, rituals really, that are as old as civilization itself. With strict adherence to these set rituals, the initiated can conjure these spirits or open a portal into the spirit world," she explained, seemingly oblivious to Severn's barely-contained derision. Indeed, though he fascinated her in a small way, his continued presence became immaterial to Alma. He had brought her to this place and, though she wished to share the moment, she was quite prepared to perform the ritual alone if necessary. "The procedures are very involved and exacting. Deviation and experimentation can reap dire consequences."

Knox watched and listened, though he comprehended very little of what she said. As she continued to elucidate, Alma went to her bag and fished out a pair of gardener's gloves. Returning to the grave, she fell to her knees and began to extirpate the weeds and witch grass. Clumps of grass and brown weeds flew in all directions as she attacked the offending growth as though its presence was a personal affront. When the last of the weeds had been cleared she stood and returned to her sack. Her hand dipped into the canvas bag and out came three small metal objects which Knox recognized to be daggers. Some complex intaglio had been fashioned into the haft, while the blade gleamed deadly silver. These were followed by a bell jar which held a dull white powder.

"What is that stuff?"

"Things that I need for the ceremony of evocation. The daggers have been consecrated." Working quickly, Alma used the three daggers to form a triangle around Jeniah's grave, with each dagger serving as a point. "This woman was evil, if the stories are true, and so the apex must be set at the foot of her grave."

Listening, he could only shake his head in bewilderment. This was quickly going from strange to outright crazy, and Knox sensed that this was only the beginning. Not for an instant did he believe that it was possible to summon up evil spirits as though you were calling for a pizza, but there was a distressing aspect to this _ritual_. The aberration with the Yamaha came to mind and he began to feel intensely uncomfortable again.

Alma unscrewed the lid from the bell jar and began to pour the powder in a straight line that ran between the points of the triangle.

"What are you doing now?" he demanded, wanting to find an honorable way to call a halt to this madness.

"I'm closing the triangle. You see, if a malign spirit was to appear, and if it was violently belligerent, the conjurer could be in grave danger. This triangle contains the manifestation and holds it in place. There are certain stipulations for such things, but I'm betting that this will do." She held the jar aloft as if inviting his opinion on the prudence of her choice. "This is a mix of things, but mostly it's a finely powdered bone meal."

"Holy shit!" Knox exclaimed, leaping to his feet and backing away from the girl. "I don't mind weird little games, but this is fucking crazy."

"This is no game, Knox," she replied soberly.

"Alma, what you're doing here is creepy and just plain crazy," he retorted. "And I don't want any part of it."

The corner of her lips twisted into an indecipherable smile that was not entirely amiable. Her eyes extended something that might have been a challenge or an invitation, yet her reply was one of indifference. "This is exactly what you want, Knox. You may not know it, but this is exactly what _you_ want."

"The hell it is," he snarled and set off up the slope, convinced that she would be only a step or two behind him once it became evident that he really meant to leave. When he had reached the crest of the slope, Severn wheeled around, fully expecting Alma to be close behind, terrified by the prospect of being deserted in a graveyard. To his amazement and consternation, he saw that not only was she not running to join him, the girl had turned her attention back to the ritual.

"Crazy bitch," he muttered in frustration. Part of him wanted to simply desert her for having ruined what might have been one perfectly radical night. Still another part was gripped by an elemental fascination...a desire to see just how far she might carry this ridiculous charade. Irrespective of how deranged her actions appeared to be, it became apparent to Knox that this ritual was not a farce to Alma. She actually believed that there was something to this evocation hocus-pocus.

"Only goes to prove that she's a basket case." His assessment did not prevent him from finding a comfortable place from which to witness the rest of the proceedings.

Alma had watched Knox make his dramatic exit with only a certain degree of disappointment. She considered warning him that he might be in great peril if he chose to remain in the vicinity of the evocation, but decided not to waste her energy. He would only dismiss her admonition as further evidence of her instability.

Sighing, she pushed all thoughts of Knox from her mind and turned her full concentration to the ritual. A sudden gust of wind howled up from the swamp, carrying with it a malodorous stench that evoked images of desiccation and corruption. Startled, Alma recoiled from the nauseating odor which faded as quickly as it had come. The whine of the wind seemed to carry tattered fragments of half whispers; hollow echoes of old despair or perhaps abnegation. All of these things brushed over Alma like a palpable touch, but if this sudden awakening of the elements had been intended to dissuade her from her purpose, they had precisely the reverse affect.

There was still much to be done and the hour was growing late. Alma could sense the furtive approach of midnight as though time had assumed a physical form and was breathing down her neck. Taking several more of the ritual daggers (replicas that she had purchased from a mail order catalogue), Alma set about the task of delineating the pentagram. When the points had been planted, she carried the satchel into the pentagram's center.

Her intense excitement must have vivified her senses, because she became aware of sounds and suggestions of movement in the purple shadows.

While these stirrings aroused no fear in Alma, they did cause her to accelerate her pace, driven by the imperative need to close the circle. She took up the bell jar again, and as she poured the white powder, beads of perspiration rolled into her eyes. She ignored the stinging pain until the circle had been closed.

As she worked, the girl contemplated the significance of each aspect of the ritual. The circle provided the conjurer with an additional barrier to protect her from belligerent spirits and entities. Alma had no clear concept of what she expected to achieve through the evocation, though she had read dozens of purportedly actual accounts of famous evocations. Like much of Alma's life, the event was premeditated, but no consideration had been given to the consequences and moral implications of the action.

Lighting a single candle, Alma set the process in motion. She closed her eyes and cleansed her thoughts of all distractions. Soon an effulgent cloud of light spread across the field of her mind's eye.

She gesticulated with her right hand, uttering the ancient words that signified a world in balance. "Malkhuth, Din, Hesed."

From somewhere, a piercing shriek welled up into the night sky. It was several seconds before Alma realized that the cries were her own. In an excited rush of adrenalin, she felt that something was happening. Elated by the prospect of success, she began to chant the words of power, the ancient language spewing awkwardly from her mouth in a fevered stream.

Knox had been startled by her violent cry. Leaping to his feet, he started down the slope, thinking that some animal must have wondered into the graveyard. He took three steps and came to a skidding halt. A small cloud of mist had materialized in the air over the Indian's grave, capering there like a poised shade.

He watched in utter astonishment as the cloud of luminous green mist began to expand. His bored indulgence abruptly became cold terror.

"Alma!" he shrieked, trying to warn her of the alarming appearance of the shapeless specter. If she had heard his admonition, she gave no acknowledgement. He attempted to repeat his warning, but the wind howled again, shredding his words and scattering them like chaff. Puzzled, Severn glanced over his shoulder. The phenomenon was evidently localized as the night around him remained utterly still, the dead air hanging hot and humid in the star-spattered sky.

Severn hesitated, torn by concern for the girl and a strong sense of self-preservation. Whatever was happening at the grave site was unnatural by any standards that he could comprehend. Still, the girl was little more than a child in a woman's body. He had sensed her inherent vulnerability from the first moment that they had met. Hadn't that been precisely why he had shown a willingness to bring her to this place? For the first...and last...time in his life he experienced a sharp pang of shame. If anything was to happen to her, he would shoulder the majority of the blame. He tried to will himself down the slope, but his feet refused to share the burden of culpability.

In the tradition of the Cabbalist magicians since time out of mind, Alma performed the intricate gesticulations, tracing elaborate pentagrams in the air. As she constructed these invisible devices, she solemnly recited obsequious invocations to her chosen archangels.

At once, the ground beneath her feet trembled. Alma reacted with a piercing shriek of surprise and alarm. Elation followed shock as her first impression that something wondrous was about to unfold grew ever stronger. All of those years spent studying and dreaming. All of the alienation and isolation, and now she stood poised on the brink of redemption.

"Din. Malkhuth. Hesed!" she bellowed, trying to channel all of her passion and energy into the final, critical invocation. Here she strayed from the prescribed ritual. Gravely, she began to intone her stylized entreaty to Jeniah Lightcrusher, a woman about whom she knew nothing, though some foreknowledge might have prevented all that would follow.

"Jeniah, wayward soul imprisoned in darkness, I beseech you, come forth, heed this solemn call. Slip the chains of death and stand before me."

She held her breath and opened one eye for the first time since the ritual had commenced. Her breath hitched in her chest at the sight of the floating light.

The roiling mist filled the triangle, and from within there came a strident hissing, almost savage in its intensity. Alarmed by the cloud's unexpected appearance, Alma nearly back pedaled out of her circle. With astonishment came the first intimation that perhaps she had unwittingly opened a Pandora's Box.

The nerve-rending hiss became a burst of scornful laughter that turned Alma's blood to ice water in her veins. The laughter ceased abruptly and a voice demanded, "Who has summoned me?"

For several seconds, the girl was unable to respond, tongue-tied by trepidation and a belated understanding of the consequences of her dabbling. Like many a conjurer before her, Alma had taken it fore granted that she would be able to control the entity, and like many an unfortunate magician, she quickly came to perceive that her assumption would prove mortally false.

From his perspective on the hill, Severn witnessed the materialization of the spectral mist and had been stunned to utter silence. All about him, the once dormant night swiftly sprang to life. Hisses, shrieks and moans boiled up in a maddening cacophony. From the deep purple shadows, indistinct forms threatened and capered.

Within the triangle, the mist gradually solidified, coalescing into an eerie green form. The process continued for several moments until, finally, a woman...whose precise features remained undefined...stood in the figure's center.

"Who has summoned me?" the specter reiterated impatiently.

"It is I who have summoned you, Jeniah," Alma declared stiffly, trying to establish her authority over the entity. "I am Alma Riesen and by the power of the sacred circle, you are compelled to obey me." The proclamation was formal bombast, but the girl was unable to subjugate the terror in her voice. The thing scrutinized her conjuror, immediately discerned the circumstances surrounding the impromptu ritual, and began to laugh. The laughter rang predacious and sardonic and billowed up into the night sky, where it was transformed into something palpable.

Alma screamed as the thing hovered above her head. She managed to drag her eyes away from the malefic shape, frantically gazing about the graveyard. She spied Knox standing near the crest of the rise. Even from this distance, she could see that he was moon-eyed...immobilized by fright.

"What is the color of your magic girl?" the thing inquired benignly.

Beneath the contemptuous delight, there echoed a subtle, yet definite anxiety. The girl managed to surmount her timidity enough to reply, "White."

A sibilant hiss assailed Alma's ears, reminding her of the deadly whistle of scalding steam. The cry twisted and spiraled...now a bellow of rage...now a bray of laughter and finally, a screech of pain.

"You presume to rouse me from the shadow. Do you propose a challenge, girl...a contest to test the integrity of our magic?" the entity taunted. A penumbra had grown out of the ground, erecting walls of impenetrable darkness that encircled the pair. Alma grasped the immediate need to achieve mastery over her terror if she were to extricate herself from this self-conceived nightmare. She would be forced to place her faith in the inviolability of the triangle and the closed circle of Solomon. She was, after all, the conjurer and this witch, despite her bluster and imposing presence, was obligated to obey her.

Trying to exude a confidence that she did not feel, she commanded, "Show yourself."

There was a moment's silence and then, "As you wish."

The green mist began to churn and roil, resolving itself into distinguishable features, which were mercifully human, much to Alma's eternal gratitude. When the transformation had been completed, the likeness of Jeniah Lightcrusher graced the face of the world for the first time in nearly fifty years. Alma exhaled...a long, languid sound that suggested the girl had fallen under the thrall of some enchantment. Indeed, the ethereal vision possessed the power to mesmerize. Luxurious long hair, eyes as deep and fathomless as anthracite, skin as flawless and rich as spun silk...all of these things complimented a statuesque, slender frame. The specter guttered and ebbed, flared and swirled like an old fashion gas lamp.

"Does this countenance please you?" Jeniah inquired sweetly. The girl nodded slowly. She felt a beguiling warmth suffuse her being, emanating from her core and spreading to every extremity. The sensation made concentration an arduous task. She could barely muster the necessary energy to drag her eyes from the burning ebony embers that held her spellbound.

"Open your mind to me, child," Jeniah purred softly. Her tone was deferential, even obsequious. "I sense a reluctance to give voice to your needs, your wishes. Sometimes it is so difficult to find the words to properly express our deepest desires...our intimate fantasies. This world has always condemned the hedonist. They refuse to consider the possibility that knowledge...all knowledge, can be a source of great value...and extreme pleasure."

Alma nodded. Despite the intellectual comprehension that she must ignore the witch, she found herself succumbing to the words that caressed her ears like soft velvet. She could even feel that the pervasive warmth was impeding her concentration and even as it faltered, Alma understood that she was powerless to prevent it.

The specter regarded her from across the barrier, its expression inscrutable. "You called me to provide you with candid answers, to satiate our burning curiosity. I am not correct?"

Again, Alma responded with a vacuous nod. The witch grinned indulgently. "You have summoned me and I am thus compelled to provide answers. You want to know of the arcane arts, do you not? Yes. Child, words are inadequate to properly convey the power of the magic, but if you will, I shall share a vision with you. You shall experience the enlightenment viscerally, rather than hear of it through second hand chatter. First, you must open your mind to me."

Alma heard herself sigh softly. She had read of the inherent dangers of the ritual...the chinks in the protective armor that was the magic circle. The foreknowledge did nothing to attenuate the seductive allure of forbidden knowledge. In a blinking instant of weakness, Alma surrendered to the compulsion of her own inquisitive nature.

Throwing open the gateways of her consciousness, Alma willingly invited the witch into her mind.

When entry came, the invasion was brutal and overwhelming. A tearing pain ripped through Alma's skull as the witch occupied her thoughts, rummaging through her mind in search of the critical flaw in character and purpose. Like Veronica before her, Alma could only stand helplessly by while Jeniah pillaged her mind, violating her more thoroughly and intimately than any physical assault could ever have done. Unlike Veronica, this girl's character was pliable and weak, which made utter domination an even easier task.

As the witch plucked at bits of thought, discarding the nonsense that proliferated in the girl's mind, she unearthed the extent of the girl's vulnerability. Here was a creature that was in desperate need of becoming tangible, of feeling somehow essential...if only to validate her own wretched existence.

Alma bellowed, shrieking until it seemed inevitable that her lungs would burst. The witch continued to dig ruthlessly, indifferent to the girl's cries of torment. Stretched to the limits of her endurance, Riesen's mind snapped. The witch could feel the fabric come unglued and fled the girl as intelligible thought swirled into a vortex of anarchy and gibbering madness. Alma sighed and rolled onto her side like a badly listing ship. As she lay on the damp grass, her body trembled and jerked.

Seeing the girl collapse broke Severn's paralysis. He charged down the hill with a feral cry, waving his arms and screaming as though he was attempting to drive off a wild animal.

The witch jerked her head in his direction. She smiled at the sight of his charge. Then, she raised her arm and brought it down with a swift chopping motion. The penumbra, which had hovered over the two women, suddenly darted into motion. It swooped down like predatory darkness given life, and intercepted Knox halfway down the slope.

The force of the impact sent him reeling backwards and he grunted as the invisible weight settle on him. He attempted to scream, but his lungs would not give him the requisite breath. He could only lay there and thrash ineffectually, as the hot, repulsive shadow covered him like a shroud.

"The night promises to be more amusing than I could ever have anticipated," the witch remarked with evident satisfaction. She returned her attention to the girl. She remained slumped in the circle, twitching like a wounded sheep. The girl's plight called up images of the way in which she had met her own death, and Jeniah was suddenly furious. She knelt down and touched her hand to the powder, which the girl had used to fashion the triangle. There was a second of intense, searing pain, but Jeniah suffered it. The bone meal blazed into white argent light. The night was emblazoned by blinding phosphorescence. When the fire had played itself out, the triangle had been reduced to a blackened line, impotent and meaningless. The girl lifted her head and mouthed words of negation, "You...you can't."

"Oh yes, I can, my sadly misinformed child," Jeniah contradicted gleefully. The specter shimmered and flared, as it floated across the space between its former prison and the circle that held the girl. Alma watched in horror, as the entity broached the perimeter of the circle with impunity. Then, with the ghastly apparition towering over her, she gave up all thought and retreated into slack-jawed disassociation. Jeniah intuited all of this as she glowered down at the girl, who looked back at her through empty eyes, her mouth lolling open like a dead fish. The sorry spectacle pleased Jeniah immensely. "You've learned a particularly harsh lesson tonight, child. The arts are not something to be dabbled in aimlessly. Without conviction and resolve, one becomes fodder for the powerful. Did your little books not warn you of as much?"

"I should kill you and send your soul to the eternal damnation you deserved for displaying such insufferable arrogance. Did you honestly believe that a witless, simpering infant could command me?" Jeniah seethed. The girl reacted with a flinch before retreating into a catatonic fog. The specter seemed to re-consider, its expression softening marginally. "Still, you did do me a service, if only unwittingly. When the fools interred my remains in this sham of a grave, they separated the essence of my soul. It would have required a lengthy and arduous process to reunite it, but you, in your witless exuberance, have served to expedite that process. If you were another person...more focused and reliable, I could reward you with a small role in the drama to come. Regrettably, you are an indolent inconsequential dabbler."

Jeniah's face became severe, judgmental. "I offered you an opportunity to experience the true essence of magic, and so you shall."

A light flickered in the girl's eyes, a curiosity that could not be dampened by either fear or trauma. As she watched, the witch's form dissolved. The mist became indistinct, devolving into a roiling cloud and losing its effulgence by degrees until it was indistinguishable from the night around it. Then it blazed back to life with a ferocity that drew a strident cry from the girl.

Her eyes widened and she began to scream in earnest. Hovering before her, head bowed to conceal its many faces, was the three-headed mistress of Hell, Hecate.

Alma tried to scramble away, but the earth opened and caught her in jaws of clay and mud. It closed around her legs, entrapping her in an earthen vice. The thing raised one of its heads. Medusa, she of ineffable beauty, gazed down upon the girl. Serpents, bloated with poison, twisted and hissed upon her scalp.

The girl attempted to scream, but her face became leaden in mid-cry, her flesh suddenly assuming the consistency of stone. The thing reached out one hand and laid its fingers tips upon the girl's staring eyes. There was an acrid smell of burning flesh and then Alma's eyes exploded with a pop, leaving only grotesque holes in the frozen face. The girl slumped forward. Jeniah uttered a blood-curdling laugh, delighted by her own cruel ingenuity.

Severn had watched the witch toy with the girl in a state of dream-like terror. He had abandoned his vain attempts to shrug off the thing that held him to the ground. His breathing caught in his chest, when he realized that the apparition had apparently murdered Alma.

"Somebody help me!" he wailed. Jeniah floated over the spot to where he lay. Her movement was unhurried...unconcerned by the possibility that someone might hear his piteous cries and come to intervene. When she hovered over him (and he felt the full, imposing weight of her beauty), Knox's terror diminished, if only a notch. She drew up her skirts and settled onto him with a weight that was less physical than it was implied...diaphanous. He felt something working at his groin and emitted a soft groan of contentment. Jeniah smiled and peered deep into his fevered eyes. She pushed her way into his mind, though more artfully than she had with the girl. Severn did nothing to militate against the witch's invasion.

"Ah God," he muttered thickly. His engorged prick pulsed in time to his frenzied heartbeat. In his thought-occluding state of lust, he could scarcely recall what had frightened him so badly only seconds before. She probed his mind the way a lover might explore the landscape of their partner's body. As he gave his seed to consecrate her spirit, she took his mind and reshaped it to her purpose. As he burst in a protracted deluge, the witch planted her own seeds of domination in his subconscious.

When the time was right, she would usher those seeds to germination and he would serve her with mindless zeal. Leaving him in a convulsive stupor, the entity spiraled into the night sky in search of its chosen ambassador.

5

Cameron was faltering badly by the time that he crested the final hill that led down to the Cemetery gates. His lean legs ached dully and his feet felt as though they had been reduced to ground beef. Despite the hours of exertion in the enervating heat, Cameron prayed that he had made this particular journey for nothing. It occurred to him that, even if he was to discover something...it was doubtful that he would be able to muster the strength to confront it.

As things developed, he was soon to find out.

A subdued, luminescent light hung in the sky over the graveyard. Crane saw it for the first time and came to a stumbling halt, regarding the oddity with a mixture of unease and dark fascination. He remained motionless for several moments and as he watched, the hovering mist would occasionally flare like lightening in a cloud bank viewed from a great distance.

' _I'm too late,'_ he thought dejectedly. Perhaps he had known that he would be too late from the first moment he had stepped off of his porch that afternoon. The random flashes of light spurred him forward with a reinvigorated sense of purpose. Dread allowed him to tap into a hidden well of energy that he did not know he had. He broke into a slow jog, his feet slapping on the gravel, moving as though by their own volition. By the time he had reached the front gates, Crane had mustered the requisite energy to break into a headlong sprint.

The gates were held fast by a solid padlock and a heavy chain just now showing the first signs of rust. He vaulted the gates with a grace he would have sworn had deserted him after the jungles of Viet Nam. Racing through the stones, the first wails of agony and terror reached his ears. To his left, the light flared in one final resplendent burst and then was gone. Cameron slowed to a walk as he reached the point of land where the slope dropped away to the swamp.

When the mysterious light had finally guttered and faded, there had been a subtle shift in the night air. Instinctively, Crane understood that whatever had transpired in this place of death was now over. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the swamp, Crane spied the first signs of disruption and let out a long, quavering groan.

Someone, a girl he judged, was slumped onto her face near the foot of an overgrown grave. There was something drastically wrong with the way that her body sprawled over the damp grass. The discord caused the flesh on Cameron's arms to rise in great hackles. It took a moment before he realized that he was seeing only a head and torso. It appeared that the girl's legs had been severed below the waist. He uttered a strangled cry of revulsion and started down the slope. The wind carried a faint whisper to his ears, drawing his attention to the person on the grass about fifty feet from where he stood.

The man writhed and jerked as his feet and arms beat sporadically on the manicured grass. Cameron's first thought was that the man was having some manner of convulsion.

"Hey man, are you all right?" Cameron called and cautiously headed in that direction. At the sound of Cameron's tentative query, Knox's head whipped around like a ball on a rusty stalk. Crane stopped in his tracks. A wild light blazed in the boy's bulging eyes. His face was grossly contorted by an expression that might have been either sheer terror or pure ecstasy.

"What's happened here?" Cameron asked the boy, holding his arms out as if to display his benevolence. A guttural growl tore from the boy's throat and he scrambled up the slope, his hands ripping up strips of turf. His movements reminded Cameron of some primitive beast, an unhappy marriage of man and wolf perhaps. In a blink, the boy was over the rise and swallowed up by the darkness. He briefly considered pursuing him, but the girl groaned then, a sound so forlorn and fraught with ineffably agony that Cameron was drawn to respond to it without question.

Her moans were wretched and rife with torment. When he reached her, Cameron discovered that she had been buried in the earth up to her waist. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he gently eased her upright and an anguished groan escaped his lips. Peering into the face of horror, Cameron found himself transported back to the jungles of Viet Nam. There, horror had been an everyday staple in a diet that was rich with mortal terror. It was in the face of insanity such as this that Crane had lost his tenuous grip on reason.

The blackened hollows stared back at him sightlessly. Cameron had been witness to all manners of unspeakable deed during the war, all rationalized under the umbrella of warfare, but he had never encounter anything so indescribably savage, so viscerally shocking. Hot tears rose to his eyes in commiseration with the empty sockets that would never again convey the beauty of the world around them.

The girl's lips moved slightly, but the muscles in her face remained frozen. A thin line of spittle drooled onto her chin. More than her eyes sockets, the girl's face filled Crane with a mortal, dwarfing dread. He gently touched her face to find that the skin felt as hard and unyielding as stone. Even in the dim light, he could see her jaw muscles bulging in sharp relief. Still weeping, he drew her into the cradle of his neck and hugged her tightly, rocking her back and forth.

This despicable act of disfigurement was a gruesome corroboration of every act of butchery that his grandfather had described. As he whispered trite, horribly incondign words of consolation, Cameron began to wonder how he could presume to confront such wicked evil. Though he bore the name, Crane realized that he was not cut from the same cloth as his grandfather.

6

Orlin had made a pass by the Ingstrom farm where everything appeared to be calm and quiet. He carried on along Winder road for another three miles, and then pulled the cruiser onto as intersecting dirt track. Turning the radio down, he settled deep into the bucket seats, intending to catch a short power nap before making the twenty minute return trip to Quinsett.

The moment that he closed his eyes, Orlin suspected that sleep would evade him on this night, just as it had done for the past two nights. Vivid images of the bloody names kept intruding upon his thoughts.

' _Names in blood,'_ he thought. Feldman felt certain that the reporter's death had been a suicide, and the scrawled names had been a final, desperate bid for notoriety. He had been certain, that is, until he had seen the uncharacteristic expression of anxiety on Huxley's face. Huxley, normally a calm and steadfast man, had appeared on the verge of apoplexy. That expression of disquiet had discouraged Orlin from drawing hasty conclusions regarding Andrew Carlson's violent end.

He had willingly concealed evidence. There had been some duress, but he had complied with Huxley's illegal demand and now he was forced to wonder if he hadn't done something far worse than whitewashing a suicide scene. Frustrated and anxious, Feldman threw the car into gear and headed back to town.

In his preoccupation, Feldman came within scant feet of running over Knox Severn. A dark shadow appeared in the twin circles of his headlights, causing Orlin to grit his teeth and slam on the brakes. The figure stopped in the center of the road and threw up its arms to ward against the glare of the harsh yellow light.

The car came to a screeching halt less than a foot from the figure. Feldman uttered a tremulous curse and threw open his door. As he stepped out, the deputy instinctively drew his service revolver. He stole a brief glance into his car and berated himself for not thinking to draw his flashlight. Blood pounded in his temple and he could feel his guts twisting into tight, debilitating knots.

"Why? Why? Why?" he groaned. These were the situations which he hated above all others...these unpredictable and terrifying encounters with the unexpected.

"What's the hurry?" he demanded of the shadow figure, trying to exude that casual authority that had come so naturally to Huxley. The figure regarded him silently for a moment and then suddenly broke for the trees on the opposite side of the road.

"He's killing her!" the runner cried as he fled. "Down by the swamp. You'd better hurry because he's going to kill her."

"Stop!" Orlin commanded, but the figure slowed not a whit. Feldman started after the man (it had been a man's voice. Despite the shrewish hiss, Orlin had been positive of that.), but stopped when he saw the runner pass into the trees on the opposite side of the road.

' _I'm not going in there after him,'_ he told himself. The dense tangle of underbrush looked as forbidding as a minefield. _'No way am I going in there,'_ he thought again, and felt a hot flush of shame at his own cravenness. The shame did nothing to propel him forward. He glanced down at his service revolver, which dangled uselessly at his side. He had never felt so undeserving of his position as he did at that exact moment.

' _He's killing her.'_ The recollection caused Orlin to grunt in consternation and he returned to his cruiser. He thought of calling for a backup unit, but decided that he had already allowed the situation to get far enough out of hand. If he were to call for a backup, only to discover that he had been suckered into falling for a vandal's ruse, the ridicule would be intolerable.

He shuffled toward the gate and peered warily up at the spikes. Sighing deeply, he gingerly hoisted himself over the fence, holding his breath as he swung his legs over the top and let himself drop. Orlin hit the ground hard and buckled to his knees, ripping his pants and tearing away flaps of skin on the treated stone.

Gritting his teeth against the abrasive sting, Feldman advanced cautiously into the graveyard. He swore when he realized that he still hadn't retrieved his flashlight from its holder.

Cameron glanced up, still clutching the whimpering girl to his shoulder, and saw a man standing on the crest of the incline. Framed in the pale golden moonlight, Cameron could see that the man was brandishing a pistol.

"You there, on the right," the man barked in a high, shrewish voice that decried the authority that the speaker sought. "Put your hands above your head and move back from the girl."

Cameron recognized the voice to be Orlin's and knew that it might be prudent to do nothing provocative. He slowly raised his hands and began to crawl away from the girl. "Orlin, It's Cameron Crane. This girl's been hurt bad. She needs help...now."

Feldman stifled a silent groan. If the night at Topper's had been bad, this was incomparably worse. He leveled his gun in Crane's direction and flicked his eyes towards the girl, who appeared devoid of all life. _'Cameron Crane,'_ Orlin thought wretchedly. _'Why couldn't that damned kid have run across the road a minute before...or a minute later?'_

In that intense moment of anguish, Orlin saw the terminal end of his days as deputy spelled out in flashing neon letters. Orlin unclipped his cuffs from his service belt and flipped them toward Crane. "Snap them on and then lie face down on the grass."

Cameron complied, gaining a new perspective on the dilemma in which he now found himself. An act as heinous as this would demand an immediate identification of a villain...a role for which he was ideally suited. He was, after all, the town crazy, and here he was, discovered at midnight in the town graveyard, a victim of hideous mutilation in his arms. The assignment of blame would be automatic and incontrovertible in the eyes of most.

When Feldman knelt before the girl and gingerly raised her head, the horrific image of her ruined, eyeless face sent his stomach into a long, slow barrel roll. He recoiled, as though struck by lightening, allowing the girl to plop back onto her face in his haste. Bringing his revolver to a shaky center on Crane's head, he shrieked, "You crazy bastard, what the hell did you do?"

Cameron Crane sighed in resignation and closed his eyes.

Chapter Eleven

1

The heat...that maddening, enervating, inescapable heat...it consumed his fluids and his thoughts with brutal rapidity, inhibiting comprehension the way a dirty window might obstruct vision. He glanced up at the sky, which was a hard, fathomless blue, and winced. The unforgiving glare of the sun lanced his eyes with sharp needles of pain, causing him to avert his gaze back to the bleached ground.

Rivers of oily sweat poured down his face, over his shoulders and along his spine; an alarming exodus of life-sustaining fluids. The parched ground seemed to open up and swallow the droplets as they poured off his besieged flesh.

' _Why was he here?'_ His frazzled mind posed the same question with monotonous regularity, but the pervasive heat made reasoning an exercise in futility. A vast panorama of yellowing witch grass spread out before him, spanning from horizon to distant horizon in every direction. Here and there, tendrils of smoke rose from the thigh high grass, though he could see no visible flame. From all around him there came the furtive, scuttling sounds of movement.

"Where is this place?" he demanded of the sun which, to his heat-distorted senses, seemed to beat down with willful malice.

"THIS IS TRANSITION," thundered the reply...ubiquitous, earth-shaking. Startled by the unexpected response, the man cringed as the bass rumble echoed in the pit of his churning guts.

A shadow fell across him, or perhaps it had always been there and he had simply not noticed. In this macabre place, nothing was inconceivable. He could feel an ambiguous weight settle onto his shoulders, like a winged predator's soul come to roost. He whirled about, almost falling in his exhaustion, but discovered that the shadow had no apparent source. It was cast of its own accord as though it was an entity unto itself.

"BEYOND THIS POINT, THERE EXISTS ONLY DISSOLUTION AND DESPAIR. THIS IS THE PLAIN OF SEPARATION. IT BUFFERS THE DOMINION OF CONSCIOUS LIGHT FROM THE PLANE OF SPIRITUAL INIQUITY. HE OR 'SHE' (that last word uttered with a peculiar and ominous emphasis) WHO WOULD RECONCILE THESE WORLDS WOULD CALL DOWN THE APOCALYPSE ON THE KINGDOM OF FLESH."

"I don't understand," he cried, bewildered by the anxiety that this lack of comprehension evoked.

"THE SHADOW OF RECONCILIATION IS UPON YOUR WORLD. EVEN NOW, IT DEEPENS AND LENGTHENS."

As the titanic rumbling or prophecy filled his ears, posing a conundrum that baffled him and terrified him all the more for his inability to grasp it, the shadow slowly spread its pall over the field. As the penumbra crept over the dying grass, the man sensed that the gloom would do nothing to attenuate the heat's grip on the land. On the contrary, he could sense its paradoxical intensification that reminded him of the heat produced by the extreme stages of infection.

Glancing down, he saw that the hair on his forearms had singed, while the skin beneath had erupted into huge, blistering pustules.

"YOU MUST STRIVE TO KNOW THE TRUE NATURE OF INIQUITY, FOR THE TASK OF FOILING ITS VILE AMBITION OF RECONCILIATION HAS FALLEN TO YOU."

The ground commenced to shake in a series of rolling convulsions. The man could actually feel the spasms vibrate in the coils of his muscles as the fiber of the middle-earth started to unravel before his very eyes.

"SHE COMES WITH A CORONA OF FIRE ABOUT HER HEAD. HER EYES ARE HOODED, AND HER HEART IS VEILED AND CLEFT. THOUGH, AS THE HOUR OF RECONCILIATION DRAWTH NIGH, THAT AMBIVALENCE SHALL VANISH AND SHE SHALL BE PURE IN DEVOTION TO THAT WICKED END."

Around the rim of the field, appearing infinitesimally small when viewed from his vantage point, tongues of fire licked at the blameless blue sky. Columns of flame raced around the horizon, hurrying to meet each other before turning to converge on the point where he stood.

The shadow had obscured the sun, though the air scorched his lungs as though he were gulping down great draughts of unseen fire. He tried to focus on the monumental spectacle of destruction, but his vision blurred and swam.

"HEED, FOR THESE ARE THE TRAPPINGS AND TOOLS OF HER CRAFT."

A flickering of luminescent images appeared on the face of the hovering shadow...stark, eerie images created by the lightening of augury. These pictures, while abstruse, were not without the power to terrify; a tumble of books, shards of sun-bleached bone, a steaming mass of entrails, powders, and unguents, creature, half woman and half bird. All of these things flashed by in stroboscopic succession, burning themselves onto the synapses of his psyche. He watched them in a deep state of contemplation, but he could not solve the riddle of their association.

Then the cascade of dazzling images ceased, replaced by the blaring voice.

"13 IS THE NUMBER OF HER ASPIRATION. CONJURY IS THE VEHICLE BY WHICH SHE SEEKS TO REALIZE THIS GOAL. IT IS HER INTENTION TO STAND AT THE HEAD OF THIS MANTRA."

"Who is she?" he raved back, growing weary of these vague allusions to the mysterious woman.

"HER NAME IS DICHOTOMY."

He grunted in frustration. Something began to take shape on the shadow bank. The man watched eagerly, thinking that the oracle would provide him with a more definitive answer to his query. He watched, as the swirl of light ran through every primary color and hue in the spectrum. Deep fingers of tension probed into the soft meat of his trembling muscles. He discerned that time had thrust him to the very brink of awful revelation, but when it appeared that the nebulous image would resolve itself into something recognizable the light would constrict like a python and fold back upon itself.

"Goddamned it, show me!" he bellowed, anger and frustration supplanting his fear.

The last grim convulsions of the dying land grew increasingly more violent. The earth thrust itself up in slabs and plates. From these new fissures in the face of the world thick lava spewed out in molten and orange sprays. Whatever the cause of this upheaval, he could see that this middle earth, this land that the oracle had referred to as transition, was being torn asunder by some profound upheaval.

"REMEMBER, YOURS IS THE PATH OF SHADOW...TREAD WITH CARE."

A braying squeal tore through the air and drowned out the thundering bass. He screamed in surprise and pain, then clutched his hands to his head, though the gesture proved futile against the mounting cacophony.

He pleaded for surcease or a quick and merciful end to his own torment. The acrid, stench of desiccation ravaged his lungs. He snapped bolt upright, wildly gazing around to determine what new twist this nightmare had taken, and saw...

2

Then he had awoken into absolute darkness. The sound of his thundering heart filled his ears as if to quell the strident cry of the telephone. He glanced at the digital on the night table. Floating like luminous ghosts, Saddler saw that it was 1:25.

Still half-asleep, Ray fumbled for the phone. The old cliché about bad news coming under the cover of darkness echoed in his mind, as he picked up the receiver. "Hello."

"Sheriff, It's Mariam." Saddler recognized the dispatcher's voice, which he had already come to dislike. Ray passed from drowsiness to total alertness in the beat of a heart. "There's been trouble at the Eternal Light Cemetery. Orlin called in for a backup and an ambulance. Then he asked for you." This last phrase was added as though to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

Saddler closed his eyes, knowing that his illusion of the idyllic middle-American town had just crumbled like worn mortar. "Did he specify the exact nature of the problem, Marium?"

"No, he didn't, Sheriff." There was a weighty pause, and then she added, "Orlin sounded very agitated."

"All right, call back and tell him that I'm on my way." Saddler rang off and hopped out of bed. It was only then that he noticed that the other half of the bed was empty. An icy wave of apprehension rolled over him as he pondered that expanse of empty space. This moment of isolation touched him as chillingly symbolic.

He dressed quickly and hurried down stairs, his thoughts whirling off on a thousand different tangents. Beneath the mounting excitement, he could feel the insipient stirring of a new tension...a self-doubt that had plagued him like a wraith after he had killed the Deleon boy. He realized, in an instant of crystalline revelation, that he would carry this millstone of uncertainty for the rest of his life. There would always be that tiny seed, ready to germinate and strangle his damaged self-confidence.

Ray passed into the kitchen and came to an abrupt halt.

A small snatch of his nightmare resurfaced then.

' _She comes with a corona of fire about her head.'_

For a fraction of a second, Ray could almost grasp the arcane implications of that bizarre dream. It gibbered and capered before him, daring him to explore its terrible enigma. Saddler recoiled from that atavistic dread and the opportunity for understanding was lost.

Veronica stood at the kitchen door, staring fixedly into the side yard. Pale moonlight fell across her shoulder, but her face remained hidden in the soft blue shadows. Something in her posture indicated that she had been standing that way, with her right hand on the door frame, for a long time.

She did not respond to his presence though he had made no effort to be silent. He took a tentative step into the kitchen. His formless dread became a more concrete thing with every second that his wife did not turn.

"Wendy's going to be heart broken, Ray," she said, so suddenly that Saddler literally flinched. Her words had come in a flat, dispassionate tone that Saddler could not recall ever having heard.

"Veronica?" he asked, crossing the kitchen to stand beside her. Seen in this light, his wife's body had assumed a peculiar diaphanous quality. It appeared as though she was an apparition...a shade inviting him to steal a glimpse into some forbidden wonder. Irrationally, Ray found himself wanting to turn and flee, to run out of the house and come back only when he felt sure that the familiar Veronica had returned.

As badly as he wanted to do this, Saddler instead laid his hands on her bare shoulders and asked again, "Ronnie, it's after midnight. What are you doing up?"

"I heard a cry. Something in the yard making shrill sounds." Her voice was clipped and inflectionless. Even the odd, truncated manner in which she formed her sentences further exacerbated Saddler's discomfort. She raised her long, slender arms in a mechanical motion, pointing to something in the deep shadows that had pooled in the side yard.

"Do you see it?" she inquired, a strange note of dark wonder creeping into her voice. Saddler squinted into the gloom, feeling cold droplets of sweat begin to bead on his brow, and saw nothing. He stepped by her and onto the landing. Swinging back and forth...a shadow within a shadow, Ray could make out a suspended shaped. He reached back and flipped the switch that controlled the garage's exterior light. The 100 watt bulbs cut a brilliant swathe through the darkness.

When Saddler's eyes adjusted to the sudden flare of brightness, he felt a small gasp escape his lips. Smucky the cat swung slowly to and fro. He had been hung from a protruding beam which extended from the loft of the garage. Saddler raced off the porch, praying that he was still tossing fitfully in the clutches of his nightmare. The wicked gleam of the piano wire noose and the vivid blotches of red on Smucky's fur informed him that he would find no such reprieve this night.

He stood motionless for several seconds, staring dejectedly up at the cat. Ronnie had been right...Wendy was going to be devastated. She had loved the animal with an unqualified fervor that only small children seemed capable of giving. Now the cat was gone, horribly murdered (though he would make sure that she never learned of the circumstances of its demise), and Saddler feared that her capacity for that special love might well die with it.

"Damn," he muttered and started for the garage, intending to cut the cat down and put it into a plastic bag. As he turned, Ray nearly ran directly into Veronica, who had come up beside him without the slightest sound. She gazed up at the dead pet with an inscrutable expression on her lovely face. It was then that he noticed three tiny droplets of blood on the lapel of her dressing gown. As in his dream, Ray shied away from the conclusion their presence invited him to draw. "Did you see or hear anything other than the cat crying?"

"No," she replied distantly. "Ray, what are you going to do?"

"Take it down and put it in my car. Later, when I've handled the trouble in town, I'll find a place to bury it. When Wendy asks if we've seen Smucky, we'll say that we haven't."

"You mean to lie?" Veronica asked, her expression intensifying. Perhaps it was only a trick of the shadow and light, but Saddler thought that he detected a hint of excitement in her eyes.

' _Christ Ray, get a grip on yourself,'_ he thought. "I don't see that we have much choice, Ronnie. If we tell her what really happened to the cat, she'll have hysterics. And who could blame her."

He moved into the garage, climbing the set of wooden steps that led to the loft. After rearranging several boxes, he opened the loft door and, clutching the wooden frame, fished in the wire. Precariously perched on the jutting post, he reeled up the carcass with one hand. It was heavier than he would have expected, and he realized that the cat had lived a pampered life in the Saddler household.

' _Gorging days are over,'_ he thought crazily, and cracked a morbid grin. He happened to glance down at his wife, who had not moved from her spot in the yard, and that grin curdled on his lips. She stared up, regarding him with an expression that could have been anything from intense hatred to jubilation.

' _Ronnie, what's the matter with you?'_ The questioned flashed through his mind, there and gone with the speed of a leaping brook trout. Though he would have many more occasions to ask himself precisely that question, this was the first moment that he began to suspect that there was something seriously awry in the Saddler kingdom.

Ray hefted the cat into the loft and carried it down the stairs, holding it out before him as though it might carry a virulent disease. Pulling one of the large hefty bags out of the storage cupboards, he dropped Smucky into its waiting mouth, grimacing at the meaty thud that the cat made as it hit the concrete floor.

Back out in the yard, Veronica followed him as he crossed to his cruiser. That unsettling expression was gone now, replaced by a more appropriate anxiety. "Ray, who would do something like this? Why would anyone do something so deplorable to a helpless little animal?"

He opened the trunk, placed the cat near the spare tire, and slammed the lid down, wishing that it could be as easy to close his memory to the images of the piano wire and drying splotches of maroon on the cat's white fur. In his mind, Saddler knew that this dirty bit of butchery could mean just about anything. A sadistic practical joke was a possibility. Warped minds often took a morbid pleasure in tormenting and terrorizing new comers and the fact that this particular newcomer just happened to be the new Sheriff could only make the prospect all the more appealing. Then there was the possibility that this signified the onset of something more ominous...the opening salvo in an escalating campaign of terror connected to the other incidents by an invisible tether he had yet to perceive. Recalling the mutilations at the Ingstrom farm, Ray decided that he might be expedient to lean in favor of the later scenario. "Ronnie, I want you to go back inside and lock all the doors. Don't be alarmed. This is probably just someone's idea of a sick joke, but I don't want to take any chances. I'm going to have Orlin make a slow pass up and down the road. If whoever did this is still hanging around, the cruiser should dissuade him from coming back."

"You're going out now? After this?" Her tone conveyed the first stirring of irritation.

He placed his hands on her bare shoulders, which felt cold to the touch, and felt her stiffen. "Ronnie, while you were downstairs, there was a call from the office. There's been serious trouble at the Eternal Lights Cemetery. I hate to leave you with this, but I have no choice to respond. Go into the house and lock all of the doors and windows. Leave all of the downstairs lights on. I'll have Orlin park the squad car just across the road and watch the house."

She continued to glower at him for a moment, and then her expression softened. "I'm sorry, Ray. I know I'm being foolish. Seeing Smucky like that and knowing the disgusting, awful way that he must have died..." she trailed off and then intoned resolutely, "We'll be all right here."

Saddler drew her to him and held her tightly for several seconds. Then he pushed her back and kissed her forehead. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Ronnie. I promise. I really do think that it's best if Wendy knows nothing about this."

Veronica nodded her silent agreement and watched her husband as he settled into his cruiser. He was in the process of pulling away, when she abruptly leaned through the window and seized his forearm. Her eyes glistened urgently, carrying an emotion that Saddler interpreted to be a need for reassurance. "Ray, what kind of town is this?"

"It's just a town, Ronnie. If you think that you can escape life's ugliness completely, you're always going to be bitterly disappointed. Quinsett is a good town. Like any good town, it's going to have its darker moments, but it's no different from any other small American town." He offered her a warm grin, but even as he offered this trite pearl of wisdom, Ray sensed that it might prove to be a falsehood.

3

The scene at the graveyard was absolute chaos. Saddler came within a hair of colliding with a group of about seven curiosity seekers as he swung his cruiser through the Cemetery gates. Hollow-eyed Art Silver herded the group away with harried impatience. Ray rolled down the window of his cruiser and flipped the party light switch. Alternating waves of blue and red bathed the graveyard in an eerie light.

Silver wandered up to the cruiser and shook his head in disgust, muttering, "Damned civilians."

"What the hell is going on here, Art?" Saddler demanded, somewhat taken aback by the improbable spectacle. As he peered around, Ray noticed a cameraman and a roving reporter.

"News travels fast," he remarked.

Art nodded. "Every good old boy in town has one of them damned scanners. In a town like this, thrills come few and far between, so every time a car is dispatched it gets an escort of about a dozen or so private vehicles."

Saddler grunted and climbed out of his car. Art barked for a group of civilians to stay the hell back from the ribbon cordon that had been strung at the top of the slope. As he turned back to Saddler, his eyes flashed and Ray perceived another emotion couched beneath his irritation. The suppressed revulsion in Silver's eyes brought to mind the images of his dead cat in the cruiser's trunk. "Art, I want to send Orlin over to my house. I want him to cruise Ringgold Lane...no, I want him to park his cruiser directly across from my house and remain posted there until he's relieved."

"What's happened Sheriff?" Silver asked, sensing a controlled urgency in the other man's tone. Ray provided Silver with a brief recount of the ugliness that had passed in his side yard.

"Christ!" Silver winced. He immediately posed the same association that Saddler had strove so hard to avoid. "I can't help but think of those slaughtered cattle at Ingstrom's farm."

Frowning, Ray nodded his tacit agreement that the parallel had crossed his mind as well. "It's probably nothing, but having a cruiser there might help my wife rest a little easier. Orlin can work on his preliminary report in the car."

As he descended the slope, Ray's eyes were stung by the harsh glare of the klieg lights which had been erected around what he supposed was the location of the trouble. An ambulance had carefully threaded its way through the rows of graves. He could see two attendants loading a stretcher into the ambulance, and his heart sunk. Something horrible had transpired here. Not death, it had its own distinctive aura that he had come to recognize during his years in LA, but something deplorable nonetheless. "Maybe you'd better give me a run down on what the hell went on, Art?"

"The truth is we don't really know how to explain what happened here." He offered Saddler a look of apologetic bewilderment. "Orlin was making his patrol of Winder, when he spotted someone running out of the Cemetery. They fled into the woods on the other side of the road, so Orlin decided to investigate the grounds."

Art trailed off, visibly shaken and perplexed. "Orlin discovered the girl...she's the one being loaded onto the ambulance, and a man."

Art led Saddler to another car, where Feldman and Cameron Crane sat in silence. Ray opened the door and sat in the passenger seat. He spared the man in the back seat a cursory glance and then turned his attention to the deputy, who was obviously suffering from a low grade shock. It occurred to him that he might have to revise his plan for protective surveillance of his wife and children. He gestured for Art, who came around the car and leaned through the window. "I think it might be better if you took the duty on Ringgold."

Silver stole a brief glance at Feldman and nodded. Saddler found that he liked Silver. He seemed perceptive and keenly aware of the intricacies of the job. He thought it would not be long before he came to rely on Silver to share the burden of running the department.

"Orlin, tell me what you found," Ray prompted, turning his attention to the distraught deputy.

The Deputy glanced up at his superior and then quickly dropped his eyes. "I've never see anything like it. The girl, I mean."

Saddler sighed internally, seeing that he would have to coax the information from the deputy. "Who is the girl, and what happened to her."

Feldman shrugged his bony shoulders and pursed his lips. "We have no established identity. There was a satchel full of all kinds of bizarre things, but no identification. She wasn't carrying a purse or wallet. She's a Caucasian between the age of seventeen and nineteen." His throat began to work then, and suddenly tears sprang to his eyes. "What could have done that to her. I mean her eyes...ah Jesus."

The words degenerated into wails of inarticulate anguish. Shamed by his rampant emotions, Feldman bent forward and hid his face in his folded arms. Ray watched the trembling rise and fall of Orlin's hunched shoulders, and remembered the torment that he had suffered through after the Deleon shooting.

' _Be patient, Ray. It'll come,'_ he told himself. Gradually, Feldman began to regain his composure, but it was a fragile, painful thing, like a freshly mended bone.

"I found the girl near that grave." He pointed to a plot near the trees. Just to the right of the grave, a slash of fresh earth gaped up at the heavens like an open mouth. There was something intrinsically wrong with that hole, and after a moment's consideration, Ray realized that there were no piles of grass and earth near the hole, giving the pit the appearance of an open gash. Fascinated, Saddler opened the door and went to examine the pit. His first impression of the hole was that the earth had simply opened up and attempted to swallow the girl.

Ray bent down and examined the edges of the pit. There was no evidence that the turf had been disturbed by any sort of digging instrument. "Orlin, hand me your flashlight for a moment."

The deputy handed Ray the flashlight, which had been sheathed with a reflective orange plastic. Ray trained the beam into the hole and then drew a sharp breath. Though the walls drew narrower as the pit deepened, the beam lacked sufficient power to illuminate the pit's bottom.

' _Christ, that's impossible,'_ Saddler reasoned. Standing up, Ray handed the flashlight back to Orlin and rubbed his chin in a gesture of perplexity.

"She was in that hole. It was like the ground had opened up and tried to suck her in," Orlin remarked shakily from over Saddler's shoulder. "We had one hell of a time trying to pull her free."

Ray quickly surveyed the immediate area. "You said that something had happened to her eyes?"

"They're gone. It looks as though they'd been burnt from her head." Orlin's narrative came to a stuttering halt then, and Ray feared that he was about to resume his sobbing. He struggled for several seconds, but eventually managed to bring himself under control. "Sheriff, no human being is capable of doing that to another person...only a monster."

' _Welcome to the real world, Orlin my man,'_ Ray thought with all of the big city cynicism that his years in LA had bestowed upon him. Unlike a good number of his fellow officers, Saddler had retained enough of his humanity to keep such obdurate remarks to himself. "They've taken her to County General out on 101?"

Orlin merely nodded.

Ray dismissed Orlin from his mind and tried to focus his attention on the scene. It was difficult to explain exactly how he functioned when examining a crime scene. On the surface, Saddler was methodical in his approach, but in truth, there was a certain randomness to the way that he tried to reconstruct the details of a crime. If one was to equate his methods to a jigsaw puzzle, Ray did not look for specific corner pieces and begin building from there. He preferred to open his consciousness and try to absorb the lingering aura of the place, as if a criminal act could leave behind perceptible residue. He allowed his thoughts to simply sweep clean and then flow out. His eyes flicked from one detail to the next, assessing, analyzing and collating.

After several seconds, Saddler noticed the lines of white powder. Cursing silently, he turned to Feldman and ordered, "Get everyone back up the slope...the photographer, everyone."

Orlin blinked, caught off guard by the unexpected snap of iron in Saddler's normally placid voice. He took a hesitant step backwards and set about shepherding everyone up the incline. Saddler followed the group up the slope and then turned to examine the grounds from an elevated perspective. Seen from this angle, Ray detected a specific arrangement in the array of gleaming dagger hilts that protruded from the sod. Thought the lines had all but been effaced by the traffic, it was apparent that they had run between the daggers to form some kind of multi-sided figure.

Walking back down to the broken lines of powder, he stooped down and retrieved a hand full. It was dry and abrasive to the touch. Regarding the powder thoughtfully, he allowed it to run through his fingers. The grave drew his attention next. The simple flat slab was cut from the cheapest quality marble commonly used in public trust burials. He read the simple inscription, mouthing the name of the woman who had been laid to rest here.

Something about the name and the life span, with its missing date of birth, touched a cold note of terror in Saddler's mind. The deliberate arrangement of the daggers was particularly ominous as it carved its mysterious figure around the modest plot. Ray knelt next to one of the knives and bent to inspect the haft. What first appeared to be a heavy haft, turned out to be shaped from cheap plastic and paint like a child's toy.

"Have these daggers been photographed?" he called over his shoulder. Feldman responded that they had not been photographed. Ray gestured him forward and Orlin moved to join the Sheriff with a sheepish expression branded on his thin face. Saddler misconstrued the look to be one of embarrassment over having destroyed evidence, but from where he stood, Orlin had noticed Ray's scrutiny of the gravestone.

' _Now the questions will start,'_ Orlin thought with no small amount of apprehension, doubting that he was capable of deceiving his way around Saddler.

"Orlin, I want a dust sample collected and sent to the county for analysis. Priority one," Feldman nodded and moved to comply, thinking that perhaps he had been granted a reprieve.

"Orlin, I also need a long shot of these daggers. The photograph will have to be taken from up the slope to get the full detail, so they may have to be taken in the morning. These daggers are not to be disturbed until then." Again, Feldman nodded without uttering a word. He turned, but Ray finally posed the inevitable and dreaded question, "Do you know anything about the woman who's buried here? This Jeniah?"

Orlin bent to retrieve the sample, hoping that the activity could conceal the extent of his discomfiture. The hands holding the zip lock bag trembled as he dredged up a portion of the white powder. "I've heard some talk about her. She died in a fire out on Ringgold Lane back before I was born. There were stories about her being a wicked woman. Just child's tales really, but they've persisted."

Ray nodded thoughtfully and seemed on the verge of pursuing the question, when another deputy jogged into the circle. Saddler recognized the shambling slouch of Kort Ranlin and gestured him over. The deputy's agitation was obvious as he approached. His small ferret's eyes gleamed excitedly in the harsh light of the kliegs. "Sheriff, we've found a motorcycle by the fence. I radioed in the license and found that it's registered to Quinsett's upstanding citizen, Knox Severn."

Orlin groaned and peeled off a surprisingly bitter string of curses. "Knox is Quinsett's own bad boy," he explained to Saddler. "Strictly punk material. Raising hell or driving that bloody motorcycle on sidewalks and lawns."

"That must have been who you saw running across the highway," Kort theorized. "It would have taken something pretty terrible to convince him to abandon that precious motorcycle of his."

"Or he did something terrible himself," Feldman remarked somberly.

"All right Kort, we'd better bring Mr. Crane in for questioning. I want him to be taken as discreetly as possible. Until we know precisely what went on here, no one talks to the press. Am I clear?" The two deputies exchanged glances and nodded dutifully, and then Ranlin vanished into the darkness. Ray took a final sweeping glance around the grave yard. "Did you have an opportunity to question the man in the car?"

"No," Feldman replied, and averted his eyes to his hands. Though generally a patient man, he saw how Orlin neurotic mannerisms could grow tiresome after a very short time. It was evident that he had badly bungled the situation here. It was also glaringly apparent that a man like Orlin wouldn't have survived a day on the mean streets of any American city. Saddler suspected that his continued presence on the force was a testimony to Huxley's sense of loyalty.

"Maybe we'd better question him."

Ray started for the car, but was mildly surprised to find his deputy catch hold of his forearm. He looked inquisitively to his deputy, who began to speak in a conspiratorial whisper, "About the man in the car, Sheriff..."

"Yes, Orlin?"

"His name is Cameron Crane. The Crane family is about the richest in Quinsett...maybe one of the richest in the whole state. He's a bit...a bit odd. If you're really interested in keeping this matter discreet, then we'd be wise to take him out of here without any of those people catching wind of who he is." Saddler looked at Orlin with a bright speculative light gleaming in his eyes.

Perhaps the man wasn't as oblivious to the functioning of the world as Ray had first concluded. "Is anyone aware that Mr. Crane is in the back of the cruiser?"

Orlin shook his head. "No, and that's why there is still a chance that we can take him out of here without attracting any undue attention."

As Ray returned to Orlin's cruiser, he was forced to question his emphasis on keeping publicity to an absolute minimum. Like a pearl built from the tiniest of irritants, a deep fear was growing in the pit of Saddler's guts. Though his nightmare was now only a string of broken, half-remembered fragments, Ray could sense the onset of some insidious process. It was as though a gigantic, infernal engine had coughed and sputtered into life. Soon it would begin to cycle up to full power. He understood that there was a glint of paranoia beneath this stream of reasoning, but the strong current of foreboding ran persistently through his mind like a raging river that could not be dammed.

The man sat patiently in the back of the cruiser. He did not protest his innocence, nor did he raise a bitter objection to being cuffed in the back of a cruiser. He greeted Saddler's return with soft grey eyes that conveyed only a mild curiosity, as if he had only a passing interest in the events here. "Mr. Crane," Ray began. "Do you understand why you're being held?"

"I suppose that I do," Cameron remarked neutrally. He watched Saddler through placid, resigned eyes, and garnered the impression of a man who was approachable...a man who possessed the rare ability to actually listen without prejudice.

"Then you also realize that you haven't been formally charged with anything. Is that not correct, Orlin?"

Feldman looked to Cameron, a faint moue of disgust curling the corners of his mouth. "No, he hasn't."

When Cameron displayed no visible reaction to the news, Ray shrugged. "My chief priority is finding out what exactly happened here. I have to take you down to the station for questioning, and I want to do so without bringing any undue attention upon yourself. I'm going to request a simple favor, Mr. Crane."

Cameron offered Saddler a rather quizzical frown. Evidently, the new Sheriff had not been apprised of Cameron's status as the town's whipping boy. He wondered if Saddler sincerely believed that he could suppress the news of a Crane's involvement in a business as nasty as this had proven to be. Cameron could discern no sign of deliberate guile in Saddler's eyes. "I'll do whatever I can to cooperate."

Ray frowned at this at this unexpected tractability. He had been a policeman for a long time and could not recall ever encountering a potential suspect who was so compliant. It was almost as though Cameron Crane was indifferent to potential trouble confronting him or perhaps he was simply resigned to the expectation of mistreatment. "I'm going to ask you to lie across the back seat while we drive out of here."

Cameron considered this for a brief moment and then slid to his left. The gesture provided Saddler with a deep insight into the man in dirty combat fatigues. In that moment, Ray concluded that Cameron Crane was incapable of a savage act of mutilation that Orlin had described. Whatever demon might plague the man...and Saddler had little doubt that he was profoundly troubled...Cameron Crane's capacity for brutal violence and terror was reserved strictly for himself.

"Let's get to the station, Orlin," Ray commanded brusquely, feeling a rather vague irritation that he didn't entirely understand.

3

The two men sat on opposite sides of the wooden interview table. There was none of the confrontational glaring or the adversarial exchange of threats that normally characterized such sessions. The atmosphere was more benign, better suited to a casual conversation in a coffee house than an interrogation. Another thing that Ray had discovered in his years with the L.A.P.D. was that there was little to be gained by badgering and intimidating most people. Saddler preferred to relax the subject, finding that they were more likely to be cooperative if they didn't feel threatened.

The man across the table presented a definite anomaly for Ray. Cameron seemed abstract and oddly divided, almost as if he was only partially present. That was not to say that the man was disconnected or that he had no real comprehension of what was taking place around him. It would have been more precise to say that Cameron Crane seemed insulated by a layer of impassivity that filtered all incoming sensations and emotions.

For his part, Cameron was perceptive enough to grasp a measure of his questioner's own pervasive despair. It was not a glaring thing, but Crane could sense traces of some hard-suffered wound that had never quite healed in Saddler's heart. Ray glanced through the glass door. In the main office, Orlin sat struggling with the night's paperwork, wondering how he could find a way of wording his report so as to diminish the extent of his own incompetence. Near the front of the office, Mariam was engrossed in a crossword puzzle, though her thoughts were abuzz with Cameron Crane and the implications of his presence here at the station.

"I want you to tell me exactly what you saw," Ray began. Cameron ran his hand through his sweaty brown hair in a gesture inspired more by confusion than anxiety or reluctance.

"When I came into the graveyard, I heard a scream. It was a high-pitched scream. I ran toward the sound and came upon the boy lying on the grass. He jumped up and ran off when he realized that I was there. The girl was caught in the pit. No, that's not exactly right. It looked as though she had sunk in mud up to her waist. She was slumped forward. I ran to her and lifted her up. That's when I saw her eyes." The recollection of the girl's hollow, blackened sockets caused Cameron's face to ripple with dismay and revulsion. He shook his head and looked down at the table.

"And that's when Deputy Feldman found you?" Saddler prompted.

"Yes. I tried to tell him that she was badly hurt, but he had already decided that I was responsible for the girl's injuries."

"Would you be able to recognize the person who ran by you?" Ray asked hopefully. If Crane could identify Knox Severn, it was just possible that Ray would be able to unravel this ugly business in short order.

"No." Seeing Saddler's open disappointment, Crane felt the need to elaborate. "It was quite dark and the boy was by me in a shot."

Ray's gaze intensified. Cameron recognized this as the moment when the Sheriff intended to get down to brass tacks. "How did you come to be in a locked Cemetery in the middle of the night? I want you to understand that you don't have to answer any further questions without having a legal council present."

"I've done nothing wrong, so I have no need for a lawyer," Crane said simply. Saddler nodded. There was an open and forthright aspect about Crane...one that seemed to preclude the possibility of guile or deception. After a moment, Saddler gestured for the man to continue. As he observed Crane, a subtle transformation rippled across the man's smooth features. The man's gaze became meditative, yet sharp enough to prickle Ray's skin.

Cameron struggled with the need to impart the full scope his awful tale, to share his burden with someone else, balancing that need against the intransigence of commonly held beliefs and predisposed notions of what was and what could not be. He sighed to himself, the silent moan echoing in his mind like a hollow cry of desolation. He had reached the one barrier past which there could be no movement. Butting up against the limits of traditional rationality, Cameron knew that any attempt to relate some of what had happened and what had motivated him...driven him to the Eternal Lights Cemetery...could only deepen his tribulations. "Every night, I go for a long walk. Some nights I head out on route 101, and others I'll go out along Ringgold Lane. Depending on how I feel and the weather, I might walk as far as five or six miles. Tonight, I decided to take a stroll along Winder road, with the idea that I'd turn back when I came to Milford stream."

"So what drew your attention to the graveyard?" Saddler asked, never taking his eyes from Cameron's face. He found himself suddenly struck by an intense curiosity over Crane's age. It was impossible to predict with any degree of certitude. The man appeared to be anywhere from thirty to forty, depending on his facial expression. "Was it the girl's screaming?"

Cameron shook his head, his eyes narrowing as his mind conjured up the recollection of his first inkling that something had gone horribly wrong. He could not come right out and tell the Sheriff that the events of the night had been rooted firmly in the stony soil of the supernatural, but perhaps he could turn him in that direction through inference and intimation. "No. As I've said, the girl didn't begin to scream until I'd actually climbed the fence and started into the graveyard."

Saddler nodded as if to say that, yes, he did recall Cameron having said exactly that. The effect was so contrived that Cameron couldn't help but smile, thinking that the Sheriff had been guilty of intentional misdirection. Unlike Huxley, who was simply straightforward, Saddler possessed a calculating and clever mind. "I was just coming over the hill that leads down to the Cemetery gates, when I noticed a glowing light coming from somewhere near the swamp. It wasn't a harsh light, like you'd expect from a fire. This light was more subdued...muted. It had a rather odd quality...effulgent is how you might describe it, and it reminded me of the kind of glow that comes from a neon tube light that is just about to give up the ghost. I've heard that swamp gases can create a similar effect, though I've never actually seen such a thing."

Cameron stopped, thinking that he had rambled on to the point where his lie had become glaringly obvious. He forced himself to meet and hold Saddler's gaze. Ray remained silent for several seconds. There was something inconsistent with what Crane had just told him, but he could not put a finger on it. "Alright Mr. Crane...just one final question...when the boy ran by you, did you see anything in his hands?"

Cameron shook his head adamantly. "No. When he jumped up and began to run, he waved his arms for just a moment. His hands were definitely empty."

Saddler turned his back to Crane, so as not to reveal his own puzzlement and consternation. His instincts admonished him that Crane was not telling him the entire truth, though he was convinced that the man had committed no crime. He felt the urge to hold the man...to see if time might just make him more pliable, but elected to let him go instead if only in deference to the undo publicity his detention would arouse. "Mr. Crane, I'm going to let you go, basically because I have no real grounds to hold you. I do presume that you'll be available to answer further question should any arise?"

Cameron nodded. Saddler gestured towards the door. "Then you may go, and thanks for that bit of cooperation back at the cemetery."

Cameron reached the door and hesitated, hand on handle. "No doubt, you're going to hear about me, if you haven't already. I've had my problems and in all candor, I still do, although I've made every effort to steer clear of causing anyone any kind of harm. What happened to that girl goes beyond just crazy. An act like that is evil...plain and simple. I hope you find whoever did this, Sheriff."

Cameron lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Ray merely watched him, not sure how to respond. After a moment, Crane opened the door and left without looking back.

4

The hospital had been built only six years before, its diagnostic and operating wings a testimony to the philanthropic bent of the town's more prominent citizens. Ray needed only five minutes in the facility to gain some grasp of the affluence that lay behind the structure of this small town. The facility had been constructed in a sprawl as opposed to the standard uninspired stack of floors. Splotches of bright and maddeningly cheery colors adorned the walls in every direction as though the designers had attempted to make the building's inhabitants forget that this was a place where the sparing of life and the inevitable coming of death were the order of business. Ray found it hard to imagine confronting slow, lingering death in a place of such blaring optimism. The contrast between purpose and intention struck him as dreary and somehow obscene.

He spoke to the head nurse in the emergency section, who informed him that the girl had been taken to the trauma unit. She frowned in disapproval when he informed her that he would have to go up and talk to the doctor in charge. Reluctantly, she provided him with directions. He walked down the corridor, depressed by the mournful sound of his boots echoing along the empty spaces of the hall. To his own dismay, he actually managed to lose his way in the maze of halls, all of which seemed to intersect at strange angles.

When he finally located the place, he was totally unprepared for the chaos that awaited him. A hysterical woman raged at a nurse and doctor, who were frantically attempting to calm her before she managed to disturb the entire ward. A few steps behind her, a tall, thin man simply stood and watched the tumult with the expression of a man who had survived a solid week of intense carpet bombing. The doctor said something to the woman, who promptly slapped his hand away. Drawing a deep breath, Saddler pushed through the door.

"What are you doing for her eyes? You can't leave her like that, do you hear me? I WANT SOMETHING DONE, NOW!" She roared, her face turning the color of freshly stewed beets. The man, who Saddler surmised must be her husband, tried to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she withered him with a smoldering glance that would have scorched granite. The doctor became aware of the Sheriff's approach and looked to him with a desperate plea in his eyes.

When the woman realized that Saddler had joined him, she turned the full weight of her anger in his direction. "What kind of town are you running here when a young girl can be taken from in front of her own home and savaged?"

Ray raised his hands. He had faced his share of irate, incensed citizens over the years and understood just how volatile they could be. Even those who were the most docile under normal circumstances could erupt into violence when they had been pushed to such hysterical extremes. "Ma'am, it would help if you started by telling me your name and the exact nature of your problem. Then I'll try to answer all of your questions."

The woman's eyes flared, and then her face appeared to literally crumple as she burst into inarticulate wails. The sight of his wife's tears seemed to rouse the man. "My name is Philip Riesen and this is my wife, Sarah. The girl who was brought in is our daughter, Alma." His face twisted in knots. "What in God's name happened to her?"

"We're still trying to ascertain exactly what happened at the Cemetery, Mr. Riesen. It appears that Alma was not the only person involved. We're still trying to pick up the other person who was allegedly involved." He turned to the doctor, who nodded his gratitude and relief. "Doctor..?"

"Wyman."

"Doctor Wyman, I'd like to have a few words with you and then I'd like to see the girl."

The doctor grew suddenly anxious. "The girl is heavily sedated. Couldn't this wait until morning?"

Ray shook his head vehemently. "No, I don't think that it can. I only want to view her condition...briefly."

Wyman hesitated for a moment, but then seeing that Saddler wouldn't relent, shrugged and led the Sheriff to a room at the far end of the corridor. Saddler was about to enter the room, when Wyman put a restraining hand upon his shoulder. "Before you go in, I'd like to be somewhat more precise about her condition."

He stole a glance back over his shoulder and Saddler understood that the good Doctor had not been entirely truthful about the severity of the girl's condition. He nodded for the doctor to proceed. "When the girl came in, the emergency staffer called me in to examine the girl's wounds. I'll be frank, I've been a practicing physician for over twenty-three years and I've never seen a wound precisely like this one."

He hesitated and then looked directly into Saddler's eyes. The man's profound agitation distilled through the veneer of professional detachment showing that the man was holding onto his composure by the tiniest of increments. "You see, the girl's eyes have been entirely burned away...everything from the actual eyeball to the optic nerves below."

"And you're certain the wounds were inflicted through some type of flame?"

"Definitely, although I have no idea how. The condition of the skin is characteristic of burn damage. The intensity of the flame must have been incredible." After a moment of reflective silence, he added, "And the pain must have been too horrendous to contemplate."

Saddler opened the door and stepped into the blue gloom. The room was veiled in darkness except for the faint glow that was cast by the tube lighting which was mounted above the bed's headboard. He stood and regarded her for a moment. As he watched her unmoving, sleeping form, Ray felt a shiver creep along the length of his spine. It was a cold, elemental fear and it took him in its embrace like a sadistic lover. He could sense the doctor's benign presence over his shoulder. "I'm truly baffled by her condition. She's in a state of absolute disassociation and not responding to external stimuli. Come and see the state of her facial muscles."

Ray bent over the girl. "Go ahead, gently touch her face."

Ray looked back over his shoulder. Wyman was gazing down at the girl with an intense fascination. Ray touched the girl's sallow cheek with his index and middle finger. He recoiled as though he had stuck his hand into a nest of hornets. He looked questioningly at Wyman, who granted him a rather quizzical smile as if to say that the girl's state was mysterious indeed. Alma Riesen's facial muscles had become as inured and unyielding as stone...her features set in a permanent expression of horror.

Ray's eyes glazed with pity. Her skin, as white as the bandages that encircled the sightless hollows that had once been her eyes, reminded him of alabaster. Wyman explained, "I'm going to be blunt. I can't conceive of a plausible explanation for what's been done to this girl. Medically, it is quite simply impossible."

The last sentence echoed between the pair like an admission of personal failure. Ray could only shrug and turn a bewildered glance upon the girl, whose jaw muscle stood out in sharp relief beneath her taut skin. Even death, in its most gruesome form, paled in comparison to the state of suspension in which this girl...this once-lovely girl on the verge of womanhood...had been entombed. Saddler sagged as he turned away from the mindless waste.

"Will she come out of it?"

Wyman only shrugged glumly and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his smock.

When he emerged from Alma's room, Ray saw that the nurses had succeeded in calming Mrs. Riesen down, if only a momentarily. He was beginning to form a crude mental picture of what might have transpired in the graveyard, though he would have to see the still shots before he could draw any real conclusions. There were pressing questions to be posed of the parents, but propriety and decency demanded that he be patient, so he assumed the role of Wailing Wall, allowing the Riesen's to vent their outrage and grief. He assured them that every effort would be made to find and punish the person who had done this to their daughter.

As he left the intensive care ward some forty minutes later, Saddler paused by the door and studied the faces of the two parents. Trite platitudes about sorrow and regret meant nothing in the face of such tragedy. In fact, they were not only hollow, but offensive. As he walked down the hall, faint sounds of crying started again as Mrs. Riesen's misery found fresh momentum. He wondered how he might react if it was Wendy lying in that hospital bed, sightless and entrapped in a mysterious embrace of stone. The image forced him to look away. Then, driven by the exigent demand of their sorrow, Saddler turned and trudged wearily to his cruiser.

5

Art Silver leafed absently through a dog-eared copy of Popular Mechanics, occasionally wiping away the sheen of perspiration that slicked his face. Finally, weary of squinting at the print beneath the limp dome light, he tossed the magazine into the back seat and lit a cigarette. He leaned over and withdrew a small metal tin from the glove compartment which would serve as an ashtray. Heaven forbid the furor that would arise if he were to be caught smoking in a public cruiser. It was a sad situation when drug pushers were given a tap on the wrist as punishment for wholesale poisoning, while a working man was nearly crucified for indulging in the pleasure of a cigarette.

God, but it was hot. He had lived in Quinsett all of his life and could not recall the heat ever having been such a persistent bitch as it was being this summer.

' _Ah, but times are a changing,'_ he thought, and smiled to himself. That had been his uncle Milt's signature expression...one that the old man had uttered in any context, either negative or positive, and in any situation. Art's instinct told him that perhaps the onset of the damnable heat also signaled the commencement of some more inimical change for Quinsett.

The scene at the graveyard tonight had been a particularly nasty bit of business. One had only to look into Orlin's pallid face to understand precisely how awful it had been. Art had caught a brief glimpse of the girl's face as the attendants had loaded her into the ambulance. He had managed to quell his roiling stomach, though only barely. The recollection caused him to shake his head in dismay. There had been a time...and not all that long ago, when Art would have sworn that there was not a soul in Quinsett capable of such an abominable act. Now, in light of the alleged suicide of the reporter and the slaughter at the Ingstrom farm, Art was no longer so sure.

He drew a deep drag on his cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud of blue smoke. His thoughts turned to Knox Severn. The kid was what the old timers had referred to as a _bad spring_ , but a brutal torturer? Art had his serious reservations. Then there was Cameron Crane. Art had little doubt that the man was not functioning with his full faculties, but Crane had always struck Silver as somehow pitiable. He drifted around the town streets like a translucent specter that only attracted attention when some mean-spirited bastard was in the mood to deal out a little humiliation. Some of the other deputies were of the opinion that Crane was the type who stoically bore all of the indignities until the day came that he would finally snap and extract a little indiscriminate payback from anyone in his path. Art supposed that it wasn't entirely implausible, but there was no way that Cameron would drag a girl off to a graveyard and mutilate her like that. Then who else? Considering the problem gave Silver the chills.

Looking across the narrow asphalt road, Silver thought of the reason behind this rather mundane bit of night duty. The Sheriff's cat had been strangled and hung from piano wire. There seemed to be a rampant epidemic of mutilation in the sleepy little hamlet of Quinsett. When one examined all of the pieces together it was possible to catch flashing glimpses of an implied pattern or vague purpose.

The Saddler property was partially concealed from the road by a stand of towering pines that delineated the road side of the property. He was afforded a truncated view of a bank of windows on the top floor of the house. As he watched, a spectacular burst of green light erupted within the house. Art gave a start and very nearly fumbled the last embers of his cigarette onto the upholstery. Irritated by his own edginess, he flicked the butt onto the pavement and watched as it died its winking death. The light flared again, brilliant in its magnitude...like the incandescent snap of summer lightening. Art's eyes narrowed as his hand went automatically to his holster. The eruptions of light began to come in staccato succession. In the blink of an eye, a shape passed in front of the window. From where he sat, the shape appeared oddly disproportioned and vaguely threatening for its distortion. Another explosion of light, this one the most intense yet, caused Silver to raise an arm to shield his eyes. When he regained his vision, the ghostly shadow figure had vanished.

Silver threw open his door and stepped out onto the road, his heels ringing abnormally loud on the cracked pavement. To his surprise and consternation, Art found that he was breathing heavily. His pulse thumped in his ears in testimony to his sudden and baseless anxiety.

"It's probably just the bloody TV," he whispered as he crossed the road. Silver was too perceptive to be lulled by such a cursory dismissal. No television on earth could have generated such an unearthly blast of that magnitude. As he made his way into the ditch, Art surrendered to the urge to draw his gun. The eerie light display continued, flaring and guttering like an ancient street light on the verge of breakdown.

When Silver had reached the property side of the ditch, he began to move toward the driveway, never taking his eyes from the upper windows. As he approached the drive, he realized for the first time, just how vital the night had become. In his state of heightened acuity, Art could hear an entire range of unnerving sounds...a snapping branch here, and a crunch of leaves in the congealing shadows on the opposite side of the road. If he had been able to stand back and take a dispassionate account of himself, Art would have been embarrassed by the extent to which he had allowed himself to surrender to his anxiety. Logically, Silver knew that there was nothing particularly frightening about this splendid summer night. He was hearing sounds and seeing movements that he had seen a hundred times before, perhaps a thousand...only tonight they had been brought into vivid focus by the unsettling events of the last few nights.

Chastising himself for is foolishness, Silver was about to holster his weapon, when a shadow swiftly materialized from a spot where the trees met the driveway. His heart sprang up into his mouth and he leveled the gun on the figure, which had appeared without the slightest of warnings. He came with in an infinitesimal distance of pulling the trigger. He could actually hear the tendons in his finger creak as he relaxed his trigger finger.

"You scared the hell out of me, Mrs. Saddler," he scolded shakily, putting his gun away with a trembling hand.

Though her face was partially obscured by shadow, there was still enough light to absorb a measure of the woman's exceptional beauty. Her lovely green eyes, which were fastened upon his, were watchful and exceedingly incisive, despite the fact that she had come within an instant of being shot, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler appeared almost serene. "I trust that there's a reason that you're creeping about my trees in the middle of the night, Deputy..."

"Deputy Silver, Mrs. Saddler," Art replied. His face felt hot with embarrassment and he was suddenly grateful for the cover of darkness. "The sheriff asked me to keep an eye on the house because of what happened with the cat and everything."

"My husband has a tendency to be overly protective, Deputy Silver," she replied stiffly. Art frowned at that. It was an oddly dispassionate reaction to something that Silver, himself, would have found especially disturbing. If it had been his wife who had been confronted with the exact situation, she would have insisted in calling out the National Guard for protection, yet this woman seemed to be trivializing the senseless slaughter of the family pet. Still, Art had learned that it was pointless to judge people on their individual reaction to traumatic situation.

"We've had a similar incident, Mrs. Saddler, and I think that your husband just wants to play it safe."

"That still doesn't explain what you're doing in my trees, deputy," she persisted, her tone glacial.

"I saw something," he stammered. It was difficult to concentrate. Even in the shadows, Art could see how tall she was, and how exquisitely formed...how enticingly feminine her figure appeared. And her eyes...there was a preternatural glow to them that should have been impossible beneath the inky concealment of night. Nonetheless, Silver could feel her gaze upon his skin like a delicate touch, making him feel inarticulate and giddy.

"Saw something?" she echoed questioningly. She stepped back into the drive now, gesturing for him to join her on the lit asphalt. Her full lips had curved into a sardonic grin.

"Yes," he said hurriedly. Pointing up to the upper bank of windows, that were now clearly visible, he told her about what he had seen. She followed his gaze up to the window. The window was dark and inscrutable. Pale moonlight reflected off the window, but he could see nothing of the inside.

He shook his head and blinked. When he turned to face her, she was watching him with a speculative expression. She smiled indulgently and Art felt his heart flutter in reaction. "Perhaps you've been allowing your imagination to get the better of you, Deputy Silver."

"There wasn't a television set on in that room, Mrs. Saddler?" he asked. His question rang lame and fatuous to his own ears. With mounting confusion, Silver found that he was uncertain about just what he had witnessed...or if he had seen anything at all.

"That is a guest bedroom, deputy. There hasn't been a light on in there for some time." She took a step closer. Silver was touched by an electric sensation...an intensely visceral reaction to her proximity. Her enormous presence filled Silver with a sense of ambivalence. He found himself wanting to go, but knew that he would not...could not, be compelled to budge until she had dismissed him. She came nearer still. He could smell her fragrance, so subtle and bewitching, and shivered as her aura enveloped him. He experienced a starkly terrifying moment when an image of her hands, with their long, manicured nails, closed upon his throat and tore it open with a malefic delight. As this ludicrous image flashed through his mind, Art realized, with equal horror, that he would be helpless to raise a hand in his own defense.

"Perhaps you're right," he heard himself murmur distantly. A stupefying exhaustion took him then. Art could feel himself wanting to simply close his eyes and let his mind drift.

She was no longer smiling. Her eyes had assumed decidedly feral glint. "There's really no need for this kind of surveillance. More likely than not, Smucky was killed by some warped little bastard, who was out to devil the new folks. Doesn't that sound reasonable, Deputy Silver?"

Art nodded dumbly and took a shuffling step toward the road. He could feel the malaise tightening its grip upon him with every word that she spoke. The feeling, while unsettling, was not entirely unpleasant. He had indulged in his share of pot, back in his high school days of the mid Seventies. That state of slow disconnection...of watching things through a reality filter...had been very similar to what he was feeling now. She continued to speak as he retreated in the direction of his cruiser. "You said that there had been trouble tonight. What kind of trouble?"

Art blinked. She was asking him to divulge privileged information, to breech his trust. She sensed his reluctance, and smiled patiently. "Now Art let's be reasonable. I'm the Sheriff's wife. Do you really think that he won't share details of his job with me?" The smile brightened another notch and Art could feel his resistance weaken proportionally. "Art, if I want you to tell me what happened, you know I have the power to make you talk. You understand that, don't you Art?"

Silver again nodded, suspecting that she could, indeed, extract whatever she needed from him. He also guessed that he would not care for her method one bit. "There was some kind of trouble in the graveyard. A girl was mutilated. There were two other people involved, but we don't know any of the details."

"Did the girl live, and do you have any notion of what the attack was related to?" she demanded in a tone that was solemn and thoughtful.

"Yes, the girl should live, and no, there was nothing to indicate what had happened. The girl is incoherent," Silver concluded in a mechanical voice that sounded as though he was responding from the depths of a hypnotist's trance.

Mrs. Saddler seemed to ponder this for a moment, and then regarded him with a satisfied grin. "As you can see, Deputy, I'm quite capable of fending for myself. I would recommend that you go back to your cruiser and simply rest there until your duty is over."

He bowed his head in a strangely formal gesture of acquiescence and then turned to comply. Before he could turn away, her right hand flashed out with the speed of a striking Cobra. The tip of her index finger jabbed into the hollow of his left temple. Art was aware of something touching his skin and then passing through it. An argent searing pain followed, and Art Silver could feel an alien presence inside of his mind. He opened his eyes to find her glaring down upon him, her green eyes cold and immeasurably cruel. "You recall nothing of this encounter, or our conversation. You saw no flashing green light. You saw nothing out of the ordinary. All in all, you will have passed a long and uneventful night."

She continued to regard the mesmerized Deputy for several seconds, methodically searching his thoughts for a sense of how the sheriff's staff perceived the events of the past few days. As Veronica released him, she began to laugh. The police were swimming in a sea of ignorance. Even if they were to suspect that there was some obscure connection between what happened at the farm, and what had happened to the reporter, they would _never_ put the connections into the correct context. Dismissing Silver from her mind, Veronica turned and strode back to the house.

Art gasped and stumbled backwards, his mind reeling from the confusion and pain that the witch's invasion had wreaked. As he crossed the highway, Silver fell and barked his shin on the pavement, tearing his pants just beneath the left knee.

Throwing open the door, Silver slumped into his cruiser and sat staring straight along the road into the impenetrable darkness. If he was even aware of the rivulets of blood which ran from his abraded knee and into his boot, Art gave no notice. After several seconds, he fell into a fitful doze, while his mind set about the process of forgetting the oddities he had witnessed and his macabre encounter with the imposing Veronica Ashcott-Saddler.

Chapter Twelve

1

Knox Severn ran for what seemed like hours. He ran until it felt certain that his lungs (which, even at his young age, had already incurred their share of tobacco abuse) would burst and his thundering heart would explode. It was as though some unknowable imperative had seized control of his mind, pushing his body with a reckless disregard for its capabilities and limitations. He continued to run through the deep stitch in his side as each gasping breath felt as though he were inhaling fragments of rusty razor blades.

Trying to cross a small stream, Severn's legs finally refused to carry him further and he spilled into a reeking bog that smelled a lot like day old cow shit. Gagging with revulsion, Knox clutched onto a protruding root and hauled himself up onto the bank, where he curled into a trembling fetal ball.

' _I've got to get up. Have to think.'_ That was true. He had been seen and stumbling blindly about the bush was going to avail him nothing, except possibly break his leg and deepen his predicament. Deep cogitation had never been an activity that Knox cared to pursue, but he forced his thoughts back to the moment in the graveyard when the thing had exploded out of the Indian's grave. It had touched him. God help him, but it had actually touched him.

There was a vague ache in his groin that caused him to recall his union with the entity. It had raped him, in a manner of speaking, but he had derived an ineffable pleasure from that violation. Knox pushed himself to his knees and attempted to reconstruct the events that had set him to bolt in panic.

He remembered the girl, Alma, and her silly ritual. She had been playing some manner of game, and then everything had gone horribly, irreversibly wrong. The memory of her blood-curdling scream reverberated in his head. He had tried to run and then something had fallen upon him. After that, there had been an interminable period of terror and ecstasy. He had been taken, though he had no clear idea by whom or why.

Though he had done nothing wrong, had had no hand in whatever fate had befallen Alma, Knox intuited that he had crossed a boundary over which there would be no return. The man had possibly seen him, and if he had not, then surely that sham of a Deputy, Feldman, had caught a passing glimpse of him. They would be salivating with the opportunity to hang something major over his head.

' _But how would they really know it was you?'_ he thought to himself.

"The motor bike might just give them a clue, you imbecile," someone snorted sardonically. Knox gave a startled cry and leapt to his feet. Gazing about frantically, he discovered that he was still very much alone, save for the sea of shadow and the sighing wind.

"Not alone, Knox," a voice corrected. It occurred to him that he was not hearing the words with his ears, but through the channels of his mind. The concept bewildered him, but he lacked the imagination to experience the paralyzing dread that should have accompanied such unlikely juncture of events. "Your days of being alone are behind you. From this day forth, I shall guide your actions."

"Who the hell are you? Where are you?" he demanded indignantly. He didn't care for the idea of someone speaking through his thoughts. He shook his head vigorously as though this might displace the intruder the way one might try to clear mental cobwebs.

The unseen presence chose to ignore his query. "I mutilated the girl...reduced her to nothing more than a drooling, blithering idiot. Why...as a punishment for her audacity. One doesn't tamper with forces that they cannot comprehend. As events will evolve, the blame shall fall squarely upon your shoulders. They found your cycle, and they will be looking for you."

Severn groaned, and protested, "But I didn't do a damned thing to her. She wanted to go to the graveyard."

"Life's a major bitch at times," the voice commiserated. "Irrespective of fairness, the fact is that you've become the outlaw you've always secretly yearned to become. Now let's face the facts, Knox...you're a plodder...a regular dray horse. Without my direction you're like a sheep in a wolves' den."

"What the fuck are you yapping about?" Severn barked, so loud that he actually roused a nearby owl into alarmed flight. Suddenly his groin contracted into a knot of white agony. He clutched his offended testicles and tumbled back into the stinking water. He flailed and gasped for breath, swallowing a copious amount of the rancid water that tasted even viler than it smelled.

"That's what I'm talking about, you impudent little bastard," the voice rasped angrily. "As far as you're concerned, I'm God. I am pain and pleasure and all things in between. You'd be well advised take every pain to insure my continued benevolence. Is my meaning clear?"

While Knox would never have turned up on any scholars list, he had enough common sense to understand where his own vested interests lay. Sounding appropriately humble and chastened, he whispered, "What do you want of me?"

"Sit then and I'll impart to you my vision of how the world shall soon be and the niche that you have been chosen to fill." His legs folded of their own volition and Severn found that he was sitting, Indian style, on the bank of the fetid stream.

After a time, the pain in his groin began to abate, his despondency giving way to a dark euphoria. After stumbling aimlessly through the first seventeen years of his life, Knox had inadvertently blundered upon a cause to which he could devote himself without inhibition or reservation.

As the forerunners of dawn crept silently over the eastern horizon, Knox Severn rose to his feet and made his way toward town. There was much to be done, but he felt confident that he could carry off his assignment auspiciously. As he strode purposefully through the tangled underbrush, the dark fire of zeal raged in his eyes, blazing as if to give challenge to the sun itself.

2

By four o'clock that morning, Raymond Saddler's eyes were a burning and itchy red. Glancing over the three pages of scribbled notes that he had compiled in the time since Crane had left, he was dismayed to find a paucity of intelligent, coherent facts. He attempted to reread the notes, but found that the words swam maddeningly out of focus, stubbornly refusing to come together in a way that might provide some coherent insight into what lay behind the night's harrowing events at the cemetery.

Sighing, Saddler pushed the notes to one side. The ability to garner useable information from a sea of apparently confusing, if not conflicting details was a talent unto itself...and a mercurial one at that. It was very much like the optical illusion puzzles that held some obscure picture that would only reveal itself when viewed from a very specific perspective. If your frame of mind wasn't conducive to the process, you could spend hours looking and looking, but the illusive image simply wouldn't come out of hiding. There was something tangible in all of this, a hidden connection between all of the events of the past few days. He sensed this on a visceral level, but had found nothing to substantiate his instinct.

Unlocking his desk drawer, He drew out the Carlson suicide report, the photo's of the Ingstrom barn and the accompanying preliminary lab workups. These, he placed in juxtaposition to his notes on the Riesen disfigurement, as though proximity might divulge the mysterious association which he felt certain they shared.

He regarded them glumly for several seconds, eventually realizing that he was bound to draw nothing other than a frustrating blank. His cat, Smucky, kept intruding on his best effort to concentrate. Good old Smucky. What a pal, Smucky, now nothing more than a mortifying corpse rapped in green plastic. Why?

He had told Veronica that the cat had probably been killed by a gang of sadistic kids, and on the immediate surface of things, that had sounded plausible enough. Plausible, that is, until you considered a few disturbing little facts that refused to be ignored. The cat had been strangled, and then the demented little bastards had decided to string him up from the family garage, all the while complimenting themselves on their inventiveness no doubt. That would have been the most logical conclusion to be drawn had it not been for one thing...when Ronnie had called him into the yard, the garage doors had been locked. As he had climbed up into the loft, Ray's mind for detail had noted that all of the side windows were still intact.

And where did this exercise in deductive logic lead him?

To three separate conclusion, each a natural progression of the other and each more disturbing than the last. When closely considered, the murder of his cat was too premeditated...the shock value too calculated to be a spur of the moment act of vapid and ugly violence. If the cat had been killed and thrown on the door step, Saddler would have had little difficulty believing that kids had been involved, but the elaborate arrangement of the corpse led him to conclude that its death had been intended as something far more sinister...a very personal warning.

There was another possibility, though Saddler was reluctant to even give it audience. There were times, he knew, when it was prudent not to gaze down certain roads. This one kept skirting at the edges of his conscious thoughts, as though taunting him to drag it into the light.

The droplets...those three tiny droplets, maroon in the color of dried blood, called out to him in a siren's invitation to explore the night side of his universe; a place where his most primitive fears paled in comparison to awful realities. Veronica had killed the cat. She had looped a length of piano wire around its scrawny neck and strangled the life out of it, turning a deaf ear to its pitiful shrieks. When all movement had ceased, she had carried it up into the garage loft and strung it from that beam.

Ray shook his head and uttered a papery chuckle. It was ridiculous, of course. Veronica was no more capable of killing Smucky than she might have been of killing Wendy or Danny. On the heels of that came the image of his wife menacing his daughter with a spade and the laughter dried up in his throat. That anomalous bit of behavior aside, Saddler adamantly refused to consider the possibility that his wife had murdered the family pet. It was simply too incredible...too earth shattering in its ramifications.

Then how did she come by those drops on the lapel of her nightgown?

The question refused to be banished by trite explanations, though Saddler could think of at least a dozen ways of how she might have gotten blood on her clothing.

There was a sharp rap at the door.

"Come in," Saddler called, grateful for the merciful distraction. Orlin opened the door and stood timidly in the threshold. He looked pale and haggard beneath the harsh glare of the overhead lighting. He held, what Saddler guessed to be, his report in his hand. Ray bid him to come in and sit.

"You let Cameron go," Orlin remarked softly. Ray guessed that this was as close as his deputy might come to reproach.

"We had no grounds to hold him, Orlin. He said that he found the girl and this Knox Severn together, and I have no reason to doubt him. I take it that we've had no success in locating Mr. Severn."

Orlin shook his head, his expression darkening. "No. His parents haven't seen him. We're keeping an eye on the house, just in case he's foolish enough to go home. Huxley would always say that Severn would come to something like this."

Feldman lapsed into a contemplative silence for a moment and then asked, "Will the girl live?"

"There's no way of knowing, Orlin. Her eyes were removed, and she's suffered an incredible shock to her nervous system. Her facial muscles were paralyzed, as though she'd suffered a stroke of some sort. The doctor sounded genuinely perplexed by that," Saddler concluded somberly.

"We have to find the bastard who did this," Orlin intoned fiercely. Ray discerned some underlying emotion beneath his outrage and guessed that Orlin had come to give it voice.

"We will, Orlin. Quinsett's a small, isolated town. If Severn's the one who did this, he'll be made to pay for it."

"I should have pursued him into the woods," Feldman said while averting his gaze to his hands, which trembled in is lap like tiny, quivering animals.

' _Ah, this is the crux of it,'_ Saddler realized. Orlin had come here to purge his feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Or perhaps he had come with the intent of wallowing in them. Either way, Ray knew precisely how his was feeling. In the months following the Deleon shooting, he had done his share of both.

"Situations like this call for split second decisions. If you had pursued the boy into the woods, he most likely still would have escaped. The Doctor told me that Alma might well have died, had she not received treatment when she did." The last bit was a blatant fabrication, but Ray saw that it had achieved the desired affect. Orlin brightened visibly.

"Is that your report, Orlin?" Ray asked, tipping his brow in the direction of the forgotten sheets of paper. The deputy extended the papers across the desk. "There are three Polaroids in there as well. They're a bit fuzzy."

Saddler took the prints and studied them carefully. Some of the daggers were obscured by shadow, but memory served to fill in the missing intersections. The shimmering of a notion flickered in is mind, and he drew one of the photographs out of the Ingstrom file. Ray looked up at Feldman, an excited light dawning in his eyes. Curious, Feldman leaned forward and examined the elaborate pentagram that had been embossed into the side of Ingstrom's barn. "What is it?"

"I don't really know. My uneducated guess would be that it's some kind of occult symbol," Ray commented, stroking his chin pensively. His eyes kept roving from one photo to the other, that faint glimmer tantalizing his thoughts. Abruptly, he opened a desk drawer and withdrew a transparency and a grease pencil. Laying the clear plastic over the photograph taken at the Cemetery, Saddler began to play a game of connect the dots, while Orlin looked on in clear fascination.

"There had to be some reason for the girl and this Severn to be there. If we assume that Crane is telling the truth, and that he came upon the pair, it follows that the pair came there together. The daggers were in her bag, as were the bottles of that white powder, both of which might indicate that she was the one who initiated the trip to the graveyard."

"Why would she want to go messing around in a graveyard?" Orlin interjected, not following his boss' logic.

Ray drew a rough line from one dagger to the other, considered it for a moment and then erased it. "I can't answer that, but I suspect that it has something to do with the arrangement of these daggers. At first, we thought that Knox might have forcibly taken her out there, but abducting someone on a motorcycle doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think that we have to conclude that she was there of her own volition."

After several seconds, Saddler concluded his sketching and offered the end result for Orlin's perusal. Ray had traced a rough circle around the pit where the Riesen girl had been found. The grave was enclosed within a more elaborate five-pointed star. Holding the photo, Orlin could feel his hands begin to shake, so he quickly allowed it to fall back to the desk. Saddler was too absorbed in thought to notice his Deputy's dismay. "That may not be the precise pattern, but I think that it's close enough to work with."

With mounting excitement, Ray positioned his sketching beside the barn photo, not surprised to discover that the pentagrams in both were very similar.

"The two are the same," Orlin observed shakily. The memory of the dripping names flashed in his mind, and he winced.

"They're not precisely the same, but there are enough similarities to indicate that the two incidents might somehow be connected," Saddler amended. He glanced up at Orlin, his eyes intense and appraising. "With what you know about this Severn, would you say that he might be involved in some kind of satanic cult?"

"You mean Devil worship?" Feldman asked incredulously. Saddler nodded eagerly. "Severn likes to raise hell, but I don't see him involved in nothing like that. I don't think he'd have the patience or the imagination to indulge in those kinds of sick games."

Saddler had suspected as much. Small time hoodlums were much like arrogant peacocks, and though Ray would never have claimed to be an authority, occult groups evidently viewed anonymity as sacred. "The Riesen's are new to town?"

"I'm not sure for certain, but I think they've only been here a couple of months." Hesitantly, Feldman inquired, "What are you thinking, Sheriff?"

"I think that Severn and the Riesen girl were there because she wanted them to be. The girl intended to perform some kind of ritual, and it got out of hand. I don't think that Knox inflicted those wounds, but he may know who did, and that's why we've got to find him."

"What about Crane? He's as crazy as a loon," Orlin blurted anxiously.

Saddler shook his head. His initial impression of Cameron Crane was spawned mostly from instinct, but he felt compelled to follow his judgment. "From speaking with Cameron, and observing him, I perceived a distinct timidity about the man. I'm not ruling out the possibility that he assaulted the girl, but I have a tendency to think that someone else, a fourth person, was responsible for Alma Riesen's mutilation."

He turned the two photos toward Orlin and pushed them in his direction. "I sense that there's a connection between these two incidents. The girl is involved, and probably several others as well. If my theory is even partially correct, Quinsett's been harboring a particularly nasty little secret."

Orlin shook his head in bewilderment. He had lived in Quinsett all of his life, and yes, there was no dearth of secrets, but what Saddler was suggesting? "I'm not sure that I see where you're going with this, Sheriff."

Saddler leaned forward and gestured in the direction of the two photos. Feldman could almost hear the whirring and click of his thought machinery as he elaborated upon his notion. "When you examine the things that have happened in the last three days individually, none of them make a great deal of sense. Why? Primarily because they don't seem to fit any specific pattern or purpose. On its own, each action appears random. If you draw a thread through each event, treat them as though they were sequential, some of the confusion evaporates and there become at least the suggestion of a pattern."

"You're saying that the three events tie in?" Feldman asked, his discomfort growing in geometric leaps and bounds. Saddler nodded his head vigorously. "Actually there are four incidents, if you count what happened to my cat, and yes, I'm suggesting that there is a pattern."

Ray came around the desk and began to pace around the office. Sudden insight had allowed him to shed his weariness like an unwanted cloak. "No matter what his state of mind might have been, we have to conclude that Andy Carlson came here for a specific reason. While it isn't entirely beyond the realm of possibility, that he came here with the intent to commit suicide, the idea doesn't seem very likely. Obviously, the next question becomes... _why did he come here?_ "

"He was looking for something here?" Orlin offered. "In Quinsett specifically."

"Precisely! I don't know what, but it was something significant enough to warrant killing him."

"What?" Feldman's jaw had fallen to his chest as though it had come unhinged.

"Carlson was obsessed with the occult. His journal describes his unremitting search for _doorways_ to a kind of perdition for evildoers, demons, witches and the like, and the people who were attempting to open these doorways. He spent six years in pursuit of elusive shadows. Then he came here, to a place where he had never been before and where he had no acquaintances. Something led him to Quinsett, and it is probably pretty safe to assume that it was connected to these doorways. Okay, then we let our imagination run wild for a moment. Somebody learns that Carlson is coming and why. They find him and kill him. Carlson is a perfect foil for suicide...an itinerant with no attachments...a man those who know him already consider unstable."

"But the door was locked and barred by a chair," Orlin objected. "There was a door leading to the upstairs floor, and that was locked as well. Burlander had to open both for us."

Ray smiled thinly. "Was Carlson's room key ever found?"

The dumbfounded expression on the Deputy's face provided Saddler with the answer that he had expected. "Carlson goes through the window. The murder simply locks the door behind him with Andy's own key. In a neighborhood like that, no one is likely to get too excited about loud disturbances. That gives the perpetrator even more time to get away clean...except, of course, for the chair wedged beneath the handle."

Feldman shook his head, suddenly caught up in Saddler's speculation. "That still doesn't explain how they would get through the doors in the first place, or how they would know that Carlson was coming or where he might be? It was not as though he had a reservation for Topper's."

Saddler nodded soberly. "You're right. Much of what I'm proposing is pure speculation...playing the devil's advocate, as it were. I may be reaching, but those missing journal pages add a lot of credence to my theory. Whenever he wanted to erase an entry, Andy would neatly rule out the sections he wished to delete. You see Orlin, reading Carlson's journal is like following a crude map. It leads him right through the U.S. and ends up at the State boundary. Then a series of pages are conveniently torn from the journal that might have provided us with some insight into why he had come here or what he hoped to find once he arrived. There's nothing that mentioned Quinsett...or the state of Washington for that matter...in his journal. The connection that led him here occurred and was detailed in those missing pages. That is why they were deliberately removed."

Saddler was directly behind Feldman when he uttered this statement, so he didn't see the Deputy close his eyes and inhale sharply. Orlin felt like a man who awakens to discover himself in the center of an ever-tightening circle of flames. Some response seemed necessary, so he posed the obvious question. "How do the other things fall into the pattern?"

"The same night that Carlson commits suicide, Lars Ingstrom's cattle are slaughtered and a complex pentagram is burned into the side of his barn, along with the rather cryptic message...It has begun. We can take that as an admonition of sorts, albeit an obscure one. Now we have the incident with Alma Riesen; a mutilation replete with occultist overtones. The one common ingredient that the three share is the aspect of occult ritualism."

Feldman deduced this more clearly than he would have preferred. Suddenly, his complicity in Huxley's cover-up assumed more grave and foreboding implications than altering the circumstances surrounding a suicide. "Then the cat was also a warning?"

Ray nodded. "Yes, though on a more intimate level. This could be someone's way of reminding me that my family is vulnerable."

"You're talking about a conspiracy, aren't you?" Orlin asked. His tone was slyly sardonic, almost rueful.

Ray sighed. Airing his woolgathering was something to which he was unaccustomed. Perhaps he had told Feldman too much, after all his notion was only in the formative stage. "Orlin, everything that I've just said is probably bullshit of the most asinine kind. Something is happening in Quinsett, of that much I'm sure. I'm also sure that something is distinctly strange and more than a little sinister. There are a good deal of unanswered questions, but I sense that things are building along a progression of some sort...towards some very specific end. Call it instinct if you will." He paused, gazing down at the material arrayed on his blotter. Like that elusive image puzzle, it had all come together into something that he could not erase.

"I want those photos taken come first light. Orlin, you'll supervise the photography. Make sure that we have shots from every conceivable angle. I need the Polaroids on my desk by noon tomorrow. Until events prove otherwise, we're going to proceed on the premise that a group of occultists are responsible for everything that's happened. I'll personally question the Riesens."

Something occurred to him and he asked, "What time does the Library open for business?"

"Nine. Why?" Orlin asked and then winced, realizing how blunt his question must have sounded.

Saddler simply grinned. "I'm going to see if I can get to know the devil."

3

By Eight O'clock the next morning, the temperature had already reached the seventy degree mark. Factoring in the humidity, the air temperature felt closer to eighty. Along the numerous dirt roads that criss-crossed Quinsett country like jagged scars, brown clouds of abrasive, moisture leaching dust hung in the air.

Veronica snapped awake like the crack of a whip, her heart skidding painfully in her chest. Unaccountably frantic, she kicked back the covers and dashed to the window.

The road was empty. Though she had no comprehension of why, the discovery pleased her immensely. Throwing a cool, silk robe about her shoulders, she loped down stairs to find the children munching away on a breakfast of juice, eggs and English muffins.

Mrs. Quilling asked if she cared for a cup of coffee and Veronica declined, instead opting for a cold glass of juice. Passing by the door, that was open to the listless morning air, she suddenly recalled the fate that had befallen Wendy's cat and almost fumbled her glass. Hands shaking, she set the glass on a side counter and pushed through the door. Standing next to the wooden railing, the recollection of having discovered the cat revisited Veronica with a terrifying lucidity. As horrible as the memory was, she sensed that there was something more, but her subconscious had occluded it as though to spare her from a remembrance that might prove to be immeasurably more shattering.

Struggling to subdue a fit of trembling, Ronnie returned to the kitchen. She seized her juice and drank down a huge draught as though the icy liquid could quell the heated buzzing in her head.

"A package arrived for you this morning, Mrs. Saddler," Mrs. Quilling called over her shoulder. Something about her pleasant, servile voice grated mightily upon Ronnie's frazzled nerves.

"Very well," Veronica responded curtly and mustering a shadow of a smile for the children, left the room. When she had gone, the housekeeper exchanged a puzzled glance with Wendy. Her mother's brusque manner only added to the burgeoning feeling of disquiet that had greeted the girl as she rose from her bed. There had been a subtle shifting in the house over the past two days, and though she could not have commented upon the exact nature of that shift, Wendy was perceptive enough to realize that the changes did not bode well for the Family Saddler. She found herself frightened...afraid for everyone within these walls, which had suddenly become so alien, but apprehensive for her mother above all others. She desperately wanted to go to Veronica and confronted her with her fear, but without specific substance, Wendy felt sure that her mother would reject her as silly. From the depths of this abstruse perception that things were going awry in the house, Wendy began to feel increasingly isolated and helpless. She could have talked to Daddy about it, but since his TROUBLE (the word had always flashed through her mind in looming, apocalyptic capitals) she had been reluctant to bring her problems to him, sensing a fragility that even he could not discern.

' _Mommy, what's wrong with you?'_ she inquired of the doorway through which her mother had just made her exit. Finally, the mocking silence drove her from the house and into the backyard in search of Smucky.

Veronica carried the package into her office and slumped heavily into her chair. She regarded the paper bound parcel absently for several moments and then pushed it to a corner of her desk. It was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore her anomalous behavior of late. Her annoyance with Mrs. Quilling had been totally unwarranted as had the incident with Wendy the day before last. Normally blithe, Veronica had found herself becoming increasingly surly as days passed. At first she had been willing to attribute her impatience to the pressures of relocation, but that particular rationalization was wearing glaringly thin as her temper darkened.

As bad as these moments of unfounded vexation were, they were not as disconcerting as her strange instances of disconnection. She found she was often unable to fill in large gaps in her recent memory...only able to conjure feelings of deep, yet abstract anxiety. The progression of time had become somehow truncated, leaving her with periods about which she could recall nothing. Through it all came the pervasive feeling that everything had gone subtly, yet irrevocably wrong in her life.

As she tried to reconstruct the events of two days before, Veronica ran a manicured finger along the edges of the parcel. She had been working at her desk and something...something horrible had occurred...but what?

"I can't remember!" she flared in frustration, angrily slamming the flat of her palm down upon the clear glass blotter. Despite her vehement insistence to the contrary, Veronica felt certain that she did know, could recollect the contents of that lost moment if only she would delve into herself. And yet she could not because, in perfect candor, she was afraid and that baseless fear only exacerbated her mounting frustration.

' _You're blowing this whole thing out of proportion,'_ she told herself reproachfully and that seemed plausible enough. More than Ray and more than either of the children, Veronica had been forced to make the biggest adjustments in coming to Quinsett. The quintessential rich girl moving in the circles of the ultra chic, it was not an easy transition to this semi-rural backwater where it was still considered scandalous for a woman to earn more than her husband. It was only natural that she would display some ill effects of the change. Her behavior could hardly be labeled as irrational.

' _Really, Ronnie dear? And just what do you consider threatening your daughter with a spade...slight over-reaction?'_

The awful memory of that moment came back to her in a horrible series of stroboscopic flashes. Veronica gasped. How close had she been to actually striking Wendy. She refused to even speculate, drawing away from the memory the way a woman with acrophobia might scramble away from a precipice.

' _And while we're on the subject of bizarre behavior, just what was it that you did amongst the ruins of that old house?'_ A memory capered just over the demarcation line of the subconscious, daring her to try and lure it into sharper focus. She bowed her head, feeling warm tears spill over her high cheek bones.

"There's nothing wrong with me...nothing at all!" she declared shrilly, her insistence fueled by growing desperation. Her outburst seemed to silence the maddening voice, temporarily stanching the flow of imponderable questions. She drew a deep breath and furiously wiped the tears away from her cheeks with the heel of her palm.

Why was she expending valuable time grappling with this lunacy? There was a business to be run and logistics problems to be resolved. She stood and made her way to the fax machine, scooping up the reams of paper that had accumulated in the holder over night. Conducting a business from a distance was an intimidating proposition especially when that business was as dynamic as the art world...as tactile and immediate.

Drawing a tablet of legal paper from her desk, Veronica spent the next hour wading through the small pile of paper, making detailed notes and drafting action memos. Engrossing herself in her work served to placate her anxieties and help regain her shaken equilibrium. Still, she could not help but steal the occasional glance at the package sitting silently on the corner of her desk. Finally, overcome by curiosity, she set the Cross pen aside and pulled the heavy parcel to the center of the desk. It took only a second's glance to spot the first looming oddity. The parcel sported neither postmark, nor return address. She turned it over several times, searching for a corporate delivery stamp and found the wrapping unmarked, save for her name and complete address.

Suddenly, the innocent package assumed menacing overtones. She could feel the restraining fabric of her subconscious straining to hold back a horde of insidious memories. Seizing up the parcel, she marched into the kitchen. "Mrs. Quilling, when did this come?"

Veronica's tone had been so abrupt that it bordered on frantic. The elderly housekeeper spun around, nearly dropping her casserole dish. She looked from Veronica, who appeared distraught, to the simply wrapped package. "It arrived this morning."

"How?" Again the voice was tight, fraught with an unaccountable tension.

Mrs. Quilling groped, agitated by Veronica's inexplicably fraught behavior. "I'm not certain. When I first opened the door this morning, it was sitting on the back stoop next to the containers of sour cream."

Veronica considered this for a moment, her perfectly shaped brows furrowing in puzzlement. What mail service would deliver a package without receiving some acknowledgment of delivery? The answer was simple: none. The package had been left on the back step by the sender.

"Is there something wrong, Mrs. Saddler?" the housekeeper inquired hesitantly. Ronnie took a deep breath to steady her pulsing nerves, sensing that it might be prudent to offer some manner of explanation. Making certain that her daughter was well out of earshot, she related the details of last night's gruesome discovery. Mrs. Quilling gasped and her complexion became noticeably pallid. "Do you think that this could be something...something else?"

Veronica struggled to suppress a burst of disdainful laughter. The old cow looked as if she was on the verge of apoplexy. She regarded the parcel solemnly for a moment and then slammed the flat of her hand down upon its surface, privately delighted by Mrs. Quilling's wincing reaction. "I don't know what it is, but I doubt that it's something threatening. Last night has set my nerves to jangling, I guess."

"Perhaps you shouldn't open it until your husband is home," the housekeeper advised.

Veronica smiled. "I've just over-reacted."

' _And who asked for your advice anyway, you decrepit old bat!'_ the interloper spat venomously. Veronica turned away lest she betray the trepidation that this alien presence in her mind evoked. She escaped the kitchen, calling over her shoulder. "I'll be going out shortly after ten, Mrs. Quilling."

"Yes, Mrs. Saddler," the old woman replied, grateful to be out of her employer's erratic presence.

Returning to her office, Veronica locked the door and crossed to her desk, moving with the graceless, mechanical shuffle of one in the deep thrall of a trance. She threw the package onto the desk as if it was something indescribably vile.

' _Sit and be calm,'_ a voice instructed and Veronica responded to the imperative without hesitation. As though her personality had become a complex thing comprised of two separate and interchangeable components, she settled into a sudden state of total comprehension. Taking up the package, she peeled off the wrap and discarded it onto the floor.

There were three books within, but of course she had known that, hadn't she? _'These are your tools...your weapons. Once you have scribed these spells into your mind, they shall also become your instrument of vengeance.'_

"Who are you?" Ronnie murmured while running her fingers over the cover of the first book. The texture was reptilian and repulsive. _'I am you and you are me. We are intertwined and soon we shall become one. First, however, you must absorb the esoteric powers inscribed within these pages.'_

Veronica took the first book and settled into a wingback. Gold leaf lettering had been embossed into the cover. Though the lettering had faded with the passing of time (how much time, she wondered absently), the title was still perfectly legible...Grimoire.

She opened the book and scanned the first segment of text. Frowning with consternation, she realized that she did not recognize the language. _'Concentrate. I shall interpret.'_

Veronica squinted, her jaws tightening perceptibly as though concentration was a physical process. Gradually, incredibly, the words began to resolve themselves into a discernable pattern. She read through the preface, amazed to discover that the book had been written from material compiled by an eighth century religious scholar who warned of the dire consequences of tampering with something so unspeakably evil.

' _Foolish dribble expounded by cowards who lack the fortitude to taste the fruits of true power,'_ the interloper remarked disdainfully.

As the enervating heat tightened its' strangle hold upon the small town of Quinsett, Ronnie delved into the pool of forbidden mysteries. The spirit of a woman, more than fifty years dead, supervised her education with mounting jubilation. Somewhere on the night side of the universe, the immovable doors of perdition budged, if only fractionally.

4

Loretta Stinson eyed the new Sheriff as though he might be of questionable sanity, not to mention dangerous in the bargain. The stories of what had happened at the Eternal Lights Cemetery had spread through the town like a California brush fire during a drought. The versions of the incident were as varied as the tellers of the tale, but some of the essential facts had passed from mouth to ear in an excited deluge.

' _Two teen-agers up to devilry in the graveyard. God knows what they had been up to, but with these kids being what they are now-a-day, nothing was outside of the realm of possibility,'_ Loretta thought. Everything came down to sex and sin, and everyday the little miscreants tried that much harder to drag the rest of the world down into the cesspool. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"

"What I need is anything that pertains to the supernatural...specifically witchcraft," Saddler reiterated, correctly interpreting the expression that had slipped through the Librarian's mask of neutrality. He understood that his request would only fuel the flames of gossip that were already undoubtedly raging through Quinsett, but he could feel the bite of urgency nipping at his heels and had no time for rummaging through piles of reference books. He still had to question Alma Riesen's parents and he hoped that he could delicately convince them to allow him to search her room for some sign of what she might have been up to.

"Quinsett is a Christian town, Sheriff Saddler," Loretta informed Ray. "We don't promote such rubbish here."

"I'm sure that you don't, Ms. Stinson," Ray replied, trying to divert an outpouring of sanctimony. The old building was stiflingly hot. If it did have a functioning air conditioning system, no one had bothered to activate it. He could feel oily beads of sweat running into his collar and trailing down into the hollow of his back, "but what I'm looking for is rather innocuous...the kind of material that might be found in an encyclopedia or a lore compilation."

The Librarian considered this for a moment in the officious manner of one who believes that her position has somehow granted her deity status. "There is a section on lore and local culture. What with the reserve being so close, it's almost compulsory for us to have such a section."

Her stern disapproval was clearly conveyed in her tone and Saddler felt a twinge of pity for the kids who had to research school projects under her watchful, and oh so judgmental eye. She moved out from behind the counter and led him along the tall shelves of books. The distinct smell of aging leather was pervasive and Ray began to feel slightly faint. As he watched the elderly Librarian peruse the shelves, picking out several books as she went, Ray was assailed by an intense feeling of anxiety. With an unshakeable certitude, he realized that the situation went beyond local kids dabbling in T.V. horror rituals. Something unspeakably malevolent had come to Quinsett. He could feel its malign presence and its proximity prickled his skin...even if he could not divine its form.

Ms. Stinson was watching him now, a wary expression twisting her already unpleasant face. Ray realized that he was sweating and breathing in rapid, shallow gasps.

"I'm not feeling all that well, Ms. Stinson," he explained quickly. "The humidity is an adjustment."

She nodded, clearly not believing a word. "It is at that. Quinsett is a different place, Sheriff Saddler...a good place that can only be ruined by people who have not lived here all of their lives and who do not love this town."

Ray simply nodded. She smiled. It was a terrible expression, somehow more withering than her sternest frown. "The Riesen girl was a stranger. Look at the trouble she's brought with her."

"Alma was the victim, Ms. Stinson," Saddler reminded her with a little more vigor than he had intended. Stinson merely smiled and handed Saddler three hardbound books. "The general reference encyclopedias may contain additional information. When you're through with these, just return them to the front desk."

She started back to her sentinel's perch behind the counter, but stopped and turned back to the Sheriff. "This is a small town, Sheriff...tight-knit. To fit in, it's best just to go along."

"I'll keep that in mind, Ms. Stinson," Ray remarked and then she left him to his business.

He withdrew a handkerchief from his rear pocket and mopped the pooling sweat from his brow, leaning against the nearest shelf of books for support. His encounter with the Librarian had been disconcerting in a complex way that he did not entirely comprehend. Hers had not been the warm embrace of welcome and he wondered if her attitude was commonly held amongst the townies.

' _Every town has its idiosyncrasies and its secrets which it guards jealously,'_ he thought.

He carried the books over to a small reading table and set them down. Then he withdrew the photographs, which had been taken earlier in the morning, and set them next to the books. Mopping his brow once more, he opened the book on the top of the pile and began to scan the text, making notes in a small flip note pad as he did. He labored through the text until he reached a section which explained the significance of the pentagram in ritual and satanic magic. There were several examples of the arcane symbol, though he found none that were precisely identical to the one that Alma Riesen had purportedly created, nor to the intaglio which had been burned into Old man Ingstrom's barn.

Each pentagram, he learned, had been conceived to achieve a specific purpose. There were pentagrams of warding and summoning. Gazing at a picture from the Cemetery, he spotted the partially eradicated, yet still distinct outline of a circle that had been drawn to contain the pentagram. This circle represented a safeguard to protect the conjurer or magician from the entity that he had summoned.

Had Alma Riesen been attempting to evoke a spirit in a childish facsimile of a perverse ritual? If so, something had gone drastically wrong...something that far exceeded adolescent dabbling.

' _What the hell could have inflicted those eye wounds?_ ' Saddler had no idea, nor had the Doctor. Knox Severn, however, did and he had taken to hiding because of it. It was imperative that they find the boy if there was to be any chance of putting a quick seal on this hideous mystery.

Ray skimmed the other two reference books, still unable to find a depiction of the two pentagrams involved in his case. It was difficult for him to understand why anyone would be attracted to something so blatantly vapid...something so twisted and perverse. Yet, beneath the Gothic pulp style, Ray sensed the presence of an implicit power that could not be entirely disregarded. He considered himself to be a pragmatist, but what he had seen at the Ingstrom farm could not be rationalized away by any logical explanation. Despite the repressive heat of the Library, Saddler suddenly shivered violently.

He was suddenly struck by an irrepressible urge to flee this stifling place with its low ceilings and its iron maiden Librarian. Standing, he gathered up the books and carried them to the desk, where he mumbled thanks to Ms. Stinson and virtually raced out into the street.

The Air was perceptibly hotter, prompting Ray to glance down at his watch. He was surprised to discover that it was five minutes to twelve. The morning had slipped by like quick silver and there was much to be done.

The Municipal Records office would be closed until one o'clock in observation of the sacred lunch hour and Saddler found that he was inadequate to face the task of visiting the Riesen's. He did not wish to aggravate the family's grief by implying that Alma had somehow been involved in something as twisted as a satanic ritual. Glancing up and down the length of the street, where the citizens of small town America shuffled languidly through high summer working day, Raymond Saddler felt profoundly alone.

There was something else he felt, as he stood on the ornamental stone steps of the small Municipal Library...though he would have been loathe to admit it, he felt deeply and inexplicably terrified.

Chapter Thirteen

1

Knox Severn was both thirsty and hungry by the time he reached the intersection of Carlyle Street and Poplar. He was feverish with an excruciating headache and enervated from a night of stumbling aimlessly about the woods in an effort to reach town without being seen. He knew that it would prove foolish to try to make it home. Even if he managed to reach the house undetected, it was likely that the cops had already been there and the old man would turn him in at the blink of an eye, grateful to be rid of his one and only son.

"Fuck 'em," Knox muttered thickly, punctuating the dismissal with a cackling laughter. Severn decided that he needed nothing more than the newfound voice of confidence that was steadfastly guiding him. When he allowed himself to turn his thoughts to the events of last night, he found that he could not recall exactly what had transpired up at the Eternal Lights. The girl had been fucking around in things that she shouldn't have been fucking around in and then something bad had happened to her. Then something good had happened to him, though the precise nature of that _good thing_ remained evasive. In the end, he realized that what had occurred didn't really matter a fuck of a lot, except that it had led him directly to this moment and all that would follow.

If asked to speculate upon what was to follow, Severn would have been unable to hazard an intelligent guess, except to say that he just wasn't going to be taken by the cops. That's why he had headed here. This particular section of Quinsett was a bit like the blight on a lovely Elm tree. The blocks of houses had fallen into disrepair and the yards looked to be experimental breeding grounds for weeds. Interspersed amongst these ramshackle houses was a collection of old sheds that had been abandoned and forgotten, left to collapse under the cumulative affects of gravity and indifference.

Knox flicked a quick glance over his shoulder and then hurried across Poplar Street at an angle. Racing along the skeletal remains of a hedge, Severn cut through yards to a narrow lane that ran along the rear of the houses, stopping to pilfer a bottle of milk that had been left on a doorstep after early morning delivery.

Forcing himself to walk so as to be somewhat inconspicuous, Knox walked down the lane until he came adjacent to a rusted tin shed. The shed was totally hidden from the street, concealed by the dilapidated hulk of a warehouse that had once served as a former wholesale food depot.

Severn hopped the fence, nimbly avoiding the rusted barbed wire, and examined the shed that was to be his new home until events moved along.

Knox took hold of one of the slats which had been nailed over the shed door with the probable intention of keeping out winos and kids looking for a place to smoke grass and drink cheap wine and beer. He tugged and the slat pulled free with a tortured scream of rusted nails. He pulled the other two slats off and discarded them in a neat pile next to the door. These, he would take in side so as to leave no sign of forced entry. Though it was uncharacteristic of Knox to be so meticulous, he did not think to question his actions. Like many of the other things that he had done over the past twelve hours, he simply attributed the change to the emergence of his new self.

Opening the door proved more difficult than had removing the slats. The metal door had been fitted with a six inch wooden runner which had warped over the course of the past several years. Sweating profusely and cursing up a tempest, Knox placed a foot on the frame and gave one final petulant tug. The door resisted at first and then flew open with an abrupt screech, dumping Knox unceremoniously on his ass.

A wave of hot, stale air issued forth from the sheds interior, rushing over him like the hot breath of a blast furnace. Severn groaned. It was going to be hell inside.

He considered simply opening the door and remaining outside until the shed had cooled down to tolerable levels, but some deeper instinct admonished that he could not afford to be spotted. Gathering up his milk, which had now become thoroughly rancid, and the loose boards, Severn crawled into the enclosed hell of the abandoned shed.

Just as he had imagined, the inside was unbearably hot. He could feel the vital juices being leeched from him in oily waves of perspiration.

Twisting the tab off of the milk container, Knox drank deeply and grimaced at the greasy taste of the thick liquid. Still, it was preferable to the sandpaper dryness. He then settled against the far wall near the door. He contemplated what type of spiders might inhabit such a lightless hell and shuddered.

Best not to think about that...best not to think about anything until intuition delivered its next set of instructions. He laid his head back against the hot wall. Seconds later he was fast asleep.

2

Veronica was waiting for him when he returned to his office. He stood outside his office, gazing at her through the glass panels. Unaware of his scrutiny, she merely sat there, with her hands folded primly in her lap. He wondered, not for the first time, how he had come by the incredible good fortune of loving and being loved by such an exquisite beauty. The improbability of it all was unsettling at times. Her beauty had the capacity to hypnotize, to enthrall. Shaking his head, Ray entered the office. "This is certainly the first pleasant surprise that I've had so far today."

She glanced up at him and smiled. Its sheer radiance evaporated all of his misgivings. "In the neighborhood, to quote a cliché."

She stood and kissed her husband. It was a demure kiss that would give nothing to the eyes that had been upon her since she had first entered the station house. "Seriously, I heard about what happened last night and came to see how you were holding up."

Ray frowned, feeling a momentary flush of irritation.

' _The slightest suggestion of a crisis and my dear wife comes to see if the wheels have come off of the wagon,'_ he thought and immediately felt ashamed of his anger. It was misguided and unfair. She had been the one to resurrect him from his malaise. Had it not been for Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, there was no telling where he would be at this exact moment. "I'm tired and hot, but other than that, I'm holding up fairly well."

They both took seats opposite each other and Veronica reached out and grasped his hands, her incisive gazing searching his face for some sign of contradiction. He held her gaze, and after several seconds, she settled back into her chair, seemingly satisfied that he was indeed coping.

"What happened in the graveyard, Ray?" she asked, her atypical bluntness surprising him a little.

He hesitated for a moment, reluctant to impart the gruesome details of what had befallen Alma Riesen under the most bizarre of circumstances. He, after all, was the reason that the family had come to this American backwater. Should the place prove to be a repository for some perverse sickness, how could he not feel ultimately responsible? Slowly, careful to be selective in his disclosure, Ray related some of what had come to pass in the Eternal Lights Cemetery. Veronica listened intently, her face tense, her eyes glistening inscrutably.

When he had concluded, she remarked, "This isn't what you expected."

Ray nodded. Her meaning had been implicitly clear. Small town America was supposed to be the last requiem against the vapid ugliness that had overrun the larger urban centers where violence was a simple reflex action. "What happened to the girl is beyond comprehension. Technically, her injuries are far worse, far more repulsive, than the Deleon boy's death, but there's an inherent difference that isn't easy to explain."

She watched him closely, waiting for him to elaborate. He tried to gather his thoughts, aware of the penetrating green eyes upon him and knowing that this was a critical moment of judgment. "In LA there was a sense of futility hanging over everything we did. No matter how hard you tried, or how much faith you had in what you were doing, the actual accomplishment amounted to nothing. Every day the department was faced with murders that would never be solved. People killed with blatant disregard for everything because they had lost respect for themselves with no hope of ever regaining it. When you can see no redeeming value in yourself, it's very difficult to find any worth in anything else. That was what we were up against and it felt dispiriting and hopeless...a breeding ground for cynicism and worse."

He stood up and walked to his office door, glancing out into the bullpen. Turned away from his wife, he never noticed the sour expression that had come over her lovely face. "Here, things are completely different. If someone actually inflicted those wounds on the Riesen girl, and there's nothing but conjecture upon that so far, then it's one of the most despicable crimes that I've personally seen. Still, it's one case of isolated poison. If the perpetrator can be apprehended, Quinsett can return to what it was, more or less. In LA there was no going back, no real prospects for improvement. I can deal with this. As bad as it is, I can deal with it."

He glanced at his wife, his gaze open and earnest. She smiled, but did not comment. Just then, he recalled what had passed at his own home last night and asked, "Did you mention anything to Wendy?"

"No. Of course, she asked after Smucky, but I said that I hadn't seen him." She paused, an expression of uncertainty furrowing her smooth brow. "Do you think we're doing the right thing?"

"Yes," he replied adamantly. "I don't want to expose her to that kind of ugliness at her age. This is the kind of thing that could leave permanent scars."

"It's just that she's so incisive. If she should discern that we've lied, I don't think that she'd ever trust us again...not completely."

Ray was tempted to confront her over the spade incident just then, but instead remarked, "We'll tell her that Smucky just wondered off. She'll believe us because there's no reason not to."

Veronica regarded him intently for a long moment and then shrugged. "I suppose your right." Then she stood and kissed him warmly on the cheek. "Come home as soon as you can. I've a few errands to run, but I should be there long before supper."

He watched her stride to the door, the epitome of feminine confidence and beauty, and something possessed him to remark, "Ronnie, try to stay off north Ringgold...it can be hazardous"

She stopped abruptly, one hand on the door handle, her body stiffening with a barely repressed anger. The moment hung between them. Gradually, that inexplicable tension drained from her posture and she issued a papery laughter. Then she was gone, leaving Saddler to contemplate notions that were best entertained on the night side of midnight...if ever.

She managed to make it back to her car, which was parked in the side lot. She opened the door and sat down, slamming the door shut and hurling her purse onto the floor. Then she pounded her fist down upon the steering wheel, again and again. Had Ray come upon Veronica Ashcott-Saddler at that exact moment, it is likely that he would not have recognized his wife then. Her eyes blazed with an immutable fury and her face was contorted with purple hatred.

Somehow, against all probability, the meddlesome bitch had lived. More galling still was the fact that the plodding dolt had mocked her.

She sat in her car, clutching the wheel and staring straight ahead, her face livid with rage. The girl's continued existence was intolerable. There could be no loose ends left to jeopardize her carefully laid plans. She would have to attend to that matter as soon as possible. Tonight, if circumstances allowed. As for Saddler, she would deal with him once her triumph had been assured.

Eventually the towering anger dissipated. She put the Spyder into gear and pulled out of the lot, heading for the outskirts of town. There was a matter of a windup toy...waiting to be put into motion...yet to be dealt with.

3

The very instant that he opened his eyes, Knox Severn knew that he was about to vomit. There was a dull pain in his temples and his stomach lurched queasily. The heat in the shed was absolutely suffocating and it was this which he suspected to be the cause of his present misery.

He attempted to rise, using the wall as a brace, burning his hand on the hot tin in the process, but his legs defied his intentions and he spilled onto the rough plank floor. The impact jolted him, giving his queasy stomach the little prompt it required to send its unhappy contents spewing out violently. He continued to kneel in this position of abjection until the spasms finally passed.

Then he rolled away and lay gasping near one of the walls. It was then he became cognizant of the person standing in the doorway. He glanced up at the very tall, very feminine silhouette and groaned, thinking that he had been caught. Had he not been so ill, Severn knew that he could have easily brushed the woman aside and fled, but he could scarcely stand, much less actually run.

The woman threw the door open and stepped into the furnace like depths of the shed, evidently unaffected by the cloying heat.

At last, Knox caught a glimpse of her face. It was perhaps the most beautiful face that he had ever seen, but it was the emerald eyes that captured his attention. Their glacial coldness defied his limited sensibilities, suggesting a blatant contempt for everything that fell beneath their gaze.

Suddenly, Severn's trepidation intensified, though he was no longer afraid of being turned in. His burgeoning fear was more elemental...rooted squarely in the kind of unfathomable mysteries that had come to pass in the Eternal Lights Cemetery the previous night.

The woman glanced around in disgust.

"I'm...I'm sick," Severn croaked feebly.

"Of course you're sick, you imbecile," the woman chided, her inscrutable eyes settling upon the empty milk bottle. "You've drank sour milk. You'll be fortunate if you haven't poisoned yourself."

Severn recalled pilfering the milk from a nearby doorstep and issued a pitiful moan, clutching his suddenly cramping stomach. Incensed by the boy's dog-like whimpering, Veronica abruptly crossed the shed floor and administered a swift kick to his exposed kidneys.

Knox howled as black flowers bloomed before his eyes.

"Hey, why the hell did you do that?"

The tall woman knelt beside Knox, her riveting stare withering his indignation. "If you wish to spare yourself some particularly harsh lessons, you'll do well not to waste my time...nor try my patience."

The threat was delivered in a cold and dispassionate tone that precluded the flippant reply that Knox had considered. Carefully, he asked, "Just who are you?"

The woman smiled coyly, a sly expression that caused Severn to shiver despite the stupefying heat in the shed. "I think you know. We met in the Cemetery last night."

The subconscious filters abruptly gave and recollection of the previous night's warped excursion flooded back in horrifyingly vivid detail. He remembered the culmination of Alma's ill-fated ritual, recalled her harrowing scream as something accosted her. Most poignant of all was the boneless way that she had slumped forward as the earth appeared to partially swallow her. Severn grimaced as his stomach seemed to rise up into his throat. Alma had been pretty...not a spectacular beauty such as this woman, but pleasing in her own right.

"You recall," the woman remarked, apparently satisfied by the fact.

"Yes," he croaked thickly. "What happened to Alma, it was...horrible."

"But it was also beautiful, was it not?" She laid a palm upon his perspiration-slicked forehead. Her hand was dry and delightfully cool. Instantly, his inner turbulence settled and he felt better...if only marginally. Placing her index finger in the hollow of each temple, the stranger began to massage his thundering head. In a matter of seconds the pain abated, relenting to a feeling of hazy serenity.

In his mind's eye, Knox visualized the image of a vague penumbra materializing out of the humid night air. He tried to escape, but it fell upon him, surmounting his defenses and eroding his resistance in a deluge of excruciating pleasure. "It was...you?"

"Yes. I spared your life in the graveyard because I suspected that you could be...biddable. You see, I have much work to do in this town and very little time in which to do it. I have a score to settle and a debt to collect. You understand the idea of scores to be settled and debts don't you Knox?"

The boy nodded his indication that he did, indeed, understand. The woman continued to massage his temples. The sensation felt as if she had permeated his skull and was applying her gentle pressure to the fabric of his brain. She smiled again, though this smile was radiant...not at all predatory. "I knew that you would. A long time ago, the forefathers of the town cheated me out of something that I had worked diligently to bring into being...something that was mine by right." Severn watched, stirring uneasily as dark shadows of anger congealed on her brow like looming thunderheads. "It's taken me fifty years to reach the point where I can extract my revenge and complete my work. You're going to help me."

She paused and considered the teenager for a moment, her eyes narrowing speculatively. "You are going to help me, aren't you, Knox?"

"I know everything of importance there is to know about Knox Severn. We've been intimate, after all. I've experienced your mediocrity and the pointless void that your wretched existence represents. Yours is a future without purpose. Providence has delivered you to me and through me there shall come validation."

She gazed into his eyes. He felt himself being mesmerized by her intensity and her formidable pulchritude, but his cognizance of her enchantment did nothing to attenuate its potency. There was also an intrinsic truth in what she had said. Even Knox could see that he was destined to become a small town loser...an incorrigible black sheep with nothing of value but time to be squandered. This woman, if that was indeed what she was, might have something more to offer. Again, the implacable request, "Will you help me, Knox?"

"Yes," His reply was a half-whispered utterance as though from the depth narcotic haze. She smiled indulgently. "Before I can begin my work, there are men whom I must destroy and you will assist me in laying the groundwork for their destruction."

"Who?" he murmured dreamily. It briefly occurred to Knox that he might still be locked in the midst of a feverish dream. His nausea had subsided and in its wake had come an unaccountable euphoria...a sense of wellbeing that he could only attribute to the proximity of the beautiful stranger.

The woman recited the list of names of her avowed enemies. Knox whistled as though in admiration. "You sure picked a heavy group to tangle with."

She offered him a feral grin. Without explanation, she stood and exited the tin shed. Moments later, she returned carrying two brimming grocery bags, which she laid at his feet. "These provisions should be adequate for the next few days. The entire town will be searching for you, so it's imperative that you remain well out of sight. Remain in the shed and do nothing to attract undo attention. The food is nonperishable, so it should sustain you until I am ready to begin."

With this, she turned and started to depart. Knox hoisted himself to his feet, feeling a dawning sense of panic and abandonment. "How long am I supposed to stay in this fucking oven?"

The tall redhead stopped at the door and regarded him with an expression of flagrant disdain which froze Severn's heart. Shrugging, he took several backwards steps, eventually colliding with the unyielding wall. "It's just that I..."

His protest trailed away into articulate babble. "You'll stay here until I require your services. I trust we fully understand each other?"

Severn simply nodded. The effort seemed to drain the last of his energy and he sank to the floor and bowed his head. Several seconds later Knox heard the door slam and he emitted a nervous sigh of relief. There was a terrifying aspect to his new benefactor that made Knox think that perhaps Alma Riesen would prove the more fortunate of the pair.

4

Sheriff Saddler sat in his unmarked cruiser, less than two miles from where Knox Severn and the woman who had once been his wife were coming to terms of association. He was not looking forward to his meeting with the Riesen's, especially in light of his conversation with Knox's good old dad, Ted. Ted was a burly, beet-faced man; the kind whose only mode of expression seemed to come in the form of that overwhelming thunderhead delivery that so irritated Ray. The man harbored no love for his offspring and had not been reluctant to demonstrate his belligerence toward the boy who he had sired.

"Look Sheriff, I'm not the type to mince words," he had begun, his color deepening through several shades of the red spectrum. "Knox was never anything but a troublesome little bastard who doesn't give a tin shit about anything but himself. Had it not been for his mother's bleeding heart, I would have kicked him out on his ass years ago."

Saddler had merely nodded noncommittally, recalling that the boy's file had listed his age as seventeen. Ray had long subscribed to the theory that behind every social misfit there stood the obligatory momentous asshole to serve as a role model and here stood Ted Severn as living substantiation of his theory.

He hadn't able to gather much else from Severn, basically because the father really knew nothing of his son's life other than the fact that he was an indolent, shiftless consumer of the old man's hard earned dollars. Still, Saddler was certain that the boy would make no effort to come home in light of the welcome he could expect.

Sighing and unconsciously mopping away the accumulated sweat from his brow, Ray opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The Riesen's were the antithesis of Ted Severn. Their love for their daughter was the genuine article...the profound depth and scope of their pain had been clearly reflected upon their faces as they had languished in the hospital waiting room. Confronted by the pathetic spectacle of their inconsolable misery, Ray felt perilously close to plunging into the depression that had afflicted him after the Deleon shooting.

Philip Riesen answered the door. His pinched expression deepened to outright misery when he recognized the new Sheriff. He shook his head in unconscious negation and Ray quickly assured him, "No, nothing new has happened, Mr. Riesen. Alma's condition hasn't changed. I've a few brief questions and a simple request and I promise that none of this will take more than a few moments."

Riesen considered this for a moment and then stepped back to admit Saddler into the house. If Philip wore his pain openly, then Sarah Riesen bore her suffering like a flashing neon sign. The extent of her physical deterioration astounded Saddler and he briefly pondered putting this off until a more suitable time. Still, he could not ignore the exigent sense that something was moving against his adopted town and quick action was desperately needed.

"Have you found the boy?" Philip asked with a surly edge to his voice, "The one that was with Alma."

"No, we haven't. He hasn't tried to come home and I frankly don't expect that he will, judging by the reception that he's likely to get there."

The little bastard should be skinned for what he did to Alma," Riesen snarled. "The little fucker should be castrated." The seething frustration sounded particularly ugly spitting from the man's lips. Saddler guessed that this was a man unaccustomed to uttering obscenities. A low moan escaped Sarah Riesen's cracked lips and Ray sensed that she was within close proximity of hysteria.

"How well did Alma know Knox Severn?"

A thoughtful light came into Riesen's eyes, his anger abating, if only slightly. "As far as I am aware, she didn't know him at all. It's hard to tell with Alma. She's such a...secretive girl. Alma's introverted by nature and was never prone to share much with either of us."

A thread of exasperated confusion had woven its way into Philip Riesen's voice and Saddler received the impression that all had not been well amongst the clan Riesen. "Mr. Riesen, we have reason to suspect that Alma accompanied Knox Severn to the Eternal Lights Cemetery of her own free will. As it stands now, it may also be that Knox was not the one to inflict Alma's wounds, though he may be the only one who may know who did. It's imperative that I understand just what the two of them were doing in the graveyard after nightfall."

Saddler paused to allow the implications of this to sink in. It appeared that Sarah Riesen made the connection first. A hint of revulsion quivered around the edges of her voice as she spoke. "You don't think that they were making out...in that place, do you?"

"Quite frankly, I can't begin to image what they might have been doing there, but I think that it may have went beyond _making out_ ," Ray explained. Sarah appeared strangely relieved by his partial lie as though making out in a graveyard was the most unbearable probability that she could imagine. "That brings me to the matter of why I'm here..." he ventured, trying to select his words as delicately as possible. The pair's daughter had been irreparably scarred and it was essential that his actions appeared to cast no asperity upon her behavior. "If I can gain any understanding of what she was doing at the Cemetery, it just might help us determine exactly what happened to her. I'd like to see her room."

Ray stood anxiously by while the harried pair exchanged puzzled glances. His voice edged with indignation, Philip Riesen said, "That's a damned strange request to make, Sheriff."

"It must certainly seem that way, but under the circumstances, I don't see any alternative. What happened to your daughter is heinous, and anything that can bring me one step closer to finding the person responsible is worth investigating. The first step in that process begins with a better understanding of why she and the Severn boy were at the cemetery."

Philip started to object, but Sarah Riesen cut him short. Though her voice was fraught with barely controlled hysteria, her tone was implacable. "Let the Sheriff do his job, Philip."

Philip scowled at his haggard wife, but quickly relented beneath the weight of her irreducible grief. Bowing his head, he gestured toward the stairs. "Go ahead. Her room is second on the left."

Saddler ascended the steps, stealing a furtive glance at the pair as he went. Each had drifted to a separate area of the large room as though solitude was the only way that each could deal with their personal grief. Beneath the facade of family, Ray realized that there lurked a void that had turned the Riesen house into a haunting ground for familiar strangers. Their condition was not an unusual one in the modern day and age, but that did little to allay Ray's deepening sense of dejection.

The moment he entered the girl's room, Saddler knew that he had ventured into the private requiem of a girl who was _strikingly different_ for the lack of a better term. The walls and dressers were adorned by all manner of mythological and occult objects and art studies. The compelling depiction of someone or something called Lilith drew his attention. Alma had seemingly afforded it a feature spot along one wall. The image of beauty and evil in duality evoked a shiver in Saddler that emanated from the base of his spine. His flesh rose in great hackles and his teeth actually chattered despite the oppressive heat of the room.

"The devil beneath the beauty," he murmured and chuckled thinly. Other more personal images attempted to intrude upon his thoughts, but he somehow succeeded in belaying them. Turning away from the disquieting rendering of the dark seductress, Ray examined the rest of the room, gradually discovering a whole inventory of bizarre paraphernalia.

In the bottom drawer of her armoire, he came across several plastic daggers like the ones that had been found in the graveyard. He also found a collection of jars that held an assortment of roots and herbs. He read the labels...some of which were vaguely familiar...stopping abruptly when he happened upon a jar containing what was described as bone meal.

Ray unscrewed the lid of the jar and poured a small portion of its contents into his palm. As he had expected, the bone meal resembled the powder that had been found at the grave site.

Saddler replaced the lid and then returned the jar to its proper place. Then he drew his palm along his brow. It came away shining with perspiration. So it had been Alma who had initiated last night's activities at the Eternal Lights. Ray had suspected as much and this catalogue of occult oddities confirmed his suspicions.

' _What were you doing in a graveyard with this hocus-pocus?'_ he thought. The pattern and use of the daggers implied the enactment of some manner of perverse ritual, but what had been its specific purpose? Had Alma been dabbling in a process which she did not comprehend and over which she had lost control? Only Alma and Knox Severn could provide those answers. Alma was trapped in an inaccessible world of pain and Knox had vanished like a wraith.

"Alma was not a well girl, Sheriff Saddler."

Philip Riesen's unannounced entrance startled Saddler. The girl's father had entered the room and closed the door behind him. He sagged dejectedly against the frame and kept his eyes averted. "My wife never really understood any of this," he remarked, indicating the contents of the room with a broad flourish. "Quite frankly, I think that it frightened her more than she was willing to admit."

"I would come up here when she was gone and go through her things, finding more and more of the oddities that you've undoubtedly discovered, and wonder where and how she came by them. I was afraid to confront her with them...afraid that I would be opening up some kind of Pandora's Box. The life she was leading, this perverse obsession with darkness, was sick and I knew it, but still I did nothing."

His voice broke dramatically and tears began to roll down his cheeks. He did nothing to conceal his misery and Ray found that he admired the man for that display of courage. "I thought to myself, _what harm could she do?_ "

Ray groped for some appropriate words of consolation and found himself lacking. Philip Riesen continued to stare at the floor for a moment and then he silently turned and left Ray standing in the center of Alma's tiny requiem.

5

Veronica parked along a side street and walked the two blocks to the Sheriff's office. As she had hoped, Ray's car was gone. Grasping the imperative need for quick action, Ronnie crossed the building and bounded up the steps two at a time, gathering her composure before entering the office.

Mariam Carter greeted the arrival of the Sheriff's wife with her usual speculative expression as though she was incapable of completely concealing her intense curiosity.

The beautiful woman stood gazing down at Mariam, smiling her beguiling smile. "Hello Mariam, it looks like my husband's out."

"I'm afraid so, Mrs. Saddler, but I could have dispatch try to raise him on the radio if it's something important," Mariam replied smoothly, offering the bait with her customary aplomb.

"No, that's fine, but maybe I'll just leave a note on his desk."

Without awaiting reply, Veronica turned and glided gracefully toward her husband's office, cleaning fielding the appreciative glances from Ray's two on-duty deputies.

She entered the office and closed the glass door behind her, wishing that the room would have provided her with greater privacy to do what had to be done.

' _And exactly what is it that you're doing, Veronica?'_ an inner voice queried. She dismissed it with a savage clenching of will. There was no time for debate or ambivalence.

She assumed Ray's seat and laid her clutch purse on the flat the desk with the open end facing in her direction. Then she opened the clasp and withdrew a small memo pad and a silver Cross pen.

She glanced up through the glass door to see that Mariam Carter, while pretending to be engrossed in her work, was stealing furtive glances in her directions.

' _Meddlesome bitch,'_ she thought and smiled brightly at the woman, who flushed and quickly averted her eyes. Glancing about to see that she was not being observed, Veronica nudged open the central desk drawer and peered in side. Other than the stapler and an assortment of stationary supplies there was nothing that might be linked to the girl.

She slowly slid the drawer shut and picked up her Cross, pretending to write her note. Not once during this time did she stop to examine her reasons for being here or rummaging through her husband's desk. The urge had come upon her as suddenly and unexpectedly as a tornado from a pacific sky, and though it had made no sense, she had found the compulsion absolutely irresistible. Now she was here, furtively searching through drawers in search of...what? She was not precisely certain, but instinct informed her that she would recognize the target of her efforts when she came across it.

She slid open another drawer and discreetly examined its contents. She was uncertain how she had even come to be here. She recalled thinking that the linear progression of her memory had become badly truncated, and that was irrefutably true. She recalled leaving the house this morning, only moments after receiving three books, and coming to see Ray. Beyond that she could recall nothing, though she had the vague impression that she had conducted a conversation with someone whom she had never before met.

That was insane, of course, but then there was little to be gained by denying that things had slipped out of kilter of late. The same instinct that had assured her she would recognize what she was looking for, now admonished her to stop wasting time and get down to the business at hand.

Upon opening the bottom drawer, Veronica located what she had been seeking. There, sealed in plastic zip locks, she discovered a number of the plastic daggers which Alma had employed in her ritual. A malign grin spread across her face like blight. With adder's speed, she slipped open the zip lock and drew one of the daggers out of the drawer, silently disdainful of the cheap plastic imitation.

This, she placed on the flat of her lap and then set about writing her brief note to her husband.

I stopped by to say hello, but you were out. See you at home, Sheriff.

Love, Ronnie

She completed the note with a flourish of those inane hugs and kisses symbols that she so roundly detested. Then she slipped the Cross pen back into her purse, immediately followed by the plastic dagger.

She snapped the fold closed and withdrew from the office, closing the door behind her. In all, she had been in the office for less than five minutes. She strode by the desk vulture with a haughty toss of her red mane and walked out into the afternoon heat.

Crossing the street and returning to her car, she briefly contemplated the risk that she had assumed in stealing evidence from her husband's office. The exercise seemed all the more foolish in consideration of the fact that she had no idea why she had undertaken it to begin with.

Saddler was not inept and eventually he would realize that something had been taken. Then the questions would start.

' _Ah, but by then the town will be ablaze and he will be far too preoccupied to be concerned over a cheap plastic artifact,'_ The voice placated her momentary anxiety. Things would take care of themselves.

"Just go with the flow, Ronnie baby," she instructed herself and uttered a small laugh.

Chapter Fourteen

1

Stuart Crane sat behind his teak desk, his head propped in his hands, wondering how to begin damage control over his brother's latest debacle. For the briefest instant, the black spark of unadulterated loathing flared and he considered handing the problem of Cameron Crane over to Scallari, but he quickly discarded the notion.

"Damnable fool!" he snarled and pounded his fist down upon the glass blotter with its embossed reproduction of the Washington State Forestry Services map. Leave it to dear brother to become the most irritating at the most inopportune of moments. He had no specific information concerning what had transpired at the Eternal Lights the previous night, but he did know that Cameron had been taken into custody by the new Sheriff and later released. As to why Cameron had been skulking about the Cemetery like a ghoul, Stuart could not begin to speculate, but it went a good way toward confirming the fact that his dear brother was thoroughly deranged. It seemed that this Sheriff Saddler had been blessedly discreet in handling the entire matter of Cameron's presence and subsequent questioning and for that Stuart was genuinely grateful.

On a whim, Stuart picked up his phone and dialed Ira Silver's number. In his capacity as first Selectman, Ira would be able to glean more detail on what had actually occurred the previous night. He would also be able to insure that the Sheriff continued to employ absolute discretion in his handling of the whole sordid business.

Ira Silver was a dignified, eloquent man. At least this was the facade that he affected in the presence of others, but Stuart knew that the older man was a razor-tongued tyrant, intolerant of the slightest nonsense in his dealings with his subordinates. Crane was certain that he would apprise this Saddler of his new job priorities.

"Stuart," Ira answered, and Crane smiled. The man's erudite voice flowed like the smoothest of Scotch.

"I take it that you've heard of last night's incident at Eternal Lights?"

"Only the general details. Something concerns you Stuart?"

"Cameron was taken into custody and questioned, Ira," Stuart informed the older man.

There was a weighty pause and Silver asked, "Why?"

"I'm not certain and that's really the point of my call. I was hoping that you could use a little official leverage to find out."

"The new Sheriff seems like an amenable man. I'm sure that it shouldn't be a problem. Ah, about the other matter?"

"Yes, I've heard nothing from Scallari, but I would expect that he'll contact me soon. I'm frankly puzzled by the fact that we've not heard from the person responsible for the incident at the Toppers...if this is some form of extortion."

"I've given that matter some thought, Stuart," Ira interrupted. "Perhaps, in our anxiety, we've overlooked the possibility that this reporter...this Carlson, may have written those names on the wall."

Stuart chewed at his lower lip thoughtfully. What Silver was proposing was indeed a contingency which the group had not allowed for...one that would prove most fortuitous, should it prove to be the case.

"That would be a rather fortunate development," he allowed.

"Indeed," Ira concurred. "I'll speak with Sheriff Saddler, Stuart."

The two men engaged in a few moments of idle chat and then Crane noticed that his call-waiting light was flashing on the secretarial line. "Get back to me, Ira."

Stuart rang off and punched the secretarial line. "Mr. Crane, Mr. Scallari is here to see you."

"Have him come in," Stuart said absently. Perhaps that repressed bitch, Ranzman had been right and calling in Vincent was a mistake. If Carlson was an isolated lunatic, then his concern was unwarranted.

Vincent entered the office and Stuart ushered him to a chair. The Italian appeared weary as though he had gone without sleep since the night of the meeting. "You seem worn, my friend."

Vincent smiled. "I've managed to occupy my time, Stuart. You have quite the little town here."

Crane arched an eyebrow. The remark, while rather cryptic, seemed to carry a certain measure of sarcasm. Vincent's smile broadened. "I wonder if your group really understood what it was getting into by inviting me into the matter."

"I don't think that I follow, Vincent," Crane remarked tightly.

"You never really mentioned that your brother was a kind of village whipping boy, though I trust that was a mere oversight."

Crane frowned. "What do you know about Cameron?"

Vincent leaned forward, his intense eyes riveted upon Stuart's. "There's something decidedly rotten beneath the Normal Rockwell exterior. I can't be more specific, because I don't fully understand what's happening yet. I'm following instinct more than anything else."

"I still don't understand what you're getting at," Crane grumbled.

Scallari raised a hand. "Go softly, Stuart. Your impatience is showing. When you first brought this matter to my attention, my immediate impression was that someone in your distinguished group was playing a deadly little game. Then I remembered your brother...poor, penniless Cameron."

"He's penniless of his own volition," Crane interjected. "Though not necessarily as impoverished as he would have the world believe."

"No doubt, but people have strange perspectives. At any rate, I thought that I just might follow him and see how he spends his idle time. Your brother is a bit of a peculiar fellow. Would that be an unfair characterization, Stuart?"

"No, it wouldn't," Crane admitted, though with obvious reluctance. Cameron was a blight on the family name that Stuart had been forced to bear like a mill stone.

"Yesterday morning, I watched him as he left Hogan's market, looking very much like a whipped dog. A few seconds later, the good patrons charged out of the place as though it was on fire. Some were screaming and bleeding."

"What in God's name happened?" Crane demanded. As troubled as he was, Cameron had always been a passive lunatic. This could be symptomatic of the onset of something far less innocuous.

Scallari merely shrugged. "There was no way of telling." His expression intensified and he asked, "Stuart, do you know a tall red head...a strikingly beautifully woman."

Stuart shook his head. "Why do you ask?"

"It was an odd thing really. Just after your brother had made his shuffling exit and the good patrons had ran out in droves, this gorgeous woman steps out into the sidewalk and stares after your brother as though she was mesmerized. There was something about the way that she watched him that suggested keen interest," Scallari concluded. Truly mystified, it was Stuart's turn to plead ignorance.

"Perhaps it's meaningless. The rest of the day, your brother took some very long walks. What's up along Ringgold Lane?"

"Nothing." The lie sprang from Crane's lips automatically as he fought to maintain his mounting discomfort. "There are a few houses at first, but the dirt road leads into the forest and peters out to nothing."

Scallari nodded neutrally and Crane could not tell if he had discerned his little deception or not. "After a while, he came back and instead of heading home, he walked out along Winder Road, toward the Cemetery. Something interesting went down there last night and it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that Cameron knows just what that something was."

Crane sighed. "Cameron has long been a burden. When I first learned about the things that were scrawled in that reporter's hotel room, I went to Cameron with the intention of warning him that someone might by up to dirty business."

"It seems that he may have taken your warning seriously," Vincent observed with an indecipherable grin.

2

Ray was grappling with the ill-fitting pieces of the puzzle, when Ira Silver sailed into his office with the imperious manner of a conquering emperor. Though Silver had been present at all of his interviews, and had presumably been the man to render the final verdict on his hiring, he had demonstrated none of the officiousness that he now displayed. Saddler was reminded of Veronica's father and correctly guessed that he was not going to enjoy the next few moments.

"I trust that you're adjusting to your new position, Sheriff?" Silver asked, assuming the seat across from Saddler without invitation. He laid a Malacca walking stick across his lap and Ray's eyes were drawn to the ivory ball which sat atop the stick. The flaunting of wealth had always been a particularly delicate subject for Ray and the man's ostentatious display did nothing to allay his disquiet.

"It's a bit of an adjustment, but things are gradually falling into place," Ray replied. Silver nodded and Ray was reminded that this man was Art's uncle, though the differences between the two were infinite. Still, blood was blood, and Ray suddenly visualized a series of previously unforeseen complications within his department.

"I've been told that there was a bit of devilry at the graveyard," Ira began, convincing Saddler that his concerns were not unfounded. If Art's loyalty was suspect, then Ray's position would become a difficult one indeed.

"I would say that it was a little more serious than simple devilry, but we still haven't ascertained exactly what did happen. A girl was seriously and permanently disfigured and there still remain a lot of questions to be answered."

Silver frowned, "Will those answers be forthcoming?"

"It's impossible to say because the only person who might be able to shed some light on the matter is still missing," Ray replied and Silver's frown deepened appreciably. "Is there something specific on your mind, Mr. Silver?"

Silver's eyes widened and then a furtive grin spread across his face. "I see that you're a man who prefers candor. I admire that quality in a man, Sheriff. At the risk of sounding patronizing, I'll remind you that there is a world of difference between the big city of LA and small town Quinsett. Not that we harbor any enmity toward the larger cities, but the folk around here prefer things exactly the way they are. We prefer our changes in small doses, Sheriff...if things have to change at all. That's why we are so _alarmed_ when incidents like last nights occur. They're so...disruptive. Do you fathom any of what I'm trying to say, Sheriff?"

Saddler knew precisely what Silver was trying to communicate and though it infuriated him to no end, Ray also understood that he would have no choice but to tolerate such blatant heavy handedness. One of the things that had first concerned him in regards to accepting this job was the degree of influence which the local politicians would exert over the day to day running of the department. As much as he might not savor the notion, Ray was directly accountable to Silver and the other selectmen, who were all officially his superiors. Only now did he grasp just how much of a nuisance that particular arrangement might eventually prove to be. "I understand your concern, Mr. Silver."

"Ira, please," Silver interrupted with the air of a man conferring a tremendous egalitarian privilege on an inferior.

"Fine, Ira. The situation in the graveyard last night was particularly complex and it's still not clear exactly what transpired. It might prove to be something fairly isolated, but considering the suffering inflicted upon the Riesen girl, I feel it only fair to warn you that this might prove to be a very serious matter...a nasty part of a broader problem."

"Indeed?" Silver replied questioningly, his right eyebrow arched sharply. "I was told that last night's incident was little more than ghoulish shenanigans."

"Then your informant is guilty of gross oversimplification," Ray countered sharply. Deciding to be deliberately harsh, he said. "The girl was severely mutilated. Her eyes were burned out of her head."

"Good God!" Silver remarked softly, his color fading perceptibly. "Who would be capable of such a thing?"

"Obviously, someone who doesn't subscribe to good old apple pie morality that small towns like Quinsett hold so dear," Ray offered acerbically, knowing that he might be making a powerful enemy and not particularly caring one way or the other. Silver's face blanched at Ray's impertinence, but he elected not to ignore the barb.

"I've also been told that Cameron Crane was held for questioning in the matter?" Silver inquired hesitantly. He had not expected the situation to be so serious and if Crane had involved himself in something as heinous as mutilation of a teenage girl, then the consequences would shake not only the Crane empire, but the enter group.

"Yes," Crane said shortly, knowing that he was being annoyingly tacit, but relishing the sensation nonetheless.

"Is Crane somehow implicated in the girl's assault?" Silver prompted, partially dreading the answer.

Saddler shook his head. "Other than being a possible witness, no."

Silver could not entirely conceal his sense of relief. "Sheriff, the Crane name is perhaps the most respected in the State, perhaps the entire northwest. Cameron is a bit of an enigma, but he is not violent by nature. Any suggestion that he may have been responsible for something so horrible could besmirch a family name that stands as a cornerstone in our community."

Deciding to end this, Ray told Silver what he hoped to hear. "Cameron Crane is not being considered a suspect in the matter and there's no need to make his involvement a matter of public record."

Silver nodded, believing that he had established an unspoken rapport with the new Sheriff. The old man retrieved his walking stick and placed his fedora upon his head. As he stood, Saddler's inner eye exploded with a premonition of the old man, lying in a coffin and attired in the vestments of the grave. The old man stretched slightly as he stood and Ray could see just how far along Ira Silver truly was. The papery, thinning skin and the red-rimmed eyes all spoke of a man who could feel time's hot breath on his neck and hear its mocking laughter from around future's corner. He gazed directly at the younger man, and for the first time Ray imagined that he was seeing the real Ira Silver. "What I said about Quinsett was true, Sheriff. This is a good town, despite the horrible aberrations that come to pass from time to time. Whatever else you might do, that is your real priority...preserving the spirit of the town."

With this, he stood and shuffled out of Saddler office. Ray watched him go, experiencing a certain degree of shame. The old man, despite his officious nature, was only trying to preserve the last bastion of what Ray imagine America had been meant to be. In LA, the Riesen case would only be another entry in a catalogue of ineffable atrocities, a sensation only until a more intriguing incident came along. Here, such things were still looked upon as inconceivable horrors that could not be tolerated. In that respect, Silver had been correct...it was his duty to insure that the distinction between the two places remained glaring.

Ray placed his index fingers along the bridge of his nose and rub vigorously. He suddenly felt tired and mildly despondent, two symptoms that he had desperately hoped to avoid. Now that his priorities had been established, Ray realized that he had done preciously little to fill his mandate. On top of the burgeoning feelings of inadequacy, Ray now had another question to add to his growing list...who exactly was Jeniah Lightcrusher?

3

Saddler returned home to find the house unsettlingly quiet. As the sun slanted over the trees in an acute angle that set the side yard on a surreal fire of deep red and burnished orange. A cool breeze had blown in from the Pacific loosening the grip of the heat and humidity, if only temporarily. Ray stood on the veranda and gazed into the side yard, where less than twenty hours before he had come upon the gruesome remains of his cat.

"Damned!" he cursed, recalling that the cat was still in the trunk of his cruiser. He could only imagine how the heat had expedited the cat's decay. Later this night, when the sun had set, he would have to take a drive down Ringgold lane and bury the cat where it would never be found.

An image came to Ray then...one over which in his state of exhaustion caused him to giggle hysterically. He wondered what the town fathers would say if he were found digging a grave along a side road in the middle of the night. When the fit of laughter finally subsided, Ray drew a deep breath and mounted the porch steps.

' _Those three droplets of blood, Ray...just remember those three droplets of blood.'_ The thought pounced upon him as unexpectedly as a rogue wolf, usurping control of his thoughts before he could turn it away. _'No matter how desperately you want to forget, or try to rationalize them away, you're going to have to confront the fact of their existence eventually.'_

"But not now...not now," he murmured and opened the door and stepped into his kitchen.

The interior of the kitchen was empty and oppressively bleak for its emptiness. Ray was reminded of a man who returns home to discover that his family has packed up and left in his absence. He noticed that Mrs. Quilling had left a covered tray on kitchen counter.

Saddler heard the subdued hum of the television coming from somewhere in the next room. Entering the family room, he found Wendy staring fixedly at the Cartoon Channel, where a famous cartoon cat was absorbed in one of its endless schemes to finally catch his elusive cartoon adversary.

She was unaware of his presence, so Ray took the opportunity to study the girl. For a young girl, Wendy seemed capable of levels of concentration that were well beyond her age. There were occasions when her serious disposition gave both parents cause for concern. In moments such as this, Ray appreciated the extent of his daughter's beauty, which had clearly originated in Veronica's side of the gene pool, but her introspective, reticent disposition was unique to Wendy alone.

He coughed lightly and Wendy turned her gaze upon him. In a glance he realized that her facade of studied concentration had been feigned. Her expression was fraught with a terrible concern.

"Hi, Hon," he ventured. "Where's mom?"

With a nod of her head, Wendy indicated the closed doors of his wife's office. "Mom's in there. She has been for a long time now, ever since she told Mrs. Quilling that she could go home for the night."

"Mrs. Quilling went home?" Ray echoed, mildly surprised.

"Just after five o'clock," Wendy confirmed with a solemn nod.

Saddler glanced at his watch and saw that it was now a little after seven. It was unusual for Veronica to leave the children unsupervised for an extended period of time. This latest incident of anomalous behavior only served to augment Saddler's disquiet.

"I would have asked her what to do," Wendy continued hesitated, "but something made me...nervous."

Saddler was visited by the unshakeable certainty that she had meant to say _afraid_. With a few words of reassurance, Ray stood and crossed to the office door. He rapped sharply and waited for several seconds, one ear inclined toward the door. There wasn't the slightest hint of stirring from within and so he gripped the handle and pushed the door open, knowing that he was violating an unspoken tenant that had long existed between them.

The interior of the study was steeped in brooding shadow. The only light was cast by the muted beam of a small tensor...its pale glow illuminating a small circle on the desk. A single volume was spread open at its heart.

His wife sat slumped in her chair, staring vacantly into the middle-distance. Her mouth lolled open and her emerald eyes were dull and unfocused.

For a moment, Ray thought that she was unconscious.

Abruptly, Veronica sat bolt upright in her chair and turned to face her husband. Ray was staggered by the enmity flaring in her eyes. Her lips twisted into a feral snarl and for a brief moment, Ray feared that she actually intended to attack him.

As quickly as the hostility had bloomed, her anger subsided, giving way to an expression of acute disorientation. In a sudden, savage motion, Veronica swept the book from her desk. The cover snapped shut like the crack of a whip. Ray caught a glimpse of a faded gold script of the cover and then the book toppled to the floor. He moved to retrieve it for his wife, but she bent forward and snatched it up, while holding him at bay with an extended left arm.

Ray took an involuntary step backward, nonplussed by his wife's puzzling behavior. She gazed up at Saddler while clutching the book protectively in her left arm. There was a wild gleam in her eyes that reminded Saddler of a panicked animal.

Seconds passed and that light receded from her eyes. Ray found himself unable to speak. Finally, Veronica bowed her head, the mane of red hair cascading over her face, and said, "I'm sorry Ray. This book is...priceless."

' _And that's why you swept it onto the floor,'_ he thought. As usual, he found himself unable give expression to his thought. It was unsettling to consider the frequency with which this had occurred of late. He reached out and lifted her chin and peered into her eyes, which were now flat and devoid of expression. "Veronica, what's wrong?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted distantly. "I've felt...strange the last few days. There are times when I find myself drifting along in a daze. I'll come back to awareness and not even be sure what it is that I've been doing."

Saddler grimaced at the uncertain, slightly hurt tone in her voice. A deep, coppery fear blossomed in the pit of his stomach...an icy, unmanning thing that spawned a hundred dark thoughts, each progressively more terrible than the last.

"Are you ill, Ronnie?" he inquired carefully, part of him dreading the answer.

She frowned, her brow furrowing with what might have been either been perplexity or anger. "I don't think so, but I can't be certain. There are times when I feel so disjointed, like just now. I remember coming to go through some rare books that are to be part of an exhibit. The next conscious thing that I was aware of was you standing over me."

Ray searched her face for some sign of deception, and seeing none, folded her into his arms. She accepted his embrace, but did not return it. After a moment, she slipped out of his arms and walked over to the window. "I don't want you to worry about this, Ray."

The timber of her voice was soft and dreamy and so atypical of his wife that Saddler could not help but worry. Veronica had always been so vibrant, so zealously alive, that he had never even considered the possibility that she could be susceptible to serious illness. Now, that possibility crashed down upon him like a giant Redwood.

"This move was good for us. It might take a period of adjustment, but I fervently believe that we're going to be happy here."

"Wendy was frightened, Ronnie. She's a sharp girl and she senses that there's something different about you."

"Too sensitive," Veronica retorted, her voice colored with something that resembled genuine dislike. "Wendy is an eight year old girl and not an adult. Perhaps it's time that we both started to treat her like one."

Beneath the harsh words lay an implicit criticism and an emotion that Ray could not credit. "Ronnie, I think that her concern might be justified. Frankly, I've been a bit worried, myself."

She wheeled away from the window, her green eyes flashing in the darkness. Saddler could feel that an explosion was imminent, and though he desperately wanted to avoid it, now was the appropriate time to carefully vent some of his questions. "I told you that there's nothing to worry about. Not a damned thing...so let it go!"

"You seem under some kind of pressure. The incident with Wendy the other day was not that insignificant." He almost added that he thought she had been on the verge of striking his daughter with that spade, but mercifully restrained himself.

"Don't bring that up to me, Ray. I explained precisely what happened and that should be enough. There's no need to belabor the issue."

"Fair enough, but even you've admitted that your behavior has been odd. I saw how you looked and what I saw was unadulterated fury." Ray was beginning to be angry, and understood that anger would be about the least productive of all possible emotions given his wife's present volatile state; still he was helpless to restrain it. "Wendy is not really what this is about. It's about you."

"You have no right to attack me. You, of all people, have no right to attack me," she spat furiously. Ray blanched, hearing the vitriol in her voice and understanding the allusion all too well. The spite and malice of the remark caused him to blink in dismay. Never during the entire ordeal that had followed the shooting of the Deleon boy, had Veronica been anything but supportive. This had been a direct attempt to wound...to strike at his most vulnerable point, informing Ray that something was very wrong indeed.

"I supported you through everything, never once questioned our relationship and future. Perhaps I should have." The final remark had been delivered with the cold dispassionate voice and utter indifference to the indelible scar it would inflict upon their relationship."

"Ronnie, I think we'd better just leave this where it is," Ray said softly, feeling very much like a man who had inadvertently wandered into quicksand.

She continued to glare at him for several moments and then her expression underwent the most astounding of transformations. Ray shivered. Something had brushed by him then...a furtive thing that had been no less palpable for all of its subtlety. With its withdrawal there also went the sickening tension that had been threatening to explode. Ray actually glanced around as though there had been someone else in the room.

When Ray gazed back at his Veronica, it appeared as thought she had been drained of the vitriol. She sagged perceptibly and slumped into a love seat, her lovely features twisted wretchedly. Feeling his scrutiny, she covered her face. After several seconds, she began to sob wretchedly.

For a long, painful moment, Saddler found that he could not move to console her. Instead, he simply stood in the center of the room, feeling stunned and miserably inadequate. The family's pillar of strength seemed to be inexplicably crumbling before his very eyes and he suddenly found that he was mortified of the consequences.

After a time, she gazed up at Ray. Her eyes glistened with tears. More than anything else, it appeared that his wife was genuinely confused by her actions and it was this confusion that instilled a deep, icy terror in Ray's heart.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered in an emotion-choked voice. "Something...something is happening to me. There are times when I'm only half aware of where I am and what I'm doing." A dark shadow fell across her face. "There other times when I'm angry for no apparent reason...violently angry."

"I'm frightened, Ray," she confessed softly. In the subdued light of her office, Ray could only partially make out her face, but he thought that he could detect a note of guile beneath her anguish.

' _She's feeling something, but it isn't precisely fear,'_ he thought.

"How long have you been feeling like this?" he heard himself ask.

She shook her head, straining to recall when everything had begun and was frustrated to find only vague shadow. "Not long...I think." She suddenly slammed her fists down upon her thigh. "Damn, I just can't remember!"

The outburst of frustrated anger broke Saddler's paralysis. In three swift strides, he crossed the office and knelt beside his wife. She clutched him fiercely and buried her face in crook of his neck. He could feel the warm tears against his skin and was disgusted to find that they had an arousing effect. He pushed her to arm's length and said, "Do you think this place...Quinsett...is responsible?"

She looked at him thoughtfully. "No. It isn't the town."

There was something distinctly off center about her reply as though it had been intended to signify many things.

' _For Christ sake, don't lose it now, Ray,'_ he admonished himself. "Ronnie, are you still going home on Friday?"

Her business trip had been scheduled for Friday, with a tentative return date on Sunday afternoon. The frequent need for travel had been just one of the many worrisome aspects of their move to Quinsett. Now Saddler was grateful that she would be returning to LA.

Veronica nodded, wiping tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. "I was planning on it. Why?"

He tensed, anticipating that she would be resistant to his proposal. "You wouldn't consider staying over for a few days and making an appointment to see Dr. Vasik?"

She gazed at him openly for several moments and then said, "Do you really think that it's that serious?"

"No, I'm sure that it isn't," Saddler said quickly with a conviction he did not feel. "But Vasik will be able to tell us for sure."

Veronica chewed her lip pensively for several seconds and then said, "Maybe it would be best. I'll make the appointment for early next week. I suppose that a few extra days just to establish a routine won't hurt."

She stood and walked to her desk where she scribbled a brief note in her agenda calendar. Watching her, Ray breathed a brief sigh of relief. Her willingness to seek help was encouraging. She turned about and smiled, "Done." Pausing briefly, she added, "What I said before was unfair and inexcusable."

"It's all right, Ronnie," he said, raising a hand. "I only want you to feel better."

She nodded while opening a desk drawer, into which she deposited the book that had provoked her initial outburst. She then locked the drawer and slipped the key into the right pocket of her slacks. Saddler watched her with an intense curiosity. She had reacted to his finding her with the book in the same way that a teenager might react to being discovered with a pornographic magazine. Again, he was struck by the certainty that her explanation for her reaction had been an outright lie and could only wonder what was really troubling his normally stalwart wife.

Placing a hand upon his shoulder, she gently but firmly ushered Ray toward the study door. He went but could not help but steal one final backward glance at the drawer and the mysterious book held within. She noticed his glance, but decided to ignore it, instead saying, "I'd completely forgotten about supper and now I'm famished. If you don't mind a slightly flighty dinner companion, what say we eat?"

"Sounds great," Ray murmured absently and the two lefty the study and whatever secrets that might be sequestered there.

4

They ate in the kitchen, while Wendy sat quietly watching the pair. Her Inquisitive eyes were watchful and subdued as though she was quartered with an unpredictable beast that might turn upon her without warning.

The conversation was intentionally light, though Veronica made passing reference to the call that had taken him away in the small hours of the morning.

"How serious was it?" she asked casually, though something about her voice declared that her offhand tone was entirely contrived. He stole a quick glance at Wendy, whom he did not want to expose to the gory detail of what had transpired at the Eternal Lights.

Saddler tipped his head in his daughter's direction and remarked, "Someone got up to mischief and vandalized some of the head stones. It might not have been all that serious had not a girl been hurt. Hopefully, she'll be okay."

Veronica's eyes narrowed at the obvious fabrication, but she chose not to press the issue for which Ray was genuinely grateful. The elements of last night's drama, both here and in the graveyard, touched a raw nerve in Saddler's heart. Though baseless, he felt a deep personal apprehension for both himself and his family. The image of Smucky hanging suspended from a glistening length of piano wire would give him no peace. Worse still, his mind insisted upon creating a morbid juxtaposition between this and the horrid image of Alma Riesen's eyeless visage.

Ray realized that the two females were watching him intensely. Forcing back the ghoulish recollection, he reached for a wedge of apple pie with a huge, predacious grin.

Veronica and Ray were watching the late news, her head nestled in the hollow of his neck and one long and elegant arm draped over his lap, when Saddler remembered that the late Smucky was still decomposing in the trunk of his cruiser.

"Damn," he muttered and disengaged himself from his wife with a deep sigh of regret.

"What's wrong?" she inquired, her green eyes sparkling inquisitively.

"I still haven't laid dear old Smucky to rest," he told her as he crossed over to the Sony and flipped it off.

"Can't it wait until morning?" Veronica asked. Ray shook his head. "Not with this heat and humidity. By nine tomorrow, he'll smell up the entire county. I've got to bury him tonight."

He left the family room and moved out onto the side porch. There was a faint breeze stirring through the trees but it did nothing to alleviate the damnable humidity. Saddler glanced at the trunk of his cruiser, as though it held a Pandora's Box of terrors and a moue of revulsion flicker over his face. Veronica came to stand beside him, leaning against the wooden railing and scrutinizing him closely. She suddenly seemed animated as though the notion of burying the cat touched her as morbidly intriguing.

' _Now who's the crazy one,'_ Ray wondered and glanced up at the jeweled vault of the western sky.

"You're going to bury him here, on our property?" she asked. Her tone suggested that she found the idea somehow repugnant.

"No. I'll take him up along Ringgold Lane and bury him in the woods."

Ronnie considered this for a moment, and said softly, "You still feel its best we not tell her that he's...gone?"

Saddler shifted his gaze toward the western horizon where a vermillion sky promised another day of wilting heat. He had grappled with the complex question ever since the moment that they had first discovered Smucky. An instinct, which he did not entirely trust, advised him that yes, in this case it would be preferable not to tell Wendy what had really happened to Smucky. And though this instinct seemed so logical...what could be gained by relating the grim details of such an ugly act of violence to an eight year old child...Saddler could not escape the impression that he was doing something deceitful and wrong. "Yes, I still think that it's better if she thinks that Smucky has just run away, or gotten lost. Maybe if he hadn't died the way that he had...if he had been run down, maybe then we could have told her, but not like this."

"Ray, you can't block a child off from the ugliness of the world," Veronica said softly.

"No, but we can at least insulate her...for a while anyway."

Saddler awaited his wife's response. When it was apparent that she would not reply, he descended the porch steps and crossed to the garage. Veronica tracked his movements, watching him as he was swallowed up by the darkness of the side yard. The side yard flood light came on and seconds later he emerged carrying a spade and a large flashlight.

Ray walked to the car and Ronnie came to join him.

"Be careful along Ringgold Lane," she cautioned.

Saddler nodded, surprised by the gravity of her tone, and promised, "I shouldn't be long."

Veronica inclined her head and smiled a curious half-smile that Ray could not recall ever having seen. Saddler pulled away, chilled by the alien shadow that hovered over his wife.

Ringgold Lane twisted and turned sharply as it wound its way to the northwest. The town maintenance crew graded the road when time permitted, but, despite the virtually nonexistent volume of traffic, it did not take long for the road to degenerate into a teeth-jarring washboard. The sedan rattled violently as Ray gently urged it through the never-ending series of curves. Headlights framed jutting slivers of rock in the road way and Saddler could easily understand how a driver could come up with a flat tire.

Finally he found a spot where he could walk into the woods without having to battle through the undergrowth. He pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the headlights. Then he climbed out and retrieved is spade from the back seat, momentarily recalling that it was the same spade that Ronnie had threatened Wendy with just days earlier.

He opened the trunk and the stench of decay hit him in a rush of rancid air. Inside the plastic bag, Ray imagined that Smucky would be well along the way to complete desiccation and knew that he had been correct in insisting that he be buried tonight.

Steeling himself against the revulsion, Saddler took hold of the glad bag and hefted the cat out of the trunk, mildly surprised by its weight. He crossed the road as puffs of white dust raised up around him. It hadn't rained a drop in the six days that the family had been in Quinsett and probably not for a fair time prior to that, judging by the tinder dryness of the forest floor.

He found a spot behind a small earth knoll where it appeared that digging would be comparatively easy. Setting the cat down, he poked the earth experimentally and set about digging. The night was oppressively close in the cover of trees and soon he was drenched in perspiration.

As he dug, his thoughts strayed to his wife. He was relieved by her decision to see her family doctor once back in LA. Her periods of disconnection and seemingly menacing and belligerent behavior could stem from any number of physical problems. He brought the spade down with a grunt. The stainless steel struck a rock, sending up a small shower of orange sparks.

A hydra of ugly possibilities reared up in his subconscious. In that tiny burst of light came images of gray, wet tumor masses eating away at his wife's sanity and health. Other images followed, each more horrifying than the last.

' _Is everything really this fragile?'_ he wondered in consternation. _'Is the human grip on happiness and security so tenuous and fleeting that it can be broken in the blink of an eye without any prior warning?'_ Could his wife be seriously ill and the anomalous behavior a precursor of some burgeoning hell? Alone in the darkness of Ringgold Lane, Saddler prayed fervently that it was not.

He resumed digging, but the ground was surprisingly stubborn and unyielding with tangles of root mass forcing Saddler to use the edge of the spade as a cutting implement. As he dug, Ray became aware of a sudden stirring in the trees around him. The sounds were soft and subtle, almost furtive.

He stopped and stood up, wondering what kinds of animals inhabited the woods around Quinsett.

A dry branch cracked explosively off to his left and he peered into the darkness.

He could see nothing beyond the thick, impenetrable shadows. He listened carefully, trying not to breathe and soon the night was alive with a thousand cracks and rustles.

Ray shrugged and laughed embarrassed by his own agitation. Bending forward, he resumed his digging, but straightened abruptly when a harrowing howl tore through the trees like the cry of a banshee. When Ray tried to isolate the source of the cry, he noticed that a thick, strangely iridescent fog had materialized further into the trees and was creeping slowly toward the road.

The fog advanced with a sly grace that reminded Saddler of a snake and he was suddenly very sure that he did not want that fog to overtake him. Sweeping up the glad bag, Ray threw Smucky into the hole and began to frantically shovel dirt over the makeshift grave. Part of his mind was appalled by the ease with which this supernatural dread could surmount reason given the right circumstances, but it lacked the power to compel him to slow his shoveling.

The fog was less than fifty feet away now, shining as though it had been backlit for a stage play. Ray scraped the last shovel of loose dirt back into the hole. "Not much of a send off, Smuck, but under the circumstances it's the best that I can do."

Then he turned and headed back to the road, determined to walk at a reasonable pace and get a rein on his irrational fear.

Pivoting about, he found a large owl perched in a tree branch not fifteen feet from where he had been digging. It appeared to be watching him with large, luminescent eyes that resembled pale harvest moons.

The eyes were so mesmerizing that Saddler found that he was riveted to the earth, fixated by the bird's incisive gaze. Ray had never seen a screech owl before and he was rather surprised by its size and bulk. As it watched him, it began to hop from talon to talon and flap its powerful wings in apparent agitation.

There was something vaguely menacing about this odd display. Without warning, the bird began to screech, its' piercing cry raising the clammy flesh on Ray's back in great hackles. He tried to laugh away the unease, but the only sound that issued from his lips was a dry, papery grunt.

In a fluid motion, the owl launched itself from its perch and rocketed in Ray's direction, talons extended menacingly. Reacting on instinct, Ray took a step to the side and swung the shovel in a vicious, tight arc.

When it appeared inevitable that Ray would connect, the owl vanished from sight and Ray turned in a complete circle, almost losing his balance with the momentum of his swing.

He regained his footing and breathing heavily, pivoted in place to find that the owl was sitting in another tree more than fifty feet behind him. It glared balefully and then wheeled up and flew off to the west, leaving Ray to wonder if he was suffering from the same malady that seemed to have touched his wife.

As he tried to quell his shaking, he also noticed that the iridescent fog had also vanished as if it had never been. Closing his eyes and holding them tightly shut for several seconds, Saddler waited for his racing pulse to slow. Only when his breathing and heart rate had settled back into a more or less normal rhythm did Saddler open his eyes.

Shaking his head in dismay, Saddler bent to retrieve his spade and flashlight before starting back to the road. When he finally emerged from the undergrowth, he had regained his composure, his anxiety giving way to embarrassment.

He stepped onto the bone dry shoulder and ran the flashlight beam over the length of the cruiser. The harsh white light washed over the car, revealing that his rear tire had gone flat. Ray regarded the tire morosely, cursing both his luck and the bastards whose actions had necessitated the trip out here in the first place.

Sighing wearily, he trudged across the moonlit ribbon of gravel and unlocked the trunk, praying that the spare was in good repair. As he set about changing the offending tire, Ray thought that he could almost empathize with his wife's frustration of two days before.

Then he recalled the malevolence that had twisted her expression as she had converged upon their daughter, the spade cocked like a hammer, and that empathy abruptly vanished.

5

Veronica watched as Saddler pulled away and turned his cruiser onto Ringgold Lane. Standing alone in the middle of the side yard, she experienced a gradual, almost imperceptible altering of states...a sense of pleasant duality.

"Jeniah?" she whispered tentatively.

"I'm here," an inner voice assured her. "I've arranged that your husband's return be delayed, but there is much that we must do."

Veronica nodded and hurried back to the house, spurred on by the interloper's sense of controlled exigency.

Unlike her initial appearance, which had been as violent and debasing as a brutal rape, Jeniah now was able to assume control of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's once formidable mind with the ease and deftness of a lover slipping into a partner at the moment of arousal. Veronica found that she no longer resisted the intrusion. Quite the contrary, as she was now only dimly aware of the witch's presence on anything more that a functional level. When Jeniah's spirit chose to withdraw into the deeper recess of Veronica's subconscious, her host would experience her bewildering periods of disconnection. Though she did not realize it, these voids were symptomatic of the pernicious decay of Veronica's psyche.

Ignorant of the gradual erosion of her volition and personality, Veronica willingly submitted to Jeniah's domination, though no longer out of a sense of terror. A darker, once dormant aspect of her personality had led her to develop a grudging admiration for the interloper. The woman possessed an incredible power and the knowledge and determination necessary to wield that power. Though Jeniah had not yet chosen to share the eventual objective of her machinations, Veronica intuited that they would be something of profound consequence.

' _And I have been elected to serve as her emissary,'_ she thought reverently.

"Familiar," the inner voice whispered, evoking a smile from Veronica. There was something pleasing and comforting in that particular title. She rushed up the steps and into the kitchen, careful not to raise the slightest sound lest she wake Wendy, whose perceptiveness had proven troublesome of late.

Making her way to the study, she carefully locked the door behind her. Ray had been unexpectedly tacit about the girl's fate, but Veronica had gleaned the only critical piece of information that really mattered...the girl was still alive.

That could not be tolerated.

Alma had inadvertently elevated Jeniah to a higher level of puissance and her recompense would be...must be...an expeditious death.

Seated behind her desk, Veronica withdrew one of the three books from the locked drawer. In addition, she took out the plastic dragger which she had stolen from her husband's office earlier that afternoon. Stealing the dagger had been a calculated risk, especially under the watchful eye of that bitch, Mariam Carter, but it had been a risk that both Jeniah and Veronica had been willing to take.

Placing the book on the table, Veronica tugged the pull chain on her desk's tensor lamp and a small circle of muted yellow light illuminated the grimoire. Deftly, she ran her fingers over the cover of the ancient book of dark knowledge, responding to its reptilian texture with a guttural articulation of pleasure.

The time worn pages of the book virtually trembled with an accumulation of power and forbidden knowledge. She flipped open the book and began to read, her soaring elation quickly curdling when she realized that the text had been written in an obscure language that she could not identify, much less comprehend. The arcane illustrations seemed to mock her from the yellowing pages. This sense of seething frustration was accompanied by an intense and inexplicable feeling of familiarity...though Veronica could hardly imagine why.

"Damn it, why can't I understand?" she seethed, glaring down at the grimoire like a petulant child.

' _Not with your eyes,'_ the inner voice prompted softly, _'but with your mind and fingertips.'_ Perplexed, Ronnie frowned at the apparently absurd instruction, but then began to smile as understanding suffused her being. Her senses were attuned to the innate power held within the pages. The Grimoire's strength was pervasive and found, not within the intellectual logic of the written word, but the dark, visceral magic that could be perceived only by the genuinely gifted.

Veronica inclined her head to one side and closed her eyes, completely surrendering to Jeniah's now languorous possession. Slowly, experimentally, she laid her fingertips upon the first page. For a moment, nothing happened and Veronica experienced an instant of plummeting disappointment.

Then, like a stellar burst set against a background of flawless ebony, the grimoire released its recumbent secrets. Veronica was jolted upright, her red mane flying wildly, and thrown back into her swivel chair.

"Do not open your eyes!" Jeniah implored urgently and Veronica somehow managed to comply. Pure energy radiated along her forearm, shaking her lean body. In a moment of revelation, the mysteries of the Grimoire revealed themselves. Beneath the redundant glow of the tensor, Veronica's fingers flew over the pages with the rapidity and unerring dexterity of a concert pianist. Veronica threw back her head and keened soundlessly as her mind absorbed the secrets of two thousand years worth of insidious witchcraft. The pages turned of their own volition and her long fingers resumed their hectic march until the final page had yielded its knowledge and the cover snapped shut with a vehement whap.

As though part of a natural progression...a carefully orchestrated process...an argent glare flooded the study. In a matter of seconds the ancient grimoires were reduced to weightless ash.

Veronica viewed the process with no small degree of alarm and consternation, until Jeniah assured her, "Don't fret, the sum total of the book's knowledge has been engrained in your mind. We have no further need of paper trappings."

In the darkness of her study, her only company the invading spirit of a malicious witch, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler smiled. The smile, while radiant in magnitude, was filled with hunger and longing.

After absorbing the cumulative knowledge of the other two Grimoire, Veronica took up the paltry plastic imitation dagger and clutched it to her breasts. Then, her eyes rolled back in her head and she muttered in a voice made guttural with anticipation, "Let the burning begin."

Chapter Fifteen

1

He groped his way out of his fitful doze and as cognizance filtered back, Knox realized that his throat felt as parched as used sandpaper. Worse still, his head thundered like a July storm and his stomach rolled in a series of queasy motions that made it feel as though his insides were on the verge of being violently evicted from his body.

For one panicked moment, Severn thought that he had gone blind, but then relaxed when he realized that night had fallen. Severn groped his way around on his hands and knees, eventually locating one of the bottles of water that the woman had left for him.

Ripping off the cap in an almost desperate frenzy, Knox took a long pull from the bottle, letting the excess run freely over his face and chest. The water was tepid but it did assuage his thirst. Discarding the bottle, he crawled across the plank floor to the wall, where he tried to pull himself up along the two by four frame. He succeeded on the third attempt, discerning just how badly enervated he had become. Pushing open the shed door, he collapsed out into the coarse gravel of the yard and lay gasping harshly for breath. Even though the water had been relatively warm, his stomach clenched in rebellion, plunging the beleaguered Severn into a series of vicious cramps. After several long, excruciating moments, these too passed and he managed to push himself into a seated position against the shed. Moaning softly, he allowed his head to loll back against the weathered planks. He gazed up into the night sky and though the vault of heavens was bejeweled and dazzling, its timeless beauty was lost on the troubled teenager.

Against his most determined effort to resist it, the harrowing memory of the last twenty-four hours filtered back to Knox and to his own chagrin, he began to weep. For the first time in his life, he found himself wishing desperately that he could be at home in his own bed or sitting on the sofa listening to his old man regale his poor mother with dreary stories of mill life. Instead, he found himself leaning against a derelict shed with his uncertain future stretched out before him like a minefield. Every step that he might take from this particular juncture in time could explode upon him with disastrous consequences, each one more pleasant than the last. Deep thought had never been one of his strong suits, but in this rare moment of introspection, Severn understood that he had become an unfortunate victim of circumstances. His attraction to the Riesen girl had led him straight down the road to madness and try as he might, Knox could see no easy way to extricate himself from the snare that the girl's lunatic obsession had set for him.

' _Her eyes...Christ, did you see her eyes!'_ his mind brayed and that final image of the Riesen girl rose, unbidden, to his thoughts. She had been slumped over the Indian's grave...her legs swallowed by the earth and her torso slumped limply forward. Her face had been the most horrific aspect of that gruesome image. Her muscles appeared to have been carved out of stone, and the fucking eyes...

"What fucking eyes?" he croaked and let loose a peel of hysterical laughter that quickly led him to recall where he was and that laughter dried up in his throat. On the heels of that came the recollection of his rambling flight through the woods near Quinsett and his encounter with the strange woman earlier in the afternoon. Unaccountably, she had provided him with water and food (and although he was weak with hunger, the thought of food made him want to gag) and had spoken to him at great length. When he had tried to recall exactly what had passed between them, he was perplexed and dismayed to discover that the precise memory of what had been said eluded him. Like a vague form dancing in deep shadow, he recalled only that he had been both enthralled and terrified by the woman and the things she had said to him.

She had informed him that he was to serve her in some capacity, though as to what that function might be, he could not detail. He did, however, perceive that she had not been soliciting his assistance...she had been demanding it. This recollection evoked a chill and he hugged himself despite the oppressive heat that hung over Quinsett like a damp shroud.

It suddenly occurred to him that it might be in his best interest to desert this ramshackle shed before the woman returned, but when he asked himself just where he might go, Knox could produce no plausible answer. He had been seen fleeing the graveyard and they would be looking for him. If they were to take him, how could he ever answer the inevitable avalanche of questions about what had befallen the girl? Any answer that he could provide would only serve to re-enforce the impression that he was deranged enough to have brutalized the stupid bitch. The other thing that held him fast was the certitude that, where ever he might run, she would find him and that his desertion would provoke her wrath.

A dullard he might be, by Knox Severn was incisive enough to know that her wrath would be terrible to behold.

Resigned to the shackles of his circumstances, Knox stumbled back into the interior of the darkened shed to await his mistress' return. As he sat in the darkness, a single word resonated in the frazzled interiors of his mind. Though he understood the intimations of the word only vaguely, it nonetheless filled him with unmanning dread. He mouthed the word with awe and superstitious wonder.

"Familiar."

2

Try as she might, Jane Dorring could not seem to focus on the routine paperwork. Time and again, she found her gaze being drawn to the clock that hung directly across the hall from the nurse's station.

10:15.

She shifted her gaze to the bank of three narrow rectangular windows and saw that night had fallen, further aggravating her mounting discomfort. Throughout the entire evening, she had felt an obscure tension worming its way into the pit of her stomach...a disquiet that had sprung to life the moment she discovered that Darla Blaine, her nurse mate on the trauma ward, would not be in that evening. The skin flint administrator had informed her that he had been unable to secure a replacement for the evening, but knowing that a cover shift would have meant doling out a time and a half salary, Jane doubted that he had made much of an effort. Thus, she was alone and suffering through an uncustomary bout of jitters.

"Darla, you miserable bitch!" she cursed quietly and was taken aback by this uncharacteristic display of vitriol. Good nurse Darla was a self-centered chatter box, who loved to regale her shift mates with every detail of her self-perceived glorious life and under normal circumstances, Jane would be grateful for a respite.

Tonight, however, was anything but normal.

She tried to resist the urge to glance at the clock, but succumbed anyway, only to discover that it was now 10:18.

She shook her head in exasperation and attempted to apply herself to the task of filling out the night's report, but quickly discovered that her disquiet would not be subdued. Disgusted, she tossed the pen aside and buried her face in her small hands, sighing in consternation. She regarded the telephone for a moment and briefly considered calling her husband Turner, but decided against the idea. The hospital had a strict and inviolable policy against personal calls and what would she tell him anyway...I'm alone on the ward tonight and I've got a mean case of anxiety.

He would think that his pragmatic wife was suffering the effects of too many twelve hour shifts and too much caffeine...neither of which was true. Jane Dorring was truly a woman ruled by pragmatism grounded by a keen sense of self-awareness. The source of her mounting disquiet was comatose in room 116, less than sixty feet from where she now sat.

Alma Riesen was a gruesome anomaly that Dorring could not evict from her thoughts.

Drawing a quavering breath, Jane swiveled in her chair and reached for the girl's chart. The clinical account of the girl's injuries could not begin to convey the horror of Alma's disfigurement...massive trauma resulting in total removal of all ocular tissue and unaccountable rigidity of the facial muscles. Jane had been a nurse for thirteen years and a trauma nurse for the last eight. In that time, she had witnessed many examples of horrible trauma, inflicted mostly by traffic accidents and fire. If she was being perfectly candid, Jane had seen large parts of the human anatomy reduced to bloody, oozing pulp and had heard screams of agony that had reverberated through her nightmares long after the screamer had died.

Still, nothing in her catalogue of wretched experiences had adequately prepared her for the sorrowful spectacle of Alma Riesen.

It was not necessarily that Alma's wounding was the worst she had ever seen. Fire ravaged flesh and pulverized bones were technically speaking, much more horrific. No, what made this girl's injuries so unique and unsettling was their inexplicable nature, not to mention the bizarre fashion in which they had been sustained. The rumors concerning what might have transpired in the Eternal Lights Cemetery had swept through Quinsett like wildfire with each account growing more fantastical than the last. The general consensus was that the girl (an out-of-towner, the local bards would invariably add) had been up to some kind of devilry at the local bone yard and had gotten seriously hurt for her efforts.

Nothing in the tale could have prepared Jane for the tangible reality of the girl's condition.

Earlier in the evening, she had assisted with the changing of Alma's eye dressing. That memory evoked a shudder of revulsion. Looking into those empty, blackened sockets was very much like peering into the depths of the girl's very own private hell. From Jane's practical perspective, death would be preferable to being entombed in a prison of inured flesh.

Dorring drew another shaky breath and ran her fingers through her short hair, surprised to find that the tips nears the nape of her neck were wet with perspiration. This, more than anything else, signified how shaken she was and that admission only fuelled her deepening anxiety.

The Riesens had left the ward around 9:25 and since that their departure, no one had come up...not even the normally ubiquitous night janitor. When the parents had made their exit, Jane had watched them leave with a measure of pity...unable to imagine what it might be like to see your only child suspended in a purgatorial half-life.

Now, she envied them their escape.

"What exactly has you shivering like a child in the dark?" she demanded, but her attempt at self-deprecating laughter fell well short of the mark. Since she had posed the query, she had no choice but to consider the answer. It was not the girl and her improbable wounding...at least, not entirely.

It was the palpable aura that hung in the very air around her.

The ward was electric with the disconcerting tension of expectation. Expectation of precisely what, however, she could not say. That ambiguity did nothing to allay her disquiet. Every shadow on the familiar ward seemed fraught with hidden menace tonight. The certainty that some malevolent force was coalescing around the somnolent girl touched her in a visceral way that her intellect could not dispel.

As mad as it might seem, Jane Dorring knew, _unequivocally knew_ , that something inexpressibly terrible was going to occur on this quiet ward...possibly tonight.

Gasping with anxiety, Jane stole another peek at the clock and was dismayed to see that it was only 10:32. Less that an hour and a half to go and the night shift duo would be in to relieve her, allowing her to scurry home to Turner, a cup of green tea and the sanctuary of sleep. It was entirely possible that she might pay dear Darla back and feign sickness tomorrow.

Scant few miles away, Raymond Saddler struggled in the moonlight to change a flat tire. Neither Saddler, nor Dorring had any way of grasping that their respective hardships were two carefully choreographed steps in a long-dead witch's waltz of death.

For one, the long and agonizing evening was just commencing, while for the other, the night was about to come to an abrupt and lethal end.

Jane was about to reach for the telephone, having decided that breeching hospital policy was preferable to this awful sense of vulnerable isolation, when something brushed past her face.

She uttered a piercing shriek and tumbled out of her chair, dragging the telephone to the tiled floor in a clatter.

Above her head, she could sense, more than actually see, a malign presence pause to consider her briefly...its gaze hot and obscene on her flesh. Apparently deciding that she posed no real threat to its arcane purpose, the shadow glided over the nurses' counter and along the deserted corridor leaving a whimpering Dorring trembling on the floor.

She tried to move, but found that her traitorous limbs would not comply. After a torturous struggle, she pulled the phone up to her chest, intending to call the security booth, only to discover that her tumble had pulled the cord right out of the jack.

Extricating herself from both the chair and the tangled cord, Dorring cast a measuring glance in the direction of the nearest exit. Clutching the edge of the counter, she pulled herself upright and peered down the length of the corridor, searching for any sign of the spectral shadow that had filled her with such terror. Indecision seized her then, tugging her between making a dash for the exit and creeping down the hall to investigate. There was a moment of profound silence in which the only sounds were the subtle whirr of the air exchange system and the riotous thunder of her heart. She exhorted herself to move, but Jane Dorring's dismay, she was gripped by a paralyzing fear every bit as immobilizing as The Riesen girl's affliction.

In the next instant, a keening shriek tore the fabric of the expectant silence and broke the shackles of Jane's paralysis. A sense of duty re-asserted itself then and she was racing up the hallway, knowing the source of the harrowing cries even before she reached the girls room.

Steeling herself against whatever she might discover within, Jane Dorring plunged through the darkened doorway.

3

In the shadow interior of her study, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler allowed her chin to settle to her chest. Her palms lay flat upon the desk top as her eyes moved rapidly behind closed lids. Around her, barely perceptible effulgence began to gather as Jeniah Lightcrusher emerged from the shadows of Ronnie's subconscious to take complete control of their shared vessel. The day was not far off when the witch's plans would near fruition and she would be able to extinguish Veronica's presence completely, but for the time being she would serve Jeniah's purpose.

"Yes my pretty, let the burning begin, indeed," she intoned darkly, and then reached out to her familiar.

4

Knox came awake with an abrupt jolt, again finding himself in a state of unnerving disorientation in the inky darkness of the shed. An immense presence imposed itself upon the confined, sweltering space and he correctly deduced that he was no longer alone.

"Snap to it lad," a disembodied voice instructed from somewhere close by. He managed not to cry out, but only by the merest of fractions. "The hour grows late and I've arranged a little display for the good townspeople."

The voice echoed with a dark mirth that struck Severn as more terrifying than the contempt and anger that it had held the first time he had heard it.

"Where, where are you?" he blurted, betraying both his fear and his inherent dullness.

"Don't fret. I am here." In the far corner of the ramshackle shed, an argent light flickered and swelled, spreading like mercury along the west wall. Knox uttered a cry of alarm and raised his arms to shield his eyes against the glare. The light expanded until it stretched from wall to wall, folded back on itself like a receding wave, and suddenly he found himself gazing upon the diaphanous, ethereal visage of the red haired stranger. The magnitude of her beauty allayed his fear for a moment and he clambered to his knees like a supplicant before a divine presence.

"I see that you're suitably impressed. My seemingly theatrical entrance is nothing but a parlor trick really. Before our time is through, I will show you wonders that will shatter the limits of your narrow sense of what is...and can be." As she spoke, the stranger's image appeared to eddy and gutter like the light of a campfire. Despite his limited imagination, Severn correctly discerned that what he was seeing this night was purely spectral and that she was not present in the tangible sense as she had been earlier. To confirm this, he reached out to touch her, but his hand encountered only empty air where she appeared to be standing. The realization that she was not actually here caused his anxiety to abate another notch.

The floating specter considered the teenager for a moment, her left eyebrow arched in speculation. "Perhaps I've underestimated you."

In response, he offered her his patented smirk, even as a small voice cautioned that it might be unwise to display anything other than fawning humility. With a startling swiftness, the stranger glided forward and extended her right arm, touching the back of this left hand with a long index finger.

"What the fu..." he started, but the words were abruptly and savagely cut off by his soundless howl of agony. As his face constricted into a rictus of pure misery, he gaped at the back of his injured hand. Where an ephemeral finger had made contact, the flesh had been burned away down to the bone, which winked obscenely through the charred and oozing edges of raw skin. Clutching the wounded hand to his chest, he began to weep. Disgusted, the stranger brandished her finger again, and Severn forced himself to be silent.

"Object lessons are painful, but necessary...especially for sniveling little bastards," she growled venomously. "I am ubiquitous Knox. My reach is far and there is nowhere you can run that I can't find you. When I leave you to brood in this little box, you just might consider turning yourself in to a certain sheriff and begging innocence. If that urge ever does surface, just consider the little memento I've left you with and understand that they can't protect you from my wrath, should you be foolish enough to betray me."

"Please, Christ...I won't...whatever you want. Don't hurt me anymore," he croaked, knowing that she had spoken the unequivocal truth.

She considered him for a moment longer, her expression inscrutable, and then her former mirth returned. "Very well, then let's get to the night festivities."

Knox regarded his burned hand with a mixture of horror and revulsion, only now fathoming the depth of his predicament. She referred to him by the term familiar, but he had essentially become a slave who was hostage to her savage whim. She read his expression and laid her palm over his hand. As quickly as it had come, the pain vanished, but the scar remained a livid and repulsive reminder of the hazards of provoking her displeasure. "I can inflict pain, but I can also bestow pleasure, Knox. Now pay careful attention."

She directed his gaze to the west wall, where once again a brilliant argent spark flickered to life, its silver light spreading to encompass the entire wall. As Severn stared fixedly at the curtain of light an image came slowly into focus. The teenager gasped, immediately grasping of what he was seeing. Despite the thick bandages that covered her face from nose to hairline, Knox deduced that he was peering into Alma Riesen's hospital room. The image was as insubstantial as the creature who had conjured it, but he gleaned that it was every bit as real as the wound on his hand and he suddenly felt an immense pity for the girl who he scarcely knew. It was evident that she was to be the primary focus of whatever horror was about to transpire here.

"What is wrong with her face?" he heard himself ask.

"Her flesh has become livid; petrified in response to the images that I revealed to her back in the cemetery. I admit that they can be a bit unsettling, but she wanted insight and it's precisely what she got," the stranger responded blithely, clearly amused by Alma's plight. "Your friend is an inquisitive one, but not especially bright. Dabbling in the Arts is folly of the most lethal kind, as she has learned to her enduring dismay. Still, she unwittingly did me a service by providing me with more power than I could have reasonably expected upon my rebirth."

"What are you going to do?" he whispered, both dreading and knowing the answer.

"I could allow her to languish in this state until her body wasted away to a husk, but as I have said, she has cleared my path and so I will grant her a fitting end...cold mercy perhaps, but mercy nonetheless." She chuckled, but the source of her levity was lost upon Severn.

"In the not too distant past, they immolated witches...burned them at the stake. Alma aspired to something that she did not truly understand and for which she was in no way prepared, but I will give her a send off that she would appreciate under other circumstances." She favored him with a smile that was both sinister and enthralling in its intensity. Watching the beautiful stranger, Severn was torn between atavistic dread and lust.

"You mean to burn her?" he stammered, mortified by the notion.

"I mean to free her!" the witch corrected, her disapproving tone causing Knox to fall silent. With this, Jeniah set about her work. She pointed into the shadows above the teenager's head, waggling her fingers in a gesture of summoning. Something sailed through the argent gloom and slapped into the palm of her hand. Severn recognized the black Athame from Alma's disastrous ritual in the cemetery. In the girl's hand, the cheap plastic imitation of the traditional witch dagger had seemed tawdry and ridiculous, but in the stranger's grasp it appeared to radiate menace and dark purpose.

"I have always loved fire magic or pyromancy if you will," The witch sighed, her capricious tone causing Knox to shiver. The extent to which she derived pleasure from inflicting pain was resonant in her every word, leading Severn to wonder how long he could reasonably expect to survive in her company.

Eyes alight with burning intensity, she set about describing a pentacle, carving the sides into the bare floor planks in one continuous line. To Severn's amazement, the gaudy toy managed to chisel a one inch deep runnel into the crude boards. When she had closed the final pinnacle, the stranger stood and considered her work...a perfectly embossed pentacle of summoning that looked as though it had been machine carved. The hint of a smile cavorted at the corner of her full lips and he knew that she was pleased by her construction.

Striding into the middle of the intaglio, Jeniah turned up her palms and in response, a series of reddish stones dropped out of the shadowy recesses of the peaked ceiling. Despite it lethal intent, Knox found himself engrossed by the arcane mechanics of the ancient ritual. Nimbly, she moved around the perimeter of the circle, depositing the polished stones at even intervals until each of the six sides was delineated by an equal number of the tiny spheres. "Red amber," she informed the mesmerized Severn. "As any Alchemist worth his salt will tell you, it is one of the primary stones of the fire element."

Knox stole a glance at the shimmering image of the dormant Riesen girl, understanding that she was mercifully oblivious to the fate that awaited her. Jeniah again bent forward and commenced tracing a perfect circle to contain her pentacle. From Alma's running monologue during her ritual of evocation, Severn understood that its purpose was to protect the conjuror from the entity being summoned. Plucking more stones from the very air above her, the stranger moved lithely around the circle, distributing brimstone, pumice, iron and ash at the appropriate points of the pentacle. The positioning of the stones was in strict accordance to the strictures of the ancients Arcana of fire magic like the elements of a complex and deadly equation. Once this process was completed, Jeniah stepped back to examine her work, her discerning eye searching for this slightest imperfection in the arrangement.

Seeing none, she moved back to the wall where Knox cowered and declared, "Everything is precisely as it should be and we can begin the evocation."

Knox grimaced at the insinuation that he was part of this macabre ceremony, but prudently held his tongue. The Athame was in her right hand again and she began to move it slowly in an elaborate series of gestures. Very much as Alma had done the night prior, Jeniah had begun to speak the ancient words of power delivering the words in a Latin that was flawless and concise. She spoke softly at first, but as the seconds passed, her words grew louder and her gestures grew more frenetic. Mesmerized, Knox pressed himself against the wall, sensing that the ritual was rapidly approaching its culmination. His gaze shifted from the gesticulating beauty to the pentacle before finally settling on the insensate girl laying miles away in a hospital bed.

The realization that an enormous force was quickly converging on the tiny shed emanated from the pit of his stomach. The old boards of the shed began to oscillate in response to the power, leaving Knox to fear that the structure would simply collapse under its assault. He began to whimper when the first of the red amber stones erupted into flames. The remainder quickly followed suit in a succession of staccato bursts, until the entire pentacle was alive with writhing flames. Jeniah emitted a howl of triumph and nonchalantly tossed the plastic dagger into the fire. A sibilant hiss filled the air and it vanished in a spray of ash.

Back in her study, the tiny dagger that Veronica had taken from her husband's office earlier in the day, burst into argent flames. She opened her fingers, oblivious to the heat which could gain no purchase on her invulnerable flesh, and allowed the flaming dagger to fall to the glass blotter where it was quickly reduced to onyx dust.

The interior of the small shed was awash with light and sound. Jeniah's pentacle was now completely delineated by red and orange flames that stood three feet high. Severn was screaming now certain that at any moment the entire wooden structure would explode into flames, killing the only tangible thing within the shed...namely him.

"Calm down, you simpering idiot," She rasped. "The flames cannot breech the circle."

After a frantic moment, he discerned that the flames radiated no heat and were completely confined to the runnels that she had carved into the floor boards. That defied logic of course, but so did every other aspect of this excursion into madness.

The rumbling beneath the floor boards continued to swell. Severn's eyes were drawn to a section of floor boards near the door, where the rusty nails had actually begun to push themselves out of the wood with a tortured scream. Jeniah raised her arms to the heavens, exhorting the converging force to come forth.

In a shower of earth and splintered wood, it did just that.

Contained within the conjuror's circle, an indistinct entity now occupied the centre of the pentacle. The creature was a construct of argent and blue flames, though Knox could no discern specific features in the pyre. Two sapphire dots served as its eyes, but the most ghastly aspect of its countenance was a gaping maw lined with curving incisors that seemed to be comprised of argent flame and poised to devour anything that might raise its ire.

"Amanoch! How long it has been my old friend," The witch purred and in her tone, Knox could hear the depth of affection she harbored for this abomination. He was only dimly aware of the dark stain that had spread rapidly over the front of his jeans.

It nodded the abstract shape that seemed to serve as its head, in response to her salutation. Jeniah raised her hand and pointed at the shimmering image of her defenseless victim. A grin cracked her lips, but did not attenuate the glacial harshness in her emerald eyes, which shone malefic and terrible in the fire's glare. "Go Amanoch and feast well."

The fire demon drew itself up to its full height and bellowed...an awful, inhuman sound fraught with insatiable hunger. It turned slowly toward the portal that Jeniah had opened into Alma Riesen's room. Rearing back, the creature named Amanoch launched itself directly into the shimmering curtain and was gone, plunging the shed into a muted gloom.

In her cocoon of shadows, the witch began to laugh, while Knox Severn's beleaguered mind reached its capacity to endure horror and plunged him into merciful unconsciousness.

5

Jane Dorring understood that her preconceptions about the world and its governing realities have been torn irreversibly and unequivocally asunder the moment that she crossed the threshold of Alma's room. At first, everything appeared pretty much as it should be...the Riesen girl was locked in the depth of her coma and the room was steeped in silence and shadows.

Dorring took a single hesitant step inside, knowing that the superficial sense of normalcy was lethally deceptive. She had experienced the foul touch of the penumbra as it had passed her and all of the trite rationalization in the world could not dispel that memory. Something was here and its purpose would be unspeakably vile.

' _I've been touched by a devil,'_ she thought and now she could feel its malign aura though it had not yet made itself visible.

She ventured another two steps into the room, her breath coming in shallow gasps, when Alma abruptly sat up and loosed a keening shriek that sent Dorring recoiling toward the door. She avoided falling down only by grasping the door frame with both hands. She could not drag her eyes away from Alma's tortured face as she continued to wail like an injured animal. The muscles appeared to swell and bulge as though they might explode from stress of fighting their rigidity as she struggled to express her terror and agony. The cries were inarticulate and strangled, but Jane could clearly discern the horror they expressed.

Still screaming, she raised her right arm, dragging the I. V. pole over. Fascinated, Jane watched it fall as though in slow motion, where the stainless steel pole clattered off of the cold tiles. Alma was oblivious to the plastic tube that now hung from her arm, her sightless gaze fixed on a spot somewhere beyond the foot of her bed. Jane followed her pointing finger and abruptly her own scream intermingled with Riesen's woeful cries. Two brilliant sapphire dots hung suspended in the air and as the disbelieving nurse watched, argent flame began to spread around them, gaining breadth and depth until a hellish imitation of a human form resolved itself not three feet from where Alma Riesen now cowered.

' _It's here for the girl,'_ she correctly deduced. ' _It means to kill her.'_ The last thought provided the impetus to shatter her immobility. If the girl had any chance of living, Jane would have to find a way of getting her clear of the flaming monstrosity. She bounded forward, meaning to pull the bed, which was on casters, out of the room and into the hall. She had no thought of what she might do once she was out there, but she could only formulate her plan in small segments lest the depth of her predicament tear away her tenuous resolve.

Amanoch's head swiveled toward Dorring, immediately divining her intention. Raising his hand with the air of someone swatting an annoying bug, the demon flicked his wrist in a dismissive gesture. Jane observed his movement out of the corner of her eye and in the next instant, she found herself engulfed in white hot flames. The flame found immediate purchase on her uniform, rapidly consuming the fabric and then the flesh beneath, before beginning the swift, yet excruciating process of devouring her exposed muscles. Her eyeballs exploded with an audible pop as the stench of burning hair and flesh filled the room. Now a human torch, the thing that had once been practical Jane pin-wheeled its arms frantically, until the ravenous flames reduced her to a fire-burnished skeleton. As suddenly as they had first appeared, the argent flames vanished and the blackened bones collapsed the floor in a swirl of ash. It had taken less than thirty seconds for the demon to immolate Jane Dorring.

With the distraction removed. Amanoch again turned his attention back to the terror-stricken Alma Riesen.

Alma could sense the proximity of something ineffably malign just as surely as her nostrils were assailed by the stench of burning flesh. She had come back to full awareness, unsure of where she was or why she was there. Worse still was the impenetrable darkness that enshrouded her like a pall. With cognizance came recollection and she began to shriek, her hands stealing up to the bandages that covered her empty eye sockets. The enormous stupidity of her misadventure in the graveyard fell upon her like the waves of a tsunami. In a moment of preternatural clarity, Alma Riesen realized that her entire life had been an elaborately-constructed charade...her attraction to witchcraft nothing more than a sad, lonely girl's way of feeling unique and valid. Even as she had performed the ritual of evocation in the graveyard, part of her understood that this was all a complex sham designed to make the new boy think that she was somehow alluring and mysterious. She never truly believed that a dead spirit could be roused back into the land of the living.

Now, she found herself painfully disabused of that jaded belief.

She could hear the crackle and hiss of fire somewhere nearby and grasped that she had still not suffered the full consequences of her previous night's misdeed.

"Please...I'll never do it again. I'm so sorry...just don't hurt me anymore!" she wailed. She recalled the vision that the entity shown her and correctly surmised that it was this knowledge that now threatened her life. The spirit had imparted the vision with the belief that Alma would not survive the experience. Against all probability, she had and now it was back to finish the task.

"I won't tell anyone, I swear!" she rasped, holding her arms our before her like a supplicant before an unpredictable and volatile god.

Amanoch regarded the girl for several seconds before spreading his arms wide in what might have been confused for a gesture of welcome. The air came alive with a strident hiss and his abstract shape appeared to collapse back into itself. White and blue flame suddenly spread out in both directions, quickly encircling the girl's bed. Once the circle had been closed, the flames sprang up until they licked the sound retardant tiles of the ceiling. Slowly, deliberately, the flames began to close in on the girl, whose howls were lost against the roar of the pyre.

Total anarchy descended upon the hospital then as the intense heat triggered the sprinkler system, which then set off the alarm in the security station near the building entrance. The water was inadequate to the task of quelling the march of the argent flames, which had now spread out over the entire ceiling, filling the room with a thick, acrid, black smoke.

Despite this, Alma Riesen remained untouched within her prison of fire. She curled herself into a fetal ball, praying that her end would be swift. Her tormentor spoke to her then, in a voice she recalled well from their shared moment of intimacy in the graveyard. "It seems we meet again, Alma. It's a shame that it has to end this way, but you've become a loose end that I have no alternative but to tie. If it's any consolation, you can go into the fire knowing that your end will be mercifully swift compared to the fate that awaits those who survive you."

The flames converged on her then, a constricting snake of fire that consumed her in the blink of an eye.

A security guard and two male nurses pushed through the heavy doors of the trauma unit just as the first of the enclosed oxygen cylinders exploded, sending shards of metal twisting and spinning in every direction. A few disoriented patients wandered out of their rooms only to fall victim to the rapidly escalating chaos.

The night came alive with random death and the harrowing screams of its victims.

6

Jeniah watched the conclusion of her night's work in a satisfied silence. When the last trace of Alma Riesen had been effaced from the world, she closed the portal, indifferent to the collateral damage that her ritual was unleashing.

Her gaze fell on the unconscious form of Knox Severn and she frowned in disgust. He had soiled himself, she saw. As the reek of his drying urine filled her nostrils, she briefly considered killing him, but elected to administer a savage kick to his kidneys instead. He flopped back into wakefulness with a grunt and scrambled into the corner while raising his hands to shed his face from the blows he felt certain must follow. When none were forthcoming, he lowered his hands and glanced cautiously at the floating apparition, still not understanding how an intangible entity could inflict such incisive pain.

His gaze shifted to the wall which was now just bare board. "Is it over?"

"For the unfortunate Alma Riesen, yes. For others, it hasn't even begun," she responded, her lovely face reflecting some inscrutable emotion that Knox could not decipher. She shook the expression away and stepped closer to Severn as her mouth twisted in a moue of disgust. "You are pathetic. What possible use can you be to me if you piss yourself like a mewling baby every time you're exposed to a display of true power?"

The implicit threat was not lost upon the teenager. Knowing all too well what she was capable of, he began to weep and gibber. "I'm sorry okay...I've never seen anything like that."

She kicked him in the face, the heel of her insubstantial foot crashing into his cheek like the fall of a mallet. The impact of the blow toppled him onto his side, where he fell into a stunned silence. "Not as sorry as you'll be if you continue to disappoint me. You have no concept of the privilege I've bestowed upon you, but I'm a woman of finite patience and you would do well to consider the fate that befell your late dalliance."

"I will do better!! I will be stronger, I swear," he croaked, still wondering if he had the mettle to serve this kind of predator.

Jeniah hovered over him as though pondering his vow, her hands on her full hips. "Perhaps you will at that."

She waved her right hand over Knox in a spiral gesture with the index and pinky fingers splayed outward. Severn gasped as a cool and refreshing breeze washed over him, suffusing his pain-ravaged body. He closed his eyes and allowed it to work its way into the core of his being. The night's stress and terror sloughed away leaving him feeling calm and placated. Opening his eyes, he gasped, seeing that he was now completely naked. His flesh was dry and cleansed and his penis stood fully erect. He scrambled to cover himself, eliciting a spate of derisive laughter from the witch. "Tomorrow I will come to you with the things that you will require to provide the next service. Over the next several days, you will act as my harbinger."

Knox Severn had no idea what a harbinger was or what function it might serve. In his present state of contentment, nor did he care. Turning abruptly, she walked off through the west wall, glancing back over her shoulder at his aroused member as she went. "Rest tonight and enjoy my gift."

Then she was gone, leaving him blushing in the darkness. He laid his head back against the wood and tried to recall precisely what had transpired here tonight, but found that he could not. His every thought was consumed by images of the exotic beauty that inspired his present state of arousal. He closed his eyes and began to stroke himself in long, languid motions and the horrible memory of Alma's demise was erased by torrid dreams of union with the witch.

Chapter Sixteen

1

It was just past 11:20 when Raymond Saddler opened the door and fell behind the wheel of his cruiser. His hair was pasted against his scalp and sweat trickled freely into the collar of this shirt. Changing the flat had been incredibly arduous as though the bolts were actively conspiring against him. Throughout the entire struggle, he had felt the weight of furtive scrutiny on his back and turning toward the trees, he could almost detect the presence of dozens of pairs of eyes peering out of every pool of shadow. The uncharacteristic jitters caused him to shake his head in dismay.

He started the cruiser and closed his eyes for a moment as the air conditioning unit started to work its magic. His ordeal roused a sense of empathy for how Ronnie must have felt yesterday.

' _Yes, except none of that was real, Ray,'_ a little voice reminded him soberly. He pushed the thought away, not equal to the task of deciphering his wife's deliberate fabrication.

Carefully reversing the vehicle, he headed back down Ringgold Lane and pulled into his yard some fifteen minutes later. As he brought the cruiser to a stop, Saddler saw an intense white light pulsing through the windows of this wife's darkened study. Perplexed, he shook his head, trying to imagine a possible source for the pulsing eruption. He hesitated for a moment before climbing out of the car, and realized how deeply tired he was and how thoroughly that exhaustion was impeding his thinking process. He needed sleep, but some primal instinct admonished him that it was a requirement that circumstances would not allow him to satisfy.

Inside, Veronica heard the crunch of gravel and rubber and literally leapt to her feet, rushing toward the doors of the study. The memory of what had just occurred in the past hour was vague and distant, but this sense of disassociation no longer inspired the profound dread that it had only days before...no more than the sense of being _directed_ caused her any real concern. It was imperative that he not be allowed into her study just yet and so she moved to meet that exigent need without question. She emerged and closed the doors behind her just as she heard Ray step into the kitchen.

She donned an appropriate mask of concern and moved to meet him just as the telephone began to bray. The ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of her lips then and she knew that the call would drag him away and spare her the need to keep him clear of her study.

' _And just what is it that you're trying to hide, Ronnie?'_ a voice demanded and she shook it off. Specifics and reasons were simply unimportant...only action mattered.

He came into the dining area and she could see weariness etched into his face. For some inexplicable reason this pleased her immensely. Ray glanced at his wife briefly, wondering why she was allowing the phone to drone on while standing only five feet away from where it rang. Her gaze slid from his face over to the telephone, but still she made no move to answer it, so Ray hurried over and snapped it up.

She watched him intently as he listened, her private delight mounting in response to his growing anxiety. His deeply furrowed brow told her that something most terrible indeed had transpired. Finally, he drew a shaky breath and responded, "I'll be there in ten minutes. Make sure that both on-duty deputies are dispatched, if they aren't there already."

He started to move back towards the kitchen, but she gripped his forearm, her hand seizing him like a clamp. Startled by the power of her grasp, he shifted his wide-eyed gaze shifted to his wife.

"Ray?" she inquired simply, but her voice was fraught with intense curiosity.

He gently disentangled himself from her grip and remarked, "There's been a fire at county hospital...and casualties, though they don't know how many right now. I'll call you the first opportunity I get. Don't wait up."

And then he was gone...unaware of the triumphant grin that now emblazoned his wife's lovely face.

' _Everything is progressing quite nicely...like pieces of an elaborate puzzle falling neatly into place,'_ she thought, and uttered a giddy laugh while spinning in place. Knowing that she had two visits to make the next day, Veronica climbed the stairs and went to bed. Within minutes she was sound asleep.

2

It took Saddler less than thirty seconds to absorb the salient facts of the situation at the County Hospital; people had died and the shock and horror of their passing would leave an indelible mark on the town of Quinsett for years to come.

He pulled his cruiser into a slot near the main entrance and swept an apprising glance over the strange tableau, made more surreal still by the inky darkness and the halogen glow of the lights of the parking lot. The Quinsett municipal pump truck was parked on the grass some fifty feet from the building, but the hoses had not been unfurled, nor had the extension ladder been raised. A group of five firemen were milling around the truck, speaking in subdued voices reserved for such tragic scenes. Beyond them, Ray could see that a section of the buildings south wall was scorched to the color of anthracite and at least a dozen windows were blown out. Plumes of black smoke drifted lazily through the openings, but the relaxed firemen suggested that the blaze had been completely extinguished.

Beyond that, the entire facility had been evacuated and he could see patients (those well enough to actually stand) and staff standing around beyond a cordon of yellow police tape. Beyond them, there was a ring of what he estimated was a hundred or so curiosity seekers from town. In the last three nights, the small town of Quinsett had experienced a decade's worth of dark drama.

Sighing, he stepped out of the car, grimacing at the palpable weight of the heat and humidity that greeted him. Art Silver came rushing over to where he stood, followed closely by Orlin Feldman. Both men wore identical expressions of bewilderment that reminded Saddler of victims who had survived a prolonged bombing campaign. Inclining his head toward the firemen, Ray inquired, "I take it that the fire is out, at least?"

"It's out all right," Silver confirmed. "But you won't believe what it looks like in there. It's lucky that there's anything left of the place."

"Well perhaps we should go and take a look," he replied warily and gestured for the two deputies to lead the way.

Stepping through the heavy doors into the trauma ward was very much like stepping into another dimension, made more surreal by the inadequate light cast by the emergency units. The acrid smoke was only now beginning to thin, but the cloying reek of burnt things, both living and inanimate, made it difficult to draw a full breath. Like the exterior, there were areas of the unit that had been reduced to char and ash, while other areas, such as the nurses' station, had escaped unscathed. The demarcation line between these points was so precise that it appeared to have been drawn with a ruler. Ray made a mental note of this oddity as he gazed around the scorched ward, attempting to gain some understanding of what had transpired here.

Three firemen were congregated down the hall where the worst of the damage seemed to be concentrated. Ray recognized Quinsett Fire Chief Herb Klyman and headed in his direction. Saddler had the occasion to meet Klyman during the interview process, but this was the first time that their paths had crossed in a professional capacity. Klyman's demeanor was somewhere between Albert Huxley and Lars Ingstrom. At sixty-two years old, Ray wondered how much longer it would be before the selectmen were shopping about for a new fire chief.

"Herb, it looks like quite the mess we've got here," Saddler offered mildly, peering over the old man's shoulder into a room that was steeped in impenetrable darkness.

"I'd say," he returned gruffly, a hint of sarcasm fringing his words. "We've got five casualties...at least. Two of the five will be identifiable only by circumstances."

"I don't follow," Ray asked uneasily.

"Well, let's put 'er plain then, there's nothing left to identify, only ash and bone fragments."

"Jesus!" Ray rasped. "How is that possible?"

Klyman fixed his police counterpart with a frank gaze of appraisal. After a moment, he explained, "I've been a fireman for thirty-three years and I understand it better than I know my own wife, who I've known for about as long. Fire's a capricious bitch, but I would have sworn that I'd seen every face she had to show in that time. This is a new one..." He trailed off to a worried silence and then repeated, "This is a new one."

So you're telling me that the circumstances surrounding this particular fire are inexplicable... or more to the point...impossible?"

Klyman nodded slowly. "Let's go inside and take a better look. I'll point things out as we go and you'll quickly catch my train of thinking on this."

He handed Saddler a flash light and the two men stepped into the charred husk of room 116. Sweeping their lights around the room, revealed the first anomaly; every square inch of ceiling and wall had been burned to cinders, causing Ray to wonder how structurally sound the room was. The floor however, was marred in only two spots, the white tile were in otherwise immaculate condition. In the center, Ray surmised, were the melted remains of a hospital bed. Another charred patch littered the floor half way between the bed and the spot where the pair presently stood. Ray whistled and shook his head in disbelief.

"Pretty strange," Klyman agreed. "There are bone fragments in both of those spots and that is just about it for the remains."

"What could have done this?" Ray asked, unable to draw his troubled gaze from the charred remains of the hospital bed. "I mean the burn pattern is so localized, and precise. What kind of fire burns this way?"

Klyman fetched a long sigh. "None that I've ever seen. There are so many incongruent facts here that I don't even know where to begin. Let's see if I can lay them out in some kind of logical fashion for you. Firstly, you're right, I don't know of any kind of fire, natural or man made, that could be so specific in its burn pattern. Maybe there are some very advance pyrotechnic special effects things that might do this, I'm not sure. Even if such things did exist, what would they be doing here? Secondly, I can't imagine the kind of heat that would be necessary to reduce the human body to so little ash and bone so rapidly."

"The initial sense I have when seeing these patterns would be that these two individuals were _struck down_ by the fire, as if they had no time to react to whatever happened to them," Ray observed quietly.

"You're exactly right," The fire chief concurred. It appears as though both were cooked to a cinder where they stood...or laid, in the case of the victim in the bed. That speaks directly to my last point; the fire alarm went off in the security office at 11:05 and the first trucks hit the scene here at 11:21. These are logged times, so we're talking sixteen minutes. When the first of my men hit the floor, the fire was completely extinguished."

"What...that can't be right?" Ray reacted, his astonishment giving way to something closer to atavistic dread.

"Logic would say that it can't be, but you see the gruesome reality staring you in the face and it's pretty irrefutable. There is no way that the commercial sprinkler system could have extinguished a blaze that could have produced the heat required to do this kind of damage. The heat would have vaporized the water. I know what I'm about to say is horseshit of the purest kind, but it would appear as though someone had lit a giant welding torch and used it to inflict the damage here. We both know that's impossible and so I'm left lacking for an explanation for the probable cause of this blaze."

Klyman's analogy of a welding torch gave Saddler a nasty start as he recalled his own impression of what might have created the massive symbol on Lars Ingstrom's barn.

"How will you write this up?" Saddler inquired, not envying the man this particular task.

"Fire with fatalities...initial cause unknown," the fire chief responded with a helpless shrug. "We're going to give the place a very thorough going over, especially in light of the deaths, and explore all of the traditional causes, but I can tell you right now we won't find an explanation there. The cause of this is a plain and simple mystery and that's likely the way it will stay."

One other thing occurred to Ray and he asked, "Do we have any way of knowing who these particular victims were?"

"Well, I can tell you that there is likely to be no incontrovertible forensics evidence, but the duty roster says that the only nurse here was Jane Dorring. She's nowhere to be found and my best bet is that's her on the floor." He gestured toward the charred mess on the tiles and even in the gloom, Saddler could clearly perceive the flicker of revulsion in his eyes. "I had my men cross-reference the patient charts to see who was where. There were only five patients and two have been evacuated. One of the dead fellows in the hall is Myron Duff, a local old timer who had suffered a mild stroke just yesterday." He paused for a moment, as though trying to decide if he should reveal the name of the patient who had occupied room 116. He drew a quavering breath. "The person in the bed was Alma Riesen."

Ray quickly averted his face, lest it betray the complex and bewildering blast of emotions that this revelation evoked. In the chaos and darkness that presently engulfed the trauma ward, Saddler failed to realize that this was the precise spot he had occupied less than twenty-four hours earlier. There was incredulity and pity in equal measure, but beyond these Ray was assailed by the certainty that she had been the target of this bizarre fire and that her death had been intentional and premeditated. Alma had been meant to die in the graveyard and when she had not succumbed to her initial injuries, her assailant had found a way to finish the job. He had no tangible proof of this, but he knew it as certainly as he knew that the dark and obscure engine driving this insanity was just getting cycled up. Alma Riesen's horrible and inexplicable death was just a precursor of things to come. He shared none of this with Herb Klyman, instead nodding his head morosely and asking for a copy of the preliminary report.

With this, he went in search of the hospital administrator for a list of addresses of the deceased. Breaking the news of their deaths to loved ones would fall to him. Once he had collected the addresses, he issued a series of instructions to his deputies and went out to carry his message of tragedy.

3

Ray was back in his office by 8:15 the next morning, having spent the previous few hours with the Riesens and Jane Dorring's husband. The memory of their shocked and bewildered face was indelibly etched in his memory, somehow exacerbated by the fact that he could provide no logical explanation for the gruesome fate that had befallen their loved ones. The stoic observation of strangers' grief and anguish was the one of aspect of the job that Saddler found the most difficult...mouthing the words of commiseration made him feel cheap and intrusive. Yet, passing the news of Myron Duff's death to his only listed relative (a nephew who lived in Seattle and reacted to the news with harried impatience) was somehow more depressing. The bottom line was that the quaint slice of rural Americana known as Quinsett had suffered six deaths in the space of three days and no plausible explanation could be offered for any of them.

The day had dawned beneath a clear, high blue sky that promised no surcease from the cloying heat and Saddler could feel weariness dragging at the limits of this mental faculties. The chaos of the last 72 hours had impressed upon him the differences between being an LAPD detective and a small town Sheriff. Where once he had been assigned a specific case load, this burden fell squarely on his shoulders and this anomalous wave of chaos was rapidly using him up. If he wasn't going to burn out, he would have to entrust some portion of this responsibility to one of his deputies.

Trusting Albert Huxley's judgment, he decided that Art Silver would be that deputy. The fact that Silver was a relative of the town's first selectman could potentially be problematic, but it was a risk he would have to take. He had spent more time with all of the other deputies, with the exception of the only female deputy Maria Cordova, and while all seemed competent enough, only Art seemed to possess a more acute instinct for the vocation.

As he pondered the need for delegation of duties, Ray absently flipped through his meticulously maintained notebook and came across the name of Jeniah Lightcrusher. He had underscored the name with three bold black lines and had punctuated it with a question mark. He could not say why, but the long dead woman seemed to call to him as though her very name held the key that would unravel the convoluted mystery that gripped his town.

"Just who are you anyway?" he demanded irritably, but the letters only mocked him with a stoic disdain. Sighing, he folded the book and sequestered it back into his coat pocket. Then he pushed himself out of the cruiser and made his way into the station.

Mariam Carter was ensconced behind her desk, efficiently plowing her way through the night's reports, her fingers flying over the typewriter keys with an adroitness that Saddler had always found uncanny. She glanced up as he entered the station, her incisive gaze settling on her new boss. "Good Morning, Sheriff. I would expect that you've had a long night?"

"I'd say so, Mariam and it promises to be a long day before it's over," he allowed guardedly.

Her keen blue eyes watched him closely. "With all that's happened, I would imagine it will be. Sheriff, did your wife happen to mention anything about the ruckus that went on down at Hogan's market, yesterday?"

Despite his weariness, Saddler found himself suddenly and completely alert. Intuition informed him that Mariam Carter was not the kind of woman who casually raised any subject without some underlying motive. Attempting to maintain a neutral tone, he replied, "Actually, she didn't?"

The secretary gave a barely perceptible nod as though she had expected as much. "Now I wasn't there of course, so you'll have to take this with a grain of salt, but I hear that she had words with the store owner. Old Marv Hogan is a windbag. Apparently he was having sport at the expense of Cameron Crane, when your wife sailed into him like a battleship and put him in his place." She uttered mirthless chuckle then. "That, I would like to have seen. Strange thing was, and this I can scarcely credit, after your wife left, there was some kind of explosion of glass. A lot of bottles just blew up and some people were cut...some badly"

She paused to allow the ambiguous implications of this to sink in and then concluded, "Guess with everything else that's happened it might have just slipped her mind."

"It must have," Ray concurred, managing to maintain an impassive expression. Mariam's bit of gossip plunged his thoughts into utter turmoil, which he correctly deduced was precisely what she intended. The fact that his wife had come to the rescue of a man who was later involved in Alma Riesen's graveyard debacle stretched the limits of coincidence and added to the growing catalogue of questions concerning his wife's erratic behavior...questions that would soon allow him no further latitude for avoidance. "Is Art in the office?"

"I believe I saw him stroll into the lunch room," she offered, the ghost of a satisfied grin playing at her lips. Mariam had met Veronica Ashcott-Saddler on two occasions and had concluded that the other woman was a condescending big city bitch who would benefit from being taken down peg or two...a task for which Mariam judged herself particularly well-suited

Ray gave the woman a distracted nod and headed towards the lunch room, deliberately forcing the tidbit of gossip out of his mind for the time being.

Ray found Art Silver standing next to the coffee maker, staring absently through the window out into the parking lot. The pinched, distracted expression on his thin face spoke volumes about how profoundly he had been affected by the hospital fire. Saddler imagined that the same sense of shock and grief would resonate through the entire town today, touching people in this small town more intimately than a similar tragedy would have affected a city the size of Los Angeles...where it barely would have registered.

The deputy turned his gaze to Saddler...his pallor immediately telling Ray that he was far from okay. "I knew Jane and her husband. She was kind and compassionate...it was why she was so good at what she did. To see her reduced to...to..."

His voice trailed off to a tiny sigh of pure anguish. Quavering on the edge of tears, he demanded, "What in God's name could have done that?"

Ray remained silent and stationary for a moment, and then he crossed the room and laid a hand on Silver's shoulder. "That's precisely what you and I have to find out, Art."

Silver inhaled deeply and closed his eyes for several seconds, struggling to regain his composure. "I'm sorry, Sheriff. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to die that way."

"Let's go back to my office, Art. There are a good number of things that I'd like to go over with you."

The deputy nodded and followed Saddler through the empty bullpen and into his office, where Ray closed the door and ushered his deputy into a seat. When he took his own seat, Ray declared, "The last few days have been certainly eventful. Would it be fair to say that Quinsett hasn't seen such a spell of drama in a good many years?"

"Not as long as I can remember," Silver allowed.

"How long have you been a deputy, Art?" Saddler asked, knowing that he was being disingenuous. He had read the personnel files of each of his deputies, but there was a great deal to be gleaned by listening to the way a man told his own story.

"I joined the squad at age twenty-two and I've been a deputy for eleven years." Silver hesitated for a moment and Ray could discern that he was debating the merits of sharing the next piece of information. "It was my uncle Ira who got me onto the force. There is no point in trying to deny the fact, but I've made every effort to prove myself worthy of the opportunity."

"Albert had the highest praise for you, Art. Basically, he said that you were his go to man in difficult situations. Albert struck me as a man who cut to the chase and didn't embellish the picture he drew of people and so I'll take his opinion for fact."

Art's eyes dropped to his folded hands. "Albert was good man, and a great boss. I don't think that I'm exaggerating when I say that every member of his staff loved him. He had that kind respect. He's the kind of guy who inspires you to do your best if only to avoid disappointing him."

"When I first agreed to take this position, I asked the selectman if I could appoint a second in command. It would pay only slightly better that a deputy's wage and there would be a fair amount of tiresome paperwork, but I think it would provide some interesting challenges for the right man. If you're interested, I'd like to offer the position to you."

Silver's face brightened. "Of course, I'd be thrilled."

"Then consider the position yours. Basically, the job would entail playing leading roll on the shift and deciding how to dispatch the men in the most effective response to any given situation. We'll iron out the particulars in the next few days, but essentially, I need someone who I can fall back on when I'm not on duty."

"I won't disappoint you, Sheriff," Art vowed earnestly.

"Naturally, discretion is the most important aspect of the relationship we'd have. I'm going to bounce some ideas around, but they must remain in the strictest confidence."

"Albert was pretty keen on the same notion," Silver remarked flatly, further indicating his understanding by adding. "Uncle Ira may be the first selectman, but I don't work for Uncle Ira and if there is something he needs to know, then I expect that he can come to you."

"Then I believe that we understand each other perfectly. As I've said, the last three days have been hectic and it's not just the amount of activity, but the kind of activity; an apparent suicide, a case of vandalism and slaughter at the Ingstrom farm, the bizarre happenings at the Eternal Lights Cemetery that led to the Alma Riesen's inexplicable injuries and finally, the fire tonight. By the way, has there been any further developments regarding Knox Severn?"

"Nothing. The kid seems to have vanished into thin air. The parents haven't heard a peep and believe me, I think the father would gladly turn in his boy and be shut of him like a bad debt. Every deputy has been on the lookout for the kid, but he's just...gone."

Ray nodded, having expected nothing less. "Art, each of these incidents if taken individually, would be perplexing enough. There are enough unanswered questions about each to keep us busy for some time to come, but when you consider them as part of a specific sequence of connected events, they go from being perplexing to deeply disturbing."

"Then you think all of this is somehow related?" Art asked thoughtfully.

Ray nodded. "I do, and this is the part where I require your complete discretion...I believe that everything ties together and what we've seen is only the beginning of a much more insidious agenda for the lack of a better word."

Saddler reached into his desk and withdrew a writing pad, where he drew four large circles in sequence. Within each circle, he scribbled one of the four incidents that he had enumerated earlier. The he connected each with a thick line. "When you examine a series of events to determine a possible connection, the first place to start is identification of the commonalities between the incidents. When you look at these four, what is the one thread that appears to link each?"

Art leaned forward and considered the diagram as though it held the key to epiphany. His brow furrowed in concentration as he pondered the possible similarities between the four events. Then he glanced up at Saddler, his eyes blazing with dawning comprehension. "Each incident somehow involved occult or supernatural mumbo jumbo."

"Exactly," Ray concurred, tapping his pen on the pad for emphasis. "Some obscure element of the occult was entwined with each occurrence and I think that we have to seriously entertain the idea that it is a primary factor in everything that has happened in the last three days."

Art's brow furrowed and he placed his finger on the final circle. "I don't see that the fire at the Hospital could be logically categorized as being occult-related?"

"This is where the theory stretches thin and you accept as a tenant of faith that Alma Riesen was intentionally murdered."

' _That and the fact that the fire's cause defies any rational explanation,'_ Saddler thought, but did not add.

Silver's head popped up with a start and he lifted out of his chair. "Is that what you think...that the fire was set deliberately to kill her?"

Saddler considered the fourth circle, clearly conflicted by the thought that the conflagration had been engineered specifically to kill a teenager who was virtually dead anyway. "In total candor, I don't know what to think about the fire. Like the other three, this situation is rife with questions and precious few answers. Here are the things we can say about the fire with a reasonable degree of certainty...the fire characteristics defy every common convention, it burned too hot, consumed its victims too quickly and went out far too rapidly. Fire chief Klyman says that nothing about this particular blaze makes any sense. It's a total anomaly."

He hesitated for a moment, knowing that he was imparting a trust that could prove damaging if it was misplaced. "This never leaves this office, Art. At first glance, it appears that his fire, however it might have been set, was ignited specifically to kill Alma Riesen. The others were the unfortunate victims of circumstances and proximity. If we attach any credence to this theory, the other three links in the chain are suddenly forged in a much more sinister cast. In a twisted way, the progression from one to the next makes sense."

Silver shook his head in bewilderment, still trying to absorb the notion that the sophisticated fire was an act of arson conceived with the intent to commit murder. Most crime in Quinsett was inspired by greed, anger, alcohol or jealousy and most criminal acts were spontaneous and stupid. The notion that an elaborate conspiracy was being engineered in this sleepy hollow on the highway seemed ludicrous. At least, that is, until you admitted that there was an ostensible occult connection between all four incidents.

Ray was watching his deputy closely and when Art became cognizant of this scrutiny, he posed the first obvious question that came to mind. "The first question that I would ask is why here? Why Quinsett?"

"It's impossible to provide an answer to that question without knowing what the motivation behind these actions might be. Art you've lived here all your life, am I right?"

"Pretty much. The only time that I've ever spent an extended time away was the year at police academy up in the big city."

"Okay, so you know the town and a lot of the people here. Have you ever had any indication that someone might be drawn to this sort of thing, the occult I mean? No matter how trivial, any hint might be important."

Silver raised a hand to his face, absently stroking his jaw. After a moment he shrugged. "No, not really. The people here are just ordinary folks. Even the kind of devilry that goes on in other small towns...like teens drinking in the graveyard and maybe knocking over a head stone or two...just never happens here."

"Knox Severn included?"

"Severn likes to play badass, but this is way out of his league, especially if we're talking multiple homicides. Frankly, he's just too dull."

Saddler sighed and ran his finger through his hair, his typical gesture of exasperation. "Alma Riesen evidently had a propensity for the occult."

"True, but Alma and her family just recently relocated in from the city."

Something else occurred to Saddler then and he mentioned the one abstract link that had been troubling him since he had first unearthed it. "The grave that Alma was apparently vandalizing belonged to a woman named Jeniah Lightcrusher; what do you know about her?"

Silver quickly shifted his gaze to his hands, but before he did, Ray detected a flicker of intense discomfort in this pale blue eyes and understood that there would be an element of evasion in whatever his deputy was about to relate. "I do know who she is...or was supposed to be. I'd imagine that every one who was born here does. Every town has its urban legend and Jeniah Lightcrusher comes as close to one as this town has. She was supposed to be a witch, I guess. Several children disappeared around the time she came to live here and the townspeople were certain that she was to blame...at least that's what the tales claim. All and all, a lot of it is pretty childish and silly stuff that makes for a good campfire story."

"The old newspapers say she died in a fire, but really nothing much else. There was surprisingly no mention of relatives or even where this blaze occurred."

"Actually, that is one thing I do know. The woman lived not twenty minutes from your house, right up near the point were Ringgold peters out into trees."

Terror, cold and incisive pricked his heart then and he felt certain that he would start to tremble like frightened child and for the second time, he recalled the presentiment of dread that had assailed him on the day they had first come to see the house. Somehow, he managed to keep his expression impassive. Distantly, he heard himself remark, "The fire happened fifty years ago come August 1st."

Silver only nodded in confirmation, but remained silent, squirming under this particular line of inquiry. He knew that tale of that long-ago night as well as he knew the lines of his palm, but nothing could induce him to divulge it to this stranger. The murder of Jeniah Lightcrusher was deeply inculcated into the town's psyche as a secret that could not be revealed. Common sense dictated that there was no connection between what had transpired a half-century ago and what was presently afflicting Quinsett. He wasn't sure that he accepted Saddler's occult conspiracy notion but he was unequivocally certain that the dead woman had no part in it. Very much as Albert Huxley had concluded, Silver saw very little to gain by dredging up the distant past, other than to besmirch the family names of a lot of fundamentally good people. He watched the Sheriff, who seemed strangely preoccupied by the revelation that this woman had once lived on the same stretch of road where he now resided.

For his part, Ray's intense disquiet was growing by leaps and bounds. Had his wife's erratic behavior first manifested itself the day she returned from her disastrous drive up Ringgold Lane? The implications of this revelation begged to be pondered, but he adamantly refused to give them audience. Even in their formative stages, these notions invited contemplation of things that no rational, lucid person would ever wish to consider. He fled the outskirts of these dark speculations, instead plunging back into the world of practicality and light. "Look Art, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm actually entertaining the idea that some supernatural entity is loose in Quinsett. What I am proposing is that there may be a group of occult practitioners here. You've lived here all your life and to you, the theory doesn't seem especially plausible, but there's been a supernatural aspect to everything that's happened here during the last three days. I won't pretend to be any kind of authority on the occult or black magic, but I do know that its devotees take the practice very seriously. Andy Carlson's journal is bursting with accounts of this type of individual."

"Yes, but Carlson was crazy, wasn't he?" Silver interjected.

"Irrefutably, as were the people he interviewed. The fact that they were deranged and unshakable in their conviction that black magic is a legitimate practice makes them more menacing, not less."

"So you would like to approach this case from the perspective that we're dealing with some kind of cultists?" Silver asked; his skepticism evident.

Saddler simply nodded. "For the time being." He pointed at his diagram. "Remove the supernatural element from the mix and you're left with four seemingly unrelated, but deeply disturbing incidents."

"So what do we do, I mean the deputies?"

"Remain vigilant for anything unusual...a mutilated animal, another desecration at the Cemetery and even a simple case of graffiti. Also, trying to locate Knox Severn is a top priority. He may have not been Alma's assailant, but there is a better then even chance that he saw who was. There are two possible reasons that he's running; the most obvious one is that he is the perpetrator, but we would be remiss if we dismissed the idea that he's running from whoever _he saw_ that night."

Silver nodded, duly impressed by Saddler's analytical approach to police work.

"Let's go over the duty roster for the next week of so. I'll have you look after the night shift for the rest of the week, while I'll cover days. Next week, we'll alternate the pattern so forth." Ray considered the list of names, trying to produce the strongest pairings based on his initial impression of the men as well as Albert's notes in their personnel records. He stopped at the name on the bottom of the list: Maria Cordova. She had been assigned to weekend coverage and fill in duty as required. He had not had the occasion to meet his only female deputy and found it unusual that Albert had neglected to mention her when they had reviewed the roster.

"What's the story with Maria Cordova?" he asked casually.

Silver shrugged dismissively. "The town selectmen decided that they should throw alms to the Affirmative Action program, mostly with the objective of scoring a slice of the state and federal funding pie. Maria was that token, I guess, but Albert found the idea of hiring a woman abhorrent, but Uncle Ira and the others were not to be put off. Albert was a great guy and good Sheriff, but he was an old fashion chauvinist; women and police work were mutually exclusive commodities in his view. He must have interviewed a hundred women, deliberately stringing the process out as long as he could. Eventually, the selectman gave him an ultimatum and a deadline, so he hired Maria. Then he banished her to weekend duty, where he would rarely have to see her."

Saddler shook his head in disbelief. This was a side of the former Sheriff's personality that Ray never would have suspected. Albert had impressed him as the obliging sort and spiteful petulance did not sit well with that impression.

"What are your impressions of her?"

Silver offered Ray a bemused smile and he understood that Art's opinion of women and police work may not have been so radically different from Huxley's. "I guess the first thing that strikes you about Maria is that she's a brainiac."

Ray shook his head, and Silver laughed. "She's a Law grad and intends to eventually take her bar exam. She's extremely intelligent, but also very tough. I don't doubt that she's galvanized enough for the job... maybe even a tad too aggressive. I think that may have also put Albert off. He preferred woman to be more demure, I guess. Maria is anything but; I've watched her put drunks sixty pounds heavier than her on the deck in the blink of any eye; tossed them like they were sacks of feathers. I suppose that she's gotten a raw deal here."

The image of Orlin Feldman gibbering apologetically rose to mind, and Saddler nodded. "Yes, she has, but that is about to be rectified. Starting tomorrow, Maria Cordova will become part of the full-time duty roster and I fully expect that she will be afforded the same respect and courtesy that the other deputies give each other."

Silver nodded solemnly, discerning that Saddler would have little patience for any demeaning treatment of Quinsett's only female officer. Ray pushed the duty roster to one corner of his desk. "I'll speak to each of the men individually and let them know about the new appointments and what it means to operational procedures. Let's take a few minutes to review the physical evidence that we've accrued; maybe another look will stir some new ideas."

Unlocking the desk drawer where he had temporarily stored the evidence, Saddler began to remove the individual times and reports, arranging them in sequence on his desk. When he withdrew the bag that contained Alma Riesen's imitation Athames, he stopped abruptly, his eyes widening in surprise. Seeing his boss' dismay, Art bent forward. Ray shifted his gaze from the daggers to his deputy, his expression conveying both incredulity and burgeoning anger. "Art, there are only four daggers here and there should be five...which there were when I placed them in the bag."

Silver was shaking his head in negation, grasping Saddler's implication. "There's got to be some logical explanation. There's no way that anyone here would remove anything from that desk. Besides, you have the only two keys."

Saddler nodded tightly and rose, heading for the public area. Tim Holland was laboring over a report at his workstation, while Mariam organized files near the bank of lateral cabinets. Ever perceptive, she gleaned that something was wrong just through the Sheriff's purposeful stride and pinched expression. For his part Ray forced himself to suppress his anger, despite the seriousness of missing evidence. Flinging allegations, or even hinting at them, would be incredibly imprudent. It was best that knowledge of the disappearance of the Athame be confined to himself and Art until he gained a clearer understanding of what might have happened. With the incisive Mariam, he would have to be especially circumspect. "Mariam, have you noticed anyone going into or coming out of my office while I wasn't there?"

Her brow furrowed slightly, but she gave no other indication that she found this question in any way unusual. "Not today, of course."

Saddler sensed that she was being deliberately coy and fought to quell his impatience. "Yesterday, then?"

"Well, the only person that I can remember stepping into your office was your wife. She came in about ten minutes before you returned from lunch, yesterday. I believe that you must have left your door open and she decided to wait for you there."

Silver and Saddler exchanged glances, but said nothing. Mariam's customarily sly expression became ingenuous. "Should I not have allowed her in, Sheriff?"

"No, no, what you've done is fine. I've simply misplaced something and wondered if someone might have accidentally removed it while dropping something off," he replied, deciding that an aspect of the truth might dissuade further questions. He quickly wheeled around and headed back to his office with Silver in tow. If Art shared Ray's own questions about what they had just learned, he did not give them voice, for which Saddler was genuinely grateful. The thought that his wife had furtively removed one of the daggers from his drawer was simply too outrageous to contemplate...though a tiny voice admonished that he was being craven and irresponsible in his refusal to give it consideration.

He dropped himself heavily into his chair and ran his fingers through his hair, not surprised when they came away slick with sweat. The course of events was moving with a momentum and direction that chilled his heart and threatened to undo his resolve. "Go home Art. Get some rest and take the night shift. I'll be in to talk to the boys about your new assignment."

Silver stood and moved to the door, where he paused, his face turned slightly away from his boss. "Sheriff, if the events of the last three nights are the acts of a bunch of occult crazies, they're pretty clever, aren't they?"

Ray pondered this for a moment, weighing the dearth of answers against the abundance of questions. "Yes they are," He concluded solemnly, "Very clever and all the more dangerous because of it. Let's keep the missing dagger between you and I Art."

Silver nodded and was gone, leaving Saddler alone with a host of misgivings and implications clamoring behind the gates of his subconscious like rabid dogs. He sat silently for five minutes and then followed Silver out into the parking lot. The temperature was coming up on ninety degrees and the asphalt felt both soft and hot beneath his feet.

As he drove home, Ray decided that he would not confront Ronnie over the missing dagger, but he would casually raise the subject of Hogan's market. His tired mind implored him to dismiss her encounter with Cameron Crane as coincidental...to simply sweep if from his thoughts like troublesome dust. As desperately as he wanted to do this, his cop's instinct warned him that this would be a grave error.

Another realization asserted itself upon the beleaguered Sheriff as he turned into his driveway and saw that the garage door was open and his wife's Spyder gone...he would have to make a trip up Ringgold Lane in the very near future to find the place where the mysterious Jeniah Lightcrusher had met her fiery end.

Ray crossed the side yard and trudged heavily up the steps, grateful for the merciful coolness that greeted him as he entered the kitchen. Wendy came to greet him as did Mrs. Quilling and he greeted both with a weary smile.

"Where's you're mother, hon?" he inquired, trying to maintain a casual tone. Wendy's precocious gaze bore into him, informing him that she knew that any questions regarding Ronnie were anything but casual.

' _God this kid would make a great interrogator,'_ he thought, bemused by this wonderful little soul that he and his wife had created.

After a prolonged silence, Wendy reported, "Mommy was up early, but spent hours in her office. A bit after nine, she came out and left without really saying goodbye."

Puzzled, Ray shifted his gaze to Mrs. Quilling, who shrugged helplessly and confirmed his daughter's account of events. "Mrs. Saddler didn't say where she was going or when she could be expected back."

Ray deliberately avoided his daughter's eyes, knowing that she would be wise to his perfunctory dismissal of this wife's increasingly eccentric behavior. Both he and his daughter knew that Ronnie was a meticulously organized woman who never went anywhere without letting those around her know how she could be reached or when she could be expected back. "She's a busy woman and adjusting to this new routine might have her a bit frazzled."

Without awaiting a reply, he turned and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. With a plethora of questions doggedly pursuing his every thought, Saddler doubted that he would be able to sleep, but within minutes of hitting the pillow, he passed into a dreamless slumber.

Chapter Seventeen

1

By eleven thirty, the ambient temperature has crested the 90 degree mark, while the fledging Humidex made it feel closer to 96. Albert Huxley sat in a lawn chair, staring out over the small stream and indolently mopping sweat from his brow with a faded bandana. His fishing rod stood forgotten next to his RV, along with his tackle kit. There was little point in casting out a line in the mid-day heat as the fish were more preoccupied with the task of finding some relief from maddening heat. Huxley inclined his gaze towards the sky, which was a monochrome blue from horizon to horizon, and shook his head in consternation. Like the majority of people in Quinsett, Albert had lived here his entire life and he could not recall this particular shade of blue ever coloring the heavens above his small town. For reasons that he could not fully comprehend, he found its appearance fundamentally _wrong_ and thus abstractly troubling...the presage of something terrible yet to come.

He sighed deeply and resumed his study of the meandering stream. It was no more than twenty feet across at its' widest and was delineated by clusters of trees that pressed to its very edges. It would have been impossible for Huxley to estimate how many hours he had spent here over the span of his life (it might well have shocked him to realize that he had passed a total of nearly four years on the banks of this small stream less than twenty miles from Quinsett) but he did know that some of his best memories were given birth in this tiny clearing. How many times had Cora and he made love next to the water with a trillion stars whirling in the night sky above them? Again, he could not speculate with any degree of accuracy, but he knew that there had been many such tender couplings in his younger years. There was a sepia tone to those memories now like old photographs from decades old newspapers, but if those images had lost their luster, they had not lost the power to move him...to instill his heart with that bitter-sweet blend of contentment and melancholy.

In many ways, this remote location with its tranquility and stillness was a microcosm of the life that he had lived. Huxley was perceptive enough to grasp that he was a small man who had found everything necessary to build a life of contentment within the narrow confines of Quinsett and its few surrounding counties. He supposed that there were those who would regard his provincial attitude as small-minded, but Albert Huxley was perfectly satisfied with every aspect of the life that he had led. Now that he was at the tail end of that life – his Cora and his job irretrievably gone – he could not help but wonder if he should finally succumb to the allure of the big world beyond Quinsett...to simply climb into his RV and drive until the last of his time had been expended.

The capricious notion caused him to laugh aloud...he could no more leave Quinsett than he could grow wings and soar on the thermals. He had been born here and here he would die...abandonment of his beloved town was not a path to enlightenment and adventure, but the desertion of everything that he held sacred. Still, he regarded the remainder of this life as a vacuum that he must fill lest he become an isolated and embittered old man connected only to the past and insulated against the present.

As he pondered, a small transistor radio brayed endlessly in the background, pumping out an endless stream of pop tunes, interspersed with ludicrous, locally produced commercials. At twelve o'clock, the news came on and Albert was jolted rudely out of his reverie. He turned toward the radio as though it had transmogrified into a beast ripe with alien menace. Listening in rapt horror, Huxley learned of the deadly blaze at the County Hospital and by extension, the bizarre events that had occurred at the Eternal Lights Cemetery two nights prior.

"Good Christ, you old fool, what have you done?" he moaned and dragged his fingers through his thinning hair. Without hesitation or equivocation, Huxley immediately embraced the connection between these two deadly episodes, the death of Andy Carlson and the admonition at the Ingstrom farm. He stood up and began to pace agitatedly about the small clearing, beating a line between his RV and the bank of the stream. Finally, he stopped and cut off the newscaster's voice with a petulant snap.

There was little doubt in his mind that he was guilty of duplicity in the five deaths at County. His concealment of evidence at Toppers had laid the groundwork for what had followed as surely as if he had lit the match himself. Against every instinct he had effaced those names from the wall, knowing full well what they signified. Now, he conceded that he had never subscribed for a moment to the notion that the reporter's death had been a suicide. More utterly astounding still was the realization that Albert embraced every aspect of the old witch's tale without reservation and what had inspired him to conceal evidence had not been the desire to preserve reputations, but simple emasculating fear.

Fear for the very soul of the town that he loved above all other things.

To his dismay, Huxley saw that his deception and refusal to divulge this information to the new Sheriff...an out-of-towner...may just have allowed an old evil to establish a foothold on the very thing he had been trying to protect.

"You silly old Coot, how are ya' ever gonna set this right?" he berated himself. He glanced up at the sky, with its impossible shade of blue. It seemed to mock him from on high as though concurring that he was the most witless thing under God's heaven.

' _Except, this is anything but God's heaven,'_ a malicious voice amended in his mind. _'Quinsett averages 140 inches of rain a year and we haven't seen a drop in nearly two weeks despite the humidity. Try rationalizing that away.'_ Huxley blinked, like the azure sky he could not recall such a span of days without at least a sprinkle of precipitation. In its absence there came the impression of a gathering of massive force...one that was not necessarily benevolent.

"Jeniah, you foul old bitch, can you really be back for another go at bringing this town down?" he demanded of the sky, but the moisture-laden air mocked him with its silence. Conscience and duty compelled him to do what the situation demanded, but some shapeless dread shackled him to inaction. It wasn't just the possible consequences (though they could be dire indeed as he had broken several laws by withholding and tampering with evidence) that rendered him immobile. The same fear that prompted him to conceal evidence in the first place now prohibited the confession of that concealment.

Albert stopped by the door to the RV and allowed his chin to settle to his chest. A cowardly part of his mind insisted that nothing of value could be gained by admitting his crime. There were no witches, only deranged, but very mortal people whose evil could not be resurrected from the grave by a thousand twisted rituals. Beneath the cold, antiseptic light of day, this advice seemed reasonable enough, but Albert had no illusions about the consequences should he choose to heed it.

Initially, Huxley had hoped that the perceptive Saddler would make the connection even though these connections transcended the bounds of conventional logic. The speed and severity of the events of the last two nights suggested that the new Sheriff would not be afforded the luxury of reaching the unconventional conclusions on his own. Should Albert refuse to provide Saddler with the missing pieces to his conundrum, blame for everything that befell Quinsett would settle squarely on his sagging shoulders. This one thought broke his torpor and gave him the impetus to move forward. He began to gather up his possessions, feeling a sense of fatalism envelope him as he did.

When his RV was loaded, he stepped out into the clearing and gazed out over the stream where he had passed so many of the quality moments of his life. Instinct informed him that he would not be back here and he savagely brushed back the melancholy and tears before they completely undid his resolve.

Albert turned quickly, mounted the metal steps and carefully negotiated the lumbering RV out of the clearing, mentally steeling himself for this sacrifice in the epic battle to save the town he loved.

2

"Mrs. Quilling, may I have a word with you please, here in my study."

The housekeeper stopped her cleaning and winced, setting aside the Windex and J cloth. She moved toward the study with no small degree of reluctance, literally willing her feet to take one step and then the next. With no small measure of astonishment, Bernice Quilling abruptly realized that she was afraid of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler; terrified of the woman to a degree that occluded all reason or justification. If left to her own devices, Bernice might just have well snatched up her purse and ran blindly for the door.

Bernice somehow found the wherewithal to heed the summons and entered the darkened study. After her eyes adjusted to the subdued light, she saw the statuesque Veronica standing next to the bay window, gazing out into the sun-splashed front yard. Despite the immense beauty of her profile, Veronica struck Mrs. Quilling as inexplicably inhuman and somehow insubstantial. It was almost as if her employer was intangible...only partially present in this particular physical realm. That was nonsense of course, but she could not disabuse herself of the odd feeling. When she had first been interviewed for this position, Bernice had thought that Veronica was one of the warmest, most sincere people that she had ever met. In the days since she had actually assumed the position, this apparent façade had began to crumble like ancient mortar, revealing a woman who was not only unpleasant, but fraught with obscure menace.

"Mrs. Saddler?" Bernice inquired softly. Veronica turned her gaze toward the older woman and her emerald eyes narrowed speculatively. She moved out from behind her desk and came to stand before the housekeeper, towering seven inches above the other woman. Bernice drew a quivering breath, clearly intimidated by Veronica's enormous presence. Gazing up into that exquisite face and those intense eyes, the notion that Saddler was somehow intangible was quickly dispelled. Veronica inclined her head slightly, her prominent cheekbones lending an imperious aspect to her countenance. "Did you clean in here earlier, Mrs. Quilling?"

"Yes Mrs. Saddler. I was up early and thought I'd do some polishing before you started in on your days' work," she explained in a feeble voice that she despised.

"You also pulled back the blinds and cracked open the window did you not?" Veronica demanded sharply.

"Yes ma'am, I did. The room was stuffy," she trailed off. The roomed had actually reeked as though something vile had been burned here.

Veronica nodded brusquely and waved off the explanation. "Do you have any concept of how difficult, how stressful is it to run a business from five hundred miles away while living in an isolated burg like Quinsett?"

Bernice simply shook her head and Veronica pursed her lips in apparent exasperation. "Of course you wouldn't. This study is not only the place where I conduct my business, it is also my sanctuary; the place where I can come and not have to worry that the resources I need have been moved at the whim of the hired help."

Veronica moved away from Bernice, though she continued to regard her from over her left shoulder. "I'm all too familiar with the way that you hirelings think. After a time, you all begin to think that the household is yours." She stopped abruptly, her gaze intensifying until it seemed that her emerald eyes were blazing in the dim light. "It is not your household, Mrs. Quilling...it is mine."

She strode over to the older woman and gripped her by the left arm. Bernice recoiled with a gasp and now tears did begin to fall down her cheeks. For a brief instant, she felt certain that Veronica would actually strike her. When the younger woman spoke, her voice was rife with menace. "You will do precisely what I tell you, and if you forget your place here, you will be back on the next bus to that widening in the road that you call home. Am I eminently clear?"

Mrs. Quilling nodded briskly, wanting only to be out of the presence of this awful woman. Veronica smiled, evidently satisfied with the reaction she had evoked. "Go back to your work."

Bernice quickly turned to leave, but as she reached the door, Veronica called her back. She turned, doubting that she had the faculties to endure any further degradation. Her employer was now standing behind her desk, casually flipping through the morning mail. "I'll be going out soon and I'm not sure when I'll be back. Also, our little discussion stays between us...my husband has greater concerns than problems with the hirelings."

"Yes, Mrs. Saddler." With this, Bernice Quilling fled into the kitchen, vowing that she would extricate herself from what was fast becoming a living nightmare.

When the housekeeper closed the door, Veronica threw with letters onto the desk with a flip of the wrist. Lamas was approaching and she had little time to waste in the menial pursuits of Ashcott-Saddler's everyday business...tawdry artifacts and trash posing as art were of no consequence compared to the great cleansing she intended to unleash upon the world. Still, Jeniah understood that she would have to maintain Saddler's façade of normalcy, if only for a few days longer. It would not be prudent to bring undo attention to Veronica's accelerating mental decay; though eradication would have been a more concise description of what was happening to her host. Jeniah could simply have effaced all trace of her host if she desired; simply ejected her soul into the purgatorial wastes, but the woman had her uses. She had become a pliable, if not willing participant in Jeniah's preparations for the final ritual of summoning. Today, she would dispatch Veronica to lay the groundwork for the vengeance that she had planned through fifty years of entombment.

3

Cameron Crane sat before his small black and white television set, glumly watching the midday news recount of last night's hospital fire. Like Albert Huxley, Cameron had no reservations about connecting this disaster to the incident at the Topper Hotel and by extension, to Jeniah Lightcrusher. Furthermore, Cameron's malleable sense of the tangible limits of reality allowed him to embrace every aspect of this grandfather's old tale. Like the now-deceased Andy Carlson, Cameron understood that evil came in many forms and wore many guises and man's unwillingness to accept some of those forms only made that particular brand of evil all the more potent.

For some now-unknowable reason, the unfortunate Alma Riesen had been up to some devilry at the site of Jeniah Lightcrusher's abandoned grave. Cameron incorrectly assumed that the disturbance at the site of her old home on Ringgold Lane was connected to the debacle at the graveyard and that the spirit of the Indian had killed the girl at the County hospital. Cameron traversed this progression of events, unencumbered by what could and could not be...quickly reaching a conclusion that Ray Saddler's logic would not allow him to draw.

As he contemplated the ramifications of Jeniah's apparent resurrection, Crane quickly deduced that his knowledge would avail him very little. He was already regarded as the town lunatic and if he began to spread the tale of Lightcrusher's return, he would probably guarantee himself a fast track to the state asylum.

He bent forward and buried his face in his hands, grasping how utterly alone he was. Solitude and isolation had become a cold comfort of sorts over the years, but now it made him feel helpless. If an ancient evil had indeed resurfaced in his town, the task of fighting it would fall to him. How ironic it was that the town whipping boy must also bear the burden of becoming its only hope of salvation.

As was the case with Albert Huxley, the silence of his tiny house mocked his impotence.

A sudden and empathic knocking startled him out of his reverie and caused him to jump to his feet. Through the thin fabric of the curtains, he could see someone standing on his door step. He considered simply ignoring the caller, but the rapping went on and on and it quickly became clear that it would not stop until he answered. Sighing wearily, he trudged across the room and swung the door open.

Stuart Crane brushed by Cameron, nearly pushing his brother to the ground. He whirled upon his startled sibling, who realized that his caller was livid. "What the fuck are you doing, you crazy bastard?"

Cameron closed the door and took a step away from his brother. Stuart's total abandonment of decorum spoke volumes about the extent of his fury. Without allowing time for a reply, Crane plunged forward. "I've put up with your vapid bullshit for years...the embarrassing behavior and the obdurate refusal to even try to become a normal human being. I always suspected that it was pure laziness that made you throw up this ridiculous façade of yours, but now I understand that you may be just plain mad."

"Stuart, what the hell are you talking about?" Cameron demanded.

The younger Crane gripped his brother's olive tee shirt in both fists and threw him heavily against the wall. "I don't give a shit what happens to you, but you _will not_ make a mockery of me and everything I've built. Rambling through graveyards with teenage girls is a perverted side of you that I never would have suspected."

Cameron moved lithely to his feet and stepped away from his visitor. "I had nothing to do with what happened to that girl. I was just a witness..."

"Who just happened to be in a fucking graveyard at midnight? Do you really expect me to believe that?" Crane raged, his voice seething with contempt.

"I was released. I've done nothing wrong. What happened to the girl was pure evil and it's only the beginning. If you'll only calm down and listen... I'll try to explain."

"FUCK YOUR EXPLANATION!" Stuart bellowed. "I don't want to hear a word of nonsense from your lips. You've been a blight on the Crane name for too long, but it never occurred to you that it's Crane cash that has allowed you to maintain this warped little life of yours, but I swear to Christ that if you do anything else to bring derision down on this family, the gravy train will come to a grinding halt and you'll be eating out of a dumpster."

"I really don't give a damn about the family money. You want it all? Then keep it all. It doesn't matter to me," Cameron countered mildly. "This town is in trouble. I suspect that doesn't really matter to you, but I am going to do what I can to protect Quinsett and there isn't really anything you can do about."

"Is that right, big brother?" Stuart replied softly, though his eyes radiated pure hatred. "Just think about this...your behavior is the stuff of public record in this town. I could arrange a competency hearing in forty-eight hours. How hard to you think it would be to demonstrate that you've become a menace to yourself? If you don't relish spending the rest of your life in the company of drooling vegetables, then think twice before raking anymore muck on the family name."

With his threat hanging in the air like an unleashed predator, Stuart whirled about and was gone, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Cameron stared through the door way, long after his brother had gone, knowing that a new and formidable obstacle had been thrown into his path.

4

Vincent Scallari sat behind the wheel of his parked car a block and a half from Cameron's small bungalow. He was parked on the opposite side of the street from the house, a perspective that afforded him an unimpeded view of the front steps. He watched as Stuart Crane mounted the steps and then departed only a few minutes later. He raised a small pair of binoculars to his eyes and focused on the man who had brought him to Quinsett. The dark expression on Crane's face spoke eloquently about the state of the man's thoughts and Scallari correctly intuited that the exchange between the brothers had been acrimonious.

Scallari leaned across the seat as Crane drove by, knowing that it would not do if Stuart were to discover that he was surreptitiously being watched. When a reasonable amount of time had passed, he sat back up. A small part of his mind was puzzled by the almost obsessive way that he had plunged into the task of uncovering what was afoot in this small town. If he was being candid with himself, there were certainly more pressing matters to be attended to back in Seattle...businesses to run, both legal and otherwise.

As much as he realized this, Vincent also discovered that he had become deeply engrossed in this sordid little mystery and he could probably not drag himself away. He reached over and took a long drink of bottled water, grimacing at its tepid and oily texture as it flowed over his tongue. His little dash board thermometer informed him that it was over ninety degrees in the cars interior and that more than anything else, confirmed how completely he had become ensnared in the Stuart's little game. He was a man with a well-honed radar that had allowed him to survive in his murky world and that radar now suggested that something of momentous consequence was unfolding in the hollow of Quinsett. Just what that something was, Scallari could not hazard a guess and though it did not involve him, he was too intrigued to simply walk away.

Whatever was going on, Vincent had little doubt that it revolved around the rather eccentric fellow who lived in the squalid little bungalow on this nowhere street.

The street was essentially deserted...most of its residents either off to work or taking refuge from the oppressive heat indoors. He abruptly sat up, groping for his binoculars."

"Now, what have we here?" he murmured to himself. The woman from Hogan's market strode across the street, looking as incongruous in the shabby neighborhood as a diamond in a bucket of coal. Even from this distance, Vincent could see that she was exceptionally beautiful and elegant, moving with an assurance that such woman seemed to master with casual ease.

She lithely mounted the steps and rapped on the door. After a few moments the screen door opened and she stepped inside, disappearing in a flourish of red tresses and long legs.

Vincent lowered the binoculars and sat pondering the ramifications of what he had just witnessed. It was suddenly imperative that he discover the identity of Cameron Crane's mystery woman. He had spent a few hours at the local diner and two of the watering holes, striking up casual conversation with the duffers who invariably frequently such place. When he would ask about the odd fellow in the combat fatigues...the goods patrons were pretty much universal in their condemnation of Crane as something of a quack. This was definitely not the kind of man who passed his time in the company of polished gems like the one who he had just seen enter his house. That anomaly alone raised alarm bells in Scallari's mind.

Vincent was already in the process of constructing a working theory that the unlikely pair were in the process of running a scam on the affluent brother. From what he had seen of Crane, it was probable that the woman was the mastermind of whatever subterfuge was in the offing. There were a host of questions that needed answering and though Stuart was the logical person to provide the answers, the Italian realized that he would need another source of information...a member of Crane's little circle who would be willing to discreetly dish the dirt.

"Lovely Judith," Scallari whispered and then uttered a throaty laugh. Ranzman's antipathy towards Crane was as apparent as her disdain for Vincent. He was willing to take the calculated gamble that she would answer his questions in confidence.

Satisfied with his course of action, he started the car and headed back to his hotel room. A shower and a change of clothes, and Vincent would be off to see the wolf princess.

5

After Stuart had stormed out of Cameron's house, belching rage like a vapor trail, the older Crane stumbled back to the living room and dropped disconsolately down onto a battered grey sofa. There was little doubt in his mind that the brother could make good on this threat, or did he have any misgivings that Stuart could successfully engineer a rapid a passage into an institution.

' _Why did you let yourself come to this,'_ Cameron demanded of himself with a bemused shake of his head. He sighed and pushed the thought aside, knowing that such contemplation served little purpose. The reasons for his present situation were really irrelevant...only the salient realities mattered and they were grim indeed. Cameron needed to plot a course of action that would yield results quietly and quickly. Judging by the pace at which events had unfolded over the last two nights, he judged that things would escalate and move quickly to a lethal climax. Mordecai had described, in harrowingly vivid detail, the hideous activity that the witch had been engaged in when the party had burst in upon her. Though he had never fully understood her foul purpose, his grandfather knew that she had been in the process of conjuring something otherworldly and malevolent. The group had intervened as she stood on the very brink of success.

They had been a party of resolute men, who stood in the face of evil, but fifty years later Cameron Crane was alone in this attempt to foil the witch's machinations and he simply couldn't see how he had the wherewithal to rise to the task.

There came a second knock at this door, causing Cameron to jump. Initially, he was sure that his brother had returned to continue his disparaging tirade, but the casual tapping was nothing like the pounding that had declared Stuart's arrival.

Rising quickly to his feet, Crane crossed the room and warily opened the door. In his mind, he had already resigned himself to placating Stuart's demand that he do nothing to further denigrate the precious family name. He was totally unprepared for the visitor who now stood on his crumbling stoop. He had only a moment to recognize her as the woman who had intervened at Hogan's market before she gently pushed by him and stepped into the hallway, sweeping the door closed behind her.

Startled, Cameron took a step away from the woman, whose incisive gaze scanned the dingy bungalow, allowing him a moment to absorb the unsettling reality of her presence here. It had been perhaps five years since a person other than his brother had entered his home. He was first impressed by two things; her height and the palpable weight of her beauty. Her red hair fell past her shoulder blades in a mass of loose curls and her green eyes twinkled with keen intelligence and playful mirth. She was dressed in burgundy slacks and a matching blouse of some light summery fabric, though he noticed that she wore no other adornments...no jewelry or bangles that would have lost their luster against such a stunning backdrop.

"Is there something I can help you with?" he stammered, not even sure how to act in response to her unlikely presence or the casual aggression of her sudden entrance.

"Well actually, yes, there is," she replied, favoring Crane with a nuanced smile. "I've come to offer you a chance to thank me."

"I'm sorry, I don't follow?" he murmured, his confusion mounting. He tried to draw his gaze away from her face, but it was futile and he wondered if he was literally being hypnotized by her compelling beauty. She continued to regard him closely, the brilliant smile never leaving her face. He suddenly felt inept and ridiculous. "Thank you?"

"Thank me for preventing that cantankerous old man at the market from tossing you around like a sack of flour for the amusement of his good customers." She paused, her expression becoming rueful, "Unless you actually enjoy being the town whipping boy?"

Cameron could feel his face flush with something akin to shame and he averted his gaze, shocked to discover how the stinging criticism lanced him. She was, after all, an intruder, who had no right to belittle him in his own home. He had every right to be angry, but instead, he dropped his gaze to the frayed rug and said, "No, I don't enjoy being the town's whipping boy, and thank you for intervening."

She extended her right arm. "My name is veronica, but you can call me Ronnie."

Cameron stared blankly at the proffered hand with its long, delicate fingers, for a moment and then shook it, mildly surprised by the strength of her grip. "I'm Cameron Crane."

Ronnie held his hand for a long moment, her eyes searching his face for hint sign of mettle...a hidden strength that she felt certain was concealed beneath layers of cringing reticence. She was not precisely sure what had compelled her to come here but she did have a sense of the nature of her purpose. That feeling of disassociation, of being manipulated no longer troubled her. She now simply responded to the imperatives that were being fed to her. She was here to divine the essence of this ramshackle man...to plumb his depths and assess his substance. Ronnie suspected that the whys and wherefores would make them self clear in time. Taking a step closer to elevate his discomfort, she intoned, "I know, Cameron. I also came because I'm quite frankly curious."

"About?" he heard himself inquired softly.

She brushed by him, her left breast whispering across the bare skin of this right forearm, and strolled into his living room, where she gracefully sat in an old, battered wingback. She made a protracted show of crossing her legs and Cameron could not help but notice how long they were. He drew a shallow, shaky breath. Her proximity was affecting him in ways that he could have sworn he could not be touched. Years of celibacy with no thought of intimacy had purged him of all desire, or so he had believed. In less than five minutes, this exotic creature had disabused him of that notion. A cold, detached part of his mind warned him not to succumb to this powerful allure...admonished him that he could not afford the distraction. On the surface, her demeanor appeared casual and affable, but Crane discerned something graver and darker couched just below the surface...as though her friendly manner was a veil behind which lurked something far less benevolent.

Veronica twisted in her seat and draped one hand over the back of the chair, pulling her firm right breast to its most seductive angle. Her nipples had gone erect, poking prominently through the thin material of her blouse and Cameron could feel his heart start to beat that much faster in response. "Actually, my curiosity has many facets, but two things puzzle me the most, so I'll start with those. Why would a man allow himself to be reduced to a spectacle...a joke really...for small-minded bullies, when that man is a member of the richest family in the state? For that matter, why would he choose to live like a pauper, who is generally regarded as an unstable nuisance by the community?"

Cameron blinked, unsettled by her aggressive, forward manner. Her audacity stunned him to silence and her smile broadened even further. "Cat got your tongue? Maybe you'll prefer this next question; what precisely does a grown man, an eccentric, solitary one at that, get up to with a teenage girl in the local cemetery when the sun goes down?"

Crane's pallid complexion deepened to a scarlet red and he felt the nascent stirrings of rare anger...something that he also would have thought himself incapable of only ten minutes before. "How do you know of this? Why have you come here? If it's simply to be cruel, I really don't think you have the right. Not here in my own house."

The red-head was out of her chair and over to where he stood in the blink of an eye. He retreated involuntarily, but she pursued him until he was pushed up against the wall with her standing so close that her nipples grazed his chest and her warm, sweet breath tickled his face. "I know all of this because my husband is the Sheriff. I do believe that you recently spent some time in his company?"

Crane was left speechless, knowing that whatever predicament he had inadvertently wandered into, this revelation had deepened it immeasurably. For her part, Veronica was struck by a nearly irresistible impulse to ravage the man before her. He was a physically beautiful man and she suddenly wanted to consume him like some forbidden delicacy. From the recesses of the host's mind, Jeniah watched, also transfixed by the spawn of her sworn enemy...offspring she had vowed to destroy. Wanting to dampen in the host's passion, Jeniah compelled her to take a step away. Cameron drew an unsteady breath, grateful that she had retreated. As ludicrous as it would seem, she seemed on the verge of kissing him just then, and he could not predict just where things might have progressed if she had. After a moment, he remarked, "He treated me very well...very fairly, which is more than I might have expected from anyone else here in town."

"Indeed, my husband is a fair and equitable man," she intoned and Crane thought that he detected an unaccountable hint of derision there. "I've not come here to be cruel or mean, only to offer you my friendship and all I ask in return is that you answer those simple questions."

"I had nothing to do with what happened to that girl. When I found her, whatever had happened was over. I tried to help...was trying to help her when they found us," he told her truthfully, not sure how to interpret her offer of friendship. The alarm bells in his mind were braying louder now.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "So you were really a victim of circumstances then? Not to mention, the town prejudice that as much could be expected from the town crazy."

Cameron nodded. "Something like that."

"Then you really didn't see what happened to the girl?" Veronica persisted.

"No. As I've said, her injuries were sustained before I reached her," Cameron reiterated.

She considered this for a moment, her green eyes blazing with an emotion that he could not quite decipher. Those eyes locked on his again and that beguiling smile returned as she placed a hand on his shoulder. "I never believed that you harmed the girl, but why do you allow yourself be reduced to the town joke?"

Cameron sighed. Had he not grappled with the same question for nearly a decade, since the first time the degradation had begun? And despite all of the contemplation, had he not suffered the abuse as though it was somehow warranted? Even now, with this incredible woman boring down upon him with her immense presence, why did he feel obligated to answer her every question, no matter how personal or uncomfortable? "I really don't know and that is the most honest answer that I can give you. Maybe it comes down to me being as crazy as they think that I am."

Ronnie's expression darkened and when she spoke, Crane discerned genuine vexation in her voice. "There is nothing wrong with you Cameron...not a single thing and we both know it, so don't be coy."

She made this pronouncement with the certitude of someone who had known him intimately his entire life. The surrealism of this encounter made Crane wonder if he was dreaming this whole episode. If so, it was the most lucid dream that he ever experienced. She was tenderly stroking his shoulder now, her touch radiating warmth that suffused his entire body. She inclined her head towards the door. "The man who was here before me, who was he?"

"My brother, Stuart. He runs the family business," Crane divulged and noticed that her eyes seemed to blaze at the mention of the name and a cold shiver traversed the length of his spine.

When she spoke, it was in a conspiratorial whisper. "He seemed very angry. He's not a particularly nice man, is her?"

"Like men who equate money with power he is driven and yes he was upset."

"Why?" she demanded simply.

"He feels that I'm a disgrace to the family name and image," Cameron allowed, not wanting to divulge the specifics of their exchange. In fact, it seemed critically important to hide the details from his caller. He merely nodded. "Stuart equates image with honor and he will not suffer a slight to either. He suffers me, but not willingly."

Veronica inclined her head to the right, the ghost of her previous smile still playing at her full lips. There was something leonine in the movement; almost, but not quite predatory. "I'm going to pull you out of the miasma you've allowed yourself to sink into, Cameron. You can be assured of that. Once you've come to know me better you'll understand that I'm the kind of woman who gets what she wants and makes good on her promises."

Her riveting gaze held him fast. Those beguiling emerald eyes were like an ocean, both warm and inviting, but all the more hazardous for those qualities. In this close proximity, he could perceive the sincerity of her vow and it frightened him badly because he could not divine her motivation.

He shook his head in bewilderment. "Why would you do this? Or even care?"

Her smile faded...her expression intensifying until Crane feared that she would set him ablaze by sheer heat of her regard. When she spoke, her voice carried the feral intonations of a predator who has fixed its quarry in its lethal sights. "I see something in you that I suspect even you don't see...like a piece of art that has been painted over by graffiti, but still discernible to those with the sensibilities to merely look."

Cameron again shook his head in consternation. "What you see here is what I am...this is the full extent of it."

She leaned forward until her lips were only inches from his ear and her full breast pressed against his chest. He could feel the incisive pressure of her erect nipples through the thin fabric of their clothing, further impeding his ability to think, or resist. His flaccid penis sprang achingly to life in response to her flagrant sexuality. Still, she moved closer until her thigh pressed against his erection. She uttered a throaty chuckle, clearly delighted by the intoxicating affect that she was exerting upon him. "What you see is what you've allowed yourself to become and what you've permitted others to make you. I intend to undo all of that and reconstruct you as you were meant to be."

Veronica took his face in both hands, her index fingers and thumbs gently massaging the hollows of his temples. "I think that you understand that I will succeed in molding you, don't you Cameron? Think of yourself as clay. I'm the sculptor who will shape you into the man you were intended to be. All that I ask in return is your friendship...and your discretion."

She glanced down along the length of their bodies to the place where his engorged cock pressed against her firm thigh. "It's pointless to deny that you won't find my friendship gratifying."

He attempted to speak, to tell her that this was crazy, that they were totally incompatible strangers, but the intensity of his lust and the torrid heat of her tantalizing presence reduced these arguments to cinders. Veronica lifted his chin and kissed the skin of his neck, nimbly running her tongue over the stubble. Crane moaned fearing that his knees would betray him and he would simply crumble to the dingy carpet. "I want to devour you, Cameron," she whispered, her voice made husky with passion that he could not credit. "You have no idea how beautiful you are."

It seemed certain that she would do precisely that and he would lack the fortitude to stop her, but then she simply stepped away. He felt his body utter a furious protest at her sudden withdrawal and he struggled to stay upright, his chest rising in heaving gasps. Veronica was watching him closely, the bewitching smile was back on her face, but there were signs the brazen overture was affecting her just as profoundly. Her flawless skin was flushed and her breasts rose and fell rapidly, their feverish dance making Crane dizzy. When she spoke, her voice was tremulous. "Yes, I want to consume you like a rare delicacy...but not now; not just yet." She pointed the tented front of his fatigues. "I want to leave you with that ache, that need...knowing that I'll be back to fill it at a time of my choosing."

Veronica moved toward the door and an addled Crane stumbled after her on rubbery legs. She opened the front door and stood on the front step; luminous in the brilliant mid-day sunshine. She momentarily, dropped her gaze to the weathered concreted step and declared, "You and I have shared an intimate moment before Cameron, though you may not recall."

She glanced up quickly, fixing him with her thought-numbing gaze. He had regained enough of this composure to murmur "I don't know what you mean?"

She mounted the step and leaned into him, while firmly gripping his left wrist. "I delivered a message to you...an admonition in a cave. I'm sure you've not forgotten the harbinger?"

Cameron froze, his face contracting into a mask of incredulity, informing her that he had indeed not forgotten the disembodied voice from that tiny corner of hell. His apoplectic reaction seemed to please her immensely and she turned to go, leaving him to gape at the poetic sway of her full hips and undulating rise and fall of her high buttocks. On the opposite side of the street; she paused and beamed a final dazzling smile, waved enthusiastically and vanished between the two dilapidated houses across from his.

It was several minutes before Crane recovered sufficiently to retreat into the darkened sanctuary of his house. _'Though it isn't a sanctuary anymore, Cameron...not at all. She would come here as she pleased and you're powerless to prevent it.'_

He crossed the small room absently and slumped into a chair. She had called herself a harbinger and that was irrefutably true, though the imminent arrival of just what she would herald, he could not begin to imagine.

Whatever this mysterious woman's incredible arrival might signify or herald...Cameron was astute enough to realize that the gyroscope which set the equilibrium of his life had been irreparably blown to pieces. He was about to sail into uncharted waters for which he was inadequately prepared. Recalling her luminous emerald eyes, he suspected this ocean's waters would be green and fraught with unimaginable perils.

She managed to make it back to her car, barely falling into the Spyder before the first wave of violent tremors struck. Ronnie gripped the leather wheel, closed her eyes, clenched her jaws and waited for the shakes to subside. Both host and interloper had been intensely affected by the encounter with Crane. Jeniah had been forced to disentangle Veronica from Cameron, though not without tremendous effort. The host's unexpected lust had been white hot in the moments before she had been pulled away. Even now, Jeniah could feel intense heat pulsing in Veronica's loins. For her part, the witch had been staggered by the mettle that lay hidden beneath the man's ramshackle exterior...an integrity of character of which even he was not aware. He was her most formidable opponent, despite his apparent timidity and tenuous grip on reason.

In the deep chambers of her mind a frantic dialogue went on between the witch and the creature that Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was quickly becoming.

"He's dangerous!" Jeniah observed.

"But beautiful, so very beautiful," Veronica countered hotly.

"You desire him as a play thing then?"

"Oh yes, please," the host implored in a voice fraught with smoldering lust.

Jeniah contemplated this for a moment. Even she had to concede that there was a bewitching beauty about the anomalous man who was the seed of her sworn enemy. Despite the threat that he might pose, Jeniah quickly decided that she would allow the host to have her toy. Her union with Crane would only hasten her descent into moral turpitude and obsequious pliability. Furthermore, Veronica's pursuit would distract Cameron and allow the witch sufficient time to complete her preparations for Lamas. An avid student of the dark arts, Jeniah knew that moral dissolution was an invaluable weapon and this torrid encounter was testimony to the nearly irresistible power of the host's sexuality. Unleashed, she would consume Cameron in the flames of dark passion, leaving Jeniah with a clear and unencumbered path to her ascension.

"Very well, you will have him to do with as you will. The blood debt, I will collect from the other Crane and this one can be there to witness our triumph."

The host nodded gleefully, her eyes glazed with anticipation. She did not fully comprehend the event that would signify the interloper's triumph, or the extreme sacrifice that she would make to insure its success, but for the moment this ignorance seemed distant and unimportant.

"Be discreet, Veronica," the witch cautioned. "There is much to be done and scrutiny will not do. Now, there is the matter of the familiar. He must be set to the task of collecting the first blood debt. You must give him this."

Veronica's gaze was drawn to her open right hand, where a pewter disc had materialized out of thin air and now lay nestled in her palm. She exhaled sharply, delighted by its immense beauty and implicit power.

"This is the pentagram that I have designed especially for the final ritual. It will serve as my calling card...a declaration that I have returned to extract my vengeance and to complete my work," Jeniah explained. "Give this to him. I feel your need, child. This one is _our_ familiar and you may use him as you will."

Ronnie merely nodded her understanding as a predator's grin spread across her lovely face. She put the car into gear and pulled away in a squeal of tires, eager to do the witch's bidding.

Chapter Eighteen

1

The moment that Vincent Scallari stepped over the threshold and into the offices of the pretentiously named Pacific Northwest Realty company, he gleaned that he had entered the den of a tyrant. There was pinched, tense expression etched on every face that greeted him as though the employees were being gradually worn down beneath a daily avalanche of fear and intimidation. One the few occasions that he and Judith Ranzman had crossed paths, Vincent had been left with the impression of a person tap dancing on beakers of Nitroglycerin. The woman was so volatile and acrimonious that he wondered how she had managed to build a successful business concern.

He approached the receptionist's desk and placed his hands on the imitation alabaster desktop. "I'd like to see Ms. Ranzman if I may."

"May I ask whose calling?"

"Vincent Scallari. Judith and I are old friends," he added, amused by the notion that he and wolf princess could ever be on anything approaching friendly terms. The receptionist nodded dutifully and buzzed her employer. There was a moment of protracted silence in response to the announcement of his presence and Vincent could clearly picture the bitch gnashing her teeth and clenching her fists. At last, a terse reply and then he was being led into Judith's lair.

She was seated behind a large antique desk and without glancing up at her visitor, she instructed, "Hold my calls for the next thirty minutes. Buzz me through when the time is up."

Judith did nothing to acknowledge her visitor's presence. As he watched her, Vincent noted the palpable tension that seemed to radiate from the woman like heat and understood that she was furious. Abruptly, she raised her head, tore off her glasses and threw them to one side. Her dark eyes were ablaze with ebony fire and he saw that his first impression had been correct...she was enraged by his intrusive presence. She stood quickly, her shapely rump propelling her chair across the room where it struck the wall with a dull thud. "How dare you come here? This is my place of business and you have no right to be here."

He raised his hands, palms outward in a gesture of placation. "I'm only here to help, Judith."

"It's Ms. Ranzman, you fucking ignorant dago and the last thing I need is help from a piece of sewer slime like you," She rasped, her tan skin going a high, hectic red. Somehow her fury served to augment her beauty as though rage was her natural state. She threw her head back, tossing her black mane, and came to stand in front of Scallari. "Stuart might view you as a useful resource, but I see you as nothing but a low-life scumbag."

Scallari continued to beam his placid grin, but wondered what it might feel like to bury a brass-knuckled fist in her arrogant face. Something told him that Judith Ranzman might just enjoy such a confrontation and might even come out the winner in that type of violent conflict. "Judith" he began, pointedly using her first name. "I've never taken you for a stupid woman...a miserable, irascible bitch to be sure, but never a fool. As you say, I may well be an ignorant dago, but I may be a step further down the road to seeing that your little group may have a serious problem on its hands. Determining just how serious is contingent on how cooperative you choose to be."

She seemed about to resume her tirade, but then a thoughtful expression slipped across her face and she leaned back against her desk, her taupe colored skirt pulling up to expose a generous length of tanned, shapely thigh. "Before you even tell me what you have to say, I want to know why you've come to me. Why not go to your dear friend, Stuart with your queries?"

"Fair question, but Stuart is an associate, not a friend. I need to know something about his estranged brother...a subject that Stuart is not inclined to discuss."

"Cameron, that pathetic bastard? Why would he possibly be of any interest to you, or the group for that matter?" Judith interjected, finding the notion that anything about Crane's half-wit brother was of value absolutely preposterous.

"Patience, I'll get to Cameron in a moment. The reason that I came to you rather than anyone else in the group is that I believe you will be discreet and keep our discussion strictly between us. Something tells me that you value discretion above all else."

"Don't presume to know me, you drone," Ranzman spat venomously. The two lapsed into a tense silence for a moment before she waved for Scallari to proceed. "Okay, just ask you questions and anything that we discuss will stay between us."

"Very good. Let's start with Cameron...what's wrong him and why does he live the way he does?"

Judith pursed her lips and shrugged in disgust. "He went off to Viet Nam and came back the way he is. By rights, Cameron should have assumed direction of the family empire and not that officious little troll, but he was and is clearly deranged and just lost his inheritance. I suppose that explains why he lives the way he does."

Scallari considered this for a moment and then observed, "Living so wretchedly right in the shadow of the family wealth has to rankle the man?"

"That's assuming that he is lucid enough to understand how unfairly he's been treated. I doubt that he is. Where are you going with this?"

"Indulge me for just a moment longer and I'll lay it out for you," Vincent requested and though Judith frowned impatiently, she motioned for him to continue. "Being who you are, I would imagine that you know just about anyone of consequence in town?"

"Pretty much, yes," Ranzman concurred. "If they live here, my company has helped buy or sell their house."

"I'd like to know about a particular woman...she's extraordinarily beautiful, tall and elegant. She has red hair and drips of money."

"Has to be Veronica Ashcott-Saddler," Judith interrupted, a furrowed brow signifying her fascination with the direction this topic was taking. "I personally handled her house purchase on Ringgold lane."

"Who exactly is she?"

"Well, to begin with, she's the new town Sheriff's wife. She's also an art gallery owner, several galleries actually and the daughter of one of California's richest industrialists," Judith disclosed. "She's a heavyweight."

Vincent could not conceal his shock. Ranzman saw the perceptible impact that her revelation had upon her visitor and demanded, "Why would she be of interest to you?"

"Your rich socialite has been spending her time in the company of the town's shiftless itinerant. Earlier this morning, she visited Crane in his squalid little shack," Scallari reported distantly, still trying to internalize Judith's information. In all probability, his theory of some manner of blackmail plot had been effectively blown out of the water. It is likely that this Ashcott woman came from more money than the entire group combined.

"Now that's priceless," Ranzman quipped through derisive laughter. "This woman would no more associate with Cameron Crane than I would, well...with you."

"You're an infinitely charming woman, Judith," Scallari retorted. Had he simply stumbled upon an odd dalliance that had nothing to do with the threat to the group? His survivor's instinct warned him that this was not the case. It was clear that he would have to risk Stuart's ire and raise the subject of this older brother.

Judith pushed off of the desk and folded her arms beneath her substantial bosom, regarding Vincent with a speculative expression that was disconcerting in its intensity. "Did you actually believe that what happened at that Flea bag hotel has anything to do with Ashcott-Saddler? I mean surely you're not that obtuse."

Scallari deliberately elected to ignore her question. "I'm an inquisitive fellow by nature. Things that sit wrong with me just gnaw away until I can produce a reasonable explanation for them. Just like you; just what is it that makes you a cold, belligerent, high-boxed bitch?"

Ranzman's expression became apoplectic with rage. For an instant, it appeared that she would launch herself a Scallari. Instead, she maintained a fragile grip on her composure. Pointing at the door, she snarled, "Get out. GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!"

Vincent complied, though he stopped by the door long enough to unleash one last parting arrow. "You know, once I've dealt with Stuart's problem, maybe I'll find out just exactly what it is you're hiding. Something tells me it'll be one fuck of a secret."

Then he was gone, leaving a seething Ranzman alone like an infuriated beast in a cage. Growling like panther, she suddenly whirled about and swept everything from her desk. Papers, pens and desk accessories sailed across the room in a dervish. She managed to make it to her chair and tumble in just as the first tears started to fall. She loathed herself for this perceived display of weakness. She also loathed Vincent Scallari and his greasy manner, but more than anything else, she despised the officious little prick that had brought him here.

"You'll pay, you little fucker. Oh, I promise that you'll pay in spades." With a hundred dark images of revenge floating in her mind, she bent to the task of cleaning up her mess.

As Scallari made his way back to his sedan, he berated himself for goading Ranzman too far. He could not allow personal animosity to occlude his judgment. Setting her off would only complicate matters.

He was about to open the door to his car, when he felt an incisive chill run down his spine, despite the intense mid-day heat. The flesh on his arms rose in great hackles and Vincent Scallari realized that he had been suffused by a deep and primordial dread. He spun about as though expecting to be struck or assaulted.

What he found was somehow far worse than a mere physical attack. He slumped back against the car, gripping the handle just to remain upright. An Alfa Romeo Spyder was parked across the street, the leather top pulled back. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler watched him, her eyes flat and her expression inscrutable. They remained locked this way for several moments, like predator and prey, and then she started her car and slowly pulled away. Her eyes never left his face until she had driven past his car.

"You and I will meet again, Vincent. Very soon now, we will have our moment," The voice echoed in his head, full of unmistakable menace.

In that moment, Vincent Scallari became aware of two inconvertible truths...Stuart and his little group were under threat from something far more nefarious than simple blackmail and for the first time in his life, he was utterly terrified.

2

While Vincent Scallari was engaged in his acrimonious meeting with Judith Ranzman and the entity that had once been Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was assessing her sworn enemy, the Quinsett Sheriff pulled up to the front of the Riesen home. He sat in the air-conditioned cool of his cruiser, surveying the well-maintained, upscale house that recent events had turned into a repository of grief and misery, preparing himself for the interview ahead.

Years of working LA homicide had not succeeded in desensitizing Saddler to the pain and misery of those who had lost loved ones to senseless violence. Under normal circumstances, he never would have thought of intruding on a family so soon after they had been beset by tragedy.

These, however, were anything but normal circumstances.

Something was wrong in Quinsett...Saddler was certain of that, and that certainty grew more pronounced with every passing hour. Like the heat and humidity that had enveloped the town like a shroud, events seemed to be building towards some malign climax...a disaster that he was duty-bound to avert.

Ray exited his vehicle and moved briskly up the walk, wincing at the rapid embrace of hot, moist air. He rang the ornate bell and stood back. After a long moment, Philip Riesen answered the door, appearing ashen-faced and haggard. They regarded each other in steeped silence for several moments and Ray realized that the man was clamped in a vice of shock and misery.

"I've just come from making arrangements for my daughter's burial," Philip Riesen declared. His voice quavered on the edge of tears and Ray wondered (not for the first time over the years) how he would cope with the grim reality of Wendy's death. "I'm sorry Mr. Riesen, but I really have to impose upon you for an immense favor."

Philip regarded the other man for a moment, his lips working silently. "I suppose that it's important?"

"I really believe that it is, Mr. Riesen?" Saddler replied earnestly. Alma's father drew a tremulous breath and stepped back, gesturing for the Sheriff to step inside. The houses interior was dark and it took Saddler a moment to adjust to the subdued gloom. Evidently, the blinds had all been drawn against the hectic glare of brilliant sunshine which seemed an utterly inappropriate backdrop for mourning.

"My wife is sleeping," Riesen explained as he led Saddler into what appeared to be a sitting parlor and gestured him into a wingback. "Actually, the Doctor's administered a sedative to calm her down. I really don't know how she's going to deal with this." He dropped his face into his hands, an anguished groan escaping his fingers. "This is an awful business!"

He lapsed into silence and the two men sat there for a prolonged moment. Saddler waiting patiently while the other man recovered sufficiently to continue. Finally, Philip Riesen dropped his hands and sighed. "On the day that my only daughter's been killed, how can I help _you_ , Sheriff?"

"I want to start by assuring you that my foremost priority right now is to find the person who hurt your daughter. You have my personal guarantee that I will not give up that search until I do. I understand that this may not be great comfort, but the person who did this will be brought to justice."

Riesen dropped his eyes to the Oriental rug. "It is a comfort and I thank you. The fire at the Hospital, is there any word on how it may have happened?"

"Actually, I spoke briefly with Chief Klyman just before coming over here and they have yet to establish what may have caused the blaze. You deserve the truth, Mr. Riesen and so I'll give it to you; the fire at County Hospital was extremely unusual and it may be some time before the inspector's are able to establish a definitive cause. In confidence, I will tell you that the Fire Chief is going to request that state inspectors be brought in to examine the location."

Philip's reaction to this was a deep inhalation, but nothing more. To Saddler, the other man looked thoroughly washed out and defeated. "Go ahead, Sheriff. I'll help if I can."

"In order to find out who was responsible for what happened to your daughter, it's imperative that I get a sense of what she might have been doing in the Cemetery the other night. What I'm really asking is permission to see her room. Again, maybe there is some further insight that I might have missed first time around. I know what an imposition this must be, but it would be helpful if you could tell me about Alma."

Riesen contemplated this for a long moment and then rose shakily to his feet, beckoning Saddler to follow. As the pair mounted the stairs to the second floor, the father attempted to paint a verbal portrait of the daughter that he had lost. "Alma was always a fey girl...capricious I guess some would say. It was like she was floating aimlessly through life without any sense of direction. When she did seem to seize on something of interest, it was always something bizarre; Wicca, the occult, the tarot and divination and finally, ritual magic.

He paused on the top riser and glanced back down at the Sheriff. Even in the deep gloom of the upper hall, the man's pain and confusion were eminently clear. "It was almost as though she could find nothing of value in everyday life and so she sought out validation or purpose in the macabre. Sarah and I regarded these excursions into the supernatural with no small amount of concern, but never did we imagine that they might lead to anything like this."

"So would it be accurate to characterize her present fixation with the occult as a passing phase?" Saddler asked.

Riesen considered this for a moment. "Passing yes, but it's important to understand that when Alma embraced something it was with a single-mindedness that was rather unsettling. She would not be dissuaded, nor would she be deflected to something healthier. That just wasn't the way she was built."

Ray nodded and the two men continued down the hall, Philip paused before Alma's door with his right hand on the handle. Without looking at Saddler, he asked, "Do you think that there's a realistic possibility of finding who did this to our daughter?"

"I do," Saddler judged that a succinct declaration of confidence was the best response.

Riesen nodded, opened the door and stepped back. "I really don't think that I can go in there right now, maybe not for a long while. Take whatever time you need. I'll wait for you downstairs."

Saddler nodded and entered the room, standing just beyond the threshold as Riesen closed the door behind him. At first glance, the girl's room resembled that of any girl of her age and station. Large and bright, it was decorated with splashes of color and oversized furniture that spoke eloquently of the material comfort that its occupant enjoyed. Only when Ray began to stroll around the room, stopping to examine poster and pictures, or pick up items and books, did he begin to gain a sense of the strange quarters where Alma's interests had been drawn.

The walls were adorned with paintings and posters of dark goddesses; Lilith, Hecate and Kali. A collection of pewter figurines were arrayed on a night stand next to the girl's bed. He bent down to examine these and discovered that they were all part of a 'Demons of the Dark Ages' series that the girl had ardently collected. Each tiny face was twisted in a feral expression of menace that Saddler found appalling and repugnant. On a small book shelf, he found books by Crowley, Blatavatski, Gardner and Summers. Thumbing through some of these, he came to realize that they were treatises on both magic and witchcraft. There were other books on palmistry, the tarot and rune magic. Pondering this extensive collection of Arcana, Saddler wondered if Alma's parents really had any notion of just how deeply the girl had delved into the macabre. The volume of material alone suggested that the girl's interest was anything but a harmless and passing fixation. As Andy Carlson had illustrated before her, Alma was skirting a dark territory that held a strange allure that was every bit as deadly as a junkie's needle.

Resuming his search, Ray uncovered an ornate wooden chest that was efficiently divided into six compartments. Inside, he discovered a collection of labeled jars that he deduced were ingredients; powders and other tinctures that the girl had attempted to use in the disastrous ritual over Lightcrusher's grave. Some of these items were obscure and some were familiar, but Saddler could not help but wonder how she had managed to accrue this material.

In another case, he found a dozen plastic athames similar to the ones that had been used at the Cemetery; something that he suspected was magician's wand and a smoked glass orb. Saddler knew enough to realize that these were the tools of ritual magic and witchcraft, but he could still not accept that Alma Riesen was anything more than an obsessed kid who had somehow become entangled in a very deadly subculture.

He continued to rummage through drawers and cupboards until he came upon a leather bound book that had been carefully hidden under a small throw carpet at the back of Alma's closet. A title had been embossed on the cover of the book in gold script: MY BOOK OF SHADOWS.

The book was held shut by a twist over string that Ray now slipped over the cover. He carried the book, which he suspected was some sort of journal, over to Alma's small bed, where he sat down, flipped open the cover and began to read. There were over two hundred and fifty pages of entries in the book. He read some of these entries at random and as he did, a clearer image of Alma Riesen began to resolve itself in this mind. What Philip Riesen had dismissed as fixated dalliance was in truth, a carefully plotted course into the world of ritual magic. In two separate entries, the girl claimed to possess clairvoyance and telekinetic energy that she could channel to move objects. Ray drew a deep breath astounded by the estrangement that existed between the girl and her parents. How was it possible that they knew so little about her involvement in the occult? The notion perturbed him in ways that he could not fully articulate, but he fervently hoped that he would never fall so far away from his own daughter.

His gaze happened on the girl's picture. Her head was inclined to one side and her face was lit by a pensive half-smile, yet it was her eyes that drew attention. They clearly conveyed perpetual distraction; an intimation that the girl was only partially present in the moment. Staring at the picture, Ray felt his heart wrench in his chest and forced himself to flip forward to the final entry of the book. Scanning the text, his eyes widened and his heart accelerated a beat or two.

When Ray concluded his reading, he closed the book and held it on his lap. Whatever Alma's intentions in regards to ritual magic and witchcraft, something had drawn her over the edge, seducing her into dabbling in darker magic. The final entry elaborated on her desire to unearth a local rural legend, to find the place where this vile creature had been interred and then make an attempt to raise its spirit. That was preposterous of course, but it did explain how she had come into contact with local bad boy, Knox Severn. Severn was her conduit to local lore. Evidently, Jeniah Lightcrusher lay at the end of that conduit. He was struck by an epiphany then...an unadulterated certainty that this woman was not simply a fire victim and for some carefully concealed reason, the townsfolk of his recently adopted home were reluctant to divulge the nature of their villainy. An audible groan escaped his lips as the dragon of conspiracy raised its ugly head, further complicating an already bewilderingly confusing situation.

' _But that still doesn't explain what happened to her?'_ a small voice pointed out contentiously, and this was irrefutably true. No explanation that Ray could produce could survive the test of logic. Shaking his head, Ray gathered up a sample of the trappings of Alma Riesen's sad life...trappings that had ultimately led to her demise.

Along with the journal, he carried these downstairs to the parlor. Philip Riesen shifted his weary gaze to the Sheriff as he entered and then down to the collection of items in his hands. "I'd like to take these with me, Mr. Riesen. They may shed more light on Alma's activities on the days leading up to her assault."

"If you think that it well help find who did this to her, then take them. I use to think that they were innocuous but silly. Now they strike me as utterly sinister and repulsive. When I get the courage, I intend to gather it all up and burn it." There was a rancor in his voice that Saddler suspected may be partially motivated by feelings of personal failure and guilt. Riesen fetched another deep sigh and rose to his feet, following Saddler to the door. Once outside, Ray paused on the bottom step and glanced back up at the other man. In the unforgiving sunlight, the extent of the man's misery was shocking. "I will contact you the moment that I have any hint or clue as to what might have happened to your daughter."

Philip averted his eyes and nodded before retreating into gloom and closing the door.

3

Knox Severn returned to the land of consciousness like a man emerging from deep, warm waters. Like Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, he had come to accept this state of disconnection as both natural and even desirable. As cognizance returned, Severn became aware of two things...he was completely naked and though the shed was stiflingly hot, he felt comfortably cool as though the heat was a distant thing lacking the power to affect him. He groped about in the darkness for his clothes and finding none, settled back against the rough planks, unconcerned by both his nudity and the mystery of his missing clothing. When the memory of the previous night's ritual of burning returned, Knox found that it had also lost the efficacy to terrify or revolt him. The stranger had purged these discordant emotions from his thought process. Compassion and abhorrence were encumbrances that could not be allowed to obstruct her purpose and so she had simply extirpated them from the soil of his emotions.

' _She'll take care of such things,'_ he told himself and this was assuredly so because he had become... her familiar.

As though in affirmation of this, the door to the shed swung open and she was standing in the threshold, regarding him intently. Her green eyes seemed iridescent in the gloom of the shed.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her, and though the interior should have plunged into near total darkness, Severn was surprised to discover that he could see her as though they stood in broad day light.

"You have been endowed with the gift of the night eye, Knox. It is a gift that I bestowed upon you last night," she informed him. "Should you serve me well and loyally, it will be but the first of many."

Her gaze drank in the lines of this teenage body which was lithe and muscular, finally settling on this generous length of manhood. The sight of his flaccid penis enflamed Veronica. She felt her own body responding with a primal heat that would not be denied. Her encounter with Cameron Crane had prodded her to the precipice and now she willingly stepped over with the interloper's subtle encouragement. Jeniah understood that this slide into moral turpitude would only make the host that much more pliable.

Knox followed her gaze and found himself unnerved by her scrutiny of his naked body. There was a hungry, feral quality to her gaze that made him feel as though he was about to be devoured.

"My clothes are gone," he offered feebly and this only evoked a grin from the beautiful woman standing before him.

"I've brought you more, but I don't think you'll need them for a while."

With this, she quickly advanced on Severn and roughly pushed the wide-eyed youth against the wall. With a throaty growl, she reached down and brazenly took hold of his member, using it to pull him back into the center of the room and into her embraced. He emitted a groan of pleasure as her full lips mashed against his and she forced her tongue into his mouth. Severn felt his penis grow rigid under her manipulating grasp and her dizzying physical presence.

Abruptly, she released the boy and pushed him to the floor where he landed with a meaty thud. He pushed himself to one elbow and regarded her with an expression that was part unease and part argent lust. He could feel the heat radiating from her exquisite body in palpable waves and was suddenly afraid that it would consume him very much in the same way that the fire demon had consumed Alma Riesen.

Reading his mind, she rasped "Oh, I intend to burn you all right, but it's a fire you'll survive."

With this, she kicked off her right shoe and placed her foot on his up thrust erection; the sole of her foot rhythmically grinding his engorged member against his abdomen. Severn responded with guttural groan of ineffable pleasure and he crossed his arms over his face. Nothing in his adolescent groping toward sexual maturity had ever prepared him for this and he found himself helpless before her rough seduction.

"Look at me," she commanded and he immediately complied. Still firmly caressing his cock, she slowly began to remove her blouse. When all of the buttons had been undone, she peeled it from her shoulders and held it at arms length between two fingers, before allowing it to billow to the floor. He gasped at the spectacle of her large, firm breasts; the promise of those erect pink nipples causing him to lick his lips in keen anticipation of what was to come.

She released his member and it sprang across his abdomen like a pendulum. Veronica quickly discarded her other shoe and then slowly drew her slacks down those intoxicatingly long legs. She turned away from Severn, who dared not move, instinctively understanding that his was the role of the quarry. Bending forward, she made a great show of removing her slacks, affording the teenager a protracted view of her splendid legs, flaring hips and the geometric perfection of her curving bottom.

"Please," he whispered, not entirely certain what had inspired his entreaty. Her slacks soon joined her blouse in the corner and she spun around to straddle her familiar, who regarded her very much like a penitent before a goddess. She wore green panties of some delicate frilled material and seizing these in her right hand, Veronica tore them off in one brusque motion, balling them in her hand.

Severn gazed up over the majestic expanse of her long legs, to the confluence of her thighs where the glistening jewel of her sex beckoned him. The throbbing ache in his testicles informed him that he would not be able to contain his need for much longer.

"Nor will you have to," she declared knowingly, and fell upon her familiar like a lioness pouncing on a bedazzled gazelle.

Placing the palm of her left hand on his forehead, she jerked his head back and pressed her panties into his gaping mouth. In the same instant, she engulfed his cock with a snapping thrust of her hips. Severn cried out against the impromptu gag, but he made no attempts to expel it. Veronica, her lips twisted in a feral snarl, entangled her fingers in his long black hair and began to slowly bang his head on the wooden floor. She punctuated each thump with a strong circular grinding of her full hips that sent an electric jolt of pure ecstasy rippling along the length of Severn's spine; blending pleasure and pain in perfect proportion.

The small remnant of the woman who was Raymond Saddler's wife and the mother of his children looked on helplessly, appalled by this lascivious and adulterous behavior. The creature that she had become reveled in the wild release of her passion and in her familiar's abjection. She released his hair and pulled his face into the deep valley of her breasts, pressing down until he began to squirm and jerk beneath her. As she held the boy on the verge of erotic asphyxiation, she began to piston her hips in a relentless frenzy that quickly drove Knox to an explosive climax. Even as he sagged beneath her, overwhelmed and verging on panic from lack of air, she continued to impale herself on his manhood, until she too reached orgasm, excoriating the flesh of Severn's chest with her nails as she did.

She pushed herself away from his face and sat up, regarding her servant with blazing eyes. Reaching into his mouth, she pulled her panties free and cast them aside, leaving Knox gasping like struggling swimmer emerging from the water.

"Now slowly, this time," She intoned huskily and began to move her hips again, though this time in languid, patient strokes. Severn's erection had not abated and soon her carnal magic had pushed him to the point of utter distraction. With his eyes closed, he did not notice that Veronica had hooked the fingers of her left hand into a claw and had placed her manicured nailed on the centre of this forehead.

Continuing her gentle motion, she closed her eyes and mouthed the proper incantation; one whose purpose was to alter the solidity of flesh. Gradually her hand began to sink into the interior of the familiar's head, passing through skin and bone as if they were no more substantial than air. Knox was oblivious to this...reduced to a living extension of his sex and its exigent need.

With her hand buried in his cranium to the wrist, the thing that had once been Veronica Ashcott-Saddler began to deconstruct Knox Severn...dispensing with the detritus of his short life and imbuing his mind with the full measure of her purpose. His body jerked and convulsed, thumped and pounded on the wood as she guided him through his apotheosis. By the time that his sex had again surrendered its seed to her mastery, the last vestiges of the old Knox Severn were gone. When the Familiar opened its eyes, they were completely brown, split by vertical pupils that resembled those of a cat.

"My mistress," it said, in a deep, gravelling voice of one who has not spoken for some time.

Veronica smiled fondly and tenderly stroked its face. Then she laid her head on its chest and the pair fell into a doze, luxuriating in the others warmth.

She awoke sometime later, to discover the naked creature beside her. His face was turned into the warm pillow of her left breast and with one leg splayed over his thighs she stroked his cock in long, languid motions. Even in sleep the creature responded to her ministrations. As a delighted Jeniah watched, the host bent forward and replaced her hand with her mouth. The familiar came awake with a guttural groan as Veronica moved her lips up and down the length of this member. He thrust his hands into the red tresses and held her face against him; an audacious sign of his transformation. As she worked his member, delighted by his new assertiveness, he began to move his hips in perfect synchronization to the glide of her lips and tongue until he came with a cry that reverberated in the small confines of the shed.

After a few lingering moments, she allowed him to slip out of her mouth and stood, hauling the shorter familiar to his feet and into a deep kiss. She pushed him to arms length and declared. "The time has come to address a fifty year old blood debt. This will lay the groundwork for my ritual of evocation. There are only a few short days left until Lamas and all must be ready by then. Do you understand?"

The familiar conveyed his comprehension with tacit nod. Jeniah smiled and guided Veronica to the supplies, where she retrieved the pewter disk. Returning to Severn, she instructed him to hold out his hand, palm turned upward. He complied and she dropped the stylized pentagram into his palm, before covering his hand with hers. Upon contact, an improbable ebony flame burst into life and enveloped their hands. The heat was incredible, but neither stirred. The witch's face remained impassive and the familiar reacted with only a slight widening of his eyes. The heat continued to build until both of the shed's occupants were bathed in a sheen of sweat. Finally Veronica bent forward and blew vigorously on the flames which immediately vanished.

She withdrew her top hand and now the pewter disk was embedded in Severn's palm, protruding a quarter of an inch above the flesh. He glanced questioningly at his mistress, who explained, "This is the sigil of my blood debt and the mechanism for the evocation I've planned. Leave it in the flesh of the first victim as a sign of my return."

The familiar responded with a ghastly smile that made Jeniah chuckle. She retreated into recesses of Veronica's mind to ponder all that was to come, leaving Veronica to her pleasure.

Grinning wickedly, the ethereal red head placed her hands on Severn's shoulders and forced him to his knees. She then hooked a long leg over his left shoulder and forced his face into her womanhood, where the complaisant familiar bent himself to her pleasure.

The afternoon stretched out slowly in hitched breaths and cries of pleasure.

4

Raymond Saddler was oblivious to what essentially amounted to the spiritual immolation of his wife, just as he was oblivious to the improbable nature of the ancient evil that was coalescing around him like a tornado. While Veronica feasted on the transmogrified flesh of Knox Severn, the Sheriff was parked less than a mile away, directly in front of a small side split that served as the home of Maria Cordova. Ray had spent an hour going through her personnel file and was flabbergasted that Albert had not recognized the tremendous potential the woman possessed. He understood that deeply engrained prejudices were not easily overcome, but this woman positively glowed when set against many of the others who served as Quinsett's deputies...plodders if he was being candid. Under normal circumstances, plodders would suffice to deal with the kind of problems that arose in a town like Quinsett.

These were anything but normal circumstances.

And it was circumstances such as these where an exceptional, intelligent resource like Maria Cordova could not be allowed to languish. As Ray disembarked from his car, it occurred to him that he was not entirely sure why he was about to dispatch Maria to the task he was about to offer. More succinctly, he did not understand how the value of the information could be used or interpreted. In truth, Ray had no idea what to make of the series of incidents that had plagued the town. He accepted the fact that they were connected to the supernatural, but the precise nature of that connection continued to elude his best efforts to define it.

' _So just what do you believe, Saddler?'_ he demanded of himself as he pulled open the gate of the white picket fence and started up the narrow walk. It was at that moment that he was forced to concede, if only to himself, that intuition wanted to pull him in a direction that logic was not prepared to let him go. This epiphany caused him to stop in the middle of the walk and gaze around as though someone had actually spoken to him. His first instinct had been to conclude that everything that happened was the product of a psychotic's dark fantasy. Now, however, a tiny voice whispered that this may well be the work of a _creature_ of dark fantasy...one whose capabilities, strictly speaking, exceeded mortal limitations.

That was preposterous of course as there were no demons or supernatural entities that could reduce a living being to ash while barely scorching the floor beneath them. Still, if you dispensed with the constraints of conventional belief, the impossible mysteries of the case were abruptly resolved. He wondered what the town selectmen might think if they knew what he was contemplating or how fast he would be run out of town. The thought made Saddler grin, but it was thin and humorless.

Saddler suddenly became cognizant of the fact that he was being scrutinized. An attractive olive-skinned woman of medium height and long black hair was watching him with the darkest and most intense eyes that he had ever seen. One glance into those eyes, with their glint of total comprehension, and Saddler realized why Albert had not been especially keen to have Maria Cordova around. She was a woman who radiated competence the way that the sun gave off heat. He realized that he was standing there, gaping foolishly at her. "Hello. Maria Cordova?"

"I am and I imagine that you're Sheriff Saddler," she replied softly.

Ray nodded. "I know that we haven't had a chance to meet, but I was wondering if I could take a few moments of your time?"

Maria's expression darkened as though she suspected that his sudden appearance was harbinger of ill tidings. In light of how she had been treated since signing on with the department, Ray thought that it was only natural that she would feel that way. Maria glanced up at the sky, where for the first time in two weeks, large thunderheads were drifting in from the Pacific. Rain was imminent, and though it should have been a relief; its impending arrival resounded ominously in Saddler's mind. "Come in Sheriff. It's much cooler inside."

Ray followed his deputy into her house. As she had promised, the interior was blessedly cool. She gestured for him to have a seat at a small wooden table on which a large white Persian was enjoying an afternoon nap. She scooped the large cat up in her arms, hugged him and gently lowered him to the floor. He loosed a meow in protest, flashed his blue eyes in her direction and disappeared into the darkened living room in search of quieter place to resume his snooze.

"Diego has no regard for house rules, but he's my body guard so I tolerate his churlish nature," She explained, looking after the cat with obvious affection. After a moment, she took the seat opposite Saddler and propped her chin on her hand. "What's on your mind...has there been another change to the duty roster?"

"Actually, there has, but I hope you'll agree by saying it's a positive change. I know that Albert didn't exactly give you the opportunity that you rightfully deserve. He really wasn't a bad Sheriff...just old fashion in his thinking."

Maria held up her right hand. "There's no need to apologize for Albert Huxley's behavior. He treated me pretty much in accordance with what I expected. I'm a strong woman, Sheriff...one who is working to a very precise plan. I'm not about to let a little old fashion male chauvinism deter me."

"I can see that," Ray responded with a laugh. There had been no rancor in her voice, only fierce determination. "I'll cut directly to the chase...what I would like to offer you is full time hours...a regular spot on the duty roster and I'd like you to begin immediately."

A smile spread across Maria's face; its magnitude transformed her attractiveness to genuine, full-blown beauty that rivaled Veronica's. "I accept, of course and I promise you that you'll never regret giving me this opportunity. Thank you, Sheriff Saddler."

"Look, it's no less than you deserve and I'm only sorry that it's so late in coming..." He paused for a moment, allowing her to digest the reality of her new situation. "I'd like to begin by giving you a special assignment...one that might seem rather unusual."

Maria Cordova stiffened, the smile fading from her face, and Ray discerned that, despite her insistence to the contrary, she was still vulnerable to perceived mistreatment.

"Unusual? How so?" she inquired, her tone guarded.

"How familiar are you with some of the things that have happened here in the last few days?"

"I only know what I've gleaned from media accounts. I haven't been to the station since my last shift on Saturday night," she explained. "From what I've gathered, the activity level has certainly been high and the nature of that activity has been unusual, but I take it that there is much more to the story?"

"Dramatically more," Ray confirmed and then produced the case files from his attaché case and placed them on the table before her. Maria regarded them for a moment, her arms crossed on the wooden table and her posture rigid. To his alarm, Ray saw that her dark eyes had gone misty, and in the seconds before she bowed her head, he realized that she was on the verge of tears. "Maria, is something wrong?"

She shook her head vigorously and dragged the heel of her palm roughly across her eyes. "I'm so embarrassed and so sorry. How foolish I must look? I must confess that I had completely given up on being anything more than a filer and ticket dispenser. I kept telling myself to be patient, but I had pretty much resigned myself to leaving if one of Albert's deputies had replaced him...knowing that my lot was unlikely to change. That I would be entrusted with real responsibility is...unexpected."

Her display of vulnerability evoked an emotion in Saddler that he immediately recognized was dangerous and he quickly and savagely cut it off. "Look, don't be embarrassed and don't be sorry. Being passed over because you're a woman has to hurt, no matter how insulated you are to that kind of discrimination. I've read your file. I recognize your potential and I have every intention of putting that potential to optimal use from this point forth."

"Sounds good," she replied, natural enthusiasm coloring her tone. For the next hour and a half, the pair reviewed the case files and compared impressions on the information gathered and the questions yet to be answered. Both agreed that there were more of the latter than former. As she perused the material, Ray would watch her silently, fascinated by the speculative gleam in her eyes and the way that her index finger traced the corner of her lips. The questions she posed were both succinct and pertinent, confirming Ray's belief that she was ideally suited for the task at hand.

After she had read the last of the reports and examined the final bits of evidence, she looked to Saddler inquisitively. "What is it you'd like me to do, Sheriff?"

Ray leaned forward and placed the flat of his palm on the pile of papers, attempting to convey a greater sense of certainty than he felt. "I think that we both agree there is a definite link to all of these events. Call it the occult or the supernatural, but it is undeniably the thread that seems to run through these incidents...the commonality. The problem is that I don't really understand anything about the subject. Carlson, in his journal, keeps referring to _rituals of evocation_ and bringing forth demons from some other reality. Alma Riesen was apparently in the middle of performing a ritual to draw out the spirit of a dead woman."

"You're not suggesting that there is any credence in the idea?" Maria interjected sharply.

Ray leaned back in his chair, unwilling to admit that a small part of his mind was indeed suggesting precisely that. "What I'm thinking is that the person or persons responsible for recent events _does_ believe in these rituals and the like. I believe that it's imperative that we learn more about the entire subject of ritual magic, witchcraft and evocation. More precisely, I'd like to find out what the pentagram on Ingstrom's barn represents. If what we've seen is a part of a scripted series of events, maybe knowing more about this pentagram will provide us with some insight into where they might be leading."

Maria Cordova remained silent for several moments, her gaze locked on the collection of files arrayed before her. Finally, she said, "You want me to learn more about the subject, to divine any pattern that is consistent with a ritual of some manner."

"Yes. I'd like you to go to Seattle and tap into the university libraries and any other source that might be of use and learn more about the subject in general and the material in these files specifically. Naturally, all expenses are covered. I had to plead with the selectmen to get extra funds, but I think the fire at County Hospital rattled them. You have the academic background to cover a lot of research ground and summarize the findings concisely. That is exactly what I require here."

"May I ask a very pointed question?" Maria inquired, her intense gaze fixed firmly on his.

"Of course."

"As of this moment, we have no real idea who might be responsible for everything that's happened?" Her incisive gaze bore into him and he sensed that this was a critical juncture in their working relationship.

If she discerned even a trace of deception or evasion, her trust would be permanently lost.

Saddler shook his head. "Not a hint. If I was being entirely candid, I would concede that it's possible that these four events are not even related."

"But your instinct tells you otherwise?" she persisted.

Saddler nodded. "It does and it also tells me that things are about to move very quickly and become very nasty. That is why I need your help on this and I need it quickly."

There was a rhythmic tapping at the window that drew the pairs gaze. Large droplets of rain spattered the glass, signifying the end of the drought that had beset Quinsett for the past two weeks. Still watching the fall of the rain, Maria said softly, "I'll have Mrs. Munson look in on Diego while I'm gone. I'll pack and can be ready to leave in a few hours."

Saddler smiled. "I was hoping you'd agree...kind of anticipated it actually. The unmarked car is yours and I've had Mariam release enough money to cover your expenses for several days. These are your file copies to take with you. The inside jacket also has my phone number, so if you find anything of importance, don't hesitate to call me at any time...night or day."

They spoke about the specifics of her trip for several moments longer and Ray stood to leave. Maria walked him to the door, where he imparted one last bit of advice. "Carlson's journal is an exercise in madness, I guess, but I believe that his interviews are very real. He intimated that these people were very dangerous and I believe him. If you decide to look anywhere beyond the academic sources, be very careful."

"I will Sheriff," she promised.

He was about to step out into the rain, when he hesitated and turned back to her. "Call me once you've arrived." Something suddenly occurred to him and he added, "One last thing; see if you can determine if the date August 1st has any occult significance."

She agreed to do both and Saddler left her to her preparations, satisfied that he had enlisted a valuable ally.

PART TWO

Chapter One

1

By the time that Ray Saddler had returned to his home on Ringgold Lane, the rain was falling in slow, steady sheets. He pulled his cruiser up to the garage doors and sprinted for the side porch. It was a little after five o'clock and the tantalizing smells of supper were the first things to greet him as he entered the house and stripped off his damp jacket. The sound of laughter issued forth from the kitchen, both Wendy's and his wife's, and Ray felt a great weight roll from his heart. The last few days had been filled with precious little laughter and a palpable tension had hung over the house like a pall.

"So, share the funnies," he declared as he entered the kitchen, to find his wife standing over the stove and Wendy and Danny seated at the table. His glaze flicked over first his son and then his daughter, who was smiling in a broad and unabashed manner that Ray was not accustomed to seeing, before settling on his wife.

"Ah, the protector of the kingdom has returned," she announced grandly and her emerald eyes twinkled with mirth. Her color was high and hectic, informing Ray that she had been laughing long and hard and it was moments such as these that Saddler was struck by the enormity of her beauty. Normally, these moments were also darkly tinted by the conviction that their pairing was improbable, as though he was unworthy of the gift that good fortune had bestowed upon him. Tonight, however, he was not beset by the usual sense of inadequacy...only a profound relief.

She set aside the wooden spoon that she had been using to stir a sauce that was redolent with a host of pleasing aromas and crossed the kitchen in three brisk strides, hugging Saddler with enthusiasm that was a little dizzying. "Isn't this rain a blessing...finally, a bit of relief from the bloody heat. To celebrate the occasion, I have actually prepared supper."

Saddler feigned a groan of dismay and she responded by poking him in the ribs, before stepping away and gesturing toward the kitchen cupboards with a lavish sweep of her long right arm. "There are things in there and I'm not even sure precisely what they do. It kind of makes you wonder how they got here in the first place. Anyway, I bundled Mrs. Quilling off early and decided at taking a stab at the evening's feast, myself."

Saddler glanced at this daughter and gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Any chance that we'll survive?"

Wendy merely offered him an exaggerated shrug. "I sort of supervised, so we might be okay."

"You little brat!" Ronnie howled in mock outrage and set to tickling the girl, evoking gales of laughter from the pair and allowing Saddler to forget about his trouble-plagued town, if only for a few short moments.

As they sat down to supper, Saddler was pleasantly surprised to discover that his wife's long list of natural talent extended to cooking. Ronnie's Cacciatore was delicious and the three devoured it with gusto. Danny looked on with the bemused expression of someone who is being excluded, but does not know precisely what they are being excluded from.

In the middle of the meal, with the chat light and silly, Ray decided to risk broaching the subject of Hogan's marker. He did not know exactly why, but Saddler could not divest himself of the impression that Mariam's bit of gossip, maliciously intended as it may have been, was obscurely important. "Ronnie, was there some kind of fuss down at Hogan's market a couple of days ago?"

He had posed the question as casually as possible, watching his wife's reaction from the corner of his eye. Both she and Wendy exchanged a glance fraught with some ineffable emotion that Ray could not decipher. There had been something else, rippling across her face like liquid mercury and then vanishing...unadulterated fury.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about?" Ronnie said at last as the levity fled her tone. Wendy shifted her gaze uncomfortably from her mother to her father, sensing that the family had abruptly wandered into a potentially explosive minefield.

Saddler shrugged as though the matter was of little consequence...nothing more than idle chatter. "Mariam at the office mentioned that you may have had some sort of run in with the owner of the market."

"Did she now?" Ronnie intoned sharply, her gaze never faltering. Ray could sense her anger, but did not want it to explode in front of the children.

"Ronnie, it's not a big deal. This is a small town and we're the newcomers. It's only natural that we're going to attract some attention. She only mentioned it in passing," he concluded, knowing that this was a total fabrication. Mariam Carter did nothing in passing. Hoping to avert an outburst, he added, "Let's face it, when an LA beauty comes to town, heads are bound to turn. As you've said yourself, you have to assimilate, right?"

Her face became impassive and Ray imagined that he could hear some internal machinery whirring as she attempted to gauge his intentions. Then that beautiful smile resurfaced like a dawning sun and she shook her head. "I'm just being stupid. I guess I've always hated scrutiny and gossip-mongering." She exchanged another glance with Wendy. "I did have a bit of a disagreement with the fellow who owns the local market, but I find it hard to imagine why it would be considered gossip-worthy."

"What happened?" Saddler ventured cautiously.

"It was decidedly odd really," Veronica began, pursing her lips and staring at her plate. "This man was shopping when Wendy and I were there and he inadvertently knocked over a pyramid of jars. Suddenly, the owner, this Marv Hogan, comes out from behind the counter and starts to berate this fellow and physically push him towards the exit. His reaction was completely out of proportion to what happened and totally inappropriate."

"The man who knocked over the jars didn't object to being treated that way?"

Ronnie's eyes narrowed and her expression became intense; colored by an emotion that Ray could not decipher. "He seemed...simple or slow and he behaved as though he expected this kind of treatment....perhaps even deserved it. The rubberneckers in the store all stopped and stared and looking at their faces, I had the distinct impression that they were enjoying the spectacle of seeing this fellow abused. Even the owner's anger seemed contrived and I couldn't help but feel that he was just looking for an excuse to humiliate this man."

Saddler smiled. "So you decided to intervene...Veronica to the rescue."

She scorched Ray with a look of resentment and consternation. "Yes, I did. I wasn't going to let this irascible old coot abuse the man for the amusement of his hillbilly patrons. I despise bullies of any kind – as you well know, my dear father has been known to throw his weight around on occasion – and I did what any decent human being would have done in that situation. I put a stop to it."

She glared at her husband as though challenging him to suggest that she should have acted differently. Ray's grin faded. "Of course you were right to intervene. That kind of school yard bully mentality can turn ugly in an instant." After a moment's hesitation, he added, "The man you saved is Cameron Crane. He's a bit of a sad sack, but his family is one of the richest in the area...a sort of founding family, I guess. Actually, you're right to say that he seemed accustomed to the abuse as he's been the town whipping boy for a good while now."

Veronica frowned, clearly perplexed. "How do you know all of this?"

"I had Cameron in for questioning in regards to the incident at the Cemetery the other night." He did not elaborate further, instead shifted his gaze quickly to Wendy and back. There was no need to expose the child to the manner of ugliness that had transpired in the graveyard.

Ronnie shook her head in dismay, clearly disturbed by the notion that Crane might be somehow culpable in Alma Riesen's assault. "You're not saying that he had anything to do with the girl's injuries? I doubt that the man could defend himself to save his life."

Now it was Ray's turn to be perplexed. Ronnie's interest in Crane seemed to exceed just being a Good Samaritan. "No. After questioning, he was released. I don't believe that he was responsible, or that he even saw who was. He claimed to have been taking a walk along Winder road at the time. Had anyone else told me that, I would have instinctively thought that they were lying. With Cameron, I concluded just the opposite."

Veronica shrugged as though it scarcely mattered either way, but Ray thought that her indifference was feigned. Still, he decided that she had been truthful in the account of the incident at the grocery store and decided (wisely perhaps) to let the matter rest.

The rest of the meal passed in the same jovial, warm tone that had preceded the discussion of Veronica's confrontation with Marv Hogan. Once the dinner dishes were cleared away, the four piled into to family room and watched television for the next two hours, until it was the children's bed time. The pervasive sense of normalcy served to anneal Saddler's fears, leaving him with the impression that he may have blown Veronica's seeming aberrant behavior out of proportion.

After she had put the children into bed, Ronnie returned and settled back beside Saddler, resting her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and kissed the top of her head, inhaling her sweet smell. They watched television in silence for the next several minutes and finally he asked, "Is everything okay, Ronnie? I mean, how do you find working form a distance?"

She glanced up at Saddler, searching his eyes with a half smile playing at her lovely lips. "Things are going well. The first day or so, I admit that I was a bit overwhelmed by the prospect...there were a number of things that I hadn't considered, but they're falling into line nicely."

Saddler grimaced and she raised a placating finger to his lips. "Not a word, Ray. You've got to start accepting that I wanted this move as badly as you did. Of all people, you should know that I'm not the kind of woman who is steamrolled or coerced into anything. If I came here, it was of my own volition. Anyway, I've found my rhythm and things are going well. It was jut a matter of rethinking the way that I've organized myself. I'll be taking the first of my business trips this Friday and might have to stay over for the first few days of the next week. That won't be a problem will it? I mean, the extra few days."

"Of course not. We agreed that you would devote whatever time you need to your business and I have no intention of ever reneging on that agreement. When do you fly out?"

"Seven o'clock Friday morning to make my ten o'clock connection to LA."

As they talked for the next hour, Saddler could detect nothing ominous or unusual in his wife's demeanor. Ronnie seemed more at ease than she had since they first arrived in Quinsett and Ray felt his misgivings slowly evaporate. For her Part, Veronica questioned Saddler about every facet of this investigation and he suspected that she was assessing the way that he was adapting to the new challenges of being town sheriff. If this was the case, Ray concluded that his calm, analytical responses to her questions succeeded in putting her mind at ease as well.

As they climbed the stairs to bed, Saddler felt happier than he had in a long while...bolstered by the belief that the uncertainties of the past year were well on their way to being banished. They had passed the perfect evening the way that he envisioned they would when he first accepted the position.

Falling asleep with his wife's head nestled on his shoulder and her long arm draped over his stomach, Raymond Saddler had no way of knowing that it was the last such evening his family would ever spend.

2

What passed for the affluent section of Quinsett was a development known as Redwood Heights...a misnomer in the fact that the sprawling subdivision was arrayed along the winding course of a narrow and picturesque stream that meandered through a stand of dazzling Redwoods...though essentially flat terrain. Judith Ranzman had developed this particular subdivision just over a decade earlier, just after taking control of her father's company. The development was calculated gamble that had paid off in spades...the first of many real estate coups that the astute Ranzman would broker. During the development and design phase, Judith had taken great pains to insure that the sprawling homes would front the narrow stream (a few well placed dollars had guaranteed that the flood plane restrictions had disappeared) and each lot would be dotted by a few towering Redwoods. The builders and architects had warned her that the construction would be complicated, thus needlessly elevating the lot prices, which would subsequently never sell. Risking her own money, she had persisted and the result had been a development of some of the most breathtaking homes and properties in this isolated section of the state.

Three of the five members of the informal group were residents of this development, though Judith Ranzman, for reasons of her own, elected to live elsewhere.

Morley Cruthers lived in three storey brick home that faced north where the Milford stream was at its widest. The property was impeccably landscaped, just as the interior was tastefully appointed in rich dark mahogany and teak, dark marble and contrasting ceramic tile. Morley had personally selected every item in the house as well as all of the building material right down to the ornate moldings and baseboards. He had created an interior designed to indulge his own elegant style and reflect his need to project the image of a man possessed of refined taste.

Like Stuart Crane, Morley was a lifelong bachelor and contentedly so. Unlike the other four members of Quinsett's little group, Cruthers was the only second generation member, while the other four were third generation members.

' _Unless, of course, you include Crimmon,'_ he amended with a frown of disgust. The old man was rotting away in some refuge for decrepit priests and Morley was personally glad to be shut of him.

A fourth generation Irish-American, Cruthers had inherited the wealth that his grandfather had accrued supplying equipment and parts to Washington State's burgeoning lumber industry. The old curmudgeon had come west with a few hundred dollars in search of the American dream and also to escape the wrath of New York City's Irish mobs, whom he had somehow managed to offend. A keen eye for ways to turn a buck, Zach Cruthers had quickly learned that the lumber industry was a rapacious consumer and would require no limit of fodder to prime its hungry jaws. Setting himself in the ideal position of middle supplier, Zach had carved a niche for himself of which sixty-one year old Morley had been the lifelong beneficiary.

When Cruthers' father had died of a massive heart attack in the mid-fifties, young Morley had inherited the family business, applying himself with the zeal of a man who has no other passion but work and the pursuit of cash. He had used the money to indulge his every whim, obsessively pursuing his interest in antique furniture, cut crystal and stained glass. Unlike Stuart Crane, who saw relationships and marriages as an entanglement for which he had neither the time nor the patience, Morley Cruthers had other reasons for this life of solitude. When he closed his eyes and visualized an object of flesh that sparked his passions, it had always been a beautifully constructed male with fierce blue eyes and a proud, engorged cock. Cruthers was enough of a pragmatist to understand that small town Quinsett would never readily accept his homosexuality. His small lumber town was miles away from San Francisco and Los Angeles and anything less than conventional maleness would be shunned. With this realization, Morley had struggled to subjugate his sexuality completely, instead turning his passions to objects of art and beauty...and, of course, business.

It would have shocked Cruthers to discover just how many of the town's resident...especially his own employees, surmised that his fastidious and prissy nature declared eloquently that he might prefer the intimate company of another male. It might further have stunned him to discover just how few people would have actually cared had he simply come clean with his preference.

As Ray Saddler drifted off to sleep in the comforting embrace of the illusion that his life was still stable and secure, Morley Cruthers stood in his darkened third floor study, gazing through the large bank of windows that overlooked the rear of his property and Milford stream beyond. He sipped thirty year old Chevas Regal Scotch from a Waterford Crystal glass and watched the mesmerizing fall of the rain...two activities that normally suffused him in a warming sense of serenity.

Tonight, however, that tranquility was nowhere to be had.

The thing that had struck such a note of discord in Morley's life was the midnight meeting of these few nights past. While the other four regarded Huxley's information as nothing more than a potential annoyance, perhaps some misguided attempt to extort money, Cruthers interpreted the news as something far more odious. Unlike the others, Morley had been very much alive when Jeniah Lightcrusher unleashed her reign of terror on the fledgling community of Quinsett. He distinctly recalled the pervasive flicker of fear that had burned in his father's eyes in the weeks leading up to the witch's murder. He also vividly recalled that her death had not extinguished that flicker, but rather had only muted it somewhat. Even now, a half century on, Morley could conjure up the shadow of anxiety that had painted his father's face during that long ago summer.

That portrait had inculcated Morley with an unequivocal acceptance that Jeniah Lightcrusher was everything that his father and the others had suspected her of being a witch. Now, with total certainty, Cruthers embraced Huxley's information, construing it to be a harbinger of Jeniah's vengeful return. Much like his sexual orientation, Morley believed that his view of events was something that his peers simply would not accept.

Therein lay his dilemma...he sensed that Jeniah's imminent return could potentially destroy them all, but he also understood that there was no one whom he could attempt to solicit for help without sounding as crazy as a loon.

Sighing with a mixture of frustration and trepidation, Morley drained the last of his Scotch and drifted over to the sideboard with the intentions of refilling his glass.

Something caught his eye deep in the shadows of this back yard and he quickly moved over to the bank of windows. The dark night and heavy rain had reduced visibility significantly, but as he squinted into the darkness, Cruthers discerned a shape standing in the shadow of one of the ornamental trees that dotted his rear yard.

Morley's breathing hitched in his chest and he quickly retreated from the window, moving over to the drapes. From this vantage point, he had an unobstructed view of that portion of the yard and discovered that he had been correct...there was someone standing next to the tree. Even with the distance and poor lighting, Cruthers could tell that this person was peering up at the house, seemingly at the very bank of windows behind which he now cowered.

A wheezy gasp of air escaped his lips and Morley realized that he was suddenly and absolutely terror-stricken. His over wrought mind drew an automatic association between the trespasser in his rear yard and his conviction that Jeniah's return was imminent.

He hovered near the drapes for a moment, rooted by indecision. Should he call the police? There was after all, an intruder on his property with God knows what intentions.

In the rain and gloom, the shadow figure stepped away from the tree and started up the walk toward the house. There was something about the casual way in which the figure moved...seemingly indifferent to the falling rain...that augmented Morley's fear. He could feel his heart begin to skid painfully in his chest. The discordant rhythm decided the issue and Morley rushed over to the phone. As he was about to reach for the handset, it began to ring. The Strident braying shattered the silence and this time he did cry out and stepped away as though the set had transmogrified into a poisonous snake.

From three floors down there came a loud knocking on the rear door. The fall of the intruder's fist was impossibly heavy, reverberating through the house like cannon fire. There was an inexorable finality to that knocking that sent icy fingers tickling up and down Morley's spine. The telephone continued its nerve-jangling tirade and finally he snatched it up in trembling fingers.

"Yes, who is it?" he demanded, his voice uncharacteristically reedy and curt.

"I think that you know," a distinctly female voice purred softly. "Just as I'm sure that you have some inkling of what may be coming for you from below."

"Jeniah?" Morley whimpered...his voice tremulous with horror.

"The very same, you degenerate little faggot. You know who I am and I suspect that you know why I've come," the caller rasped in a voice fraught with loathing. "Your father probably never told you that when Crane lost the nerve to do what had to be done, the moment of my return became inevitable. I've come to finish my work and collect my blood debt."

Below, the cannonade had ceased, replaced by an eerie and unnerving silence.

"I'm not responsible for my father's actions," Cruthers entreated in a voice that was shrill and petulant.

"Oh, but you are," the caller contradicted. "The sons shall inherit the sins of the father and so you have."

Now Morley could clearly hear footsteps ascending the stairs, finally coming to a halt just outside of Cruthers' study doors. Held in the paralyzing grip of fear, Morley could only hold the receiver to his ear and wait for whatever was on the other side to enter. "You're going to carry the news of my return to your colleagues. I want every one of them to squirm with terror until it's grown so excruciating that they pray for death."

"You're insane," he whispered, eyes bulging in anticipation and dread.

"Quite the contrary, I'm perfectly lucid. Your fathers and grandfathers were the crazy ones believing that they could stand in the way of my apotheosis. I'd like you to meet my familiar Morley."

As though on cue, the door slowly swung open and the intruder stepped inside. Morley was not precisely sure what he had expected, but the person standing before him was so banal that Cruthers actually laughed. It was a teenage boy and in the muted gloom of the study's interior, Morley thought he appeared vaguely familiar. "You're the one the police are looking for...the Severn boy."

The boy shook his head in negation. When he spoke, it was in a voice that resembled gravel grating over head stones. "Perhaps once, but no more."

The derisive laughter dried up in Cruthers throat and he dropped the phone and began to back away from the thing that had once been Knox Severn. It regarded him through eyes that were entirely dark and devoid of any semblance of humanity.

He continued to back away until he had bumped into a sideboard, where he kept his Scotch decanters and glasses. The thing began to move around the desk, its ineffably foul gaze never leaving the older man's face. Slowly, the Severn-thing raised its arm with the palm extended outward. Morley saw that there was a complex metallic intaglio embedded in the flesh of the thing's hand and as it advanced, the intaglio began to glow. That glow grew in magnitude until it was blinding and radiated an intense heat. Morley averted his eyes in fear that they would be burned form their sockets.

Starting to gibber, Morley abruptly snatched up one of his prized decanters and heaved it blindly at the approaching Severn. More through blind luck than anything else, the heavy crystal struck the familiar just below the right cheek bone with an audible thud. Blood began to cascade down its face in great sheets, but its expression remained impassive and its forward progress did not falter.

"I think that you're beginning to understand your predicament here, Morley," Jeniah's voice issued, not from the receiver but from the very air. With his breath coming in intermittent gasps, he waited until the familiar had moved part way around the large teak desk and than raced for the door, attempting to put the desk between himself and his pursuer. A high, whining sound tore through the study's interior, accompanied by shrapnel bursts of crystal, and the familiar was suddenly obstructing Cruthers' path to the hallway, its other-worldly eyes settling upon its quarry with an undeniable imperative.

It was then that Cruthers discerned that there would be no escape. He stumbled back into the study, with his arms held before him as he mouthed a wordless entreaty to a beast that could not be swayed. He tripped on the edge of a large Persian rug and sat down hard on his bony haunches. Terror, huge and coppery, swept him up in its immobilizing embrace and he began to scream then; high, grating sounds that filled the interior of the empty mansion that was in many ways symbolic of the life that he had built for himself...cavernous and empty.

"I'll leave Knox to his work then," Jeniah declared in a tone alive with malicious delight. "You should have known that your passion for young boys would be your undoing some day." The room filled with a derisive laughter before trailing away, leaving an expectant and lethal silence in its wake.

Cruthers had climbed to his knees and propelled himself backwards, away from the argent blaze of the intaglio and the implacable advance of the creature who wielded it. His pleas for mercy had degenerated into inarticulate wails of anguish.

And then Severn was standing over him, peering down upon the helpless Cruthers like personification of death that he had become. Reaching down, the familiar snatched Morley's throat in a constricting grip and hauled him to feet. Sensing that his demise was imminent, the old man began to flail at Severn, raining ineffectual blows down on his unblinking face.

For the first time since he entered the study, the familiar displayed a hint of emotion. His lips split in a malevolent grin as he began to apply a slow a steady pressure to his victim's throat.

The old man began to claw at the choking hands, drawing up flags of flesh with his manicured nails. Still, Knox did not waver and soon Morley's color passed from scarlet to purple and his eyes began to bulge in their sockets. With one malicious twist, Severn drove his fingers deep into the flesh of Cruthers' throat. A great gout of dark blood spewed forth from the wound, spattering the familiar as a thin, wet gurgling sound escaped the old man's blue lips.

Morley Cruthers eyes abruptly rolled back into their sockets and he mercifully passed into the void.

The familiar then placed the embedded intaglio on the center of the old man's forehead. The room immediately filled with the acrid stench of burning flesh as the metallic disk sank deep into the meat. After a moment, Severn removed his hand and inspected his work. The pentacle was branded perfectly on the dead man's flesh...Jeniah's calling card would herald her return to those with understanding.

The familiar then gave the corpse of Morley Cruthers a vicious shrug, propelling him backwards towards the bank of windows. There was a titanic shattering of glass and the lifeless body was falling in a shower of fragmented glass and rain. It struck the stones with a muted thud, cracking the skull and spilling cerebral fluids and blood out in an ever widening fan.

The familiar stood at the ruins of the study window for a moment, admiring its handiwork. Then it turned and was gone like a shadow across the sun.

The first installment of Jeniah Lightcrusher's blood debt had been collected.

3

In the darkened bedroom of the Saddler house, Veronica stared at the ceiling with a broad grin twisting her full lips. Beside her, Ray slumbered in the warmth of his perceived relief that all was at least well in his home. Jeniah reveled in the first segment of her intended campaign of vengeance...a vengeance that would serve as a prelude to her ritual of evocation.

She had deliberately left a message for the others, though she wondered if they were astute enough to grasp its implications. Her choice of vessels was proving superb; Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was affording her opportunities to function in ways that her original flesh would never have been granted. When Jeniah had first made her cast for apotheosis, men still subscribed to the concept of otherworldly evil and darkness. In this new age of science and enlightenment, the new age man could simply not accept the existence of creatures of Jeniah's ilk. Only poor, demented Cameron Crane would readily accept the reality of Jeniah Lightcrusher, dark queen in waiting, and the transformed Veronica would insure that he would pose no threat to her machinations.

The stranger, the one who had been spying upon her; he posed a possible threat that she must eliminate quickly.

"Eight days until Lamas, dear one," she whispered. In the interim, she would weave a tapestry of carnage that would have this wretched town praying for the apocalypse that she intended to visit upon the mortal world.

Chapter Two

1

By the time that Ray had reached his office the next morning, the previous nights' sense of relief had all but dissipated. Veronica had been distant over morning breakfast, fending off his efforts to engage her in conversation with terse one word replies. He attributed this reticence to preoccupation with her upcoming trip, but a small voice informed him that this was a facile rationalization.

' _There's something wrong with her, Ray,'_ that voice insisted, as he paused at a stop sign. _'You know it, but you just don't have the courage to confront it. She's never behaved like this...not in all the years you've known her.'_

That was true enough, but neither had she ever been displaced from a city where she'd spent her entire life only to be deposited in a rural backwater. That managed to force his internal tormentor into a disapproving silence.

He mounted the steps to the station, hurrying to be out of the steady fall of rain that had not relented in over sixteen hours now. Some inner sense warned him that, like the draught of the previous two weeks, the rains might be a long time in leaving. He stole a quick glance up at the dark roiling clouds that appeared to hang over the town as a presentiment of some rapidly approaching catastrophe.

The night had passed without incident, for which Ray was grateful. He checked in with deputy Holland who was about to head out for a swing through town before heading to his office. Passing Mariam's desk, he asked, "Did Deputy Cordova check in for her paperwork and advance this morning?"

Mariam glanced up at Saddler from over the rims of her glasses. "Actually, she stopped in last night just as I was leaving. She said she wanted to make a start before night fell."

Ray nodded without comment and proceeded to his office. He wasn't particularly surprised that Maria would attack the task she had been assigned with tenacity and eagerness.

He had just settled into his seat and was thinking that it might be prudent to take another ride up Ringgold Lane to see if he could find the spot where Jeniah Lightcrusher's house had once stood, when his phone began to ring. He picked it up and enquired, "Yes Mariam?"

"Sheriff Saddler, there's an Arthur Ashcott on the line for you."

For a moment the faculty of speech completely deserted Saddler as though Mariam had just informed him that Napoleon was calling. In the years they had known each other, Ashcott had called Saddler specifically perhaps less than a half dozen times. The improbability of this call left Saddler mute, but also filled him with a formless dread.

"Sheriff?" Mariam prodded, finally prompting Ray to speak.

"Yes, Mariam...put him through please."

There was a momentary silence and then Arthur Ashcott's deep, rumbling voice filled Saddler's ear, causing him to grimace. "Saddler, what precisely is going on up there?"

Thinking that Veronica's father was referring to the events in Quinsett and shocked that they had merited trans-state attention, Ray replied, "We've had a few unusual incidents in the last few days, but nothing that we can't handle."

"I don't particularly care what's happening in your rain-soaked backwater, I'm speaking about my daughter," Ashcott interrupted curtly. Saddler could feel his ire rising, but there was desperate note in the other man's voice that caused him to quell his anger.

"Arthur, I'm afraid that I don't know what you're talking about," Saddler commented honestly. An icy thread of disquiet had begun to worm its way into his stomach.

"I've been trying to call Veronica for the last two days," he explained. "I can never get through to her. I leave messages with your housekeeper, but Veronica never returns my calls."

"The only thing that I can think is that she's been extremely busy. She's flying back to LA tomorrow morning," Ray offered, but in the back of his mind, he understood that he was glossing over yet another aberration in his wife's behavior. Despite their occasional clash of wills, Veronica was close to her father and would never slight him by deliberately ignoring his calls.

"I was finally able to reach her yesterday afternoon. Whatever her issue might be, it isn't simply a matter of being busy," he countered gruffly. Ashcott's demeanor hinted that Saddler would be profoundly disturbed by what the other man was about to divulge. "Speaking to her was like speaking to a total stranger and not too pleasant one at that. When I asked her if she was all right, if she was making the adjustment okay, she told me to stop being an overbearing prick and to go fuck myself. Then she hung up. Veronica has never spoken to me like that, not even at the height of our most heated disagreements." He fell silent, but Ray could clearly feel his anguish and confusion resonating along the miles of fiber-optic cable.

After a protracted silence, Ray admitted, "I really don't know what to say. What you are telling me is so atypical of the woman I know, it's actually hard to believe."

The image of his wife brandishing a spade toward Wendy rose unbidden to his mind and his mouth closed with an audible plop. In a moment of utter clarity, Ray Saddler saw what he construed to be aberrations, were in fact the obvious manifestations of a dramatic shift in Veronica's personality. Somehow, he could not come to share these misgivings with Arthur Ashcott.

"Hard to believe, perhaps, but nonetheless true. I fretted over what to do and finally decided to call you. I realize that we've never had the best rapport, but I want to set that aside because I think there's something wrong with my little girl and I need to know what that something is."

Ray closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the incipient stirrings of the anxiety that had plagued him after the Deleon shooting. "Frankly, Arthur, I don't know what to tell you. Veronica has seemed a bit tense in the last few days. I'll speak to her tonight, but I won't mention you called me. If there's something specific on her mind, I'll get back to you sometime tomorrow night and we can discuss the issue. We both know that Veronica has zero tolerance for subterfuge, so I'll have to be discreet."

"Thank you. I would appreciate that." After a brief pause, he added, "I only want what's best for her. There are times when it may not seem like that, but I assure you it's true."

"I believe you Arthur," Saddler remarked and than rang off. He sat staring vacantly at the telephone for several moments, listening to the slapping of the rain against his office window. It was difficult to digest what he had just been told and harder still to envision how he would approach the issue of Ronnie's aberrant behavior.

A shadow fell across the frosted glass of this office door and there followed a soft knock. Saddler actually found that he was grateful for the diversion. "Come in."

The door opened and a dripping Albert Huxley stepped into the office that had been his for so many years. Saddler smiled and came around the desk to greet his visitor. "Albert, this is a pleasure. I would have expected that you'd be off fishing some obscure back stream somewhere."

"Well, I was," Huxley confessed in a subdued voice. "This rain looks like it's come with the intention of staying awhile. May I sit...the dampness is starting to take a toll on the old bones."

Saddler gestured for the old man to have a seat and then went back to his own chair. Ray watched Huxley as he settled his bulk into the chair. His white hair seemed thinner and there were distinct dark circles around his eyes; lending to the general impression that the man had been somehow diminished in the short few days since he had left his job. "Have you just stopped in for a visit, Albert, or is there something specific on your mind."

Huxley offered Saddler a pained expression and then remarked, "It's been a bit of an eventful start you've had?"

With a humorless grin, Ray allowed, "It has been at that. The town has certainly had its share of drama in the last seventy-two hours."

"I'm not sure how to say this, so I'll just go ahead and say it plain. I know the trouble you've been having and I know why. Worse still...I'm part of the reason that you're having it. That's why I came down this morning, though I should have come much earlier."

Saddler inclined his head and his eyes narrowed as he remarked, "I don't follow, Albert."

The former Sheriff reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced several folded pages, which he placed on the desk and slid in the direction of his successor. Ray regarded them for several seconds and then picked them up, correctly surmising what they were before he had even read the first line. He glanced up a Huxley in open bewilderment. "Why, Albert? Why would you do this?"

"Maybe you could take a quick pass through those couple of pages and then you might get a sense of what I was thinking when I removed them," Albert asked glumly. Ray regarded the other man for several moments and then began to read, his sense of anxiety deepening with each sentence. Andy Carlson did have a very specific objective in coming to Quinsett...an objective that made his purported suicide seem highly improbable. Ray understood that he had been deceived by everyone around him from the first moment that he had assumed the position.

Shaking his head in utter disgust, he said, "I don't have to tell you that you've committed a crime...tampering with and concealing evidence, as well as falsifying reports."

"I pretty well know what I've done and I'm beginning to see what it might mean for the town... and that's really what I care about...what happens to me, happens to me, but now I want to help undo some of the damage I've done," Albert declared and Saddler could clearly perceive that he was being totally sincere. "There's more...there were six names scrawled on the wall of the hotel room in what appeared to be blood. I had Orlin wash them off, but before you go assuming any duplicity on his part, I can tell you that I basically threatened him to do it. Orlin might be a bit short in the backbone department, but he has his uses, so I'm asking you not to hold it against him."

"The six names on the wall are the same six listed in the last journal entry?" Saddler asked if only for confirmation. He recognized some of these names and guessed at the community status of the others.

Huxley nodded and his expression became grim. "Yes...five of the six are what passes for heavy hitters in a town like Quinsett. Crimmon was the Catholic priest for nearly sixty years, but he fell into senility in the last decade or so. Somehow, this Carlson found him and got him to talk, which wouldn't have been hard considering that Crimmon was apt to rave when given a willing audience."

Saddler sighed in consternation and dragged his palm across his face. Huxley's belated revelation opened up a flood gate of possibilities and colored events in a far more macabre and menacing tone. "Why Albert...why would you cover this up?"

Huxley averted his gaze to his hands, though Saddler could feel a sense of confusion radiating from the other man like a palpable heat. "I could give you all sorts of slick justifications for why I did it, but if I look back with absolute honesty, I'd have to say that I don't know. After I left here, I went to Stuart Crane and warned him about what was in that journal and on the wall, knowing that he'd pass it on to the rest of his little group."

"Albert, I'm going to ask you a question and I expect nothing but the unequivocal truth...who is Jeniah Lightcrusher and why is she significant in town history?"

Now it was Huxley's turn to fetch a deep sigh. "It always comes back to that damnable bitch. She's hovered over this town like a black cloud for almost fifty years now."

After delivering this rather dramatic and obscure preface, Albert told the story of Jeniah Lightcrusher, sparing no detail and disclosing much of the conjecture and rumors that surrounded her legend. Saddler absorbed the story in impassive silence, but inside, his thoughts were beginning to churn and roil like ocean water in a storm. After Huxley had finished his tale, Ray had to restrain the deluge of questions that were begging to be asked, instead attempting to organize his thoughts into a coherent flow. "Does anyone know where this woman came from or who she really was?"

"She was mystery really. We called her an Indian, but that was only because she had Native American features. It was never clear who she actually was or where she came from. After the original group killed her, they buried her in a pauper's grave and tried to forget about her. She became the town's skeleton in the closet, I guess. Rumor has it that she cursed the six and their families before they killed her, but that may be one of those embellished details that makes a good yarn all the better."

Saddler pondered this for a moment and then asked, "Did you ever actually see this woman?"

Huxley grimaced as though he was recalling something distasteful, but beneath that distaste, Saddler thought that he could discern an unconscious trace of fear. "I only saw her once. I was twelve at the time and running with a bunch of lads. I'll carry this image with me to the grave. We were all sort of hanging around what passed for the main drag then and she came out of Craston's general store. I remember that she seemed very tall and even as a kid it impressed me that she was very beautiful. Anyway, she comes through the front door and stops on the wooden step and looked over at where we were standing. I remember that everyone just stopped cold and the moment seemed to freeze. Her eyes flicked from one boy to the next and even now, I can clearly see the expressions of fear and revulsion dawn on every face. When her gaze settled on me, it felt as though spiders and snakes were brushing over every inch of my skin. Her eyes were terrifying...intense. Finally, she just smiled and walked on without saying a word. I'll be honest with you, it is the only time that I ever come face to face with something I'd consider pure evil."

Huxley fell silent, his expression of loathing informing Saddler that there was no deception or embellishment in his story.

"So what am I to conclude from all of this; that one or more of Jeniah's relatives has shown up in Quinsett looking for a bit of old fashion retribution on the fiftieth anniversary of her murder?"

"That, perhaps," Huxley allowed and then after a moment's hesitation, added, "Or maybe Jeniah herself has come back to make good on her promise."

"You don't really believe that, Albert?" Saddler remarked reproachfully, but the hair on the back of his neck had risen as an intense electrical current traversed the length of his spine.

The old man merely shrugged, "Maybe I do and maybe I don't. Maybe it is part of the reason I did what I did back at the Toppers...maybe I was just plain afraid."

When it became clear that Saddler would not comment, Huxley asked, "What will you do now?"

Ray knew that he owed Huxley nothing by way of explanation and in fact, should be herding him off to a cell, but he saw little to be gained by doing that for the moment. Huxley knew the town and despite his criminal manipulation of the incident at Toppers, he was the only one to shed some light on Quinsett's dirty secret. Saddler reasoned that the old man would be a more valuable resource if he were to remain free. There would be time enough to decide how to deal with him once Quinsett's problems had been resolved. "Your revelation certainly casts everything in a new light, but I'm going to need some time to absorb what you've told me and decide what to do. If I spoke to any of the five, would they provide me with any further insight into what their fathers and grandfathers actually did that night?"

Huxley shook his head. "That isn't very likely. They are pretty stoic about the subject. I think they all regard it as a bit of an embarrassment."

"And Father Crimmon...would he have anything more to contribute above what he told this Carlson?"

"Oh, he might have a lot to say, but whether any of it would be credible is another story."

"Albert, you know full well that you would deserve it if I tossed your ass into the holding cell, but I'm not going to do that. What I am going do is enlist your help. I can't really pay you, but I can bring you on as a sort of civilian consultant."

"Anything you need, I'll do and be grateful for the chance to help," Huxley replied with complete sincerity.

The telephone rang then and Saddler snatched it up. As he listened, his eyes narrowed and his expression became ashen. Finally he said, "Very well, Mariam. I'll head out now. Pass the message on to Timmy and send for the County M.E."

Huxley fixed Saddler with an inquisitive stare and Ray explained. "A neighbor just found the body of Morley Cruthers. It appears that he'd been killed by falling out of his third story window. You said you wanted to help, so you might as well start right now by coming along for the ride."

"Christ, this is exactly the thing that I didn't want to happen," Albert groaned, and it was evident to Saddler that the full onus of guilt had just settled onto the old man's shoulders...a burden that would not be banished by meaningless platitudes...and was perhaps rightly deserved.

2

They drove to the Cruthers' home in silence, each locked in his own contemplation of what this latest incident just might imply. For his part, Saddler realized that his investigation had produced no tangible leads as to who the perpetrator might be. Years of experience had taught him that a poor investigation was characterized by reaction as opposed to initiative and this was all that his team had done thus far...react. To his own critical judgment, he and his staff were reacting like keystone cops running in circles. If Morley's death proved to be anything other than a suicide/accident, it might well signify the onset of an avalanche that could well threaten to bury his department and by extension, the town.

It took only sixty seconds or so to disabuse Saddler of the notion that Cruthers' death was anything but murder. Both he and Huxley stood in the rain, grimly gazing at the intaglio that had been branded into the dead man's forehead. The back of Morley's skull had been effectively pulverized by the impact, but the facial area was preserved. The dead man's face had been contorted into a rictus of absolute horror, while below his chin the deceased's throat had been ripped out.

"That thing on his forehead...it's the same pattern that had been burned into Ingstrom's barn," Huxley observed.

Saddler shivered with revulsion and remarked distantly, "Yes, even without the photo, I'd say they're identical. Someone's branded him to send a message."

"To you?"

"Perhaps indirectly, but I think that this is intended as warning to the other five people named in Carlson's journal. Whoever did this will try to kill them all and wants them to have prior knowledge of that fact. The brutality of this murder is meant to induce terror." Saddler elaborated, unable to drag his eyes away from the wreckage that had just recently been a human being. Huxley nodded his concurrence.

With comprehension dawning in his eyes, he suggested, "This would imply that they don't think we can stop them?"

"I'd have to agree. This murder is not only extraordinarily savage, but it also hints at a supreme confidence that borders on arrogance." He shifted his gaze to the former Sheriff. "Albert, I'm beginning to think that we may be out of our league here and I just might have to request state or federal help."

"I can predict that the selectmen aren't going to be thrilled with that thought."

Saddler waved his hand to signify his indifference. "I don't really give a damn how they feel. Instinct tells me that we've now had seven connected murders in Quinsett in less than a week. More disturbing yet is the fact that some of these murders were committed in ways that defy any rational explanation."

"Unless you throw conventional thinking out the window," Albert amended. Saddler grimaced at the notion.

High above the pair, Tim Holland leaned out of the window and called down, "Sheriff, you might want to come up and take a look. There looks to have been a hell of a struggle up here."

"We'll be right up Tim," Saddler called out and the two men proceeded to enter the house, both grateful to be out of the rain and away from the horror. As they came into the study, Saddler instructed Holland to have the other duty deputy dispatched to the scene and start placing the crime scene tape around the property.

Holland's assessment proved to be accurate. However the old man might have died, it had not been without a vicious fight. Surveying the carnage, Saddler attempted to construct a scenario of what had transpired here last night. "Whoever did this was able to locate Morley here. We can deduce that because there is no other sign of struggle anywhere else in the house. That could mean one of two things...either the killer gained entry without Cruthers knowledge, or Morley knew the murderer and let him in of his own accord."

"Cruthers had a pretty limited circle of friends; most of them on that list of ours. I'd be willing to bet that you could count the number of people who saw the inside of this room with one hand," Albert informed Saddler, who absorbed the news without remark. Huxley's observation could well be correct, but Ray was loath to rule any possibility out at this point.

"Albert, I need forensics to go over this scene with a fine tooth comb. We need a break here; a print, a drop of blood...anything. After the work is completed here, I'd like you and I to visit the people on this list and impress upon them the grave danger they may be in. Hopefully that might prompt them to be more forthcoming with any knowledge pertaining to the Jeniah Lightcrusher murder."

"I'm game and it might actually be a treat seeing these high brows squirm a bit."

Saddler then began the arduous process of organizing the crime scene investigation. He called in Art Silver and together the pair set about creating a photographic record of the study and Cruthers' final resting place. Albert and Holland methodically went through the study, dusting for prints and collecting samples of broken glass, some of which were clearly stained with blood. The County ME arrived some thirty minutes later to supervise the examination and removal of the body.

At two o'clock, Ray took a quick break to call Veronica to let her know that he would be home quite late and that she shouldn't wait for supper. He was surprised when Mrs. Quilling informed him that Ronnie had left earlier in the morning and did not give a specific time when she would return. He found the news vaguely disturbing for some reason that he did not fully grasp, but he did not have the time to give the matter much thought. Returning to his cruiser, he checked back in with Mariam, who reported that Maria Cordova had called and left him a telephone message. Saddler was reluctant to leave the Cruthers home until the preliminary examination of the scene had been finalized.

As he replaced the handset, the County ME drifted over and leaned against his car, oblivious to the rain that continued to fall unabated. "That's a nasty bit of work back there."

"No disputing that. Any thoughts as to a probably cause?"

"With a preliminary examination of the throat, I would say that was the cause. He was most likely dead before he hit the ground," the M.E. explained. "The most disturbing thing for me is that the wound was probably inflicted with the assailant bare hands. I don't need to tell you that anyone who is capable of that is one scary, sick bastard."

Saddler merely nodded. Opening his door, he stepped out into the rain and returned to the house, feeling weary and despondent. As he mounted the front steps, Ray perceived another emotion, still submerged in his sub-conscious, but growing closer to the surface with every passing moment; Ray Saddler realized with total clarity that he was afraid.

3

"Scallari," Vincent answered in an atypically curt fashion after snapping up the braying phone that sat on the scuffed night stand next to his hotel bed. There was a prolonged silence as the caller was apparently taken aback by the greeting that they had received.

After a moment, Stuart Crane ventured, "Vincent, is everything okay; you sound... harried?"

"I was just dozing and the phone startled me," Scallari lied with the practiced ease of one accustomed to lying. In truth, Scallari was anything but okay, he had spent the last twenty-four hours vacillating between going to Crane and simply leaving Quinsett and being glad to be shut of the place. Those green eyes plagued his mind's eye without surcease...their gleam of cold hatred had touched a nerve in Scallari that he had never suspected even existed.

"Then I take it you haven't heard?" Crane asked urgently.

"Haven't heard what?" Vincent retorted, having no patience for trying to extract Stuart's story bit at a time.

"Morley Cruthers was murdered last night. Someone tore his throat out and tossed him out of his third storey window. It looks like our _little nuisance_ has evolved into something more ominous...just as you suggested it might."

Scallari sat up, his feet hitting the floor with an audible crack as he lapsed into a rare profanity. "Son of a bitch! Any idea who did it?"

"I don't believe so. Ira spoke with the Sheriff, but it looks to be too soon to make a determination."

Vincent's mind reeled as he tried to absorb the news of Cruthers' death. Could the sheriff's wife actually be responsible? It seemed highly improbable, but he could not completely discount the notion. Something in her frigid gaze struck him as deeply malefic...devoid of compunction or mercy. Then there was the issue of the blood droplets on his pillow this morning and small bloody patch on the back of his scalp where it appeared that hair had been pulled out by its roots. Stuart was speaking again and Scallari dispatched the troubling recollection with a shake of his head. "I'm sorry Stuart, I didn't catch that?"

"I was asking if you thought that there was any chance that his could be a random act of violence," Crane asked and the Italian thought that he could discern a hint of trepidation in the other man's voice.

"Anything is possible, but it would be prudent to assume that it isn't and take precautions. If this has anything to do with the matter we discussed that other night, I would conclude that revenge is the motive and that none of you are safe. I'm not sure if you own a gun, but if you do, I would keep it close at hand."

The normally unflappable Crane drew a tremulous breath, conveying the extent of his disquiet. "This is madness! Even if is really had anything to do with that damnable bitch that my Grandfather killed, why would anyone wait fifty years to get even?"

"Straight revenge is not always the most rational thing, Stuart, so it's hard to qualify with common sense logic," Scallari offered.

Crane snorted in disgust. "There's one other thing...I received a call from Judith. She was livid, claiming that you threatened her?"

"We did have a chat, and I confess that I may have tried to get the bitch's goat. I'm sorry if it caused you any inconvenience. I required some information on someone who recently moved to town and thought that she would be the best source. I never realized how...angry your Ms. Ranzman is. At any rate, have you ever met the new Sheriff's wife?"

"No, I haven't" Crane replied, clearly perplexed by the question. "I know that she comes from a considerable fortune, but that's the extent of the information that I can give you. Is this who you were asking Judith about?"

"Yes."

"May I ask why?"

"All in good time, but I've got to ask you another question first...would your brother have any reason to have dealings with this woman?"

There was protracted hesitation and then Crane replied, "Cameron? Of course not. Cameron is a reclusive and doesn't have relations with anyone."

' _I think you'd be surprised old friend,'_ Scallari thought but did not say. Instead, he explained "Look, obviously there is a point to this line of questioning, but I'm going to ask that you bear with me for a short while. There are a few things that I need to check out and then we'll get together and go over what I've learned. In the mean time, take care. Avoid being completely alone if possible."

There was another extended silence as Stuart Crane attempted to gather his composure and then he rang off, saying, "Very well, I'll trust your judgment, but I hope you can get back to me before the end of the day. I'm not going to lie and tell you that Morley's death hasn't upset or frightened me?"

"You'll hear from me before the day is out," Scallari vowed and then hung up.

He was trying to decide what to do next when the phone began to ring again.

4

By three o'clock that afternoon, that pervasive fear had begun to weave its way into the psyche of the town. Word of Morley's death spread through Quinsett like virulent contagion; speculation growing wilder with each recounting of the tale. One by one, the townspeople began to see threads of an emerging pattern of violence and death that conjured up a growing sense of atavistic dread. Something had come to stalk the town...something with claws, fangs and no remorse.

A few of the more incisive old folk even mouthed the name of a fifty year old terror that they believed had been laid to rest.

Chapter Three

1

As Ray Saddler was in the process of learning that his predecessor had illegally misdirected his investigation, Veronica parked her Spyder outside of Judith Ranzman's Realty office. What she was about to do was not necessary in the strictest terms, but her sponsor assured her that taking this approach to matters would serve several purposes in the end. Ronnie would comply without thought, just as she had begun to regard the presence in her mind as _a sponsor_ and not an interloper. This term of reference, as much as anything else, signified the proximity of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's total and irreversible extinction. The final sparks of the woman who Ray had fallen in love with and subsequently married were about to be extinguished...replaced by a creature whose only similarity was entirely physical.

Drawing out her umbrella, Ronnie opened the door to the Alfa Romeo and quickly crossed the street, mounting the steps and entering the office. She presented herself to the receptionist and asked if she could speak to Judith. A moment later she was ushered into Ranzman's office.

Veronica closed the door and placed her umbrella in a wicker holder. Without even looking at the mystified Ranzman, she removed her full length leather coat and hung it on a nearby coat rack. Only then did she turn to the office's occupant, who was clearly nonplussed by the degree of presumption that Veronica's entrance suggested.

Judith leaned back in her chair, propping her chin on a fist, and gazed speculatively at the statuesque red-haired beauty standing before her. Ronnie was elegantly attired in a hunter green blouse and matching skirt that exposed a generous length of shapely thigh. The top two buttons of her blouse were open and an exquisite strand of pearls nestled in the deep valley of her cleavage. The woman exuded an elegance and style that was so discordant with the town where she had come to live.

Something in the woman's unexpected appearance lifted the black mood that had fallen over Ranzman like a funeral shroud since Scallari's visit. In truth, his visit had evoked a low-grade panic that had compelled her to dismiss her _servant_. As she had handed him the envelope with twenty five thousand dollars cash and sent him on his way there was no mistaking the gleam of relief shinning in his eyes. As she had marched around her drearily empty mansion, Judith had fumed and vowed that she would extract some measure of revenge on Stuart Crane for unleashing that crude imbecile upon her.

For her part, Ronnie was aware of the intense, rapacious gaze that drank her in from head to toe and was privately delighted by Ranzman's overt hunger...a hunger that she would exploit to ensnare Judith.

"I would ask that you make yourself comfortable, but since you already have, I'll just ask why you're here," Ranzman remarked. "I hope that there's no problem with the house."

Veronica crossed the room in three strides and placing her hands on Judith's desk leaned forward, affording the woman a clear view of her breasts. She offered the beguiled Ranzman a blindingly brilliant smile. "I don't give a fuck about the house...it's a dump, but I won't need it for much longer."

Now Ranzman's smile surfaced...a rarity inspired by the other woman's coarse and frank manner. "Then... what do you want?"

Veronica came around the desk and sat next to Ranzman, positioning herself in such a way so that their calves touched. She could feel Judith stiffen slightly, but she made no attempt to move away. Ronnie's gaze never left Judith's face. The other woman fielded the challenge cleanly, sensing that there was a clear invitation being extended in that brazen gaze. "What I want is the name of the man who was here asking questions about me. I hate being at the disadvantage. I also want to know precisely why he's interested in me and who sent him."

Judith passed the tip of her tongue over her lips, trying to decipher the other woman's intention and evaluate how to respond. The electric sensation of that firm calve against hers was making it extraordinarily difficult to concentrate. At last, she challenged "Why should I tell you any of this?"

With the speed of a striking cobra, Veronica reached out and took hold of Judith's wrist. Immediately, Judith's back arched and her head snapped back against her chair as an immensely powerful presence invaded her mind. Seemingly paralyzed and powerless to resist, Judith was helpless as the foreign presence rummaged through her thoughts in search of the leveraging memories that would reveal Ranzman's vulnerability. The two women remained locked in this state of total empathy for several moments and then the sensation of invasion abruptly vanished. Veronica's smile beamed wickedly. She gently guided Ranzman's hand to the inside of her left thigh. A stunned Ranzman regarded her visitor with incredulity, not even aware that she had begun to lightly scratch the silky flesh of Ronnie's inner thigh with her manicured nails. "I think that we both know that I could simply take the information that I need from your mind, though I doubt that you'd find the process pleasant."

Veronica leaned forward until her lips were only inches from Ranzman left ear and whispered, "If you tell me willingly, I'll let you hurt me."

Drawing her head back, a nonplussed Ranzman fixed Saddler-Ashcott with an appraising gaze and stammered "What do you...mean?"

"Don't try to play ingénue, Judith. It doesn't suit you. I'll let you take me to the place you like to go...and hurt me there."

With dawning comprehension came erupting lust. Judith's breath came in shallow, rapid gasps and her nipples became erect and electric, standing out in sharp relief against the thin material of her blouse. She was only peripherally aware that her hand had constricted into a claw and was excoriating the firm muscle of Veronica's thigh, leaving deep red crescents in the flesh. If the other woman found this painful, she gave no outward indication.

"His name is Vincent Scallari and he's nothing but a commons hoodlum," Ranzman began breathlessly, taking further liberties up the length of Veronica's thigh. "Stuart Crane uses him to perform the dirty little tasks that the officious little prick finds too distasteful to do himself."

"Why is he here now and why would he be interested in me?"

Judith's roaming fingers disappeared under the hem line of Ronnie's parted skirt, her nails gently exploring the topography of the other woman's exquisite thigh. "I'm a member of an informal group of local business people and Crane is the figurative leader of that group. Recently, there has been a possible threat leveled against the group and Scallari was brought in to investigate."

"What sort of threat?" Veronica demanded sharply, her eyes narrowing.

"Nonsense really, but the group thought that it could lead to potential blackmail or some such bullshit. Over my objection, they elected to bring in this Neanderthal. Yesterday, he came in to ask about you. I told him your name and that you were the Sheriff's wife. He didn't mention why he wanted to know."

Veronica pursed her lips in contemplation of what she had just uncovered. It was apparent that somehow Scallari had seen her with Crane. That of itself meant nothing, but Jeniah need only recall the way her first life had ended to know that complacency could prove fatal. She would not commit the same error this time. Scallari was a loose end that would be dealt with quickly and brutally. She returned her gaze to Ranzman and unleashed her dazzling smile again. Firmly removing Judith's hand from her thigh, she stood. "Our deal is closed. You've given me what I want. Tomorrow night, we will meet and I'll deliver your compensation...myself at your mercy for the evening. Let's set eight o'clock as a time for our little assignation, shall we? That will give you the whole night to show me just how you can bend me to your will."

Judith stood and gazed up at Ashcott-Saddler, who was a full six inches taller. The fire of lunacy radiated from Ranzman's eyes as she abruptly plunged her right hand into Veronica's red mane and tugged the other woman's head back, exposing the long expanse of her neck. With her other hand, she pulled back the left lapel of Ronnie's blouse and clamp her mouth down on the firm flesh of the other woman's left breast. In response, Ronnie shuddered and placing her left hand on the nape of Ranzman's neck, pulled the other woman into a tight embrace. They remained in this position for several moments until Judith's bite segued into gentle kisses and flicking licks of her skilled tongue. Still grinning her lunatic's grin, she took a backward step and examined her handy work...a crescent of teeth marks that stood out in angry, sharp relief like a brand high on the swell of Veronica's breast.

"Very good, Judith, I can see that you have a talent for this sort of thing."

"Oh, but you can't imagine. Tomorrow night I intend to break you of every last bit of that insufferable arrogance, to make you grovel and beg," she vowed, still relishing the sensation of the other woman breast in her mouth...intoxicated by its texture and taste.

Veronica leaned forward and tenderly kissed Ranzman on the mouth and then moved away. "I'm counting on it."

Collecting her coat and umbrella, she paused at the door with a hand on the handle. "I do believe that you and I are destined to become good friends, Judith. You and I have shared our secrets today and established a bond that must never be breeched. I can assure you that Scallari will never be a threat to either one of us again. As for the others, especially Stuart Crane, perhaps you will have occasion to live out your darkest fantasies."

With this, she left an enthralled Ranzman to ponder the rather ambiguous implications of what she had just been told. A long disused part of her conscience attempted to admonition her against succumbing to the dark temptation that she had just been offered, but moral bankruptcy allowed her to silence the voice in an instant. She virtually collapsed back into her chair, already plotting the pain and degradation that she would mete out to the exquisite jewel that had just fallen into her life.

Veronica returned to the Spyder and sat behind the wheel for several moments, attempting to regain her composure. Even Jeniah was astounded by the depth of depravity that lurked just beneath the erudite exterior of Judith Ranzman's professional facade, whose closet was virtually brimming with skeletons. It occurred to her that his woman might have proven to be a superior instrument for her resurrection and she might reconsider actually killing her. It might be more beneficial to augment and unleash the dark side of her natural before throwing her to the wolves as diversion in the days just prior to Lamas. As she started the car and drove to Cameron Crane's squalid shack, Jeniah concluded that while Ranzman's psychotic zeal would be unexpected boon, she lacked the one thing that made Veronica so invaluable...children.

2

The final effacement of the woman known as Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was a play acted out over three masterfully directed acts. Her eviction from the chambers of the own mind was effected with such subtly, that Ronnie did not even notice until the final two acts and even then, she did not regard her spiritual extirpation as a cause for great concern. The entity that would supplant Veronica would serve Jeniah's will with a zeal and artistry that even meticulous Jeniah could not fully have anticipated. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler would pass out of existence without so much as a tear to mark her passing.

3

The rasp of the straight razor over stubble and flesh was unusually pronounced in the silence of Cameron Crane's kitchen; as was the creak of the old wooden chair as Veronica gently undulated her hips over Cameron's bare upper thighs. She was naked, except for a pair of gold silk panties. Cameron was quite naked and feeling utterly overwhelmed by his visitor's fragrance, her warmth and consuming femininity. The intoxicating sensation of silk and heat was making it hard for him to breathe much less think as she delicately and expertly guided the razor over the contours of his face. The subtle movement of her hips had turned him to throbbing stone, causing him to fear that he would be unable to endure much more of this sweet torture and explode embarrassingly. He also wondered if she would be delighted if he did precisely that.

As had been the case the previous day, Veronica had simply sailed into his house like an invading army, completely breaking down his resistance in a dervish of irresistible sexuality and beguiling charm. She carried four bags of newly acquired clothing, which she set down by the door, and placing her hands on her hips, regarded Cameron with an expression of theatrical disapproval. "I see you haven't lost the stubble. Well, I guess that I'm just going to have to take matters into my own hands."

With this, she moved around the room drawing blinds, while promising, "I guarantee that you will like it."

She pointed back at the collection of bags as she advanced on the speechless Crane. "That, incidentally, is your new wardrobe, or a least the start of one."

"I don't understand why you're doing this," Cameron stammered, but Veronica merely placed a long index finger on his lips and whispered "In time, you will...all in good time."

With this, she had pushed him to arms length and without ever breaking her gaze, slowly, sensually removed his clothing. He wanted to push her away...wanted to tell her that this was all fundamentally wrong, but denial, isolation and her intense beauty quelled any thought of resistance. His senses simply overwhelmed his reason and as she dropped to her knees to free him from his pants, his breath came in shallow rasps. Standing, she gave his flaccid penis a lingering caress and a groan escaped his lips, causing her to utter a throaty laughter fraught with hunger. Looking around the kitchen, she found a wooden chair which she pushed over to the sink. She then filled the basin with warm water, withdrew a hand towel from the cupboard and then went in search of a razor and shaving cream, while Cameron could only look on with a delirious mixture of consternation and rising heat.

Returning with the straight razor and cream, she placed these on the counter near the sink, and then guided Cameron into the chair, while he gazed at her like a lamb being led to slaughter. With this, she slowly removed her blouse and slacks and then kicked off her shoes. His eyes were drawn to the prominent bite mark on her left breast and when she noticed his scrutiny, she merely laughed and remarked flippantly, "There are those who like it rough, dear." Laying the flat of her palms on the satin of her panties, she added "I think I'll keep these on. I wouldn't want to be distracted and cut that beautiful face."

As she straddled him and pushed her full breasts against his chest, Cameron was again assailed by a sense of intrinsic _wrongness_ , but like his rising penis, he felt as though his limbs had become inured and he was powerless to offer even cursory resistance.

When the last of his stubble had been removed, Ronnie arched her back and considered her effort. With a voice made husky with desire, she intoned, "You have no idea what a beautiful man you are, but I intend to show you."

She stood and lithely removed her panties, then reached down and ushered Cameron to his feet by grasping his erect member. The exigent throb beneath her palm betrayed the extent of his need and she understood that he could not hold back for much longer. She guided him to the center of his small living room and brusquely pushed him onto his back on the faded area rug. Purring in anticipation, she lowered herself onto him, enveloping his length in one fluid movement that evoked a gasp of pleasure from both. Cameron's eyes rolled back in their sockets and his back arched and he surrendered to her mastery with a guttural groan and an interminable explosion. Through the roar of blood in his temples, he could hear her laugh in delight and when the tremors of excruciating pleasure finally subsided, he mumbled, "I'm sorry, it's just that I..."

She silenced him by pressing her right breast into his face. "Don't fret, my love, I have no intention of letting you off that easy. You'll do better each time."

And as she promised...he did, his erection abating not a whit as her hips moved over him like liquid mercury. To his own amazement, he came repeatedly, each successive eruption more intense that the last. Eventually, he began to match her movement in perfect syncopation and she too exploded in a full body contraction that stunned Cameron in its intensity and unbridled beauty. Her shrill cry unleashed a long dormant passion in the Crane that he believed had long since perished. Rolling her onto her back, he began to take her with long, powerful thrusts each of which elicited a gasp from the exotic beauty and caused her breasts to wobble on her chest. She implored him onward by raking her nails down the length of his spine and scoring the flesh of his muscular butt. When she came it was in a tattoo of pounding feet and shrill cries that filled the confines of his neglected house as it had never been filled before.

When at last their lust had been sated, Veronica led him by his spent member to the bedroom, where she lavished him kisses from head to toe, before taking him in her mouth and raising him to one final, incredible eruption when he would have thought that none was possible. Even as his heart began to settle back into a normal rhythm and he marveled at what he had denied himself all these years, Cameron spiraled down into sleep.

Sometime later, they lay together; he with his arms around her shoulder and she with her long leg draped over his and her left breast pushed into his side. Even as they snuggled, luxuriating in post-coital dreaminess, her hand did not stray from his member, which she stroked lazily. Somehow, Crane mustered enough clear-headedness to reiterate his previous question. "Why are you doing this? Why would you be attracted to someone who's really nothing more than a derelict?"

Ronnie propped herself up on one elbow and regarded him closely, her eyes searching his face with an incisiveness that made him want to squirm. For a moment, he thought that she would just offer a perfunctory dismissal, but then she said softly, "All of my life, I've managed to have things that I wanted...partly because of my beauty, partly because of my father's money, partly because of my father's indulgence, but mostly because of my tenacious determination."

He watched her silently, ever cognizant of the gliding fingers that relentlessly worked him. Her green eyes flashed. "Don't think that I'm telling you this as though asking you to pity the poor little rich girl who always gets what she wants. When I saw that miserable old bastard abusing you in that store...saw that long suffering grace, it affected me in ways that I still don't understand and I knew that I wanted you."

"To save me?" he intoned, though his voice carried no hint of accusation or resentment.

She shook her head vigorously. "Not precisely. When I saw you, I was struck by a poignant sense of inner beauty and I discerned instinctively that you were something rare and special; a mystery that I was determined to unravel."

He contemplated this for a moment, trying to sense some deception or mockery, and divining none, pointed out, "You have children, a husband who strikes me as a good, sound man. What good can come of this?"

"You," she began rather cryptically. "You are the good that will come of this. I have the strength and will to banish your demons and raise you up like a diamond encased in coal. Every one has some one thing that they secretly cherish and you can be that one thing for me. I'll have you when I want and no one need know." She smiled a predacious grin. "I think we both know that if I want you there really isn't much that can stop me from having you...least of all, you."

Cameron had no idea how to respond, but discerned the ultimate truth in her assertion that he would be powerless to resist her. The circumstance in which he now found himself was incontrovertible truth of that. She noticed the lingering troubled expression that darkened his face and she bent forward, drawing him into a long, passionate kiss. "This is something that you needn't worry about. I'll manage us just fine, dear." Her natural levity dissipated and she inquired gravely, "Cameron, do you need money? Forget about pride and be perfectly honest."

Crane studied the perfection of her face for several moments, and could detect only genuine concern. With no small amount of regret, he gently removed her hand from his semi-erect member and climbed off of the bed. Veronica propped herself up on her left arm, her gaze tracking the enigmatic man with intense fascination as he opened the closet door, bent down and removed a brown banker's box. From over his shoulder, Ronnie saw that there were at least three other such boxes in the closet. He carried this over to the bed and placed it before her. His gaze found hers and without saying a word, he removed the top.

Veronica gasped in incredulity.

Each box was filled with stacks of ten and twenty dollar bills. "My God, Cameron. How much is in here?"

Crane shrugged indifferently. "I really don't know?"

"And those other boxes...are they filled like this," Ronnie asked, guessing that this crude stockpile of cash could easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cameron nodded in the affirmative.

"Do you have any concept of how dangerous this is; having this kind of loose money simply lying around?" she demanded reproachfully, boggled by the flagrant disregard for both the wealth and his own security. "There is no limit to the number of people who, if they got wind of this, would gladly kill you to get it. Don't you see that?"

Crane frowned. "To be candid, I've never given it any thought."

Veronica shook her head. "Where did all of this come from?"

"Ten percent of all after tax profits from Crane ventures come to me," he said with a mirthless grin. "I'm sure that Stuart would like to break the trust agreement, but much to his chagrin, it's inviolable. Once a month, money is deposited in a bank account. I withdraw it all and put it here. I give some to the local church and send a lot to various charities around the country. The rest just sits here and I take the small amount required to meet my needs which as you can see are pretty Spartan."

Ronnie's eyes again shifted to the money and though much of her spirit had been effaced by Jeniah's invasion, there was enough of the host's sensibilities to balk at the alien mentality this disregard symbolized. "Cameron, how did you become like this? What kind of twists and traumas compelled you to live like this...to eschew everything that most people hold sacred...yearn to accrue?"

Cameron inhaled, attempting to gauge his capacity to give voice to the underlying motivations and emotions that comprised the person that he had become. Was he condign to the effort or would his expression of the dark concepts that haunted his soul, only serve as an affirmation of this innate instability...the chronicles of a lunatic? She was watching him with those ethereal green eyes and he knew that he could not deny her. It was as though she had found a conduit into his very essence and he could not help but divulge secrets that even he did not fully understand.

"Sometime, I'm a mystery even to myself. That sounds rather melodramatic, but it's nonetheless true. There are other times...and I don't know if these are moments of lucidity or neurosis...when everything that I have become makes perfect sense as though any other perspective or way of living is inconceivable."

With a sudden fluid thrust of one long leg, Ronnie kicked that box of loose bills to the floor. They spilled over the worn rub in a loose fan. She gazed up a Crane, her expression impassioned and defiant, and then taking him by the penis, tugged him down onto the bed beside her so that they were facing each other and resumed her expert tantalization. "Tell me everything."

There was an imploring quality to her tone that he was powerless to deny and so even as his cock grew rigid under her gentle but insistent stroking, he began to recount the tale of how he had evolved to his present state.

"I was nineteen when I first remember deciding that I had no intention of emulating my Grandfather, Mordecai. He was a strong, driven man who had a penchant for making things work by force of will alone. Nor did I wish to be like Stuart who was also a driven ambitious person, even as a boy. Unlike my grandfather and father, Stuart seemed to be driven by a consuming, dark need to wield power over other people's lives as though he relished the notion of having people in subservient positions. If you asked me, I couldn't say with any degree of accuracy that Stuart enjoys being wealthy any more that I do."

"Then you'd say that he craves the status and sense of power that his position conveys more than the actual trappings of wealth?" Veronica asked softly.

Cameron nodded. "It's always been my opinion that he was drawn more to the power than the money. We've never actually been close, so it's hard for me to relate to his view of the world. At any rate, despite the money and the accrual of power, the Crane's were always governed by a very narrow sense of the world. Their lives were here, their fortunes were amassed here and that's all that they really cared about."

"But you were different?" she asked, her tone and expression neutral.

"Yes," he responded simply. "It was the last year of the decade of revolution and protests raged across the country. The war in Viet Nam galvanized and polarized people, but I watched it as though it was a surreal drama being played out in another world. Listening to the cacophony of argument and seeing the nightly accounts on television, both from oversees and here at home, I just couldn't come to any real conclusion about what was happening over there. I realized that I had to go and see on my own as though there was some great and fundamental truth waiting to be uncovered there. The family thought that I'd lost my mind. From their perspective, it was apparent that neither Stuart nor I was going to be drafted, something for which we should be grateful...the privileges of money and influence I guess you'd call it. Anyway, under a storm of protest, I went up to the Draft office in Seattle and signed up. A few months later, I found myself in Viet Nam."

"And did you find this great and wondrous epiphany that you'd been looking for?" she asked flatly and now Cameron thought he could discern just a hint of disdain.

"Yes, I did...and I suppose you could say that it undid me and set me down the road to where you first found me at Hogan's market. The unrelenting horror and stupidity of the war shattered every illusion about the meaning and value of the life that we were living back in Quinsett, U.S.A.; the barbaric and senseless slaughter that really served no comprehensible purpose divested me of every foolish notion I'd never possessed. In a moment of crystalline clarity illuminated by innocent blood and suffering, I saw that nearly everything that we held sacred was founded on lies. Somehow, we accepted the foolish idea that killing was noble and honorable if the goal was _just_. The blind acceptance of that kind of institutionalized madness is an indictment against our humanity. I should never have lived because I was ill-equipped to survive there and yet I did, while all around me, soldiers who were much better suited died on a daily basis. I witnessed the suffering and the misery of the people who lived there and understood that, irrespective of the outcome, the war would do little to change their lot."

He sighed and ran his fingers through his thick hair, not surprised to find that they came away perspiration-soaked. He had lived fourteen years without once ever attempting to give coherent voice to his thoughts, but was still surprised by how enervating the effort was. Veronica sat up and pulled him against her, sensing how frangible he was. Even without Jeniah's puissance, she suspected that she could crush him with her bare hands and legs and he would be powerless to resist. She instead, began to caress his bare shoulder. In a tone that was gentle, yet pitying, she observed. "Cameron, war is an engrained part of the human psyche and no amount of philosophy will ever purge it. Injustice is pervasive, but that's not an excuse to give up on life."

"I understand what you're saying and I really did make an effort to assimilate back into a normal life, but it's like a magic trick...once you see how it works, you can't _unsee_ that knowledge. No matter how desperately you might want to. They all wanted me to, but I couldn't take up the threads of the good old American dream. I just wasn't capable of such a flagrant act of self-delusion."

"I'm not sure I understand," she interjected, her brow furrowing in perplexity.

"Everything that we base our lives on in this country, in our culture, is all a carefully scripted myth. We've become a society of super consumers who gobble up more that 40 percent of the world's resources when we are only five percent of the global population...all of this while two thirds of the world is malnourished by any standards of human decency. Our decadence and greed have driven entire species into extinction and it shows no sign of abating. I witnessed much of this first hand and I could not go back to pretending that this was acceptable...to turning a blind eye to the gross injustice and the destructive mythology that our society represents."

"And this is a better alternative?" she demanded, making a sweeping gesture about the room with her long left arm, her voice passionate with a heat that might have been consternation.

"I suppose it isn't," Cameron declared with a shrug. "But at least it's not hypocritical and contrived. I don't really expect you to understand any of this."

"Because I'm a rich girl that comes from privilege...is that why?" she challenged, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"No, not at all. The way I think and have chosen to live my life stems from my inability to adjust to what I've learned and seen," he said mildly. "I've admitted that I was shaken and affected by my time overseas. I've never been able to right myself. If anything, I've gotten worse over the years. That's the part that I don't expect some one with your confidence, strength and self-assurance to understand. Veronica, I don't really know if I'm capable of changing...of conforming to what everyone thinks that I should be."

Veronica dropped her gaze, but the rigidity had left her posture and Crane saw that his explanation had placated her anger. When she raised her head, her expression had softened dramatically. "Cameron, I don't want to change you. When I first set eyes on you at the market, I sensed your innocence and inner beauty. It's why I'm here with you now. Perhaps it's my maternal instinct emerging, but I knew that I had to protect and shelter you from the humiliation and ridicule that you've endured. That's why I'm asking you to change just enough to put an end to that kind of treatment. Wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt won't impinge on your view of the world or diminish your capacity to empathize with its suffering. Are you willing to do that much? If you are, I'll never ask you for anything else."

Cameron nodded and the blazing smile dawned on her face again. She took hold of his both shoulders and pulled him down onto the bed again, gracefully swinging her right leg over his hips as she did. "Now, there's another reason that I'm here and I do believe that you're quite ready to indulge me again."

For the next hour, she made love to him in a slow, tender fashion that made Cameron feel as though he had been submerged in a warm sea of delicate pleasure and sensation. As she caressed his face and bestowed gentle kisses on his brow, it became evident to him that she was a force that he did not have the faculty to resist and that she had the power to deconstruct him and recreate him in any image that she saw fit. Given time and her desire, he would be scarcely recognizable to himself. Where once this notion would have terrified Cameron, it now aroused only a vague anxiety.

Later, as she moved about his apartment after showering, she gathered up her hastily discarded clothes, he watched her, trying to convince himself that his was all not merely a particularly lucid dream.

"I'm heading back to LA on business tomorrow, but I'll be back on Wednesday night." She stopped and regarded him with eyes that twinkled with mirth as she shrugged on her blouse. "I hope that I've satisfied your appetite until next Thursday. If not, I'm afraid that you'll have to suffer exquisitely until then. I'm certain that I'll find a way to make it up to you."

"I'm sure you will," he murmured softly and grinned. Her mischievous grin was infectious and it occurred to him that he had never met a woman who seemed so alive, so utterly vital. She came and knelt down next to his chair, placing her palm alongside his face. "Actually, it may take you that long to recuperate. Seriously, I want you to think about what I've said; I'll make no demands on you other than to ask that you take care of yourself. You and I are going to be special friends, Cameron."

She inclined her head forward and gave him a lingering kiss. Then, she crossed to the door, where she paused and said, "I'll be back next week. I'd stay longer but I've a loose end to tie before I go."

With this, she was gone...leaving such a pervasive vacuum in the tiny house that Cameron feared he would be unable to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and let his head drop back against the chair. As his mind's eye played out the recollection of what just transpired, the utter desolation of Cameron's adult life settled onto his chest like a mill stone. When he rejected what he perceived as the American illusion, it now occurred to him that he also eschewed life itself. Although, their every action was underscore by an innate sense of wrongness, Cameron vowed that he would allow her to help him make up for those lost years...to mold him like clay.

It did not occur to him until much later that Jeniah Lightcrusher had not crossed his mind once during that long and surreal afternoon.

4

As the telephone continued to ring for several seconds, Vincent merely sat on the edge of the bed, warily staring at the device as though it had the capacity to strike him dead in the beat of a heart. The ringing persisted and finally, he reluctantly snatched it up. "Hello?"

"I presume that I'm speaking to Vincent Scallari?" the caller inquired in a voice that was distinctly female...her tone couched with a sardonic mirth.

"I'm afraid you have me at a bit of a disadvantage," he replied and managed to convey the impression of calmness and polite confusion while his heart began to gallop. Vincent knew precisely who the caller was and he could even guess at the motive behind her call.

"Actually, I was the one at a disadvantage, but since we're both now on equal footing, why don't we both agree to dispense with the pretense," Veronica suggested and now the mirth had vanished from her voice, replaced by an icy and unmistakable loathing.

Whatever the intention of this call, it was not to establish a reasonable dialogue.

"All right, Mrs. Saddler, why don't we do just that," Scallari concurred, dropping his own air of exaggerated politeness. "Just what is it that you want...with me and the group?"

"Why, an exchange of mutually beneficial information. You have questions about me and I have questions about you. I'm proposing that we get together and sate our curiosity. I'm most interested in discovering precisely why Stuart Crane's hoodlum business associate is sniffing after me like a hound? Obviously, you have concerns of your own."

"Listen lady, I don't know what game you're playing with Stuart's brother, but I warn you that it's a very perilous one."

An indulgent laughter filled Vincent's ear, rife with a genuine amusement that Scallari could not decipher. Despite his earlier disquiet, he found himself becoming annoyed. "If there's a joke in any of this, I'm afraid that the humor is lost on me."

"Of course it would be," Veronica retorted sharply. "Stuart has brought you to town because he suspects that someone is, what...blackmailing his little group? Somehow, your convoluted path has led you to me and my involvement with his brother. So, do you expect that I intend to extort money from your patron?"

"It's evolved a little beyond extortion, but being a sheriff's wife, I'd bet you already know that," Vincent countered. Even as he engaged in this bizarre conversation, he thought, _'Ranzman, you psychotic bitch, you actually spilled the whole story.'_ With utter incredulity, he saw that he had become entangled in a situation that grew more complex as each new facet was revealed and wondered with no small degree of apprehension, if he could still extricate himself unscathed.

"Ah poor, unfortunate Morley Cruthers," Ronnie remarked in a voice devoid of compassion. "I must say that it's a fairly liberal progression to infer that I killed the old man simply because I enjoy fucking Cameron Crane."

"So you're telling me that this is what you're all about...a married woman screwing around with a misfit to cope with the boredom of small town life?" Scallari demanded harshly, hoping to provoke a reaction.

"Vincent, I predict that you're going to come to regret that boorish witticism." Veronica intoned with deadly calm. "Now, you and I are going to meet face to face and I will answer all of your questions."

"Exactly why would I want to do that?"

"My instinct tells me that you're a curious fellow. I doubt that Stuart sanctioned your surveillance mission of his own brother. You wanted to unravel the mystery behind my involvement with Cameron and so you shall." After a moment hesitation, she added, "Also, if you don't come, by tomorrow morning, they'll find Stuart Crane dead, with his cock and balls stuffed down his throat. I'd bet that you'd construe that to be a personal failure."

Vincent inhaled sharply knowing that her assessment of his personal sense of honor was uncannily accurate. He had made a promise to Stuart Crane...a forged link of honor that he was loath to break. Ignoring the admonition that kept screaming in his mind's ear, he asked, "So where do we meet and when?"

Veronica Ashcott-Saddler emitted a satisfied chuckle. "The Eternal Lights Cemetery on Winder road. I trust that you know where it's located?"

"I do," Scallari allowed with a frown. Her choice of location did not bode well for an amicable little exchange of information and his eyes crept automatically to the side table and the Smith and Wesson that patiently awaited his summons.

"I will allow you thirty minutes to find me. The police cordon tape should be easy enough to spot and that's where I'll be waiting."

"You're responsible for the mayhem here over the last week," Scallari offered this more as a statement than a question, but Veronica was deliberately nebulous in her response.

"Perhaps or perhaps not...though you'll be in a better position to judge my complicity in thirty minutes or so."

"I'll be there," Scallari confirmed, though he knew that it would take no small exertion of will to subjugate his fear.

"I knew you'd accept," she remarked, clearly delighted by the prospect of their impending meeting. "Just one last thing to consider...should you decide to call Stuart Crane, I'll know and he'll meet the grisly end I described earlier. If you don't come alone, I'll also know and the officious little bastard will meet a nasty end. Do you doubt me, Vincent?"

"Not for a moment," Scallari remarked gravely.

"Then you and I have a date with destiny in just thirty minutes." With this grandiose declaration, the thing that was once Veronica Ashcott-Saddler rang off and the line went dead. Scallari regarded the receiver for several seconds and then replaced it in the cradle.

A certain mantle of fatalism descended upon the one-time enforcer as he prepared to leave his hotel room for what his mind informed him would be the last time. He had no illusion that this encounter was destined to end in violence and very probably death, but he went about his preparation with the unflinching resolve of a man for whom both probabilities had become constant companions. He quickly checked his gun and then slid it into the ankle holster. He surveyed the room and was about to leave, when a final thought prompted him to seek out the complimentary pen and stationary.

He tore out a single sheet and wrote the woman's name in large block letters: VERONICA ASHCOTT-SADDLER.

He then neatly folded the sheet and slid it under his pillow. If he did not return from this macabre meeting, the sheet would serve as a decidedly obscure clue to the identity of his murderer...one which her husband could not ignore.

Outside the steady rain had escalated into a torrential down pour, forcing Scallari to sprint to his car and still he was thoroughly soaked by the time that he fumbled with his keys and managed to get the door open. He sat for a moment, trying to gather his composure, still mystified as to why this particular woman evoked such terror in his hardened soul.

"Because she isn't just an ordinary woman, and I think you know it," he said, startling himself. That was ludicrous of course...he knew no such thing, but logic did nothing to attenuate the efficacy of the image and he quickly started the car and pulled out into the rain-soaked street before he lost his nerve.

The late afternoon streets were surprisingly deserted and as Vincent pulled his sedan onto Gower Street, which eventually played out to Winder Road, he was struck by how dark the day had grown. True the sky was enshrined by lumbering black clouds and the heavy rain dramatically reduced visibility, but the pervasive darkness was deeper than either of these two factors should have warranted.

He crested a hill and there lay the Eternal Lights Cemetery sprawled out along the left side of the road. He slowed the car and tried to get his bearing on the general layout of the ground. Scallari saw that the site was delineated by a wrought iron fence, the gate of which appeared to be closed, but as he pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road, he noticed that the gate had been slightly ajar. The chain hung down in two broken ribbons, informing Vincent that she was already here.

' _You don't want to go in there, Vince,'_ his internal Geiger counter insisted. _'Turn around and go back into town. Tell the cops what you know or hell, just leave, but do not go in there.'_ This instinct had never led him astray, not once in twenty years of living on the outer fringes of the law, but for the first time, he elected to ignore the voice.

Just ahead on the right, he noticed a narrow side road leading into the trees. A small green car was pulled into the entrance, leaving him just enough room to squeeze his sedan by. He cautiously picked his way past the other vehicle, which he noted was her Alfa Romeo and pulled as far down the road as he dared. The incessant rain had turned the dirt track into a mire, but he estimated that he had driven in far enough not to be noticed by casual scrutiny from the road. Even the heavy rain was a double blessing of sorts. If he did manage to emerge on the either side or whatever was to follow, the rain would efface his tracks and the trees would offer enough concealment that his vehicle would not be seen.

Drawing a quivering breath, Vincent Scallari opened the door and stepped out into the deluge, squinting against the driving rain. Water splashed over the top of his leather shoes and he cursed as he picked his way back toward Winder road. He was nearly out of the trees when a car slowed directly in front of the Alfa Romeo, causing him to duck off into the trees on the north side of the dirt tract. Even through the crisscross of branches, Scallari could see that he was looking a police cruiser. He remained frozen in place for perhaps thirty seconds, thinking that the cruiser was going to pull over and put an end to this deadly charade, but then it accelerated and headed north.

Vincent shook his head in exasperation, wiped water out of his eyes and then made his way over to the other car. Cupping his hands on either side of his face, he peered through the passenger side window. A leather purse sat on the passenger seat, its presence caused his anxiety to abate...this everyday accessory drew Veronica Ashcott-Saddler back into the world of the ordinary. It was quite possible that this woman was crazy, even dangerously demented, but she was a woman nonetheless.

Feeling somewhat reassured, he ran across the road and slipped through the gateway, closing it back behind him. He correctly deduced that Winder road was not all that long and the cruiser would be making its return trip soon enough. If the vehicle was still there when it did, Vincent surmised that the deputy might just be inclined to take a closer look. Scallari was determined to have his business concluded and be back in his hotel room well before that happened.

As quickly as he dared, Vincent ventured deeper into the graveyard, squinting against the rain and feeling a deep chill sink into his flesh as his clothes became sodden. Again, he was struck by the depth of the darkness that had descended over the town during the course of the afternoon. Bending down, he retrieved his hand gun from its ankle holster and shoved it into his jacket pocket, comforted by its reassuring weight against his side.

He became aware of a melodic humming and stopped to listen, his head inclined to one side. After a moment, he discerned that his first impression had been correct. He could actually hear someone humming in a decidedly female voice...the gentle lilting sound drifted over the rise just to the north of where he stood. He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and clutched the butt of the Smith and Wesson in fingers that felt wooden and unresponsive. Drawing a tremulous breath, Vincent Scallari crested the slope and peered down into the depression that made up the Pauper's corner of the Eternal Lights Cemetery.

A solitary figure was standing near the fence, staring down fixedly into a cordon-delineated grave. From his perspective, Scallari saw that this was the same statuesque red-head who had visited Cameron Crane.

"So you've come," she said suddenly without looking up, causing Vincent to take a few stumbling steps in retreat. "I never doubted that you would. Come down, join me and show your respects."

Still clutching his gun, he started down the slope as the woman turned to face him. Even in the rain and gloom, Vincent was struck by the full weight of her immense beauty. As he registered the cruel angle of her cheekbones and the sardonic twist of her lips, Scallari was assailed by an unmanning doubt that was inversely proportional to the confidence that Veronica seemed to exude. She seemed cognizant of this disquiet and offered, "You may draw the gun if you'd like...if it sets your mind at ease."

Scallari suppressed the urge only by a marshaling every last bit of restraint along with enough bravado to rasp, "All right lady, you wanted me here and I've come. What is this all about?"

The woman's smile broadened as Vincent became cognizant of a small but dread-inspiring oddity...the torrential rain appeared to find no purchase her skin. While he was soaked to the skin, Veronica seemed untouched by the downpour. Small droplets glistened in her mane like rubies, but she was otherwise desert dry.

"No Vincent, don't disappoint me...you know precisely what this is about...or at least, the part of it that concerns you and your patron," she intoned with a broad and deceptively disarming grin. Scallari understood just how dangerous it would be to succumb to the charm of this creature's ingenuous smile.

"You want him dead."

"Along with all of the others," she admitted flatly, the admission prompting Vincent to draw his weapon and level it at the woman.

"You're not Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, are you?"

"A very astute observation, Vincent. I'm afraid that Veronica doesn't live here anymore. She's been what could best be described as evicted. Though he's reluctant to admit it, your patron knows who I am...or will before he dies...just as his brother knows who I am, but is too bedazzled to see it at the moment." Reaching into the pocket of her hunter green leather coat, she withdrew a small object and held it forth for Scallari's consideration. It looked like a crudely fashioned figure made of either clay or some such material.

Seeing it, Vincent Scallari began to laugh. "You really are crazy."

Veronica also uttered an amused chuckle. "I'm glad to see that this situation strikes you as amusing. Perhaps you'll also be entertained to know that there are two salient forces governing our little encounter here today. Only one of us is going to leave this wretched little graveyard alive and that someone is going to be me."

"It seems to me that I'm the one holding the gun and you're holding a lump of clay." Scallari noted, though he did not feel that confidence that his tone attempted to convey.

"True," she allowed simply and then reached into her other pocket and withdrew something that appeared to be a knife not much larger than an ordinary kitchen paring knife. The blade was perhaps no longer than four inches, but even in the gloom, Scallari could see that it had been honed to a lethal edge. "Have you ever heard of imitative magic, Vincent?"

"You mean like voodoo dolls and other shit?" he snorted contemptuously.

"Voodoo is a specific school of magic. Imitative magic is a kind of magic practiced by every school...the concept being that the pain inflicted on the likeness is also suffered by the person whom that likeness represents," she explained patiently. Scallari's gaze shifted from the clay to the deadly blade which she rolled lithely between her fingers and then to the woman's green eyes which were as frigid as a winter's night.

"Of course, to be effective the image must have some personal connection to the victim...nail clippings...or hair," She concluded significantly.

He recalled his surprise and dismay earlier in the day when he had first discovered the small wound in his scalp and his eyes widened with dawning comprehension.

Leveling his gun at the woman's left breast, he bellowed, "You crazy bitch!"

Before he could train his weapon on the target, her right hand flashed with the quickness and precision of a viper and lopped off the right arm of the clay figurine. Vincent uttered a soundless scream of negation and gazed down in horror at the stump of his arm, which had been severed cleanly just below the elbow. Blood issued from the wound in a spray of crimson, spattering the grass in a fan. Near his feet, the severed hand twitched, still clutching the Smith and Wesson.

"Would it be fair to say that you've been made to see the error of your skeptical ways?" she intoned gravely, taking several steps toward the flailing hoodlum. She gestured again...a short, incisive jab into the area that would have been the image's eyes. There followed a harrowing, liquid pop and this time Vincent did scream as his right eye burst in a spray. He clutched his wounded face with his left hand and with his right arm still gushing blood, attempted to stumble away on wooden legs. Through the roar of pain and his own anguished cries, he could hear his sadistic tormentor begin to laugh.

With a series of rapier slashes, she began to inflict superficial but horribly painful wounds on the defenseless Scallari. Two horizontal slashed severed his hamstrings causing him to collapse onto his back. He lay on the sodden grass, writhing in agony as Jeniah came to stand over him. Placing the small blade near the spot where the figurine's face began, she peeled a sliver of clay away with deliberate slowness. The left side of Vincent's face tore away at the lower mandible and peeled up ward to expose his bloody teeth and gums.

"Kill me!!" Scallari exhorted, though the words that boiled out of his tortured flesh were garbled by blood and suffering.

"As you wish," Jeniah said softly and dug the point of the blade deep into the image's midsection, drawing the blade upward in one fluid motion. A volcano of blood erupted from Vincent Scallari's mouth as his abdominal wall was torn open from pubic bone to sternum. His body gave one spastic twitch and went still as his intestines lazily uncoiled through the massive wound. Jeniah regarded her act of butchery for several moments, before spitting contemptuously on the corpse. She then casually tossed the clay image over the fence and into the swamp that bordered the north side of the Cemetery.

She was about to leave when from over her shoulder a bewildered voice demanded, "What the hell's happened here?"

5

Orlin Feldman was less than an hour away from shift end when he commenced his final pass along Winder road. The horrendous weather had essentially reduced visibility to no more than a few yards and speeds to no more than twenty five miles per hour. Orlin was a cautious man by nature and felt no compulsion to test those limits. If he arrived back at the office a few minutes late, then so be it. Had he not been driving slowly, it was unlikely that he would have noticed the small green sports car pulled into the side road directly across from the Cemetery.

The sight of the side road evoked memories of his debacle of a few nights past and even as he slowed the cruiser and punched the four way flashers, Feldman could clearly recall Knox Severn sprinting by him as he sat rooted in his cruiser...riveted there by apprehension. The new Sheriff had not uttered a word about his allowing Severn to escape, but Orlin had no illusion that a negative judgment had been passed. Why else would he be on patrol while less experience officers helped with the murder investigation at the Cruthers house. That moment of doubt and fear, along with the way that Huxley had intimidated him just days before, had served to all but emasculated Orlin...making him feel inadequate and craven. He found it increasingly difficult to don the uniform in the morning...feeling that he had become a shoddy imitation of a real police officer.

Gazing at the parked car, Feldman felt sure that he had seen it before and that he knew who it belonged to, but he was unable to conjure up the owner's face. Reaching across the seat, he flipped open his notebook and quickly scribbled down the license plate number. Glancing at this watch, he decided to continue his patrol to the end of Winder, though he would stop for a closer look if the car was still there when he returned.

As he maneuvered the cruiser through the twisting turns, Orlin's thoughts turned to the sense of impending disaster that seemed to have permeated the atmosphere of Quinsett in the course of the last week. The murder of Cruthers drew an automatic association with the names that he had purged from the wall at Toppers and though it could be a mere coincidence, Feldman was inclined to think otherwise. If the old man's death was a consequence of his duplicity in evidence tampering, Orlin would be looking at something far more drastic than the end of his police career. He sighed and attempted to push the thought away, but could not extricate himself from the disquieting certainty that, as bad as the last few days had been, things were going to get a great deal worse.

The Ingstrom house loomed up on the right and though the rain added to its already depressing and rundown appearance, there seemed to be no sign of disturbance there, so Orlin pulled the car into the driveway and carefully reversed back on to Winder road.

As he came around the curve near the Eternal Lights, he saw that the Alfa Romeo was still parked in the side road.

' _Ignore it. It's nothing, so just go home to Melissa,'_ a voice inside his head advised, but he could not help recognize the hysterical note that resonated beneath the thought. It was the voice of the craven, whose advice had only brought shame and humiliation. Orlin pulled the cruiser to the shoulder and shut down the engine, determined that he would not succumb to fear this one time. He paused by the Romeo for a moment and was again struck by the certitude that he should know who this car belonged to, but a wail of anguish tore forth from somewhere within the graveyard and in the next moment, Feldman was racing across the slick asphalt and in to the Cemetery.

The chilling sound rose again and was abruptly cut off, though its echo allowed the deputy to get a fix on its location. Even as he sprinted over the rain-sodden grass, Orlin grimaced, knowing all too well where this head long rush was leading him. His gun was out of its holster as he came over the rise, but the panorama of carnage that greeted him caused Feldman to come to a skidding halt. His jaw dropped as he gazed from the blood-drenched wreckage to the woman standing some fifty feet down the slope.

"Mrs. Saddler?" Orlin asked, immediately recognizing the Sheriff's gorgeous wife. It occurred to him that he had seen her driving the green sports car on a few occasions. She shifted her gaze to the deputy and he could see that she was distraught. Her mouth was drawn down into a severe frown and for a moment, Orlin wasn't sure if she even recognized him. He quickly holstered his weapon and came down the slope to stand before her. "Are you okay? What...what happened here?"

"He tried to kill me," Veronica declared in a small flat voice. Feldman craned his neck to get a better view of the body...totally disconcerted by the volume of blood and what he now realized were disemboweled intestines. He looked back at the Sheriff's wife, his eyes alive with revulsion and incredulity. Veronica was perhaps four inches taller and he found himself peering up at her, squinting against the driving rain. Though her face seemed contorted with misery, Orlin was perceptive enough to see that the expression did not touch her eyes. There was neither remorse nor revulsion, only a cold acceptance and he suddenly wished that he had not holstered his gun. Even as he reiterated his last question, "What's happened here? How did you do that?"

A grin spread across Veronica's face like oil on water. "Like this!"

Her right hand lashed out in a tight, savage arc. Orlin's hand involuntarily sprang to his throat as she lithely danced back to avoid the spray of blood that issued from his severed carotid artery. His eyes became impossibly wide and a thick gurgling sound issued from his mouth as he attempted fruitlessly to stanch the flow of blood with his hands. Veronica uttered a malefic chuckle and surged forward, driving the tiny blade through his service jacket and uniform as though they were rice paper and penetrated his abdominal cavity with the same ease. She stepped closer and straightened her arm, driving the blade downward.

"And like this," she whispered as Orlin Feldman pitched forward with his intestines slipping out before him.

Veronica regarded her two victims for several seconds and then inclined her face into the deluge, delighting in the purifying sensation of the rain against her skin. Sparing the still-twitching Feldman a final glance, she calmly mounted the slope and left the graveyard.

Chapter Four

1

"All in all, that went about as well as could be expected," Saddler remarked as he settled heavily into his chair. He was weary and could feel dullness abrading his normal acuity, but doubted that sleep would be a luxury that he would be afforded over the next few days. Gazing across the desk at Albert Huxley, Ray could clearly see exhaustion etched into the old man's face. The painstaking investigative process at the Cruthers' house, combined with Albert's assumed burden of culpability, was quickly taking a heavy toll on the former Sheriff. He appeared morose and sickened by the carnage that he had witnessed. "I suppose you're right. Three of the four seemed scared enough and that's probably the best reaction we could hope for. Dwyer especially looked as though he was about to turn tail and run for the forest."

Ray nodded his concurrence. Raymond Dwyer had reacted to the news of Morley's murder with open trepidation and while the others were more guarded in their reaction, Saddler could clearly discern a seed of fear germinating behind their reticence. The one exception had been Judith Ranzman, who seemed totally indifferent to the news. It had not been her apathy that had perplexed Saddler...years of working LA homicide had taught him to accept that people reacted to death and murder in ways that ran the gamut from shrieking hysteria to shrugging indifference. What had confused and disturbed Saddler was the way that she had stared fixedly at him during the entire short interview with a knowing, sardonic smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. Shaking his head in bemusement at recollection he asked, "What is the story with Judith Ranzman?"

Albert shrugged, "She's a dark and strange duck, that one. No one really knows anything about her, except that she's a fanatic when it comes to protecting her privacy."

"I just found the way that she was looking at me to be unsettling. It was almost as though she knew something that I didn't and found the whole affair...amusing. At any rate, if we rouse them into being cautious, we'll be one step ahead of the game."

"I think that it was also interesting to see how quickly old Ira opened the purse strings," Huxley observed wryly. Normally parsimonious, Silver had quickly acquiesced to all of Saddler's demanded for extra duty and even went so far as to accept Albert as a paid consultant for the duration of the investigation.

Ray glanced through the window and out into the rain-swept street. "What's your impression of this whole thing, Albert?"

Albert pursed his lips and sat forward, clutching his hands in front of him. "First off, we both know that despite the fact that I was a town Sheriff forever, you have a world more experience in this type of thing than I do. Also, this has been a week like no other week that this town has seen."

' _On that score, we're both in perfect agreement, my good man,'_ he thought, but did not articulate. Neither did he give voice to the nascent stirring that insisted things were no where near as dire as they were destined to become. "Maybe, but I'm still curious to know what your instinct suggests might be going on here in Quinsett."

Albert tugged at the cuff of his jacket, trying to organize his thoughts. After a moment's consideration, he said, "It's pretty hard to deny that there's a clear pattern emerging. On second thought, I would say that progression is a more accurate way to describe what's happened so far. Somehow, this Carlson stumbles on old Father Crimmon, who infects him with his craziness and sends him here, where he ends up being tossed out of the window of a locked hotel room. Someone leaves a warning to this informal group on the wall of Carlson's room at about the same time that another vague and gory warning is left at Lars Ingstrom's farm...evidently burnt into the side of his barn with the world's biggest wood working kit, not to mention, strung out in an arrangement of cow intestines. Alma Riesen decides to get up to no good in the local bone yard, bringing the town misfit along for the ride."

"I think that her involvement is nothing more than an extremely inopportune coincidence," Saddler interjected.

"Mayhaps your right," Albert replied colloquially. "Then, maybe nothing about this whole mess is coincidental. We can think on that later. Severn vanishes into thin air and the girl is horribly disfigured and all of this drama just happens to take place on the site where Jeniah Lightcrusher was buried fifty years ago. The next night, the girl is burned to death in an inexplicable fire. That brings us to Morley Cruthers' brutal murder; a murder that sees the same pattern branded into his forehead as was set into the wood of old man Ingstrom's barn. While I don't profess to be a master of logic, it's pretty clear to me that every one of these events is connected to the supernatural in general...and to Jeniah Lightcrusher specifically."

Even as he nodded his agreement, Ray's brow furrowed in vexation. "I'll allow that Jeniah seems to be the common element to each incident, but I just can't fathom the context of her involvement. She's been dead for half a century and the only remotely plausible explanation might be if some type of cult has coalesced around her myth, but there is really no evidence of that whatsoever. Then there is the possibility of her descendents...perhaps determined to right what they perceive to be a festering wrong. Even if I was inclined to pursue this line of reasoning, we know absolutely nothing about this woman, much less any relatives she might have."

The two men fell silent, both watching the falling rain. At last, Albert said softly, "There is one other explanation, if you're willing to set conventional thinking aside for a moment or two."

He was about to say more, when the phone began to ring, its insistent cry startling the two men. Ray snatched it up. "Sheriff Saddler."

"Hello Sheriff. I was hoping that I would still catch you at the office," Maria Cordova began, her calm, warm voice filling Saddler's ear like a balm. He glanced at Albert and held up one finger in a request for patience. Huxley merely nodded and resumed his study of the street.

"It's been an eventful day here, Maria. I've not had the chance to return your call. There's been an especially brutal murder and it looks to be squarely connected to the things we've discussed. If you have even a shred of insight to offer on what may be happening here, it would be invaluable."

After a protracted silence, Maria spoke, though now her tone was somber. "I Have managed to unearth some information, but I can't say how immediately relevant it will be. I found an Anthropologist here at the university, who just happens to be an authority in paganism, shamanism and ritual magic. We spent the better part of the afternoon going through the material you provided and he was able to draw some fairly interesting conclusions about what it just may signify."

"You have my undivided attention," Saddler declared, glancing up at Albert who was now looking on with no small degree of interest.

"Firstly, he more or less confirms your assumption about Alma Riesen, who he says is nothing more than a dabbler. Her spell books contains a lot of primitive, mainstream...hocus-pocus is how he referred to it. There was nothing that he would characterize as even vaguely menacing in her material," Maria summarized. Ray nodded even as he listened. The expert had effectively corroborated his own impression...Alma's involvement had been entirely coincidental and had caused her to become an unwitting victim of whatever evil now stalked Quinsett. Knox Severn was probably the same, but his continuing absence was nonetheless troubling.

"And the crime-related material, what was his impression of that?"

There was an extended silence through which Saddler could almost hear Maria attempting to organize her thoughts on the subject. He also wondered what portion of her hesitation could be attributed to skepticism. Finally, when she spoke, her voice was subdued and quiet. "When I explained the context of how we came by this material, the Doctor became quite animated...almost agitated."

"You were specific about the situation here?" Ray interrupted.

"Yes. I judged that he would be able to offer a more informed, and ultimately useful opinion if he understood the circumstances surrounding the way in which we obtained this evidence," Maria disclosed in a tone that intimated implacable faith in her judgment.

Ray considered this for a moment and conceded that Maria's initiative was probably the correct one. "I'd say you're probably right."

"At any rate, he found the material not only darkly fascinating, but profoundly disturbing. Unlike Alma's collection, this pentacle is extremely specific in its intent. It is stylized and suggests a mastery of the mechanics of witchcraft and ritual magic."

"Was he able to offer any insight as to what it might signify?" Ray inquired hopefully.

"Only in a general sense. He suggests that at this level of skill, the practitioner develops their own stylized pentagram and endows it with elements specific to his or her intended purpose. From what he can gather, this is a device that has been designed for evocation...designed to conjure some type of demon."

"From what I gather, this Anthropologist seems to think there is credence to all of this...legitimacy?" Saddler inquired, clearly startled by the notion.

"Not to the extent that he subscribes to the idea that this is real or that demons can actually be conjured. His concern is that the individual who designed this pentagram does believe in the power of ritual magic and that fanatical devotion would make this individual extremely dangerous. If this person does believe that they can invoke the power of some demon or spirit, it is highly likely that they would do anything to prevent any form of threat or interference with their ritual."

"On that count, it would be hard to disagree. This latest murder victim was found with the same intaglio literally branded into his forehead."

"Holy Madre!" Maria whispered, though she quickly recovered her composure. "Is there any other specific information you would like me to find?"

Ray considered this for a moment and then recalled another piece of information that he had requested. "Ah yes, there was the question about the meaning of Lamas?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry Sheriff," Maria began, her words echoing her dissatisfaction at her omission. "Lamas is an ancient tradition that is derived from many things really, but seems to have originated in Great Britain. It falls on August 1st and is one of the four major Sabbats of the Wiccan religion. It is really a rather innocuous ceremony of tribute to the Gods of harvest and a kind of tribute to renewal and nature."

"I'm afraid I don't see the relevance to our situation," Saddler remarked, clearly bewildered.

"The only conjecture that my expert friend would offer is the possibility that this ritual of evocation hinted at by the arrangement at the Ingstrom farm might take place on August 1st...to take full advantage of the concentration of magical energy that each Sabbat evidently inspires," Maria offered, though there was a thread of cynicism clearly discernable in her tone.

"If we adopt his theory, then it would at least provide us with a time line of sorts," Saddler remarked thoughtfully. "You've done well, Maria. We now have some insight into the murderer's possible intent and a timeframe in which he or she might intend to bring his insane scheme to fruition."

"Is there anything else you would like me to research?" she asked again.

Ray considered this and replied, "No, I think that it would be best if you came home as quickly as possible. We're stretched pretty thin back here and if we've read this correctly, the situation is going to develop quickly. I'm going to need all of the resources I can muster."

"All right, Sheriff. I'll stay over for the night and head back to Quinsett early tomorrow morning." After a slight hesitation, she added, "I want to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to prove my worth, Sheriff."

Saddler's gaze flicked over Albert Huxley as he responded. "Maria, it's me who should be thanking you and I can pretty well guarantee that you'll have a good many more opportunities to prove yourself before this thing is over."

Ray rang off and slowly replaced the handset in its cradle. Albert watched the sheriff with the inquisitive expression of a natural cop. "Sounds important?"

"Not in the sense that I've learned anything new. Maria has basically confirmed what I already suspected...we're dealing with someone who is a serious practitioner of either witchcraft or black magic. If I recall correctly, you told me that this Jeniah Lightcrusher was killed by a group of townspeople on August 1st fifty years ago?"

"That's true to the best of my knowledge and in all of the years that the tale has been passed around, I've never heard any different," Huxley related.

Saddler sat back in his chair and drew a deep breath. Again he found himself skirting around the edges of something that was inconceivable by any rational standard of logic, but every time he turned his mind to an examination of the town's present plight, he was led back to this precise point. "I think that we can safely deduce that this has something...no, everything to do with Jeniah Lightcrusher and what the group of town vigilantes did to her fifty years ago. It's the who and why of it that remains elusive. If we could only find Knox Severn, we might know exactly what transpired at the Cemetery that night. The revenge factor is a far stretch, but at least it's within the realm of possibility. It's hard to image that someone would wait for fifty years to extract some payback, but that could be explained if someone sort of took up her cause...someone who became obsessed with her legend and decided to write a new chapter to her saga."

Huxley nodded his acquiescence and ventured tentatively, "But you think that there might be something else to this bit of dark craziness?"

Ray wavered, reluctant to give his speculation voice as if to do so might invest it with a power that it did not possess in his thoughts alone. "To be honest with you Albert, I'm not entirely sure what I'm thinking other than to say that it's utter nonsense in all probability." An earlier thought occurred to Saddler and he asked, "Albert, would you happen to know exactly where Jeniah's house once stood. I know that it's on Ringgold Lane but I would like to know specifically where."

Albert uttered a mirthless chuckle. "Every kid who was born in Quinsett could probably tell you where it is because every last one of 'em has probably ventured out there on a dare. I know that I did once or twice after she was killed."

"Not before?"

"Oh no!" Albert reported as though the very notion was absurd to even consider. "I'll tell you one thing; when Jeniah lived at the end of Ringgold there wasn't a single kid in town crazy or brave enough to take so much as a step down that cart path, no matter how much they had been dared or what they'd been promised. At any rate, I did make a few trips down there, though I'll admit the place did give me the creeps. It was as if there was an echo of the things that might have happened ringing in the air."

"Could you show me where it is, Albert?" Saddler asked and there was an exigent note to his voice that caused the old man to frown.

"When would you like to have a gander?"

Ray glanced at his watch and saw that it was coming on six o'clock. The day had been long and taxing, especially for Huxley, but a pervasive sense of urgency hung in the air and Saddler felt that he could not afford to hesitate or delay his visit to the place where Jeniah's purported reign of terror had been brought to a violent end. "Now, Albert; if you're up to it, I would like to see the site now."

Alert blinked, clearly startled by the Sheriff's insistence. "I guess I could manage. It's still raining and pretty gloomy, but I'd say we have a few hours of passable light left. Mind if I ask what you're thinking on this thing?"

The memory of Veronica brandishing the spade toward Wendy sprang into his thoughts along with the way that he had caught her in the lie about her flat tire, but he managed to relegate them back into the dark chamber from where they had sprung. They were far too complex and disturbing and he could never share them with Albert Huxley. "Albert, let's assume that the perpetrator is someone who has become obsessed by the myth of Jeniah Lightcrusher. This person or persons has visited her grave and it is very possible that they interrupted or were interrupted by Alma Riesen and Knox Severn. The perpetrator horribly disfigured Riesen while Severn managed to flee. If this person is fixated on Jeniah it follows that they would be extremely interested in the place where she actually was killed. I want to find the site and see if there is anything there that might give us even the smallest clue as to who might be behind this. I know this seems like clutching at straws because that is exactly what I'm doing."

Huxley absorbed this last remark without comment and then said, "Okay, let's do it. I'm fairly sure that I can still find the place. We might do well to grab a few of the large flashlights and a couple of rain slickers."

Ray nodded and the two men went off to the supply room to gather up the required items. Though he managed to conceal it, Saddler could feel his anxiety mounting as though something of immense consequence was about to be disclosed. Stealing a furtive glance at Huxley, he discerned that the old man was feeling precisely the same thing.

2

The two men made the drive out to Ringgold Lane in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. For his part, Albert Huxley hoped that whatever service he might provide to the new Sheriff, it would be sufficient to atone for his transgression in misdirecting the Carlson investigation. That momentary lapse of character had helped contribute to the loss of several lives, though it was difficult to determine just how differently things might have evolved even if he had played things exactly by the book.

Ray Saddler peered through the windshield into the rain which had now slowed to a drizzle. The slap of the windshield wipers was nearly hypnotic in their monotonous rhythm and he could feel his thoughts being tugged incessantly back to the matter of Veronica and her aberrant behavior of the last few days. He stole a quick glance at Albert who appeared to have regained a measure of dignity thanks to the department rain slicker and cap. In that moment, Ray decided that the matter of Huxley's suppression of evidence would be forgotten. His had been a simple misjudgment and not a deliberate attempt to short circuit the legal process and Ray determined that he would not destroy the man's life for one simple lapse in judgment. Like Huxley, Saddler concluded that events would probably have unfolded no differently even if he had treated the Carlson incident as a homicide.

As he started down Ringgold, Ray was assailed by a momentary augury of impending catastrophe that was so incisive he was fortunate not to drive his cruiser into the ditch that delineated the road. The Lane had seemed picturesque and lovely when bathed in golden sunlight. Now, steeped in brooding shadows and pervasive gloom, the place where he had come to call home appeared full of dark, albeit vague menace.

As he drove past his house, Ray glanced into the side yard and was relieved to see his wife's Alfa Romeo parked directly in front of the garage door. If what he suspected proved to be true, Saddler wondered just how safe his family really was...living on the fairly isolated stretch of road.

The asphalt gave way to gravel where the effects of a full day's rain forced Saddler to decrease his speed to about twenty miles per hour.

"This rain has slowed, but it doesn't show any signs of stopping," he remarked absently.

"We went a couple of weeks without a drop, but I'd be willing to bet that the next few weeks will more that make up for it," Albert observed as they splashed through another deep rut. "The forest had become a tinder box and for a while, I was afraid that some fool would take the whole town down with a careless campfire or cigarette."

"This curtain of trees doesn't show any sign of a break. Do you think you'll be able to find the spot?"

Huxley gazed unblinkingly through the driver side window. Scanning the shadows for a tell tale gap that would hint of an overgrown drive. Finally, he spotted a break no wider that the span of an average man's shoulders. "Pull over. I think that just might be the spot. The road winds around this bend and peters out into nothing as if someone started building this road and just gave up on the venture."

Gazing at the barely perceptible break in the trees, Ray was impressed that Albert was able to spot it at all. The gloom had filled the narrow gap with impenetrable shadows, leading Saddler to conclude that perhaps Jeniah's property had been completely overgrown in the intervening half-century.

As the cruiser sat idling on the side of what was now little more than a dirt tract, the two men pondered the shadowy gap in a silence that had become charged with a formless expectant tension.

"I don't know about you, but I feel as skitterish as a hound in a lightening storm," Albert declared in a voice fraught with anxiety. "This is not a good place. I can feel that in my bones and the pit of my stomach."

Albert's sentiment of apprehension mirrored Saddler's perfectly, but he knew that there was no turning back from the task at hand. "This may seem unwarranted, but I think it would be a good idea if you took the shotgun from the back rack. I'm going in with my revolver drawn."

Huxley nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the twelve gauge pump action. "Under the circumstances, I'd say that's a damned fine idea."

Saddler inhaled sharply and stepped out into the drizzle, while Albert unlocked the back door and released the twelve gauge shot gun, chambering a round even as he came around the vehicle to stand beside Ray. Outside of the safety of the cruiser, the small opening appeared even more ominous that it had from the vehicle's interior. Ray had been through countless tense situations, but he could honestly not recall feeling the degree of nervous anxiety that presently assailed him. Trying to muster his resolve, he started out across the road, descending into the shallow ditch and up toward the gap. As he ducked through the narrow opening in the trees, water cascaded down from the leaves, finding its way under his collar and sending icy fingers coursing down the length of his spine.

He took several steps into the clearing and stopped, discovering that his impression that the property must have been overgrown proved totally false. A thick line of trees had concealed the open area from being visible from the road, but the only vegetation within the actual clearing was a dense tangle of weeds.

Saddler became aware that Huxley was no longer behind him. He pivoted about to see the old man standing just inside the opening. Even in the failing light, Albert's rigid posture and pasty complexion informed Ray that something was very wrong with what they had discovered in the clearing. Albert's lips moved wordlessly and his moon-eyed expression hinted at an astonishment that had reduced him to immobility. The twelve gauge hung limply in his right hand...forgotten and useless.

Ray hurried over to the old man, fearing that he was having a coronary. "Albert, what's the matter man?"

He raised his left hand and pointed at the center of the clearing, dumbfounded by the improbability of what he was witnessing. "That just isn't possible...it just isn't."

"I don't follow, Albert...what isn't possible?" Saddler asked in genuine confusion. Being an outsider, he had no way of knowing that the three partially standing brick walls had no business being where they were. Albert took a few stumbling steps forward, oblivious to the weeds and chuckholes that attempted to upend him.

"These walls shouldn't be here." He looked back at the Sheriff and now trepidation had crept in to his eyes and for a moment Ray thought that he might bolt for the road. "This place burned flat. All that should be sticking out of the ground are a few charred pieces of flat timber."

Saddler followed Huxley, only dimly aware that he had drawn his service revolver. With no small degree of reluctance, he stepped into the area that was enclosed by the three walls and began to examine the partial construction. On closer glance, he immediately gleaned the source of Albert's anxiety. The bricks were cherry red and looked as though they had just come from a kiln. The mortar was bone white and Saddler was struck by the certainty that, if he had the desire to actually touch it, his fingers would sink into the paste. Not only did the material show no sign of weathering, it appeared as though it had been erected only days before. Upon closer inspection, he saw that there were streaks of dirt along the upper row of each wall. He withdrew from the partial enclosure and went around to the outside to discover that what would eventually become the exterior was also similarly marked with dirt.

' _It's almost as though it's been pushed up out of the earth,'_ his mind offered and Ray inhaled sharply. Glancing down at the base of the wall, he saw that a dune-like mound of dirt delineated its length at ground level. Tracing the outside perimeter and then the inside, Saddler quickly realized that a pile of earth hugged the base of each wall, suggesting that his improbable explanation for how the walls had come to be here might actually be correct.

Instinctively, he backed away from the anomaly and gestured for Albert to do the same.

"What the in the blazing hell is going on here?" Huxley demanded in a voice that was both petulant and incredulous.

"It is possible that someone could have recently put this up?" Saddler offered, attempting to convey a calmness that he certainly did not feel.

Huxley dragged his gaze away from the partial structure, his eyes wide with dismay. "Anything is possible, but it means that someone would have had to bring the bricks in by the armload and carry in buckets of mortar. We're talking a hell of a lot of trips out to the road just to erect these three sections of wall."

Albert swept his arm about in a gesture of encompassment. "I doesn't look like anyone's been in here in a good while' no trampling of the weeds and grass."

Saddler could only nod and gaze at the wall as though it was a tangible riddle that was daring him to attempt to solve its mystery.

' _This thing is building itself...you know it and no amount of facile rationalization is going to change that knowledge,'_ an internal voice informed him flatly and yet if he accepted this to be true, that acceptance would force him to re-evaluate everything he believed about his world's reality.

For his part, Huxley was more receptive to taking that step. "There's just the two of us here, so we can be perfectly candid...this wall is building itself right out of the ground beneath our feet. Those piles of dirt have been pushed back from below. The house is remaking itself because she's coming back to finish whatever black business she started fifty years ago."

Ray wanted to tell Huxley that he was being foolish and childish, but the physical reality of what stood before him would not allow the words to form in his throat. If he had any chance to stop whatever it was that was developing, he would have to take a giant leap of faith into the macabre right here and now. The two men stood in silence for several moments as the gloom deepened and the rain began to intensify. Finally, Saddler remarked gravely, "We're alone Albert. Quinsett is utterly alone. If I accept as a given what these walls seem to imply, there is no way that I can call in outside assistance. If I even hinted at what we're thinking here, they would have us terminated and then committed."

"The group was in pretty much the same situation fifty years ago and they managed to shut 'er down," Huxley observed.

"True, but they had a face to match the threat, even if they didn't understand it," Ray pointed out. "We don't have that luxury. If Jeniah Lightcrusher is back, then she is far more elusive and formidable."

Huxley was pondering this grim reality when a soft, furtive sound drew their attention back to the brick walls. At first, neither man could identify a source of the sound, but the Huxley stumbled back and exclaimed, "Holy shit, look at that!"

Ray remained as immobile as a piece of statuary. The improbability of what he was seeing has simply divested him of his ability to move. At the terminal point of the north and south walls a furrow had begun to rise in the dirt as if some huge snake or burrowing animal was rapidly excavating a tunnel just beneath the surface. A low, torturous sound issued forth from the ground and then the dirt and weeds split from one wall to the next. As a mesmerized Saddler gazed in astonishment, something red began to push itself out of the earth, rolling back grass, weeds and dirt as it came forth.

He felt someone tugging frantically at his arm and gazed dumbly over his shoulder to find Huxley attempting to pull him towards the opening. Saddler brushed him off and leveling the gun (knowing how silly and ineffective this gesture was even as he did it), ventured a few steps closer.

Within five feet of the upheaval, he became aware of a slight vibration thrumming through the soles of his shoes. In the space of less than two minutes a compete row of bricks had sprung out of the earth to connect the north and south walls, completing the enclosure groundwork on what had been Jeniah's original home. The repulsive spectacle of birthing divested Saddler of any and all lingering doubt and he fully and utterly embraced the terrifying reality of Jeniah Lightcrusher's insidious evil.

"Ray, let's get the hell out of here!" Huxley cried shrilly, and Saddler complied, stealing one final glance over his shoulder even as he ducked through the sopping branches and back out onto Ringgold Lane. The entire first row of bricks had pushed free of the earth and now the connective mortar was clearly visible even in the dull light.

The two men half-slid and half-stumbled down the back slope of the ditch and stood on the side of the dirt road, breathing heavily in the falling rain and struggling to regain their composure.

"What the hell was happening back there?" Huxley wheezed, bending forward with his hands on his knees.

"I think we both know. It's impossible, but that building was pushing out of the ground. Something is reconstructing Jeniah Lightcrusher's house brick by brick."

"Why, for God sakes?" Huxley rasped in consternation.

"I can't answer that yet, but I have a feeling that whatever is intended to happen here will happen on August 1st and has everything to do with what this group tried to stop fifty years ago."

Huxley peered at Saddler through the rainy gloom, his expression quizzical in the dull light. Clearly, he didn't immediately grasp the connection between the bizarre construction and the anniversary of Jeniah's demise so Ray began to elaborate upon his theory; as if testing its integrity against spoken words. "It all goes back to Andy Carlson and his little book – his journal. When I first read it, my initial reaction was to dismiss the man as a seriously deranged lunatic. Since then, I've had many opportunities to re-evaluate my beliefs. Carlson spent several years looking for people who he claimed were attempting to make a connection with a parallel world full of demons and monsters; basically evil practitioners...conjurors, I guess they'd be called."

"He believed this, did he?" Huxley asked, arching an eyebrow.

"He did and eventually he found his way to Quinsett in search of the legend of Jeniah Lightcrusher and we're both all too familiar with the end he met. These elaborate shapes that we've come across on Ingstrom's barn and on Cruthers forehead are instruments of evocation."

"I'm not sure I follow," Huxley said with a perplexed shake of his head. Ray explained what Maria had discovered in Seattle.

"Whoever created these things intends to perform a ritual of evocation; to conjure up some type of demon. If they are following the pattern of Jeniah's life, then it is natural that August the first would be the date and this would be the site."

Stealing a nervous glance back at the narrow clearing from which they had just emerged, Huxley remarked, "I would dismiss that as utter horseshit if it weren't for what I've just seen with my own two eyes. So what the hell do we do about this?"

"I'll be perfectly candid by saying that I have absolutely no idea, but I know that we'll have to formulate a plan in short order because we'll want to apprehend this lunatic or lunatics before the sun goes down on July 31st," Saddler stated this as though it encompassed the full extent of their dilemma...as though apprehending a suspect would obviate the need to explain the impossible spectacle they'd just witnessed.

The two men regarded each other silently for a moment, sporting mirror expressions of dismay and apprehension very much like two men who wake to find themselves in the center of an unfamiliar landscape fraught with unimaginable perils. Nothing in their combined experience could provide them with a compass with which they could chart a course of action. Saddler suggested that the two men return to town and Albert agreed with no small measure of relief, grateful to distance himself from the abomination that was taking shape on the other side of the trees.

As Huxley replaced the shotgun in its rack and Ray keyed the engine, the two way radio came to life, startling the pair. Saddler snatched up the transmitter and toggled the button. "Sheriff Saddler...go ahead dispatch."

The voice of night dispatcher Sturgis Relford filled the cruiser's interior and both of the vehicle's occupant knew at once that something was dreadfully wrong. Sturgis had been the night dispatcher almost as long as Huxley had reigned as Sheriff, directing and dispatching resources in a calm, reasoned voice that roused a similar sense of tranquility and self-control in all who heard it. Tonight, however, Sturgis' voice quavered on the edge of unadulterated panic. "Sheriff, wherever you are, you're needed immediately at the Eternal Lights Cemetery."

Saddler grimaced at the sense of déjà vu which this urgent summons evoked. That expression deepened to one of grim dismay when the dispatcher uttered the department code for homicide and then added _times two_ and the department buzzword for an officer. "I'm there in less than ten minutes. Who is on the scene?"

"Deputy Silver and Deputy Holland. County M. E. and an ambulance have been dispatched." Sturgis reported, clearly struggling to maintain his composure.

Saddler slammed the transmitter down onto the clip hard enough to bend the metal and uttered a rare curse. Across from him, Albert Huxley had gone white tinged with gray. "It's Orlin, isn't it?"

Ray, who had reached precisely the same conclusion, could only nod as the image of Ruben Serrano lying dead in a garbage-strewn alley, rose unbidden to his thoughts. He carefully reversed the cruiser, trying to keep a tight leash on his emotions, and started back toward Quinsett, feeling very much like a man who finds himself strapped into a carnival ride that is being controlled by an unseen lunatic. Events were hurtling him toward a harrowing, nightmarish end that he could not even begin to comprehend.

3

Saddler's worst fear was confirmed the instant he came over the final hill that led down to the Cemetery entrance. It was a little past eight o'clock, but the persistent rain and dark clouds had combined to weave a tapestry of alternating shadows that proved to be a disconcertingly appropriate back drop for the tableau of carnage into which both Huxley and Saddler were about to enter. Cruiser number three was parked on the gravel shoulder with its party lights rotating, washing waves of red and blue light over the surrounding trees and tomb stones. Ray knew that this particular cruiser had been assigned to Orlin Feldman for the duration of his day shift duty.

Feeling sickened, he pulled his own car onto the shoulder just beyond Cruiser number three and sat gripping the wheel for perhaps thirty seconds. He could feel Albert's heavy gaze on the side of his face like a palpable touch and drew a deep tremulous breath.

"I'm not sure that I'm ready for this Albert," he confessed softly and shifted his eyes to meet the other man's gaze. "They say that a good cop is prepared for any eventuality, but coming here to Quinsett, I must admit that the thought that I might someday be confronted by the harsh reality of another dead officer just never crossed my mind...never!"

There came a sharp rap on the driver side window that caused both men to jump. Tim Holland was bent forward, his face partially concealed by the brim of this deputy's hat. Even so, Ray could see that his jaws were clenched and his expression pinched and unsettled. The Sheriff nodded and pushed the door open. Only when he was standing face to face with his deputy did Ray divine the full extent to which Holland had been traumatized by whatever he had discovered in the Cemetery. His blue eyes were glazed and perpetually shifted from one man to the next and then toward the trees that lined Winder road as if he fully expected to be set upon by concealed horrors, capering in the trees.

4

It was three thirty the next morning before a thoroughly exhausted Saddler quietly opened his kitchen door and stumbled into the darkened interior of his house. He carefully hung his jacket in a closet and flipped on the light over the kitchen sink. It cast an oddly surreal glow over the entire kitchen that left much of the room steeped in brooding shadows. Ray pulled out a chair, careful not to make any noise and slumped heavily into the seat dropping his head onto his crossed arms and closing his eyes. As he did, the events of the past six hours came flooding back like flickering, dislocated images seen through the lens of a broken kaleidoscope.

Descending into the Eternal Lights Cemetery had been very much like entering a poorly maintained slaughterhouse. The gruesome remains of Deputy Orlin Feldman and the other victim – one Vincent Scallari of Seattle – spoke eloquently about the gruesome death that both had suffering. Seeing the intestines of both victims strewn over the grass had made his deputies violently ill, but it had also succeed in doing something far more detrimental; it had thoroughly sapped their morale. Again the Klieg lights had been erected in the Cemetery so that both Ray's men and the M.E. could conduct their business. As Saddler surveyed the carnage, he could clearly see the signs of utter and emasculating defeat standing sharply forth on each face. He had little doubt that had he been afforded a glimpse of his own reflection, his own visage would have mirrored the others exactly.

Albert Huxley had stood statue-still, gazing fixedly down at the remains of his former deputy, his face a portrait of torment and agony, until Saddler had personally led him away from the body and back to the cruiser. Once inside and away from the others, the old man lost the battle to contain his emotions and the tears had come in a torrent. Patting his shoulder, Ray had left him to his private moment of grief.

Seeing one of their own reduced a butcher sack of meat had robbed his men of what efficiency they had once possessed, forcing Saddler to literally guide each through the steps of their job. Recalling the sense of absolute devastation he had experienced after the death of his partner, he did this with as much patience and sensitivity as the situation allowed.

Drawing a ghost-pale Silver off to one side, Saddler had been able to elicit an account of how the victims had been discovered. Shift change was scheduled for 7:00 and when Kort Ranlin, Art's night partner, had arrived at the station, he had been mildly surprised to see that the spot that was designated to Cruiser 3 was empty. Mariam Carter had been in the process of tidying up her station just before leaving for the night and Kort had asked if number three had went down with engine troubles. The dispatcher had fixed him with a perplexed stare that had quickly deepened to concern when she realized that Orlin had not checked in prior to heading home...a routine that he observed without deviation since he had first donned the uniform.

A quick scan of the dispatch records had revealed that his last call had come in around four thirty as he was starting his routine patrol of Winder road. Art and Vaughn conferred and set out along Winder, first discovering Orlin's empty cruiser and then the mutilated bodies just a few minutes later.

"What could do something like that to two men?" Art demanded...his voice shrill and wavering toward hysteria. "I mean Orlin was armed for Christ's sake and so was the other guy for that matter," he added pointing a trembling finger toward a spot where a severed hand lay on the grass next to a revolver. "Obviously, his gun was drawn, but something cut his hand off before he could even fire a shot. It's... fucking impossible!"

Peering into his deputy's misery-twisted face, Saddler discerned terror lurking just beneath the sorrow and revulsion. He asked if anyone had searched the cruiser and Silver had responded numbly with a shake of his head. Ray had set him to the task of totally cordoning off the scene before jogging back toward the Road, where he found Albert Huxley leaning against his cruiser and smoking a cigarette. The old man's eyes were dry but red and his face was pinched and pasty. He had started to apologize, but Saddler had waved him off, saying quietly, "I think that we both know that I understand precisely how you feel at this moment."

Huxley nodded vacantly and went back to smoking his cigarette while Ray opened the passenger door of cruiser #3 and leaned inside. Everything seemed in order, though Feldman's notebook was lying closed on the passenger seat. Saddler had sat down in the passenger seat and closed the door behind him to escape the rain, which had intensified once again.

He had leafed to the final entry and his heart seemed to freeze in his chest. Even as he now sat in the warmth and relative calm of his kitchen, the recollection of that moment evoked a chill and forced a soft moan form his lips. In Feldman's crisp, efficient script, Saddler discovered a license plate number emblazoned across the page...a number that he immediately recognized as belonging to his wife's precious Alfa Romeo. The combination of numbers and letter seemed to leap off of the page like intertwined striking Cobra's and he snapped the book shut as though that simple act could expunge that precise combination from reality.

His next action created a moment of total empathy for what Albert Huxley had done on the Sunday morning past...he opened the book and carefully tore the page from the heavy spiral ring, even going to far as to carefully remove the small scrap of paper that stayed behind in the ring. He spared the slip one final glance to confirm that he had registered the license correctly and then crumpled it into the left pocket of this jacket where it seemed to burn like a damning indictment against his integrity.

He fetched a deep sigh in the stillness of his kitchen, struggling hard to stave off the myriad of questions that swarmed about the confines of his skull like angry bees. He knew that he could not put them off for ever, but he lacked the energy and mental acuity to give them audience now.

As he had exited his cruiser (with the damning scrap of paper still buried in this pocket), Ray noticed that a car was recessed in the deep shadows of the side road. He summoned Albert over and the two men carefully made their way through the muddy tract over to where the apparently abandoned car sat. Trying the doors, they found that the car was locked, but concluded that it might well belong to the other victim.

Back in the graveyard, the M.E. had arrived and was conducting a preliminary examination of the crime scene, his face set in a grim portrait of contained revulsion. Saddler made his way over to the man and asked, "Any similarity between these murders and this morning's."

"Other than the fact that all three are dead, not really," the M.E. returned rather peevishly. Saddler, who was accustomed to people reacting to the gruesome spectacle of violent death in many different ways, took no offense. Finally, the examiner sighed wearily and remarked, "The Cruthers murder was extremely crude...his throat was torn out. By contract, these victims display wounds that have definitely been inflicted with surgical precision, despite how massive they appear to be."

Saddler pondered this silently as the M.E. led him over to the body of the other victim and squatted down beside the severed arm. Withdrawing a pen from his jacket pocket, he pointed at the exposed end. Ray could clearly see cleaved bone winking out from its surrounding raw flesh and ligature and felt his stomach perform a slow roll. "If you'll notice the exact nature of the wound was inflicted with surgical precision of a hospital-performed amputation. The other wounds share similar characteristics."

He fixed the Sheriff with a frank gaze and admitted, "Actually, what we are seeing should, by all rights, be impossible. Conflict circumstances should not allow for this kind of damage...it's simply too clean and precise."

"What kind of weapon would be capable of this degree of precision?"

The M.E. stole another glance at the severed hand. "I honestly don't know what could have inflicted this one... it's just too perfect for this environment. The others could be the result of a heavy surgical scalpel...or even some of the more exotic blades that are available on the collectors market."

"You mean like a knife?" Ray asked, rather dubious.

"Actually, more like exotic daggers. Some of these things are honed to incredibly sharp edges."

"One last thing before I let you get back to it; can you offer a preliminary cause of death for each."

The M.E. glanced speculatively at one body and then the next. "This fellow probably died as a result of massive abdominal wounding and poor Orlin as a result of severing of the major arteries in his throat. Of the two, Orlin's death was probably much quicker. Judging by the condition of the other victim's face, the perpetrator took intense pleasure in killing this fellow. I think the number of superficial wounds corroborates that impression."

Ray and Albert had left his two deputies to the task of securing the scene. As he left the graveyard, which was now awash in harsh yellow light, it occurred to him that his staff was certainly becoming practiced in homicide scene investigation. In this present state of exhaustion, his mind found this notion blackly humorous and he had to fight to suppress the laughter that wanted to bellow out of his mouth.

There was absolutely nothing humorous in the task of conveying the news of Orlin's murder to his wife Melissa. Huxley had volunteered to accompany Ray, for which the Sheriff was eternally grateful. The woman's grief had poured forth in a torrent while the five year old daughter had asked repeatedly and with increasing agitation why her daddy wasn't coming home.

"Orlin was always saying that he wanted out," his wife divulged between sobs, her small frame trembling with the effort. "But I kept telling him that his job was great and he was fortunate to have it. In a million years, I never would believe that anything like this could happen in Quinsett."

Huxley had spoken with the widow for a long time, but even as he attempted to console her, he could not help but recall how he had intimidated Feldman the last time the two had spoken. The recollection made him feel hypocritical and ineffably vile.

It was just before three o'clock when Ray had dropped Huxley off in front of his house. Albert had sat there, staring vacantly at his folded hands, seemingly reluctant to leave. "Any help that I can give is yours for the asking...you know that, right?"

"I appreciate it Albert because I'm most definitely going to need it," Saddler allowed. "I'll take as much of your time as your willing to invest."

Huxley shifted his gaze to the house which was completely dark except for the inadequate glow cast by the porch light. "It's not as though I have anything pressing to do anyway. I've lived in Quinsett all my life and now my town is under siege; I'm in a position to be of some use and that's just what I intend to do." After a weighty hesitation, he added, "If I had acted differently, perhaps things wouldn't have gotten this far...it's even possible that Melissa wouldn't be a widow. That little girl might still have a dad."

The image of the crumpled piece of paper sitting in his pocket exploded in Saddler's mind and he averted his face, afraid that Huxley might correctly interpret the grimace as a sign of unspoken guilt. "There's no way of knowing that Albert. The harsh reality is that Orlin died while doing his duty. His decision not to leave a job that he was essentially unsuited for was his to make. I know how obdurate that sounds, but when you decide to start parceling out blame, it is exactly what you have to hear. The perpetrator is the one responsible...no one else. As for Cruthers...he was warned and even if it had been in an official capacity, we both know that there just aren't sufficient resources to put a 24 hour guard on these people. In total candor, you and I have nearly fifty years of experience between us, but nothing in that time has prepared us for this or what we witnessed at the end of Ringgold Lane."

Huxley contemplated this for a moment and then nodded somberly. "I suppose you're right. I guess that it's automatic blame yourself, because you get the feeling that this is your town and everything that happens here is somehow your responsibility...to protect it and keep the people safe. Do you have any notions on what to do next?"

Now it was Saddler's turn to be forthcoming. "Albert, I have absolutely no idea what to do next. I'm still trying to assimilate the notion that people can be killed by magic and that houses can grow out of the ground like rank weeds. We do have a few points of reference and maybe that's a start, but between you and me, I have no concept of how to deal with this situation. I am going to see Silver tomorrow morning and ask for more resources and maybe a bit more insight on what happen with his grandfather and the others. I'm hoping that a few hours sleep gives me a fresh perspective."

Albert absorbed this admission without remark. When it was clear that Saddler would say no more, he opened the door and stepped out into the rain. Bending back into the cruiser, he said, "I'll try to be in as early as I can tomorrow. If you don't mind, I'd like to tag along to when you go to see Ira Silver."

"It's a plan," Ray agreed wearily. As he watched Huxley shuffle up his wet walk, Saddler experienced a wave of affection for the old man and wondered if he was doing the right thing by drawing Albert into a conflict with a mysterious, powerful enemy...a battle in which the rules of engagement had yet to be defined...and no one was immune to the consequences.

All of these things flickered in stroboscopic succession through Saddler's mind as he sat in the silence of his kitchen, listening to the monotonous patter of rain on the window pane. His own inadequacy mocked him in ways that it had never done in his previous years as a cop. He could sense capering evil leering at him from out of the shadows, preparing to strike in a dervish of fangs and cracked claws.

His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, abruptly shaking his head. He realized that someone was standing in the hallway leading into the kitchen and a startled gasp escaped his lips. He half rose and then sat back down in his chair, recognizing that it was Veronica regarding him quizzically from the shadows.

She stepped into the kitchen's interior and flipped on the fluorescent lights...the sudden glow searing his eyes with its artificial intensity. He pinched the bridge his nose, feeling a huge pain pulse to life behind his eyes.

"Sorry," Veronica apologized and switched the lights off. Taking a seat opposite Saddler, she observed "No need to ask if you've had a difficult day."

He looked at her flatly, cognizant of the slip of paper sitting in his jacket pocket and its' damning implications. "I could safely say that this has been the worst day that I've had in my career. Unfortunately, I can predict that things are likely to get worse...far worse before they show any sign of improvement."

"Ray, tell me exactly what's happened?" she asked solemnly, reaching across the table and laying a hand on his wrist. He peered into her luminous green eyes and although he was exhausted and bleary-eyed, even this could not diminish his appreciation for her beauty.

There was an expectant gleam in her eyes that caused him to arch an eyebrow as she normally displayed no desire to be apprised of the grizzly details of his vocation. "There have been three homicides in one day. I'll spare you the gory details, but they were particularly savage and we have no clue as to who might have committed them. Not one!"

His emphasis on the last two words was particularly strident, conveying the enormity of his frustration. Veronica watched him closely, searching his tired eyes for some sign of evasion and seeing none, remarked, "I would imagine that's pretty rare...I mean three deaths and not a clue about who the _perp_ might be?"

He glanced at her sharply...there had been something decidedly odd about her use of the term _perp_...almost flippant and definitely atypical of how Ronnie would describe a murderer. "Yes, I suppose that it is, but this case is unlike anything that I've ever seen. In logical terms, what has taken place in Quinsett makes absolutely no sense. Things have gone bad quickly in the last week...it's almost as though I've brought the devil to town with me."

Veronica grimaced and squeezed his hand tightly, though inside she was laughing silently at the appropriateness of his analogy. "Ray, you know how foolish and dangerous it is to indulge that kind of thinking?"

Saddler nodded, now feeling virtually paralyzed by tiredness. "Of course, I realize that my arrival and this situation are strictly coincidental...though I do think that there is a definite time table and purpose of the killer's campaign of terror."

Veronica arched an eyebrow at this revelation, her breath hitching in her chest. "Okay, this is strictly confidential and highly speculative at this juncture, but it appears that the killer is acting out a fantasy of revenge...and this is where I'm really stretching conjecture, but it looks as though whatever dramatic conclusion he might have in store will be en-acted on August 1st."

Ronnie released her grip on his hand and quickly sat back in her chair, averting her gaze lest he glimpse the extent to which his revelation had unsettled her. Fighting to maintain her equilibrium, she asked, "So you're saying that everything that's happened this week has been connected...the journalist, the thing at the graveyard and the fire at the hospital...they all connect to these murders?"

"I know that seems unlikely at first glance, but a lot of things have led me to conclude that each incident is part of a well-choreographed plan."

"You mentioned August 1st?"

"The date has all sorts of supernatural and Wiccan implications...and it ties in to something that happened here in Quinsett fifty years ago on that date."

She shivered and hugged her shoulders. "You're scaring me, Ray. You're saying that someone is terrorizing the town because of something that happened fifty years ago?"

Saddler provided her with quick synopsis of Quinsett's urban myth. As she listened, her expression darkened and her mouth twisted into a scowl of revulsion. "This group of vigilantes burned this woman alive?"

"It's what the story claims. These people were what passed for Quinsett's community leaders and they took the law into their own hands. Now, evidence is suggesting that someone has decided to avenge her death, though who or for what purpose, I have no idea."

Her gaze strayed to the kitchen ceiling and Ray knew that she was thinking of Wendy and Danny who were sleeping in their beds, oblivious to the evil that was rampaging through the town that had become their home. In that moment of crystalline insight, the full ramifications of just how his failure in LA had affected every member of his family impacted on his conscience like a detonating bomb. He had spent hours pondering how relocation might adversely affect his wife, but he had never taken the time to consider just how his children's lives would be dramatically altered by leaving LA. His inability to come to terms with the aftermath of those final two deaths during his tenure with LA homicide had plotted a course that had led directly to this juncture in time; a place where a malefic and dark menace was taking shape not ten minutes from where his children lay sleeping.

A notion germinated in his mind and he gave it voice before he could construct reasons to cut it down. "Veronica, are you still leaving for LA at 7:00 this morning?"

"Actually, something's come up that requires me to stop over in Seattle for the day. I'll spend the night there and fly into LA Saturday. Why?"

"I think that it would be best if you took the children to Los Angeles and stayed with your parents until we find who's doing this," Saddler suggested.

She regarded him closely for what seemed like minutes, before inquiring, "You really think that the danger is that grave?"

The images of Morley Cruthers, Orlin Feldman and the charred remains of Alma Riesen flickered through his mind's eyes in rapid succession and he nodded vehemently. "I do and I would feel better if all three of you were as far away from this place as possible."

She frowned and placed a long index finger on her lips. "All right, I'll trust your judgment on this because I think that you've managed to frighten me sufficiently. First thing tomorrow, I'll arrange for three tickets to Los Angeles via Seattle. They can fly out with me and than go on to LAX. I'll have Arthur meet them at the air port."

An expression of pure relief passed over his face and he felt as though a small fragment of this onerous burden had been lifted from his shoulders. She stood and came around the table, where she leaned down and kissed him deeply, her long red tresses spilling around his face. She drew back and hauled him to his feet, holding him out for inspection at arms length. His face was haggard and he could feel sleep urging him into its embrace. "Promise me that you'll keep yourself safe."

"It's certainly my intentions," he replied thickly. She smiled and kissed him again, before taking his hand and leading up the stairs to bed. She helped him undress and guided him under the covers, before gracefully sliding into the bed beside him. She pulled him into an embrace and draped a long leg over his.

As he fell asleep, it occurred to Saddler that he had not shared the story of the regenerating house with his wife, nor had he mentioned the location of Jeniah's original home. He had intended to but memories of her lie about the flat tire and the true nature of her own trip up Ringgold Lane had held his tongue.

Passing into sleep, Raymond Saddler was ushered into the nocturnal world by a floating collection of numbers and letters...all glowing blood red. The Alfa Romeo's license plate hovered above the ravaged bodies of Vincent Scallari and Orlin Feldman like a condemnation.

Chapter Five

1

Friday morning dawned under a pall of rain clouds and a relentless chatter that spoke of small town gossip and mounting unease. It was as though a shadow had fallen across the face of Quinsett as some dark and as yet obscure force coalesced over the town, enveloping the once sleepy hamlet in a vice of constricting dread.

Word of the multiple deaths, at the Eternal Lights Cemetery, spread quickly through the town; leaping from diner to diner, market to gas station with increasing rapidity. Even the check-out line conversations at the local grocery stores were abuzz with talk of Orlin Feldman's murder and its dark implication for the town as a whole. A subtle undercurrent of fear could be heard resonating through every one of these conversations along with growing speculation about the new Sheriff's ability to deal with the growing crisis. Mercifully, Ray Saddler was still oblivious to such debates regarding his competence, but they would reach his ears soon enough.

Inevitably, news that Morley Cruthers had met a violent end quickly roused talk about the urban legend of Jeniah Lightcrusher. The more superstitious of Quinsett's citizens (and there were a surprising number of these) were quick to embrace the notion that the town's current woes were directly related to the long dead witch.

These conversations multiplied in frequency and intensity, laying the seed for the sweeping panic that would soon germinate in the rich soil of Quinsett's psyche.

2

Ray Saddler awoke with a start just after 7:30, fleeing from the dreadful clutches of a nightmare that dissolved into mist the moment he opened his eyes. The sheen of cold perspiration stood as testimony to just how bad the nightmare had been. He pushed himself out of bed feeling a bone-deep weariness that he knew he simply could not afford. He stumbled down stairs to find Veronica and the children congregated in the kitchen and recalled the expectant tension that had filled precisely this scene on the Monday past. Though only five days ago, the shared moment of optimism and a sense of new beginning felt as though it had take place a century ago. Wendy was quiet and even Danny seemed abnormally subdued.

Veronica favored him with a distant smile as he walked into the kitchen and inclined her head toward the counter. "Mrs. Quilling's waffles are not to be missed and you look as though you could use the energy boost."

Ray took down a plate from the cupboard and forked out three steaming waffles, feeling a sense of guilt as he did...Orlin was laying cold on a coroner's slab while he sat here stuffing his face. Still, Ronnie was right...he would need every ounce of energy he could get to propel him through the grim mire that lay ahead of him today. His entire department was reeling and if he did not take radical action to set it back on its feet...the Quinsett Sheriff's department would become irrelevant in the dark drama that was unfolding in the town.

He was aware of Veronica's close scrutiny as he ate and found that the assessing gaze irritated him in ways that were too complex to fully understand. In that moment, he realized that he would never fully escape the stigma of his failure in L.A...not even with his own wife. Finally, she remarked, "I'm going to make the arrangements for Mrs. Quilling and the children to head to Los Angeles. I'm hoping that I can have them booked to leave later today. If I'm fortunate, they'll be able to join me on my flight to Seattle and then go on from there. I moved my flight to ten o'clock."

"Excellent. Hopefully this will only be for a short time and we'll apprehend whoever is responsible," Saddler offered with more optimism that he actually felt, fixing his wife with an expression of absolute relief, grateful that he would not have to concern himself with his family's safety on top of everything else.

"What is happening here, Daddy?" Wendy asked, so abruptly that both Ray and Veronica were startled. Her voice was fraught with a nervous anxiety that wrenched Saddler's heart. Her normally serious deportment had now deepened to outright somberness.

"Some one has done some very bad things, Wendy; they've hurt people...and worse. Do you understand?" Ray explained cautiously.

His daughter regarded him with that unsettling expression of precocious maturity and said, "People have died."

"Yes. Some people have been killed and it doesn't seem that his person particularly cares who they hurt," Saddler confirmed, incessantly amazed by his daughter's incisiveness. "That's why your mother and I have decided it would be best for you, Danny and Mrs. Quilling to spend some time with your grandparents."

She considered this for a moment and then nodded as though affirming the prudence of the measure. Then she added, "Do you think these bad people hurt my cat?"

Ray experienced that lancing pain in his chest again and stole a brief glance at his wife, who to his surprise was regarding their daughter with an expression that resembled contempt. She noticed his scrutiny and merely inclined her head for him to proceed.

"Honey, I just don't know," he intoned softly, hoping that the guilt he felt was not evident on his face. Wendy gazed out the window and nodded. "I hope he's somewhere dry and warm...Smucks always hated getting wet."

Overwhelmed, Saddler tenderly squeezed the girl's shoulder and quickly fled the kitchen. He stood on the covered porch clutching his hat in one hand and covering his eyes with the other, trying to rein in his emotions. If he started to cry now, he feared that he would never be able to stop. He heard the door open and knew that Ronnie had come to join him. A moment later, he felt her arms encircle his waist and her chin come to rest on his left shoulder. "This is the right thing to do, Ray...they'll be safe and you can focus just on finding whoever is responsible for all this."

He nodded brusquely and reaching for her hand, kissed her palm. "Take this with you, Ronnie. Whatever is happening here will probably be over in a few days and then you can come back."

She came around to stand in front of him, her green eyes watching him intently. Then she drew him into a tight embrace and kissed him fiercely and when she again pushed him to arms length, her eyes were glistening wetly. "You have to promise to keep your end of the bargain and stay safe."

He vowed that he would make that his first priority. They spoke for a few moments more and then he reluctantly pulled himself away.

3

The moment that Saddler pulled out of the Drive and onto Ringgold Lane, Veronica dragged the heel of her palm roughly across her mouth, wanting to wipe away the taste that his kiss had left on her lips. She despised his weak, sentimental nature...relishing the anticipation of the moment when she would reveal herself to him and the reaction of shock and horror that this revelation would surely evoke.

As she returned to the kitchen, a tiny voice urged that she tread cautiously. He had, after all, surmised at least some aspects of what was afoot and though he was actually light years away from grasping what was truly unfolding around him, her long life experience had taught her that even a fragmentary bit of knowledge could undermine her elaborate scheme. Once the fabric of the world had been torn asunder and the demons hers to command, she would be impervious to any threat, but until that moment, she was still vulnerable.

Mrs. Quilling was laboring over the kitchen sink, dutifully scraping leftovers into the trash compactor. Ronnie came to stand beside her, noticing that the woman actually flinched at her proximity. Loathing what was to come, but realizing that it was necessary, the thing that had once been Veronica laid a hand on the woman's shoulder and squeezed gently. "May I have a word with you in my study, Bernice."

The old woman hesitantly shifted her gaze toward her employer and Jeniah derived a small measure of private delight by seeing the fear clearly registered in the other woman's eyes.

"Of course, Mrs. Ashcott-Saddler," Bernice said and followed the statuesque beauty into her study, where she had been so thoroughly and humiliatingly down-dressed only days before. She was not certain she had the wherewithal to survive another such scathing onslaught and was trying to assess how this vile-tempered woman might react to her announcing her intention to quit, when Veronica closed the door and said, "Mrs. Quilling, I want to say right off that I'm sorry for the way I treated you the other day...it was absolutely inexcusable. If you'll accept my apology, I promise that nothing like it will ever happen again."

Bernice was so flabbergasted, not only by her employer's apology, but also her contrite, almost sheepish expression, she simply could not find it in herself to speak and the room fell into a protracted silence for several moments. Finally, the older woman managed to regain something of her composure. "Of course, Mrs. Ashcott."

"Veronica, please call me Veronica, and I would like to call you Bernice...if that's okay," the young beauty ventured with a tentative smile.

"Of course...Veronica. That would be fine," Mrs. Quilling responded, wary of the other woman's dramatic transformation. Ronnie dropped her voice and intoned, "I know that I was a proper bitch earlier and though it's certainly not an excuse, I've been...unwell of late. There have been moments in the past week when I scarcely recognize myself and that's part of the reason for my trip to L.A.; I'm going to undergo a series of tests next week."

Bernice's expression became somber. Seeing that she had succeeded in securing the other woman's empathy delighted Veronica and she thought contemptuously, _'you gullible old bitch, once you've served my purpose, I'll personally tear your throat out.'_

Mrs. Quilling saw none of this as Jeniah concealed her savage disdain behind a veil of contrived misery. "Veronica, if there is anything that I can do to help."

"Just giving me another chance is more that enough."

"Of course," the older woman replied with a nod, momentarily disarmed by the younger woman's ostensible openness and hopeful that perhaps that situation with the Saddlers could yet be salvaged. Veronica averted her gaze to the floor and drew a quavering breath as though attempting to steady herself. "Bernice, of course you know what's been happening here in town. With last night's murders, my husband feels that it is no longer safe for me and the children to remain here in Quinsett. This is why we had decided that it would be best to return to Los Angeles until the person responsible for the killings has been found. Naturally, I would like you to come along as my schedule in the city is going to be hectic. We would all be staying at my parents and I promise that I'll make the time a wonderful vacation experience for the three of you."

Bernice, who was a widow, who now lived alone and had only been to L.A. once was frankly daunted by the prospect of not only the city but the notion of living with people of wealth the enormity of which she could not even comprehend. Still, there was a beseeching quality to Veronica's expression that bordered on desperation which the older woman construed to be a reflection of how badly frightened she was for her children. Caring for the children as she did, Bernice could hardly deny that imploring plea. "Of course, I'll come. When would you like us to leave?"

Veronica's reaction of relief was unmistakable. "I know that it's short notice, but this morning if possible. I'm going to call the airport and make the necessary arrangements. I'm hoping that the three of you can fly with me to Seattle and then to L.A., where I'll have my father meet you at the terminal."

Bernice was clearly intimidated by the prospect of flying into the city alone, but Ronnie spent the next several minutes allaying those fears and finally Bernice felt comfortable with the prospect. Ronnie watched her go, barely able to suppress the snarl of disgust that wanted to surface on her face. She closed and locked her study door, before placing another distasteful call to Arthur Ashcott, where she would be forced to grovel like an obsequious dog yet again. Though prompted by necessity, the pleas for forgiveness extracted a heavy toll on Jeniah's pride who viewed an apology as tantamount to an admission of weakness.

In the end, the father had accepted her saccharine-coated platitudes like the fawning fool that he had always been because she was his little princess and could be forgiven any transgression. After dispensing with this unpleasant task, she set her self to the one thing that had to be done prior to heading to Seattle and her assignation with the depraved Judith Ranzman. The mere thought of what would pass between them roused a warm, sensation in the pit of Jeniah's being and she was forced to concede that she was looking forward to the encounter with keen anticipation.

As Veronica replaced the receiver in the cradle she smiled to herself, satisfied that things were unfolding precisely as she had envisioned and though Saddler had somehow stumbled onto fragments of her plan, she found it impossible to conceive that he might draw the conclusions necessary to seriously jeopardize her scheme.

She settled onto the sofa and allowed her head to sink to her chest, closing her eyes and folding her hands primly in her lap. At once she was able to discorporate her mind from its physical moorings and propel it out onto the metaphysical plane that connected her to the familiar. She would set this one final piece in motion and sit back to watch the drama from afar.

4

The familiar, who had once been Knox Severn...inconsequential back-water badass...leaned against one wall of what had now become his box; a closet where he could linger like a forgotten toy until his mistress saw fit to put him into motion. Yet, if he felt any resentment or sorrow at this subversion of his will, it was not evident on his expressionless face. He was squatting down on his haunches, head leaning forward and eyes closed, and had been since he had returned from slaughtering Cruthers. The position caused him no discomfort...nor did the recollection of the savagery that he had wrought. These actions were as insignificant as the loss of his will. Her rewards...her favor validated any sacrifice that he had made on her behalf...including the loss of his humanity...a quality and condition that had never impressed him much in the first place.

He became cognizant of an electric crackle and raised his head, oblivious to the creaking of the tendons in his neck that cried out in protest against being immobile for so long. A hideous grin twisted his lips as he beheld the spectral image of Jeniah Lightcrusher take shape at the centre of his shed and his eyes gleamed with a repulsive blend of lust and adoration.

"You've done well," the shimmering vision declared and the familiar's grin broadened. "The old faggot suffered exactly the death his wretched life merited. I must be absent for a time and you will carry on with the preparations in my stead."

"What would you have me do?" the familiar intoned, its voice thick from lack of use.

"The blood debt must be put paid before I can begin the ritual of evocation. Lamas draws near and my enemies must be laid in their graves before it arrives. To that end, I intend to summon the stryges." She paused, chuckling at the quizzical expression that crossed his dark face. "Or more correctly...you will summon the stryges and set them to their tasks."

Severn nodded, his dark eyes gleaming malevolently.

"Do you love me?" she inquired sweetly.

"Yes!" the familiar replied unequivocally.

"Do you vow to give me your unwavering loyalty?"

"Always!" it vowed in a voice fraught with dark rapture.

Jeniah smiled. "In turn, your reward shall be power the likes of which the shallow thing you once were could scarcely image. Now come and kneel before your mistress."

Knox came down off of his haunches and dropped to his knees before the ephemeral entity. He raised his arms and dropped back his head like a supplicant before a religious shrine, though his burgeoning erection declared that the Goddess he worshipped was anything but virtuous.

"I shall impart to you a plum of lost knowledge; the power to summon the stryges and bend them to your will. Consume my wisdom like a dark sacrament...a testimony to my puissance." Eyes blazing like enchanted emeralds, Jeniah held her hands before her, with the palms facing each other...a gesture that conveyed the impression that she was holding an invisible orb. An iridescent light sprang to life in the cusp of her palms, growing in magnitude until the familiar cried out in alarm before its blinding intensity. The shed literally shook with the tumult of what resembled the screeching cries of a thousand owls.

Jeniah abruptly turned her palms upward and the light that had been enveloped within the confines of the invisible orb leapt forward, pouncing on the kneeling Severn like striking cobra. It entered his gaping mouth, eyes and nostrils, jolting him onto his back with the sheer force of its invasion. His body convulsed and his feet and hands pounded out a frantic tattoo beat on the scarred boards. The witch viewed this development impassively, though a smile surfaced upon her lovely face when Severn's body went slack.

"Do you understand what is required?" she asked quietly.

Severn looked at his mistress, dark eyes widening with incredulity. He did grasp precisely that she wanted. The knowledge was engrained in the circuitry of his mind as though it had been branded there. "Each summoned stryge will track your enemies and allow me to monitor their every move."

Jeniah nodded vehemently. "Exactly, and should any of them be possessed by the urge to flee, the stryge will insure that their flight is short and futile."

Severn grinned wickedly, contemplating the prospect of unleashing the horrifying creatures that would be his to command. The feral thing that now controlled his thoughts hoped fervently that they might indeed try to flee.

The witch placed an insubstantial hand on his shoulder and his body was suffused by intense, yet pleasant warmth that robbed his muscles of their rigidity and dropped him to his knees. "My good new friend, Judith has many a deep, dark secret. I will have you open the closet as it were, and bring them to life. Upon her return from Seattle, Judith Ranzman will be granted the one thing she's always coveted...even if she didn't fully grasp the nature of her own hunger. Remember, though you walk under the cover of perpetual shadow now, no one must suspect what is contained within the fence of the Ranzman estate. If someone should happen upon you during the ritual, dispose of them."

The familiar nodded, the voracious appetite for destruction etched deep into its face. She nodded affectionately and drew herself back along the astral tether to her waiting body. Severn continued to stare into the empty space where she had dematerialized, for several moments and then he settled back onto his haunches to await nightfall, as his newly obtained power coursed through his veins.

5

Ira Silver had intuited early that this particular Friday was destined to be wretched. As he left his house and made his way to his BMW (a conservatively gray one, of course), umbrella tucked casually under his arm, he had glanced up at the sky and the slate gray clouds that held court there, he was visited by a portent of rapidly converging calamity...a vision so visceral and intense that he had been forced to lean against the trunk of his car lest he collapse to the paving stones. He attempted to recall precisely what he had seen in the roiling clouds, but could not; yet that inability did not rob the memory of its power to terrify him, suddenly he was possessed by the certitude that something exceedingly dire had transpired over the course of the night.

' _Another nail in the coffin,'_ had been his exact and disquieting thought, though he was not the type of man to expend energy pondering the subtle nuances of the subconscious.

He had been in the office not five minutes when the worst of his fears had been confirmed. The normally unflappable Silver had been shaken by the extent to which the even more reserved Stuart Crane sounded as if his composure was on the brittle edge of shattering.

"Scallari is dead," he had divulged flatly, though Silver could discern the faint echo of hysteria around the edges of that toneless voice. "Along with bumbling Orlin Feldman...both were found slaughtered in the Cemetery last night."

Silver had absorbed the news as though he had been struck by lightening...his mind circling back to the vision of catastrophe that had assailed him earlier. When he asked Crane if he knew of the circumstances surrounding their deaths, Crane had brayed a crackling laughter and reported that both men had been cut to shreds and now his hysteria came within close proximity to sheer panic.

"Scallari called me late yesterday afternoon and told me that he had information to relate...that he had discovered something and warned me to be extremely cautious until we could meet."

"Did he say of what?" Silver interrupted, trying to resist the temptation to succumb to Crane's infectious anxiety.

"No. He seemed quite agitated. You've met Scallari and know that he is characteristically a cool customer, but he seemed thoroughly rattled. He told me that I shouldn't be alone and asked me if owned a gun."

"Good God! Why would he think you need a gun?" Silver exclaimed.

"He didn't elaborate, though he did say that he no longer subscribed to the notion that the group was in danger of being blackmailed. He had come to suspect that it was something far more sinister. We were supposed to meet later, but it was an appointment that he was destined not to keep." A bizarre laughter filled the line, making Silver wince.

"Obviously, there's been no indication that the murderer has been found or even identified?" Silver asked, knowing the answer even as he did.

"None. I think that it would be safe to conclude that our local constabulary is miles out of its league in this case," Crane responded, his tone resentful and surly.

Silver grunted and glanced out of his window where the rain had commenced falling in earnest again. "I'll speak to Saddler today and see if he's making any progress on this. Surely the carnage that we witnessed in the last few days must have yielded some clue."

"Speaking of the good Sheriff, Scallari asked me if his wife knew my brother. I thought that was decidedly odd, but again he didn't want to elaborate on the phone," Stuart reported, causing Silver to arch an eyebrow.

Though he could not imagine why a polished beauty such as Veronica Ashcott-Saddler would possibly have dealings with dysfunctional sad sack such a Cameron Crane, something in the suggestion touched a raw nerve. "Speculation is pointless for the time being. If you're former associate is correct, our best course of action is to be vigilant and take the necessary precautions to insure that our safety is not jeopardized." He considered for a moment and then added, "Perhaps his suggestion about carrying a handgun shouldn't be dismissed so quickly."

"The good it did Scallari and Feldman," Crane retorted grimly.

"At any rate, let me speak with Saddler and see where things stand. Then, it might be prudent for the group to meet tonight and discuss what measures we should take." Silver suggested, trying to convey a calm that he did not feel. "Perhaps you could call Judith and fill her in on what's happened."

"I called her office and was told that she's off to Seattle on a business trip...perhaps it's just as well," Crane concluded distantly, but Silver could clearly discern the rancor he felt toward Ranzman. They had spoken for a few minutes further and then Crane had rung off, leaving Silver to ponder the implications of what he had just learned. He sat in the early morning silence of his lavishly appointed office and for the first time since he had been a very young boy, Ira Silver was consumed by a sense that he had relinquished control over his own life to a force that he could not identify nor comprehend. He could feel its cool shadow across his back, but he could grasp neither its intent nor the extent of its power. His eyes swept over the interior of his stylish office...a space that spoke of formality and decorum, qualities to be cherished and preserved as a matter of personal dignity. He had remained in Quinsett because he theorized that it was better to be a big fish in a small pond than the reverse and had quietly striven to consolidate his power and wealth until he had become arguably the most influential man in the area. There were those who would scoff at the notion of being a mover and shaker in a place where there was little to be moved or shaken, but Silver relished the notion of exerting a measure of control over his surroundings...something that he had succeeded in achieving in Quinsett, but would not have in a place like Seattle or Los Angeles.

"Jeniah Lightcrusher." The voice was soft...a barely audible whisper and somehow darkly seductive. It caressed Silver's mind like silk being drawn over bare flesh.

"Nonsense!" he rasped aloud, reproaching himself for even entertaining that tripe. The urban myth of that old Indian bitch had plagued him for his entire adult life like some kind of foul disease that could not be medicated. He vowed that he would not raise that specter simply because the town of Quinsett appeared to have veered onto some side road of lunacy. The lilting whisper came again and Silver understood that, despite his resolve to reject the notion, a part of him could not help but subscribe to the idea that the Indian woman might lie at the heart of his current troubles the way a vile spider might sit at the center of an inescapable web.

There came a gentle rap at his office door and without awaiting an invitation to enter, Raymond Dwyer, Silver's business partner, entered and softly closed the door behind him. Dwyer was perhaps Silver's ideal partner as in many ways he was the exact antithesis of everything that Silver outwardly symbolized. Where Silver was formal and reserved, Dwyer was jovial and gregarious. Where Silver proceeded with an acerbic, rapier wit, Dwyer made his way with a joke and a grin. Yet, despite their apparent differences, both men shared a mutual love of money and the prestige it garnered. Both could be ruthless in obtaining what they desired and would not hesitate to discreetly bend the rules when the situation required that they do so. Ira had learned quickly that Raymond Dwyer's buffoon persona was a façade, behind which lurked a ruthless and incredibly astute business and legal mind.

Dismissing Dwyer as a clown when he was the opposing attorney was likely to leave you homeless and impoverished with the lethal efficiency of a Texas tornado.

This morning, however, there was no evidence of the Irish good humor. On closer inspection, Silver realized that Dwyer appeared ashen-faced and exhausted as though he had contracted some incredibly aggressive wasting disease. Ira half rose from his chair, but Dwyer gestured for him to remain seated. "Don't bother getting up. I won't be but a moment."

Silver settled back into his leather chair and continued to eye Dwyer warily, quickly deducing that the man was not ill, but rather thoroughly unsettled. Raymond glanced down at his shoes and drummed his fingers on Silver's desk, not certain how to express his feelings without sounding completely mad. "I suppose you've heard about the business at the Eternal Lights last night?"

"I was just on the phone with Stuart before you came in," Silver declared gruffly.

"How did he sound?"

"He was distraught, naturally. Worse still, he sounded irrational...suggesting that there might be some substance to this Indian legend after all. Coming from the mouth of a man who is normally so grounded, I find Crane's reaction frankly distressing."

Dwyer glanced sharply at Silver. "His attack dog was slaughtered. I don't see how else you would expect him to react."

Silver swiveled his chair and gazed out the window, sensing how profoundly his assessment of Crane's reaction had vexed his colleague. "That might be, but it's ludicrous to make the progression from a particularly nasty murder to the contention that a vengeful spirit had returned from the grave after fifty years."

Dwyer sighed, his momentary anger dissipating. "You may be right, but something wicked is happening in Quinsett that no one seems to be able to get a handle on...least of all, our good lads down at the Sheriff's department. I think that it would be exceedingly foolish to dismiss the link between the horror and our group. Cruthers is dead and now Scallari and I for one, am not a man who believes in thumbing his nose in the face of fate. I also don't particularly subscribe to the concept of coincidence, for that matter."

Dwyer paused and a perplexed Silver raised his hands in a gesture of confusion. "I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to tell me, Raymond?"

Dwyer fixed Silver with a flat, unwavering gaze. "I'm taking time off from the firm, beginning today and until such time as whatever is happening here is brought to some definite conclusion."

Silver stared at Dwyer with an expression of horrified dismay, but the Irishman fielded his gaze unflinchingly. "What...what do you mean?" Silver stammered...his voice a shrill contrast with his normally controlled tenor. "You're going to simply abandon your business and run like a scalded dog in a knee-jerk reaction to an old urban myth? That preposterous...what's more, it's craven."

Now, even the slightest hint of brogue had vanished from Raymond Dwyer's voice, leaving the true man beneath fully exposed and obviously vulnerable. In a moment of total empathy, Ira realized that Raymond Dwyer completely and unequivocally embraced every nuance of the Jeniah Lightcrusher myth and was terrified on an atavistic level that Silver could not begin to comprehend. He further intuited that argument would be futile...nothing was going to prevent Dwyer from folding his tent and vacating Quinsett as quickly as humanly possible. "Make your choice, Ira, but I've made mine and am at peace with it. I don't want to end up like Morley and I certainly don't want my family members to end up that way. It's a dangerous misconception to think that the police are going to be able to find whoever is doing this and stop them. If the intention is to kill the descendents of the group, whatever the motivations, then the only thing that might protect us is to put as much distance between ourselves and Quinsett as possible."

Ira shook his head, his sharp features twisted by a mixture of disgust and dismay. "Very well, Raymond. I trust that you will at least take the time to insure that pressing business matters are put in order before you flee?"

Dwyer sighed, unwilling to rise to the bait. "Don't worry, Ira. The important cases have been assigned to the juniors. Instinct tells me that the situation in Quinsett is coming to a rapid boil and I'm sure that I'll be back in the office within two weeks...I only hope that you'll be here when I get back."

"Don't be absurd!" Ira offered impatiently, but his bravado sounded brittle...even to his own ears.

"I'm being anything but. It may seem valorous to stay in the face of an enemy that you can't even begin to fathom, much less defeat, but it's nothing more than hollow vanity that could well prove fatal. I won't even expend the energy of attempting to persuade you to leave as well, but I would ask you to carefully consider this; how do you suppose you will survive if confronted by the same monster that killed Cruthers...or a capable man such as Scallari? Ask yourself why you would survive when they could not."

Silver averted his eyes to the window, the set, stubborn expression affixed firmly on his face. Dwyer merely shrugged and started towards the door, where he paused for a moment and said without looking back, "If you won't go, then at least have the good sense to take every precaution that you can...look over your shoulder, listen for every footstep and peer into every shadow."

Advice imparted, Dwyer stepped out of the office and closed the door behind him...leaving an irritated Silver to ponder the chaos that had descended upon his world.

6

Stepping into the station that Friday morning was very much like stepping into the reception area of a funeral parlor where the family and friends had come to bid final respects to a beloved soul who had died in a swirl of tragedy. Every pair of eyes was downcast and every brow was furrowed by a hundred dark and complex emotions that ranged from remorse and grief to burgeoning fear. Ray understood that the former were the natural and even healthy reactions to needless and premature death.

It was the dark pall of fear that caused him the greatest concern; a complicated and emasculating potion that could easily rob his department of whatever effectiveness it might still muster...if he did not move to extirpate it like a particularly pernicious weed.

He had requested that the night shift people stay on and had summoned the off-duty officers for a squad meeting in the hopes that he could marshal the eloquence and inspiration to banish that fear before it took root. There was a mutual expression of hovering defeat on every face present that hinted his challenge would be formidable indeed.

Ray was pleasantly surprised to find a bleary-eyed Huxley and a tired, but grimly resolved Maria Cordova sitting on opposite sides of the common room. Albert offered Saddler a wan smile and Maria nodded, her dark eyes reflecting the intense gravity of the moment as though she could empathize with the situation that Ray now found himself confronting. He acknowledged the two and gestured for the others to gather around. His gaze swept the room, his eyes settling for a moment on each and every staff member; trying to asses the extent to which each had been affected by the previous night's tragedy. The profound sense of shock and sorrow that colored every face served as a testimony to Orlin Feldman's value and memory in the eyes of his fellow officers.

"From personal experience, I can tell you that there is nothing in the course of a police officer's professional life that is as painful to confront as the death of a fellow officer. That is especially true in a small department like ours, where the loss is not only symbolic, but felt on an intensely personal level. I can spout a thousand platitudes about death and duty and honor, but none of those words, as noble as they might be, will bring Orlin back, or provide an ounce of comfort to his wife Melissa or his children, who will now have to grow up without a father. So, I will dispense with those because I can personally attest that, while they sound great in the movies, they don't do a damn lick of good in the real world."

He scanned the room and was pleased to find that he had captured his staff's undivided attention and realized that they were, in fact, looking to him to provide leadership in the face of a situation that they had never expected to confront. Saddler made a point of giving voice to this exact sentiment. "I doubt that there is a person in this room who expected to face the kind of terror that has fallen across Quinsett. I would hazard that it is even safer to say that none of you believed that your lives could seriously be in danger while performing your duties. It could even be that there have been deputies who served their whole careers in uniform here and never came within shouting distance of serious harm, much less actually dying."

His blues eyes, hard and unblinking, swept the room again. "As Orlin's death had demonstrated with tragic brutality, this is no longer the case. I want to admonish each and every one of you that as long as you are wearing that uniform, you face precisely the same danger that Orlin faced at the Eternal Lights Cemetery yesterday afternoon. We don't know who is behind the crimes of this last week, but we do know that they will kill without compunction...without remorse of hesitation. It's imperative that we keep this first and foremost in our minds with everything we do. Even something as routine as pulling over a car for erratic driving, has the potential to be life threatening under our present circumstances. The best way to honor Orlin Feldman's memory is to keep this town and ourselves safe and find the person or persons who committed these heinous crimes and make sure that they are punished to the full extent of the law. Are there any questions?"

The room was utterly silent for a moment and then Maria raised a tentative hand. Saddler offered her a slight smile and then nodded for her to speak. She gazed directly at Saddler, but was cognizant of the other deputies watching her and suspected that many resented her for daring to speak in such a somber moment. "Sheriff, with our resources being stretched and the nature of the crimes, will we be soliciting help from the State Police."

Across the room, Huxley grunted in disgust, but Saddler merely nodded and replied "Actually, that's a good question. Technically, due to the nature of the crimes committed...arson and multiple homicides, specifically...we are compelled to call in the state authorities and hand jurisdiction over to them. This is probably the route that we will go, but due to circumstances that I can not discuss just yet, we are going to wait until Monday to place that request."

Maria arched an eyebrow at this, but had the good grace not to pursue the issue, for which Saddler was deeply grateful. "I intend to speak with the selectmen and try to procure additional resources. I also intend to ask for a town sundown to sun up curfew. I want to close Winder Road, the Cemetery and Ringgold Lane until further notice. I believe that this should make the actual task of policing the town somewhat more manageable with the resources we have."

This was greeted by a general murmur and Ray breathed an internal sigh of relief, seeing that he had succeeded in focusing their attentions on the task at hand by showing some sense of purpose and organization. Even though these steps were more cosmetic than anything else, they still conveyed a sense of direction that would hold the fear at bay if only for a short while. Still, Saddler understood that something would have to break soon or that virus of futility would return with a vengeance.

He dismissed the staff and summoned Huxley and Art Silver into his office, closing the door behind him. "Well, gentlemen, I'm not really sure I did anything to comfort them?"

"I don't think anyone could have said it any better, Ray," Huxley declared softly. "These are folks who value straight talk and that's just what you gave 'em."

"Considering the shock that they've suffered, candor is the least that they deserve," Saddler remarked, before turning to Silver and asking, "Any more information on the other victim...Vincent Scallari?"

Silver's brow furrowed and he fetched a perplexed sigh. "A good deal...Scallari is from Seattle where he owns and operates a good-sized used car dealership chain. He's been indicted...but never convicted...for racketeering and has been under federal and state scrutiny for the past fifteen years. All indications are that he is one slick piece of work because he's beaten everything that they've thrown at him."

Ray whistled and shook his head, sharing Silver's sense of perplexity. He glanced at Albert, whose fascinated expression mirrored his own. "Now how do you suppose it is that a mob type ends up in Quinsett, only to be butchered at the Eternal Lights Cemetery in the middle of a storm?"

Saddler formulated the most probable answer even as he gave voice to the question. "The most logical answer would be if he had some connection with one or more of the people who are the killer's designated targets."

Silver shook his head. "Why could he not also be in cahoots with the killer?"

It was Huxley who spoke in a tone that indicated that he expected Silver to discern the obvious and was disappointed that he did not. "Art, the fact that he was killed in the same nasty way as Orlin makes it pretty clear that the same killer did them both."

"Exactly!" Ray exclaimed, feeling a thread of excitement building in the pit of his stomach...this train of thought was leading in a direction that just might yield a thin thread of optimism. "If we assume that Scallari was killed first and Orlin had the misfortune of happening upon the perpetrator, it follows that Scallari was there specifically to either meet with or confront whoever killed him."

"Good Jesus," Albert murmured softly. "Let's say that we make that leap of faith...it means that this Scallari was several steps ahead of us and may actually have known who's terrorizing Quinsett."

Buoyed by the thought that perhaps his side had finally caught a break, Saddler felt a surge of resolve to move things forward. "We're going to run with this angle, because candidly, it's the only one we have right now. Scallari died with the knowledge of who is behind everything that's happened over the last four nights. We have to determine who he was working for and specifically what he was attempting to discover."

He quickly crossed to the office door and summoned in Maria and Tim Holland and briefly summarized what he, Albert and Art had been discussing. While Tim appeared hesitant, Maria watched her boss with an expectant gleam, sensing that they may have reached a critical juncture in what thus far had been a fruitless and frustrating investigation. "I want the two of you to find out where Vincent Scallari stayed while in Quinsett," Saddler instructed. "I need to know when he arrived and if it turns out that he stayed in a motel, I want to know the source of every call that went in and out of that room."

The two deputies nodded and withdrew back into the bullpen. Saddler watched them in silence for a few moments as they engaged in what appeared to be a fairly intense conversation. After a moment, Timmy shrugged and Maria led him back to her newly assigned desk, where she sat down and produced a Quinsett and area telephone directory. Timmy sat in the chair next to her desk, his expression inscrutable. Ray smiled, knowing that in the space of less than sixty seconds, Maria had managed to demonstrate the extent of her intellect to Tim Holland, who had the good sense to yield to it and give her the lead in their task...if only grudgingly.

Saddler shifted his gaze to Albert, his expression clouding. "Really, this is something that I should probably handle myself, but I think that meeting Silver is probably more pressing at the moment. Beside which, Maria is an incisive woman and if there is anything of value with this Scallari lead, she'll find it."

Albert nodded noncommittally and Ray realized that old prejudices did not die easily. He glanced back to the bullpen where Maria was writing something into her notebook, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. She hung up the telephone, spoke briefly with Holland and then the pair were moving quickly back to the Sheriff's office. When she spoke, Saddler could clearly detect the excitement in her voice. "We've found his hotel...a place called The Stop over."

"That's the economy place over on Suran Street," Huxley interrupted, his tone suggesting that he found the notion that Scallari was staying there somehow startling and distasteful.

Maria nodded absently and continued her report. "The day manager...a man named Seth Onanden...had already heard what happened to Mr. Scallari, but he stated that he has not been into that particular room."

"That would be a real boon if it's true. I want you and Deputy Holland to go over there now and conduct a thorough search."

Maria made to leave, but Saddler reached out and touched her shoulder. She met his gaze questioningly for brief moment, her dark eyes flashing, and he saw that his was a woman who did not brook unsolicited contact, however casual that contact might be. He quickly removed his hand, his expression conveying his unspoken apology, which she fielded cleanly and accepted with the hint of a smile. "Remember Deputy Cordova...caution above all else."

Maria nodded, her smile intensifying, and then she was heading toward the station entrance with Tim Holland in tow. To his own consternation, Saddler found himself admiring the gentle sway of her hips as she moved away and shook his head in dismay. It was the first time in his married life that he could recall actually ogling another woman (or feeling vaguely attracted to one, if he was being totally candid). Veronica's immense beauty had always been enough to keep his attention fully focused on his marriage.

' _Ah, but all is not well in the kingdom Saddler, is it?'_ an internal voice observed maliciously, causing Ray to grimace. Though he was unwilling to admit any such thing, the words resonated in his thoughts like echoes of a half-remembered nightmare. He became aware that Albert was watching him closely, and quickly summoned a thin smile to cover his confusion.

"Perhaps I was wrong about your new deputy," Huxley admitted. "She seems like a real take charge kind of girl."

"Indeed she is and particularly sharp one as well," Ray allowed.

Wishing to divert his thoughts from Maria Cordova for a moment, Saddler ushered Art Silver out of his office and bid him a good day's sleep, before asking Huxley if he would care to visit Ira Silver. "Sure. Maybe the two of us can gang up on the old skin flint and make him see reason. I suspect that he'll be pretty accommodating, seeing how someone may be tying a noose with his neck in mind."

Both men uttered a grim chuckle at this and then went off to meet the first Selectman in hopes of locking down the town of Quinsett.

Chapter Six

1

"So basically you're asking that I open the municipal coffers and dig a little deeper into the cache of public coin?" Ira Silver demanded peevishly, though his normally condescending tone was but a pale facsimile of its usual mordant self. The first Selectman dealt with his perceived inferiors (and in a backwater like Quinsett that pretty much constituted the entire population, save for a small number of Associates to whom he afforded a grudging respect) with distracted impatience. Today, the churlish demeanor seemed forced...a veneer contrived to conceal his burgeoning disquiet. "Am I correct in surmising this is the purpose of this visit?"

"In part," Ray replied evenly, stealing a brief glance at Albert Huxley who was making a point of examining his fingernails with great interest. Dealing with this officious bureaucrat made Saddler envy Albert's informal consultant status. Ignoring Silver's grating tone, Quinsett's beleaguered sheriff forged ahead. "I'm going to ask that you authorize a doubling of deputy coverage for the night shift and weekends until we find whoever is responsible for this terror campaign."

Silver arched a perfectly tapered right eyebrow, but offered no comment which Saddler interpreted as a sign to continue. "I would also request that you authorize municipal works to erect a chain-link fence and gate on Ringgold Lane approximately a quarter mile past my home. I would also ask that the gate be locked and the keys be left in my possession until the matter is resolved."

The first Selectman greeted this request with an expression of genuine surprise, his smooth brow furrowing as he asked, "Do you care to explain the purpose of this gate?"

Saddler had anticipated this particular question and along with Albert, had contrived an answer comprised of just enough half-truths to hopefully satisfy the incisive Silver. "If you can indulge me for a moment longer, I'll provide a rationale."

Ira frowned, but nodded...clearly displeased that underling would not jump to provide an immediate explanation. Saddler drew a breath and forged ahead. "My final request is that you authorize at dusk until dawn curfew effective immediately. This would serve the dual purpose of protecting the citizenry and making the night shift job of monitoring the town that much easier. I need every resource focused on this investigation and this measure should reduce the number of distractions."

Silver leaned back in his leather chair and tented his manicured fingers...every bit the small-town potentate. Yet behind his pale blue eyes and their barely disguised disdain, both Saddler and Huxley could divine the presence of the dark bloom of anxiety and in that moment both knew that he would acquiesce to their request. Fear would prompt Ira Silver to beggar the town of Quinsett and perhaps his own fortune in the bargain, if he believed it could ward him against whatever demon presently stalked his town.

"Of course I'll have to confer with the other Selectman," Silver began, as if their agreement was anything more than a mere formality. "But these measures seem reasonable in light of the exigency of the situation. Having said that, I'll ask you again...what precisely is our situation? Are you any closer to unearthing the monster that's committing these unspeakable acts?"

In admission of perfect candor, Saddler shook his head and confessed, "To put it bluntly...no, we have nothing to point us toward an individual or group that might be responsible for any of the crimes that have been committed in Quinsett over the last few days...and that leads me to the second reason for this visit."

Silver greeted this disclosure with a grimace of displeasure, but before he could launch into a diatribe over Ray's handling of the matter, Saddler cut him short. "You asked for an evaluation of this investigation in brutally honest terms. Albert and I now believe that everything that has occurred over the last week is directly related to the vigilante murder of Jeniah Lightcrusher. I assume you're familiar with the circumstances of her death?"

Silver's expression of smug disdain evaporated, giving way to a scowl of revulsion, yet seeing that denial was pointless, he merely shook his head.

"On July 31, 1936, a group of town leaders killed this woman in her home along Ringgold Lane," Saddler began, surprised that he was able to deliver the statement in a flat, dispassionate voice. "Albert informs me that Quinsett found itself in a black situation not dissimilar to the one we are facing now and this woman met with a particularly gruesome end at the hands of these good folk...one of whom would have been your father."

Silver lashed Huxley with a look of seething outrage which Albert fielded unblinkingly. He was well past the point where Ira's withering stare could affect him or the lawyer's spiteful disfavor cause him any meaningful harm. Discerning that the old man would not be cowed, Ira rose and quickly moved to the office's bank of windows, where he stood staring out over the office's manicured lawn and meticulously groomed hedge that delineated the firm's property. He remained silent for a protracted moment. Saddler could sense that he was gathering his thoughts, trying to decide how best to address a particularly distasteful subject. When he spoke, it was in a voice that sounded weary and oddly diminished.

"That vile name has been a blight on the Silver family name...on the town of Quinsett for the last half-century. This woman's myth has been an irritating nuisance that reduces this town to the status of hick seed provincial backwater." The lawyer paused, his voice resonating with the anguish that this persistent urban legend evoked.

"It looks like the bitch's ghost isn't quite through with being a thorn in your craw, Ira," Albert intoned, speaking for the first time since he and Saddler had entered the lawyer's lavish office.

Silver quickly spun about, his lean face a portrait of incredulity tempered with contempt. "Are the two of you actually suggesting that Jeniah Lightcrusher is responsible for Quinsett's rash of violent murders?"

"Only peripherally," Saddler confirmed, exuding a calm he did not feel. "I...both Albert and I, believe this deranged individual has taken on keen and deadly interest in Quinsett's town secret and is now trying to...resurrect Jeniah's legend. Andrew Carlson learned of her tale from Father Crimmon and came to Quinsett to investigate the legend. His curiosity got him killed in short order. We now believe that one Vincent Scallari came to town for very much the same reason and suffered a similar fate. Deputy Feldman happened upon Scallari and his killer and died horribly for his ill-timed arrival. The other three incidents all contain elements that can only be described as supernatural."

"You're not seriously suggesting that these heinous acts are the result of...dark magic?" Silver sputtered, his color deepening into an alarming shade of red.

"I'm not," Saddler insisted firmly, managing to suppress a wince as an inner voice branded him a flagrant liar. "I am, however, saying that we believe someone in this town is striving to fulfill a very dark agenda, part of which involves extracting revenge from the families of the men who killed Jeniah Lightcrusher fifty years ago. If you accept this is a plausible theory...and we do...then we believe this situation will reach a particularly bloody culmination come next, Friday, August 1st."

Saddler hesitated, allowing Silver sufficient time to absorb the implication of what he just divulged. After a moment, he pressed on, feeling the crushing weight of exigency breathing down his neck. "This is why I've come, Mr. Silver. I need the pure, unembellished truth about what happened that night. I also need to know if Vincent Scallari, the man who was brutally murdered last night, is connected to either yourself or your associates and in what capacity. I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out that you are legally obligated to be forthcoming with this information, if you can, in fact, provide answers to these questions. If my theory is correct, the legal fallout of refusing to cooperate would be the least of your worries."

Ira Silver's brows knitted in consternation and he dragged his hand roughly across his face, leaving livid red lines on his cleanly shaved cheeks. Sensing his reluctance, Huxley interjected, "He is most of the way to the full story anyway Ira...at least, the town version of what happened to the bitch. The only people who really know the truth of what really occurred that night are the six who did the dirty work. Five of them are cold in the ground and Crimmon as mad as a Hatter. That leaves the offspring as our only source of information and potential targets for a sick bastard living out of twisted revenge fantasy."

Taking up the thread of Huxley's bludgeoning argument, Ray interjected, "I understand your reluctance...your aversion to dragging this unpleasant episode into the light, Mr. Silver. If you require further inducement to come clean, then consider this...Quinsett has suffered nine murders and a case of arson this week. By standard protocol I should've called in the state authorities after Alma Riesen and nurse Dorring died in the fire. That I haven't done so after last night probably borders on a legal violation."

Ira Silver shook his head, clearly not grasping the gist of whatever point Saddler was attempting to. "And why haven't you adhered to protocol. I would imagine nine deaths would warrant the state bringing considerable resources to bear on the investigation, while we barely have sufficient staff to cover the 24 hour clock."

Saddler nodded, understanding that he's reached the delicate juncture in the conversation...a critical moment that would cast the dice for all three men, if not the entire town of Quinsett.

Later, when the detritus of the storm had cleared away and Raymond Saddler was left alone to ponder the incredible, tragic aftermath, he would reflect back on this single moment. Staggering beneath the enormous burden of guilt and loss, Ray would try to envision the course events might have taken had he maintained his unflinching belief that procedures and protocol are the cornerstones of integrity.

Circumstances did not benefit Saddler with the gift of hindsight or clairvoyance, so he made his case hoping desperately that Silver would accede to his demands. "Your supposition is correct Mr. Silver...more so than you could possibly imagine. State authorities would descend upon Quinsett like a tornado pouncing out of the clear blue sky. They will dissect the lives of your little group and lay out the wreckage for everyone to see. Amongst other things, your association with Vincent Scallari will be the subject of intense scrutiny, both by the state police and probably the feds. One phone call will thoroughly decimate fifty years of effort to protecting your families' good names."

Saddler had delivered this assessment in a calm, reasoned voice, but its effects on Ira Silver were immediate and devastating. His face crumpled and his blue eyes widened in a comical expression of horror, even as his legs betrayed him and he sagged into his leather chair like a deflated balloon.

Seeing that he had Silver reeling, Saddler relentlessly pressed his advantage. "Nine murders in a small town will garner national media attention and the events of that night will become tabloid fodder, not to mention attract the interest of every crazy and gore crow...many of whom will make the late Andrew Carlson seem sane and stable by comparison."

Silver actually groaned aloud at this last thought, as though disparaging the Silver legacy was the worst fate he could possibly suffer. Quietly, Saddler disclosed (at least, in part he would later reflect) his true motivation for not calling state authorities to Quinsett's rescue. "There's another reason I don't want to summon state authority...maybe the real reason considering that I don't give a tinker's damn about family names and tarnished reputation."

This earned a withering glare from Silver which Saddler ignored, instead shifting his gaze to Huxley who offered and nodded encouragement. "Mr. Silver, I will not turn this case over state police because I believe...no, I know that there is a dynamic at work here they simply won't get. These are hard, cynical and competent people who will treat this investigation with a textbook approach that Albert and I now believe will be disastrous for the town of Quinsett."

Silver shook his head slowly as if Saddler had begun to speak a language he did not understand, but nonetheless filled him with an atavistic dread. "I don't believe I'm following your line of reasoning, Sheriff."

It was Huxley who replied, his tone somber, "What Ray is trying to say is that the state boys are by the book I's dotted and T's crossed and this case just doesn't fit that method. While they grope their way toward accepting that fact...this town is going go up in flames like a stand of trees in a July drought."

Ray offered Huxley a smile of gratitude. "Mr. Silver, there are elements to this case that defy all conventional logic...the intaglio on Lars Ingstrom's barn, the fire at the hospital, the way the Riesen girl was disfigured and the way in which Mr. Scallari met his end. The circumstances surrounding these events defy any and all conventional logic...anomalies that simply can't be explained by science. The reports filed in each instance are full of banal noncommittal conclusions that completely gloss over the inexplicable mysteries of each...and that's precisely how I'd like it to remain. Remember, we suspect that the situation will come to a boil on July 31st...the fiftieth anniversary of Jeniah Lightcrusher's execution. If you take this as an article of faith, then you understand that a conventional investigation will never make the necessary progression to where Albert and I are right now. My every instinct tells me that this is something Quinsett simply can't afford."

Silver absorbed this in silence for several moments, his gaze shifting back and forth between the two generations of lawmen. When he next spoke, his tone had been divested of every trace and every hint of arrogance or condescension. "Your request for erecting a gate on Ringgold Lane...it's connected to your inexplicable mysteries, isn't it?"

"Yes," Saddler confirmed, but made no attempt to elaborate.

Finally, Silver pursed his lips and declared, "Vincent Scallari was an associate of Stuart Crane's, though I can't imagine what possible interaction might have originally brought the pair together. Over the years, he has provided certain services for our informal group...some of these services might be construed as less than ethical, though none were illegal as such."

"So it was Stuart Crane who bought Vincent Scallari to town?" Saddler asked, already knowing the answer and hearing the subtle clatter of pieces of the puzzle falling neatly into place.

Silver nodded, briefly shifting his gaze to Huxley before continuing, "I assume you already know that Albert informed Stuart about discovering our names on reporter's hotel room wall?"

Saddler nodded his head and a ghost of the grin flickered across Silver's face as if the disclosure was something of exploitable value. "Scallari met with the group the night after the reporter's death. We asked him to discreetly look into the possibility that this incident was a prelude to blackmail or some campaign to smear our family names. I don't believe that any of us remotely considered the possibility that this affair could evolve into something more...sinister."

"Do you know if Mr. Scallari's informal investigation yielded anything tangible?" Saddler inquired hopefully. The fact that he had been slaughtered in such a barbaric fashion confirmed in bloody and irrefutable terms that he was leagues closer to the truth than Quinsett's finest.

Now Silver's expression clouded with obvious confusion. "Scallari called Stuart yesterday afternoon to inform him that he learned something vitally important and warned Stuart that the threat to the group was much more menacing than they first thought. He wouldn't divulge specifics over the telephone, but asked if they could meet later last evening."

"But sometime between that phone call and scheduled meeting, your hound became butcher fodder at Eternal Light bone yard," Huxley remarked thoughtfully, stroking his chin absently. Saddler could discern the older man's mounting excitement...this revelation was the closest they had come to legitimate investigative thread. Trying to subjugate his own enthusiasm, Saddler pressed the selectmen to recall the tiniest nuance of the conversation. Silver reflected back on the disturbing exchange, recalling how thoroughly flustered the normally unflappable Crane had sounded. "There was nothing specific as to the cause, but Crane shared that Scallari had been very agitated when he spoke and I can personally attest that this was not a man to be easily flustered."

Saddler felt that optimism dissipate like fall warmth before cold wind and the prospect for genuine insight vanish in the blink of an eye. Even that sinking sensation could not compare to the emotional bombshell that exploded in Raymond Saddler's mind after Silver made his next disclosure. The remark was an afterthought, offered in a casual fashion of someone passing on the triviality in a meaningless conversation, but it destroyed Saddler's equilibrium with ruthless efficiency of the detonating landmine. "He did mention something that I found decidedly odd and I'm reluctant to share this because I can't possibly imagine what relevance it has to the matter at hand..."

"Mr. Silver, you might be surprised how often apparently meaningless detail can be the single piece of information that breaks an investigation wide open," Saddler heard himself give voice to this time-honored maxim, even as an atavistic dread welled up in the pit of his guts like acid. _'You don't want to hear this, Ray. You know you won't.'_

On this account, his instinct would prove horribly correct. Silver bit his lower lip and then forged ahead. "Stuart said that Scallari made only one specific reference...one that Stuart found decidedly odd. Scallari gave Crane the impression that it was crucially important but neither Stuart nor I could see why." Silver paused for a moment and shook his head in an unconscious gesture of puzzlement, before saying, "He asked Stuart how your wife might know Cameron Crane...Stuart's brother."

It was a testimony to Saddler's composure and mettle that he was able to keep an unwavering grip on the impassive expression that held his face like a brand. In that moment, his carefully erected barriers crumbled and every persistent question assailed him like a pack of ravenous wolves.

' _Ronnie, please not Ronnie!'_ The strident plea exploded in his mind, followed by the stroboscopic flash of images that he labored so hard to repress. There came the damning drops of blood on her nightgown just after they discovered the suspended corpse of Wendy's cat, which then gave way to the awful picture of the disheveled Veronica menacingly brandishing a spade over her frightened daughter and finally, the pristine tire sitting in the trunk of his wife's prized Spyder after she'd claimed she had changed a flat.

' _She's part of this...this nightmare, Ray...maybe even the center of it all,'_ an inner voice declared in tones of irrefutable certitude that made Saddler want to run screaming from this officious prick's absurdly lavish office. These images and the cataclysmic upheaval that accompanied them reverberated through Saddler's mind in the blink of an eye. He became cognizant of Huxley's guarded scrutiny and forced himself to respond. "I have no idea how Veronica could have anything more than a passing familiarity with Cameron Crane. We've been in Quinsett only since last Thursday and she's been preoccupied with setting up the house and organizing her business affairs. I have no rational explanation for why Vincent Scallari would connect the two."

Saddler closed his mouth with an audible plop, knowing that he was on the verge of blathering, something that could only arouse suspicion. Ira Silver shrugged dismissively, but Ray noticed that Albert was watching him with an openly speculative expression. Saddler realized that Huxley was incisive enough to conclude that this tidbit of information could not be discounted so easily...especially considering that such tidbits were in deadly short supply.

Having evidently decided that Scallari's interest in Veronica was immaterial, Ira moved on to the second part of Sadler's inquiry. "You've asked me to tell you about Jeniah Lightcrusher, her execution and the circumstances surrounding it. I suppose it is only logical to assume a man would share the story of such a significant event with his only son, but my father never did...not on a single occasion. In passing, I can't say if his silence was the consequence of shame over what had been done to the woman or a deep desire to purge the recollection from his memory. Whatever the reason, he never uttered a word about the events of that night. Any mention of the woman's name was forbidden in his present and Inar Silver was not a man to suffer defiance from his family."

Saddler inhaled, feeling that seething frustration boil up as yet another venue seemed to evaporate.

' _You have the only name you need, Ray,'_ that relentless voice informed him with a measure of smug satisfaction which Saddler again ignored with great effort. Silver was speaking again and Saddler grimly forced his attention back to the selectmen. "You could speak to Crimmon of course, but the old priest has been completely consumed by his dementia and so I doubt he could provide you with anything of genuine value."

Silver paused, looking inward for moment. "In the years before he passed, Mordecai Crane shared the tale of that night with his two grandchildren. What compelled him to do so is beyond me. Being a pragmatist, Stuart Crane paid little heed to the story, but Cameron did. The boy was cut from, shall we say, a very different cloth and embraced every detail of Crane's account as though it is been handed down in stone. Stuart never shared specifics, but he claimed that the old man's story was disturbing...fraught with all sorts of supernatural nonsense. Still, Mordecai Crane was the architect of the excursion and Cameron, while decidedly strange, should be able to provide the most accurate account of what supposedly happened that night fifty years ago."

"Cameron might be a bit off center, but nowhere near as bad as town folk would have you believe," Huxley offered thoughtfully. "A good deal of what is believed about the lad is petty cruelty that comes with small-town jealousy and spite."

"We certainly aren't in a position to discount anything at this point," Saddler observed distantly, deeply troubled by the way that everything seemed to circle back to Cameron Crane and the loner's mysterious connection to Veronica. Despite his reluctance, Saddler knew that he would have no option but to unearth the exact nature of that connection...and in short order if his instincts were even remotely correct.

With this, Saddler rose to his feet, suddenly desperate to be away from Silver and his contrived extravagance. He needed to be alone to come to terms with this staggering disclosure and its possible implications. "Thank you for your time Mr. Silver...we'll speak to Cameron this morning."

Silver rose but did not offer to indulge in the customary handshake, a gesture he privately believed was not warranted when dealing with underlings. "I'll have municipal works erect the fence this afternoon and have the key dropped by your office once the work's completed. I'll also have my office contact the radio and television station and the curfew declaration should be broadcasting before the dinner hour."

Saddler thanked the selectmen with a rather subdued smile. He should have been elated that his request had been granted with a minimal amount of fuss, but Scallari's puzzling query hung over him like a malevolent specter. Ray stumbled for the door on wooden legs, barely restraining the urge to run from the room like a fleeting rabbit. Huxley nodded and rose to follow Saddler, but before the pair could make their exit, Silver demanded, "I expect to be fully informed of every development in this investigation Sheriff Saddler...especially if that development concerns any of the members of my group of associates. Am I clear?"

Saddler paused with his hand on the handle and looked back to the lawyer, somehow succeeding repressing the caustic reply dancing on the edge of his tongue. "You have my personal assurance that you'll be the first to know if we uncover anything of that indicates a threat against you or the members of your group."

Without awaiting a response, Saddler opened a door and plunge into the hall with Albert Huxley at his heels.

2

Outside, the rain tumbled from the gray sky in a slow indolent way that could often be mildly hypnotic, but instead Saddler felt listless and despondent. Ray pushed his hat onto his head, opened the car door and slumped into the driver's seat, where he clutched the wheel with white knuckled intensity. The oppressive heat that had greeted him during his first week in Quinsett had been bad...debilitating and draining after the dry heat of Southern California. Somehow this lazy fall of rain...this malingerer's drizzle was far worse...a misty despair that fell over the town like a funeral pall.

Saddler raised his head and peered down the length of Emerson Street which was strangely deserted for a midmorning Friday. Ray gave a sudden start as he peered along the empty sidewalk. Perhaps some three blocks to the west, a solitary figure seem to be standing motionless in the center of the street. The dull morning light and pervasive mist seemed to have created an odd distortion, rendering the distant figure oddly indistinct. Yet, even at this distance, Ray could see the luxuriant flowing red hair that spilled over the figure's shoulders in a beguiling tumble.

Transfixed, he silently mouthed her name, even as the distant figure raised a long slender arm and pointed directly at the cruiser. Saddler heard himself hiss...there was something accusatory in that gesture.

_'Her name is dichotomy.'_ This fragment from a partially forgotten dream leapt unbidden to his mind, dripping and bloody like flayed flesh.

Up the street, the figure made savage chopping gesture with its left hand. As that tumble of red hair swung across its face, a huge incisive pain skewered his skull then and Saddler gasped, his wheezing cry a mixture of pain and shock. The pain continued to swell until it seemed inevitable that his eyeballs would inevitably explode in their sockets. He pressed his palms into the hollows of his temples as if this might forestall the possibility. Abruptly a strong feminine voice spoke within the confines of his skull. "I am dichotomy. Be warned...I will brook no interference!"

In the next instant, the alien presence withdrew from his mind as the pain abated and then vanished, leaving Saddler shaken and watery-eyed in its aftermath. When Ray's vision finally cleared, he discovered that the street was deserted, just as Albert Huxley opened passenger door and piled into the shotgun seat.

Though the moment appeared to have spun itself out at a torturous crawl, Ray was astounded to realize that the entire incident had played out in the few seconds it taken Huxley to move around the cruiser and enter the vehicle.

_'Was that her?'_ Saddler thought, wondering if the brief episode was merely a stress-induced hallucination...the terrifying aberration of an overwrought mind. _'Did Jeniah Lightcrusher just warn me off?'_

"Albert, you mentioned that you saw Jeniah when you were a boy? Do you remember what she looked like...I know that was a long time ago and perhaps an odd question out of the blue, but can you recall anything about her?"

Even before he was cognizant of his intention to pose the question or had time to consider its possible consequences, Saddler heard the words slip from his mouth, wincing as he did. Huxley regarded Saddler sharply for several moments, his eyes narrowing in bemusement. "There are some faces you never forget and Jeniah was one of 'em...I was a lad of about eleven that summer and we only crossed paths a time or two, but I'll carry that face to my grave as clear as the face of my wife of thirty years."

He shifted his gaze to the street and Saddler could tell that the old man was peering back to the long distant memory...conjuring an image of Quinsett's dark mystery. "I would bet most of the old codgers would tell you pretty much the same tale...Jeniah left a powerful impression on who ever set eyes upon her."

Even as he said this, Albert shivered and uttered a self-conscious chuckle. "She lived up along Ringgold Lane from before I was born, but no one knew a shred about her...like where she came from and how she ended up in a forgotten burg like Quinsett. Quinsett was a pretty wild and isolated place in the thirties and it is still difficult to imagine how a lone woman would end up living by herself at the end of the cart path. Later, when I became a man, I thought about just that exact question...you'd be surprised just how much time I spent thinkin' and mullin' the matter of Jeniah Lightcrusher over in my head through the years. I came to figure that she was exactly where she was intended to be...to serve whatever purpose things of her kind are meant to serve."

Huxley lapsed into a contemplative silence for a moment, and Saddler could indeed discern that the old man had spent a disproportionate amount of time pondering the matter of the town's malign specter. Finally, Albert roused himself from his reverie and offered Saddler and apologetic grin. "Sorry Sheriff, I'm an old man and old men tend to ramble on while not actually answering the question that was put to 'em. It was always said that Jeniah was a Native American, and with that foolish last name...it seemed kind of right. Name sounded foolish until you came face to face with the woman and then it hardly seemed foolish at all. In fact, it seemed to _fit_ her like a glove."

"Then you don't really believe Jeniah was Native American?" Saddler inquired, suddenly excited without fully grasping his excitement's source.

Again Huxley studied Saddler's face for a protracted moment before replying. "Looking back, it could be said that Jeniah Lightcrusher was a beauty of a woman, but there was a terrifying intensity in those dark eyes and looking at her was like looking at something too terrible to suffer for very long. She was tall...that much I remember clearly and the few times I happened to see her, she'd be wearing this long black dress that reminded me of funerals. She had this olive complexion and long black hair that kind of reminds me of Maria Cordova. People always held to the notion that she was some kind of Indian witch, but I've always thought that was a load of prejudice-fired bullshit. Truth is, I don't know what hole Jeniah crawled out of, but I bet it was one a world away from this place."

Huxley fell silent and Saddler studied his hands, trying to conceal the firestorm of anxiety that was raging behind his placid blue eyes.

' _Her name is dichotomy.'_ The thought again manifested itself in his mind and he cursed the ambiguous but persistent declarations, regarding them as riddles he dare not attempt to solve.

Albert sat next to Saddler, his discomfort growing geometrically with each passing moment. Behind Saddler's closed expression and inscrutable blue eyes, Huxley could almost hear the roar of the man's inner turbulence. Silver's mention of his wife had affected the man like an electric shock. Saddler did not strike Huxley as a man to idly pose a question without good reason and thus he reasoned that there must be a specific purpose behind suddenly wanting to know the particulars of Jeniah's physical appearance, though Albert couldn't fathom how the information would be in any way useful. Worse still, Huxley felt certain that Saddler was harboring a secret...or at least, an insight that he was unwilling to share.

' _Ah, but don't we all cling to our little secret, Albert,'_ he thought to himself. _'This town certainly has, planting it like a black rose growing in foul, stony soil...didn't we just? Now look where it's brought us to.'_ Huxley's finely honed intuition informed him that Quinsett could well find itself in dire peril if he couldn't contrive some way to coax Saddler to divulge the source and shape of his present agitation.

Like a man treading ever so softly to avoid detonating a landmine, Huxley began to skirt around the far edges of the matter. "Ira Silver is an insufferable and condescending ass and has been since he was old enough to understand how much money his old man had squirreled away in his shoebox. Still, I think the goings-on of the last few days have scared him into a cooperative state of mind that can only help us." He paused momentarily and then added, "Still, it was odd that bit about Scallari taking such a keen interest in Cameron Crane knowing your wife."

Huxley noted how Saddler stiffened perceptibly at the mention of that rather perplexing reference, just as he could discern that Saddler was groping for response that would be either evasive or dismissive...probably both.

Just then the two-way blared to life and spared him the effort. Mariam Carter's voice filled the cruisers interior, strident in itself and made all the more grating by the accompanying static. The day dispatcher had worked for Huxley for the better part of twenty years and in that time, the former sheriff could not recall Mariam sounding as close to open panic as she did now.

Then again, there had never been a span of days the likes of which Quinsett was now experiencing.

"Sheriff, we have a...a situation back here at the office," she began, her voice frantic or exasperated. Saddler could not quite ascertain which. "Is there any chance you can come back to the office?"

"I'm on my way Mariam...any specifics on the situation?" Saddler ventured, dreading the response.

"Media!" came the single word response, and Saddler and Huxley groaned in unison. "A rather large pack at that."

"There in five," Saddler vowed and then threw the cruiser into reverse, grateful for the reprieve from having to discuss a riddle he, himself, was fearful to ponder.

Chapter Seven

1

The transmogrified Knox Severn came awake, not with a heart-jolting start of the previous two nights, but rather with the pleasant sensation of a swimmer emerging from warm dark waters. The confines of the abandoned shed were oppressively hot and cloyingly humid even at this early hour, but such things had lost the efficacy to touch Severn...because he had changed.

He stretched languidly and sprang lithely to his feet like a predatory cat fraught with a lazy sort of menace, smiling as he contemplated the nature of his transformation. Knox intuited that he was no longer strictly mortal. To be sure, he could still die, could sicken and age like all other man, but he had been...augmented...enhanced. In his former incarnation, Knox Severn had been what most would describe as a plodder...a dullard who sought refuge from the truth of his mediocrity in vapid acts of defiance and rebellion.

His new benefactress had changed all that.

Knox Severn had been instilled with a new sense of purpose and a new set of capabilities with which to serve that purpose. He could discern these modifications pulsing the flesh, viscera and bones of his body as well as the fabric of his freshly focused mind. He would serve his great and terrible purpose...even though it was alien and incomprehensible and filled him with an atavistic dread. Despite the terror and ambiguity, Knox would set himself to his task with the grim, inexorable determination of a mindless juggernaut...a willing slave to his mistress' dark purpose.

He knew this as instinctively as he grasped there could be no return to his old life. This realization filled him with neither sorrow nor anxiety. On the contrary, it suffused him with exuberance that he had never before experienced or even thought possible in the confines of the sad life he once lived.

Knox opened the door slightly and the dull light filtered in along with the rush of damp morning air. A black shoulder satchel sat in the far corner, along with the black hoodie, black jeans and stout boots. None of these things had been there when he had fallen into a dreamless slumber the previous night. On further consideration, that was not quite accurate...he recalled fragments of a fading dream of blood and a high shrewish scream that filled him with an inexplicable euphoria. These fragments would not resolve themselves into discernible pattern...and so he dismissed him from his thoughts.

Leaving the door of the abandoned shed slightly ajar, Knox returned to this mysterious cache. After a moment's consideration, he stripped off his perspiration-soaked clothing and donned the items that had been left for him. As he finished lacing up a black hiking boots, Severn was suffused by a palpable feeling of warding as if these ordinary bits of clothing were pieces of armor or the regalia of the great and powerful institution of which he had become an avowed member. Wearing clothes that his mistress had provided only heightened his new found sense of capability...of lethal competence.

Smiling to himself, Severn squatted down and began to rummage through the contents of shoulder satchel. As he did, Knox was assailed by a growing sensation of doubt and confusion. He could fathom no particular discernible function or purpose for the odd array of implements within.

"Calm yourself," a voice instructed...her voice, soft and placating, heard in his mind's inner chamber. Knox drew a tremulous breath and after a slight hesitation, began to lay the items on the crude floorboards at evenly spaced intervals. When he had placed the last of the implements on the floor, Severn stood with a liquid flexing of thigh muscles and examined the items as a deep frown furrowed his brow. The arrangement seemed to mock Severn like a complex intaglio that stubbornly refused to resolve itself into a recognizable pattern.

He inclined his head toward the peaked roof as though intently listening to a silent voice. Quickly, he knelt down and began to pick up each item. Closing his eyes, Severn gently and lovingly ran his fingers over the surface of each, a hideous grin blossoming on his face as he did. He caressed each the way lover may languish in the feel of a lover's breast...with an exceedingly tender touch that the old Knox Severn could never have hoped to duplicate. As he did, the mystery of each implement resolved itself in an illuminating eruption of light and when he finally let the last object slip through his fingers, the purpose for each was crystal clear as was the manner in which they must be utilized.

Knox became obliquely aware of the fact that he had begun to weep and as he hurried to stuff the objects back into the shoulder satchel, the familiar blubbered its fawning gratitude for being granted the opportunity to do her bidding.

After he had collected the final object...a stainless steel hollow tube no more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, Knox swung the satchel over his shoulder and left the shed for the final time.

He nimbly vaulted the chain-link fence that delineated the rear of the abandoned property, and set out down the lane at a dead sprint. He ran slightly bent over, covering great gulps of ground with the loping gait of a timber wolf.

Great things were afoot and he had much yet to do.

2

Knox Severn's mistress (a term she would have found uproariously amusing had she bothered to pluck it from the mire of his thoughts) sat in her darkened office, absently drumming her fingers on the glass desk blotter. To her eternal frustration, Veronica had been unable to procure a flight ticket from Quinsett to Seattle for Mrs. Quilling and the children.

A quick glance at the bottom right corner of her computer screen informed her that it was 8:45 and her Seattle to Los Angeles connector flight took off at 5:10 this afternoon. Delving into Veronica's thoughts, Jeniah had determined that there was ample time to drive to Seattle and still shuttle her burden onto the afternoon flight.

She was up and around the desk in an instant, summoning the simpering housekeeper as she went. Despite their earlier reconciliation, Mrs. Quilling approached the statuesque red-haired beauty with obvious wariness and Jeniah found she had to willfully restrain herself from smashing the woman's doughy face on the ceramic tiles. Instead, she allowed Veronica to emerge and deal with the annoying old woman.

It occurred to Jeniah that proximity to the realization of her centuries old aspiration was making her surly and impatient. She would have to be vigilant in keeping a tight rein on her emotions because she could ill afford to have her machinations laid bare because of an ill-timed fit of bad temper. Mindful of this need for circumspection, Jeniah receded into the shadows and allowed the appropriate fragment of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's shattered mind to come to the fore. Viewing the heiress' adroit handling of the old woman...the perfect blend of pleasant condescension and undeniable authority, Jeniah offered profound thanks for the good fortune of having found such an ideal vessel. When the door swung open and dominion was hers, Veronica would serve as the perfect visage...the very personification of supreme and regal authority to govern and guide the transformation that her ritual would unleash. Veronica would be the face of a new, evolved humanity...what little of it would remain once the denizens of the other reality had satiated their appetites.

' _At least, those who were left to offer fealty,'_ Jeniah thought with a silent chuckle.

"Bernice, I wasn't able to book last-minute tickets for three from Quinsett to Seattle. Los Angeles flight wasn't a problem, so we're going to have to drive to Seattle," Veronica informed the housekeeper, who nodded dutifully. "That doesn't present a particularly large problem as we can easily drive to the city if we can leave in the next thirty minutes. Are the children packed and ready to go?"

"Yes, Mrs..." Bernice Quilling began, but seeing the dark shadow rippled across her employer's face, quickly amended, "Veronica, they are ready. Their cases are already in the hall and the children have had their breakfast."

"Excellent! I'm going to leave my husband a note detailing my change of plans and then I'll pull the Caravan out of the garage. If all goes well, we could have a leisurely lunch in Seattle before I drop you off at the terminal."

A ripple of concern and doubt flickered across Bernice's face, filling Veronica with an acute disdain for woman who found the prospect of an airplane flight to be a daunting undertaking. Instead, she smiled and put a reassuring arm around the old woman's narrow shoulders. "Please don't be concerned Bernice. I'll be with you until you board the plane and my father's driver will be there when you disembark in Los Angeles. Arthur's arranged to have the guest house be prepared for you and the children, so you have your own private space. I'll be in by Sunday noon and we'll spend the next few days enjoying the city. It will be a marvelous vacation, Bernice."

"I'm sorry Veronica. I must seem like an addled old fool. It's just that I am worried for Quinsett...for my hometown...I've lived here my entire life..." she trailed off, unable to articulate a terrible dread that festered in the pit of her stomach. Veronica gripped the older woman's shoulders, her green-eyed blazing fiercely. "Bernice, I can say with unequivocal certainty that my husband will find whoever is responsible for these unspeakable murders and Quinsett will be as safe as it ever was."

The woman met and held that intense gaze for a moment and apparently found a measure of reassurance and comfort there, because she nodded resolutely and moved off to make her final preparations to depart. Veronica watched her go while struggling to suppress the derisive laughter that came with knowing the grim future Quinsett faced once her plans came to fruition.

She returned to her office and quickly penned a note to her husband, even managing to conclude the scribbled text with a syrupy expression of love and admonition to stay safe. The tawdry sentimentality threatened to turn her stomach, but the knowledge that she would tear his throat with her teeth and spit blood into his dying face brightened her mood considerably.

Veronica suddenly became cognizant of being scrutinized and turned to find Wendy watching her intently from the doorway to her office. The girl's penetrating blue-eyed gaze and her precociously serious demeanor grated on Jeniah and she again ushered Veronica to the fore to deal with the waif.

"Honey, are you nearly ready to go?" Ronnie began. "We won't be able to fly, so we'll be driving to Seattle instead. So if there's anything you'd like to bring, go and tell Mrs. Quilling so she can make sure to pack it for you."

"Why are you leaving daddy?" Wendy demanded quietly in a grave tone that made it explicitly clear trite explanations would not be accepted. Veronica considered her daughter for several moments, struggling to master her mounting anger. Though she could not say specifically why, children had always vexed Jeniah and she found this one's absurdly serious disposition to be particularly galling.

Veronica crossed the room in three brisk strides and knelt before the girl, gently taking her shoulders in hand. "Wendy, you do love daddy, don't you?"

Wendy merely nodded as if any suggestion to the contrary was too absurd to repudiate. Veronica offered her daughter a solemn nod, reminding herself that she must be ever cautious in the presence of this perceptive nuisance...if only for a short while longer. "Your daddy loves us...and because he loves us so much, he wants to make sure we're safe. That's why were going to stay at grandpa's for a while."

"This town...it isn't safe," Wendy remarked softly with an audible quaver in her voice.

"No it isn't," Ronnie affirmed. "No one is safe and your daddy's job to find the people who have done the terrible things that are making Quinsett a dangerous place to be. It's also daddy's job to protect the people of Quinsett, but it's very difficult for him to do that properly if he's always worried about us. Do you understand, Wendy?"

Wendy considered this for a moment and then nodded solemnly before asking, "Do you think the bad people got Smucky?"

For the slightest instant she wanted to burst into gales of hysterical laughter. She wanted to excoriate the girl with the gruesome details of the vermin's ugly, torturous death.

' _Oh yes, most assuredly they did...he died hissing and screeching until the wire closed his miserable windpipe.'_ Instead, Ronnie tenderly stroked her cheek. "I think the bad people want to hurt other people, Wendy...not one little cat."

Wendy searched her mother's green eyes for some hint of prevarication and apparently seeing none, nodded and averted her gaze to her sneakered feet. "Who will protect daddy?"

Veronica raised her daughter's chin was a long index finger, deriving no small measure of delight from the tears glistening in the girl's blue eyes. "Daddy can protect himself, Wendy. He's a very good policeman and he's going to find the person who did this and make Quinsett safe for all of us. Now go get packed, sweetheart."

Wendy regarded the woman who she was virtually certain was no longer her mother, through a kaleidoscope of tears. The fragmented image was terrible and loathsome and though Wendy was not familiar with the word, it was also portentous. As surely as she knew her beloved Smucky was dead and moldering in the earth, Wendy Saddler understood that this woman...this perfect imposter...meant to harm her father and her brother and everyone else. She had no notion of how she had obtained this knowledge, but this lack of understanding did nothing to attenuate her conviction that it was nonetheless true.

Desperate to be out of the imposter's presence, Wendy turned and fled, feeling trapped and helpless. Veronica watched her go, reassuring smile curdling to a frown of consternation. Dismissing the impudent brat from her mind for the moment, Jeniah started for the side yard. She had just stepped onto the veranda when a strident cry filled the damp morning air, cutting the stillness like a scythe.

Her eyes narrowed in concentration and her head inclined to one side, as she listened intently to the harrowing screech that filled the morning sky. Veronica's lips twisted into a feral smile. Her familiar had discharged the first of his tasks and was well along the path to fulfilling the second.

Humming to herself, she strode across the yard, dark images of tonight's assignation with the depraved Judith Ranzman filling her thoughts.

3

Saddler carefully pulled his cruiser into the parking spot designated for the Quinsett County Sheriff, He was both bewildered and disheartened by the collection of television and news vehicles that were encamped (some of them on the front lawn) outside the Sheriff's office. He was relieved to discover that all were local affiliate vehicles. If he played this adroitly there was a chance that he could quell the media storm that could only attract unwanted attention and further exacerbate an already delicate situation.

"By Jesus," Albert muttered, staring at the congregation of reporters who had gathered on the office steps despite the midmorning drizzle. "I got to confess, I'm glad I'm not the one who's got to stand up before that pack of wolves."

Saddler need only glance at the former Sheriff and his expression of open bewilderment to know that this expressed sentiment was genuine. Saddler, who had suffered through a media storm...a decidedly belligerent one...after the shooting death of young Miguel Deleon, was well aware of how apt this metaphor could be. Sighing and feeling hollow-eyed with wariness, Ray opened the door and stepped out into the intensifying drizzle.

In the interim between Mariam's frantic call and Saddler's arrival, Maria Cordova and Tim Holland had returned to the station. Tim stood near the doors, gazing at the reporters and cameramen with the moon-eyed expression of the deer caught in the proverbial headlights. Maria had retained enough her composure to usher (rather forcefully it might be said) the entire group out into the damp morning air. Her impassive expression made it clear that she would not be badgered or harried into responding to the cacophony of questions that were flung her way like crossbow bolts. She was clearly relieved and quickly retreated into the background when Saddler bound up the steps and turned to face the out thrust microphones.

An attractive blond with the predatory blue eyes of a hawk...a boundlessly ambitious hawk...thrust her microphone at Saddler as if it was a fencing rapier. "Sheriff, Deirdre Wilkins from Channel 4 action news. Can you provide us with more information on the events at the cemetery, yesterday evening? And could you comment on the investigation into the nine murders that have occurred in Quinsett since Sunday evening?"

"Whoa Ms. Wilkins," Saddler began with humorless grin that never touched his eyes. He knew all too well that he was walking a particularly precarious tightrope by not summoning state or federal authorities. If he had any hope of retaining control of this investigation, he would have to adroitly maneuver his way through this particular minefield. "I just want to clarify that we have had one suicide, five deaths attributed to fire at the hospital and three fatalities that are very probably homicides. The last eight fatalities are still under investigation."

Ambitious Deirdre raised one perfectly tapered eyebrow in the knowing fashion of the chronically cynical. Before she could respond someone at the back of the throng blurted, "Are you saying there is no relationship between the three incidents?"

Saddler shook his head, knowing that he was about to propagate a deliberate lie or at least a convenient half-truth. "I'm telling you that we've not established a direct connection between the three. This does not preclude the possibility that the incidents are directly related, but as we have no evidence to tie them together, the Sheriff's Department will continue to consider them three separate investigations."

"Sheriff, can you confirm that at least three of these incidents appeared to have some connection to the occult?" Deirdre Wilkins then asked, leaving Saddler to wonder how she might have garnered this particular bit of insight.

This question, more than any other, was particularly inflammatory and could easily detonate in his face in an explosion of sensationalist publicity. "Ms. Wilkins, I won't confirm or deny that aspect of the investigation other than to caution against the dangers of sensationalizing this situation beyond its already grim context. Obviously, Quinsett now finds itself in a situation the likes of which it is never before faced...a very dangerous situation that is extremely fluid. It would be blatantly irresponsible to further worsen the crisis by sensationalizing the circumstances with unsubstantiated speculation."

"Will you at least confirm that the individual murdered along with Deputy Feldman was not a resident of Quinsett?" Wilkins persisted tenaciously.

"Yes, the other victim was a forty-nine year old male and a resident of Seattle, but his name will be withheld until his immediate family has been informed of his death. In the interest of brevity, I will try to anticipate likely questions. Thus far, we have been unable to ascertain the motive for any of the confirmed homicides and we do not have a suspect for these crimes."

"Was Cameron Crane not questioned in connection with the initial disfigurement of the Riesen girl?" Wilkins interjected and Saddler saw at once that the others had naturally deferred to her aggressive pursuit of the salient questions. Willing himself to remain calm, he stated emphatically, "Cameron Crane was questioned because he was the first to discover Alma Riesen after the events of the cemetery. I want to make it unequivocally clear...Cameron Crane is not nor has he ever been a suspect in any of incidents that have occurred in Quinsett in the last six days. Now I'll really have to bring this impromptu conference to an end. As this department uncovers information that can be shared, I assure you we will do so."

"One final question, Sheriff...are the eight thousand citizens of Quinsett safe? I think they have the right to that answer, Sheriff Saddler," Deirdre Wilkins demanded with a contrived solemnity. There was something in the way she had emphasized his name that spoke eloquently of her detailed foreknowledge of the man to whom she was posing her questions.

Seeing no way to avoid the skillfully played gambit, Saddler sighed and turned back to the group of reporters. "As I said, Quinsett finds itself in a situation unlike anything it has ever faced."

That was grossly inaccurate of course, but Saddler would sooner have swallowed ground glass then raise the specter of Jeniah Lightcrusher.

"You're right, Ms. Wilkins, the citizens of Quinsett are deserving of candor. Without a thorough understanding of the motives behind the crimes committed over the last week, I would say that every citizen of the town would be prudent to exercise a greater degree of caution as they go about their daily lives. Parents especially should be vigilant, though don't misconstrue this to mean that children are in any way being targeted. It might also be wise to not go into the surrounding forests alone. Again, these are only general precautionary measures that would be advisable to follow until such time as those responsible are apprehended. Now, I really do have work to do."

With this, Saddler turned away, nodded to Albert and Maria and mounted the steps. The throng quickly began to drift away, but Deirdre watched the Sheriff with a speculative gleam ablaze in her incisive blue eyes. She abruptly handed her microphone to her cameraman and hurried to intercept Saddler before he could reach the door. Never one to be branded as timid, Deirdre imposed herself between Saddler and Cordova, earning a fierce scowl from the deputy which she pointedly ignored,

"That was a deft, big-city piece of evasion, Sheriff Saddler," the reporter remarked softly. "Every bit as amusing as it was vexing. Andrew Carlson being a tabloid journalist and that most interesting pentagram on Lars Angstrom's barn...they would certainly have the most fascinating new complexion to an already intriguing story...wouldn't you agree Sheriff? Stir in just the right measure of urban legend and you would quickly find yourself with a tale worthy of network news coverage."

Saddler narrowly managed to suppress a grimace, though he doubted his inscrutable façade fooled this woman from moment. "You have no idea how...unproductive and irresponsible a story framed in that particular light would be, Ms. Wilkins."

Deirdre leaned closer and placed her hand on his left wrist, beaming a broad smile that never touched her predator's eyes. "Oh but I believe I do, Sheriff and that's why I'm going to omit these compelling tidbits from my report...for the time being."

Now Saddler did scowl at the thinly veiled threat. "What exactly do you want Ms. Wilkins?"

Deirdre step back and pressed a hand to her breast as though aggrieved. "The media is not your enemy, Sheriff...at least it doesn't have to be. What I want is simple...I will not report on pieces of information that might prove a hindrance to your investigation. In return, you will give me first access to any new development you could share with the public. I think you're an astute man Sheriff...if so, you'll see beyond this veneer and realize that I'm a capable woman...an extremely capable woman. Who's to say what a tenacious woman might just unearth. If we can reach an informal accommodation, anything I come across will reach you ears first."

Saddler pursed his lips, knowing fully and completely that he was being expertly stroked. A finely honed instinct insisted that Deirdre Wilkins would honor this rather murky arrangement. A slight frown of disapproval rippled across Maria Cordova's face as Saddler struck his precarious bargain. "Ms. Wilkins, perhaps there is something I can pass along. The first Selectman has agreed with my request to impose a dusk until dawn curfew in Quinsett. In addition, access to the eternal lights cemetery will be curtailed for the foreseeable future. If you can confirm this and begin broadcasting these edicts, it would be most helpful."

Deirdre offered the Sheriff a radiant smile. "I believe we have an understanding, Sheriff. Once I've confirmed this with municipal office, Channel 4 will be pleased to provide this community service. Let's stay in touch, Sheriff."

She offered him a nuanced grin and was gone, her blond hair bouncing exuberantly as she gathered up her cameraman and headed back to the action four news van. Saddler drew a tremulous breath as he watched her go and then headed back into his office, pursued by a disquieting realization that he had just become entangled with a viper and could only hope it was a complication he would not soon come to rue.

4

Lynda Verin had lived in a red brick side split on Chester Crescent for twenty seven years and had lived in Quinsett for her entire life save for the years she had left to attend teachers College. Upon returning, she began teaching at Quinsett primary school where she met and fell in love with Keith Verin, who she would marry soon after. After twenty three years of contentment (the absence of children notwithstanding), Keith had left Lynda a forty five year old widow after a mercifully brief battle with lung cancer.

Seven years later, Lynda Verin lived a life of quiet solitude and though Keith's death was like a lingering pain that had diminished with the passing of time, it never entirely vanished. She had come to suspect that it never would even if she lived another fifty years.

Still, with the passage of years, Lynda Verin had learned to live with the loss...that omnipresent pain, as all humans must inevitably do. She vowed never to take another husband and true to her word, no man had shared her bed in the intervening years because Lynda was a strong and resolute woman who could no sooner renounce that vow than she could bring her beloved husband back from his premature grave.

Instead, Lynda focused her energies on her career as a teacher, bolstered by the unwavering conviction that her efforts could help mold each generation of young minds into worthwhile expenditures of space. She sought refuge from the insidious drag of loneliness in books and solace in cultivating relationships with a close-knit circle of like-minded female friends.

The fact that her Monday and Thursday night bridge games had assumed the gravity of sacred ritual spoke eloquently of the state of Lynda's life.

Here was a woman who was happy...after a fashion, having accepted that, for her, true contentment was a thing of the past; something experienced only through the bitter-sweet lens of sepia-colored reminiscence.

As she stepped out into the morning drizzle with her three year old West Highland Terrier, Barney, at her side, Lynda locked the front door and slipped her house keys into the pocket of her yellow windbreaker. Before setting out on her morning walk (yet another ritual the widow Verin observed without deviation) Lynda closed her eyes and drew a deep breath of the humid air, grateful that she had resisted the urge to sell the home after Keith's death.

"Another day, Barney and more miles to travel," Lynda intoned affectionately and bent down to ruffle the dog's fur. Barney gazed back at Lynda with an expression of unconditional love that only dogs seemed able to achieve.

As she and Barney set out, Lynda Verin hadn't the slightest inkling that this would be the last occasion she would leave the house where she had lived the happiest days of her life.

5

During a campaign of carefully contrived community benevolence measures in the early part of the eighties, Stuart Crane had financed the construction of an extensive network of recreational biking and walking trails. These trails set out from the outskirts of Quinsett proper and wound and twisted their way through the surrounding forest, usually terminating at a picturesque brook or pond. These trails were a uniform five feet in width and surfaced with packed chip and dust. A widening had been created at the terminus of each trail, where local geographic trivia was set on placards and affixed to an ornate Dais. Sturdy wooden benches set on concrete pads had been erected to allow the users to rest and wallow in Washington State's natural beauty before making their return hike to Quinsett.

One of these trails had its point of origin at the north end of Chester Crescent and it was from there that Lynda and Barney set out on this gray and drizzly Quinsett morning.

Barney, usually every bit as enthusiastic about this morning ritual as his beloved mistress, found himself feeling uncharacteristically anxious as the pair passed into the trees. In truth, the terrier had been out of sorts for the last several days, but his inchoate anxiety had grown stronger with each coming of dawn. Though he lacked the faculties to give voice to this mounting sense of disquiet...to give it shape and substance, Barney knew with an animal's unequivocal certainty that something was very wrong in this two-legged animal's enclave.

There was a high, eldritch smell capering just beneath the profusion of other scents that normally filled the air. The West Highland grasped the concept of evil...as most animals are apt to do...on an atavistic level that most humans could not begin to fathom. Barney realized that something ineffably evil had descended upon his home.

Fiercely loyal and courageous Barney understood that he was afraid...afraid for the two-legged companion beside him more than for himself. Her unchanging scent informed him that she remained oblivious to this malignant presence and might not have feared it even if she had detected its proximity.

That awful feeling of imminent disaster grew geometrically as the pair moved further along the now familiar path. Something terrible was watching them...shadowing and stalking them with a keen hunger and malevolent purpose. Somehow his mistress could not detect that furtive scrutiny, though the sense of being watched made Barney's fur stand on end.

Humans could be so utterly frustrating in their inability to glean the most obvious ambient elements...intimations of peril that any dog would've noticed in an instant. Even encumbered by limited ability to communicate complex emotions or the exigent need for caution, Barney understood that he had to find a way to alert his beloved mistress to the presence of the monster whose attention was now riveted firmly upon her.

Chapter Eight

1

Sheriff Saddler slumped into his chair, relieved to be back in the refuge of his office while trying not to contemplate the bargain he'd just struck with Deirdre Wilkins. It was possible he could put her ambition and journalist's zeal to good use, but such a course of action was akin to trying to keep a king cobra on a leash.

"In my years of being Sheriff, I never had to deal with anything close to that," Albert intoned, clearly nonplussed by the tone and direction of the impromptu press conference. "I don't envy your position...not one damn bit. That Wilkins woman is sly...like a fox that knows something the farmer doesn't."

"On that matter, were in total agreement," Saddler allowed. "My biggest concern is that our Ms. Wilkins is getting her tidbits of inside information from someone in this office."

Huxley shifted his gaze to the common area, an expression of consternation twisting his features. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, he remarked, "I can't see anyone deliberately spilling sensitive material to the press, Ray. I've known these people for a goodly number of years...other than Maria, of course."

Ray glanced at Huxley sharply and the old man held up his hand in a gesture of appeasement. "Don't get me wrong, Ray...I'm not suggesting Maria would be your leak. She strikes me as a sharp cookie and a right stickler for playing her by the book. I'll go you one further and admit that I let my old man's prejudices get in the way of giving her a fair shake. Still, while the rest of the crew may not be anyone's notion of a gathering of geniuses, they're a loyal lot and smart enough to know the disclosing investigative info to the press without your say so is stepping way over the line."

Saddler absorbed this thoughtfully and gave Huxley a tight nod. "I have no doubt that you're right, Albert. Deirdre Wilkins is a formidable piece of work and as you so astutely observed, sly like a fox. I'm going to have a casual conversation with everyone on the team...including Mariam and Sturgis and give them a friendly reminder about the need for discretion when dealing with members of the media."

"Seems reasonable," Albert allowed, rather noncommittally Saddler noted. "So where do we go next? I've never known Ira Silver to be so accommodating...or look so unsettled. Other than restrictions you were hoping to get, did we come away with anything of value?"

Saddler sensed the implicit question capering beneath Huxley's businesslike tone, but he refused to be drawn in...at least, not before he had the opportunity to approach Ronnie with the issue. "I'd say that our next step...our only step, to be frank...would be to question both Crane brothers. Taking the Jeniah angle as an article of faith, it makes sense to piece together as accurate a picture as we can in regards to exactly what happened on Ringgold Lane that night. As for Stuart Crane, we have to make him understand that he may be squarely in the crosshairs of whoever murdered Vincent Scallari. If he comes to appreciate his situation, I hope he might be a great deal more pliable in disclosing the nature of his association with Scallari."

"I wouldn't be too hopeful on that account, Ray," Huxley admonished, a ripple of distaste shaping his expression. "Stuart Crane is not known for his cooperative spirit. Speaking of Vincent Scallari, how did Seattle PD react to the news of his untimely passing?"

"With a keen degree of interest," Saddler reported, masking his disquiet over just how keen that interest had been. Ray had gleaned that the late Mr. Scallari had been a person of _real interest_ for local, state and federal authorities...a fact that did not bode well for Saddler's hopes of keeping a tight lid on Quinsett's deepening crisis.

"I'd imagine it's going to get harder and harder to keep the big dogs out of this hunt, isn't it?" Albert uttered, again displaying his penchant for cutting to the salient heart of the matter. Saddler ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and abruptly stood.

"Albert, my first instinct tells me to bring in federal authorities and have them throw blanket over Quinsett in hopes it smothers whatever nasty scheme is in motion here." Saddler paused, peering out into the street where the rain had begun to fall in earnest. When he shifted his gaze to the former Sheriff, there was a haunted light in Saddler's eyes that Huxley found intensely disturbing. "I normally follow my first instinct, but a more primal intuition is warning me that inviting the Feds in could well be signing Quinsett's death warrant. It all comes back to what we witnessed at the end of Ringgold Lane. That wall literally growing out of the ground...it was monstrous...unspeakably vile. Something has insinuated itself into the soil of this town and its gathering...moving with a plan and definite purpose. I feel foolish for speaking this aloud in the cold light of day, but I'd be an even bigger fool to discredit what I saw with my own two eyes or felt in the pit of my guts. Even if we were to lay it out for the Feds in the most matter-of-fact clinical way...or have them watch as those grotesque bricks pushed out of the earth...they would never accept our conclusions. Not in time to stop whatever's going to happen, come August 1st."

The two men lapsed into despondent silence before Huxley finally side conceded, "I guess you're right. Still, knowing what we know...which doesn't amount to a great deal...what exactly can you and I do about whatever the hell is happening here?"

Ray peered directly into Huxley's watery eyes and a rare moment of perfect and absolute empathy passed between the two men that left both feeling profoundly shaken. "The only truthful answer I can give you Albert is that of this moment, I have absolutely no idea."

2

On a typical summer morning, Lynda Verin would be found striding purposefully along the chip and dust trail that wound its way out from Chester Crescent, her gray-blue eyes focused squarely upon the trail ahead. Her brisk strides were strong and unwavering and Barney kept pace with the dogged determination that befits his breed.

There was an air of serenity about Lynda as she embarked on her daily hike. Lost in thoughts of better days...fuller days...she skillfully traversed the fine line between fond remembrance and the seductive pull of melancholy. She was only peripherally aware of the verdant splendor flashing by as she strode or the humid air that was redolent with a sweet blend of heady fragrances, all clamoring to delight the senses.

This particular morning was different...somehow discordant and vaguely ominous...though why she would find it so, Lynda could not exactly say.

For one, the usually stalwart Barney seemed oddly out of sorts. His usually unfaltering and boundless enthusiasm appeared to have deserted him. Lynda found herself frequently having to stop and give a gentle tug on the Terrier's leash just to keep him moving. Whenever she did this, Barney would respond with a plaintive whine and gazed up at her, his expressive brown eyes offering a wordless abjuration Lynda simply couldn't fathom.

Finally, she bent down and stroked his muzzle. "What's gotten into you, Barney?"

Again there came the beseeching stare as the Terrier gave a determined tug toward home. Lynda stood and regarded dog with exasperated frown furrowing her brow, "You're being quite a silly young man," she informed Barney reprovingly. "I swear you're being every bit as silly as that collection of hens were last night."

With this, Lynda resumed her hike, pulling Barney along with uncharacteristically petulant snap of his leash. Resigned, the Terrier fell in beside his mistress, stealing fearful glances at the surrounding forest.

The drizzle intensified to a light rain and Lynda pulled the hood of her windbreaker over her gray hair. Her mind darkened as she recalled the strange dynamic that had infected her normally pleasant bridge game last night. Barely focusing on the game, the three other ladies had prattled about the dire events of the last week. Celia Dandridge had even went so far as to suggest (jokingly, or so Lynda fervently hoped) that these events could be connected to the long dead witch.

"It's said she cursed Quinsett right before those men killed her," Celia had reported, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. That earned a particularly reproachful scowl from Lynda, who had very little patience with such ludicrous nonsense, but Celia had droned on, oblivious to her host's displeasure.

Near the end of the evening, Celia had suddenly blurted, "Lynda, you're not still walking into the woods alone, are you? Tell me you're not...not with everything that's happened?"

Lynda responded to this with a disparaging scowl in the dismissive wave of her right hand. "Don't be daft, Celia. Quinsett is perfectly safe."

Now, as she stepped into the deserted clearing on the south bank of Trafford stream, an apprehensive Barney plodding beside her, Lynda was assailed by a sense that her confident declaration that all was well in Quinsett, might be incorrect...perhaps fatally so.

3

Ray Saddler was alone in his office, absently skimming through Art Silver's preliminary report detailing the previous night double homicide, when a soft rapping came at his office door.

Maria Cordova popped her head around the door jam and inquired, "Can you spare a moment, Sheriff?"

"Please, Ray will do fine," he replied and gestured her toward the chair Huxley had vacated only a few moments before. Maria nodded, though her discomfort with eschewing formality was evident. As she moved across the office and settled into the offered seat, Ray could not help but notice a liquid grace with which she moved.

' _Nimble like a leopard...and just why are you thinking these sorts of thoughts anyway?'_ Saddler wondered, perplexed by his reaction, his decidedly physical perception of Quinsett's only female officer. "I want to commend you on how you handled the wolf pack earlier. Poor Mariam was on the verge of apoplexy and herding them out of the office may have spared the department a good deal of...grief."

Maria accepted this with a slight nod; her exquisite brown eyes regarding him in that frank and open way that could be thoroughly disconcerting. "I would imagine it is no less difficult having to deal with someone as clever as Ms. Wilkins."

Saddler thought that he could discern a hint of implicit criticism in Maria's observation. This was the type of formidable woman who could make a man feel woefully inadequate by simply arching a finely tapered eyebrow and though her remark seemed neutral enough, her disapproval of his bargain with Deirdre Wilkins was glaringly evident. Like Veronica, Maria Cordova was not a woman who would miss a great deal.

This made her next statement all the more surprising...and unsettling. "Sheriff, I want to begin by expressing my gratitude for placing your faith in me."

Ray started to offer a platitude about being the one who was grateful, but Maria vehemently cut him short...her expression darkening with an emotion Saddler could not immediately identify. "I hope that what I'm about to tell you doesn't cause you to regret bringing me onto the active-duty roster, but I will certainly understand if it does."

She lapsed into an uncomfortable silence and Saddler could clearly recognize her reluctance to disclose whatever was causing her such consternation. Not certain why, he suddenly recalled the crumpled page from Orlin's notebook and his heart began to hammer painfully in his chest...suddenly certain that Maria's revelation was going to be devastating.

"What happened, Maria?" Saddler heard himself ask as though from down the length of a long corridor. She met his gaze and those beautiful, expressive eyes held the measure of something that might have been concerned or pity.

"Deputy Holland and I searched Mr. Scallari's hotel room. We found a single suitcase that held a few articles of clothing and toiletries." Again there came the weighty pause, but her eyes never left his. "I asked Deputy Holland to search the bathroom while I went through the dresser and nightstand. While searching the bedding, I found something...that I purposefully did not share with Deputy Holland. I haven't entered this item into evidence and while I am fully aware that both of these actions represent serious procedural violations, it seemed critically important that I share this with you first."

Saddler attempted to speak, but found himself shackled by an odd paralysis and the best he could muster was a nod. As perceptive as always, Maria correctly interpreted this as a sign to proceed. Never averting her eyes, she slowly reached into the pocket of her department jacket and produced a single slip of folded paper. Saddler watched with intensifying horror as she slowly leaned forward and placed slip of paper on the desk, deftly spreading the folds with two fingers. Inhaling deeply, Saddler shifted his gaze to the page. This time he could not suppress a groan of stark despair as he read the letters that ran neatly across the page like a damning accusation.

VERONICA ASHCOTT-SADDLER

The name blazed up at Raymond Saddler like a baleful indictment...an indelible scar that could not be banished however desperately he wanted to. He wanted to snatch up the paper and tear it into pieces as though that petulant act could somehow efface it from reality. Instead, he forced his gaze back to Maria with the intention of offering a cursory dismissal. Yet, when he met that unrelenting gaze boring into his skull, there passed between the pair of moment of pure empathy the likes of which neither had previously experienced nor would again.

In that singular moment, Saddler felt that his heart and mind had been torn asunder...laid bare before the beautiful, intelligent woman to examine and render judgment over. He understood implicitly that he and Maria Cordova were in the process of forging an inextricable link as binding as the most profound of loves.

More astounding still, he realized that he would surrender to this binding with wholehearted acceptance, and the trite explanations dried on his lips. Saddler could tell from Maria's own bemused expression that she had experienced the precise same reaction.

Without saying a word, Saddler rose from his desk and crossed over to the coat rack, retrieving the crumpled notebook page. He carefully smoothed out the page and laid it on the desk for Maria's perusal. She glanced at the plate number and then up to Saddler, her brow furrowing...though in confusion or dawning comprehension, he could not say.

"I tore this from Orlin's notebook last night. It was the final entry." After a slight hesitation, he revealed glumly, "That is the plate number for my wife's car. So you see that I can hardly condemn you for breaching protocol. I've done precisely the same thing Maria, though perhaps my reasons are...more complex."

Maria shifted her gaze to the license number, chewing on her full lower lip. "There could be a number of perfectly logical explanations for this...Ray,"

"There could be, but they can be dispensed with quickly enough when you consider that the notebook was lying open to this page facedown on the passenger seat of Orlin's cruiser."

Maria's lovely countenance became grim. "The implication being that Orlin had made a point of recording the plate number just prior to heading into the cemetery...which further implies that the vehicle was there when deputy Feldman arrived."

To hear it laid out so succinctly caused Saddler to grimace, but he merely nodded. "While I'm baring my soul, I may as well tell you that Vincent Scallari was making discreet inquiries about Veronica...my wife. Scallari was allegedly brought to town by Stuart Crane, which connects back to everything that happened in the last week. That's why I want to thank you for bringing this to me and allowing me the opportunity to come to terms with everything it might imply."

"What will you do now?" She asked, her tone clearly conveying her appreciation of his unenviable position.

"That actually depends on you," he responded with a wan smile. "If you enter this into evidence...as you have both the right and the duty to do...I will have no choice but to stand aside and summon outside authority. That would have immediate effect of putting Veronica squarely in the crosshairs of the investigation. That's absurd of course...as of six weeks ago, Veronica had never even heard of Quinsett, Washington."

"And if I choose to leave this information in your keeping?" Maria asked softly, the unexpected question filling Saddler with relief.

Cautiously, he ventured, "Then I would owe you one tremendous debt of gratitude and perfect candor from this point forth."

Maria returned her gaze to the license, tapping her index finger rapidly on the slip of paper. Finally, she looked at Saddler and intoned, "I'll leave this with you for the time being because I believe in the concept of reciprocity and because I trust your judgment. Again, I'll ask you; what do you intend to do now?"

Ray's sense of relief was a palpable thing. "Before I even try to answer that question, there's something I'd like to show you...something only Albert and I are aware of. After you've seen it, I suspect you'll have a new perspective on exactly how precarious the situation in Quinsett really is. Let's take a ride."

Maria regarded Saddler questioningly for a moment and Ray thought he perceived just the slightest glint of suspicion in her lovely brown eyes. In the next instant, she rose to her feet, swept the two slips of paper from the desk and tucked them into her pocket, before moving resolutely to the door.

Fetching a deep sigh of relief, Saddler followed his deputy. As he left the station, he realized that by deciding to take possession of the two pieces of withheld evidence...both his and hers...Maria Cordova had become the self-appointed custodian of their deception.

4

Lynda stood on the sandy bank of Trafford stream, staring glumly at the falling rain that made tiny plumes as it fell into the dark waters. She felt out of sorts and unaccountably anxious, which further aggravated her darkening mood. Thoughts of last night's gathering circled in her mind, invariably leading back to that ridiculous myth, but here...alone and isolated in this very forest...thoughts of Jeniah Lightcrusher seemed anything but ludicrous.

' _Oh for God's sake, you're acting like a frightened schoolgirl at summer camp,'_ she castigated herself, disgusted that the old urban legend had any power to rouse her anxiety.

Abruptly, a gust of wind blew out of the north, raising a curtain of cold, watery mist. The spray caught Lynda a full in the face, momentarily blinding her and causing her to gasp. Beside her, Barney had retreated two paces and began to growl deep in his chest, his ears laid back along his skull.

Lynda pawed at her eyes, instinctively turning away from the wind that continued to gust and raise curtains of spray from the surface of the slithering stream.

As she did, her feet became entangled in the Terriers leash, spilling her to the now sodden gravel surface. She uttered a rare and particularly vile epithet and staggered to her feet, barely retaining her grip on Barney's leash. Lynda gazed down at the palm of her left hand to see tiny pearls a blood glistening on the flesh in a semicircular fan, where the skin had been abraded by the sharp edged gravel.

Now the wind began to swirl through the clearing, seemingly blowing from every direction at once. Worse still, the rain began to fall in great torrential sheets, bouncing back into the air a full six inches on impact. There was something vaguely menacing about the sudden eruption of inimical weather...as if it had pounced upon Lynda with willful malice.

Her gaze swept the periphery of the clearing, but the depth of the surrounding trees and the foliage were lost in pools of purple shadow. Squinting against the rain laden gusts, Lynda thought she could detect subtle hints of movement in the forest gloom...furtive intimations of scrutiny that caused her to gasp aloud.

"Who's there," she called, feeling at once silly and frightened. _'There's no one there, you daft bitch...now get yourself home before you take a chill.'_

"Let's move Barney... Looks like you knew something mommy didn't, eh boy?" She rasped and began to pull the terrier toward the head of the hiking trail. To her eternal consternation, now the dog stubbornly resisted commencing the return trip.

She peered down at the thoroughly soaked terrier, barely resisting the malicious compulsion to deliver a good swift kick in the ass as a means of motivation.

Suddenly, Barney turned its snout of the heavens and loosed a keening howl that seemed to pierce her skull like a driven nail.

"Barney?" She ventured tentatively, her irritation giving way to concern. The dog repeated its ear-splitting howl and its volume and pitch was now more frantic than ever. Lynda deduced that a companion was offering a strident admonition.

She jerked her gaze back to the head of the hiking trail just as someone stepped from the trees into the driving rain. There was something distinctly threatening about the figure's slightly crouched posture and she raised her right arm to shield her eyes in an effort to get a better look at the person who now blocked her egress from the clearing.

To her chagrin, Lynda discovered that the black clad figure seem to be shrouded in haze very much like a television image that is distorted or badly out of focus.

"Who are you? What do you want?" The questions burst forth in a deluge and Lynda new they were both foolish and unnecessary even as she gave voice. Who this person was ultimately didn't matter and what they wanted was glaringly obvious...declared succinctly by the adversarial manner in which figure came forward.

The figure came to a sudden halt and slowly raised its right hand, index finger pointing directly at a transfixed Lynda. When it spoke, it was in a decidedly feminine voice fraught with malice. The voice was ubiquitous and seemed to reverberate in the confines of her skull like apocalyptic thunder. "You have been chosen...a harbinger of the way. You will not leave this clearing alive, but your end will not soon be forgotten."

Barney began to bark then, baring his fangs and leaping at the approaching figure. For a moment, she briefly contemplated letting him go and using his attack as a distraction to get clear. She discarded the shameful notion as quickly as it had come...she might die, but it would not be as a traitorous coward.

She started right and then broke left, pulling the West Highland with a frantic tug, but even as she began to sprint, the distorted figure appeared to blink and then vanished before disbelieving eyes. Even before she could internalize this incredible aberration, a nylon cord snapped tight around her neck and black circles bloomed before her bulging eyes. Lynda automatically dropped Barney's leash and tried desperately to grip the wet nylon cord that was biting deep into the soft flesh of her neck. She could clearly hear her attacker's hot breath in her right ear.

Sensing that she was about to lose consciousness...knowing that this turn of events would prove fatal...Lynda instinctively drove her head back. There followed a satisfying crunch and guttural grunt and she could feel the assailant's cord loosen, if only marginally.

Raising her left knee, Lynda drove the heel of her sneaker down and by good fortune, connected squarely with the attackers left instep.

Suddenly the constricting pressure was gone and Lynda Verin stumbled free gasping for air. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to see that brave, valiant Barney had circled behind the hooded figure and sank his teeth into the assailant's left calve. The figure cried out in pain but nonetheless promptly clubbed Barney across the snout. The small dog rolled away, but regained its feet and began to circle the attacker, barking, snarling and looking for another opening.

"Run Barney...run home!" Lynda screamed and resumed her headlong sprint toward the trail.

The familiar returned his attention to the quarry, ignoring both snarling dog and throbbing pain in his injured foot and broken nose. With mounting panic, the thing that had once been Knox Severn saw that the woman had almost reached the trail. He was cognizant of the hot blood running into his boot from where the terrier had bitten him and correctly deduced that the bitch may have actually managed to break several small bones in his foot.

He could ignore the pain, but it was highly unlikely that he could outrun her in a flat-out foot race back to Chester Crescent. Worse still, he had expended the vast majority the arcane energy his mistress had bestowed upon him when creating this hostile weather anomaly.

He tried to envision how his mistress would respond to the news of his failure and shuddered violently. The price of failure would be a protracted and excruciatingly painful. Knox need only recall the sadistically creative end she'd visited upon the Riesen girl to know this woman had cultivated an insidious art for cruelty.

Drawing on the last of his arcane energy, Knox stepped forward, gritting his teeth against explosion of pain in his left foot and made a grand sweeping gesture with his right arm.

Lynda Verin was a few strides from the trail when the massive force struck her in the back and sent her sprawling onto her face. She lay prostrate on the wet ground for several seconds, trying to regain her senses, feeling the warm trickle of blood from her nose and from just above her left eye. She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.

She started forward and stopped instantly, her breath hitching in her chest even as she shook her head in negation. Where once there was a chip and dust path leading south into the forest, now there was an impenetrable wall of vegetation...a twisted tangle of trees and underbrush that bristled with the wickedest looking thorns Lynda had ever set eyes upon.

Lynda pivoted in place to discover that the improbable tangle now encircled the entire clearing, save for a gap that led to the south bank of Trafford stream. As quickly as the frantic downpour had commenced, it now ceased abruptly, giving way to a light drizzle and uniform slate gray skies.

This struck Lynda an appropriate backdrop for the mortal struggle in which she now found herself embroiled.

Her assailant was converging upon her again, lurching forward and dragging his foot behind him. He pushed back the hood to reveal a swollen and bloody nose and two rapidly swelling eyes.

Lynda needed only one glance at that face to conjure the memory of Knox Severn...a perpetual excrement-disturber who left an indelible impression on any teacher unfortunate enough to be burdened by the little hellion.

Apparently, he had graduated far beyond the role of class agitator. With the revelation of her attacker's identity, Lynda's terror evaporated, giving way to outrage...an outrage that supplanted good sense.

"Knox Severn...so now you've taken to mugging women and not just being the town lay about?" Lynda demanded indignantly and began striding toward Severn as if she intended to catch hold of his ear and yank him to the principal's office as she had done so often when he was in her fifth grade class.

Not believing his good fortune, Knox offered the old bitch a feral grin so rife with malice that Lynda should have grasped the essence of her folly. Instead, she bore down upon him with every intention of slapping his smug face.

She raised her right hand, but before she could deliver the indignation-fuelled blow, the familiar surged forward and drove his knee into her belly. Lynda let out a wheezing exclamation and sagged to her knees with bulging eyes. Severn quickly seized a fistful of grey hair and smashed another vicious knee into her face, reciprocating for shattering his nose.

Lynda Verin collapsed onto her back, staring sightlessly up at the roiling sky and gasping like a fish out of water. Barney viewed this catastrophic reversal of fortune and uttered a strident howl, instinctively knowing that his mistress had committed a fatal error by electing to confront the _bad thing_ rather than escape down the path that stood wide open to her.

Unlike Lynda Verin, Barney was unaffected by the familiars barrier illusion and knew that access to the trail remained unencumbered.

The familiar stared down at the prone figure of the troublesome old bitch, alarmed by the volume of blood flowing freely from her shattered nose. He bent down and retrieved his nylon cord and then looped it around Lynda's neck before dragging her toward Trafford stream. The pain in his foot blared out but he found himself able to compartmentalize it now, reducing it to a peripheral, inconsequential thing.

The woman clawed frantically at his hands, but her nails found no purchase on the rubber gloves. Lynda was a spirited victim who frantically resisted her imminent death, but even as she dug her heels into the saturated chip and dust, leaving great runnels in her wake, Severn dragged her inexorably forward.

It was a rather fortuitous stroke of luck that the familiar had selected this specific spot to take his quarry. The mistress had made it exceedingly clear that his kill must be quick and essentially bloodless.

Trafford stream would provide the means with which he could achieve that rather challenging feat.

As he dragged Verin over the thin sandy strand to the waters edge, she grasped his intent in redoubled her effort to break free. Tiny blood vessels had ruptured in her eyes and her skin had taken on a bluish tinge, lending her face a macabre, demonic appearance.

When the familiar was knee-deep in the cold water, he released his grip on the nylon cord and Lynda dropped unceremoniously into the rushing stream. Severn quickly straddled the woman's chest and plunged his hands into the water. Finding firm purchase on her throat, he applied a steady pressure while peering down through the murky water into her blue eyes.

Eventually, her struggles subsided, but the familiar prudently continued to hold her under the water for several more minutes. Taking the woman had been far more difficult than anticipated and Knox could ill afford further miscalculation.

Back on the bank, Barney sensed the moment of his mistresses passing. He had failed to protect her and now found himself cast adrift in the face of the approaching storm. Laying back his head, the terrier emitted in a terrible howl of sorrow and anguish and then started back towards the home that was as lost to him as the mistress who had lived there.

5

Forty minutes later, a blood spattered familiar stood, his face set in a contemplative grin, admiring the end result of his efforts. Nodding in satisfaction, Severn began to collect the eighth stainless steel cylinders that were arrayed in a semicircle at his feet and carefully packed them into the satchel along with the rubber tubing and thin hollow needle.

Once the cylinders were stored away, he withdrew an athame, marveling at the exquisitely fashioned handle and a gleaming blade that had been honed to a lethal sharpness.

Returning to the suspended horror that had once been Lynda Verin, the familiar quickly and deftly cut away her clothing. Her sagging flesh, pendulous breasts and thatch of gray pubic hair evoked a shudder of disgust in Severn. Thus, when he made a deep incision that ran from pubic bone to sternum, it was with more vehemence and rancor than was strictly necessary.

The deadly blade of the athame sliced through the muscles of the abdominal wall effortlessly and the familiar had to skip nimbly back to avoid the viscera that spilled through the gaping incision. They hung from the cavity in great steaming ropes. Severn quickly cleaned his dagger on the suspended corpse's left thigh and tossed it back into the satchel, before retreating into the circle of Solomon from which he would complete the final aspect of his vile task.

As the familiar closed his eyes and bowed his head, foreign words began to spill from his lips in a fevered torrent...an incantation that had been inculcated into the fabric of his subconscious by the creature he now served. As the strange entreaty continued to pour forth, Knox became cognizant of the strange subtle coalescing in the center of his being.

It grew and swelled until the pleasant warmth became a searing heat that Severn feared would surely consume him before much longer. This inchoate fear did not prompt the familiar to falter and his adjurations grew louder...more strident.

That coalescing energy grew in geometric increments and when it seemed inevitable that Knox Severn would be immolated in a spectacular blaze of bale fire, he laid back his head and howled.

An indistinct shape burst from his mouth in a geyser, threatening to tear his vessel of flesh asunder. The nebulous shape assumed the form of an ululating cry that spiraled up into the dull morning sky, gaining volume and pitch as it burst from his lungs.

Knox Severn stood as rigid as a piece of statuary as this outpouring of energy went on for what seemed like an eternity. Like a large stone dropping into the center of a calm lake, the sound reached a crescendo and then began to roll out in every direction. Unlike the stone-in-a-lake metaphor, the sound did not gradually dissipate as it moved further from the source. Instead, it seemed to gain inexorable momentum...like an avalanche.

As it moved over Quinsett like a breaking wave, the sound (that was really a command of summons) caused people to grit their teeth and cover their ears. It shattered windows at several locations through the town and fell small birds from the sky as they flew.

When at last the familiar had regurgitated the last of the energy, he collapsed to his knees, groaning and gasping for breath. When he recovered his composure sufficiently to stand, Knox gathered up the shoulder satchel and set out for his next task on a dead run...the injury to his foot and calve forgotten.

There was much that remained to be done. Beside which, the familiar had no desire to be here when the things he had summoned finally arrived.

Chapter Nine

1

Cameron thrashed one final time, kicking the sweat sodden sheets onto the floor with a spastic violent thrust, and came awake with a start. He sat for several moments, gazing around in wild-eyed disorientation as the dull light filtered through the thread bare curtains that hung in his small bedroom window.

Crane closed his eyes and sat breathing heavily as rivers of perspiration ran freely down his forehead and torso. The small bedroom was cloyingly hot and its air seemed scarcely breathable, but the sweat that glistened on Cameron Crane's brow was glacially cold...the kind of emphatic response that only stark terror could induce.

Cameron swung his long legs over the edge of his narrow bed, propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. While he waited for his racing heart to settle back into a more or less normal rhythm, he tried vainly to recall the exact nature and context of the nightmares that had plagued his nocturnal slumber. To his frustration, Cameron found that he could do no better than conjure disjointed fragments. These fragments were all that remained of his nightlong ordeal save for the prevailing memory of the vivid cloud of utter dread that lingered even upon waking.

There had been a ubiquitous, apocalyptic darkness that held sway over a world of ruin, flame and acrid smoke, through which lumbered enormous shadow figures that dispensed death and carnage in a mindless, random frenzy.

' _Not random, Cameron...as you very well know,'_ came an inner voice speaking in a tone normally reserved for someone being deliberately obtuse. This disdainful mental barb caused the elder Crane to utter a groan as another aspect of his previous night's terror marathon resolved itself into sharp and irrefutable focus.

Through every excruciatingly horrifying incarnation of this nightmare there had run one thread...the one commonality that gave sinister context to an otherwise harmless night terror.

Veronica had gazed down upon the vast, sweeping panorama of destruction, her ethereal green eyes inhumanly cold and bereft of any trace of pity. The slaughter being visited on the tortured earth came at her direction, though to what purpose, Cameron could not begin to imagine.

Crane rose and stumbled to the window on unsteady legs, where he threw aside the curtain and peered out into the gray morning, where an indolent drizzle fell over the beleaguered streets of Quinsett.

Feeling despondent, Cameron pushed open the window and headed toward the shower, his gaze falling briefly on the stacks of new clothing that were arranged neatly atop his scarred wooden dresser. It had been Veronica Ashcott-Saddler who purchased the clothes for Cameron with a mind to raising Crane from what she regarded as a self-destructive malaise.

He shook his head in profound bewilderment and left the room, but even as he traversed the short length of hall that led to the bathroom, images from the last several days raced through his frazzled mind. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler had swept into his life like clear air turbulence, shattering its moorings of stability...or perhaps, his functional instability. Cameron had fallen completely under her enchantment, but he could hardly castigate himself for his inability to resist her. She had swept through his life of sterile solitude...a tsunami of self-assurance and poise, beguiling beauty and irresistible sexuality.

Even as he stripped off his pajama bottoms, evocative images of her naked perfection filled his head as did the sensation of her firm breasts and turgid pink nipples grazing his lips. Cameron stepped into his pitted tub with his rigid penis swaying across his abdomen like an insistent pendulum...throbbing testimony to the impact she had made upon a man who believed he had reconciled himself to a life of celibacy.

Understanding the exigent need to resist this distraction, Cameron jerked the faucet to cold, yelping as the cold spray stung him like incisive ice needles. Gradually his erection wilted somewhat, but the lingering sensation of her tight hips gliding over his was far too compelling to be banished entirely.

He did his best to ignore the slow, but insistent pulsing in his groin, dipping his head under the spray and turning his thoughts back to the fragments of his nightmare.

He had dreamt of slaughter on an inconceivable scale, executed by legions of shadow entities at Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's command...but what did it mean? Was this absurd nocturnal construct just a metaphor for Veronica's thorough and spectacular dismantling of the pathetic prison he'd made of his miserable existence?

Under other circumstances, he might have even entertained the plausibility of this facile psycho-analytical bullshit...but these were far from normal circumstances. Perhaps in mindless romantic comedies, wealthy, indescribably beautiful women suddenly materialized on the doorstep of the town's self-appointed hermit to rescue said misfit from his misery. As flawed as Cameron Crane might be, he possessed enough pragmatism to differentiate between whimsical fantasy and the harsh realities of a brutal and indifferent world. For the Veronica Ashcott-Saddlers of the world, men such as Cameron Crane existed well below their range of vision. If by some mischance, their gaze was drawn to such men, they would regard them with revulsion and a measure of fear.

Yet, despite this inviolable truism, Veronica had found and pursued him with the lethal skill of a stalking panther. As he stepped from the shower, water dripping onto the curling linoleum, Cameron was suffused by the certainty that his continued existence and perhaps the very survival of Quinsett hinged on him solving this particular riddle of her anomalous behavior.

Cameron peered into the mirror and considered the reflection that stared back at him. Setting false humility aside, he understood that he was an attractive man...tall and lean with a youthful, angular face and compelling gray eyes that had resisted the cumulative deprivation of the life he had chosen to live. Perhaps his fragile mind served as the Dorian Gray portrait to his flesh? Whatever the reasons, he had resisted the inevitable scarring of a squandered life. Still, his physical attractiveness paled in comparison to Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's sublime beauty. If a woman of her station felt the need to acquire a male play toy, there were far more suitable options to be had. That begged the question...why would she go to such lengths to ensnare him?

' _The answer's as plain as day, boyo...she wouldn't,_ ' came the voice of the dead man, some twenty-five years in the ground...who had set him veering down the twisted path to madness. He had not heard the voice of Mordecai Crane since the morning he had died. Still, the gravelly voice, that seemed to gravitate between surly impatience and affection, was unmistakably that of his long dead grandfather. ' _At least not without a very specific purpose. You're skirting around the edge of this thing, boyo...because you're not asking the right question.'_

Feeling chastised, like a fumbling schoolboy, Cameron returned to his bedroom and dressed, selecting a pair dark blue jeans and a light blue golf shirt. The clothes felt alien and distinctly odd, but as he considered his reflection, Cameron realized that he appeared perfectly normal...an ordinary man casually attired for typical day. Divested of the disheveled hair, the stubble and the worn army surplus regalia, Cameron Crane displayed not the slightest hint that he might be a seriously troubled soul.

In a simple flourish, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler had stripped away the veneer of mental dysfunction that Crane had sported like a perverse badge of honor since returning from Vietnam.

It was very possible that he could walk the streets of Quinsett without being recognized.

The ghost of Mordecai Crane's memory had whispered that Veronica sought him out with a purpose, but what possible reason could a woman of her ilk have for making the town outcast her personal reclamation project?

As he wandered into the living room and threw himself into the chair where Veronica had so artfully seduced him, Crane intuited that he was failing to perceive a critical step in the progression. Then, like a spark burst into flame, a single recollection emerged from the haze of the past seventy two hours and Cameron Crane uttered a strangled, inarticulate wail of anguish.

Mesmerized by the efficacy of her enormous aura, Cameron had somehow managed to forget the one revealing utterance. In retrospect, he wondered if she deliberately taunted him...teased him mockingly with the truth of his imminent corruption. She whispered those parting words as she had swept out of his door that first morning, "You and I have crossed paths before Cameron...or have you forgotten that cave in that foreign land?"

In that singular moment of crystalline epiphany, Cameron Crane gleaned the fundamental truth. Jeniah Lightcrusher had returned just as Mordecai Crane had predicted she would while lying on his deathbed.

With this dawning comprehension, that missing step in Cameron's progression opened a pathway to acceptance and understanding so terrible that it threatened to loosen Cameron's tenacious, yet tenuous grip on sanity.

Tears of shame and self-loathing began to stream down his face as he traversed the flagstones of the dark progression. Jeniah had somehow supplanted Veronica's will...possessed her and subverted Veronica to her service. The insidious genius of that selection...that enslavement, spoke volumes about the severity of Quinsett's plight. By somehow controlling the wife of the man entrusted with the task of protecting the town, Jeniah was free to pursue her schemes with virtual impunity. What's more, she would have probable access to every aspect...every nuance of the authorities' efforts to foil her.

' _And you let her fuck you, Cameron?'_ he thought, with a spastic shiver of disgust. ' _You wallowed in her vile filth like a rutting swine.'_

' _I never fancied you for an idiot, boy...an odd one to be sure, but never a fool,'_ Mordecai's voice resounded in his head...a blend of genuine surprise measured with scathing condemnation. ' _Do you really believe you possess the wherewithal to resist the kind of temptations such a woman represents? You allowed yourself to sink into a miasma...prime pickings for a creature of Jeniah's kind, but truth be told, only a madman or a saint could've marshaled the mettle to resist...and you boy, are neither of those. She didn't just beguile you with the pleasure of forbidden flesh...though an honest man would never deny the lure of that; she seduced you with something far more precious to a man who's allowed himself to sink as low as you have...the prospect for redemption. Lay your guilt aside, boyo...it's disingenuous and you don't have the luxury of wallowing in self-pity and guilt.'_

"Are you really here with me...speaking to me?" Cameron inquired of the familiar voice.

There followed a moment a protracted silence through which resonated a profound sadness. ' _When we pass, each of us leaves a measure of themselves in those we love and who have loved us in return. It's in the memories we leave behind that we achieve a kind of immortality. Do you understand, son?'_

Cameron nodded distantly as if to signify that he did in fact grasp the notion. Again, the painfully familiar voice began to speak. _'You asked if I'm really here and I can tell you that I am, but not in the sense you mean. In life, I planted a seed in the cleft of your heart; a kernel of truth that I knew you would someday come to need because my failure insured that the day would inevitably come. That dark day has arrived and the seeds germinated, reminding you of the things you already know...but have forgotten.'_

Gradually, Mordecai Crane's voice began to fade...growing softer and more distant, but before it fell silent for the final time, the man who once delayed Quinsett's moment of reckoning, intoned softly, _'I've done what I can, Cameron. What happens after this moment is in your hands.'_

There followed an instant of disengagement...of withdrawal as keen and poignant as anything Cameron had ever experienced. Sitting in the worn chair in his dismal, ramshackle hovel, Cameron Crane felt more utterly alone than he had at any prior moment in his wretched life.

When Veronica Ashcott-Saddler had miraculously stepped over the threshold of his squalid shack, Cameron had experienced a moment of elation at the prospect of possible deliverance. With the realization that he'd fallen willing victim to a sinister deception, that elation vanished like a delicate flower before killing wind.

In the wake of that bitter disillusionment, the void opened beneath his feet and invited him to succumb to the cold requiem of absolute despair.

' _What happens after this moment is in your hands._ ' That parting utterance, offered by the spectral remnant of his long dead grandfather, was all that prevented Cameron from capitulating.

He leaned forward and scrubbed his face with his hands. By some blackly humorous twist of cruel irony, the town's chosen whipping boy had now become its only hope for deliverance. Whereas a rational person would have vehemently rejected the preposterous suggestion that an evil entity had taken possession of the Sheriff's wife and was plotting the demise of the town, Cameron Crane traversed the vast distance between discovery and acceptance without hesitation.

Veronica had become Jeniah Lightcrusher's biddable marionette...Cameron accepted this unequivocally. Why she elected to seek him out...to seduce him and even go so far as to offer clues regarding her true identity...was beyond his comprehension and so he set it aside for the time being.

Assessing the situation, Cameron immediately discerned the depressing reality of the position in which he now found himself...he was utterly alone. Should he attempt to share his theory with anyone, Cameron would assure himself of a fast-track ticket to the sanitarium, especially considering the town's prevailing view of his mental health.

However Cameron chose to proceed from this juncture, it would be a solitary venture. Scowling in consternation, he rose and began to pace through the dull confines of his suffocating, small house, trying to recall the specifics of the tales Mordecai had imparted all those years before. One week hence, it would be the 50th anniversary of Jeniah's vigilante execution. Mordecai had claimed that his group of vigilantes had interrupted some manner of satanic ritual that involved the corpse of one of the town's missing children. He shared his belief that Jeniah had been...a witch of some sort...and had been trying to conjure something, when the men had broken in and put an end to her. That part of the tale had been lucid enough albeit sickeningly gruesome.

Camera recalled sitting transfixed at the old man's bedside, the air thick with the smell of imminent death, as Mordecai disclosed how the group...him specifically...had failed because, though they had managed to kill the witch, he had bungled the completion of some arcane ritual they had been directed to complete. Mordecai, when pressed by enthralled younger Crane, had adamantly refused to elaborate on the specific purpose and mechanics of the ritual or the nature of his failure.

"It was grim business, boy," Mordecai had related with the death rattle prominent in his lungs. "In the end, I didn't have the stomach to do what needed doing. She cursed us...before she died she cursed the lot of us and our families...and their families after 'em."

Mordecai had faltered then, his watery blue eyes glistening with tears of shame and failure. "Everyone thinks I'm a doddering old man, rambling on at the edge of death's door. You're the only one to pay me a bit of heed. We tried to stop something that night...something more terrible than any of us could imagine, I think. The others have deliberately forgotten some of what happened. I am the only one that saw it all and I can tell you...as sure as I'll be in the cold ground come the end of summer, that vile bitch will be back to finish what she started."

Cameron Crane knew with irrefutable certainty that Mordecai's dying prediction had proven chillingly correct.

' _And what precisely do you see yourself doing about it, Cameron?' a_ voice whispered...the derisive tone, rife with contempt, could only belong to his lifelong detractor, Stuart Crane. ' _Will you kill her...or perform an exorcism to banish Quinsett's resident demon?'_

Cameron stopped mid stride and laughed in spite of his pervasive pall of dejection. He never believed himself to be capable of murder and he sincerely doubted that he could actually harm Veronica Ashcott-Saddler if she was bearing down on him with a raised dagger and a lunatic gleam in her eyes. The notion that he could actually kill her was simply too absurd to contemplate.

' _But if you accept that she's been...possessed by the spirit of Jeniah Lightcrusher...it could very well come to that.'_ That passionate assertion, delivered with the conviction of cold logic, made Cameron grimace.

"Never!" he vowed to the mocking silence. Perhaps the idea of exorcism was not so fatuous after all. Anything to forestall the terrible possibility that Jeniah's dark schemes could only be undone by lethal force...delivered by his hand.

It suddenly occurred to him that if he had any hope of avoiding that unpalatable juncture of events, it would spring from understanding exactly how his grandfather had attempted to vanquish her...and just how he had failed.

Hurrying into his bedroom, Cameron dug into his hiding hole for fistful of loose bills before collecting the beige windbreaker Veronica had left for him.

Of the six men who could have provided the necessary answers to queries, five were deceased and one languished in a wavering state between total disconnection and apparent raving incoherence.

As Cameron hastened out of his bedroom, it occurred to him that Quinsett's fate could well rest on the stooped shoulders of the town's misfit and a demented priest.

He could not be certain if he found the idea ineffably tragic...or uproariously funny.

2

Cameron had not made it to the end of his crumbling walkway, when he noticed Stuart hurrying up the sidewalk. The elder Crane did not fail to notice that Stuart had parked his vehicle a considerable distance down the street.

' _Ever mindful of public perception, eh Stuart,'_ Cameron thought with a surprising degree of rancor. It would simply not do for the helmsman of the Crane dynasty to be seen openly associating with his halfwit sibling. Cameron was dismayed to discover that, despite having suffered it for so many years, the realization still had the power to wound him so acutely.

That anger and resentment immediately evaporated when Stuart discerned his brother's presence and their eyes met for the first time. It was immediately evident that his brother was clearly agitated...a state that was rare enough for the normally unflappable Crane. What Cameron quickly realized (and what was especially disconcerting) was that his brother appeared to be frightened. They made their way back into the house and Stuart dropped himself into a chair without waiting to be invited, while his brother took a seat across from him.

"Something's happened," Cameron prompted more as a statement than a question.

"Yes," Stuart replied flatly, though his anxiety rippled just beneath the surface. "I can't believe that you haven't heard. It's been blaring over the local radio and television for the last twelve hours."

"I haven't heard anything...I've been occupied," Crane explained, suddenly feeling the infectious sting of his brother's unease. Stuart looked at Cameron closely and noticing the new clothes for the first time, remarked, "I don't think I've seen you wear anything but those grubby army clothes for the last ten years."

"I guess I decided it's time for a change of image," Cameron offered with a ghost of a smile, but did not elaborate further. Stuart grunted, but did not pursue the issue, instead saying, "The last twenty four hours have been particularly bloody in Quinsett. Morley Cruthers had his throat torn out in his own home the night before last. Yesterday afternoon, Vincent Scallari, a business associate who I hired to look into a threat against the group, was slaughtered at Eternal Lights Cemetery, along with Orlin Feldman, from the sheriff's department."

The color had drained completely from Cameron's face as Stuart related the grim details of the trail of bloodshed that had cut a swath through Quinsett's sedate blanket of normalcy. Distantly he heard himself ask, "What time were Scallari and Orlin murdered?"

"The conjecture is that they were killed in late afternoon."

' _I'd stay longer, but I have a loose end to tie up before I go.'_ Those had been her words to him just before she breezed out yesterday afternoon. For reasons he did not entirely fathom, his mind drew an automatic association between this particular statement and the gruesome deaths at the Cemetery. To hide his dismay, Cameron asked "Any suspects?"

"None that I am aware of...it looks as though the sheriff is running around like a headless chicken in this case," Stuart observed, his mouth twisting in a glower of disgust. He lifted his head and peered directly into Cameron's eyes, an action that was extremely uncommon for the younger Crane, who could scarcely look upon his brother with anything less contempt under normal circumstance. "Perhaps I was wrong to dismiss your warning about this Jeniah business so quickly."

Cameron could only gape in disbelief, finding the idea that Stuart would actually consider the idea that the Indian had returned to seek vengeance, much less embrace it, simply incredulous. When he said as much, Stuart merely waved his hand impatiently and remarked, "I never said that that I actually think the spirit of the Indian bitch has returned from the great beyond. I do, however, suspect that someone who is thoroughly obsessed with her legend has...taken up her cause if you will. To that end, I think that everyone associated with the group is in real danger...you included."

Crane merely blinked at this. He had distanced himself from the family for so long that he took it for granted that everyone else did the same. Stuart was correct to assume that Jeniah would not bother to draw such distinctions. "Taking it as a given that this does involve Jeniah in some way, how do you intend to protect yourself?"

Stuart drew a deep, tremulous breath, informing Cameron that this very dilemma was forefront in his mind. "For one thing, I don't intend to be anywhere alone until this lunatic is apprehended...or killed. When I get back to the office, I intend to make arrangements the hire a security service."

"You mean a bodyguard?"

"Bodyguards," Stuart amended. "I intend to be vigilant and I won't make the mistake of being alone. You're not safe here, Cameron. I won't be pretentious and suggest that I've ever had much concern for your welfare, but this has given me a different perspective on a good many things. At any rate, I don't want to see you vulnerable and exposed. I guess I'm extending an invitation for you to return to the family home until this is over."

Cameron's disbelief deepened by leaps and bounds. The fact that Stuart would suggest, even circumspectly, that he was wrong was incredible enough, but that he would actually invite Cameron back into the family home was simply inconceivable. The elder brother could not decide if he could attribute Stewart's invitation to fear or compassion and finally decided true motivation was probably a mixture of both.

"I'll be fine here, but I certainly appreciate the offer," Cameron said and thought that he detected a glimmer of relief ripple across his brother's face.

"Well, the offer is still there, should you change your mind. I don't think we can take this situation lightly."

"I have every intention of being careful," Cameron said softly as Stuart stood and started to drift over to the door. He paused with his hand on the handle and turned back to his brother, again marveling over how different he appeared without the grubby fatigues. "Cameron, how is it that you know Veronica Ashcott-Saddler?"

Cameron's eyes narrowed even as he shook his head. "She and I are friends, I guess. I just happened to bumped into her at Hogan's market and struck up a conversation. Why do you ask? For that matter, how did you even know that we were acquainted?"

Stuart hesitated, clearly reluctant to divulge the source, but then he shrugged and explained, "Just before he was killed, Vincent called me. Among other things, he asked me how you knew this woman. He was quite agitated and his tone seemed to suggest that he found this to be somehow important. We were supposed to meet later last night to discuss the matter."

Cameron tightened perceptibly. Obviously, this Scallari had been trailing him and has seen Veronica visiting him here. He wondered if the man had been observing him at Stuart's behest and decided this was not likely. "I can't imagine why he would be interested in Veronica?"

Stuart frowned, misconstruing the depth of Cameron's feelings for a woman who was another man's wife. He considered pursuing the matter, but decided that he had enough to deal with out exploring his brother's possible dalliances. "Neither can I. This situation is so incredible...so bizarre."

Both men contemplated the matter silently for several moments and then Stuart opened the door and stepped in the early morning gloom. "Be cautious, Cameron and don't forget the offer. You're vulnerable here and there's been enough bloodshed already."

Cameron stood in the doorway and absently watched his brother hurry through the drizzle.

After Stuart Crane departed, Cameron sagged against the door, a groan of despair tearing from his chest. These three latest brutal deaths emphasized the need for immediate action and served as a bloody affirmation of his theory that events were gaining momentum towards a violent climax.

Obviously, the murder of Morley Cruthers was the opening salvo in Jeniah's campaign of vengeance against the men who had executed her, a half-century before. The slaughter of Scallari and Orlin Feldman, however, had probably been motivated by something else. Cameron's first inclination was to attribute these two murders to Jeniah's unwillingness to brook any interference or risk any exposure before her machinations reach fruition.

' _And yet her involvement with you is an absolute contradiction of that very idea,'_ he thought with no small degree of consternation. ' _She could've easily killed you, given what you believe she's done thus far and yet her behavior has been anything but belligerent.'_ Veronica seemed genuinely intrigued by the wayward Crane, regarding him with the kind of fascination someone might display towards a pet.

Crane shook his head in bewilderment, unable to reconcile the savage carnage of the past week with the image of the woman who had encouraged him to explore the root causes of his affliction. Cameron suspected that there was something of value to be had in unraveling the mystery of this perplexing anomaly...as painful as the solution might prove to be.

First, however, he had to speak with Quinsett's former holy man and discover exactly how Mordecai Crane failed to put a permanent end to Jeniah's evil.

3

As Cameron Crane set out with the intent of discovering more about the events of the infamous night of Jeniah's execution, he did so with a fervent belief that he was the only resident of the town who perceived the true shape of the threat hovering over Quinsett. Though he was leagues closer to gleaning the essence of the impending calamity, Cameron might have taken solace in knowing that there were others who were taking the first tentative steps along the road to genuine understanding and acceptance.

Eventually, they would all attain the same level of understanding, recognizing the incredible shape and countenance of the evil that stalked them like a predatory shadow. That moment of confluence...of perfect and terrible comprehension would come too late to influence the course of events that followed.

4

Deirdre Wilkins sat lost in silent contemplation, oblivious to the typical newsroom commotion and bustle that flowed around her...an endless stream of movement and white noise. She had just finished taping a segment for the public service announcement that would broadcast during the noon news program.

After her impromptu segment with Sheriff Saddler, she had gone directly to the first Selectman's office. There, with no small degree of effort, she'd obtain the full details on emergency measures the municipality intended to impose.

Even as she recorded the broadcast segment, it occurred to Deirdre that there was a glaring inconsistency in the proposed measures. When Silver had divulged that the three actions had all been proposed by Sheriff Saddler, a kernel of suspicion had germinated in Deirdre's keenly inquisitive mind.

Deirdre had been drawn to journalism not by an insatiable ambition, but rather a near maddening need to know...to unravel and understand the inherent mystery that lay behind the events that shaped the world around her. In that respect, Deirdre was very much like the lamentable Andrew Carlson...though with immeasurably greater talent and none of the neurosis. Where Andrew's path to his fateful end had been a shambling, tentative lurch toward comprehension, Deirdre Wilkins moved forward to confront Quinsett's dark conundrum with an unwavering focus.

Deirdre possessed the razor-sharp, analytical mind that could ferret out deception and evasion with the tenacity of a bloodhound following a scent. A finely honed instinct now informed her that Saddler had deliberately lied and misled reporters during the impromptu press conference. The Sheriff's refusal to acknowledge a possible occult link, along with his vehement insistence that the incidents of the past week should not be assumed to be related, confirmed (at least in Deirdre's mind) that these events were anything but a random cluster of violent crimes. Saddler had gone to great pains to steer the press away from the idea that these incidents were not only related, but connected by an occult tether.

And then there was the matter of the three public safety measures, two of which were logical given the situation and one of which was baffling.

' _Why erect a gate and close Ringgold Lane?' s_ he thought, vexed by the improbability of the measure. When she had questioned Silver about the closure's purpose, he had offered a vague explanation that was obviously an evasion. Saddler had proposed the measure and the Sheriff didn't impress her as a man would who enact such a closure without a very specific reason.

Deirdre's lovely face congealed into an annoyed scowl and she abruptly stood and marched into the station bullpen. On impulse, she settled on Bernie Tanner and crossed the congested common area in a dozen purposeful strides. She stood at the narrow entrance to his cluttered cubicle, casually leaning on a frosted glass partition. He finally became cognizant of her presence and glanced up from his morning newspaper, his leering gaze making a slow pilgrimage from her tight hips and pausing on her full breasts before settling on her incisive blue eyes. His eyes consumed her body the way a connoisseur might consume a rare delicacy, but she suffered his ogling in exchange for the information he would hopefully provide.

"Something you need, Deirdre?" Bernie inquired in a tone that hinted at a mind mired in a constant state of distraction.

"Nothing major really," Deirdre began, trying to affect the casual tone that belied the burgeoning excitement that was building within. "You lived in Quinsett all your life, right?"

Tanner nodded, though his grin faded slightly as though the question reminded him how he had squandered most of his adult life living alone and covering local high school track meets and basketball games. The perceptive Deirdre was afforded a brief glimpse into the underlying emptiness that characterized Bernie Tanner's lonely life. As it was not germane to the matter at hand, she ignored the flash of insight and forged ahead. "Is there anything on Ringgold Lane of interest?"

Bernie pursed his thin lips and narrowed his hooded eyes as he considered this for a moment. "Really, there's nothing much on Ringgold Lane...certainly nothing of interest...at least not now. The old Lawson house is a couple of minutes down the road...after that, the road is uninhabited and just peters out into nothing."

Immediately, Deirdre distilled the nuance from his simple reply, her keen mind seizing on the most significant aspect of what she had just been told. "When you say _at least not now,_ I take that to mean that there was a time when something of interest could be found on Ringgold?"

Tanner issued a papery chuckle tinged with a distinct note of what might have been condescension. "You really aren't familiar with Quinsett's mythology, are you?"

Not trusting herself to speak, lest she revealed her eagerness, Deirdre merely shook her head. The next ten minutes, Bernie Tanner regaled the newsroom beauty with his version of Jeniah Lightcrusher's legend, including a particularly graphic recounting of the events of that infamous night fifty years earlier. Wilkins absorbed the tale without comment, thanked Bernie while offering a smile of disgusted cynicism and quickly disengaged herself.

' _No occult elements, Sheriff?'_ she thought peevishly as she returned to her cubicle. ' _Ah, but you are a sly one.'_ The vigilante execution of a child-murdering witch carried out by the town's most prominent founders...that certainly added a fascinating texture to an already intriguing puzzle.

Seated again, Deirdre reached for a black pen and pad of paper. To Deirdre Wilkins' mind, most mysteries were fundamental analytical problems. Many of these problems could be resolved by analyzing the known facts and establishing logical connections...contextual links between those groups of facts. Once done, this would allow for cautious extrapolation into the areas of the mystery that had yet to be resolved.

Deirdre laid her index finger on her lips as though gesturing for silence and then closed her eyes. After several moments, she took up her pen and drew seven circles on the pad...one in the center and another six arrayed in a circular pattern around the central circle. She hesitated for a brief moment and then carefully began to label the diagram elements.

Finally, Deirdre sat back and studied the diagram...the balloons of which represented the fundamental elements of the case. Trusting her intuition, she labeled central circle Jeniah Lightcrusher's myth and then she began to draw her connecting lines between the outlying circles and what she considered central theme bubble.

Twenty minutes later, Deirdre set the pen aside and sat back to consider the diagram. Four of the six outliers were connected directly to the central bubble. These bubbles were labeled; Morley Cruthers, Ringgold Lane road barricade, Alma Riesen's disfigurement and the Vincent Scallari-Orlin Feldman murders. For varying reasons, these four event bubbles had clear and substantial links to the Jeniah myth.

The fifth outlying circle...this one labeled Andrew Carlson... She connected to the Jeniah bubble by means of a dotted line. The link was tenuous at best...Jeniah had been accused of witchcraft and Carlson had reported for a second rate paranormal tabloid.

The last perimeter circle...Alma and the hospital fire...she could only connect to the girl's disfigurement in the graveyard. Irrespective of how she tried to bend and convoluted logic, she did not establish a direct link between the outlying bubble and the Jeniah central hub.

' _So what exactly have you learned from this exercise, brainchild,'_ Deirdre murmured softly. Upon further consideration, she understood that this deduction diagram had yielded two pivotal bits of information; there was irrefutable occult thread running through the events of the last week, rooted deeply in the Jeniah Lightcrusher legend and good Sheriff Saddler had spun the press a series of carefully contrived lies to deliberately prevent them from establishing this conclusion.

Deirdre wrapped her knuckles on the page in vexation and muttered, "I warned you about making enemy of the media."

She had little doubt there was invisible connections between many of her diagram bubbles. Again a deeper intuition prodded her to approach the puzzle chronologically, starting with the oldest link first...Andrew Carlson and why he'd made his way to Quinsett.

Above all else, Deirdre Wilkins despised being deceived, which she considered an affront to her intelligence. When she finished her diagram, she and Sheriff Saddler were going to have a very long talk.

Chapter Ten

1

They drove in silence for several moments after leaving the station, the slap of the cruisers wipers serving as a sharp counterpoint to the gathering tension that swirled between the car's occupants. Midmorning traffic was especially light even by Quinsett standards. Saddler stole quick glances at the few pedestrians they encountered along the way and he imagined he could sense subtle signs of subconscious anxiety that appeared to weigh upon each and every one.

Troubled times had come to Quinsett and it was impossible to blithely ignore the fact that a powerful sense of foreboding now hovered over the remote Washington town. Saddler discerned this in the pinched expressions and downcast glances of the townsfolk as they hurried about their daily lives. When those glances fell upon his department cruiser, Ray felt certain there was an accusatory flicker in every eye.

That was only natural, he supposed. It was, after all, his duty to keep them safe from the kind of ugliness and brutality that now affected every American city like a plague. If Saddler's initial suspicions were even remotely correct, what Quinsett was presently experiencing would make the big city variety of wickedness seem like random and vapid acts of childish violence by comparison.

Ray realized dwelling on Quinsett's dire woes could only invite the opening of an internal dialogue over Ronnie and her inexplicable link to Vincent Scallari...and Cameron Crane. Rather than engage in this bleak (and ultimately futile) discourse, Saddler turned his attention to the woman sitting next to him.

"Maria, may I ask how long you've lived in Quinsett?" Saddler inquired. Maria shifted her dark gaze to her superior and Saddler imagined he could hear her pondering his possible motive for proposing a seemingly innocuous question. In that brief glance, Saddler saw that, despite her beauty and readily apparent intelligence, Maria Cordova had endured her share of unfair judgment and dismissal...possibly because of her race or perhaps because of her sex. Whatever the underlying motivation, Maria had been victimized by stereotypical prejudice...and not just at the hands of Albert Huxley. She had managed to resist succumbing to the cynicism such treatment could engender, but Saddler guessed that she would insulate herself behind an automatic mistrust default when dealing with strangers...especially those in a position to exert an influence over her life.

"I moved to Quinsett three years ago...from San Diego," she responded at last, her tone neutral.

"I don't mean to pry and if you really don't want to answer, I understand, but how did you end up in Quinsett? A predominantly blue-collar small town must seem a universe away from Southern California?"

Maria hesitated and then intoned gravely, "I would imagine our adjustments wouldn't be all that different...considering that you come from Los Angeles."

Saddler's lips curled in what might have been a horrible parody of the grin. "I take it you're familiar with the circumstances surrounding my acceptance of the position here in Quinsett?"

"It's surprising how quickly gossip travels in the town this size," she remarked, allowing a brief pause. "More to the point, I doubt there is a person of Hispanic descent on the whole West Coast who doesn't know the story of Los Angeles homicide Detective Raymond Saddler and young Miguel Deleon...or at least a skewed version of the story."

Now Saddler could not conceal his shock and dismay as the indelible recollection of that awful day returned in a blood-hued torrent. He stole a brief glance at Maria and saw neither judgment nor indignation on her exquisite face. "I would imagine that the common perception couldn't be described as complementary?"

"Most Hispanics regard you as a child murdering racist," she declared dispassionately. "That savage condemnation isn't affected by the fact that Miguel Deleon was a child crack addict or that he killed a Hispanic police officer in the moment before you shot him. Issues of race occlude all reason or logic because they are often fueled by hate and fear."

"And what do you see, Maria?" He asked, wishing he could recall the question even as the words left his mouth.

Maria's response was immediate and unequivocal. "I know precisely what it feels like to be the victim of prejudice and prejudgment. You gave me an opportunity where others did not and not just as a nod to tokenism. You recognize my potential and tried to employ that potential to good use. By sharing that license number with me, you demonstrated a sense of trust that few people would ever possibly risk...hardly actions consistent with a murderous bigot. I see a fundamentally good man who subscribes to the notions of fairness and justice and who cares about the town he's been chosen to serve."

Ray felt his throat constricted with emotion and his heart began to hammer. Not trusting himself to speak, he offered his deputy a nod and a smile of gratitude. A silence fell between the pair as Saddler negotiated a right turn onto Ringgold Lane. As they drove past his house, Saddler noticed that the Caravan had been pulled into the yard and sat idling with the sliding door open. For once, Saddler found the prospect of Ronnie's absence a welcome relief as it would allow him time to reach an accommodation with the myriad of questions now haunting him.

Maria was speaking again and Saddler forced his attention back to his deputy. "I'm sorry...you were saying?"

"You'd asked why I came to Quinsett. The answer is...rather complicated, but in a way it relates to the ordeal you experienced after the Deleon incident. I wanted to experience a life where racial politics didn't stand at the center of every discussion or color every decision made and every action taken. As you're all too painfully aware, issues of race can distort reality like a fog that changes the complexion of even the most clear-cut of action. Don't misconstrue what I'm trying to say...I'm very proud of my family heritage, but I don't want to let it define who I am...at least not exclusively. I want to define myself as an individual...all I ask...all I've ever asked is to be judged solely on my own individual merits and abilities and nothing else." Maria stopped speaking and averted her gaze to her hands, displaying a rare hint of vulnerability and uncertainty. Finally, she fetched a deep sigh and continued, "I know how incredibly naïve that must sound and my leaving San Diego...particularly my motivations for leaving...were a source of bitter disappointment to my father. At any rate, I'm telling you this because you've given me the opportunity to achieve what I first set out to do what I moved to Quinsett...to prove my value based on merit. You've earned my loyalty and trust."

"Maria, it takes tremendous courage to abandon the comfortable...the familiar...and willingly embrace the unknown," Saddler commented, feeling intensely uncomfortable with the nascent stirring of emotions Maria Cordova's presence seemed to arouse. He cautioned himself to tread very carefully lest he stray into a complex distraction he could ill afford. "I hope I'm wrong, but instinct tells me there'll be a great many opportunities to prove yourself before these present problems are resolved."

Maria frowned and looked at Saddler askance. When it became obvious that the sheriff would not elaborate further, a silence descended upon the pair for the remainder of the ride.

2

The familiar stood outside of the massive wrought iron gate that delineated the boundary of the Ranzman property. The iron spikes atop the ten foot fence were eighteen inches in length and had been honed to a lethal point. Anyone attempting to scale this uninviting barrier would likely find himself impaled atop one of the spikes like a pinned butterfly on a collector's board.

The reconfigured Knox Severn found the image uproariously funny and chuckled to himself as he began to perambulate the fence. He followed the fence as it ran north along County Road two before making a right angle turn to the east.

Severn traversed the weed clogged drainage ditch in two bounding strides and moved into the dense forest that surrounded the property on three sides. Only when one viewed the fence from the forest did the full extent of Judith Ranzman's deeply ingrained paranoia manifest itself. At the Eastern and Western corners of the northern perimeter, two security cameras had been mounted on steel rods that extended a full 6 feet above the fence top. A narrow path had been meticulously cleared and maintained along all three forested sides, providing an unobstructed view of the entire length of each section of fence. Not satisfied with this deterrent, the owner had ordered strands of Barb wire be woven amongst the spiked fence tops. Those barbs gleamed wickedly in the dull morning light.

Knox inclined his head slightly to the right and listened intently for a moment. After a time, his augmented hearing detected the low-level hum that indicated that the fence was electrified. The current would not be set to lethal levels, of course...that would be flagrantly illegal...but contact would result in the low-level jolt that would certainly get the attention of anyone with a mind to scale the fence.

' _Ranzman, you really are a crazy bitch,'_ he murmured though his tone hinted at admiration more than contempt. Severn resumed his trek along the exterior of the fence, indifferent to the blinking red light of the security cameras. Their prying eyes would not detect him...he was invisible after all. He took this invisibility as an article of faith, just as he knew, with irrefutable certainty, that he would scale this fence without incident or injury.

The familiar, who had once been a rebellious, lost boy devoid of faith in anyone or anything, now possessed the unwavering conviction that his mistress would ward him as he did her bidding. If a modicum of proof was required (and for Knox, it most definitely was not) it could be found in his left foot and nose. Both had been badly injured in his unexpectedly difficult struggle with the teacher bitch. Yet now, as he stepped lightly along the path and inhaled the sweetly-scented air, those injuries were naught but a rapidly fading memory...a testimony to the might of his mistress' dark magic.

It occurred to Severn (only obliquely as most thoughts now did) that he had perhaps been born to this role. As his old man had been so willing to attest, logical thought and common sense were two attributes with which his son had not been blessed. On this particular issue, the mean-spirited bastard was irrefutably correct...thinking was not one of Severn's strong suits. It was why he'd always been so easily led and manipulated. As a young boy, it had been easy matter for the cruel little monsters he called friends to bait him into the most outlandish and self-destructive dares.

It was also why he had allowed that staggeringly strange girl (he thought her name had been Alma) to entice him into the graveyard. She had done something...something unforgivably wrong because the mistress had meted out harsh punishment, followed by a particularly gruesome death. He could not recall the specifics of what had transpired that night, but was unconcerned by his inability to remember much beyond his next task. For the new Knox Severn, the past quickly faded into irrelevance.

Like the perfect familiar he'd become, Severn felt no inclination to know or understand anything beyond what was strictly necessary to fulfill his next duty. Unlike the willful Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, Severn had offered no resistance to the complete subjugation of his will. In truth, he had welcomed the role of subservience as though ridding himself of the unwanted burden of volition. Like every zealot before him, Knox Severn had come to regard his mistress as a means to his personal salvation. There was nothing he would not do to assure continued benevolence, as he had demonstrated so ruthlessly at Trafford stream.

' _And just what did you do there?'_ A small, knowing voice whispered from somewhere in the dense fog that now passed for conscious thought. Severn frowned in consternation as he struggled to recall. Abruptly, a pleasant warmth suffused his body and the need to recall seem suddenly...unimportant.

He at last came to a spot about halfway along the rear fence that afforded him a view of the back of the Spanish colonial. Severn would have been unable to identify this particular style of architecture even if the building had fallen from the heavens and landed on top of him. Nonetheless, the familiar did recognize the trappings of opulence and understood that Judith was one seriously wealthy woman. Where normally this might have inspired a malicious envy, the familiar could only feel remote pity for the pompous bitch who had apparently managed to make herself one terrifyingly powerful enemy.

He became distantly aware of the plaintiff yapping and growling of a number of dogs coming from somewhere within the grounds. The familiar merely grinned, confident they would pose no more of a hindrance than the imposing fence standing before him.

Knox briefly considered simply tossing his satchel over the fence, but realized the consequences he would suffer if any of the metal flasks spilled their precious contents. Instead, he swung the satchel over his left shoulder and approached the fence.

A low-level hum seemed perceptibly louder now and thin wisps of acrid smoke rose into the air as a light drizzle made contact with the wrought iron.

With only the slightest hesitation, the familiar reached out and wrapped his hands around two adjacent vertical bars at shoulder height. The subsequent jolt of electricity caused Severn's head to snap back as every muscle in his body became as rigid as a piece statuary. Despite the nauseating jolt from of current racing through his flesh and viscera, the familiar did not relinquish his grip on the electrified fence.

Gritting his teeth, the familiar closed his eyes and bowed his head, waiting for his augmented body to acclimatize itself to the strange pain that wasn't precisely pain.

The acrid stench of burning flesh reached his nostrils and he forced himself to bite back on the slow roll of nausea. Eventually, Knox succeeded in compartmentalizing the biting pain in his blistering palms. He braced his two feet on the same vertical bars and began to climb.

Knox was oblivious to the hissing groans that escaped his twisted lips as he struggled to pull himself to the top of the fence. When he finally reached the horizontal upper frame, his hands were oozing blistered ruins. When his feet were firmly planted on the upper frame, he released his grip on the spike, grimacing at the small snippets of flesh that remained behind like cooked meat on a skillet that had not been oiled.

Slowly, he stood erect and with great care, pulled the satchel over his head. Then, bending at the knees, he stood perched atop the fence with the heavily laden satchel dangling some ten feet above the manicured lawn. Wincing, Knox let the satchel drop. It hit the grass with a muffled metallic clatter that caused Severn's heart to leap into his throat. When nothing appeared to spill forth from the satchel, the familiar drew a tremulous breath and straightened on wobbly legs.

The cumulative effects of the day's trauma had taken a toll on the familiar and when he was nearly upright, his legs suddenly buckled and he very nearly tumbled backwards. Only by twirling his arms wildly was he able to forestall that eventuality, but in the process his overcompensation pulled him forward.

The leg of his black jeans snagged on gleaning barb just below the knee. Even as he tumbled the barb tore a deep, bloody gash in his left shin. More catastrophic yet, the snag prevented the familiar from simply suffering an unpleasant but survivable spill from atop the ten foot fence.

Instead, he was pulled forward with his snagged pants leg serving as a hinge. Severn's face smashed against an iron upright, shattering his right cheekbone and several of his front teeth. When his body weight tore his boot free, it did so with explosive force sending his feet shooting out over his head.

Knox Severn landed on the point of his chin with the majority of his bodyweight arched out over his head and spine bent like an overdrawn bow.

The resounding crack of the familiar's neck as it broke shattered the relative calm and sent Judith Ranzman's penned dogs into a frenzy. Even as the false aura of invulnerability dissipated like the illusion it was, Severn's devotion to his new mistress did not waver. He reached out a trembling hand for the satchel even as the life light was extinguished from his eyes.

Such was Quinsett's misfortune that even the unexpected and decidedly mundane demise of her familiar would eventually prove to be to Jeniah's advantage.

3

Even as Saddler carefully negotiated his way over the badly rutted dirt road, he could feel an undercurrent of expectant tension gather within the cruiser's interior. By the time he spotted the scarcely discernible break in the underbrush, along the back slope of the western ditch that tension had coalesced into an incessant buzzing.

' _It's true...as insane as it seems,'_ Saddler thought with a measure of supernatural dread. This close to the source, it was impossible to ignore the ubiquitous presence of a dark and malign force. He recalled that Ronnie had come here...to this very place of poised evil...and it was all he could do to suppress a groan of despair.

Gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, Saddler brought the cruiser to a halt and keyed down the engine. He could feel a trickle of cold, icy perspiration coursing its way down his spine and he grimaced. He turned to Maria, who was watching him with those disconcerting dark eyes.

"There's something I need you to see," Saddler began tentatively, groping for the words that would bestow even the smallest measure of rationality on what he was about to suggest. "Before I show you, I want to explain a bit more about what Albert and I have come to suspect. I'm going to warn you in advance that what I'm suggesting will seem preposterous, and you'll likely think that Albert and I are as crazy as a pair of loons...I know I would if our situations were reversed. All I ask is that you hear me out and take an open-minded look at what I have to show you before you start drawing up the committal papers."

"I'm intrigued...and I'm listening," Maria replied earnestly.

Ray offered his deputy a warm smile of pure gratitude. "Before I start, I would like to ask a question and I know it's going to sound decidedly odd... Do you feel anything unusual about this particular place...a strange sensation or weird vibe maybe?"

Maria's expression became quizzical, but she nonetheless inclined her head and narrowed her eyes, assuming the posture of one who is listening intently. At first, she could feel nothing, save for the palpable air of expectant tension radiating from the man beside her. She was about to tell him that she could discern nothing out of the ordinary, but then there came a subtle sensation...something niggling at the very periphery of her awareness.

It was barely perceptible at first, but as she redoubled her concentration, it came into sharp focus...a discordant clatter like a vast, infernal machine laboring to cycle up. Maria shifted her gaze back to Saddler, her exquisite brown eyes popping wide in surprise. "I do sense something...the impression of something waiting or perhaps gathering itself."

Ray sighed in relief and asked excitedly, "There is an aura here...once you become attuned to its presence. It's impossible to ignore...but does it strike you as threatening?"

Maria nodded, pursing her full lips with an unconscious scowl of revulsion. "It feels vile...not precisely menacing, but somehow reprehensible. This is related to your theory about everything has befallen Quinsett in the last several days, isn't it?"

Maria offered this more as a statement than a question and Ray nodded and began to explain his theory. He spoke for the next twenty minutes during which Maria listened in silence, her face an inscrutable mask. When finally Saddler concluded his monologue he fell silent and waited for Maria's reaction.

"And the two of you both subscribe to this idea?" Maria inquired at last, clearly bemused by the very thought that two seemingly level-headed pragmatists would entertain such nonsense much less actually accept it.

"Things have happened in Quinsett that defy all conventional logic," Saddler began carefully. "The incident at Lars Ingstrom's farm and Alma Riesen's death in particular are simply inexplicable...there's no other way to characterize them."

"Perhaps, but that does not mean that we should make the automatic leap to something so...so outlandish," Maria interjected vehemently. "There might still be a perfectly plausible cause that isn't rooted in the supernatural."

Ray held up his hand in a plea for indulgence. "Albert and I both believe that everything that occurred in the last week...starting with Andrew Carlson's death...ties directly to what those six men did Jeniah Lightcrusher in 1936."

"Do you think the Carlson's death was the catalyst?" Maria asked and Saddler could discern her sharp mind beginning to cycle up.

Saddler shook his head. "No, Andrew Carlson's arrival was purely coincidental...he became a convenient harbinger...a warning. My theory is that the salient root of this nightmare is the thing...ritual, if you will...that Jeniah was attempting to complete when the six townsfolk murdered her."

"So someone with the knowledge of what this apparent madwoman was attempting to do, has now decided to finish what Jeniah started...and attempt to extract a measure of revenge in the process?"

Saddler's eyes narrowed into speculative slits and he nodded distantly. "Perhaps..."

Maria discerned the equivocation in Saddler's measured response and interpreted it perfectly. When she spoke, her tone conveyed both incredulity and stern disapproval. "What you're actually thinking isn't that someone is emulating Jeniah...but rather, the witch herself is behind this terror!"

Ray merely nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving her now flustered face. Maria shook her head and ran her long fingers through her luxuriant black hair. "You have to know how absolutely ridiculous that sounds?"

"I do," Saddler replied simply, taking no affront from her pointedly querulous criticism. Maria Cordova was a woman rooted firmly in the soil of conventional reality...as he had been before this terrible week began. He could only hope that the very same pragmatism would guide her toward acceptance of the seemingly impossible when confronted with the incontrovertible truth. "Let me show you exactly why."

With this, Saddler stepped out of the cruiser and into the light rain. It suddenly occurred to him that it might have been prudent to reverse the cruiser in the event that the need for hasty retreat became necessary.

"Maria, I'm going to ask you to draw your service revolver and slip the safety off," Saddler instructed even as he reached into the back seat and retrieved the pump action Remington from its locked rack.

When he moved to the front of the vehicle, Maria was watching him with a clearly perplexed expression. Ray could see that her customary grip on her composure had wavered if only marginally, but he was relieved to see that she gripped the revolver in both hands angled away from her body and aimed towards ground. It occurred to him that this was probably the first time she drawn her weapon in the line of active duty.

"That sense of...wrongness, it's more pronounced out in the open air," she observed quietly and Saddler nodded grimly. That sense of foreboding...of imminent evil was so pronounced here that drawing a deep breath became onerous. It would be a very simple matter to dispense with rigid dogma of what could and could not be in place such as this.

Pointing towards a break in the underbrush along the back slope of the ditch, Saddler rasped, "We have to go through there. What I need to show you is another hundred feet or so in." He raised a shotgun slightly. "I'm not sure if this will serve much purpose, but be ready."

Maria's eyes widened slightly, but she offered Saddler a resolute nod and deftly picked her way across the weed clogged ditch. She crested the muddy back slope and stood to one side, waiting for Saddler to lead the way.

When the pair passed into the trees, Saddler gestured for Maria to take up a position some five feet to his left. He made no attempt to describe what they were about to encounter, reasoning that the initial shock of seeing the unnerving anomaly would better serve his purposes.

Despite this intention, it was Saddler who came to an abrupt stop, staring in transfixed incredulity as the pair emerged into the small, circular clearing. Unaware that her superior had come to a halt, Maria continued another several feet into the clearing until she heard Saddler's sharp hiss of dismay. She glanced back at Saddler, wondering why the moldering remnants of a tumbledown house would cause him such anxiety.

Saddler stood with the Remington dangling forgotten at his side. He wore the completely disconcerted expression of a man would wandered into a nightmare from which he could not awaken. Shaking his head in negation and dragging the back of his left hand across his mouth, Saddler murmured, "This wasn't here yesterday."

Maria grimaced, beginning to suspect that she was being made the butt of some particularly distasteful joke and could feel her anger begin to churn.

Discerning her reaction, Saddler growled urgently, "Look Maria. Open your eyes and look at what's right in front of you!"

Maria scowled at Saddler's uncharacteristically abrasive tone, but repressed her irritation enough to return her gaze to the ruins. It took only a moment of intense consideration to realize that her initial impression had been staggeringly incorrect.

"Mia Madre," she inhaled and retreated several steps with her blood thundering in her temples. Upon closer inspection, Maria discovered that what she had first misperceived to be the crumbling remnants of long abandoned house was actually construction in progress. The cherry red bricks appeared as though they had just come from a kiln and the bone white mortar glistened as if it was not fully dry.

Maria's confused gaze swept the clearing and the stand of trees through which they had just passed to get here. What she saw caused her burgeoning apprehension to ratchet up another notch. None of the ground vegetation appeared to have been disturbed, much less trampled. She stumbled over to Saddler, wisely deciding to holster her gun.

When she spoke, there was a distinct quaver in her voice. "How could someone have done all of this without so much as trampling the undergrowth?"

"They couldn't," Saddler remarked softly and then pointed towards an empty window casing. Maria followed his finger and now a low moan escaped her full lips even as she clutched his forearm. A clear, viscous fluid had begun to run slowly along the upper groove where a pane of glass normally fit into the casing. When it finally covered the entire length of the groove, it began to run down the sides in two streams. The same repulsive transparent gel then bubbled out of the bottom groove.

As the two officers watched in transfixed horror, the transparent gel began to expand away from the frame...materializing into a full pane of glass, where only seconds before there had been empty void.

Maria dragged her gaze away from the repulsive spectacle of manifestation. Her moon-eyed expression of shock and dismay might have been comical under other circumstances. In a voice she could scarcely recognize as her own, the Deputy stammered, "that's just...impossible!"

Saddler nodded his total concurrence. "It is, but nonetheless, this thing is constructing itself out of the earth...out of thin air."

As if to punctuate this inconceivable notion, the ground beneath their feet shook with a guttural rumble and a torturous groan. Another row of glistening bricks slowly pushed itself of the black soil.

Maria again drew her service weapon and leveled it at this unholy construct of brick, mortar and wood, even though the rational part of her mind understood that bullets would have no affect on whatever force powered this infernal process. Then she began to slowly back away.

"We have to leave here, Ray," she said softly, intense eyes never straying from the loathsome abomination taking shape before her. Her voice tottered on the edge of open panic and Saddler wisely concurred. There was little to be done by lingering. They could accomplish little without the means to disrupt or halt this vile construction. Worse still, it was entirely possible that proximity could...infect them...subvert their minds somehow.

Saddler gestured for Maria to retreat and the pair began to withdraw, never taking their gazes off the unholy birthing until the trees occluded their view.

4

A few minutes later, the pair was seated back in the cruiser. Ray intentionally stared straight ahead, allowing Maria a few moments to regain her badly shaken equilibrium and digest what she'd just witnessed. The only sounds to be heard were the steadily falling rain and Maria's breathing as she drew in deep gulps of air. From the corner of his eye, Saddler stole a furtive glance at his deputy, noting how her hands shook perceptibly as they rested in her lap.

Without warning, Maria raised both hands and slammed her palms down on the dash, uttering a rare curse as she did, "Fuck!"

The single expletive reverberated like thunder in the cruiser's interior. Genuinely shocked by his deputy's unexpected outburst, Saddler gaped at Maria, who had allowed her chin to settle to her chest and was breathing in long, slow inhalations. When she finally gathered herself, she turned to her superior, a sheepish expression twisting her features. "I'm sorry, Ray...I've embarrassed myself." She shook her head in obvious disgust. "I...I panicked back in the clearing."

Saddler shook his head emphatically. "Confronted by what we saw, anyone would have been unnerved. If you would've glanced in my direction, you would've seen me standing like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. It's partially my fault for not warning you about what to expect, but I wanted the place to make a full impact on you."

"You're right, it is your fault," she intoned gravely and abruptly punched him on the right shoulder, her face breaking into an effulgent smile of such dazzling radiance that Saddler's breath hitched his chest. For the second time in the last few minutes, Maria Cordova had allowed her façade of detached professionalism to lapse, providing Saddler with a compelling glimpse of the fascinating woman within the reticent mantle.

Ray could feel the spark of undeniable attraction wanting to erupt into full flame, but fought frantically to resist the allure, nonetheless bemused by the sudden vulnerability to a woman other than his wife.

' _Because she's lost to you, Ray...irretrievably lost...and you know that,'_ a voice informed him with a malicious glee that made him cringe. The notion that Veronica could be lost to him was ineffably terrible and so he fled into the distraction of that lustrous smile. Rubbing his shoulder with a mock grimace, he complained, "Hey, you got a right like Roberto Duran."

"No Mas! No Mas!" She cried, waving her hands frantically and laughing all the harder. Saddler joined her, realizing this was the first occasion that he actually experienced a moment of laughter since assuming his role as Sheriff.

All too soon, the humorous respite dissipated and Maria retreated behind her wall of cool detachment. The mood in the cruiser became somber. "What exactly did you just show me?"

"That really is the salient question because I really don't know," Saddler admitted candidly. "Against all possible reason or logic, Jeniah's house is rebuilding itself. How? I haven't a clue, though I suspect its completion will coincide with the August 1 Sabbat. The only thing I can say with any degree of certainty is that this is not a natural occurrence. I doubt I have to tell you that. Whatever that thing might be or whatever purpose it's intended to serve, it's purely evil."

Maria nodded her acquiescence and shuddered at the sense of inherent wrongness that blanketed this place like a shroud. After a moment's consideration, she asked, "Could you simply arrange to have municipal works bulldoze it into the ground?"

"It could well come to that, but for the time being I want to keep this under wraps. Bringing in crew to demolish that...that thing would raise a storm of questions for which we simply have no answers. I have arranged for a locked gate to be erected just north of my house. It's a good enough distance down this road to discourage curiosity seekers...I hope."

Maria, who suspected that the erection of a gate would have precisely the opposite effect, elected not to comment. Instead she again demonstrated an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of the matter. "I know you're opposed to bring in state aid and I get a sense of why...but where do you go from here?"

"You're right...if I can avoid bringing in the Feds, I will, though if we don't catch a break quickly that will become unavoidable," Saddler confirmed. "My instinct tells me that we have to determine exactly what happened the night Jeniah was murdered. Apparently these men interrupted some kind of ritual. Both Albert and I think that, if we can learn more about this ritual and its purpose, perhaps we can gain a better understanding of what's happening now and hopefully how it might be stopped."

Maria pursed full lips her expression becoming pensive. "That seems like a rather optimistic stretch considering how both the victim and those who murdered her are long dead."

"It's hard to dispute that point, but Ira Silver told us that Mordecai Crane...the leader of this vigilante group...shared the story of what happened with his two grandchildren. I'm hoping there's something of value to be discovered in questioning the two. Albert and Tim are going to interview Stuart Crane. You and I will talk to Cameron. After, the four of us will get together and compare notes."

Maria nodded distantly and again chose to offer no comment. That horrifying aberrations springing into being in the forest had thoroughly and irreversibly destroyed her trenchant perception of the world in which she lived. She felt as if some powerful bout of vertigo had shattered the foundations of her reality, leaving her to spin wildly in the void with no point of reference to help re-establish her bearings. While many would simply retreat behind a wall of intransigent denial, Maria was pragmatic enough to realize that such a course of action would not only prove fruitless, but very probably fatal.

Then, in a revelatory burst, Maria realized that this case and its perplexing connection to Veronica Ashcott-Saddler should now be viewed in a dramatically more sinister light. There were two significant pieces of evidence that established a relationship...an admittedly nebulous one...between the Sheriff's wife and the blood drenched events of the past week. Despite this, Veronica remained a white elephant in the room. Combined with the paucity of tangible leads in the investigation, Saddler's refusal to address and explore this connection was tantamount to criminal negligence.

As much as Maria Cordova was cognizant of the potentially disastrous consequences of turning a blind eye to this thread of investigation, she knew that she would continue to do so...if only for the time being.

' _Perhaps that's why he left you with those two slips of paper,'_ she thought. On further consideration that idea seemed plausible enough. If Veronica's involvement in Quinsett's woes took a sinister twist and if Saddler would not or could not take the necessary action, he had given her his implicit blessing to intercede.

Part of Maria resented the subtle imposition of this burden, but she was sufficiently self-aware to realize that she owned partial responsibility. What's more, she could empathize with how Saddler must feel. The revelation in that damnable clearing had pulled the rug of perception out from under her with a savage, petulant yank.

She would need time to internalize what she had witnessed and make an accommodation with the new reality it dictated.

Time, however, was a commodity neither she nor Saddler (and certainly not the beleaguered town of Quinsett) could afford.

This complex array of thoughts flashed through Maria's incisive mind in the span of seconds. Saddler keyed the engine and carefully maneuvered the vehicle through a reverse turn. As the pair began the return trip to town, a titanic, ear-splitting cry filled the air, seeming to arise from everywhere at once, until its strident exhortation seemed to blanket the earth like a very sky itself.

A stunned Saddler stomped down on the brake pedal very nearly bouncing Maria Cordova's face off the dashboard. The two exchanged identical looks of google-eyed trepidation before stepping out of vehicle. They both stood with one hand on the cruiser's roof, peering up into the churning sky where the ululating cry continued to swell and expand like diverging waves in the ocean.

Then as quickly as it had commenced, the welling cry vanished, leaving in its wake a terrible and profound silence.

Saddler glanced at his deputy, guessing that her expression of atavistic dread mirrored his own. Whatever the source and purpose of that harrowing wail, it did not bode well for Quinsett.

"Let's get back to town," Saddler managed, thinking of his family some ten minutes down the stretch of road. Without further conversation, the pair climbed back into the cruiser, hurrying back to Quinsett as quickly as Saddler dared.

Chapter Eleven

1

The familiar's undeniable command of summons rose up and washed over the remote town of Quinsett, Washington like an invisible wave.

It rolled through the sparsely occupied streets of the town, raising hackles and lifting startled faces to the sky in search of the improbable tumult's source.

It grew in both volume and pitch, shattering the three large windows of Jeb Garnerson's Texaco gas and convenience store on the west edge of town. In its wake, it left a score of stunned and frightened patrons and a fan of glass bits scattered across the freshly laid tarmac.

While many believed that the harrowing cry ceased as abruptly as it had commenced, in truth, its pitch rose until could no longer be detected by the human ear.

Radiating out from the source, it rolled across the globe, over hill and into hollow, inciting creatures to fits of panic and blind flight. Eventually, it found its way to those whom it had been intended to summon. Long dormant, they stirred and slowly rose...hideous and ghastly abominations that had been the stuff of nightmares down through the ages. Scattered throughout the dark corners of the world, these shadows coalesced with palpable malice. They raise their grotesque heads to the sky...listening.

To a one, they recognize the indisputable authority in that apparent cacophony. Yet even as they submitted to that authority, in each intense golden eye there gleamed a brilliant and terrible pleasure...pleasure that their time was once again upon the world.

2

The Greyhound bus carrying Cameron Crane rolled into Olympia central transit terminal a little after two o'clock, Friday afternoon. As he disembarked, Cameron realized that he not strayed beyond Quinsett town limits in over eight years. Though this was an unquestionably sad commentary on the sorry state of his hollow existence, it lacked the power to inspire any stirring of sorrow or regret in the elder Crane.

Whatever it might be, his life was what he had allowed it to become.

' _But perhaps that's not quite true,'_ a smaller inner voice contradicted. ' _Perhaps your life...every moment that followed the time in the cave...was held in stasis...waiting for the specific moment and particular time to endow it with purpose.'_

The notion stopped Cameron dead in his tracks. He stood gape-jawed in the center of the dreary waiting area, staggered by the concept that the bulk of his whole life might have been a mere prelude to one consequential juncture that would bestow meaning upon the long flow of squandered years.

After a moment, it occurred to him how odd he must appear, simply standing statue still and staring blankly into the middle distance.

He drifted over to the nearest phone kiosk in hopes of finding the address of the retirement home where former Catholic Priest James Crimmon now languished, purportedly locked in a prison of senility. Even as he thumbed through the badly worn pages of the directory, Cameron could not escape the sense that he had been _directed_ to this exact moment in time...as though in accordance with a script that had been written the very day that Mordecai had shared the dark secret of his decades old failure.

' _Perhaps you really are crazy,'_ he chided himself. Cameron did not put a great deal of stock in the concept of God and religion and he certainly didn't subscribe to the belief that one's life path ran along the predestined route dictated by fate. To Crane's mind, fate was a device created to excuse and absolve the vapid cruelties and ugliness of some of history's most heinous offenders. The idea that a wretch such as himself had been selected to give opposition to the kind of monstrous evil that now stalked Quinsett was too ludicrous to contemplate. If fate was the force that guided the universe and he, Cameron Crane, had been carefully groomed to serve its purpose, then fate was a seriously flawed and fallible force indeed.

' _And yet here you are...the only person standing between Jeniah Lightcrusher and whatever insidious scheme she's returned to fulfill,'_ the voice persisted. Again, that valid point was not easy to gainsay. In the end, it didn't particularly matter if Cameron had been chosen by blind and random chance or the pre-conceived design of some sentient purpose...he was the only one who could stop whatever process Jeniah's return had set in motion.

After locating the address of the Tranquil Comfort Seniors Care Facility, Cameron made his way to the street and hailed one of the many cabs that lined the curb in front of the terminal. He had no real idea what to expect from this meeting with the retired priest. It was rumored that Crimmon had declined badly in the years since stepping down from the pulpit, slipping into bouts of raving disorientation that had grown longer in duration and more frequent as time passed. Cameron understood that the prospect of garnering any useful insight from the old man was precariously slim, but instinct told him there were precious few options to be had.

The facility was located some five miles north of Olympia and stood on ten acres of mostly forested land that hid the collection of buildings from the main highway. Cameron paid the cab fare and stood staring up at the three story brick façade of the main building, suddenly and intensely depressed by the very real prospect that he would likely end up alone and incarcerated in just such a place at the tail end of his life.

The interior of the building did little to alleviate his despondent mood with its dark halls and prevailing smell of old age and antiseptic cleaners. The fundamental vibrancy that one would associate with a normal life...a life that still held the prospects and possibilities of the future...was conspicuously absent here.

' _It's a place where people with no further purpose come to die, Cameron,'_ the voice observed dispassionately and Cameron found himself suddenly and vehemently loathing his new internal commentator. _'Father Crimmon is waiting to serve his purpose, Cameron...before moving on.'_

As the attendant led Cameron along the tiled hall, Crane shook his head in consternation. These constant allusions to pre-destiny were a new and disturbing manifestation of his lingering mental health issues, but when Cameron was finally guided into the presence of the old man, it was hard to deny that he seemed to be clinging tenaciously to the last vestiges of his life.

The old man was the sole occupant of the high-ceiling room. Three banks of tall narrow windows were set into the west wall, facing out into the gloom of the late afternoon and looking over a manicured lawn that dropped away to a forested area that pressed in on the property. Crimmon was slumped in a lime green leather chair that clashed discordantly with the cream colored walls and floor of the sitting room. In one corner, an ancient television droned on unnoticed, only adding to the sense of hopelessness that permeated the room.

"I feel compelled to warn you Mr..." the attendant began.

"Cameron Crane...Father Crimmon was my perish priest for most of my life," Cameron replied by way of explanation...the lie springing easily to his lips.

The attendant seemed to accept this readily enough. "I have to warn you Mr. Crane, that Father Crimmon is inclined to some fairly dramatic mood swings from day to day."

"And how has he been today?" Cameron heard himself ask, his eyes never leaving the back of the figured slumped in the appallingly ugly chair.

"Quiet...unusually quiet," came the considered reply. "It's almost as though he's expecting something...or someone."

The attendant turned away, not noticing the involuntary shudder with which Crane had reacted to that last casual remark. Cameron drew a quavering breath and made his way over to the old priest, who remained oblivious to his presence. Even when he came to stand before Crimmon, the old man did not react to his presence, but continued to stare vacantly out onto the back lawn. That moment of disconnection afforded Crane the opportunity to study the man whom he hoped would provide the desperately needed insight into his situation. What shocked Cameron was not the man's profound frailty...he was after all, eighty-one years old, but rather the odd haunted light that burned in his pale gray eyes.

Crane recalled that Crimmon had been a robust and imposing figure as he delivered the mass...tall, straight of spine and seemingly immune to the very insidious evils he railed about. The man before him was stooped-shouldered and as pale as some delicate night shade bloom. His white hair was gossamer thin and listless, while his skin seemed as thin as to almost appear translucent in the bright light of day. Indeed, Crimmon gave the distinct impression of close proximity to his final summons to his beloved maker.

After a prolonged moment, cognizance appeared to filter gradually into the old man's gaze and he turned his watery eyes to Crane, apparently confused by the unrecognized presence. When he spoke, Crimmon's voice was scratchy and paper thin as if from an extended period of disuse, "Who...who are you?"

"You may not remember me, Father...my name is Cameron Crane...from Quinsett," Cameron ventured softly. The former priest continued to regard Crane questioningly, his vacuous expression unchanging. Cameron noted a slight palsied tremor shook the man's sagging frame from time to time and experienced a sharp stab of pity for the man who had devoted his life to the service of a cause, only to be left to die alone in this wretched place. His gaze shifted briefly to the pink mottled flesh of Crimmon's thin-fingered hands and he recalled how his grandfather spoke of the way that the priest had sustained this disfiguring injury.

Gradually, recognition stole into the man's gaze and with it came a discordant storm of warring emotions...surprise, terror and unaccountably, loathing. Crimmon raised a badly trembling right arm and pointed at Cameron with a gnarled index finger. "You...you're Mordecai's grandson...the one everyone said was crazy."

The accusation evoked a bitter grin and Cameron replied simply, "The very same one."

The old man absorbed this thoughtfully for a moment, his head shaking on the thin stalk of his long neck. Frowning, he demanded, "Why have you come to bother an old...I'm...tired, don't ya' see?"

Thinking that _tired_ was an enormous understatement, Cameron forged directly ahead, seeing little to be gained by circumspection. "Father, I've come to hear the story of what happened that night...the night that you and Mordecia and the others took after Jeniah Lightcrusher. I need to know exactly what the group did and if you can tell me, I need to know what it was Jeniah was attempting to do when you stopped her. You're the only one left who can provide answers to these questions, father..."

Cameron faltered then as a strangled groan escaped the old man's hollow chest and his eyes widened in anguish. He allowed his chin to settle to his chest and Crane guessed that the priest was struggling to gather himself against the pain of recounting the old nightmare. Finally, the aging priest inhaled deeply and let the air out in rush, reminding Crane of a deflating balloon. When he glanced up at the elder Crane brother, any signs of emotional ambivalence had vanished, replaced by a truculent, almost combative glare that baffled Cameron. "Your being here tells me that she's back...finally, she's back."

The flat declaration startled Cameron, who was still struggling to completely accept the concept of a resurrected supernatural entity. Yet, in the simple unequivocal statement, Crimmon confirmed everything that Cameron had come to believe. In a way, Cameron was relieved, even though Crimmon's response confirmed his darkest fears. There would be no need to skirt around the issue or pick delicately at the edges of the truth...he could simply plunge straight to the dark heart of the matter. "Yes...I think she has and that's why I've come."

Crimmon barked a spate of resentful laughter and Cameron saw, with no small amount of gratitude, that he was fully engaged and lucid. Again, he wagged that boney finger in Cameron's direction. "It's Mordecai's fault that she back...you know that don't you boy?"

A ripple of intense fear passed through Crane at this disclosure. He had long suspected that Mordecai had deliberately omitted something from his tale...something crucial...or perhaps damning. Tightly, he demanded, "Can you tell me exactly why?"

Crimmon stared at Cameron knowingly, his gray eyes narrowing. "He never mentioned that particular fact, but knowing Mordecai as I do, I suppose that isn't especially surprising. When we headed up Ringgold Lane that night, we each knew precisely what was required, if we were to put paid to the witch once and for all. Mordecai understood more than anyone else because he organized everything...found the old Indian that told us exactly what had to be done." He paused for a brief moment and that unblinking gaze bristled with contempt. "At the crucial moment, the mighty Mordecai Crane...that puffed up rooster...faltered and let the witch come away with a draw."

The priest uttered another spate of laughter, but it was an ugly sound resembling the grating screech of a coffin lid being opened after centuries in the earth. The laughter degenerated into a wheezing cough that thoroughly shook the old man. When that subsided, Crimmon's contempt vanished. Again, he posed his original question, though his words exuded an unimaginable weariness. "What is it you want from me?"

"I need to know how he failed...what my grandfather didn't do?" he began though he could feel a sudden reluctance germinate in the pit of his guts. Mordecai Crane had been a hard man...in truth, a ruthless man. If he had wavered, then the task must have been grim indeed. "I also have to know what you think she was doing when you stopped her that night. Mordecai said she was up to some kind of...ritual, he called it...or making some kind of offering."

Now Crimmon grimaced in obvious revulsion as the image of that small, bloody corpse came back in a frantic burst of horrifying clarity. Even after fifty years, that appalling image was as vivid as it had been on that terrible night. "An Indian from the Hoh reservation laid out the process for your Grandfather...a kind of pagan banishing ritual is how you might best describe it. I won't put a pretty wrap on it...what we did was murder, pure and simple, but it was supposed to be done in a very specific sequence. Your grandfather deviated from the script and now the bill's come due for his failing."

"I still don't understand...how did he fail? Jeniah was murdered and the incidents in Quinsett stopped," a puzzled Crane observed.

"The devil's in the details, son," Crimmon replied cryptically as a horrible grin twisted his thin lips. "Mordecai was supposed to behead her with a sanctified axe...the Indian insisted that no other method would assure he spirit stayed dead. Instead, he let her goad him into shooting her. It was as if she understood exactly what we were attempting to do and knew how to disrupt it."

"Jesus Christ!" Cameron exclaimed and then offered the priest a sheepish grimace at his blasphemy. The sudden image of him standing over a fallen but very much alive Veronica Ashcott-Saddler with an axe raised above his head and poised to take hers off, leapt unbidden to his mind and he very much feared that he would vomit. Crimmon seemed to glean Crane's inner turbulence because he glared at Cameron, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Then his eyes widened in disbelief and he waggled an accusatory finger at his visitor. "She's touched you somehow...Jeniah has infected you with her filth. I can smell the stench of her corruption on you like sewage...like death."

Crane recoiled as if slapped and took an involuntary step away from the priest whose voice had grown shrill with agitation. The old man attempted to rise, but failed and stumbled forward. Cameron gripped the old man firmly by the shoulders and guided him back into his chair. "A woman I know has been...possessed, though I'm not certain that's the correct word. I want to save her if possible and I need to know how."

Crimmon shook his head, a look of pity shaping his expression. "If Jeniah's touched her, she's lost, boy, and if she's touched your soul, then you're probably lost as well."

"I'm here aren't I...trying to find a way to stop her," Crane retorted in a rare burst of vexation. "You say that my grandfather is responsible for what's happening in Quinsett now, so then please help me atone for his mistake by telling me what I need to do now."

Crimmon did not respond for a long moment. The old priest could sense the terrible desperation behind the younger man's entreaty and when he again spoke, his voice was calm and his tone somber. "There are times when whatever Gods there are, require us to take horrific actions in the name of preserving the greater good, Cameron. If this woman has been possessed by Jeniah's spirit then she is beyond redemption...beyond any reclamation. Accept that, boy, as cruel as it may seem. Her only freedom from the witch's enslavement will come with death. I know they think you're crazy boy just as they think I'm a demented old man gone around the rim of madness at the end of his days. As I recall, you always gave the town's folk good reason to reach that conclusion."

Crimmon fell silent and both reflected back on the twists and turns that had led them both to this particular sorry state of existence. A shudder passed through the aging priest's wasted body and he turned his face to Cameron, his expression ablaze with a sudden urgency. "What's the date, boy?"

"July 25th," Cameron replied.

Crimmon groaned again and suddenly gripped Crane's right forearm. "You've got exactly one week to stop her, boy. The Witch's Sabbat falls on August the 1st. That date represents many things to the various pagan religions...but it stands as a confluence or focusing of power...a nexus of sorts. If Jeniah is back, whatever her intentions might be, they will play themselves out by then."

"What will happen on August 1st...what was she trying to do?" Cameron whispered, partially dreading the answer.

Crimmon frowned in disgust. "What vile monsters of her ilk are always trying to do...open doors that were never intended to be opened."

Crane shook his head in bewildered confusion, "To where and for what purpose? You're saying you interrupted some kind of...conjuration or summoning ritual?"

Crimmon snorted in disgust and waved an impatient dismissal as though he found the questions both foolish and irrelevant. "If you want to know the specifics, perhaps you should ask her...the next time she seduces you to wallow in her filth." The priest noticed Cameron's shocked reaction to the provocation and cackled. "Whatever she intends to summon won't be friendly, boy and in the end, that's all that matters and it's why you have to stop her before she can throw that door open. You may not believe in evil...true evil, boy, but I'm a creature of faith and I can testify that I saw true evil that night."

He held his badly scarred hands aloft and intoned solemnly, "These are my permanent reminders of exactly how evil Jeniah Lightcrusher was...is."

The old priest fell silent then and it took Cameron a moment to realize that the old man was crying, tears welled up in his listless gray eyes and rolled down the sunken hollows of his stubble-covered cheeks. Crane became cognizant of a subtle shifting in the light then. Shifting his gaze to the window, he saw that clouds had occluded the sunlight, plunging the rear yard into deep, brooding shadows. He could sense something sly and furtive insinuate itself into the ambience of the room. When he glanced at the Father Crimmon, the old man had gone utterly rigid. He sat, straight-backed and wide-eyed, with his gaze fixed squarely on the eldest Crane. When he spoke, the old priest's voice was fraught with derision and contempt.

"She's back like a dark and terrible angel and she's brought the fire retribution with her," Crimmon declared with a malicious mirth and Crane suddenly understood that it was no longer the priest speaking, but rather the thing that infected him fifty years before. The priest threw back his head and bellowed a gale of contemptuous laughter and as he did, tufts a wispy hair began to fall from his scalp. They drifted to the tiles like feathers...the roots bloody and glistening.

"She's going to extract the terrible price from the get, boy...one by one, she's gonna to take'em all," the thing chirped and the skin along the top of its skull abruptly peeled back. It hung down the back of Crimmon's neck in a repulsive bloody flap that dripped quarter-sized drops of crimson onto the floor.

' _Am I really seeing this?'_ Cameron wondered dumbly even as he raised his right arm in a warding gesture and began to retreat towards the door. Crimmon's left eyeball exploded with a distinct liquid pop as if by way of affirmation. The gaping hollow seemed to peer at Crane...a sardonic wink at the futility of his circumstances. Moaning, Cameron spun and bolted for the door. A resonating voice followed him as he fled, but now it was the voice of Mordecai Crane that pursued him. "Remember boy...you're gonna need a good sharp axe and some serious backbone...off with her head while her heart still beats. She's going to save you for last Cameron...make you watch while she slaughters the others and tears everything down...unless you can find more gumption than I ever had and take her head clean off!"

As he reached for the door handle, Cameron heard piteous whimpering and realized it was issuing from his own twisted lips. He risked one final glance over the shoulder just before throwing open the door.

Father Crimmon was slumped in the lime green chair, staring vacantly through the back window where late afternoon sunlight blazed in all its glory. It appeared as if the former priest had not so much as stirred from the time Crane had first set eyes upon him.

Reeling, Cameron tore open the door and staggered into the dimly lit hallway, leaving the aging priest to his sorry imprisonment.

2

After Veronica managed to calm a distraught Bernice Quilling and the badly agitated Wendy Saddler, the three and a half hour drive to Seattle passed without incident. Jeniah had grown quite adroit at assembling just the right selection of fragments from her host's shattered personality to placate the daft old cow and the troublesome child. She had even managed to convince the pair that the cry of summons was nothing more than a harmless aberration.

By the time the four stopped for lunch on the outskirts of the city, Veronica's natural ebullience had infected the other three. Even the dour, self-serious brat had been coaxed to sing along to a series of sickeningly syrupy Disney show tunes. Still, Jeniah would often catch the girl watching her intently, as though suspicious of her mother's sudden return to her normally blithe disposition.

Jeniah lacked the requisite sensibility to appreciate the love and tenderness with which Veronica interacted with her children. Like all other emotions deemed virtuous, they were simply beyond her understanding. She did, however, fully appreciate how Veronica's natural enthusiasm...her vivacity could be deftly exploited to full advantage.

The art of soul or personality fracturing was one that Jeniah had perfected down through the long centuries of her life. The skill essentially involve breaking the victim's mind into precise fragments that could then be combined in varying combinations to replicate aspects of the host's cumulative knowledge or personality. The process was a delicate one and not without its inherent perils. A mind...and by extension, body...could be rendered utterly useless if shattered into too many fragments. Conversely, if the interloper attempted to combine too many fragments at once, there was a minimal risk that the victim would regain enough actual cognizance to rebel against the usurper. In the case of victims endowed with a particularly strong will, this point of cognizance could be reached by drawing on only a few fragments.

Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was a ferociously indomitable woman...and yet, Jeniah had supplanted her will with a speed and efficacy that was staggering. Initially, Jeniah had been suspicious and wary at the ease with which Veronica had succumbed to her soul fracture. In the intervening days, Jeniah had reached the conclusion that Veronica's mantle of fierce independence was a brittle façade, behind which stood a fragile and insecure soul.

Veronica stood in the departure lounge and waved as a nervous Mrs. Quilling led Wendy and Danny toward the boarding ramp. The moment the trio vanished from view, Jeniah relegated Ronnie's paternal fragment back to the void and headed back towards the terminals exit, tapping into her host's vast pool of knowledge to guide her through the tedious interactions of everyday life in the mid nineteen eighties.

As she watched the first jet lift off the tarmac, lumbering incredibly into the heavens like a monstrous metallic bird of myth, Jeniah was hard-pressed to repress the near paralyzing amazement with which she regarded the spectacle. In a half century during which her soul...her divested essence...had lain dormant in the Earth, nearly incomprehensible changes had swept over the world.

The fragments of Veronica's mind helped Jeniah to negotiate the complex and bewildering labyrinth of modern life without the slightest miscue.

As she made her way through the main concourse filled with Friday afternoon flyers anxious to return to their banal lives, Jeniah experienced a sudden and acute stab of disconnection. It was not an incisive pain exactly, but rather an abrupt and disconcerting withdrawal...or severing.

The effect was so startling that the normally graceful Veronica stumbled slightly. A young man in a blue jacket with a collegiate crest moved to help the beautiful redhead, but she fixed him with a forbidding scowl of such intense vexation that he quickly recoiled several steps.

Bowing her head, Veronica marched briskly through the exit, barely managing to throw herself onto a bench before her long legs simply gave out beneath her.

She allowed her chin to settle to her chest and closed her eyes in an attempt to calm her galloping heart. To the casual observer (and there were many who stole appreciative glances at the exquisite flame-haired beauty) Veronica was just another harried traveler catching her breath.

It took only a moment to probe the periphery of her conscious mind and discern that her tether to her familiar had been severed. Veronica inhaled sharply and gripped the edge of the graffiti-marred bench with white-knuckled intensity.

A huge, towering fury welled up in Jeniah like lava, but that consuming rage was mitigated by the nascent stirring of panic. If the tether to her familiar...that omnipresent link that allowed her to control him when and as she saw fit...had been severed, it could only mean that the bumbling incompetent had managed to get himself killed. Despite being imbued with a miniscule measure of her power, Knox Severn was dead...leaving some, if not all, of his critical tasks unfinished.

Veronica started to rise with the intention of racing back to Quinsett, but immediately dispensed with the idea. She sat back down and labored to rein in her rampant emotions. It had been a risk to leave even a small aspect of her carefully contrived machinations in the hands of a mentally deficient child, but circumstances had left her with little alternative. A quick return to Quinsett would raise a host of difficult questions for which she would be unable to provide reasonable answers.

The culmination of everything she aspired to create...to conjure into being...was well within her grasp. She could not allow an impetuous, emotional reaction to derail her plans. It was essential that her vendetta against the accursed be discharged before the enactment of the ritual, when the clock tolled midnight next Thursday. Thus far, only that disgusting sodomite Cruthers had met his end.

Jeniah frowned in consternation and sighed. Glancing briefly at her watch informed her that it was nearly four hours until her assignation with the depraved Judith Ranzman...a dark tryst she was looking forward to with keen anticipation. She had every intention of wallowing in Ranzman's madness, while dragging the host's nubile body through the muck of Ranzman's perversity.

Pondering that twisted prospect ignited an unexpected lustful spark in Jeniah's black heart and restored her equilibrium. With its return, came the first formative whispers of a possible solution to her dilemma. When she at first unearthed hints of Judith's depravity, it occurred to Jeniah that Ranzman might have been a better choice of host that Veronica. When she discerned just how precariously thin the veneer of the woman's civility and sanity really were Jeniah had dismissed the notion.

' _Ah, but as the familiar, she would be...ideal'_ Jeniah thought, immediately concluding that advantage could be seen from the ashes of ill fortune. Veronica beamed a lustrous smile that banished her misgivings. As the familiar, Judith would serve Jeniah's purpose with the fanatic's zeal that would be beautiful to behold. The ability to adapt...to re-imagine and restructure with a seamless and fluid grace...these were the traits that separated the empowered from the cowering victim. These were the qualities that Jeniah possessed in abundance.

Rising, she chastised herself for the uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Her machinations had gained an inertia that simply could not be stopped or diverted. The repulsive flit, Cruthers, was dead and Crimmon was incarcerated in an institution and shackled by madness. In just a few hours, Judith Ranzman would be broken to the role of fawning, obsequious bitch. That would leave only Silver, Dwyer and one of the Crane brothers to dispose of next.

' _But not you, Cameron,'_ she amended, a lascivious grin lending a darker shading to her enormous beauty. ' _To you, I grant the special privilege of witness...you may watch as I take my revenge and give birth to a new world.'_ His special dispensation, Jeniah viewed as her one great egalitarian gesture to the concept of mercy. She would keep Cameron Crane for pet...a living testimony to the completeness of her revenge and the unending totality of her dominion over the world to come.

Driven by a rekindled enthusiasm and again secure in her mantle of infallibility, Veronica hailed a cab and headed into the city. Her tryst with mad Judith would require the proper regalia after all and she would allow Veronica to select the appropriate attire.

Later, when Ranzman's irretrievably lost soul was firmly in her pocket, Veronica would call Saddler and subtly extract details of the situation in town. It was an easy matter for the host to manipulate the unsuspecting fool. This malleability was the direct consequence of Saddler's subconscious realization that he was unworthy of the woman to whom he was married...a black irony that she would gleefully exploit.

3

The object of Jeniah Lightcrusher's seriously warped affection sat on the wooden bench near the stone and wrought iron gates of the Tranquil Care facility. As Cameron waited for the cab that would carry him back to the Olympia bus terminal, he briefly pondered embarking on a bus journey that would carry him as far away from Quinsett, Washington as possible.

_It would never be far enough,'_ he croaked and uttered a bitter laugh, not particularly caring who overheard his mordant muttering. Jeniah's malign spirit had found him on the opposite side of the world, so it was improbable that he would find a safe haven anywhere. He was suddenly struck by the unsettling thought that it may have been Jeniah Lightcrusher who had saved him from the ambush that killed his patrol mates all those years before. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that she had spared him to face whatever horrifying fate now loomed over him.

Cameron groaned and absently massaged his right temple. These ideas and their implications were ineffably horrible and Crane relegated them from his thoughts, knowing full well that they would inevitably return to plague him like a pack of yammering hounds.

Running was simply not a viable option and not only because there was no where he could run where Jeniah would not find him. The thing that made him eschew the false refuge of flight was something that the priest had said in response to Cameron's query about Jeniah's purpose.

"...to open doors that were never intended to be opened."

The priest's cryptic reply evoked a shudder of abstract dread from Crane. While he couldn't conceive of what Jeniah might wish to conjure...or more perplexing still, why...Cameron concurred fully with the priest in his certitude that the summoned entity would not be benevolent.

If the notion of attempting to stop an evidently immortal spirit from loosing monstrosities on an unsuspecting world was not daunting enough...he would have to achieve this inconceivable task by beheading a woman of angelic beauty and grace. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler was a victim of Jeniah's evil, but if Father Crimmon was to be believed, Quinsett's only chance for salvation came with her unspeakably gruesome death.

"I'm not a barbarian!" Cameron lamented with a low moan, unknowingly uttering the protest offered by Mordecai Crane nearly fifty years prior. Murder was anathema to Crane... an insufferable violation of every sensibility by which he defined himself.

Nonetheless, if he accepted Father Crimmon's account of Mordecai's past failings, he would have to set this aversion aside and commit the very act of savagery he loathed.

Sitting alone and isolated on the bench before the dreary repository for the forgotten, Cameron Crane felt himself tottering on the verge of tears. For the first time ever, he experienced the lancing sting of self-pity over the life he had led and the place to which the course of that life had now led him.

Shackled by the inexplicable prejudice of mental instability, Cameron was utterly alone. Even if he'd been regarded as a living epitome of stability and pragmatism by the community, he doubted that he could find a single soul in Quinsett who would consider his tale plausible. As it was, he would find himself on a fast-track to an involuntary committal hearing if he dared share his suspicion with anyone else.

' _Then you really don't have a choice, do you boy?'_ Mordecai's suddenly irascible ghost rasped in his thoughts. ' _You've got to find the balls to do what I couldn't. If you don't, old Jeniah's gonna unleash a world of hurt on Quinsett that'll make beheading seem like a tender mercy.'_

Shaking his head in vehement negation, Cameron slammed his left fist down on the wooden railing. ' _There has to be another way...to stop Jeniah...and save Veronica!'_

On this matter, Cameron's internal tormentor remained stubbornly silent, only exacerbating Cameron sense of helpless isolation. A yellow cab turned quickly onto the tree-lined lane, raising plumes of white dust as it sped toward the main gate.

Feeling lethargic and dispirited, Cameron fetched a sigh and pushed himself wearily to his feet. Veronica had told him that she would be away on business until early next week. If his suspicions were correct, her absence should provide a beleaguered Quinsett with the period of much-needed relief. In that time, he would seek an alternative to Father Crimmon's suggested course of action...a course of action Cameron Crane simply could not envision under any circumstances.

As he settled into the backseat of the taxicab, it occurred to Cameron that, even if he could not divulge his suspicions in full, perhaps he could give the right person the gentle prompt in the correct direction. To his own mind, Cameron possessed no particular talent for manipulation. Still, if he approached someone who was open-minded...and absolutely desperate enough to hear him out, it was possible he could turn their attention on the unassailable Veronica Ashcott-Saddler. Even the smallest degree of scrutiny could derail Jeniah's machinations.

As he began the return journey to Olympia, Cameron realized that there was only one man in Quinsett who would not dismiss him out of hand and he was in a position of influence...Sheriff Raymond Saddler.

The absurd notion caused Cameron to laugh aloud. The cabbie flicked an appraising glance at his passenger. Cameron offered a mumbled apology and averted his gaze to the passenger side window.

As preposterous as the idea might seem, Cameron knew instinctively that he must find a way to act upon it. When he'd been questioned by Saddler, after the horrible discovery of the Riesen girl, Cameron had discerned a deep sense of compassion...an unfaltering humanity...in Quinsett's new Sheriff. Cameron would have to cast his faith in his ability to appeal to that rare capacity to listen without the filter of prejudgment. The other alternative was simply ineffable.

As his thoughts inevitably strayed back to Veronica, he shuddered to imagine the shape and tone their next encounter would assume.

PART THREE

Chapter One

1

"Fuck it all!" Ethan Rannout exclaimed bitterly as he fumbled his sweat-slicked beer can onto the frayed upholstery of his Chevrolet pickup. Taking his eyes from the road, Ethan made a clumsy snatch for the can before it could spill the last of its precious contents. His knuckles rapped the bottom of the can, sending it careening off the passenger door and down onto the floor of the cab.

Ethan cursed disconsolately and watched as the last of the beer fanned out and was absorbed by the tattered remnants of the floor mat. The vehicle veered sharply to the right and in response, Rannout jerked the wheel to the left, while simultaneously tromping down on the brake pedal with more vigor than was strictly necessary.

The rust-ravaged truck trembled violently, sliding along the slick, pot-hole riddled pavement like a badly tossed curling stone. The remaining five cans of the recently purchased six-pack joined their unfortunate comrade on the foul-smelling floor mat, eliciting a groan of pure despair from Rannout, who had purchased the beer with the last of his scrounged coins only an hour before.

More by luck than skill, Ethan managed to correct the skid before the vehicle could turn completely sideways and possibly overturn as a consequence. With his heart galloping and his breathing coming in great wheezing gasps. Rannout steered the truck to the side of road and slammed it into park. He shut the engine down with another vile curse against every ill twist of fate...real or imagined...that seemed to plague his miserable existence.

Ethan allowed his forehead to settle to the cracked leather steering wheel and waited for his wildly palpitating heart to settle back into a more or less normal rhythm. After a moment, he sat back, but not before he scooped up the five remaining cans of beer that were held together by a plastic tie wrap. He then sat them carefully on the seat beside him the way someone might handle a delicate and precious possession.

The purchase of that liquid delight had left Ethan Rannout with precisely thirty-seven cents in the pocket of his stained work pants. This piteous coinage, along with the moldering pickup and three ragged changes of clothing, represented the depressing sum total of his worldly possessions.

This morning, he had been faced with the grim choice between purchasing a few gallons of gas for the seventeen year old truck or a six-pack of discount beer.

Ethan had opted for the six-pack after the briefest deliberation.

Sparing the now volatile cans a bitter scowl, as though their tumble was a willful act of spite, Rannout started the vehicle. He drove another mile down the now abandoned and crumbling road and parked the truck in a stand of trees just as the fuel gauge needle glided into the red.

"End of the line, buddy," he croaked as he stuffed the keys into a shirt pocket and laughed at his own double entendre. That laughter vanished like water through a sewer grate when his gaze slid to the barb wire-topped fence that delineated the Crane P and P shipping yard. The road, on which Ethan now sat, ran along the southern perimeter of the sprawling lumber facility. It had once served as the main entrance into the property, but had been fenced off and abandoned when the operation had been modernized and the facility reconfigured some eight years earlier.

The land rose sharply from the North edge of the road up to the base of the fence. The view of the P and P yard was completely obstructed by a solid wall of stacked logs that had been piled along the entire length of the fence awaiting shipment to the mill.

Towering over the looming stacks of harvested timber, rose the dark silhouette of three chip silos. They were spaced at even intervals along the West extremity of the property, erected on concrete pads to prevent ground seepage.

A dark grin spread over Rannout's sunken face and an ugly gleam flickered in his red rimmed eyes as he considered the three hulking silos.

Someday very soon, he would find his way into these three silos...when the night was hot and the wind howled out of the West. He had three bottles of accelerator in the rotting wooden box of his truck and a small propane torch...reserved especially for that inevitable day when you reach the end of the line.

From the dreary, warped perspective from which all of Ethan's philosophical views sprang, it had been in the very yard where his inevitable descent had commenced. As is often the case, Ethan Rannout's perception of reality bore only distantly passing resemblance to the truth. If Rannout's life could be written against the heavens, it would blaze across the firmament in deeply disturbing colors...purple, black and red...plummeting despair, seething bitterness and pervasive formless anger.

There had been a time, back when his Chevrolet pickup truck gleaned without a speck of rust, when Ethan had a comparatively normal life...at least to the most casual scrutiny. He held a good paying job at Crane P and P. He was married to a pretty, submissive wife with whom he had a respectful, obedient son. If his volatile temper occasionally prompted him to employ an open hand...even a rare fist...on both, he at least had a measure of control over his demon.

One hot and humid afternoon, seven years ago, that control evaporated, leading to the cataclysmic severing of every tether that bound him to normalcy. There were instances, more frequent of late, when he couldn't conjure the faces of his ex-wife and estranged son.

Ah, but he need only close his eyes and the hateful visage of Rob Gustavson would materialize in his mind like a baleful specter. It had been Gustavson...his immediate supervisor and a world-class prick...who had been riding him mercilessly that dark day.

Perhaps Ethan had been working a bit slower than normal, but couldn't the insensitive bastard see how he was suffering from the damnable heat?

' _Not to mention a skull-crushing headache,'_ a traitorous part of his mind recalled...an incisive observation that Rannout adroitly ignored.

Like every normal man, Ethan had his limits, and when Gustavson foolishly goaded Rannout beyond his, he'd finally exploded. The punch had knocked out five of Rob's teeth before Ethan was even aware of his intention to throw it. He remembered staring down on the moaning supervisor in glazed shock. This shock, however, did not deter him from administering three savage kicks to the defenseless man's ribs.

Though well-practiced in the art of self-delusion, even Ethan could not deny that he might well have kicked Gustavson to death had a group of co-workers not intervened.

' _The bastard deserved it!'_ Ethan informed the indifferent late afternoon silence.

With that one lamentable incident, Ethan Rannout's life had unraveled with the bewildering rapidity of a cheap rug. Naturally, he had lost his job (a perceived transgression for which he now harbored a killing grudge against Stuart Crane) and had been sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary for aggravated assault. During his incarceration, he'd been beaten and sodomized by men far more brutal than he could ever imagine. To compound his fear and humiliation, his once pliable wife had mustered the courage to seek a divorce, divesting him of everything he owned in the process.

Ethan left custody and returned to Quinsett a broken, humiliated man with no family, no home and virtually no prospect of finding anything beyond transitory employment. Where many men might have turned to crime or abandoned Quinsett in search of a fresh start, Rannout found that he was incapable of leaving his hometown. Isolated and increasingly angry, Ethan had sought cold solace in the bottle, all but insuring his inevitable and utter dissolution.

The subsequent slide had been slow but irreversible and finally, on this dreary July afternoon...unloved, destitute and virtually homeless, Ethan Rannout had reached the absolute nadir.

The only thing that provided him with the impetus to move at all was the euphoric prospect of watching Crane P and P in a cloud of brilliant orange flame and black smoke.

He grabbed the can of beer and tore open the tab, unmindful of the burst of froth that welled out over his clutching fist. He drained the can in a single draught, belched thunderously and then threw the crumpled can out the passenger side window.

He suddenly resolved himself to the notion that it was time to put paid to lingering debts. He would begin with Crane P and P and then move on to Rob Gustavson. With those scores settled, he might even pay a visit to his whore of an ex-wife and their ingrate son...a family reunion of sorts.

As his face cracked in a reptilian grin, Ethan was pondering the specifics of this campaign of retribution, when something landed on the roof of his truck with a titanic thud.

2

Saddler and Maria Cordova were nearly back in town when the radio blazed into life in a burst of static. As the pair drove back along Ringgold Lane, Ray had stolen the occasional glance at his deputy, who had fallen into a contemplative silence once they had put the horrifying anomaly behind them.

He was impressed by how quickly Maria had recovered her composure, knowing that many people would have been paralyzed to immobility by the aberration. Still, she had seen the rug of her perception torn out from beneath her and had landed on her feet...more or less unscathed...a testimony to her considerable mettle. It was difficult to gauge exactly how she perceived what she'd just witnessed, but Saddler correctly surmised that she was still in the process of internalizing those implications. When the walls of ones reality were so dramatically toppled, it was only natural to rummage through the detritus in search of some fragment of past belief that could yet be salvaged.

Saddler had no doubt that Maria would come to terms with the improbability of that monstrous reconstruction and make an accommodation with everything it implied.

Mariam Carter's static-distorted voice interrupted Saddler's musing just as the cruiser entered the outskirts of Quinsett. "Sheriff, I have a call on a noise-related disturbance on Chester Crescent." There was a slight hesitation and then, "Specifically, a dog barking loudly on the front steps of a home there."

Saddler raised an eyebrow in exasperation and exchanged glances with Maria, who was reacting to the trivial complaint with surprising intensity. As he snatched up the two-way, she retrieved the laminated street map from the cruiser's storage pocket and began scanning the diagram to locate the unfamiliar street. Despite his mild annoyance at this ridiculous distraction, Ray immediately discerned that his deputy had been pricked by a stab of intuition...a faculty that Saddler trusted and respected greatly. Still, he could not help but respond, "Mariam, don't we have an animal control department to respond to these types of complaints?"

Before the dispatcher could respond, Deputy Holland cut in, "Sheriff, we're fairly close to that location...I can respond if you like."

Saddler shook his head absently, thinking that he'd much rather dispatch Albert and Tim to question Stuart Crane on the matter of Vincent Scallari. He became cognizant of Maria's intense scrutiny and eyed her questioningly.

"Sheriff, Albert suggests you join us on Chester Crescent." Tim Holland's voice filled the confines of the cruiser and it was impossible to mistake the uncertainty and unaccountable anxiety that resonated in his tone.

More perplexed than ever, Saddler again shifted his gaze to Deputy Cordova, who nodded encouragingly, that same anxiety gleaming vividly in those large, dark eyes. There was an imperative aspect to her intense gaze that prompted Saddler to respond, "We're there in five, Tim. Saddler out."

"What am I missing here, Maria?" Saddler asked his deputy as he returned his mic to its holder. She averted her gaze to the street where the prevailing drizzle had finally ceased. When at last she replied, her voice was unusually restrained...hesitant, as if she was reluctant to provide an answer.

"I don't precisely know, Sheriff, but something is telling me that we personally need to respond to this call...that this call is related to everything. I've never had a propensity for the supernatural...always thought that foreshadowing was a gimmick...but after what you showed me this morning, I feel compelled to trust my instinct."

She turned back to Saddler then, meeting his regard with those hauntingly beautiful eyes. Finally, Saddler asked quietly, "All right then, Maria...where exactly are we heading?"

3

Ethan cursed, seeing the roof of the Chevy's cab buckle like an aluminum can. Securing his grip on the beer can, Rannout threw open the side door and ducked into the afternoon gloom. He could feel his accursed temper boil up like lava, occluding what little sense he normally possessed. Never prone to analytical forethought, it didn't occur to Ethan that there might well be an element of menace in whatever had landed on his ailing rust bucket.

If the possibility hadn't occurred to him before he made his explosive exit from the cab, it did the very instant his horrified gaze fell on the hulking monstrosity now perched on the truck's crumpled roof.

Ethan uttered a shrewish cackle and attempted to back pedal away, but fear and encroaching physical enfeeblement caused him to lose his balance. He went down hard on his bony ass, with his head snapping back on the thin stalk of his neck. His beer flew, forgotten, from his hand and went clattering across the dirt in a spiral of foam.

Ethan used his hands and the heels of his boots to scramble away from the towering horror. He did not attempt to regain his feet, nor could he avert his gaze from the improbable nightmare as desperately as he desired to do both.

Rannout lacked the faculty of communications necessary to adequately describe the horror that now loomed over him. Though his flesh knew, on an atavistic level that had little to do with the age of light and reason, that the stryge was a creature born of pure malevolence.

Ethan was distantly aware of the hot stream of urine that spread in a dark fan over the front of his ragged work pants. He raised his right arm to the beast, though in a gesture of warding or entreaty, he could not be certain.

The creature that had come to ground atop Ethan Rannout's truck stood seven feet tall and appeared to be the failed culmination of a mad geneticist's deranged experimentation. Its long and sinuous body was a sickening amalgamation of bird and human physiology. Thick, squat wings sprouted from the center of its muscular, hunched back. Large, suppurating wounds covered much of the exposed flesh, swelling and bursting constantly...expelling huge gouts of malodorous pus that caused the stricken Rannout to twist to the side and vomit the meager contents of his shrunken stomach.

The stryge abruptly hopped down from the cab on long, spindly legs that gave the impression of possessing tremendous power despite the apparent fragility of its delicate bone structure. As he dragged a dirty shirt sleeve across his mouth, Ethan's eyes were drawn to the razor sharp talons that flexed and scrabbled, leaving runnels in the hard packed dirt. He correctly deduced that those talons could easily gouge holes in sheet metal.

Slowly, his gaze traversed the length of the terrible apparition's (and surely that must be what he was experiencing now...an alcohol-induced waking nightmare) torso. Its upper body was covered in the chaotic mass of corrupting pustule, bristles and feathers...except for two stunningly perfect breasts that adorned its upper chest. Ethan shuddered in revulsion when he noticed that the creature was lactating...pearlescent droplets flowing from turgid pink nipples.

Finally, his gaze settled on the horror's large misshapen head. Two feather tufted ears and curving bony protrusions adorned the crown of its skull, but it was two large, luminescent eyes that dominated the creature's hideous countenance. Its piercing gaze held the powerful, transfixing quality that suggested a deeper sentience.

"Stay the fuck away from me," Ethan brayed defiantly, spittle flying from his lips, but then his tone became pleading...desperate. "Leave me alone, please...I'm nobody...nothing...just leave me be."

The stryge inclined its head, regarding the urine smelling, wretched creature quizzically, it's wicked curving beak chittering constantly, suggesting a murderous impatience to rip and tear flesh asunder.

And then it spoke in a throaty, beguiling feminine voice. "Where is the one who has summoned me?"

An expression of complete bewilderment rippled across Rannout's face, giving way to absolute and unmanning terror, when Ethan realize he could offer no meaningful answer to that query. Again, he renewed his anguished, blubbering entreaty. "I...I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Just...just go away, please!"

The stryge's lids slid down, lending its expression an aspect of judgment...of appraisal and deadly finality. "Then I have no further use for you..." though after a moment's further consideration, it added, "Except perhaps..."

Discerning that an ineffably horrible sentence had just been rendered, Ethan fell back upon the flaw that had been the scourge of his wretched existence. Turning onto his hands and knees, he crawled along the edge of the road while the stryge tracked his movements through luminous golden eyes. He retrieved the aluminum beer can, crumpled it into a crude ball and heaved it at the unmoving nightmare. Rannout then scrambled to his feet and made an ungainly, shambling run for the trees.

The can bounced harmlessly off the creature's shoulder, which nonetheless loosed an angry cry and took to the air with a flap of its massive wings. It covered the distance to the fleeing derelict in a few heartbeats, digging its sharp talons deep into the soft muscle of Ethan's deltoids and effortlessly lifting the hundred and sixty pound Rannout from the ground.

Ethan bellowed in pain as the talons tore through the connective tissue and scored the bone beneath. The stryge spiraled up into the air and then suddenly released its quarry, though not before ripping Ethan's throat out with one precise slash of its beak. Rannout plummeted the forty feet soundlessly, landing flat on his back beside the pickup truck that had served as his last home.

There was a resounding snap on impact and all physical sensation and pain vanished. Paralyzed, Ethan Rannout watched in moon-eyed terror as the stryge descended upon him with talons extended.

Its right talon covered Ethan's face and the rough leathery pad literally abraded the flesh from the bone. With a sudden flexing of its talons, the stryge efficiently pulverized the front half of Ethan's skull. His eyeballs exploded with an audible liquid pop as blood and cerebral fluids gushed out across the hard-packed dirt of the abandoned road.

Satisfied that its prey would offer no further resistance, the stryge executed an odd, hopping pivot until it faced the mangled corpse's feet.

The journey to this unfamiliar land had been a long one as had been the slow passage of time since last the stryge had hunted in the world of men.

Its hunger was a vast and terrible thing that must now be satiated.

In one swift pass of its beak, the stryge tore away the tattered remains of Ethan's shirt. Next, it gouged through the flesh and abdominal muscle, peeling them aside in great bloody flaps to expose the sweetmeat and glistening viscera beneath.

The thing emitted a spine tingling screech and with wild abandon, set about devouring its delicious feast.

4

Sheriff Saddler arrived at the designated house on Chester Crescent, still not certain why he was responding to a barking dog complaint when the town was crumbling around him. Even as he stepped out of the vehicle and swept his gaze over the Crescent, Saddler chastised himself for being convinced to indulge in this time wasting exercise.

Maria Cordova watched him expectantly and then turned her attention to the house were Albert Huxley and Tim Holland stood speaking to an elderly gentleman in a bright orange windbreaker. The senior was speaking in a low, urgent voice while gesturing frantically to the front door of the house. On the doorstep, a white terrier (a West Highland, Maria thought they were called) on an ornate leash still attached to its collar, barked incessantly while spinning in circles like a dervish. Occasionally, it would jump up and slam it fore paws against the door before resuming its frenzied howling.

"By Jesus, how long has it been doing that?" Saddler heard Albert inquire irritably as he approached the trio.

The older gent, a retired P&P shift supervisor named Ben Langston, glanced at his Timex and revealed, "since about 11 o'clock...a good forty-five minutes at least."

"What exactly do we have here, gentlemen?" Saddler inquired as he joined the group, peripherally cognizant of the growing number of people who had emerged from their houses to see what attracted the police cruisers to the normally tranquil neighborhood.

The three men stared back at him with disproportionately grave expressions that seem completely incongruous with the apparent situation. Turning to the elderly gentleman, Saddler inquired, "Do you know who owns this dog...Mr.?"

"Ben Langston," the senior responded with a distracted nod. "The woman who lives in this house...Lynda Verin...owns Barney...that's the little fellow who has got himself in such a lather. I can tell you right now Sheriff...you got more than upset pooch here."

Ray arched an eyebrow, feeling a chill slowly start to radiate from the base of his spine. "Why would you think that, Mr. Langston?"

"Lynda loves that terrier a good sight more than most people love their children. She would never leave Barney outside alone...never in a million years," Langston declared fiercely, his vehemence ratcheting Saddler's burgeoning tension up another notch.

"Has anyone approached the dog or knocked on the door?" Saddler asked and was surprised by how calm he sounded to his own ear.

"We just arrived a moment before you did Sheriff...Mr. Langston was waiting for us on the front lawn," Tim Holland offered by way of explanation.

Maria step closer to the Sheriff and intoned discreetly, "The dog still has a walking leash around his neck. That would suggest that something might have happened to the owner while walking the dog."

Langston overheard Maria's comment and by way of affirmation offered, "Lynda's a teacher...rain or shine, she takes Barney for a morning walk out to Trafford stream. The trail heads out into the woods starting over there."

He pointed in the direction of the walkway, between the well-maintained homes, that appeared to lead northward into the forest. At the head of the path, a steel-channeled guardrail had been bolted onto two concrete posts to prevent motorized vehicles from accessing the path. Saddler quickly deduced that it would be necessary to search the trail on foot.

It was then that Ray realized that the dog...Barney...had stopped barking and was watching him with expressive brown eyes, its head cocked to one side. Gesturing for the others to remain where they were, Saddler slowly approached the dog, bending forward slightly and extending his right hand in a gesture of friendly encouragement. "Hey Barney...hey boy...it's okay. We want to help you find your mom."

When it appeared that the terrier would allow Saddler to catch hold of the leash, Barney bolted in the direction of the hiking trail. Ray stood and sighed, but then noticed that the dog had come to a halt a few yards away and was looking back at Saddler with what appeared to be a sense of eager expectation. After a moment, the dog gave a plaintive whine and drifted back toward Saddler.

"I think it wants you to follow him, Sheriff," Maria suggested, to which Saddler merely nodded. Whatever this poor animal wanted him to see, Ray correctly deduced it was something he could most definitely do without.

Still, his natural police instinct prompted him into action. "Tim, try the home and see if there's a response. If not, force entry...we need to determine what, if anything, has happened to the owner. Albert, if you could pull the cruiser to the head of the trail, deputy Cordova and I will follow the dog and I want all traffic kept out of the trail until we can determine if there's anything to find."

Both Albert and Tim nodded and moved to fulfill their respective tasks. Maria had retrieved a portable radio from the cruiser and now moved to join Saddler. The pair set out after the terrier and as suspected, the dog had been attempting to induce them into following it into the trail. Saddler was assailed by a tingling of foreboding, the intensity of which he'd experienced only once before in his life...on the day that Ruben Serrano and the Deleon boy had met their bloody ends.

"I think I understand what you meant about foreshadowing, Maria...can you feel it?" Saddler inquired as he hurried along the chip and dust trail. Maria nodded tightly and drew her service revolver without soliciting her superior's permission. Upon a moment's consideration, Saddler followed suit.

"I don't think there's ever been a deputy to have the kind of first week you've had," Saddler remarked, attempting to conjure a casual levity he did not feel...a ward against the nearly suffocating weight of impending calamity. Maria responded with a tight grin and the flash of those exquisite brown eyes.

"To think, it's not over yet," she replied having no notion how prophetic those words would prove to be.

A short time later, the pair followed the heartsick Barney into a rest area at Trafford stream. Simultaneously, both came to a stumbling halt and stood gape jawed and staring at the ravaged, bloody corpse of what until that morning had been a living, fundamentally happy human being. Nothing in his years of experience as a police officer could have prepared Saddler for the gruesome spectacle that was Lynda Verin's mangled remains.

Beside him, Saddler was only peripherally aware of deputy Cordova, who had stumbled off a few paces, fallen to her knees and was now vomiting copiously into the grass that rimmed the forest's edge.

"This...this changes everything," Saddler murmured.

Beneath the hanging body, a faithful West Highland terrier named Barney began to howl.

5

Raymond Saddler sat at his desk, one elbow propped on the armrest of his chair, staring absently through the side window of his office. Outside, the rain had begun to fall in earnest, plunging the town into premature darkness.

Lynda Verin's orphan terrier, Barney, lay curled up on a woven mat near Saddler's feet. The dog was sound asleep, but every now and then its body would spasm and shake as it offered a mewling cry in response to whatever terror plagued its dreams. After what they have both witnessed in that isolated clearing, Saddler suspected those dreams would be terrifying beyond imagining.

He, himself, wondered if the harrowing image of Verin's horribly mutilated body would ever allow him a moment of peaceful sleep again.

When Lynda's body had been removed and the last of the emergency service people had left Chester Crescent, Saddler's exhausted gaze had fallen upon the frightened, whimpering West Highland. In that simple glance, Saddler's tenuous grip on self-control had nearly dissipated. In that one creature's plight and suffering, Ray had found the embodiment of the ineffable landslide of darkness that threatened to bury everything around him. In the face of such staggering evil, he felt woefully inadequate. He had failed to protect Quinsett and lacked the faculties to give meaningful opposition to the type of menace he believed now loomed over the town.

He shifted his gaze to the sleeping terrier and vowed solemnly that he would not allow the dog to fall victim to the evil that had ravaged its owner. If nothing else, he would succeed in that one small thing.

Someone coughed softly and Saddler turned his attention to the other two occupants, who sat on the opposite side of the desk. Albert Huxley appeared haggard to the point of illness and Maria Cordova reminded Saddler of a bombing survivor. Nothing in their accrued life experiences had come close to preparing them for the madness into which they been drawn.

Concerned, especially for the former Sheriff, Saddler instructed, "Go home Albert and get some rest. If you're up to it, we can question the Brothers Crane tomorrow, though my first instinct is to simply hunker down until the cavalry comes."

Huxley found and commented, "Silver is not going to be pleased, Ray."

"Albert, I think we're well beyond the point where Ira silver's reaction is of any consequence. I should've made a call yesterday...candidly, I should've made it after the fire at the county hospital. After that...that atrocity at the clearing, we can no longer worry about containing situation for the sake of the town's good name," Saddler replied, feeling the cumulative weight of his own exhaustion fraying at the edges of both his nerves and temper. After concluding the preliminary investigation of the Verin murder, Ray had placed a call to the Seattle office of the FBI, providing the bureau chief with an overview of the situation in Quinsett and requesting federal assistance with the investigation.

"She wasn't just eviscerated, Sheriff...something's eaten her intestines," the M.E. informed Saddler in a voice made tremulous with revulsion and fear. It had been this disclosure, more than anything else that had compelled Saddler to dispense with the ludicrous notion that he could _manage_ the situation.

Huxley sighed and rose to leave. "You're right, of course. It's just that...assuming we're right about what's goin' on in Quinsett, I'm not sure if the feds are the right soldiers for this particular fight."

Saddler offered his predecessor a sour grimace and remarked, "Can you honestly say that we are?"

"Point taken, Sheriff," Huxley murmured and then turned to the door. Without looking back, he said, "See you in the morning Sheriff. Good night Maria."

Then he was gone, leaving Saddler to immediately regret his curt dismissal of Huxley's concerns.

Saddler sighed before turning his attention to Maria, who was watching him intently. "You should go home as well, Maria. I'm going to need your help getting the paperwork organized for the feds tomorrow."

Maria nodded, though her unsettling gaze never left his face. "Ray, don't beat yourself up over not requesting federal assistance sooner. This situation is developing like a runaway wildfire...and that's not even taking into account the supernatural enigma we've witnessed."

Saddler nodded glumly. "Of course, you're right, but it doesn't do a lot to lessen the sense of failure over how many people have lost their lives in less than a week. As I began to develop a more specific sense of what was happening in Quinsett, I thought we might actually be able to end this insanity...to apprehend or at least stop whoever was responsible. It seems despite this bizarre complexion, the situation had two facets we could focus on."

"I'm not sure that I'm following your line of reasoning," Maria remarked quietly, but Saddler noticed as a speculative gleam sparked to life in her dark eyes.

Encouraged, Saddler continued his explanation. "We knew that whoever is responsible...for the sake of argument just call her Jeniah...wanted to extract vengeance from a specific group of people. That gave us a fixed and finite group of targets, which narrowed the field of those we had to protect. We further theorized that the ultimate culmination of Jeniah's return would be in some manner of occult ritual. What's more, we can say with a fair degree of confidence that it will be enacted on the night of July 31 or the early morning of August 1...the Sabbat of Lamas."

Dark eyes glittering enthusiastically, Maria abruptly sat forward, taking up the thread of Saddler's deductive reasoning. "We can also speculate, with a reasonable degree of certainty just where this ritual will be enacted."

Saddler nodded and offered his Deputy a wan smile. "This murder...this horrible slaughter of an innocent woman changed the equation completely. Everything that's happened thus far has been connected to the two facets, but this is something else entirely. No one in Quinsett is safe now. We may have an idea of what's behind this carnage, but we don't have the resources...or the skill to do anything about it. That's why we need the Feds."

Maria sat back in her chair nodded thoughtfully. "Albert was perhaps correct in suggesting that the feds may not be the right soldiers for this fight." She offered a thin, humorless chuckle and then quipped, "If what we suspect is even remotely close to the truth, we'd be better served by a legion of exorcists."

They both laughed at the rather fatuous notion of a band of exorcists descending on the beleaguered town, armed with crucifixes and vials of holy water. That laughed died quickly beneath the resonating memory of Lynda Verin's mangled corpse. "What do you intend to tell the Feds?"

Again, Saddler fetched a weary sigh. "Pretty much everything short of the conclusions we've reached. I'll give them everything we have, answer all of their questions and hope to give them a subtle nudge in the right direction. If nothing else, my hope is that the Feds will descend on Quinsett with enough force to stifle whatever was to happen here come August 1st. I know that's not the preferred outcome, but I'll take a draw in this case...at least for now."

Maria frowned in reaction to this, evidently dissatisfied with some aspect of Saddler's intended course of action. "When they arrive, I imagine we'll lose control of this investigation?"

"We'll be effectively sidelined, yes," Saddler confirmed. "I'll probably become the personal tag along, gopher for the FBI lead and the rest of the team will go back to everyday policing duties."

Maria pursed her lips and that frown became a grimace. "So our involvement is basically over?"

Saddler offered her an apologetic grin. "On the surface, it would seem that way, but while the FBI throws a cordon around Quinsett, you, me, Albert and possibly Art Silver are going to focus on stopping Jeniah's ritual...discreetly of course."

Maria's expression became resolute. "Whatever you need...or decide, you can count me in. I don't relish the prospect of going back to the vile place at the end of Ringgold Lane. Still, if the Feds do nothing else but wrap Quinsett in a security blanket, I'm going to camp out on the doorstep of hell house and wait for its owner to return."

Saddler watched her closely and discerned the shadow of a deeper emotion lurking in those dark, limpid eyes...enormous fear held at bay by stolid determination. Quietly, he intoned, "My biggest fear, Maria, is that it could well come to that."

"If it does, then I'll be there with you," she declared fiercely. She dropped her gaze to her folded hands and nodded slightly. As Ray watched her closely, he experienced a sudden and intense rush of emotion...emotion that bore a perilously close resemblance to love. When she again met his gaze, her face was lit by a radiant smile that caused Saddler's heart to flutter. It was as though, in that avowed commitment to a peril-fraught course of action, Maria Cordova had drawn upon an inner strength...an unshakable serenity. "What I saw in the woods...that thing pushing out of the earth like a monstrous birth...it frightened me in ways that I lack the words to express. I'll be perfectly candid, Ray...I wanted to throw down my gun and run. My first instinct was to run and keep running. The only thing that prevented me from doing exactly that was seeing you watching me and knowing that you had found the courage to actually go back to that wicked place. I couldn't shame myself before you...I'd rather die than do that."

"Maria, I've never doubted your courage," Ray replied, scarcely trusting himself to speak. They were skirting dangerously close to something that could prove disastrous and he had to find the mettle to resist. Still, those eyes...those beguiling dark eyes seemed to fill the world.

Maria raised a hand as though gesturing for a moment of indulgence. "I try to be pragmatic and tough, but it's a façade really...something that's expected. I'm not sure if I'm adequate, but I know I have an obligation to fight whatever dark force is threatening this town." She hesitated, her expression becoming pensive. "Perhaps the FBI assuming control of the investigation will work to our advantage. While they pursue the traditional investigative venues, we can concentrate on learning more about Jeniah's ritual and how to stop it."

Maria fell silent and Saddler could not help but notice how her considerable chest rose and fell with the passion of the moment. He quickly averted his eyes. "Then at least we have a plan...go home and rest Maria...something tells me there won't be many opportunities for that over the next seven days."

Deputy Cordova studied Saddler for a moment, the intensity of her scrutiny causing his heart to race. She seemed on the verge of saying something further, but then she appeared to reconsider. She rose and drifted over to the door, though her every movement hinted at a reluctance to leave. Pausing at the door, she spoke without looking back. "May I offer a word of advice, Sheriff?"

"Of course...and please, Maria, call me Ray."

"Ray then...don't mention your wife's possible connection to the investigation. Nothing good can come of it...for any of us." Then, without awaiting his reaction, she was gone, leaving Saddler alone to face the turbulent storm of emotions, doubts and nagging questions he could no longer avoid.

Chapter Two

1

It was just past 9:30 that evening when Saddler stumbled into his kitchen, his newly adopted companion, Barney in tow. After Maria had departed, Ray had spent time with Kort and Art Silver, explaining how the dusk to dawn curfew should be imposed and enforced. The pair would patrol the streets...together...and inform those found outside and on foot that a curfew had been imposed and would be in their best interest to return home at once.

Both men were especially quick on the uptake and Saddler left them to the task, feeling confident that the curfew's imposition was in capable hands.

Saddler pulled back a kitchen chair and slumped into the seat, absently consuming his take-out burger without actually tasting it. Giving up, he broke the remaining portion to smaller pieces and fed them to the grateful Terrier, who consumed the offering with a wolfish relish.

When the last remnant was gone, Saddler gave the dog an affectionate pat on the head and remarked, "Been a tough day, little fellow."

The dog uttered one clipped yip as though in acquiescence that it had, indeed, been a brutally difficult span of waking hours. Those large, expressive eyes regarded Saddler as if he somehow possessed the capability to rectify the horrible injustice that had befallen the creature's life. Raymond Saddler felt small, futile and utterly alone, fearing that the dog's faith was grossly misplaced.

Rising, Saddler retrieved a beer from the fridge, gestured for Barney to follow and headed into the family room. With sheets of driving rain pounding the windows in a discordant rhythm and the darkness pressing in, the house felt empty and cold...devoid of the vibrant energy that Ronnie's very presence bestowed.

He moved toward the sofa with a mind to settling in with his newfound companion, when the blinking light of the answering machine drew his attention. He considered simply ignoring the silent summons, but deciding that it might be Veronica with news of his family's Exodus, Saddler crossed the room and depressed the playback button.

Distorted by electronic circuitry and distance, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's voice filled the brooding silence. "Looks like I missed you, Ray. I'm just leaving the airport here in Seattle and wanted to touch base before heading off to my series of meetings. If you notice my note, you already know that I couldn't book local connections for Mrs. Quilling and the kids, so I decided to drive. At any rate, I squired them onto the plane without incident, so everything turned out fine." There was a momentary hesitation and then she added "It was a prudent decision to have the children leave until this...this nightmare is over. Be safe Ray...find whoever is doing this and put a stop to it...but keep yourself safe for the children...and for me. I think of Orlin and what his family must be going through and I don't think I could cope if anything happened to you."

Veronica's voice faltered then and Ray thought he could detect a slight hitch in her breathing, declaring that she was perilously close to tears. He could discern the struggle, but after a moment his wife seemed to regain a measure of composure. She laughed weakly and then said, "I'm being foolish...I have every faith that you can handle whatever Quinsett can throw at you. Anyway, I better run. I love you...and miss you." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, fraught with brazen promise. "Next time I have you alone, I'm going to show you exactly how much."

There was a whir in the click as she disconnected, leaving a bemused Saddler staring at the message machine, in perplexed expression set on his lean face. He glanced over at Barney who was watching him with his head inclined to the right as if he shared Saddler's puzzlement.

A deep creased furrowed his normally smooth brow as he stood pondering the device, as though it contained the key to unraveling the mysteries of the universe. An abstract intimation tickled lightly at the edges of his conscious thoughts.

There was something off center in this brief message...something innately wrong which sent a chill coursing up and down the length of his perspiration-sodden spine.

"Leave it be, Ray," he whispered savagely between clenched teeth. His trembling fingers hovered over the rewind button. He felt like a man peering down the length of the shadow-cloaked street over which he had no desire to travel.

It came to him then, with a preternatural clarity and certainty, that should he decide to press this button, his life as he knew it would be irretrievably lost to him. Never one for self-delusion, he grinned and declared to the disapproving silence, "I believe it is anyway."

When the message concluded, Saddler shook his head and frowned. There was definitely something amiss. Ray Saddler possessed a quality that was rare in a male spouse...he loved to hear his wife speak and took private delight in the distinct tones and nuances of her voice. Even the most trivial of conversations could wash over him like a balm. He could plunge into a deep and calming state of contentment by simply listening to her talk.

Everything about what he was hearing on this voice message was wrong; essentially inconsistent with the fundamental speech patterns and habitual phraseology Veronica normally used.

A low moan escaped his lips and he wanted to simply abort this line of reasoning, but an inner voice would not grant him the hollow luxury. "There is more...and you can sense it. Listen again!"

And so Saddler did, growing increasingly frustrated with each successive playback. The words seemed to swell until repetition reduced them to an indistinguishable blur.

Then, with the swiftness that was unsettling, the incongruity resolved itself and the source of Saddler's disquiet stood fourth in sharp relief. From the tiny speaker came two distinct voices speaking in flawlessly perfect harmony...Veronica's light exuberant voice mirrored exactly by a deeper voice that caressed the ear like satin drawn across bare skin...seductive, yet deadly.

Saddler shook his head in negation and drew away from the machine as though pulling back from a coiled viper. It would have been easy to discredit the tape's revelation then...to attribute the dual voices to a machine defect of sorts.

Instead, Saddler darted forward and hit the playback button again. The senses would not be deceived once the truth was disclosed and now the two voices stood plainly forth like water flowing parallel in a river suddenly divided by a stone outcrop.

In that mortifying moment of disclosure, Raymond Saddler was confronted by the terrible, incontrovertible truth...Veronica was gone. In his viscera and the marrow of his bones, Saddler was suffused by the unbearable weight of loss. More horrifying still, he knew exactly who had supplanted her.

He stumbled in the direction of the sofa on wooden, unresponsive legs, suddenly grasping the ramifications of both pieces of evidence that he and Maria Cordova had suppressed. Both Vincent Scallari and Orlin had left clues to the identity of their murderer. Scallari had taken the time to scribble Ronnie's name on a piece of paper and tucked it under his pillow before leaving for his fateful encounter in the graveyard. The dual implications of that action were glaringly obvious...it was Veronica who Scallari intended to meet at the Eternal Lights Cemetery and the meeting was one from which he anticipated he might not return. The Spyder's license number confirmed that Ronnie's car had been parked in the cemetery's access road when Orlin had arrived on the scene.

As incredible...as absolutely inconceivable as it seemed, this equation could produce only one logical explanation; against all reason, Veronica had slaughtered both men in the graveyard.

' _No, not Veronica because she's gone, Ray,'_ a loathsome traitor's voice informed him, speaking in a reasoned, matter-of-fact voice that made Saddler want to scream. _'Ronnie belongs to Jeniah now...while you were trying to resurrect your pathetic life here in Quinsett, you left her alone and vulnerable on Ringgold Lane and while you fought to regain a measure of your fragile dignity, Jeniah reached up from the grave and destroyed the one thing you claim to love above all else. The only question that remains is what you intend to do about it?'_

Barney watched the man carefully from a spot on the area carpet, instinctively knowing that something ineffably horrible had just befallen the man. He could feel waves of pain and soul rending anguish radiating from a stranger like palpable heat. Abruptly, a harrowing screech tore through the night air, drawing both the dog and the man's startled gaze to the bay window that opened on the property's side yard.

An electric current of malice flowed through the house's interior, washing over its two occupants like water through a burst dam. Saddler could feel the clammy flesh on his back rise into great hackles. Barney began to howl then, his shrill cry a strident blend of trepidation and warning.

In response, Saddler drew his service revolver and gradually made his way to the window. Pulling back the curtain several inches, he peered into the unlit side yard, where heavy rain added depth and texture to the darkness. Squinting revealed nothing at first, but then two large, luminous golden orbs came forth from the shadows near his garage. Transfixed by dark wonder, Saddler watched raptly as the figure slowly emerged from the shadows.

The grotesquerie came to a halt in the middle of the mired yard, lantern like eyes fixed directly on the window where Saddler stood. Even in the darkness, Ray could glean the malice burning in those terrible eyes and knew they were fixed squarely and specifically upon him.

The thing emitted another earsplitting screech and then with the flap of its massive wings, rose into the stormy skies and was gone.

Saddler inhaled sharply and sagged against the wall beside the bay window. With trembling hands, he holstered his service revolver and slid down the wall to the floor, where he sat with his knees drawn up against his chest. Cautiously, Barney crept forward and settled at the man's feet.

Raymond Saddler sat there unmoving, and even with the cyclone of madness that would engulf his life in the days to come, he could not recall exactly how long he remained this way. He could distinctly recall, however, the two thoughts that chased themselves in wild circles through his frazzled mind. The first was a damning condemnation that he was the reason that Veronica had come to this evil place...his failings had exposed her to this insanity.

The second, and ultimately the more debilitating thought was the fragments of a dream...cryptic at the time of dreaming, but stark and obvious now...her name is dichotomy.

2

The cab sped through the mostly deserted streets of Seattle, the driver indifferent to the sheets of dirty puddle water that his wild charge raised. He had picked his fare up at the Olympic Hotel on Seneca Street only moments before, but during the short ride he had grown unaccountably but desperately anxious for his passenger to disembark. Her very presence filled him with a powerful, atavistic dread and it took all of his wavering self-control not to bring his cab to screeching halt and flee whimpering, into the stormy night.

This intense trepidation was ridiculous of course. Over his twenty nine years as a Seattle cabbie, he pulled many a frightening fare...passengers who left him with an irrepressible itch in the center of his back...crazies who appeared to vibrate with a compulsion to unleash violent mayhem. The woman who now resided in his backseat hardly matched that profile. Stunningly beautiful with long, flowing red hair and limpid green eyes that reminded him of pristine oceans, the woman nonetheless exuded menace like a rabid dog on a chain.

Veronica, discerning the effect her mere proximity was having on the cab driver, allowed herself a private smile of satisfaction.

There had been a moment, upon first entering her lavishly appointed suite at the Olympic Hotel, when she experienced a disconcerting burst of terror. Sitting on an ornate coffee table was a rough-hewn wooden box, closed and secured by two crudely fashioned copper latches. Veronica's initial instinct had been to simply withdraw...to head to the destination of her night tryst and await Judith Ranzman's arrival. Before she could action the impulse, the stirrings of a long forgotten memory terminated and curiosity surmounted her initial reluctance.

She cautiously approached the chest, its cracked and pitted surface conveying the impression of tremendous age. Carefully, Jeniah released the clasps and slowly, warily raised the lid. Her nose wrinkled as a rush of long enclosed, stale air that belched forth.

Reaching inside, Jeniah withdrew a full length, hooded cloak of some composite material she could not identify. She held it out for inspection and saw that the cloak's color defied categorization, so often did it shift. A serene, erudite voice spoke to her then, unexpectedly breaking a silence that had stretched over twenty-three centuries.

"I return this to you child...Jeniah Lightcrusher...she who walks in shadow and travels a dark road unseen. The moment of culmination is at hand and this will serve you well."

Smiling, Jeniah lovingly laid the familiar cloak on the bed and began to remove her clothing. Once naked, she stepped before a full length mirror, marveling at the feminine perfection and symmetry of the host's long, leonine body. Then she pulled the cloak on, relishing the sensation of its smooth lining on her taut naked flesh. The sensation on her body was that of a cherished lover bringing back an ardent caress after a protracted absence.

Jeniah closed her eyes and emitted a sigh of primal pleasure.

"Do you believe you have chosen the correct path, Amathera?" The voice inquired softly, but beneath that seemingly unflappable veneer of tranquility. Jeniah thought she could detect a discordant note of concern.

Amathera? How long had it been since she had last been referred to by that name? Confidently, she insisted, "As you would have me. I have watched and I have listened. I have heard the cacophony and howl of the human spirit resonating down through the centuries."

She paused briefly, a malefic shadow falling across her beautiful face. "And now I shall give them that which they have craved."

"Then I leave you to your labors, child," the presence concluded, the faint echo of regret and disappointment in its voice.

Then it was gone, leaving an ebullient Jeniah alone with her ancient treasure.

3

It was just moments before ten o'clock when Veronica instructed the cab driver to pull to the curb on Jackson Street. He complied eagerly, feeling an overwhelming surge of relief and gratitude at the prospect of her departure. When the car finally and artlessly came to a halt, he checked the meter and flicking his gaze to the rear view mirror, quoted the fare price.

The woman had drawn up the hood of her cloak, occluding her face in deep shadow. With an elaborate flourish of her left hand, she produced a fifty dollar bill and gracefully extended the bill in long, impeccably manicured fingers. "The change is yours."

The driver blinked at the absurdly extravagant tip and reluctantly accepted the bill with a mumbled thank you. As he began to turn away, Jeniah reached forward and touched the hollow at the base of his neck with her right index finger.

His body responded to her touch with a violent, spastic jerk, immediately suffused by a rolling wave of seemingly limitless puissance. There followed an instant of incisive agony, as something pierced the fabric of his mind and seized control of the nebulous swirl of his conscious thoughts.

She leaned forward until her warm breath caressed his ear. "When I leave this vehicle, you will call your dispatcher and inform him that you're unwell and will accept no further fares this night. You will then procure a length of heavy chain and a stout padlock. Once this is done, you will chain and secure your left foot to the seat frame...and then drive this vehicle off a pier on the waterfront...do you understand?"

The driver shifted his gaze to the rear view mirror, his watery eyes bulging in terror and incredulity. He managed to shake his head in negation, yet murmured dreamily, "I...I do and I will do as you desire."

Jeniah smiled Veronica's most beguiling smile. Her blazing, green-eyed regard...fraught with a secret emotion...caused the driver to void his bladder. The pungent smell of hot urine filled the cab. Veronica wrinkled her nose in disgust and sat back. "Go then...this blessing I give to you...a far kinder fate than those you leave behind can expect."

Veronica opened the door and stepped out into the storm ravaged night, her ancient cloak swirling around her ankles. She'd taken but a step, when the cab's passenger window slid down with an audible whir. Veronica arched a tapered eyebrow and turned back to the vehicle, where the cab driver was leaning across the passenger seat, regarding her with an expression that might well have been genuine affection. She was not particularly surprised to see that he was weeping. "Be careful...this area after dark...it can be dangerous."

Veronica responded with a chuckle, the rich, mirthful sound washing over the doomed cab driver, suffusing him with a sense of deep contentment. "Not to worry, young one...there is nothing here that can cause me harm."

He nodded, his face contorted by a fey grin of adoration, and then he pulled the cab away from the curb. Veronica stood watching the receding tail lights until they vanished in the direction of the water front.

Strictly speaking, compelling the cab driver to an act of self-destruction was an unnecessary precaution. Still, she sensed the intense anxiety that her very presence had evoked in the old man and Jeniah was unwilling to risk even the slightest possibility that her _adventure_ here would be noted.

Jackson street was deserted, the wild storm and heavy rains having driven the street's usual denizens to seek distraction indoors. Veronica strolled unhurriedly down the sidewalk, ensconced deep in the warm embrace of the Shadow Cloak. When sporadic eruptions of silver-blue lightening arced through the heavens and illuminated the street, they revealed no discernable sign of the woman's passage...only an empty, storm-ravaged expanse of pavement.

Veronica walked through the constant downpour, until she came to a six storey building that stood inconspicuously between two towering glass structures. A muted orange neon glow declared that the black and grey stucco façade belonged to a business called _Subtle Distinctions._

Jeniah smiled, knowing the nature of the commerce that was conducted beneath this innocuous euphemism. Veronica approached the single smoked glass door and saw that entry could only be gained via a reader card. _Subtle Distinctions_ catered to a select clientele with...eclectic tastes...men and women with the requisite wealth to indulge their specific fantasies. Here, those fantasies could be explored in an atmosphere that guaranteed discretion.

Veronica examined the reader device and with a pass of her hand over its surface, the door swung open and she stepped swiftly through. Like the exterior façade, the interior was one of understated elegance. Veronica moved past the security station and down the red and gold carpeted halls, eschewing the bank of elevators in favor of the rear stairwell. She quickly mounted the stairs to the third floor, experiencing a rapidly burgeoning rush of keen anticipation at the prospect of what was to come.

A tomb-like silence greeted her as she strode down the hall toward the suite, which Judith Ranzman paid handsomely to reserve. The management of _Subtle Distinction_ had spared no expense in procuring the best sound suppression technology to be had. Again, Jeniah smiled...when one indulged the kind of perverse cravings that churned in Judith's twisted mind, a certain amount of unbridled outcry was only to be expected.

During their brief, but highly titillating encounter in Ranzman's office, Veronica had gleaned intimations of capering madness beneath Judith's beautiful façade. By provoking mad Judith into sinking her teeth into the warm flesh of her breast, Veronica had quickly and completely surmounted the barriers behind which Ranzman concealed the ugly spectacle of her true nature...a frightening black morass of violence and sexual depravity.

Veronica entered Judith's suite and flipped the light switch. Harsh white light filled the room's deceptively large interior. Sterile to the point of obsession, the black and white floor tiles held a huge array of the trappings and tools of those who viewed torture and the inflicting of pain as a sexually stimulating diversion.

Veronica paced about the room, absently running her fingers over ball gags, flexible scourges and an array of cuffs, manacles and other restraints.

' _Children playing at pain as if it was a game,'_ Jeniah spat contemptuously, a disdainful scowl twisting her full lips. She had watched from the darkened recesses of a hundred dungeons as torturers...dispassionate artists crafting works of misery and prolonged suffering on human canvas...had gone about their bestial work.

' _These posturing fools would not last five minutes beneath their hands,'_ Jeniah informed Veronica as she tested a stout set of restraints. The heavy iron manacles were crude in design and connected to a cement beam in the ceiling by a heavy iron steel chain. The chain was affixed to the beam by a swiveling ring bolt and would allow the manacled submissive to swing 360 degrees. These hanging manacles were incongruent with the rest of the room's implements that were better suited to titillation than torture.

Jeniah smiled. These manacles spoke eloquently of a woman leaning to the darker extremes of bondage and discipline.

Jeniah had first approached Ranzman with the intention of gleaning her intrinsic weakness...the inevitable human fallibility that she could exploit. When she uncovered the nature of Judith's sadistic perversion, Jeniah decided to lure Ranzman to _Subtle Distinctions_ and provide her with a lethal taste of her own obsession, thus putting paid to another blood debt.

The apparent demise of her chosen familiar quickly and dramatically changed that. In truth, Ranzman was much too valuable a commodity and this turn of events would prove fortuitous for Jeniah's plans. Under the proper rigid constraints, Judith Ranzman could prove to be a lethally efficient tool in removing the few remaining descendents of her avowed blood enemies, leaving Jeniah to focus on the enactment of the ritual.

Jeniah smiled and hugged herself, luxuriating in the pleasant warmth of the Shadow Cloak against Veronica's smooth skin. The unexpected return of the cloak was a fortuitous boon...one that invited wistful reminiscences. Jeniah knelt gracefully, bowed her head until her face was lost in shadow, and folded her hands in her lap.

Closing her eyes, she allowed her thoughts to lead along a path of capricious memories, sepia-toned and winding it led back through the centuries to a time she had all but forgotten.

Chapter Three

1

**Pella, Macedonia, 331 B.C.** The day was hot, though not oppressively so and certainly not enough to deter Amathera from her daily trek into the surrounding fields and rolling hills. At eighteen, she was the oldest unmarried girl in the town, her passions inclining more towards potions and salves than the handsome young men, who constantly trailed after her. In truth, Amathera was all but oblivious to their advances, just as she was unaware of the impact that her stunning beauty seemed to have on everyone whose path she crossed.

Oh, on the periphery of her self-awareness, Amathera understood that she was attractive...desirable. Her thick black hair was a waterfall of loose curls, spilling to a precise point at the small of her back. Her dark blue eyes shone with dreamy warmth that softened the arrogant slant of her high cheek bones. Her flawless olive skin seemed to possess an iridescent quality that made her appear to glow from within, whenever she walked in sunlight. Amathera's full breasts, tiny waist and flaring hips drew the eye with their intoxicating promise. Still, it was the young beauty's beguiling smile that warmed the heart and fired the blood of those fortunate enough to be its recipient.

Pelarius, her father, had declared proudly that his daughter's smile could rival the glory of the sun breaking through the clouds after a storm.

Despite this bounty of feminine blessings, Amathera could rouse in herself no passion for the things the other women of town craved...a husband, home and hearth and a dutiful bounty of offspring. While other girls of her age swooned over masculine beauty and the thrill of ardent caresses, she took delight in the possibility that she might discover new ingredients to augment the potency of her concoctions.

For Pelarius, his daughter's capricious and whimsical nature was no small source of consternation. A master blacksmith, whose wares were regularly commissioned by the Macedonian military, he frequently found himself in the lamentable position of having to explain his daughter's polite, but firm rejection of another prominent suitor. This discomfort was further exacerbated when one of these suitors turned out to be a member of Alexander's inner circle. The old smith's lingering fear was that the precocious boy-king would somehow fall under the enchantment Amathera could unwittingly weave...and she would reject even him out of hand.

When he confronted his daughter over the issue of an acceptable husband, Amathera had responded with a fond smile and declared cryptically, "I'm destined for greater things than a marriage bed, father."

Even as she uttered the words, Pelarius noted the odd gleam in her eyes...a gleam, he feared, might well be the mad fires of delusion. Fearing that his precious daughter might well be demon-kissed, and understanding the fate that she could expect...even in liberal, progressive Greece, Pelarius desisted. Let her live as she would choose...a living piece of art left unsullied by human hands. What harm could come of her unguents, balms and salves...even if she was held in the thrall of some grand delusion?

Thus, the issue of Amathera's marriage became less of a point of contention, leaving her free to pursue her passion. In the town, she gained the status of an object d'art...something to be admired, but never touched on the level of intimacy or possession.

Amathera lived a sedate life of pleasant detachment, wandering through the idyllic countryside in search of the bounty of life-giving treasures that grew among the rocks and green fields.

Beyond the cloister walls of her self-imposed isolation, great things were afoot in the world.

2

Alexander (the great, many were calling him now) had set out to conquer the very world. The native son of Pella had vowed to extend the dominion of enlightened Greek philosophy and societal principles to every corner of the known earth. An inimitable master of strategy and tactics, the boy-king led the mighty Greek army from one scintillating victory after another and his bold and daring vision for a universal Greek state seemed well within reach.

Tales of his glorious exploits rang throughout Pella...a soaring litany of praise for their favored son before whom even the Gods seemed to bow.

Amathera was only marginally cognizant of these momentous events...a disinterested observer at one of the grand junctures in history. At the age of eighteen, she had achieved a level of mastery, and subsequent renown, as an apothecary and people would journey great distances to procure her healing wares. The beautiful young creature was soon beheld with a mixture of awe, reverence and the slightest hint of trepidation. There was an aspect of divinity about the girl that roused a measure of supernatural dread amongst the townspeople, who went to greater and greater lengths to avoid her unless directly requiring her skills.

To this perplexing behavior too, Amathera remained oblivious...though her father, Pelarius, was not.

Yet, as Alexander's juggernaut rolled through Mesopotamia, even Amathera could not ignore the subtle, but persistent restive itch that had appeared to disturb her life of tranquil solitude.

It arrived in the form of a small inner voice that whispered to her...soft and seductive...through every waking hour and in dreams as well.

"You once proclaimed that yours was a destiny greater than slavery to a marriage bed," it purred. "You spoke truthfully, but you must understand...and accept...that your mortar and pestle are mere distractions; diversions, until fate chooses to reveal its design upon your soul. That moment of revelation is close at hand."

Amathera's smooth brow furrowed in a rare display of vexation. That was patently absurd of course...she possessed a rare talent and had been born to the healing arts. That she would abandon her gift and subjugate her passion at fate's command was simply preposterous...and yet, the whispering voice persisted, besieging the ramparts of her quiet resolve, until Amathera began to fear for her sanity.

Feeling beset and uncharacteristically out of sorts, she kissed her mother, Imera, and her father and set out in hopes of finding some sort of respite from her internal tormentor.

"Take a care, Amathera. These are turbulent times and you would do well to keep a wary eye on your surroundings," Pelarius cautioned, privately troubled by his daughter's atypical reticence of late. She merely offered the blacksmith a distracted smile and left without comment. Pelarius frowned, not knowing that this casual admonition would be the final words he would ever speak to his beloved daughter.

She left the confines of the town and set out into the surrounding countryside, as the sun climbed higher into the pristine blue sky. She was momentarily relieved to discover that the omnipresent internal whisper had fallen silent. That relief curdled like cream left out in the scorching sun, when she first heard the voice speaking to her in the light breeze soughing through the trees.

"Come to me, child...your moment of disclosure is upon you." The gentle caress of the wind brushed the hair from her brow...enticing her to heed its call. Amathera gritted her teeth and scowled, the expression marring her intense beauty. Deliberately, she turned in the opposite direction and strode off, fiercely determined to ignore the summons.

Setting her mind to the task of harvesting, she casually picked her way through the fields, seeking out the precious blooms that were hidden amidst the tall grass or behind jutting rocks. As the sun reached its zenith, it became a blazing molten ball. Great beads of perspiration stood forth prominently on Amathera's brow and rivulets of oily sweat ran down the hollow of her back. She paused to take a long drink of tepid water from her skin and as she did, her dark blue eyes widened in absolute astonishment.

Turning in place, Amathera realized that she had described a meandering arc that had led them back to the spot where she had first heard the ghostly summons. Glancing down at her basket, she was dismayed (and more than a little unnerved) to find it completely empty.

She had wandered in a state of disconnection for three hours without picking even a single plant.

The wind returned with a sudden gust and the persistent voice resumed its entreaty...now more vehement than ever. "Come child...destiny will not be forestalled...it is inevitable...inexorable."

Amathera hung her head and inhaled slowly. She could feel a subtle tug...an ephemeral pull gently urging her to submit. Though the only plausible alternative to submission was resistance, this path seemed inevitably bound to end in madness. The voice would hound her without surcease, until she capitulated or was driven mad. Capricious and wistful, she might be, but Amathera of Pella was not a fool.

Gazing owlishly about in the way of one arising from a prolonged and deep sleep, Amathera found herself on the bank of a tree-lined river. She began to follow the course of the river, knowing that it would eventually carry her to the foot of Edessa falls. As she grew closer to the falls, Amathera realized that the whispering voice grew steadily louder and correctly speculated that she was fast approaching its point of origin.

She could feel the nascent stirring of a long dormant force thrumming in her viscera, in the taut muscles of her thighs and in the bound depths of her womanhood. A deeper instinct informed her that this force had resided in the cleft of her heart since birth...quiescent and awaiting this exact moment.

The wild rush of the river intensified as she reached the base of the falls, the dark water roiling and churning as it flowed by.

At last, the looming trees fell away to reveal the spectacle of Edessa Falls in all its majesty. The cascading water, shimmering like plummeting liquid diamonds, refracted the brilliant afternoon sunlight to create a rainbow that reminded the mesmerized Amathera of the multi-colored arch of some otherworldly doorway.

Now the voice, her constant companion of the past year, spoke...its tone ubiquitous and bombastic. The cadence of its words reverberated through her body, suffusing Amathera with a sense of euphoria.

"You have come, Amathera...daughter of destiny," the voice declared, a hint of triumph resonating in its tone. "Come into my embrace. Come to me as you first did on the day of your birth. On this day, you shall be reborn to your true purpose."

Her misgivings vanished and even as she grasped the resident force's meaning. Amathera blushed, but nonetheless set her empty basket on the flat rock next to the river. She then proceeded to remove her clothes, her rings and finally the engraved copper bracelets her father had given her on her 16th birthday. She understood the symbolic implication of divesting herself of the few simple trappings of her old life...with this simple gesture, she had effectively disentangled herself from the moorings of her previous existence.

She stood erect and raised her face to the sun, letting its warmth caress her flesh.

"Come, Amathera, into my depths and there we shall hold discourse."

Momentarily confused, her gaze swept the clearing and noted the spiraling narrow ledge of rock that rimmed the concave escarpment over which the falls flowed. Thinking she was required to ascend this twisting ramp, Amathera began in the direction of its base.

She taken but a few steps when the presence advised, "Not that way child...you must consign yourself to the bosom of the mother."

Mystified, Amathera shook her head, but then the invisible force gently tugged her in the direction of the raging water at the base of the falls.

' _It means for me to throw myself into that,'_ she suddenly deduced and along with this dawning comprehension, came welling panic.

"There is no need for fear, child...you are precious to us beyond your ability to grasp," the voice insisted. Indeed, Amathera, could sense not the slightest intimation of malice or deception. As quickly as it had appeared, her panic evaporated. Resolutely, Amathera strode to the edge and dove into the vortex.

Invisible fingers grasped her limbs and pulled her down. She succumbed without resistance, eyes gazing up at the receding sky until only a field of diffuse golden light filled her vision. When she could hold her breath no longer, she opened her mouth. Water, stunningly cold, filled her lungs, but even this did not rouse a fresh wave of panic.

Eventually, that rippling field of golden light faded to black and Amathera knew no more.

Days later, searchers from the village would find Amathera's possessions where she left them. Pelarius was inconsolable in his grief and the shadow of his loss would trouble the blacksmith for the rest of his days. The opinion amongst the townspeople was that the girl, who had always been decidedly odd, had taken her own life.

It was in this way that Amathera, daughter of Pelarius and Imera, passed into history.

3

When consciousness filtered in, like a languid trickle of rainwater, Amathera found herself standing upright in what appeared to be a cavern. Though still completely naked, the damp chill of the cavern could not permeate her flesh which was somehow cocooned in pleasant warmth.

Standing before her was the most wondrous entity she had ever set eyes upon; an improbable apparition of such immense beauty that Amathera was momentarily convinced that she had died and now found herself in the afterlife, awaiting judgment.

The tactile sensation of cool stone beneath their feet and the mist laden breeze upon her flesh refuted this impression. Somewhere behind her, the roar of the falls filled the cavern's damp interior.

The thing undulating before her was composed entirely of water which gushed out of a round spout in the stone floor of the cavern. It resembled a man in its general outline, though its ever shifting features were indistinct. Coruscating waves of light emanated from the figure, washing the cavern walls in 1000 dazzling colors and hues, many of which the thoroughly mesmerized Amathera could not identify. Despite the ambiguity of its liquid features, she could sense the intensity of its gaze on her cheek.

She found herself desperately wanting to embrace the wondrous construct...to step into its pristine waters and allow them to wash over her and into her like an impassioned lover unleashed. Yet, she found herself unable to conjure the temerity to take that brazen step, though her flesh ached with the desire to do so.

Confronted by such an improbable spectacle, Amathera felt neither apprehension nor doubt. The shifting wash of color and warmth over her naked flesh, confirmed its tangible reality and the aura it exuded was one of benevolence and welcome.

"Are...are you a God?" Amathera ventured tentatively.

In reaction, the entity laughed...a rich sound that was accompanied by a flash of brilliant golden-green light. "No Amathera... I am not a God as you would understand the concept. I am what might best be described as a messenger...though I served in many capacities."

"Messenger?" she echoed, arching a finely tapered eyebrow in confusion. "Then you serve the gods?"

The entity shook its nebulous head. "Amathera there are no gods as you would conceive them. All peoples of this world have raised their own constructs...elaborate myths which they can worship in the hopes of bestowing meaning and divine grace upon their lives. They offer these symbolic tokens of appeasement in the belief that such gestures might curry favor and lessen the travails of their onerous lives."

"You say our gods are false?" Amathera demanded, a note of suspicion creeping into her tone. The water construct flared pristine blue and raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

"I'm saying that humans merely misperceive the salient forces that govern this universe. Amathera, humans routinely mistake inimical, yet entirely random acts of nature for the rendering of divine judgment. Gods are false only in the sense that they are misperceived. All God's are a personification of one governing force that holds dominion over all of creation."

"Why have I been summoned here?" she inquired softly, though the prospective answer filled her with inchoate dread. "I'm a simple apothecary. What possible use could I be to a...a force such as the one you've described?"

Of a messenger extended a limb and gently caressed the hollow beneath Amathera's prominent right cheekbone. "Child, you have no notion of how far that estimate of your value is diversion from the truth...from the very moment of your conception, you were destined to be the chronicler...the one who walks in perpetual shadow and watches."

Amathera shook her head in negation. Though uncertain about the role...the label of chronicler was fraught with dark implications. "Please, I don't understand what you're asking of me."

Again the water spirit raised a dripping hand in a plea for patient indulgence. "Human beings were created when the universal force allowed the random flows of fate to fashion a being possessed of heightened sentience...of an augmented cognizance and comprehension unique and previously unheard of in all of creation. The ever-inventive machinations of the random instilled in man, not only the ability to adapt to his environment, but to actually shape and surmount it if need be. Do you understand, Amathera?"

Amathera signaled her vague understanding with a nod. Now the messenger's inner light guttered to a dull, listless red and its tone became somber. "The advent of man, and the granting of an enhanced form of consciousness, was permitted by the universal force with no small degree of reservation. In the years since man was created, he has been...observed with growing anxiety. "

Amathera's eyes widened and an audible gasp escaped her full lips. "You're saying that the creator is...displeased with what we've become and he is considering...undoing us?"

"Perhaps concerned would be more accurate characterization," the messenger amended, his voice a liquid trill. "As for the second aspect of your question; let me allay your fears, child...the force that governs the universe is one of creation...even eternal cycle of birth and death is one of creation, conceived with a mind towards renewal."

"But?" Amathera interjected, sensing that this was not an unequivocal maxim.

"But the governing force of creation will not sit idly by while a single predatory species lays waste to all that the flow of natural creation has wrought."

"And you fear that human kind could well be that...predacious species?" Amathera murmured.

"That has yet to be ascertained...yet there does seem to be a rapacious hunger inherent in your kind...one that exceeds the demands of simple survival," the entity remarked with obvious sadness. "In its wildest of imaginings, the universal force could not have anticipated mortal's affinity for wanton destruction...its propensity for violence."

Amathera shuddered to think that her own country stood as a glaring affirmation of that very contention. With sinking horror, she intuited the motivation behind her summons. The words that escaped her lips were strident hisses of despair. "The chronicler...that's what you first called me. You're...its asking me to catalogue the sins of mortals...to chronicle our vile misdeeds and heinous crimes so that we might be judged."

Even to her own ears, her words were absurd...unthinkable. The entity's color shifted to a disturbing shade of black and purple that conjured images of the apocalypse...a dark and remorseless abyss. "If it only were this, Amathera, you would bear a burden that no human soul was ever intended to carry. When you have chronicled the path of man's journey...it shall fall to you to be the arbiter of his fate...to pass judgment on the worth of your species."

An involuntary groan burst from Amathera's lips and she stumbled backward on unsteady legs. Only a firm hand from the entity prevented her from collapsing to the damp stone in a quivering mass. She tried to raise a coherent, logical objection but found that her faculty of speech had deserted her. Despite its apparent benevolence, the entity...and by extension, the force that controlled it...was implacable and uncompromising. Finally, after an interminable moment of anguish, she managed a misery-fraught, "Why me?"

The thing knelt beside her and began to stroke her bare left shoulder in a gesture of commiseration. "You have been chosen because you are a creature incapable of prejudgment, free of the corrupting stain of prejudice. You are unique amongst your kind, Amathera. Yours is the capacity to see without the distorting taint of personal bias. The universal creator is confident that you can traverse the rivers of history and render a judgment that is impartial and just...something that even it, by its own admission, cannot achieve."

It leaned forward, its internal aura flaring golden, and said softly, "You, Amathera, and your purity of spirit, are your kind's one hope for survival."

He effortlessly lifted her to her feet. "To stand in judgment of an entire species is an immense burden...a sobering commission. To possess the very power of existence over the only truly sentient species in the creator's dominion is the true definition...the very quintessence of absolute power. This is not a power lightly bestowed as it carries with it the extreme risk of perfect corruption. Irrespective of this intrinsic danger, the universal creator has invested such power in you...confident that your compassionate heart is incorruptible. The very fact that you do not eagerly embrace the prospect of holding such unfettered might is an affirmation that his faith is well founded."

Amathera gleaned the truth in this effusive praise, knowing that she had somehow managed to evade the inescapable snare of intransigent bias. Reluctantly, she asked, "What is expected of me?"

The water herald clapped its hands together, clearly delighted by her acquiescence. "You will go forth into the world, Amathera, and there you will tread the paths of light and darkness, witness the welling tides of triumph and plummet to the depths of despair and misery. Through dark and light, you will journey in impenetrable shadow. I can tell you that your road will be ineffably harsh and fraught with heartache. You must understand, Amathera, that your path will carry you not only through the ebb and flow of time's inexorable passage, but also through the convoluted labyrinth of the human psyche. At the culmination of your odyssey, you will discover if humanity is worthy of salvation...or even capable of redemption."

Amathera shook her head, buffeted between swirling winds of confusion and dejection. "Certainly you don't expect me to render such a judgment in the span of a few years...yet you speak as if my time is infinite?"

The thing nodded in a way that suggested solemnity. "For you, Amathera, it is."

She recoiled as though struck and her eyes narrowed in suspicion while her heart palpitated wildly in her chest, and she demanded, "Please, speak plainly. What are you saying?"

"When you passed willingly into the water's embrace, the mortal life you knew ended."

"I'm dead?" She interjected, her voice rising to a frantic screech.

"No dear...not dead," the shimmering entity assured her hastily. "Your humanity is a crucial element in fulfilling your role as chronicler. It would be more accurate to say that your mortality has been enhanced...augmented to ensure that you never succumb to the ravages of disease or the slow degradation that comes inexorably with the passage of years. Your physical body can be undone by cataclysmic trauma, but even that will not deter you from the creator's purpose. In that eventuality, you would merely be reborn in a new vessel of flesh."

Amathera closed her eyes and shuddered, knowing that even death could not extricate her from this awful charge. Her only exoneration would come in fulfillment. Sighing, she rose to her feet and when she spoke, Amathera's light, lyrical voice was uncharacteristically somber. "Where do I begin?"

The messenger seemed to ponder this question for a moment and then suggested, "Your boy-king is blazing a path through the weave of history. Follow in his wake and discover just what his aspirations will yield...and when his tide has ebbed, as every tide invariably must, then seek out the upheaval to follow. It is said that the passage of time is likened to a river, but perhaps a circle would be a more precise metaphor when describing the affairs of men. All that has gone before, both good and ill, does invariably come again, attired in different clothing."

"You're suggesting my kind simply cannot learn from their errors and transgressions?" Amathera remarked rhetorically, her tone mordant.

"Cannot...or will not; this is a distinction for you to make, child," the entity allowed simply.

Amathera's answering smile was a pale facsimile of its former radiant glory, fraught with bitterness and resignation. The pair fell silent, the taut gap in their conversation filled by the guttural rumble of Edessa Falls.

At last, the entity raised its head and gesticulated. In response to the apparent summons, something scrabbled over the uneven stone in the shadowy recesses of the cavern. As Amathera looked on curiously, a crudely constructed wooden box floated slowly on the mist-laden air, finally settling at her feet. She shifted a questioning glance to the entity, which merely inclined its head toward the box.

Amathera bent and opening the chest in one fluid pass, drew out a hooded, full length cloak that had been tailored in a dark, smooth material she did not recognize.

"This is the cloak of shadow," the entity explained. "While wearing it, your flesh will be invisible to all creatures of the living world. While within its embrace, you may traverse the world undetected, invulnerable to the inimical tides and devices of both man and nature. This will allow you to stand in the raging vortex of history and emerge unscathed. In this way, you will bear direct witness to the momentous events of every age, Amathera."

Amathera arched an eyebrow and after only a fractional instant of hesitation, donned the Cloak of Shadows and drew the hood up over her head. There followed a moment, mercifully brief in duration, of incisive pain, followed by soothing warmth that seemed to permeate every fiber of her being. Amathera recognized these acute sensations for what they were...the severing of her tether to the tangible world. The wearing of this cloak did not transform her into a truly ephemeral being, but the distinction was so minute as to be nonexistent.

Deciding that there was nothing to be gained by further discourse with the messenger...no reprieve or exoneration from the incomprehensible burden that had been imposed upon her, Amathera abruptly spun about and strode toward the raging falls.

The entity watched her go, rather surprised by her uncharacteristically curt dismissal. Before she could exit the cavern, the glittering water construct delivered an admonition. "You are free to discharge this duty as you see fit Amathera, but with one caveat...you must not interfere in the affairs of men or meddle in the unfolding of history. Do so and your task will be forfeit and the creator will render his own judgment...a turn of events which, I suspect, will not weigh in humanity's favor."

Amathera acknowledged this warning with a slight nod of her head and then stepped into the cascading water.

The entity watched her vanish into the deluge, feeling unaccountably sad. It had watched the girl since the moment of her birth and had developed a deep, almost paternal affection for the wistful, ingenuous beauty.

After a moment, the entity collapsed into itself, vanishing into the stone spout like a wraith.

It would encounter the girl on other occasions through the centuries to come. During these encounters, it would observe marked changes in the girl's nature...extreme and disturbing changes.

Chapter Four

1

Amathera walked slowly back toward her village, suddenly understanding that for her and what she had now become, the concept of time has been radically altered.

When she emerged from the raging falls, Amathera had not plunged into the churning water as she'd expected. Instead, she executed a graceful, spiraling descent on a carpet of air, coming to ground on the riverbank, next to her discarded clothing.

As she glanced at the neatly folded articles of simple clothing, she was accosted by a wave of self-pity so painful that she nearly screamed. Closing her eyes, she inhaled slowly and deeply until the storm of emotions subsided. _'You're a child no longer, Amathera,'_ she scolded herself. _'You held yourself aloft from the life around you, bolstered by the conviction that you were destined for other things. That conviction has been validated and now you whine and wring your hands like a child. Accept this burden as your new reality and make of it what you can!'_

Sighing, she considered retrieving the clothing, but rejected the idea, reasoning that it was the lesser cruelty for parents to believe that the river had claimed her. Their grief over her drowning would eventually yield to acceptance, but if they believed that she had vanished, uncertainty and the slim hope of a possible return would ensure a lifetime of sorrow.

On impulse, Amathera stooped down and snatched up the bracelet her father had given her. As she thrust it onto her right wrist, she vowed that she would never remove it...this one tangible connection to her lost life.

She set off in the direction of town, but decided to skirt the settlement before it came into sight. To see Imera and Pelarius one final time might well shatter her fragile resolve...a possibility best avoided.

Barefoot, she set out through the fields, heading east. Despite the profusion of thorns and nettles hidden in a deep grass, Amathera's delicate feet remained untouched. Nestled in the cloak of shadows, her flesh truly was impervious to the hazards of nature.

Amathera was not certain if she considered this newfound invulnerability pleasing or disturbing.

During the course of her mortal life, Amathera had never traveled more than fifteen miles from the town of her birth. Her perceptions regarding the world beyond were acquired through the tales passed along by her father (who had once made incredible journey to Athens and Sparta), traveling merchants and many of those who came seeking her skills as an apothecary. Many of these tales she could scarcely credit, so fantastical were they in the description of the world beyond her birthplace.

In the weeks following her departure from Pella, Amathera discovered that these tales held none of the hyperbole she'd first imagined. In the course of her journey, she began to acquire a deeper perception about the salient realities that now governed her existence. She was affected neither by thirst, nor hunger. She had become indefatigable and walked for days on end without sleep, stopping only to bask in the natural treasures that often revealed themselves in the course of her travels.

Amathera traveled overland, deliberately avoiding the few towns and settlements there were to be found in Phrygia. As she approached the coastal city of Taises, the tang of salt in the air piqued her curiosity and she made her way into the city, drawn to the shore of the great sea. Amathera negotiated her way through the markets, deliberately throwing back her hood to drink in the myriad of odors and scents that reached her nostrils on the salt-stung breeze. Despite the milling press of so much humanity in such tight confines, Amathera made her way through the narrow streets without obstruction. The mob of vendors and shoppers, opportunists and thieves would simply part before her as she approached. Whenever a gaze would happen upon her exquisite face, it was quickly averted. Eventually, Amathera concluded that people might still sense her presence on some atavistic level too deep for immediate consciousness to recognize.

Perhaps they even gleaned her purpose and that motivated them to do all they could to escape her notice.

Then she reached the end of a rapidly descending street that opened up into the harbor front and all such contemplations lost meaning.

Amathera came to an abrupt halt, a full throated gasp of wonder escaping her lips. Stretched before her in all of its majesty, as a red sun cast the calm waters in the hues of blood and fire, was the Mediterranean Sea.

Stretching from horizon to horizon in every direction, the sheer enormity of its size stunned Amathera to wonder. Drawn to the waters as though hypnotized, she made her way to the harbor wall, where she stood immobilized by awe as the sun disappeared beneath the Western horizon. With a half moon illuminating the thin strand in a restrained Silver light, Amathera drifted westward, out of the city, her passage marked by the screech of gulls and the warm ocean breeze.

She walked for the entire night, her solemn commission momentarily forgotten, and then sat quietly to watch the sun rise over the Eastern horizon. Amathera searched the surrounding area and finding a secure niche in the cliff face, stripped off the cloak of shadows and walked naked into the surf, where she spent the entire day frolicking in the shallows like a young child.

As the sun again made its nightly descent, Amathera retrieved her cloak and with no small degree of reluctance, began her return journey to the city.

' _What if you were to simply walk into the setting sun...to allow the ever shifting wind to blow you where it will?' s_ he wondered wistfully, drawing intricate patterns in the golden sand with her bare feet. ' _I wouldn't renege on my obligation...merely defer it.'_

Amathera laughed at what she saw as the musings of the capricious child she had once been. Now she had become something else...the chronicler. She sensed that, while the creator's universe might be infinite, his patience was not.

2

When Amathera returned to the harbor, the wind began to gust. Its vigorous breath slammed white froth-tipped breakers into the shore. She watched in fascination as small fishing vessels struggled to make their way out into the Mediterranean while being cast about like a child's toy.

To challenge the dominion of such a vast force as the ocean...Amathera was awed by the temerity of the men who braved the waters. Such courage spoke eloquently of the indomitable nature of the human spirit, did it not?

Amathera left the port city on the trail of Alexander's questing army, thinking that a species capable of such bravery must surely be worthy of its right to exist.

3

It was mid-September of that year before Amathera finally caught up with Alexander's marauding Greek army. She walked, unseen, through the orderly camp. The expectant tension that permeates a military encampment prior to a great battle was in full evidence. The chronicler drifted through the massive camp, randomly eavesdropping on soldiers' conversations.

Pelarius had made a fine living and built a respectable reputation supplying weapons to Alexander's Macedonian military. Despite the constant proximity of the implements of battle, war remained an abstract concept for the innocuous Amathera...something that she could scarcely define in tangible terms.

As she wandered through Alexander's camp, in the days leading up to the historic battle of Arabela, she heard men paint a portrait of war in colors of glory and nobility. As the smaller Greek army prepared to take the field against Darius the third's numerically superior Persian army, Amathera was left with the impression that war was a grand and glorious contest...ordained by the gods, if the soldiers attestations were to be believed.

On the day of October 1st, 331 BC, Amathera of Pella, now the divine chronicler, stood on the distant hill and watched Alexander's tactical genius overcome his Persian foes. From her perspective, the sounds of battle were distant thunder and the soldiers, scurrying ants. Watching, she could grasp the symmetry of the choreographed movement and discern the logical flow of Alexander's tactics.

When the battle was over, Amathera waited for the coming of night and then descended to the field. Torches had been erected on the hills that ringed the site of the battle. The flickering dance of the light cast a macabre aura on the scene.

Amathera stumbled haltingly through the killing floor, her eyes widened in horrified fascination and her mouth gaping open in revulsion. Dead bodies littered the blood sodden grass as far as her gaze could see. Entrails and severed limbs spread over the wreckage in fly ridden piles. Many of the Persian soldiers had been stripped of their armor and carelessly thrown into a large pile that resembled a midden heap of chilling human flesh. The air reeked of blood, feces, urine and death.

The cacophonous sound of feasting flies filled the night like buzzing thunder, above which rose the boisterous din of the Greek army celebrating its historic victory. Everywhere, great pools of coagulating blood filled the hollows. As she wandered deeper into the detritus of human conflict, she became cognizant of the piteous moans of those who had been wounded and left to die, both man and animal.

She stopped before horse that lay kicking and twitching at the air, its body shivering in agony as its eyes rolled wildly in its skull. Both of its forelegs had been horribly shattered and its sufferings suffused Amathera's flesh like heat of an infection.

A keening shriek reached her ears then and it was a moment before Amathera identified it as her own voice, raw and hysterical.

Gazing out over the field, Amathera sank to her knees beside the dying animal that had been conscripted into man's monumental act of madness. Even as hot tears spilled down her cheeks, she could feel something dark and cold grip her racing heart...an icy fury that could prove lethal to her kind considering what she was.

The maddening buzz of gorging flies feasting on coagulating blood and the sounds of revelry rising from the victors' encampment only fed her fury.

Beneath their feet, Amathera thought she could feel the reverberations of the very Earth gagging frantically on the blood of squandered humanity. She began to crawl across the killing fields, mindless of her hands plunging into gore and viscera.

The hammer of understanding fell upon her then and she abruptly and completely grasped the creator's misgivings over his creations. That men were capable of such savagery, such squander of precious human life, all in the name of avarice...of lust for power...was an indictment against the species as a whole. That man would frame these barbarian lusts for violence in terms of glory and honor...Amathera felt as though her soul had been sullied...indelibly stained by bearing witness to such a black spectacle.

Amathera trembled, precariously poised on the knife's edge of judgment, but all at once a warm energy surged through her cold flesh. Her cold fury dissipated as a placating voice spoke in the confines of her frazzled mind. "Rush not to judgment, child...divorce yourself from the emotions of the moment and seek out the real motivations that drive men to engage in such bestial acts of wanton destruction. Once you've divined the underlying cause that leads men to such brutal extremes, only then can you render a meaningful and unbiased judgment on their collective worth."

Amathera drew a quavering breath, brushed absently at her drying tears and rose on unsteady legs. She walked out of the sprawling shrine of death without once glancing at the desiccating flesh around her.

Miles away, she plunged into a cold stream in hopes that the waters could wash the taint of corruption from her flesh. As she lay naked on the bank and watched the celestial dance of the stars in the firmament, Amathera felt her humanity slowly begin to trickle away.

4

Amathera followed Alexander's campaign of empire building until his death in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar the second. She watched, growing increasingly numb, as his dream of dominion accrued mountains of wasted flesh and let rivers of spilt blood. Upon his death, she bore witness from the shadows as those who had claimed to worship him fought like a pack of jackals to divide his empire, while systematically slaughtering the family of the man they had helped raise to greatness.

The tides of history rose and fell, swelled and subsided, raising new tyrants...men and women who fervently believed that theirs was the right of dominion. With each new incarnation of this sorry delusion came a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sycophants willing to follow these tyrants and commit every atrocity imaginable in their name.

She hovered in the dark corners of a thousand torture chambers, gritting her teeth while piteous cries for mercy...even the cold mercy of death...fell on the deaf ears of the remorseless.

On village greens and city commons, she wandered through a thousand mob-like crowds that elevated the dismal spectacle of public execution to a sort of comedic farce. When the time of Rome came upon the world, Amathera floated over blood-lusting spectators, inebriated with the prospect of gruesome violence, while slaves fought to the death for their entertainment.

All the while, she could feel her empathy for mortals drain slowly, but inexorably away...one needless death at a time.

Even in innovation and invention, man seemed motivated primarily by the desire to perfect the art of dispensing death. As she traveled through the northern reaches of the Roman Empire, to the wild edges of civilization, Amathera's spirit was heavy with despair. She walked mile after mile through the dark, brooding forests that were home of the barbarian Saxons and found passage across the Baltic Sea, where the war-addled Norsemen worshipped God's of incessant carnage and bloodshed. Yet, despite the revulsion and horror that came to be her constant companion on every step of her journey, Amathera fought valiantly to maintain an open mind...to seek beauty in the art, lore and the music of each and every culture she encountered. Perhaps in the black depths of constant violence there could be found a single spark of enlightenment that would illuminate the path to redemption.

Amathera spent long nights reading poetry or sitting in the shadows as a village elder spun heartbreakingly beautiful tales of a people's history and ancestors. As often as not, the stories were replete with accounts of great victories won or savage injustices suffered. As she watched the rapt faces of youth, ablaze with kindling passions over the glories of their ancestors or the burning desire to give answer to past wrongs, Amathera perceived hints of an unbreakable cycle. It was on these nights that Amathera came to suspect that the consuming lust for glory and unquenchable need for retribution were flip sides of the same ignoble coin.

Unlike the other living creatures of the earth, that lived harsh and violent lives born of the necessity to survive, man possessed the gift of rational and logical thought. Humans had it within their power to expurgate the need for violence from their everyday lives. Instead, they had become enamored with violence...driven to it by the slightest provocation or the thinnest pretext.

As the Crusades swept through the holy land, Amathera concluded that the need for violence had been so deeply inculcated into the psyche of men that it could never be expunged...the lust never sated. Secure in the belief that man was incorrigible, she could well have rendered a judgment then and there, but something stilled her hand. Amathera was perceptive enough to understand that this reluctance did not spring from pity for or misguided loyalty toward humanity. In truth, any such emotions had long since been scoured from her heart, which had been inured by constant exposure to unspeakable acts of brutality.

As she stood on the crest of a wind swept dune, gazing on in a distracted sort of disgust, Richard the lion heart's crusaders slaughtered bound and defenseless Saracen prisoners. Screams rose into the shimmering heat, while the ever thirsty desert sands drank the blood of the Muslim captives. Amathera understood that, before she could pass judgment, some dark compulsion...some insatiable fascination insisted that she produced a reason or a root cause for humanity's self-destructive proclivities.

As she stood next to the sprawl of corpses, Amathera removed her father's bracelet from her wrist and tossed it contemptuously onto the nearest corpse. In doing so, she severed her last link with her humanity.

Beginning that day in the desert outside of Acre, she turned her attention not to the perpetrators for insight, but instead focused her attention on the victims. Unlike that long ago, horrible day at Arabella, Amathera could walk dispassionately through the worst of killing fields, viewing the destruction and death with cold attachment.

Whereas once she would look upon the glazed, sightless eyes of the dead and see a terrible sadness and regret, now the blank faces conveyed something else... an emotion she could not quite define.

She returned to Europe and spent the next several centuries communing with the dead...seeking insight...seeking epiphany. During those years, Amathera underwent a gradual but profound physical transformation that was a cosmetic reflection of the changes affecting her heart and soul. Gone was the soft, blue-eyed dazzling beauty, given way to a lean, vulpine beauty bereft of all warmth. The limpid eyes that once resembled calm, pristine oceans were now as hard as diamond and as dark as a sealed tomb. Her eyes seemed to devour light like black holes that consume radiance in the way a rapacious beast would consume flesh.

Amathera's great moment of epiphany occurred in the Limoges, France when England's Black Prince Edward ordered his troops to sack the town. Marauding soldiers dragged men, women and children from their houses, killing them in a frenzy that left Limoges a blood-soaked abattoir.

Walking through the smoldering ruins, closely inspecting the ravaged corpses, the chronicler experienced a moment of shocking revelatory truth.

What she had long misconstrued to be sorrow and regret on the faces of the dead was actually...relief!

She stopped, mid stride, and peered about, raising a contemplative finger to her lips. These victims were anything but. The soldiers had merely brought a welcome end to lives of unrelenting drudgery that held absolutely no prospect for deliverance or hope.

As the notion solidified to certainty, the chronicler realized (in the way of one who is embarrassed over not reaching a blatantly obvious conclusion) that man craved destruction. Man craved destruction, not only of his fellow mortals, but ultimately of himself as well. The burden of sentience...of self-awareness was one that man, as a species, simply lacked the wherewithal to shoulder.

In the moment of staggering insight...of crystalline clarity, Amathera the chronicler became Jeniah, crusher of light...fist of retribution.

She would spend another five centuries wandering through the charnel houses of the world, seeking further affirmation of her newfound conviction. As her perception of humanity was radically altered, so too was her view of her purpose. At the dawn of the industrial age, Amathera watched columns of thick, choking smoke rise over the grime-crusted cities and came to realize that man's innate desire for self-destruction had evolved to a new level of desperation.

As the world's population increased and civilization spread its reach to every corner of the world, Amathera came to see that humanity was no longer content in seeking its own destruction. On some primal level of consciousness, man discerned that he could not obliterate his species, no matter how many wars he fought or how much wholesale slaughter he perpetrated. With this disappointing discovery, it seemed to the chronicler that man then decided he could not confine his destructive appetites to his own kind.

With the advent of heavy industry, man now possessed the necessary weaponry to destroy the very world that nature's miraculous artistry had provided.

After twenty-two centuries, Amathera finally came to understand and share the universal creator's legitimate fears over what had once seemed his greatest of achievements.

In that single moment of unmitigated insight, Jeniah decided that she would grant wretched humanity the cold mercy of extinction.

5

During the course of her long, meandering journey, Jeniah (by this time, Amathera was a long gone whisper of the distant past) became cognizant of what she referred to as _points of confluence._

While the chronicler had obsessively devoted her life to the discharge her duty, she was not oblivious to the dark powers that dwelled on the fringes of the world. Though growing increasingly quiescent, Jeniah learned of the existence of dark magic and sorcery. To her amazement and consternation, she discovered the existence of shadow planes...worlds that lay beyond, but running directly parallel to our own.

At first, she dismissed these anomalies as irrelevant, but as her perception of man's fate became more concrete, Jeniah came to see that her perfunctory dismissal was premature. As years passed, she began to develop a fascination with these shadow planes.

What manner of inhabitants lived there and what purpose did they serve? These questions intrigued Jeniah and pursuit of the answers came to occupy a greater portion of her time.

In an isolated corner of the Himalayas, Jeniah inadvertently discovered a point of confluence...a location where the intangible distance separating the two concurrent realities was razor thin. Here, Jeniah quickly gleaned that her initial perception of what might lay beyond the fabric of this world was incorrect...or perhaps incomplete. Carefully exploring this point of confluence, Jeniah could distinguish the close proximity of numerous other realities...planes of existence flowing in concert with her own, along an infinitely vast river of time.

As Jeniah traversed these lost and darkened corners of the world, she realized that each point of confluence was adjacent to a different world. At first, she was both mystified and bemused by this concept, but then discerned that the dictates of three dimensional, spatial physics did not likely apply beyond the immediate reality.

Gradually, Jeniah began to develop the formative outline of a plan...a plan that would see its fruition come in the form of man's extirpation. By the mid nineteenth century, Jeniah's perspective of her intended role had begun to change. Man, she now regarded as a pernicious weed that must be culled and the duty to do so was hers by right for the centuries she had devoted to the universal creator's grim and onerous task.

In the new world, she witness new incarnations of the avarice-driven behavior as she made her way across the fledgling nations of North America. In a burgeoning lumber town named Quinsett, Jeniah encountered a point of confluence whose proximity to reality was infinitesimally thin. Just as it had on the day she was inexorably drawn to the messenger at Edessa Falls, a sensation of undeniable compulsion drew her out of the ramshackle town and into the great forest beyond.

Eventually, she found herself confronted by a hanging aberration. It appeared to Jeniah as though the air had been distorted to create a circular portal roughly the height of a tall man.

Squinting into the late afternoon sun, she could detect vague shapes moving behind this translucent veil. Sitting cross legged on the damp earth, she closed her eyes and extended her arms with the palms facing forward, until she felt the subtle intimations of resistance. Feeling a sense of keen exhilaration, Jeniah exerted greater pressure and felt the barrier give slightly, she could feel its resistance increase until her hands were pushed back to their original position.

Opening her eyes, Jeniah sat back and consider the aberration. Eventually, she reached the conclusion that the barrier was impermeable, designed to prevent an intermingling of realities, and was not likely to be undone by any amount of brute force. She suspected that by breaking the barrier, one or both realities would be effectively obliterated...an unacceptable consequence of violation. Her goal, after all, was to purge the disease of humanity from the Earth, but not at the expense of the world she was attempting to save.

Instinct advised Jeniah that she had happened upon the means to her end, but she would have to exercise patience and restraint in bending it to her will.

If she failed to obtain a thorough understanding of what she was attempting, Jeniah could inadvertently destroy the very thing she intended to save.

After twenty two hundred years of incessant wandering, Jeniah Lightcrusher removed her cloak of shadows and took up a fixed place of residence. As the first decade of the 20th century passed, Jeniah gained a mythical status of both awe and fear in the raw-edged town of Quinsett. The taciturn and inaccessible beauty came and went like a wraith. She lived alone in a remote cabin in the woods, but not even the most intrepid or curious soul in town would venture there to discover just what it was she did in her isolation.

Jeniah spent the long, lonely years seeking an understanding of the nature of this adjacent reality. She could find no way to penetrate the barrier, but she did gain a more robust comprehension of the type of world that existed on the other side.

Now, whenever she made contact with the point of confluence, every fiber of her being would be suffused by a surging tide of pure, nearly intolerable malevolence. At first, she found this wellspring of malice to be repulsive. Shivering with disgust, she pulled away thinking her efforts had been in vain.

Always, however, something would draw her back. Gradually, Jeniah came to see that what she first believed to be pure, unmitigated evil (and thus ungovernable) was actually something subtly different. Entwined in the wild flows of black energy, Jeniah detected nuanced threads of desperation and a hunger to be let free.

Over time, these inhabitants began to communicate with Jeniah...not in spoken language, but rather in a frenzied succession of dark, horrific images. From these disturbing images, Jeniah cobbled together an unnerving portrait of a bleak and sterile world where rapacious entities lingered...eternally hungry and desperate for freedom and the supply of victims with which to appease that hunger.

In this simple revelation, Jeniah uncovered the means to exploit that need...the leverage to extricate vows of fealty in return for emancipation. Slowly, artfully, Jeniah undertook a campaign to enlist the denizens of this grim reality to her cause. Eventually, the unseen horrors pledged absolute subservience in exchange for being let loose into her world.

In this way, Jeniah conscripted her army of executioners. In her supreme confidence, the possibility that such entities might renege on their vow once freed simply never occurred to Jeniah.

When the first global conflict began in 1914, Jeniah left Quinsett, taking up the shadow cloak once more. Nothing in her long and black life prepared her for the sheer devastation that engulfed Europe during the First World War. She watched in transfixed incredulity as men died by the millions on mired battlefields all over the continent. If Jeniah had even the most minuscule misgivings about her judgment on humanity, they vanished in the death throws of imperialism as the great empires of Europe fought one final war for dominion.

Jeniah Lightcrusher returned from Europe determined to bring an expeditious end to the cursor humanity before its insane lust for destruction consumed world.

Searching through her vast repository of accrued knowledge, Jeniah had turned to the arcane powers of ritual magic as a means to surmount the barrier.

Near the stroke of midnight on July 31st, 1936, she came within mere heartbeats of achieving precisely that, but flagrant disdain for her adversaries thwarted her ambition. Now, fifty years later, she would commit no such error.

Chapter Five

1

The first night of Quinsett's municipally decreed dusk until Dawn curfew passed without incident...more or less. This could well be attributed to the heavy rainfall and the disturbing news of the discovery of Lynda Verin's mutilated body along the Trafford stream recreational trail.

Whatever the reason, the streets of Quinsett were virtually deserted as night descended on the lumber town, a fact for which Art Silver was eternally grateful.

At just after two o'clock, Saturday morning, a bleary-eyed Silver received a call from dispatch...a body had been discovered on an abandoned perimeter road running adjacent to the Crane P and P shipping yard.

On the scene, it was determined that the wreckage of flesh had once belonged to Ethan Rannout. A former P and P employee, Rannout had been fired several years earlier for viciously assaulting his supervisor. The body had been discovered by Crane security personnel, who had been ordered to step up perimeter patrols by Stuart Crane personally, earlier that evening.

' _At least the cold hearted troll is taking the situation seriously,'_ Silver thought, despite his personal aversion to the younger Crane.

By general protocol (not to mention, specific instruction), Art should've called Saddler and informed him of this latest homicide. Once he and Kort had mastered their initial revulsion over the gruesome condition of Rannout's corpse, Art had made the decision to defy this order and handle matters himself.

By his nature, Art Silver was unwaveringly scrupulous in adhering to regulation and authority, so even he was perplexed by this decision. As he went about securing the crime scene, taking copious photographs and ordering the body's removal, Silver examined the reasons behind his decision to ignore protocol.

In the short time that he had known Raymond Saddler, Art had come to respect the new Sheriff, recognizing the man's natural aptitude for police work. When he had looked into the other man's eyes earlier that evening, as Saddler apprised him of the situation with both the curfew and the Verin murder, Silver had discerned extreme exhaustion capering behind those mild blue eyes.

It was only natural, of course, considering the extremity of the situation, but Silver could clearly see the signs of stress and exhaustion in both Saddler's expression and his voice. Again, it was to be expected...the man suddenly found himself confronted by a situation for which there was no precedent. Despite his obvious capability, Saddler was under intense pressure...a pressure that mounted geometrically with each new body found. That pressure would eventually cause even the most vitiated of minds to explode or implode depending on its source.

For reasons he could not begin to articulate, Art felt inexplicably certain that Quinsett's future hinged on Saddler's continued ability to perform his duty.

Thus, Art Silver decided to handle his preliminary investigation himself and allow the Sheriff to have his much-needed night of rest. If he caught the sharp side of Saddler's temper for his decision, will that was a price Art was willing to pay.

As he set about meticulously writing his preliminary report, Art Silver had no notion that his decision would cost him far more than his superior's wrath.

2

Judith Ranzman was in a belligerent mood and while this was not an altogether uncommon state of mind for the volatile Ranzman, she could feel her rage churning like burning bile in the pit of her stomach.

Rage, often formless and undirected, had been Judith's constant companion for as long as she could remember. The struggle to repress this anger was incessant and it cost her dearly in a vast array of complex ways, over the course of her thirty seven years. She had always harbored the private opinion that her family's wealth had saved her from a life of incarceration that would've been inevitable had she been born in less fortunate circumstances.

Her affluence and the management of that wealth had taught her discipline and the obsessive need for privacy. That arduously maintained discipline had allowed Judith to internalize that smoldering rage and even turn it to her good advantage when ruthlessly pursuing her business goals. The money had also help minimize the damage on the few occasions she lost control of her temper and allowed her anger to boil to the surface.

The wealth also allowed her to indulge her darkest proclivities. Her controlled sexual sadism served as a steam dump for the volatile furnace that was her rage. _Subtle Distinctions_ provided a fanatically discrete and selective service that allowed Judith to indulge those proclivities without fear of exposure. It cost the real estate broker a small fortune to maintain a private...chamber, but Judith regarded the expense as a further ward against those who might take an unhealthy interest in her personal affairs.

She made the last two hours of the drive to her tryst with Veronica Ashcott-Saddler through a deepening gloom and intensifying downpour. Judith never flew to Seattle for her excursions into _Subtle Distinctions_ , nor did she remain in the city once her affairs there were concluded.

The long drive home, through the mostly empty side roads, helped Ranzman bring her rampant emotions back under control...an opportunity to let the mask of civility slip back into place.

There was something about this uppity socialite bitch that incited Judith as few things ever had. Perhaps it was a subtle note of condescension that echoed in her tone when she first proposed this tryst. Possibly it could be the brazen challenge she issued when agreeing to submit to Judith's perverse ministrations. Maybe (and from Judith's skewed perspective, this was the most likely explanation) it was Veronica's keen and accurate insights into Judith savage appetites that were really the primary triggers.

' _How could she possibly know about this place?'_ a cautionary voice demanded and Ranzman noted the raw apprehension that lurked beneath that roiling fury.

Logically she could not, and Judith could produce no plausible explanation for the other woman's disturbing knowledge.

"Oh, but I will find out!" She vowed between clenched teeth. "Before I send you crawling back to your straight-laced husband, I will extract every shred of knowledge from that pretty head of yours."

Judith beamed a grin of pure malevolence and depressed the Corvette's gas pedal. She would reduce Veronica Ashcott-Saddler to a whimpering bootlicker who would divulge her every little secret. She might even defy one of her own edicts and make this privileged cunt her personal pet to use and abuse for her private amusement once they returned to Quinsett.

Again, a rational inner voice reiterated its plea for caution and careful consideration, but an inflamed Ranzman ignored is prudent warning. Her keen anticipation might have been dampened considerably had she known that the intended target of her fury was approaching their tryst with precisely the same intention.

3

The instant the Judith approached the door to her reserved chamber, on the third floor of _Subtle Distinctions_ , that unsettling inner voice renewed its plea for extreme caution. She grimaced and uttered a soft curse, knowing that the door was unlocked even before she reached for the handle. Before her grip could close on the ornate curving handle, the door abruptly swung open, spilling intense white fluorescent light out into the dimly lit hallway.

Never one to succumb to timid caution, Judith marched across the threshold and the heavy door slammed shut behind her. Judith glanced over her shoulder, startled by the loud bang and when she gazed back, the chamber...this private repository of dark indulgence...was deserted.

She scowled with contemptuous disgust, thinking, _'she didn't come. I should have known that the pampered bitch wouldn't have the courage.'_

"Oh, I've come, Judith," a sanguine, disembodied voice informed her as if Ranzman had spoken aloud. "This is one appointment I wouldn't have missed for the world itself."

In the instant it took Judith to blink, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler appeared to materialize beneath the suspended shackles. One moment the space was empty and the next, Veronica was crouched down with one arm stretched across her bent knees. Those full lips were curved in the ghost of a grin and she watched Judith with those disconcertingly beautiful green eyes. Her long hair spilled over the shoulders of her cloak in red flowing waves.

"How...how did you get in here?" Ranzman stammered, despising the shrill, plaintive whine of her own voice. "And how did you just appear like that?"

Veronica offered Ranzman a radiant smile. "I do have my secrets, Judith and if anyone understands the need to guard one's secrets...to tend them carefully...it's you."

A towering rage swept over Judith then and she strode towards the crouching Ashcott-Saddler, the stiletto heels of her calf-hugging leather boots ringing on the cold tiles. Ranzman raised her right hand above her head and slapped Veronica's upturned face. Veronica made no attempt to avoid the blow, instead lifting her face to meet it.

The report of flesh on flesh was shockingly loud. Veronica's mane of red hair swung wildly as her head snapped to the right. Despite the ferocity of the blow, Veronica returned her gaze to Judith, that infuriating smile broader than ever.

With an inarticulate growl, Judith struck Veronica with two rapid blows, but still the squatting woman's smile did not falter. Livid, Judith balled her fist and prepared to deliver another blow. Part of her recognized that she was in perilous proximity of losing all control, but this woman's arrogance, her presumption, ignited Judith's madness...her killing fury.

Judith swung, fully intending to pulverize this woman's gorgeous face, but with the speed of an adder, Veronica reached up and caught her wrist in a crushing grip.

Ranzman bellowed in pain and outrage as her arm was bent painfully backwards. Veronica forced Judith to her knees even as she stood with a liquid flexing of her long legs. Still smiling, the red head intoned, "Such a temper, Judith...but it is what I do so love about you."

Judith perceived the blur of movement, but too late to avoid the open-handed strike. She reeled across the room, collided with the padded wall, and slid to the floor in a boneless sprawl.

She stared up into the blinding glare of the recessed fluorescents. Great waves of throbbing pain rolled through the confines of her skull and she became cognizant of the stream of hot blood running from the left corner of her mouth and dripping onto the floor. She raised her head with considerable effort and saw the statuesque beauty slowly crossing over to where she lay. Though her words were slurred by her swelling lips, Judith rasped defiantly, "You crazy bitch."

"No, Judith, that would be you," Veronica contradicted blithely and reaching down, she gripped the collar of Judith's long PVC coat and hauled her effortlessly to her feet. Towering over the shorter Ranzman, she roughly pushed her against the wall and remarked, "I, on the other hand, am quite lucid and totally self-aware. I know exactly why I came here, tonight and what I wanted to do when I did."

Clutching Judith throat, she pressed the shorter woman's head against the padded wall and scooped up a rivulet of dark blood with her right index finger. Gently but insistently, she pressed the bloody finger against Judith's swollen lips and instructed huskily, "Taste your own madness, Judith."

Judith glared at the taller woman, but nonetheless opened her mouth and slowly slid her lips over the long, blood-covered digit. She stared unblinkingly at Veronica even as she ran her tongue along the finger like a hungry cat lapping up cream. Veronica smiled as she searched the turbulent storm of Judith's intense dark eyes. Whatever emotions burned there, fear was not amongst them.

Reluctantly, Veronica withdrew her glistening fingers from Ranzman's hungry mouth, who demanded, "Who are you, really? You're certainly not a rich industrialist's princess daughter."

Veronica threw back her head and uttered a full throated laugh of genuine delight. "Very perceptive, Judith."

She did not elaborate further, but after a moment, revealed, "I've made sure that Vincent Scallari won't be dredging the skeletons from your closet. I confess I didn't have your best interest in mind when I unzipped his guts, but the outcome will prove to be mutually beneficial."

Judith's eyes grew comically large at this disclosure. She clutched Veronica's thin wrist with both hands and attempted to pull the taller woman's hand from her throat. To her chagrin, she could not even budge the hand, much less dislodge it. Veronica inclined her head slightly and then casually tossed Judith to the tiled floor.

Judith landed in a facedown sprawl with the air punched quickly and efficiently from her lungs. As she lay with her bloodied face pressed against the cool tile, gasping for breath, Veronica reached down and roughly tore the full-length coat from her back. Judith grunted as the shiny material twisted and abraded her arms while coming free. Before she could attempt to rise, Veronica pressed the spiked heel into her lower back.

Judith Ranzman went utterly still as the quarter inch heel bit painfully into the tight flesh of her lower back. Veronica's gaze crawled appreciatively over the taut curves of Judith beautiful body and the form clinging PVC, midnight black leggings and the blood red bustier that left her back and mid-rift exposed. The palpable sense of extreme madness wafted up from the prone Ranzman, making her outfits seem considerably less absurd.

"It might interest you to know, Judith, that torturers...real torturers, who lived for their art...often worked bare-chested. The work does tend to become rather messy, so they often wore heavy leather aprons and gloves. The victims' discharges could be...well, rather unsanitary. I'm sure you understand. Still, this particular outfit is most fetching on that body of yours. I'm sure this must have been very arousing for those unsuspecting playthings you brought here over the years. I suspect that arousal must've wilted when they realized just how dark that heart of yours truly is. That's the real reward...the true remuneration, isn't it Judith? How you must savor that moment when they discover they've put themselves at the mercy of a woman who has none?"

Grasping the heavy laces of the top in both hands, Veronica rip them with the casual flexing of bicep muscles. Ranzman gasped as Veronica tugged the garment out from beneath her and threw it into the far corner.

Judith raised herself on her left elbow and twisted her neck until she could see Veronica, who appeared impossibly tall and intimidating from this perspective.

"I'm not afraid of you," she rasped and Veronica could discern that she was being sincere. She knelt down, still pinning the smaller woman with her heel, and gently gathered Judith lustrous black hair in her right hand. Slowly but insistently, she pulled the bunched hair, while removing her heel so the Judith was forced to turn onto her back.

"Nor should you be, Judith," Veronica intoned huskily. She began to gently caress Ranzman's two prominent dark nipples until they had risen into turgid knots. Judith arched her back, pressing her full breasts into Veronica's open palms. Massaging the firm globes, while still teasing the rigid nipples, Veronica declared, "at least not now. Until as recently as this morning, it had been my intention to gut you like a swine and leave you hanging upside down by your own restraints. Even in a place valued for its discretion the smell would've eventually led someone to investigate."

Judith raised her head, those impossibly dark eyes narrowing into speculative slits at this admission.

"Why would you want to kill me?" She demanded and again, Jeniah could not detect the slightest hint of fear...further testimony to the extent of Judith's psychosis.

Veronica inclined her head and pursed her lips as if to signify her disappointment. "Why, for sins of the father, of course...or more precisely, the grandfather in your particular case. He was one of the men who interfered in a process more than two millennia in the crafting. On that night, dear Judith, I vowed that I would extract a price from their offspring."

Judith uttered a short spate of disdainful laughter, her blood caked mouth twisting into a contemptuous sneer. "You are not actually going to tell me that you're...what, the reincarnation of Quinsett's resident myth? And you call me crazy. Really!"

Veronica's tone became menacing, like the throaty growl of a roused predator. "Skepticism is a disposition I refuse to suffer, Judith," she warned darkly. "Just as I won't tolerate the obstinate refusal to see what is right in front of you...or what is not in front of you, as the case may be."

She swiftly moved to straddle Judith's upper thighs and lifted the hood of the shadow cloak up in one fluid movement. Judith gasped in shock as the woman sitting astride her appeared to vanish into thin air. Still, she could sense, though not precisely feel, the woman's weight holding her to the tiled floor. After a moment, Veronica pushed back the cloak's hood. A dazzling smile illuminated her face beautiful face, though that mirth never touched her limpid eyes. "I'm no myth, Judith, and I came here with the intention of collecting on your grandfather's debt...with extreme prejudice. Fate seems to have intervened on your behalf, Judith, and now I'm prepared to forgive that debt...if you pledge unconditional fealty to me, here and now."

"Why would I agree to be your lick-spittle...especially if you really are who you claim to be?" Ranzman challenged, the flames of mad defiance flaring in her eyes.

The back-handed blow snapped Judith's head like the fall of a rubber mallet, bringing a fresh flow of blood streaming down her chin. "Each time your skepticism rears its ugly head, it will cost you dearly from this point forth," Veronica promised in the flat, calm voice of reason. "You've asked why you should agree to be my familiar and two good reasons come to mind. If you're more apt to be inspired by negative motivation, consider this...there are only two ways you're leaving this ridiculous parody of a torture chamber...crawling at my heels like the appropriately obsequious bitch I need you to be or as a dismembered, rotting corpse."

Judith snarled and attempted to rise, but Veronica swatted her down with a casual flick of her left hand. Blood flew; spattering tiles in a fan that resembled an abstract painter's frenetic doodling. Judith inhaled sharply and offered Veronica a bloody, toothsome grin, "and the other reason?"

"I can offer you the opportunity to indulge your darkest cravings, Judith, without fear of consequences. There's no reason to be coy...I've divined your every secret...illuminated every crevice of that cesspit that you call a soul. You love to kill...to inflict misery and suffering. Your parents could testify to that particular truth...had you allowed them to live so long."

Judith stiffened, but attempted to mask her shock by rasping, "I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about."

Veronica sighed wearily and struck Judith again, adding a new nuance to the floor's blood art. "I hate contradiction...it insults my intelligence. You killed your mother and father, but they were only the first. How many others are moldering in unmarked graves on the grounds of your fortress back in Quinsett? Pledge yourself to me and I will provide you with the opportunity to revel in your blackest fantasy on a scale you couldn't begin to fathom."

Judith appeared to consider Jeniah's proposal and then raised her throbbing head. Thinking mad Judith was about to capitulate, Veronica leaned forward just as Ranzman spat a great glut of bloody saliva in her face.

"Fuck you!" she bellowed and began to bark mad laughter.

Fury took Veronica then...a blind rage that could level mountains, but she managed to master it by the tiniest of increments. She brushed the spit away with the back of her left hand and whispered, "I'm sure that was your intention when you first agreed to meet me here?"

She hauled Judith to her feet by her long black hair, delivering a vicious knee to Ranzman's exposed abdomen as she did. The air exploded from the shorter woman's lungs in a wheezing burst and Veronica quickly hauled the coughing, sputtering Ranzman over to the steel manacles. Before Judith could mount any sort of resistance, she found herself hanging and helpless, struggling to draw breath.

Veronica came to stand before the struggling Ranzman. She propped her right arm on her left elbow and assumed a contemplative pose. "Clearly, I'm not conveying my message in succinct terms. The fault is mine I suppose...it's up to me to impress upon you the dynamics that will exist between us."

Surging forward, she drove her right knee into Judith's exposed sternum and quickly spun to the side. Judith's eyes bulged in shock and agony an instant before the contents of her stomach erupted in a steaming glut. She sagged against her restraints and hung panting like a wounded animal.

Veronica watched her, shaking her head in feigned disgust. In truth, she was impressed with Judith's courage in the face of obvious menace. She would serve Jeniah's purpose admirably, provided she could be brought fully and emphatically to heel. Glancing past Ranzman, her gaze fell on the small case that Judith had been carrying when she had first entered the room.

She crossed the blood-spattered tiles and retrieved the case. After setting it on a small metal table that stood next to the moaning captive, Veronica sprung the two latches. The case's contents caused Veronica to smile as an idea germinated in her mind like a dark bloom. She selected two items from the case and approached Judith, who had recovered her breath and was watching Veronica warily.

"You intended to use these on me?" Veronica demanded, her voice glacial, as she brandished the two items. Judith merely nodded and offered Veronica a blood-glazed grin. Veronica acknowledged this disclosure with a severe frown.

"It would be my guess that you've never been the recipient of your own twisted brand of pleasure, have you Judith?"

Ranzman did not respond, but only glared malevolent daggers at her tormentor and Veronica nodded. "I thought as much. I think an introduction to the role of masochist is in order then...a demonstration to help establish the proper frame of mind to conclude our arrangement. Let us begin."

With this, she gracefully removed the Shadow Cloak and lovingly draped it over the side table. Naked, she held her long arms out before Judith as though presenting herself for inspection and approval.

Despite her unaccustomed disadvantage and the pain that throbbed in her face, Judith experienced a rush of white hot lust at the sight of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's naked perfection. She growled deep in her throat and jerked against her manacles hard enough to abrade her slender wrists. Droplets of blood shimmered on her inner forearms like rubies.

Veronica laughed and lithely glided behind Ranzman, who twisted her neck but did not swivel to face her tormentor. Veronica set one of her chosen implements on the table...a slim-handled, stainless steel fleshette. The thin disc of the device resembled the blade of a pizza cutter except the edge was adorned by 1/8th inch needles that covered the wheel's entire circumference. The device was designed to rouse an exquisite pain with its bite, but if used adroitly, would not inflict permanently disfiguring damage.

She carried the other implement over to Judith and draped it over Ranzman's shoulder. Two lengths of thin gold chain had been forged together to create a deceptively sturdy T-chain. The T segment of the chain was ten inches long and terminated in alligator clips at both ends. The jaws of the tips were crenellated for maximum grip. A six foot length of slightly heavier chain was attached to this T section at the latter's mid point. A leash style handle was affixed to the terminal end of this section of chain.

Veronica stepped behind Judith and embraced the smaller woman. As she pulled her close, her hands cupped Judith's heavy breasts. Her thumbs resumed their tender ministrations and soon Ranzman's prominent nipples stood forth like bullets. Judith hung her head and sighed with pleasure. With a malefic grin, Veronica swiftly and deftly attached each alligator clip to an up thrust nipple and that sigh of primal pleasure became a shriek of acute agony. The spring-loaded clips bit cruelly into the engorged, sensitive flesh and soon droplets of blood spattered Judith's taut abdomen.

Veronica pulled a moaning Ranzman into a tighter embrace and brought her lips to Judith's left ear. "I want you to resist me with every fiber of your being, Judith. Fight me with every spark of madness in your twisted soul...it will make your inevitable moment of abject surrender so much sweeter."

Looping the end of the leash over her left wrist, Veronica stepped away from Judith. She retreated until the chain was taut. Ranzman's hissing exhalation reminded Veronica of the strident cry of a kettle. Slowly, savoring Judith's every pained reaction, Veronica began to walk in a circle, occasionally pausing to snap the chain and draw a shriek from her victim. The swivel mounted ring allowed Veronica to turn Judith in a complete circle with only a minimal amount of discomfort or resistance.

Finally, Veronica stopped beside the table and retrieved the flechette. Judith was perspiring heavily now, streams of sweat mixing with indolent trickles of blood, but still she panted, "You'd better kill me here, tonight, cunt...because if I leave this place alive, I will kill you...but very slowly."

"Ah, the hubris toned sound of bravado," Veronica crooned, drawing a deep breath. "It is certainly preferable to groveling and pleading. It might interest you to know that this exquisite vessel of flesh once belonged to Veronica Ashcott-Saddler. Aside from being a wealthy princess, she was a patron of the arts, with a discerning eye for talent. I think she'd appreciate the artistry of what's about to follow."

She held the gleaming flechette between her thumb and index finger. "This will be my brush. That ravishing body of yours will be my canvas and your blood will be my paint."

Veronica glided closer, until their faces were mere inches apart and spoke in a sanguine whisper. "I'm going to hurt you Judith...in ways you can't possibly begin to imagine. I'm going to break that malicious spirit of yours and grind it to dust. Now let's begin by removing these."

Veronica slowly removed the rest of Judith clothing and then set about creating her masterpiece.

4

Time lost all tangible meaning for Judith Ranzman...a form of measurement inadequate to chronicle the duration and depth of her suffering and degradation. To her credit, Judith did not utter a solitary plea for mercy, but perhaps this was more of a testimony to the full extent of her own psychosis. She did, however, scream until her vocal cords literally exploded with the effort. Even then, Judith continued to give wordless voice to her agony.

When a blood spattered Veronica finally set the last of Judith cruel instruments back on the metal table, the thing hung from the manacles scarcely resembled a human being. Great scarlet ribbons of skin hung from Judith's raw, oozing torso where she had been methodically skinned. Judith once beautiful face was a grotesque portrait of glistening red flesh and exposed ligature. Her lipless mouth seems set in a ghastly permanent smile of exposed teeth.

The raw tissue oozed fluid and languid trickles of blood. The quiet whisper of the room's air-conditioning evoked convulsive shudders of unimaginable agony as it played over Judith's ruined body.

Veronica studied her work, pleased by her efforts. One by one, the moorings of Judith's tenuous grip on sanity had snapped. Now, tottering on the very edge of life and death, Judith Ranzman's mind was shattered beyond reclamation...just as Jeniah had intended.

Veronica stepped closer and raised Judith's chin in her left hand. Ranzman's staring, lidless eyes found Ashcott-Saddler's and a wheezing rasp escaped her lips as bloody spittle flew from the holes in her cheeks. "Now Judith, I'm going to reward you for every instant of suffering to which I've subjected you tonight. I'm going to give you back your beauty...and something far more precious as well...the opportunity to embrace and indulge your darkness without fear of discovery, judgment or consequences."

A guttural grunt issued from the suspended horror...an exclamation of some fervent emotion that could well have been anything. Veronica nodded sympathetically and then gently laid her palms along the ruined landscape of Judith's jaw line. "When I was a young girl, my father made a comfortable living as a blacksmith of considerable renown. He would often tell me that the strongest, most enduring metals are tempered in the hottest flame."

With a sibilant hiss, Veronica's hands burst into flame; a molten fire that bathed the cavern's interior in a golden glow. In a voice made husky with passion, Jeniah declared, "Let me share with you the life I've lived and the purpose to which I've been tempered."

This grandiose declaration was accompanied by a blinding explosion of golden flame that swiftly engulfed the two women. The cumulative sum of Jeniah Lightcrusher's long and terrible life exploded in the ruined confines of Judith Ranzman's thoroughly shattered mind like the sensory equivalent of a nuclear detonation. With this onslaught, the last of Judith's resistance and her mindless psychosis were eradicated. In its place was a fully functional intellect that was completely subservient to Jeniah's will.

Just as the deluge of Jeniah's accrued memories reconfigured Judith's mind, so too did the raging flames reconstruct her devastated body. Veronica waved her hands and the enveloping flames vanished as if they had never existed.

A very naked and perfectly restored Judith Ranzman knelt at Veronica's feet. Veronica extended a slender right arm with the palm casually turned downward. Judith smiled knowingly, exposing silver teeth that gleamed wickedly. She crawled compliantly over to her mistress, and gripping Veronica's wrist in both hands, bestowed a lingering, fervent kiss on the back of her hand.

The dark eyes that gazed up at Veronica were remorseless and devoid of humanity. "I'm yours to command...how would you have me serve you?"

Bending forward, Veronica tenderly traced the cruel ridges of a slanting cheek bone. "Return to Quinsett and take up the thread of your old life. Settle my blood debt with the others. Kill them all with extreme prejudice...all but Cameron Crane. He is to come to no harm. Pave the way for my return...eliminate anyone who would jeopardize the ritual, but do so in a way that will not turn the light of suspicion upon you."

Judith's reaction was one of unconcealed disappointment but she nodded tightly and rose, still clasping Veronica's hand, who inclined her head and promised, "When the ritual has been enacted, you will be free to appease your appetites, Judith...without restraint. Be patient a while longer and you will bear witness to the birth of a new world."

The expression of keen anticipation that lit Judith's face was terrifying in its intensity. Jeniah, however, was elated by the culmination of the night's grim business. "Be about your task then. The stryges will be yours to command...be sure to utilize both their eyes...and their talons. I will return in the days before the ritual...by then, I expect the matter of the blood debt to be settled."

Again, Judith offered her new mistress an inscrutable smile; her dark eyes alight with zealous fire. As Veronica watched, her living weapon donned her boots and long coat and then she was gone.

Jeniah was satisfied that Judith would succeed where hopelessly inadequate Knox Severn could not. Retrieving the cloak of shadow, she left _Subtle Distinctions_ , turning her thoughts to playing the role of dutiful mother over the course of the next few days. The blood of Veronica's innocent son would provide the catalyst to surmount the barrier and a new reality would be born.

Chapter Six

1

Maria Cordova was seated at her desk at 7:00 am, Saturday morning, absently reading through Art Silver's preliminary report on the previous night's homicide. The night had been a long, slow crawl and she had slept fitfully, unable to repress the sickening images of Lynda Verin's mutilated corpse. The pragmatic traditionalist in Maria's nature was still struggling to internalize the previous day's events. It was probably easier to question one's grip on sanity than it was to accept the type of radical alternation to reality that those events would require.

And then there was the bewildering matter of her growing emotional...attachment to Raymond Saddler. Color it any shade she chose, but she could scarcely deny that her feelings for her boss had progressed far beyond professional respect with an alacrity that was mystifying.

Maria shook her head in dismay, silently reproaching herself for even entertaining thoughts of such a potentially disastrous entanglement.

' _And with a married man nonetheless,'_ she chastised herself. _'You're a grown women, Maria...not a fawning school girl with an infatuation.'_ Still, in Ray Saddler, she sensed an honest compassion and kindness that was all too rare in an increasingly obdurate and cynical world...qualities which she personally found most enticing.

She glanced at the bullpen clock and with sudden alarm, saw that it was 7:30 and the man who presently preoccupied her thoughts had yet to make an appearance.

' _Now that's odd,'_ she thought, glancing past the dispatcher's station to the glass doors of the double entrance. Heavy rain swept across the gloomy, deserted street. The sheriff had requested that she help him organize the files in advance of the FBI liaison's arrival later that afternoon. Now, however, he was thirty minutes late and tardiness did not strike her as a trait that Raymond Saddler was likely to possess...especially on a day that promised to be as difficult as this one did.

She chewed her full lower lip, briefly entertaining the notion of calling his home number, but then rejected the idea, deciding it was far too presumptuous. Maria was considering asking Albert and Tim to swing by the Saddler residence on Ringgold Lane (another fact that did little to alleviate her concern), when Ray finally entered the station with Barney in his arms. Her relief quickly dissipated when she saw his face...the dark smudges around his eyes and his generally haggard expression.

"A pretty tough night?" she ventured, as he set the Terrier down and removed his rain-soaked hat. When his gaze met hers, Maria inhaled sharply, so acute was the misery in his blue eyes.

"Good morning, Maria," he said and inclining his head in the direction of his office, remarked, "We have to talk."

2

Deirdre Wilkins sat at her kitchen table, her omnipresent agenda opened to her latest entry of notes. She set her pen aside and took a long sip of coffee. Gazing to the narrow window over the sink, she saw that this Saturday seemed intent on being a rain-soaked, uncooperative bitch.

The heavy rain was frustrating, but she wasn't about to let it deter her. Deirdre was off for the day and she was determined to put that free time to good use in solidifying her ideas and theories regarding Quinsett's troubles.

It was obvious that Saddler had deliberately lied to and misdirected reporters yesterday. More galling still, he had taken advantage of her personally in order to fast track his curfew announcement; a transgression she would not suffer lightly.

' _But not before you have something tangible to skewer him with,'_ she vowed to the empty kitchen.

Flipping back through copious notes, she found the association diagram she had drawn the day before. Frowning, she added Lynda Verin's name in an unconnected circle, set off by itself. Deirdre could produce no rational justification for connecting this event to any of the other nodes. As puzzling (and profoundly disturbing) as this latest incident might be, Deirdre conceded that she had little choice but to ignore it for now. Instead, she would concentrate on solidifying the connections between the original cluster of events...more specifically, the people tied directly to the Jeniah Lightcrusher myth.

She considered the list of names and selected one that would serve as a starting point for this bit of unsanctioned investigative reporting.

Judith Ranzman.

' _The only female on the list,'_ Deirdre murmured thoughtfully. ' _Perhaps a bit of sisterly bonding could yield a pearl or two of insight.'_

Downing the dregs of her coffee, Deirdre deposited her cup in the sink, collected her agenda and headed to the shower. If things went well, she would have a much clearer picture of what kind of engine was moving events in Quinsett before the day was done.

In her wildest imaginings, Deirdre had no concept of how close to full revelation her first interview would carry her.

3

Cameron Crane awoke with a wretched cry of pure despair and gazed, wild-eyed and frantic, around the stuffy, darkened confines of his bedroom. His bare torso was perspiration-soaked and his respiration came in great gulping gasps.

Unlike most nightmares, this one did not lose shape and substance upon waking. Instead, it grew in clarity...its resolution sharpening until it assumed the air of premonition.

In his dream, Cameron's right hand held Veronica Ashcott-Saddler by the throat, while he brandished a heavy blade in a trembling left hand. She lay supine beneath him, her arms flung casually above her head. Her luxuriant red hair spread about her in a fan that reminded Cameron of a flaming crown.

Despite his brandishing a weapon, not to mention her position of total vulnerability, the dream incarnation of Veronica displayed not the slightest hint of concern, much less panic. Her eyes flashed with an inscrutable emotion that he could not decipher and her vulpine smile seemed to mock his hostile intent.

His arm wavered and he cast the blade aside with a guttural grunt, while wrapping his left hand around her throat. This elicited a spate of derisive laughter from the woman beneath him, who chided, "Cameron, did you actually think you could kill me...take my head off while peering into these green eyes. Your grandfather was a hard man and the best he could manage was a draw. You, dear, sweet Cameron are made from far gentler stuff." She appeared to consider this for a moment and then added teasingly, "Perhaps you would care to try for a draw yourself. Squeeze, Cameron...I promise not to lift a finger in my own defense and your world will be granted a temporary reprieve."

Cameron grimaced and gritted his teeth, but as though his body had rebelled against his mind, he could not compel his hands to tighten around her throat.

He raised his gaze to the abomination straining against the fabric of reality. Tears brimmed in his eyes, distorting the image into a kaleidoscope of nightmares. He could hear them mewling and shrieking as they fought to surmount the beleaguered wards. Only her death could terminate this depraved ritual and still, fully cognizant of the consequences of failure, he could not command his hands to tighten.

He jerked awake just as the first rent appeared and a black, nebulous shape pushed through the opening. The contemptuous echo of her laughter chased him from the nightmare, but his sense of inadequacy and failure persisted long after that laughter finally faded.

It had been just after Eleven o'clock last night when his bus pulled into the deserted Quinsett terminal. A light drizzle and brisk breeze had made the night rather unpleasant, but that did not account for how utterly deserted the streets were on a Friday night. As he walked through the empty avenues, Cameron could feel a pervasive chill creep along his spine...something sinister had inculcated itself into the atmosphere of the town.

When a squad car turned onto the street, a few blocks further ahead, Cameron had instinctively faded into the shadows, though he could not say precisely why.

When he finally mounted the front steps of his house, Cameron experienced an inexplicable surge of relief. He nearly fumbled the key as he attempted to open the front door and then hesitated before opening it, struck by the overwhelming certainty that Veronica would be waiting for him within.

He was both surprised and discouraged to discover just how disappointed a part of him was to find the interior dark and empty.

Cameron spent a long night listening to the monotonous, incessant fall of the rain and trying to visualize a scenario in which he could actually harm Veronica...much less kill her. He fell asleep not long after reaching the depressing realization that her death simply would not come by his hands...even if it meant that Quinsett was reduced to a charnel pit as a consequence.

His inadequacy (which, in truth, was an undeviating adherence to his humanity) would not allow him to do the one thing necessary to save Quinsett. Accepting this, Cameron would now have to turn to the one man who might listen to his tale with open ears...Raymond Saddler.

He would be forced to disclose everything...including the sordid details of his sexual entanglement with Saddler's wife. Cameron couldn't begin to imagine how the Sheriff might react to that particular disclosure, though anger or outright dismissal was the most likely responses.

' _You're being a coward, boy'_ his grandfather's gruff voice accused. _'Trying to absolve yourself of this obligation by passing it on is nothing short of cowardly.'_

"Not cowardly at all," Cameron contradicted, "just practical and honest."

Mordecai's lingering presence offered no response, leaving Cameron in peace to contemplate how he might approach the man, whose wife he had ravaged so hungrily.

4

"I want you to enter Scallari's note into evidence," Saddler began, once they were seated in his office and the door closed. Maria gaped, her eyes widening in astonishment. She began to object, but he raised his right hand in a plea for patience. "Tag it in now, Maria. If Tim has any questions or issues, send him to me. It has to be done before the Feds arrive today. Up until this point, it will look as if we've badly blundered the investigation...bad perhaps, but not criminal. If it's found that we suppressed evidence, well that's another beast altogether. I'm not prepared to have you risk being drawn into that situation."

"I know you understand how this will put your wife squarely in the Feds' crosshairs," Maria observed pointedly.

"I do," Saddler allowed, though an expression of raw misery rippled across his face, there and gone in an instant. He inhaled sharply and averted his gaze to his folded hands. "Maria, I'm going to ask that you trust me and not ask me to elaborate just now, but I now think...fear, if I'm being totally honest...that there may actually be a connection between my wife and Vincent Scallari."

Maria started to respond, but could find no appropriate rejoinder to Saddler's statement. Instead, she informed him of the prior night's homicide. The Sheriff stiffened, visibly perturbed over not being informed, but as Maria delivered her account of Art's report, Ray conceded that he'd handled the preliminary investigation perfectly. "Sheriff, we're all aware of the strain you're under and everyone's just trying to assume a small share of the burden," Maria concluded softly. "In light of the Feds' arrival today, Art just thought you could use a decent night's rest."

"Not his call to make, Maria," he grumbled, his tone uncharacteristically harsh. She nodded tightly and Saddler immediately experienced a flush of shame. "I'm sorry Maria...this situation has gotten totally out of control. Enter Scallari's note into evidence and then you and I can question Cameron Crane, while Albert and Tim interview Stuart. Just give me a bit of time to organize my thoughts and we can discuss my sudden change of heart."

"All right," Maria agreed, her tone guarded. "I'll organize the files and enter the note into evidence."

Saddler offered his deputy a tired smile that was badly frayed. She rose without further remark and left. He could feel a sudden distance open between them. She had demonstrated her trust and loyalty over the past few days and he had just reciprocated by pushing her to arms length.

He sighed, bent down to scratch Barney's ear and then settled back to read Art Silver's preliminary report.

Saddler was still reviewing the notes when Albert and Tim returned from their early morning patrol. Ray gestured for Huxley to join him in the office. The former Sheriff appeared gaunt and pallid as he settled heavily into the seat across from Saddler. His gaze settled on his successor and he ventured, "Looks like a tough night all around. How are you holdin' up, Ray?"

"About as well as can be expected considering the circumstances. I imagine you already know there was another civilian death over night?"

"Ethan Rannout," Huxley replied, not bothering to disguise his obvious distaste. "No one deserves to die like that, but Rannout was a world class asshole. If someone had to be the next victim..." He let the sentiment hang. Ray was rather shocked by Albert's rare display of rancor, but made no comment. At any rate, Art Silver's side notes on the victim painted a fairly ugly portrait of the deceased.

"Albert, this thing has taken on a very personal wrinkle...one that, I must confess, I don't understand," Saddler suddenly blurted with no prior thought intending to doing so. Huxley glanced at Ray sharply, but waited for the younger man to elaborate. Ray inhaled deeply, trying to organize his tangled thoughts into a coherent explanation. He related the story of Maria's discovery and his decision to enter the name into evidence. Huxley winced as Ray announced this particular decision, but did not comment. "There may be a perfectly mundane explanation for why Scallari would take an interest in Veronica, but my instinct...the one I've always trusted...keeps insisting it's something far more sinister."

"What...exactly are you thinking, Ray?" Huxley demanded, his gruff voice a hushed whisper.

Saddler met Huxley's eyes and Albert was astounded by the anguish in those blue depths. Ray fumbled to explain what defied all logic, "Veronica has been...different over the last few days...disconnected and out of sorts. At first, I attributed the change to the stress of relocation and an adjustment to a completely new lifestyle. Now, I'm not so sure."

"Ray, surely you're not sayin' that your wife is somehow involved in what's happening in Quinsett?" Huxley exclaimed, unable to restrain the cynical response this notion evoked. That laughter dried on Albert's lips when Saddler only continued to stare at him with those graveyard eyes. Saddler then revealed his suppression of Orlin's evidence from the cemetery murders. The blood drained from Albert's face and it was several moments before the older man could trust himself to speak. "Ray, there has to be a logical explanation."

Huxley faltered into silence and Saddler intoned quietly, "I've racked my brain, Albert, but I can't produce a single one."

"Have you spoken to her...picked around the edges of the subject?" Huxley asked, while trying to come to terms with the notion that the elegant, vivacious beauty he'd met briefly could somehow be responsible for the carnage of the last week.

Saddler shook his head and averted his gaze to the parking lot, where a black Buick had just pulled into the designated visitor's spot. "No, I haven't. She left for Seattle yesterday and I missed her call last night. She should be in Los Angeles tonight, so I'll talk to her then. I'll be honest, Albert...I have no idea what I'm going to say to her. The Feds are going to take this investigation away from us, Albert. If they're even remotely competent, they'll jump on Scallari's note. I realize how craven this is going to sound, but I'd rather they pursue this line of inquiry, because I sincerely doubt I have it in me."

Huxley could not suppress a sorrowful groan. "Fuck it all to hell...what a mess this is!"

Saddler nodded his head in grim concurrence. "It is that."

After a moment's further consideration, Albert insisted, "Ray, think clearly man; there's no way Veronica could have killed two armed men at the Eternal Lights...especially not the way they were butchered."

"You're absolutely right Albert...Veronica couldn't, but..." Saddler's voice trailed off as he struggled to maintain his composure. Articulating his fears seemed to bring them into sharper resolution, making them all the more horrifying. "The first day I took office...it seems like a thousand years ago, though it's been less than a week...Ronnie took a ride down Ringgold Lane."

"Jesus!" was all that Huxley could manage, beginning to align himself with the tangent of Saddler's reasoning.

"I think she found what we did...and I think it's somehow changed her."

Huxley jumped to his feet and began to pace around his former office like a caged animal. Running his hands through his thinning hair, he exclaimed miserably, "This is Crazy. Just fucking crazy! What...what will you do?"

"I'm going to start by calling Veronica and asking her...no, telling her to return to Quinsett. I'm also going to try and steer the Feds in the right direction. Once they've assumed the lead on this investigation, I would ask that you, Maria and possibly Art help me look into this ritual that Jeniah was attempting to conduct."

"You really believe that the old bitch's ritual is the key to this nightmare?" Huxley asked uncertainly.

A despondent Saddler glanced down at Barney, who stared back as though listening to the conversation intently. All things considered, it would not surprise Saddler if he was. Distantly, he replied, "At this point Albert, I don't know what to believe, but I don't see any other way forward."

Albert nodded, his countenance grim. "I'll help you in any way I can, but I do know something...unnatural is behind this horror and I want to stop it before it kills my town."

Saddler could feel his throat constrict with emotion, wondering what he had done to earn the unwavering loyalty of those around him in such short order. "Thank you, Albert...I can't tell you how much that means to me. Every instinct is telling me that this next week is going to be hell and as much as I wished I didn't have to, I'm going to take you up on this offer."

At that precise moment, Maria opened the door and the two men turned to face her. Her lovely dark eyes seemed to radiate concern, prompting Saddler to ask, "Has something happened, Maria?"

"The Feds have arrived, Sheriff?"

PART FOUR

Chapter One

1

It was slightly after eleven o'clock Saturday morning, when Deirdre Wilkins parked her Toyota Corolla in front of Judith Ranzman's Realty office. She was surprised by how lifeless the streets were, even taking into consideration the constant rainfall. The only concentration of traffic she'd encountered was the steady stream of vehicles heading out to the main highway.

Deirdre wondered how many of the town's residents had developed a sudden and compelling urge to take a prolonged vacation. Quinsett had certainly become an alien and hostile landscape and undoubtedly the urge to get out of Dodge swelled with each successive murder.

One glance told Deirdre that the darkened office was closed and unoccupied. She sat for a moment, thoughtfully drumming her fingers on the leather steering wheel cover. She was tempted to move on to Ira Silver or Stuart Crane, but a deeper instinct insisted that Judith Ranzman would be a more productive source for this impromptu fact-finding mission.

Flipping open her journal, she found the entry of Judith's home address and then quickly pulled out onto the deserted street. It was fairly presumptuous to approach Ranzman at her home, but Deirdre was never one to allow herself to be deterred by adherence to protocol.

The drive along Lodger Mill Road lasted only a few minutes, but left Deirdre with a disconcerting sense of isolation. When she finally pulled her car to the side of the road, directly across from the gated property, Deirdre was experiencing an uncharacteristic bout of nerves.

She stepped out onto the asphalt, arching a tapered eyebrow at the imposing wrought iron fence that delineated the property. In conjunction with the two security cameras that were trained directly upon her, the fence spoke eloquently of a woman who guarded her privacy with fanatical zeal.

"And yet the gates are standing wide open," she murmured as a shiver of vague apprehension coursed along her spine. "It's almost as if she's expecting...someone."

Deirdre drew a tremulous breath and looked up and down the length of empty roadway. She couldn't deny that she was suddenly and inexplicably reluctant to cross the road and enter the property.

The open gates evoked images of gaping jaws, while the brick drive beyond reminded her of the gullet of some immense and ravenously hungry beast.

Deirdre laughed nervously, a thin, papery sound that clearly resonated with an irrational fear. She glanced around again, noticing how the looming trees seemed to hunch over the road. The rain had nearly stopped, though the roiling sky promised more. The ambience hanging over this place was tinged with undefined menace.

Deirdre had actually turned back to her car, but then stopped, castigating herself for being utterly foolish. Drawing up the zipper of her stylish red rain jacket, Deirdre marched purposefully across the road and through the open gates, not knowing that she was entering a house of horror.

2

"Special agent Tamara Hood," the woman announced as she crossed the reception area floor, with her right hand extended before her. "I'll be leading the FBI team on this...this investigation."

Saddler shook her extended hand, not particularly surprised that she possessed a vice-like grip. He needed only one glance at Tamara Hood to know that his situation had just gotten immeasurably more complex. She was a tall, slender woman with a creamed coffee complexion and long, black hair and a lean, angular face that was handsome, if not exactly beautiful. Saddler estimated that she might be in her late thirties. Her most captivating feature was her amber-colored eyes that regarded Saddler with the intensity of an eagle. Those eyes bespoke a woman who was quick-witted and capable and would brook absolutely no nonsense or gamesmanship.

"Sheriff Raymond Saddler and this is former Sheriff Albert Huxley and Deputy Maria Cordova," Saddler said. The agent's assessing gaze swept over the other two in a cursory, dismissive way that caused Maria to grit her teeth and look away.

"It seems you have yourself quite a situation here, Sheriff," agent Hood remarked, removing her black raincoat and hanging it on a peg near the door to Saddler's office. Saddler noted that her movements were lithe and efficient. Her eyes met his and she intoned, "I would imagine this isn't quite what you expected before you moved here from LA?"

The keen-edged remark struck Saddler like the first shell of an unexpected artillery salvo, but he recovered sufficiently to counter, "Agent Hood, I think you'll find that, whatever your prior experience might be, it isn't likely to prepare you for what's happening in Quinsett."

Tamara inclined her head, fixing him with a speculative expression. After a moment, she suggested, "Perhaps the two of us can have a word in your office, Sheriff."

Saddler nodded and agent Hood followed him into his office, pointedly closing the door behind her.

Albert whistled softly and commented, "I feel like I've watched a man being dragged into a cougar's den for dinner."

Maria glanced sharply at her former boss and then returned to her desk without comment, leaving Albert standing alone in the center of the office.

Once seated, special agent Hood cut directly to the chase. "Before we delve into specifics, I want to establish the exact nature of what is going to happen from this point forth. The murder of Vincent Scallari is sufficient justification for my agency assuming control of this investigation. As of this moment, that is exactly what has happened."

After allowing this to sink in for a few moments, she continued brusquely, "I have neither the patience nor the willingness to engage in a jurisdictional pissing match, Sheriff. I am the lead in this investigation and I expect your whole-hearted cooperation and support, when and how I see fit to ask for it. If you have a particular issue with that, let's get it on the table now."

Saddler offered agent Hood a thin, mirthless grin. His prior dealings with the bureau had prepared him for this kind of abrasive interaction. He could not help but wonder how Albert might have reacted to Tamara Hood's overtly aggressive attitude. "There's really no need for storm trooper tactics, agent Hood. I called the bureau with the full awareness that my department has neither the resources, nor in truth, the experience to deal with this situation. Furthermore, I fully expected that the bureau would take the lead. If you require my personal assurance that you'll get my full and unreserved cooperation, you have it. This town is in dire straits and my only interest is in saving it."

Tamara sat back in her chair and offered Saddler a radiant grin, apparently satisfied that he was being sincere. "I think you and I will get along just fine, Sheriff. How about we start off by you giving me a verbal overview of exactly what's happened since this situation first began. Then, I'd like a quiet place and some time to read through your incident reports."

"Deputy Cordova's arranged all of the reports and files. You can use my office," Saddler interjected.

The agent's answering smile suggested that she'd expected no less. "Once I've reviewed the material, I'll need you to give me a guided tour of the crime scenes. What I'm trying to accomplish, Sheriff, is to gain a sense of the magnitude of your problem. Once I've done that, I can determine the size and the composition of the team I'll need. If that's fair, let's get started."

It was then that she noticed the terrier curled up in a bed at Saddler's feet. Frowning, she inclined her head questioningly towards the dog.

"His name's Barney...he's an orphan of yesterday's victim. It seems that I've adopted the little guy," Saddler explained. Tamara nodded slightly and dismissed the dog from her mind. As he set about recounting the details of the past week's nightmare, Saddler reached the spontaneous conclusion that special agent Tamara Hood would not be an easy woman to like.

3

Deirdre's first impression of the meticulously maintained grounds of Judith's property was that it belonged to a woman who prided herself on appearances. The impeccably trimmed shrubbery, the strategically placed rocks and flower beds all bespoke a woman with exquisite tastes...and the means to fully indulge those tastes.

When she reached the base of the stairs, that lead up to an elevated stone platform and the main entrance, Deirdre paused. Again, she was assailed by that unaccountable feeling of imminent and willful menace, more pronounced than ever in this close proximity to the house.

Away from the road, this sensation seemed significantly less foolish. Deirdre Wilkins was a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist, but Judith Ranzman's brooding home instilled her with a primal disquiet that had nothing to do with practicality. She was within a quavering breath of beating a skittering retreat, when someone spoke from behind her, startling Deirdre into crying out.

"May I help you?" inquired a woman's voice as Deirdre gasped and spun about to confront the speaker. The attractive woman standing before her was dressed in a shiny black rain jacket, form fitting leggings and knee-high black boots, adorned with pewter buckles. Her silky black hair was swept back from her angular face in a tight pony tale.

"I'm sorry...the gate...it was open," Deirdre stammered.

The woman shifted her daunting gaze back along the winding drive. "Yes, I've just arrived and it seems my security system has given up the ghost. My name is Judith Ranzman and you are?"

"Deirdre Wilkins...I'm the news anchor at the local ABC affiliate," Deirdre began, regaining a measure of her composure, now that she was venturing onto familiar ground.

Judith inclined her head and fixed Deirdre with a disconcertingly frank gaze of appraisal. "You're a very beautiful woman, Ms. Wilkins," Judith observed, a remark for which Deirdre had no reply. After an awkward moment, Judith concluded, "I take it you're here in some...official work capacity?"

"Not really official, Ms. Ranzman," Deirdre admitted.

"Do call me Judith," the other woman interjected with a smile that made Deirdre want to squirm.

"I'm doing a bit of background work on Quinsett...specifically concerning the history of the town as it relates to the tragic events of the last week." Deirdre paused, suddenly reluctant to brooch the subject of the old urban myth. Still, that dark, unsettling gaze was upon her and she divulged the purpose of her visit, despite her sudden reservations. "I wanted to speak to you about the Jeniah Lightcrusher legend and, I think it would be...your grandfather's involvement in that tale."

Judith regarded Deirdre with unblinking intensity for a protracted moment and Wilkins discerned that the other woman had grown as tense as a coiled spring at the mention of the old tale. "I can't possibly imagine how those foolish old tales could be germane to the horrible things that are happening now?"

"There does appear to be several connections between those old tales and at least some of the incidents that have occurred this week. What I'm trying to do is put those connections into some relevant context. In order to do that, I thought I'd interview relatives of the men involved in Jeniah's execution." Deirdre came to faltering halt, suddenly feeling intensely foolish before this ferocious woman.

Judith remained silent for several moments, further exacerbating Deirdre's discomfort. Finally, she growled, "I highly doubt that any of the surviving relatives would be interested in having this particular dialogue with you, Ms. Wilkins."

"You included?" Deirdre heard herself ask and immediately wished she had not.

Judith regarded Deirdre, a knowing light stealing into those impossibly dark eyes. "You really don't have your station's approval to follow this line of inquiry, do you Ms. Wilkins?"

Deirdre wanted to declare unequivocally, that she had the full blessing of her station manager, but there was something in Judith's gaze that would brook no prevarication. "No," she admitted in a small, scarcely recognizable voice. "I wanted to add some substance to the idea before I presented it to the station manager."

"Ah, a woman of initiative," Judith remarked with a luminous smile of approval. "A quality I appreciate."

Judith stepped closer and it required all of Deirdre's considerable discipline not to bolt and run back to her car.

"Actually, perhaps I was a bit premature in approaching you...Judith," Wilkins began haltingly. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time. I'll see myself back to the road."

She turned back to the driveway and had actually taken a step, when Judith caught her right wrist in a shockingly strong grip. "Deirdre, I'd be more than happy to speak to you about grandfather's escapades."

Deirdre's head snapped back to Ranzman and for just the briefest instant, it appeared as if the woman was regarding her with jet black eyes. More horrifying still, Ranzman smiled and her mouth appeared to be full of razor sharp metallic teeth. Wilkins blinked and those grotesque aberrations were gone. Judith was watching her closely, with a cryptic expression set on her lovely face. "I'm not sure if anything I say on the matter might be news worthy, but I'll let you be the judge of that."

Before Deirdre could respond, Judith looped her arm through the other woman's and guided her around to the side yard. "I was in the process of checking the grounds, when I heard your car and came back around. I'd like to finish and then perhaps we could have lunch while I answer your questions."

"Please, I really don't want to inconvenience you," Wilkins objected, desperately wanting to be away from this place and the woman who seemed to radiate something that Wilkins could only describe as blackness.

"Oh, it's no inconvenience at all," Judith insisted, not relinquishing her hold on the blond's arm. "I rarely have visitors and as it looks like it's determined to be a dismal day, the company would be nice. Besides, just before I came around, I discovered something I'm sure you'll find...most fascinating."

Curious, Deirdre arched an eyebrow, but Judith only offered her an inscrutable smile. They entered the side yard with its trees, flowers beds and quarry stone pathways. Wilkins was surprised by the size of the property. Just the wrought iron fence alone must have cost a small fortune.

It was then that she noticed the first of the depressions scattered over the perfectly manicured lawn. They were roughly rectangular and very shallow. Under other circumstances, Deirdre doubted she would have even spotted them, but in her heightened state of anxiety, Wilkins' senses were acutely attuned to everything around her.

' _Graves!'_ she thought frantically. ' _My God, they look like graves.'_

Just then, the pair rounded the corner of the main building and Judith led Wilkins down the slope, in the direction of the rear fence. There, she turned and continued along the path that followed the fence.

"I'm not really sure what to make of this, Deirdre," Judith intoned and then lifted her right arm and pointed at something further along the fence line.

Releasing Deirdre's arm, Judith retreated a few paces. At first, Deirdre could not identify exactly what she was seeing, so grotesquely contorted was the shape at the base of the fence.

Then she recognized the contorted form of the human body, its legs bowed over its head in a way that defied description. Deirdre raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream, but the only sound escaped her mouth was a thin squeak.

Judith reappeared at her side and encircled Deirdre shoulders with her right arm, ushering the horrified reporter forward. "Don't be afraid, Ms. Wilkins. He really is quite dead."

Deirdre turned to Judith, pallid and moon-eyed, and stammered, "Who...who is he?"

Ranzman shifted her gaze to the fly swarmed human detritus. "I believe that would be Knox Severn."

"The kid the police are searching for?"

"The very same," Judith confirmed with the strange chuckle. "I suspect he came to do me harm...and found that my fence is every bit as formidable as it appears."

Deirdre discerned a note of intense satisfaction in the dark beauty's voice, but not the slightest hint of revulsion. Distantly, she heard herself murmur, "Shouldn't we call the police?"

"All in good time, dear," Judith advised. "You did, after all, come here for a story and I believe you found one."

"This...this is what you wanted to show me?" Deirdre managed as fear clawed her insides with icy talons.

"Not precisely," Judith revealed and then marching purposefully over to the slowly desiccating body, she retrieved a satchel. As she returned to Deirdre, the reporter could clearly hear the clatter of metallic objects.

"Judith, you're tampering with potential evidence," Deirdre cautioned, instinctively taking a step away from the approaching woman. "What's in that thing any way?"

"Metallic cylinders...filled with the blood of yesterday's murder victim, I suspect," Judith declared in a dispassionate, matter-of-fact tone. Just then, the strident cries of an owl shattered the late morning silence, drawing Deirdre's gaze to the forest beyond the fence.

In that brief moment of distraction, Judith surged forward, and swung the satchel with both hands. The full weight of the satchel caught Deirdre square on the left side of her face, shattering her cheekbone and sending her sprawling to the lawn.

Wilkins peered up through glazed eyes, her vision swimming, while she gagged on blood pouring down her throat. Judith loomed over her, all mock civility now gone, and rasped, "You signed your death warrant the second you intruded on my privacy, cunt. If it's any consolation, at least you'll die with the answers you came looking for."

Deirdre made a valiant effort to scramble away, with the hope of regaining her feet, but Judith drove the heel of her left boot into the fallen woman's face. Wilkins experienced an explosion of agony as more bones shattered in her face.

The black void opened beneath her and Deirdre Wilkins willingly consigned herself to its embrace.

4

Deirdre gradually emerged from unconsciousness, much to her immediate and agonizing regret.

' _My face, the crazy bitch destroyed my face,'_ was her first semi-coherent thought and that was most certainly true. Judith's petulant heel had, indeed, mashed the thin, perfect nose into a bulbous, bloody ruin that had closed Deirdre's exquisite blue eyes to slits. Her second thought was, _'I'm going to die!'_

She could sense a presence nearby and turned her head to the left, unleashing a firestorm of pain that evoked a garbled cry from Wilkins. When the pain subsided somewhat, Deirdre could make out the bleary form of Judith Ranzman squatting down beside her.

"It seems I allowed my temper to get the best of me again, Deirdre," Judith admitted softly. "I'd like to say that I'm sorry, but that would be a lie neither one of us would believe. Frankly, it felt rather invigorating to smash that beautiful face of yours. If I'm being perfectly candid, I'd confess that it's turned me on like you wouldn't believe."

"You...you're responsible for what's happened in Quinsett?" Deirdre croaked, though the effort of speaking inspired another nauseating was of agony.

Judith threw back her head and laughed, the rich, throaty sound fraught with genuine amusement as it rose to the morning sky. "Good heavens, No! You actually had the right of it, Deirdre. Jeniah Lightcrusher has returned to extract her vengeance...and so much more. She's demonstrated her capacity for compassion and mercy by foregoing her blood debt against me."

In Judith's disclosure, Deirdre could glean the strains of madness and the zealous ring of fanaticism. "Please, don't kill me."

Judith gazed down on Deirdre's battered visage, while continuing to stroke her perspiration-soaked hair. "Oh, I have no intention of killing you Deirdre," Ranzman declared blithely. "While I must say that the idea of dissecting you, piece by twitching piece, is incredibly arousing, the mistress has made it eminently clear that I must be cautious and so I won't kill you."

She abruptly stood up and stepped to the side in one fluid movement. "I'll leave that task to my avian friend."

Through pain-distorted eyes, Deirdre peered up at the towering figure that now loomed over her...a grotesque amalgam of humanoid and owl. She began to scream then, a harrowing cry that reverberated through the grounds of the Ranzman estate and into the forest beyond.

"Shut the fuck up, you whining bitch!" Judith barked irritably and bent down to hook her powerful fingers into the manicured lawn. With only a minimal amount of exertion, she pulled a clump of grass and soil free and abruptly crammed the mass into Deirdre's gaping mouth, cutting off her screams with brutal finality.

A quick pass of the stryge's talons tore out the reporter's exposed throat, thus ending the arc of her ambition-fuelled life. The stryge then set about feasting on her warm flesh while Judith stood by, gazing on as if mesmerized by the gruesome spectacle.

When the beast had sated its hunger, Judith collected one of the silver metallic cylinders and returned to the mangled remains. Removing the screw-on lid, she began to describe a circle around Deirdre's body, slowly pouring the blood from the cylinder as she did. Once the circle had been closed, Judith unzipped her jacket and removed an onyx handled athame from a sheath at her waist. Kneeling outside of the circle, just before Deirdre's feet, Judith drove the ceremonial dagger into the blood-delineated circle. There followed an intense eruption of black flame, consuming the spilled blood, until the entire perimeter was ablaze.

Judith opened her black eyes and mouthed an ancient incantation, her tone and cadence swelling as the flames rose. A guttural rumble shook the earth then, but she continued her entreaty. The earth began to settle and shift beneath Deirdre's corpse. All at once, the ground separated and the body fell into a gaping fissure as though swallowed.

As the earthen walls sloughed in and covered the body, Judith's utterances lost their frenetic urgency. When she at last fell silent, the perfectly manicured lawn had been restored.

All trace of Deirdre Wilkins had been effaced from the world.

Judith recalled that Wilkins' car was still parked on the road. Thinking of Knox Severn's corpse, a notion germinated in Ranzman's dark mind. Whistling merrily, Judith set to work creating her clever misdirection.

Chapter Two

1

It was just after five o'clock, that gray, oppressively gloomy Saturday afternoon, when Sheriff Saddler and special agent Hood returned to the station. The pair had spent the afternoon touring the crime scenes in chronological order of occurrence.

Saddler's impression of the sharp-tongued Hood's likeability did not change during the course of the tour. He did, however, gain a deeper respect for her skills as a law enforcement officer. The woman possessed a sharp, analytical mind that immediately picked up on minute details and the tiniest of discrepancies. Tamara took copious notes and posed logical, well-considered questions.

As the day went on, however, Saddler noticed that Tamara's mood darkened perceptibly and she grew increasingly reticent. At several points during the afternoon, Saddler became aware of her watching him with a look of obvious vexation on her angular face.

Her eyes seemed to glare at him like amber storm clouds, poised to burst. That impending storm broke with a fury the moment the pair entered his office and Tamara closed the door behind her.

"I'm not sure what it is that you see when you look at me, Saddler," Hood erupted, her voice low, but livid with fury. "If you think I'm the bureau's nod to affirmative action...a black female, token officer, you're in for one rude awakening."

"I'm not really sure it is what your issue is, agent Hood, but I don't appreciate your tone and your belligerent attitude is getting old fast," Ray replied evenly as he took his seat. In the bullpen, Saddler noticed that Maria was watching their obviously adversarial exchange, her face a portrait of concern.

Tamara planted her fists on his desk and leaned forward as her lips peeled back in a humorless smile. "At this point, I don't particularly give a damn what you think of my attitude. This morning, you promised me your cooperation..."

"And that's exactly what I've given you," Saddler retorted hotly, knowing that he was losing his composure, something that would prove disastrous for the normally unflappable Sheriff.

Hood straightened and crossed her long arms, her expression becoming sardonic. "Then either you're the dumbest cop I've ever run across or you're deliberately derailing this investigation...in which case, you're skating on perilously thin ice. You'll come to rue playing games with me, Sheriff...I can promise you that."

Saddler averted his eyes and drew a deep, calming breath. Then he gestured toward her forgotten chair and suggested, "Please, this isn't productive...let's keep this civil and save each other a good deal of grief. Tell me exactly how you think I mislead you."

"Why don't we begin with your apparent perception of the situation in Quinsett? It's glaringly obvious that every one of these incidents is connected by a common thread, yet your reports suggest that you're treating them like a series of random and unrelated crimes," Hood complained, her surly tone clearly accusatory.

"You're absolutely right," Saddler conceded candidly. "I admit to being deliberately...vague when briefing you, though my motivations should be rather obvious...or so I hoped."

"Then color me obtuse because I'm just not getting it," Tamara interjected hotly. In an exaggerated southern drawl, she added, "Perhaps you'd better explain it to me...and make it real simple so I understand."

Saddler stiffened, but reminded himself of exactly what was at stake and willed himself to be calm. "There's an obvious occult element at work in this situation and it seems to have a definite, but still undefined connection to the vigilante murder of a woman that took place exactly fifty years ago this coming Thursday. The stories surrounding this woman are what might best be described as an urban myth...but none of the locals are laughing."

"So you're saying that you didn't want to fuel the fires by making the connection a point of public record?" Tamara demanded, but her truculent tone softened, if only marginally.

"Partially, yes, but that's not the entire reason," Saddler allowed, preparing to spin a delicate half-truth. "I wanted to see how you would perceive the situation without imposing my own personal skew on it first."

"Basically, you were testing me," she growled combatively, those large eyes flaring menacingly.

"I prefer to think that I wanted you to draw your own conclusions before comparing notes," Saddler amended. "You want total candor? Then let's be totally forthcoming; there are things happening in Quinsett that defy any rational explanation. You saw the markings burned into Lars Ingstrom's barn. The fire at the hospital and the injuries suffered by Alma Riesen...there is no plausible explanation for how these things could have occurred, but they did. There is no way I could commit the conclusions these incidents suggest to paper and sound lucid or retain any measure of credibility."

Tamara pursed her lips in exasperation and settled into the seat opposite Saddler. "I suppose you're right. So what exactly do you think is happening in your town, Sheriff Saddler?"

Saddler automatically regurgitated the theory he'd embraced earlier this week...an idea disabused by the abomination taking shape at the end of Ringgold Lane, not to mention Veronica's devastating voicemail. Agent Hood listened intently and paraphrased, "So a crazy...or a group of crazies, who are intimately familiar with this...this urban myth, are orchestrating this campaign of violent crime? To commemorate this vigilante murder, they've taken up her life's work, while extracting a measure of revenge in the process...is that about right?"

Saddler shrugged, hoping his expression conveyed the proper degree of bemused sincerity. "That sums it up pretty succinctly."

Tamara shook her head, a gesture suggesting skepticism. "This could be a cover for something...maybe some sort of personal axe grinding. Still, this would be a pretty elaborate scheme to extract some payback. I agree that there are some aspects of the situation...the one's you've mentioned and a few more, that don't fit any conventional mould. Okay, I'm going to exercise my option to reserve judgment on your theory, other than to agree that there is an element of supernatural mumbo-jumbo mixed into this equation. What disturbs me the most is that I cannot see even a trace of a consistent m. o. in any of these incidents. That, in itself, is extremely unusual."

"Some of the details in the last two murders were similar," Saddler pointed out evenly.

Hood nodded. "Possibly, but only superficially so...the Verin murder appears to have been committed in a very ostentatious fashion as if to send some type of message. The last murder seems like a random target of opportunity. I'm sincerely hoping that the condition of both corpses can be attributed to feral animals and not cannibalism."

Saddler agreed, though without much hope. Still, both incidents begged the inevitable question; if he genuinely believed that Veronica (or whatever now resided in her flesh) hadn't committed these last two murders...just who did?

The question heaped another layer of bewildering confusion atop a growing mountain of nightmarish chaos.

Agent Hood was speaking again and Saddler inquired apologetically, "I'm sorry agent Hood. I was wool gathering...what were you saying?"

"There are two other inconsistencies I want you to explain and keep in mind, my patience is stretched to capacity, before you answer."

"I'll do my best, agent Hood," Saddler managed to reply earnestly.

"If we're going to bicker like an old married couple, we might as well be on a first name basis," she remarked mildly, flashing that too-rare, beautiful smile. "Call me Tamara."

Saddler returned the smile, grateful for the opportunity to develop a rapport with the bureau's lead. This was a formidable woman with whom he'd not want to be on adversarial terms. "Ray would do just fine for me."

"Ray it is, then," Tamara agreed and then promptly led Saddler into a minefield, where a single misstep could prove disastrous. "Cameron Crane...I read the report of the Riesen girl's initial disfigurement and I have to ask myself why this man is not being held as a suspect...or at the very least, why he is not the focal point of your investigation? I made a few calls on Crane and his personal history alone would be enough to move him to the top of the suspect list. Cut out of the family fortune and living in squalor, while his brother is one of the wealthiest men in the state. That would irk even a well-adjusted person."

"I questioned Crane personally and at great length," Saddler began carefully, selecting his words with extreme delicacy. "Considering the girl's condition...the inexplicable nature of her injuries...and the presence of another individual, who fled the scene and has still not been located, I made the decision to release Mr. Crane."

Tamara continued to stare silently at Saddler for an extended moment, clearly weighing his response against her own assessment of Cameron Crane's culpability. Finally, she allowed, "That's fine for now, but I'll want Crane back in for questioning again."

"I've no objection to that," Saddler replied, but privately realized it was imperative that he speak to Cameron first. He had dispatched Maria to question Crane earlier in the day and now fervently hoped that the interview had yielded some tangible results.

Tamara nodded, but still radiated a palpable dissatisfaction and it was clear that she deemed his handling of the Crane matter to be lacking. "Okay, now to the white elephant in the room, often accused but never convicted Vincent Scallari...slaughtered in a local cemetery, on the very spot where Alma Riesen had her eyes removed from her head. That, in and of itself, would be enough to dismiss the coincidence angle. When you factor in the location...this Jeniah Lightcrusher's public dole resting place; well, we've progressed far beyond any plausible argument for coincidence. This pretty effectively substantiates your urban myth tie-in." She paused and Saddler could feel it coming like an imminent avalanche, poised to sweep away every vestige of his old life. Both her gaze and tone intensified dramatically as she plunged ahead. "Then there's the matter of finding your wife's name under Scallari's pillow, Ray. The implication is glaringly obvious...Scallari seemed to know he was going to a meeting from which he might not return and he wanted to leave a message of sorts, just in case he didn't. While the connection is vague and cryptic, the possible relationship between your wife and this criminal cannot be ignored."

"Tamara, I can think of no possible way that Veronica could know who Vincent Scallari is, much less actually having any kind of relationship with the man," Saddler insisted firmly.

"Yet Scallari took the time to write her name on a scrap of paper and slide it under his hotel room pillow just before heading off to a fatal meeting," Hood countered relentlessly. "What was your wife's response to this, Ray?"

"I haven't had the chance to speak to her about it," Saddler informed her and went on to explain the circumstances surrounding his wife's departure.

Tamara listened, her inscrutable expression changing only when Saddler mentioned her business stop in Seattle. The pair sat in a contemplative silence for several moments and finally, agent Hood spoke in a tone that made it eminently clear that all authority in this situation was hers. "As a matter of professional courtesy, I'm going to allow you to speak to your wife and ask her...no, tell her to return to Quinsett. If she is not on a plane by the end of the day, tomorrow, I'll be forced to request an arrest warrant and I don't believe either of us wants it to come to that."

Saddler wanted to raise a vociferous objection...a strident protest at the unfair impingement of his wife's honor. Instead, he nodded glumly and promised, "I'll have her on a return flight to Quinsett, tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, Ray," Tamara said, her tone soft and sympathetic. "I can't begin to imagine how difficult this has to be and I'm sure there's a perfectly legitimate explanation why Scallari wrote her name on that slip of paper. Still, I'd be derelict in my duty if I didn't aggressively try to determine just what that connection might be."

Not certain what to say, but certain that some type of response was required, Ray said simply, "I understand, Tamara. With what's happened here in the last week, we can't afford to ignore anything, no matter how remote or implausible."

Tamara nodded, her expression solemn, "Ray, I'm going to request the biggest commitment in resources they'll allow me to have. This situation is like a wildfire and if nothing else, I intend to smother it. I've got a lot of calls to make, so I'd like to set-up in your office if I can."

"It's yours for the duration," Saddler responded distantly and rose to let her have his seat.

Saddler left the federal juggernaut to her work and wandered into the bullpen. As he closed the door behind him, it occurred to Saddler that what remained of his tenure as Quinsett Sheriff could probably be counted in days.

Chapter Three

1

Maria watched from the corner of her eye as a pallid Saddler emerged from his office. His pinched expression and tight-lipped frown succinctly characterized the nature of his dealings with the formidable agent Hood. The woman was a sharp-toothed predator and Maria suddenly found herself feeling maternal and protective towards her new boss.

Saddler stopped at her desk and asked discreetly, "Maria, can we have a word in the lunch room?"

She nodded and rose without further remark, making her way to the staff room that was located just behind the dispatcher's office. She could sense Saddler following her and could actually feel his carefully concealed anguish, radiating like heat from a furnace.

When they entered the staff room, Saddler leaned against the kitchenette counter and asked, "Anything useful come from questioning Cameron?"

"Yes...and no," Maria replied cryptically. Saddler's brow furrowed and she went on to elaborate, "He admitted that his grandfather spoke to him about what transpired the night of the ritual...at great lengths and on many occasions in the last years of his life."

"How did he react to your bringing up the specific subject of Jeniah's ritual?"

"He appeared genuinely surprised, at first," she disclosed, her brow furrowing at the recollection. "When he realized that I was being quite serious, his demeanor became perplexed...distrustful."

With this, Saddler appeared to sag perceptibly as if his one venue of hope had just eroded to dust. Maria shook her head and stepped closer. "Ray, he agreed to speak...in fact, he was very anxious to do so, but only to you personally. He asked if I could bring you to him, but in light of our present company, I judged it might be...imprudent."

"That was an astute decision, believe me Maria," Saddler commended. "We're going to have to be cautious. Tamara Hood has the instincts of a scalpel. If she gains any inkling we're working to our own agenda, we're likely to end up in our own cells. Did Cameron give any indication of why he would only speak to me?"

Cordova shook her head. "Nothing, other than to say that he had information about the situation in Quinsett only you would understand. He was very adamant in claiming that it was critical he speak with you today. I told him I would do what I could to arrange a meeting. During the entire time, he was extremely agitated."

"You did well, Maria," Saddler remarked. He then provided his deputy with by abbreviated recap of his day with agent Hood. "She reacted pretty much the way I expected she would, but it only emphasized just how precarious our situation is. She wants to question Crane and she wants Veronica back in Quinsett by tomorrow night."

"I'm sorry, Ray," Maria commiserated softly, recalling how she's advised against divulging Scallari's cryptic note.

Again, she detected a brief glimpse of the enormous anguish lingering behind those blue eyes, there and gone in an instant. "Maria, a great deal has happened, but I just can't talk about it here. When your shift ends, I want you to go home and change into civilian clothes. Then I would like you to pick up Cameron Crane and bring him to my house. Once I've heard what Cameron has to tell me, I'd like the two of us to go out for dinner or a drink. A lot has happened that I need to talk about and I want to bring you up to speed." Saddler hesitated for a moment, averting his gaze to the tiled floor. "I'm reluctant to drag you any deeper into this, but things have taken an unexpected turn...one that I'm not certain that I can deal with alone."

Maria overrode his reservation with a brusque wave of her right hand. "I promised you yesterday that I would stand by you on this until the end. Nothing will change that...as long as you're forthcoming with me."

"You have my assurance on that, along with my eternal gratitude," Saddler declared in a voice made harsh with emotion. "If you can bring Cameron by at nine o'clock...I have a phone call to make and I anticipate it's going to be a difficult one."

"Veronica?" Cordova inquired softly.

Saddler nodded, but could not meet those limpid dark eyes. "I've got to convince her to come back to Quinsett...and I've got to muster the courage to ask her the questions I've been avoiding since the night Orlin and Scallari were killed. The most dreadful part is that I think I already know the answers."

His voice trailed off to nothing and she arched an exquisitely tapered eyebrow in response to that final baffling statement. He shot her a glance that was a silent plea for patience, which she acknowledged with an understanding nod. Glancing up at the clock above the sink, Maria saw that it was ten to seven. Moving to the door, she paused, "I'll finish up and head home. Then I'll collect Cameron at 8:30 or so and be at your house by nine."

Saddler watched her leave and then buried his face, feeling bone weary and dejected. Part of him utterly dreaded Cameron Crane's revelation almost as much as he dreaded the telephone call that he, nonetheless, could not extricate himself from placing.

He retreated to the bullpen to find that both Art and Kort had arrived for the nightshift. Albert and Tim had returned from a day of patrolling and Saddler was relieved when they reported that nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. In a low, conspiratorial whisper, Albert reported that his interview with Stuart Crane had yielded nothing of value...an outcome that did not particularly surprise Saddler. He, in turn, apprised the four of the new protocol, now that the Feds were in charge, and then bid them good night.

He checked in with agent Hood, who was thoroughly engrossed in her work. She offered him a dismissive wave good night, without raising her head from her notes.

Collecting Barney, Saddler stepped out into the rain and deepening dusk, feeling more alone than he ever had in his life.

2

The clink of ice cubes striking crystal was impossibly loud in the silence of Raymond Dwyer's den. He followed the cubes with three fingers of Glenlivet Scotch, but deciding that a forth was in order, splashed more into the glass before slumping disconsolately back into his chair.

The vintage oak desk was a vast expanse of highly polished wood except for three items; an ornate brass and crystal tensor lamp, the aforementioned glass of Scotch and a loaded nine millimeter pistol. Dwyer regarded the pistol morosely; doubting that it would afford much protection against what he now believed was stalking the town...and him.

"Fucking crazy bitch...why couldn't you have just stayed dead?" he complained, his plaintive whine distorted by his day-long and unsuccessful attempt to douse his fears with alcohol.

Unlike the nebulous and non-specific fear that had crept over much of the town, Raymond Dwyer knew exactly what and who he was afraid of. The thought of his terror had left him immobilized...emasculated like a frightened child cowering in the dark...waiting for its worst nightmare to materialize.

Dwyer doubted that Ira Silver or Stuart Crane was suffering this unmanning level of dread. They might feel a strong sense of disquiet, to be sure, but both men were too trenchantly pragmatic to ever accept that a malefic specter from the past had returned to extract revenge upon the group.

Judith Ranzman was far too absorbed in her incessant battle with her personal demons to be cognizant of anything but her own appetites.

Raymond Dwyer, however, accepted without equivocation, that there were things that capered in shadow and leered from darkened corners. These things were voracious and remorseless and they could not be appeased with money or dissuaded by position or influence.

Dwyer drained half of the glass' contents in one draught and then snatched up the pistol. For a brief instant, he contemplated shoving the barrel into his mouth and putting and emphatic end to this insufferable fear. Instead, he clutched the weapon to his chest and with Scotch in hand, made a meandering exit into the cavernous living area of his sprawling home.

When he had sent the family packing, earlier that morning, it had been his every determined intention to be leaving with them. He desperately wanted to put as much distance between himself and this accursed town as the country's asphalt ribbon would allow.

That fervent desire had evaporated like fading hope, just as he'd been loading the travel cases into the trunk of his Cadillac.

He had sensed its malign gaze upon his back as he placed the cases into the trunk's shadowy recesses. Like the whisper of a malign infection or a virulent poison, that gaze had traced the curve of his spine like a palpable touch. Dwyer had straightened and spun about, his narrowed eyes scanning the towering trees that delineated his property.

It stood in the shadow of a towering Redwood, regarding him with improbably large golden eyes. Their baleful glare reminded him of lanterns on the devil's personal carriage. The alcohol-addled fog occluded the exact memory of what it was Raymond Dwyer had seen in the forest, but the intent...the terrible promise in those inhuman eyes could not be ignored or misconstrued.

With preternatural clarity, Dwyer understood that this horrible abomination would kill him if he attempted to leave.

The incontrovertible truth of this vibrated in the marrow of his bones and the pit of his viscera. Resigned, Dwyer had walked back into the house to inform his wife and family that he would not be accompanying them.

His wife had raised a vehement objection to the idea of his remaining behind, but he had tenaciously overridden her arguments and fears. Finally, she had capitulated and he had watched his family drive away with tears streaming down his corpulent face.

Raymond Dwyer had little doubt that he would never see them again. His gaze swept the surrounding forest, but the hideous creature was gone, which he interpreted as a sign of having made a wise decision in remaining behind.

Dwyer came back to himself standing in the center of his spacious living room, peering through the floor to ceiling bank of windows. The windows overlooked the rear yard of the property's extensive grounds, falling away to a small, stony brook that meandered through one end of his property.

In his inebriated state, Dwyer had neglected to activate the exterior lights that would have illuminated the yard with a muted yellow glow.

It was because of this uncharacteristic bit of negligence that Dwyer noticed as the first of the golden specks flickered into being. Transfixed, the gun hanging forgotten in his right hand, Dwyer watched in entranced wonder as more of the tiny lights flickered to life. The odd process continued until the entire rear lawn was bathed in a soothing golden glow. There was something comforting and seductive about this improbable curtain of shimmering golden effulgence.

Watching, the expression on his perspiration-soaked face was one of contentment. Raymond Dwyer could feel the weight of his fears slough away. Barely cognizant of his own actions, he felt himself drift across the marble floor as if he'd suddenly become insubstantial...spectral. He could not drag his eyes away from the undulating curtain of exquisite golden light. It appeared to dance...an intricate ballet choreographed for his personal pleasure. He deposited his Scotch glass on a Mahogany runner table as he drifted toward the exterior door that opened onto the terrace.

Outside, the light began to gutter and flare in a discernable rhythm that only augmented its hypnotic beauty. Dwyer opened the door and stepped out onto the cool stone, still clutching his gun. A low susurration reached his ears and he inhaled deeply, breathing the cool dusk air while continuing to watch the beguiling display at the rear of his manicured lawn.

The instant Dwyer stepped over the threshold, the door swung shut behind him and he heard the lock engage with a distinct and audible click. Cursing, he turned back to the door and gave the handle a petulant tug.

' _Calm down...your keys are in your pocket,'_ he chastised himself. Behind him, the entrancing curtain of light had vanished, plunging the rear yard into a thick, brooding darkness.

Struggling to hold his resurgent terror at bay, Dwyer waded into the pooling shadows and began to make his way toward the front of the house. Despite the return of his debilitating fear, he retained the presence of mind to disengage the safety.

Dwyer saw the first of the floating golden globes, the instant he rounded the corner of the house. As he crept through the darkness, one hand pressed against the wet brick for guidance, Dwyer counted seven pairs of the luminescent orbs hovering in the trees.

"Keep away from me...I'll shoot...don't think I won't," he screamed, his voice rising through the octaves to a shrewish cackle.

"What the fuck are you babbling about, Dwyer?" A voice demanded and the lawyer bellowed another womanish cry of shock and alarm.

He swiveled the gun in the direction from which the voice had issued, very nearly discharging the weapon as he did. Recognition filtered through the roar of rushing blood in his ears and he inquired, "Judith?"

"Yes," she replied, her tone somewhere between disgust and contempt. "Now put the gun down before you blow your own fucking balls off."

The vulgarity was signature Judith and Dwyer relaxed sufficiently to lower the weapon and engage the safety. "Did you not see the lights hovering in the trees?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Raymond, and just what are you doing running around in the dark with a gun?" Judith demanded.

Dwyer could offer no rational response to either question and countered with a query of his own. "What are you doing here, Judith?"

Dwyer had known Judith for most of her life, but he had never encountered her outside of Crane's informal group meetings. Not only did they not run in the same social circle (if Judith, indeed, had a social circle), but they'd never even met by random chance on the streets of Quinsett.

Never once did she come to Dwyer's home, which lent her sudden appearance a decidedly sinister aspect.

Judith appeared to recognize his agitation because she retreated several steps, until she was partially visible in the front yard's inadequate light. "I've come to speak to you about...our mutual problem. I also want to speak to Ira and Stuart, but I didn't think it would be wise to gather in one spot at the moment. I think I've uncovered the source of our current woes, Dwyer."

That particular revelation washed over Raymond Dwyer like a ray of sunshine. He lowered the gun, but did not engage the safety. His misgivings over Judith's unexpected appearance vanished, banished by the prospect that she might actually have found a way to extricate them from this horrible predicament.

"What have you found out?" He asked in a voice childlike in its eagerness.

Ranzman planted her fists on her hips and shook her head in consternation. "If you actually think I'm going to discuss this with you while standing out in the fucking rain, then you really must be drunk."

"Sorry Judith. Let's go inside," Dwyer murmured sheepishly. Ranzman turned and marched along the front of the building, indifferent to the carnage her boots were wreaking on a Nola Dwyer's flowerbeds. Dwyer trailed after her, noticing the heavy satchel that Judith carried effortlessly over her left shoulder, for the first time. Though insufficient, the ambient light enabled Dwyer to make out the shape of a long wooden handle protruding from the bag, which appeared to bulge under its burden.

That bulging satchel evoked fresh tremors of disquiet in Dwyer's frazzled mind, but he dismissed them as baseless paranoia. Judith was vulgar (in a contrived sort of way) and irrationally protective of her privacy, but Dwyer knew her to also be an astute businesswoman, with a keen, no-nonsense mind. If she claimed to have come upon some valuable insight into the groups' current misery, he and the others would be well advised to pay her heed.

When they came to the paving stone walkway that twisted up to the main entrance, Judith stepped deferentially to one side, allowing Dwyer to take the lead. They approached to the main door and Dwyer fished his house keys on his left front pocket.

"You mentioned having found the source of our problem?" Dwyer inquired, trying to sound nonchalant, but missing the mark by a considerable margin.

"Indeed," Judith exclaimed blithely. "The source of our biggest problem would be your continued existence, Raymond...a problem I'm about to rectify."

Dwyer straightened, and as he did, caught a glimpse of Judith's ghastly reflection in the glass of his front door. His eyes widened in shock and terror.

Her black eyes regarded him above a smile comprised of darning needle teeth. The blade of Judith's Athame had sliced open Dwyer's throat, from ear to ear, before he could so much as begin to turn. The lawyer fumbled his keys and reflexively pulled the trigger of his 9 mm. The gun had been aimed down and slightly in front of Dwyer. The bullet struck the thick stone slab and ricocheted back, tearing into the obese lawyer's groin.

The report of the pistol was incredibly loud in the isolated silence of the country. Ranzman cursed as Dwyer toppled onto his face where he gurgled an inarticulate plea for mercy.

When Judith noticed where the bullet had struck, she uttered a derisive laugh and quipped, "I told you that you'd blow your balls off with that thing."

Dwyer's glazed eyes stared sightlessly while his body twitched a spastic death jig.

Judith deftly snatched up the fallen house keys and opening the front door, dragged the gushing corpse over the threshold. As an afterthought, she retrieved the gun and kicked the door close behind her.

It would have been impossible to mistake that gunshot for anything but what it was. Considering the pall of fear hanging over Quinsett, not to mention the empty streets as a consequence of the curfew, it was highly probable that the police would be dispatched to investigate.

Knowing the time was of the essence, and understanding that she simply couldn't be discovered here, Judith hastily set about her work. The carefully arranged display would send a powerful message to the two men whose debt to Jeniah remained unpaid.

After a moment's consideration, Judith cleared the center of the living room area, and then dragged Dwyer's body across the marble tiles. She quickly removed his bloodstained clothing, grimacing at the sight of his repulsive rolls of fat that reminded her of over boiled chicken. She then splayed his limbs and began to empty the contents of her satchel, methodically arranging the implements near Dwyer's chilling corpse.

Mordecai Crane would have recognized the array of items and tools, had he been present to watch the familiar go about her work. There was a double headed axe, honed to a lethal edge, four rail spikes and a five pound short-handled sledgehammer.

When Judith had absorbed the staggering sum total of Jeniah's enormous collective memory, she had seized upon the moment of her mistress's first demise. Ever inventive in her cruelty, Judith decided that a re-creation of that grim night would send a powerful and unequivocal message to those foolish enough to oppose her mistress.

Judith removed her coat and meticulously folded it over a nearby chair. Then she retrieved the two headed axe and returned to Dwyer's corpse, administering a petulant kick to its head as she did.

With a maniacal grin twisting her lovely face, Judith spread her legs, squared her shoulders and raised the axe.

Sometime later, Judith sprinted away from her repulsive work of death art, humming merrily as she ran.

Chapter Four

1

Saddler carried Barney up the stairs and sat the small dog on the covered veranda. He stood regarding the door to the family home with a bleak expression on his face, as if he was contemplating the very doorway to hell.

In reality, it was hard to consider this house as the family home. It would be closer to the truth to say that this amalgam of wood and glass, concrete and mortar was the catalyst for the demise of his family.

' _Or perhaps the illusion of family,'_ Saddler murmured and then shook his head in consternation, wondering where that thought had found its origins. Finally, he unlocked the house and stepped into the empty kitchen that abruptly struck him as devoid of any lingering sense of family. He retrieved food from the fridge for Barney and set out a bowl of fresh water. He then knelt and played with the dog for several minutes, before coming to the realization that he was unconsciously delaying the dreaded phone call.

He fetched a quavering breath, scooped up the terrier and carried him into the family room, setting the dog down on a sofa cushion beside him. Outside, the rain had begun to intensify, its incessant tattoo providing a mournful backbeat for the call he was about to place. Knowing that this one conversation would signify the probable end of the life he'd come to cherish, Saddler punched out the numbers with slightly trembling fingers.

Arthur Ashcott's voice filled the earpiece, clipped, precise with subtle undertones of condescension. When he recognized that it was his son-in-law calling, a hint of distaste was added to that catalogue of vocal traits. "Saddler, I've been hearing about your quaint backwater village on the news."

Ray grimaced upon learning that his town's plight had become fodder for the national news. Given the sensational nature of the murders, Saddler knew it was inevitable, but that did little to make its arrival any more palatable. "We're in a pretty grim situation here, Arthur," Saddler allowed evenly. "The FBI is landing in force, so I'm hoping we can find the culprits in short order."

"Let's hope," Arthur replied in a tone that intimated he had his serious reservations. "This isn't exactly the Norman Rockwell rural town my daughter's been dragged off to, Saddler."

Saddler bit back the acerbic rejoinder, adamantly refusing to accept the bait. "Speaking of Veronica, I really need to speak to her, Arthur."

"Not possible, Saddler. She hasn't arrived from Seattle," Ashcott informed him, causing Saddler to blink in genuine surprise.

"Hasn't arrived?" He echoed. "I thought she was scheduled in before noon?"

"Originally she was, but she called earlier this morning to say that her business in that rain sodden slum would delay her arrival. Emerson will be picking her up at LAX on the 11:15 flight."

Saddler frowned, struck by the intuitive certainty that something was drastically off with her disclosure. "Arthur, when Veronica arrives, I need her to call me irrespective of the time. Even if a flight is delayed and she arrives in the middle of the night, it's imperative that she reaches me tonight. Can you promise me you'll have to call me, Arthur?"

There was a protracted moment of silence and finally, with obvious reluctance, Ashcott replied, "I will, but I need to know...is something wrong with my little girl?"

Ray inhaled, unable to ignore the genuine anguish resonating in the older man's voice. If nothing else could be said about Arthur Ashcott, he loved his daughter wholeheartedly and without reservation.

"Arthur, I can't really say more. Given what I've just requested and the tone of urgency it suggests, I know how unfair that is. I need Veronica to call me once she arrives...and I need her on a plane back to Quinsett by tomorrow evening at the latest."

This last disclosure was met by a burst of sputtering, indignant outrage. "Back to Quinsett...with everything that's happened there? My daughter isn't going anywhere near that godforsaken backwater bog until it's safe."

"Arthur, just have her call me," Saddler reiterated, feeling unbearably weary.

He was about to hang up when Ashcott threatened, "If you embroil Veronica in this awful business...especially after what she did to secure your petty, bureaucrat position and allow you to feel like a man again, I will see you ruined, Saddler."

Saddler blinked and held the handset away from his ear, regarding it with unfettered shock and dismay. When he could trust himself not to erupt at Ashcott, he demanded, "What the hell are you talking about, Arthur?"

There was an extended moment of silence and Saddler imagined Ashcott chastising himself for divulging something he was clearly not meant to hear. Still, Saddler refused to relent. The implications of that malice-fuelled statement were too terrible to ignore. "Arthur, what did you mean?"

Seeing that there was little room for obfuscation or evasion, Arthur Ashcott offered an irked sigh and remarked, "There are times when my irritation gets the better of my judgment...this is one of them. Veronica made me give her a solemn vow never to utter a word of this. I let the beast out of the cage, so it's a bit late for regrets. I've known Ira Silver for years, Saddler. We are not precisely what you describe as friends, but we are well acquainted. Veronica is an Ashcott, and when she decided she wants something, she's tenacious and resourceful. When you decided that a policing tenure in the woods was to your liking, Veronica took aggressive steps to insure that you have your wish."

"Aggressive steps?" Saddler heard himself echo in a voice he barely recognized.

"Veronica made a point of learning the names of the selection board members. She recognized Ira Silver, and knowing that we were acquaintances, asked if I would make a personal recommendation on your behalf. That entreaty was an extravagant blow to her pride, Saddler...I hope you appreciate that. Since we're sharing painful admissions, I'll further disclosed that Ira was leery of hiring a man with such...unfavorable notoriety associated with his name. He elected to ignore those reservations and offer you the position. This is a world of quid pro quo, Saddler and now I'm beholding to Ira Silver...a shrewd Jew who will inevitably take full advantage of that fact. I can assure you that being indebted to someone like Ira Silver is a position in which I'm loath to find myself. Fortunately for you Saddler, that aversion is nowhere near as strong as my inability to suffer the sight of my beautiful daughter in desperate need." Ashcott fell silent and though the scathing recrimination went unspoken...that Saddler would bear full responsibility for any ill fortune that befell Veronica...the message was perfectly clear.

"Tell Veronica to call me the minute she arrives, Arthur," Saddler managed, even as intense anguish tightened about his chest like constricting hoops of steel.

"Now listen here, Saddler," Ashcott grumbled, his tone indignant. Saddler hung up, the phone slipping from his fingers. His gaze slid to Barney, who was regarding him intently, with an expression that might actually have been concerned or empathy. A small sound escaped his lips then, a fluttering exhalation fraught with anguish.

Veronica had engineered his position here...had gone so far as to beg her father to intervene on his behalf. This awful revelation was fraught with so many grim implications of that Saddler felt overwhelmed...numb in the face of the turn of events almost too terrible to contemplate.

Still, the part of his mind from which his every instinct as a cop found its origins, would not be dissuaded by the enormous weight of his misery. ' _It had been Veronica who encouraged you to consider taking a position outside of LA in the first place.'_

An unavoidable and devastating truth, this realization threw open the door to the blackest of speculations. If Saddler elected to traverse this particular dark highway, its ultimate destination would be the belief that Veronica had been thoroughly corrupted long before she ever set foot in Quinsett. Could it be that every step in his dissent from the nadir of his career with the LAPD to this nightmare in Quinsett had been carefully scripted, with no latitude for deviation? He waded back through the turbulence of his raging thoughts in hopes of recollecting if it would have been he or Veronica who had first come across the Quinsett Sheriff's posting. To his consternation, he found that he could not recall, although Saddler wondered if this was the subconscious denial of a damning truth simply too terrible to accept.

Saddler couldn't marshal the courage to explore that dark territory and so he forced it from his thoughts, knowing full well that he was merely postponing the inevitable moment of absolute reckoning. Yet, even if Veronica had not choreographed every step along the path to this excruciatingly painful moment of epiphany, Saddler could not rationalize the truth of her actions in ensuring that he procured the position here in Quinsett. Going to the extreme of using her father's influence to sway a board member spoke eloquently of many things, none of which were complementary. If he had learned this under other, more mundane circumstances, Saddler realized that he would still be afflicted by the same terrible sense of personal betrayal.

The supportive, sympathetic wife was a mere façade for woman who perhaps feared that she had made a misjudgment, but simply could not bring herself to admit as much. It was hard to accept the fact that she regarded him as anything other than a damaged millstone that could potentially drag her down if she did not take radical steps to rescue him. That was probably incorrect, not to mention harshly unfair, but it was difficult to reconcile the image of a forthright, caring wife with the woman who would plead with her father to help find her floundering husband gainful employment.

Saddler shook his head and ran his fingers through his thick brown hair, knowing that even if there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for Veronica's name being found in Scallari's hotel room (not to mention, Orlin's notebook), Arthur's purportedly accidental disclosure had inflicted irreparable damage upon their marriage.

Glancing at Barney, Saddler intoned with mock levity, "Well boy, one stinging betrayal deserves another."

With this, Saddler rose and crossed the darkened family room, pausing for a moment before opening the double doors to Veronica's office. What could he find on the other side of these doors that wouldn't gouge deeper wounds into his already brutalized psyche?

' _How much more can you take?'_ he inquired of himself and realized that there was no limit to the scourging he would willingly endure. The days to come would provide him with innumerable opportunities to recant on that particular sentiment, but for the moment, Saddler subscribed to the notion that he was somehow culpable in Veronica's undoing. He threw open the door and stepped inside, the way a soldier might enter hostile and foreign terrain. One of the many inconsistencies that had been troubling him in the last two days had been Veronica's supposed business trip to Seattle. It was true that Veronica deliberately spared him reports on the minutia of her daily business affairs, but she was considering a possible expansion into the Seattle area, it would've been a subject that she would mention. Yet, here she was flying off to engage in a series of mysterious business meetings there, though she had never previously mentioned having any sort of business associations in the city. That oddity, when combined with the fact that the late Vincent Scallari made his home there, cast a suspicious light over this sudden trip.

Barney had followed Saddler into Veronica's study and Ray noticed the small dog did not venture far inside the double doors, but rather stood near the exit with a low growl issuing from deep in his chest.

"It's okay, Barney," he reassured the dog, but even as he mouthed this platitude, Saddler was cognizant of something inherently wrong with this space...like a discordant note that was so low as to be barely audible.

Saddler crossed over to Ronnie's desk and sat down in her wood and leather antique chair. He switched on the power source and her computer screen blazed into life, filling the shadows with its harsh glare. While he waited for the machine to boot up, Saddler tried each of the six doors of the oak writing desk.

He was not particularly surprised to discover that they were locked. He considered the drawers for a brief moment and reaching for a letter opener, jammed the heavy blade into the opening and deliberately broke the lock. There followed a flash of intense white light and Ray found himself being propelled backwards until the chair struck an unyielding surface and toppled over, spilling a stunned Saddler to the area rug.

Barney began to bark and run in small, agitated circles as the smell of charred metal permeated the air of the study, cloying and thick. Saddler pushed himself to his feet, eyeing the desk warily, and saw that the area around the lock had been severely scorched by whatever had just transpired.

"It's okay, Barney...everything is fine," he called, trying to placate the anxious dog without taking his eyes off the desk. The dog gave one plaintive whimper and then settled down next to the door, though his posture suggested that he was ready to bolt at the first hint of any further strangeness.

Saddler switched on Veronica's tensor lamp and positioned it so that he could have better light in which to examine the demolished lock. The lock was an utter ruin...nothing more than a molten piece of slag. He whistled and tentatively extended his right index finger to discover that the lock was still hot to the touch.

' _Jesus, this thing was actually booby trapped,'_ he thought, totally dismayed by the incredible notion that his wife had actually rigged this device. Squinting at the damaged lock, Saddler didn't want to contemplate what might have happened had he actually tried to use brute force to pull the drawer open with his hand. Again, this action was so radically inconsistent with the woman that he thought he knew and loved, that he could scarcely credit what his eyes insisted was true. Two questions immediately clamored for his attention...what exactly was she so desperate to hide that she would resort to booby trapping her work desk, and just how the hell had she managed to do it? It was absurd, of course...totally fatuous, but it seemed as thought the drawer had been protected by some type of electrical field.

Sliding two fingers under the antique handle, Saddler slowly opened the top drawer. The tensor lamp revealed a neatly arranged collection of ordinary office supplies. A search of the bottom and middle drawers yielded similar results. Saddler repeated his methodical search on the series of drawers on the left side of the desk and again found nothing that could be considered unusual, much less sinister. Shaking his head in bemusement, he sat back and propped his chin on his right first.

' _If there's nothing incriminating in the desk, why go to such diabolical lengths to deny entry?'_ he wondered and glanced down at the blackened hunk of twisted metal that had once been Veronica's ornate letter opener. It suddenly occurred to Saddler that he was considering the situation from the wrong perspective. _'Perhaps she hadn't been trying to protect what was there, but rather, what wasn't there.'_

He slid the top drawer open again and immediately saw what he was looking for...her leather bound agenda. He removed the agenda and placed it on the desk, inhaling deeply as he did.

"Nails in the coffin," he muttered and then uttered a humorless chuckle. In all of their years together, Saddler had never entertained the notion of invading Veronica's sanctuary and now here he was, rummaging through her private papers like a common thief. The very presence of this agenda...a tool Ronnie employed to great effect in managing her business...suggested that something was amiss. That she would head off to a supposed business meeting without it was unthinkable...and yet, here it was.

With no small degree of reluctance, Saddler flipped the pages until he came to yesterday's journal page...only to discover that it was empty. Shaking his head in bemusement, he flipped backward through the dates and found that the week's pages were similarly empty...all the way back to Monday.

' _The day she took the mysterious ride up Ringgold Lane,'_ he thought and could not forestall the anguished groan that escaped his lips. It seemed that the genesis of whatever malign change had overcome Ronnie's nature could be traced back to that day, though there were still subtle intimations that the root cause of her thorough corruption originated further back in the past. Suddenly, Saddler turned to her computer and began scouring her files, particularly her new e-mail storage files, and found that nothing had been sent out after Monday morning. Conversely, the in-box was full of messages that had gone unacknowledged and unanswered.

Saddler stood and began to pace around the office, while Barney watched him warily. As much as he wished he could find a way to avoid the obvious implications of Veronica's sudden negligence of her business, Saddler was forced to acknowledge two salient truths...Veronica had encountered something at the end of Ringgold Lane, either by chance or design, and that _something_ had supplanted her will...transforming her somehow.

The question, however, remained unanswered...what exactly had she become? If he was really of a mind to indulge morbid contemplations, he would ask himself instead, _'Exactly who had she been all along?'_

He was taking the first depressing steps down this dark and depressing path of speculation when the doorbell rang.

2

Raymond Saddler's first glimpse of Maria Cordova literally took his breath away and all thoughts of his tribulations and the shambles of his life were momentarily forgotten. Her thick black hair spilled over her shoulders in a lustrous onyx cascade. It was swept away from her face on one side, revealing the full weight of her beauty. She wore a blood red sweater cinched at her tiny waist by a shiny black belt. Her simple blue jeans clung lovingly to her shapely legs.

Saddler realized that he was staring (and that his mouth was probably hanging agape as well) and quickly averted his eyes to the shadowy figure, standing on the top step of his veranda. He stepped back and gestured for the pair to come in out of the steady rain. Despite his best intentions, Saddler could not help stealing one furtive glance at the enticing sway of Maria's hips as she glided into his kitchen.

Shaking his head in genuine dismay at his behavior, Saddler turned his attention to Cameron Crane and that terrible weight of enormous burden crashed back down upon him in an instant. Aside from being neatly groomed and better attired than the night he'd been detained, Cameron looked like a man beleaguered by demons too numerous to account. There was a desperate, haunted light in his eyes that elicited a shudder from Saddler.

There was something else as well...something that Ray found both puzzling and vaguely troubling...Crane appeared both embarrassed and sheepish to be in his presence. Saddler shook off his renewed sense of foreboding. It had, after all, become his constant companion over the last few days.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet under these circumstances. This investigation has now fallen under federal jurisdiction. I have questions to ask that might be frowned upon by the people now in charge and I believe discretion is required. Maria tells me that you are familiar with the ritual Jeniah Lightcrusher was attempting to conduct the night she was killed. I think it's critical that I know exactly what happened...and what didn't happen that night."

Cameron's eyes cut momentarily to Maria and he remarked softly, "Sheriff, if we could speak privately, I can answer your questions and I have other information you need to know."

Without equivocation, Saddler countered, "Whatever you have to say to me, you can do so in front of Maria. Along with Albert Huxley, she's helping me conduct this unofficial inquiry."

An expression of extreme discomfort rippled across Cameron's face, but he nodded his agreement. Saddler ushered the pair into the family room. After the three were seated and Barney had jumped up to take his now customary seat beside his new friend, Saddler struck directly to the heart of the issue. "Cameron, we suspect that everything presently happening in Quinsett is directly related to what transpired that night."

Cameron Crane's eyes widened and he inhaled sharply, but he withheld comment. Both Saddler and Maria noticed Crane's sharp reaction and exchanged glances. Cautiously encouraged, Saddler continued, "Any information...however implausible it might seem, concerning what happened that night could be extremely helpful."

Cameron continued to stare at Saddler, an uncharacteristically intense glimmer burning in his normally placid gray eyes. Finally, he began, "It was my grandfather, Mordecai, who actually killed Jeniah Lightcrusher. Five others accompanied him that night, but it was Mordecai who actually fired the shots and..." Here, Cameron faltered perceptibly, "and did the other things after she was dead."

Saddler was suffused by sudden impatience, discerning that he was now on the cusp of a significant insight, but willed himself not to badger the clearly troubled Crane. "Take your time, Cameron. What I'm looking for is in the specifics of what this woman was attempting to do when your grandfather and the others interrupted her."

This provoked another sharp reaction from Cameron, who leaned forward and asked in a tone that was half plea and half demand, "What exactly do you think is happening in Quinsett, Sheriff? I know about what happened that night...and a few things that happened since, but before I tell you, I need to know how you perceive this...this situation."

Saddler automatically shifted his gaze to Maria, who nodded slightly as if to convey her accent and encouragement. "Officially, we believe that the incidents of the last week are the work of an individual, or individuals, obsessed with the legend of this woman Jeniah Lightcrusher. The patterns suggest that they are conducting a twisted campaign of revenge against the families of the men who killed Jeniah. It's also conceivable that they intend to re-enact this ritual your grandfather interrupted."

"But unofficially?" Cameron prompted eagerly.

Saddler pursed his lips, searching for the proper words that were leading, yet still nebulous. "Unofficially, the three of us suspect that the root causes are considerably more...macabre."

Cameron felt a surge of elation, but cautioned himself not to misconstrue Saddler's admission to conform to the demands of his own desperate need. Allowing that something was substantially more bizarre than a normal event was hardly the same as embracing the notion that a malign spirit was orchestrating a campaign of evil in Quinsett.

Still, the fact that he was here at all, discussing Jeniah under these circumstances, illustrated that Saddler had strayed far beyond the bounds of conventional thinking. Feeling moderately hopeful, Cameron began to tell his tale, scouring his mind for the smallest forgotten detail, however fantastical that tidbit of information might seem. He delivered his recollections in an even, dispassionate voice. Cameron noticed how both Saddler and Maria's face blanched in revulsion as he described Jeniah's use of a child's corpse in her ritual. He concluded with a graphic account of the manner in which the group had disposed of Jeniah. Both listeners were ashen faced by the time Crane concluded his tale. Maria Cordova shuddered perceptibly and hugged herself in an unconscious gesture of revulsion.

When Crane fell silent, an electric tension permeated the house, while the two struggled to internalize what they had just been told. Finally, Saddler inquired, "Did your grandfather ever speculate on the purpose of Jeniah's ritual?"

"Actually, he never did other than to say that the group had prevented something terrible...at least, temporarily. According to the Indian who had advised the group, he was supposed to behead her while she was alive and staked within her own pentagram." Cameron allowed the pair of moment to absorb the grim reality of that awful task. "Mordecai simply couldn't bring himself to do it...so he shot her instead."

"Do you believe the last part of his story, Cameron?" Maria inquired, her tone clearly skeptical. "That last segment where he finds himself alone with the woman's corpse?"

Cameron looked directly at her, his handsome face an amalgam of warring emotions. "By the time grandfather told me the story of that night, his health had started to fail and he was often...distracted. You ask if I believe his account of that night. Yes I do...every word."

"But he didn't or couldn't tell you what she was hoping to achieve with this ritual?" Saddler queried again, his disappointment readily apparent.

"He didn't...but someone else did," Cameron revealed and provided the pair with a brief retelling of his trip to visit Father Crimmon in Olympia.

"Open doors!" Maria exclaimed. Turning to a mystified Saddler, she reminded him, "Do you recall my first assignment to Seattle and the pentagram burned into Ingstrom's barn?"

She abruptly fell silent, the horrified expression dawning on her beautiful face along with the realization that she just disclosed confidential information in front of a witness. Saddler waived her faux pas aside with the casual shrug. "It's okay Maria. Cameron can probably be of greater help if he is fully aware of everything that's transpired. You were saying..."

Still scandalized by her own breach of protocol, she took up the thread of her previous thought. "The professor described that pentagram as an instrument of evocation; in other word...the opening of doors."

"Okay, so it's fairly safe to say that Jeniah's ritual was intended to open a doorway of some sort," Saddler allowed, scarcely able to credit that he was discussing this seriously, even after all that had transpired. "Doors swing both ways, and so the next logical question would be...did she intend to let something in or perhaps make her way to somewhere else?"

Saddler considered this for several moments and then stood. "Cameron, again I want to thank you for agreeing to meet under the cloak and dagger circumstance. I'm not quite certain of how yet, but the information you've just provided should prove helpful. I'm going to give you a heads up as a token of my gratitude...the FBI's lead on this case is going to bring you in for follow-up questioning in the next day or so."

Cameron stiffened, his expression becoming somber. Saddler empathized, but knew that he was powerless to forestall the summons. "The federal lead on this case is aggressive and capable and she's going to hit you hard on both the situation at Eternal Lights and your relationship with your family. I can't over-emphasize how critical it is that you mention nothing about our conversation or your personal ideas about the underlying cause of Quinsett's woes."

The sheer torment radiating from Cameron's eyes told Saddler that this forthcoming indignity was just the latest in a long succession of such ordeals. Still, as was his natural inclination to accept all such unfair treatment, Cameron nodded and promised Saddler that he would remain silent.

"Then Maria and I will drive you home," Saddler said, but Cameron remained seated, staring forlornly at the area rug.

Finally, he glanced up at Saddler, his unblinking gaze both haunted and resolute. "There's more."

Saddler sat back down, dreading what Crane might now relate, even as he bade him to continue. Maria remained standing, but gravitated closer, perhaps intuiting that something of consequence was about the pass between the two men.

"There is no easy way to say this," Crane began with a discernible quaver in his voice. "Did...did your wife mentioned the incident at Hogan's market on Tuesday?"

"She did," Saddler allowed. Behind him, Maria scowled, her gaze shifting to Saddler.

"The following day, she came to my house and again the next."

Saddler reacted with the wounded hiss as if correctly surmising where this was destined to lead. Sensing his mounting agitation, Maria stepped forward and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.

"What...what did she want?" Saddler heard himself ask, knowing that no answer could forestall or assuage the grief that would accompany this next bitter affirmation.

"Honestly, I don't know," Cameron replied, obviously bewildered by the encounters. "The first day, she questioned me or interrogated me is probably a better description of her method...about why I chose to live the way I do."

"Did you know who she was...that she was my wife?" Saddler demanded, struggling vainly to master his smoldering anger.

"She made a point of telling me," Cameron confessed, his voice low, yet rife with anguish. "She wanted to know exactly how I became involved in the situation at the graveyard."

"And she came again the next day...Thursday?" Saddler persisted, his body coiling like a spring.

Cameron averted his eyes and Maria groaned silently, her heart breaking for the man beside her. Finally, Cameron looked directly into Saddler's eyes, a moment of pure empathy passing between them. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am for what happened and how ashamed, though I doubt that's any consolation. I was vulnerable and she...she was irresistible...overwhelming."

"So you're saying you slept with my wife?" Saddler growled and his voice rose even as he stood and took a menacing step towards Crane. In that single transitory instant, despite the gathering darkness that threatened to destroy his life, Raymond Saddler became just another aggrieved husband confronting the man who had cuckolded him.

Maria quickly imposed herself between the two men, facing Saddler. She firmly gripped his shoulders, praying that she could defuse an escalation. He dragged his livid gaze to her, recognized the imploring glint in those beguiling eyes, and abruptly spun away, crossing to the bank of windows.

As he stared out into the rain-swept darkness of his side yard, Raymond Saddler understood that with this shocking confession of adultery, his last meager illusion that his old life could somehow be salvaged was painfully disabused.

"Sheriff, I..." Crane began but then faltered.

"You may as well call me Ray," Saddler snapped, though with far less rancor than expected. "We've shared the same woman, after all."

"Please, Ray, don't," Maria pleaded. Somehow, this horrible, convoluted passion play was far worse than the prospect of confronting a vengeful specter.

Suspecting that he could plummet no lower in Saddler's regard, Cameron steeled himself and delivered the final devastating disclosure. "The woman who stormed into my house is not your wife. She hinted much on the first day, but I was too flabbergasted to see it."

Saddler had turned back to face Crane, but now his outrage had relented, giving way to a wary, speculative expression that Maria found every bit as disconcerting. She wanted desperately for Crane to stop talking, for this insufferable dissection of Raymond Saddler to come to a merciful end.

"What are you saying, Crane?" Saddler demanded tautly, but Maria was appalled to realize that he already knew what Cameron suggesting...or at least, he suspected.

"It was Jeniah Lightcrusher who came to visit me on those days," Cameron intoned flatly, pawing absently at the tears that hung in his long lashes. "I know how absolutely demented that sounds, but it's the truth. I don't know why she chose to reveal herself to me or how she usurped Veronica's body, but she did. I know it's the truth...though I'd give anything if I didn't."

Saddler remained silent for several moments. To Maria, it appeared as if he might literally implode under the weight of his anguish. He then proceeded to utter the one response that shattered her equilibrium. "I know it as well."

Now it was Maria's turned to glare, her withering gaze fixed squarely on Saddler. "What are you both talking about?"

Her voice had risen through the octaves until it became a strident shriek. Behind her, Cameron Crane has risen to his feet. Hearing the idea of Veronica's possession so plainly stated...and unequivocally accepted...brought the immensity of Cameron's burden into mercilessly harsh focus.

"He told me what I had to do, you see," Cameron blurted, his voice wavering on the edge of control. "Father Crimmon said it was the...the only way to stop her...but I can't do it. I could never do that to her even if she turned out to be Satan himself."

Cameron buried his face in his hands as misery rendered him incoherent. Saddler regarded the man who had so thoroughly devastated his life, his brow furrowing in puzzlement. Like a violent explosion of dark energy, dawning comprehension burst forth in a stuttering, ghastly image...a stark, terrible portrait of Ronnie's stark and headless corpse.

A furious growl of negation tore from Saddler's lips and he brushed roughly past Maria, inadvertently slamming her into the wall. She lost her balance and went down in a sprawl, the impact of her collision with the wall punching the air from her lungs.

Mindless of his rough handling of his deputy, Saddler seized Crane's left arm and a fistful of shirt collar, and began hauling an unresisting Crane to the door. "Get out of my house, you sick bastard!"

Dazed, Maria nonetheless pushed herself to her feet just in time to see Saddler slam Cameron against the wall. She staggered to her feet just as the sheriff opened the door leading to the veranda, and roughly propelled Cameron Crane out into the rainy night.

Cursing, Maria raced out onto the veranda as Saddler was about to descend the steps in pursuit of the fallen Crane. With a light sidestepped, she intercepted Ray and wrapped her arms around him. Though she was seventy pounds lighter and six inches shorter, Maria mustered the strength to pull him back against the wall. "Ray, stop this childish nonsense now!"

He looked at her, his blue eyes consumed by immutable pain and outrage. "Maria, you have no idea what this bastard's implying."

"You're right...I don't because you haven't been honest with me, have you?" She rasped and her acidic tone deflated his fury in the blink of an eye. He sagged against the wall and she released him and stepped back.

"Take him home...get him out of my sight," he grumbled. "Please Maria."

Maria looked back to see that Cameron was still lying in the puddle where Saddler had tossed him.

His clothes were disheveled and mud spattered and his face was vacant and slack. Saddler took the keys from his pocket and handed them to Maria. "Take him home in the cruiser and then we'll talk after you come back."

Maria stepped closer and gripped his right forearm, her nails leaving deep crescents in his flesh. Her voice was both quiet and fierce and she vowed, "We'll talk to be sure. I promised I would follow you...if you were totally honest with me."

She left the implications of this last statement unspoken, between them and went to assist Cameron Crane to his feet. As she helped him towards the cruiser, Saddler leaned on the railing.

"Crane, stay away from me...and stay away from Veronica," he warned, but his admonition was delivered without heat or conviction. As she opened the passenger door and guided the withdrawn Cameron Crane into the car, it occurred to her that she could not be certain if Saddler's cautionary words had been intended to protect Veronica...or Cameron Crane.

3

Saddler watched the car pull out onto Ringgold Lane and then hung his head and closed his eyes. Even at the nadir of his post Deleon shooting life, he had never felt as utterly desolate or defeated as he did at this exact moment. Through it all, Saddler retained enough of a dispassionate mind to know that his dramatic mistreatment of Crane had been grossly unfair. Saddler could scarcely conceive of the courage required to come here and make the confession that Cameron had made.

He was equally cognizant of the man's background...of his years of isolation and disenfranchisement. If an aggressive, determined Veronica had shown up on his doorstep, intent on seduction, there was little that Crane could have done to resist. Veronica unleashed was a carnal juggernaut that Crane simply lacked the facility to resist.

It had not been Cameron's revelation of Veronica's infidelity that had provoked Saddler's utter loss of composure. Instead, it had been Crane's bluntly stated scenario for Jeniah's demise that had led to Saddler's rare outburst.

He was shocked to realize that, despite Crimmon's vehement insistence to the contrary, Saddler still harbored the hope that Veronica...his Veronica...could yet be saved.

Barney came tentatively forward and Ray scooped him up. Carrying the terrier back into the house, Saddler was oblivious to his weeping.

In truth, he shared one sentiment with Cameron Crane...he was dreading the next encounter with the entity that was now inhabiting his wife's flesh.

Chapter Five

1

They drove through the rain in total silence, save for the metronomic beat of the cruiser's wipers. Maria stole brief, furtive glances at Cameron, whose eyes were blank as they stared straight ahead into the blustery night. Something seemed required and so she offered, "I'm sorry. You can't begin to imagine the stress the Sheriff's under."

Crane turned those dreamy, haunted eyes upon Maria and murmured, "I think, perhaps, I can."

There was no rancor in his voice, only weary resignation, informing Maria that this type of abuse was all too common in Cameron Crane's life. "Cameron, let's assume that Jeniah has somehow possessed the body of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler...why would she pursue you the way she has...seduce you and become some kind of benefactress?"

Divining the unintentional innuendo in Maria's question, Crane regarded her with a rare expression of genuine bitterness. "You mean to ask why she would display such a keen interest in the town's ramshackle loser."

"That is not what I meant at all, Cameron," Maria snapped defensively. "If what we suspect about Jeniah's intentions is true, the descendants of the six vigilantes are squarely in her crosshairs. Morley Cruthers' death seems to substantiate that theory. Yet Jeniah's interaction with you would hardly be characterized as overtly sinister."

"I wish I could answer that question, Deputy Cordova," Cameron replied, clearly baffled by the extraordinary interest Jeniah had taken in the eldest Crane. "I've wracked my brain for an explanation. The best I can produce is that she views me as a...pet...someone she can gloat to, once she's achieved her twisted ambition."

Maria absorbed this thoughtfully and the pair lapsed into a silence that persisted through the remainder of the ride. When Maria pulled the cruiser up to the crumbling curb and killed the lights, she found it difficult to reconcile the rundown dwelling with that fact that Cameron Crane was a member of one of the richest families in the state.

Cameron thanked her for the ride and opened the door, but Maria reached across and gripped his left wrist. "Again, I want to apologize for what happened tonight. Be careful Cameron and stay safe."

He glanced back at her from over his shoulder. In the subdued glow of the car's interior light, Crane appeared suddenly ancient. "I wish I knew how to do that, Deputy."

Then he was gone, leaving a bemused Maria Cordova staring after him until he entered his sad house. Pulling away, preoccupied by her coming conversation with Raymond Saddler, Maria failed to notice the figure that was watching her intently from the darkness of Crane's narrow side yard.

2

Recessed deep in the shadows, the hood of her black rain jacket pulled up around her lean face, Judith Ranzman watched Cameron Crane's exchange with Maria Cordova, her dark eyes ablaze with curiosity. As the police cruiser pulled away, a frown of consternation dawned on her lovely face.

"Pave the way for my return and eliminate anyone who would jeopardize the ritual." These had been her mistress' instructions to Judith after the familiar had offered her vow of fealty. "All but Cameron Crane...he is to come to no harm."

It had been that one cautionary restriction that had awakened a firestorm of curiosity in the familiar's black heart.

"Amathera, what game are you playing at?" Judith murmured, referring to her mistress by her birth name...a subtle expression of contempt that the familiar found intensely satisfying.

When Jeniah had broken Judith to her service, she had succeeded in securing the familiar's resolute devotion to the chronicler's apocalyptic vision for humanity. In truth, Jeniah had no clear notion what she had wrought in Judith's agony-fuelled transformation. True, Judith's devotion to Jeniah's vision was zealously unwavering. Her absolute subjection to her new mistress had been inculcated into the very fabric of her being.

Still, by subjecting her chosen familiar to the onslaught of knowledge and memories that entailed Amathera's unprecedented life, Jeniah had unwittingly created an entity whose power and capability rivaled her own. In many respects, the transmogrified Judith Ranzman was infinitely more dangerous than the woman who had created her.

While Jeniah was constrained...after a bizarre fashion...Judith Ranzman was unencumbered by neither moral compunction nor pity. Whereas Jeniah regarded the cumulative chronicles of history as a damning indictment against humanity's very existence, the reconfigured Judith viewed man's catalogue of cruelty with reverence for its infinite variety and dark artistry. Where Jeniah saw irredeemable damnation, Judith perceived opportunity...an unexpected chance to slake her insatiable thirst.

Through acquiring twenty three centuries of knowledge, Judith had gained access to an unimaginable reservoir of dark magic. In her all-consuming obsession with rendering judgment, Jeniah was barely aware of the vast array of power at her disposal.

Conversely, this dark incarnation of an already twisted soul was fully aware of the limitless wealth of forbidden knowledge to which she'd gained access. It whispered its seductive and lilting siren song from the periphery of her corrupted mind. When her obligation had been discharged and her mistress rose to oversee humanity's bloody demise, Judith would let her appetites run rampant. She would hunt with the unshackled monstrosities as they ravaged this world. She would bathe in blood and feast on flesh like a wild beast unleashed. She would...

She came back to herself with a start, clutching the corner of Crane's hovel lest her trembling legs to spill her to the sodden ground.

Judith inhaled deeply, willing herself to be calm. She could feel the void...that beckoning maw of absolute madness...threatening to open beneath her. It had been an omnipresent demon since the early days of her pampered childhood and even then had yielded a procession of headless dolls, before giving way to dead pets. Now, with virtually limitless power within grasping distance, Judith was acutely aware of its siren call, now more insistent than ever. Only cool detachment and distraction could spare her from being dragged into that black and inescapable pit.

To that end, she turned her thoughts to consideration of what she'd just witnessed. Judith leaned casually against the wall of Cameron's house, struggling to disentangle the various threads that were confusing the present situation.

Jeniah had warned her that Cameron was off limits. As Judith delved into her mistress' huge compilation of memories, she came to the shocking conclusion that Jeniah harbored complex affection for the man. More accurately, Veronica and Jeniah held a bizarre affection for the pathetic facsimile of a man. Judith understood that this tidbit of knowledge exposed a weakness that could be exploited. As badly as she might wish to do precisely that, the familiar would not renege on her vow to serve.

Still, this would not prevent her from exploring the nature of this mysterious attraction.

Then there was the ominous matter of what she'd just witnessed. Why would the police be dropping Cameron Crane off at his house at eleven o'clock on a Saturday night?

The question was not without its grave ramifications. Whatever black proclivities Judith might possess, she was blessed with a razor sharp mind. Judith's keen sense of observation registered that Maria Cordova (a name she conjured from Jeniah's high-jacked Veronica memories) was dressed in civilian clothes and driving the Sheriff's vehicle. That suggested one of two possible explanations. The more benign (but perplexing) possibility was at this Cordova was entangled with Cameron on a personal level. The other and far more disturbing possibility was that Cordova was with Crane at Saddler's behest for some unknown purpose.

Irrespective of what that purpose might prove to be, it would not bode well for Jeniah's machinations.

' _Eliminate anyone who would jeopardize the ritual.'_ Again a broad commission echoed in her mind and Judith smiled. That charge gave Ranzman a great deal of latitude. Cameron Crane was immune, but everyone else was not so fortunate.

Yes, the familiar was sworn to serve Jeniah's purpose, but that did not preclude her from serving her own agenda if they ran in tandem.

"I will do as you wish," Judith whispered. "But just how I accomplish your task will be for me to decide."

With this in mind, Judith set out across the street, loping through the brooding shadows like a preying wolf...the scent of her new quarry flaring in her nostrils.

3

Maria sat in her cruiser for nearly ten minutes before crossing Raymond Saddler's side yard and mounting the steps to his veranda. Trying to sort out her turbulent thoughts and resolve her warring emotions, Maria realized that she'd unwittingly strayed into a minefield where the slightest miscalculation could prove fatal.

Still trying to grapple with the fantastical concept of supernatural spirits and houses springing out of the earth like plants, Maria now found herself confronted with the idea of possession. She tried to visualize what it might be like to be faced with the realization that the person you loved had been taken over by a malign spirit. The idea was simply beyond the boundaries of her sensibilities to fathom. Yet, if she had misconstrued what had passed between Saddler and Crane, this was precisely what Ray now found himself faced with.

For the first time in her life, the tenacious Cordova found that she was frightened by and inadequate to face the challenges before her.

Saddler greeted Maria at the door and gestured for her to follow him into the living room. She took a seat that Cameron had recently occupied while Saddler settled onto the sofa with Barney at his side. She was mildly surprised by how quickly the terrier had bonded with Saddler, but there was a certain quality about the man that seem to invite trust and loyalty.

' _And love.'_ The thought rose, unbidden, to her mind and she chastised herself for entertaining it.

"Maria, I'm sorry for my behavior with Cameron. His disclosure caught me totally flat-footed. I've been a cop far too long and should have known better, but when things take such a personal turn, I guess common sense goes out the window. If you knew Veronica, you'd understand how baffling her behavior has become." He ran his hands through his thick brown hair. "Adultery with a total stranger defies everything she believes about commitment and loyalty."

"Don't apologize for losing your composure. It's not an easy matter to remain calm and levelheaded when a man tells you he's been sleeping with your wife...a wife who you thought was faithful." Saddler grimaced at this bluntly stated summary of the state of his marriage, but Maria quelled her pity and forged ahead. "You never mentioned the incident at Hogan's market, Ray. That might seem trivial and I suppose it is compared with the discovery that you now believe your wife is...what, possessed by the spirits of Jeniah Lightcrusher? Christ Ray...what am I to make of that?"

When Saddler's only response was a helpless shrug, Maria demanded, "Why didn't you share this...this suspicion with me before?"

"It only came to me last night. I wanted to tell you this morning, but I honestly didn't know how." He glanced down at his hands. "I felt that I had to speak to her first...that I owed her that much."

Saddler could feel her incisive gaze boring into him. Haltingly, struggling to contain his emotions, he recounted his revelation from the answering machine.

Maria gave the machine a dubious glance and then insisted, "Let me hear the message."

Saddler appeared reluctant, but after a moment, he rose and crossed over to the machine and depressed the rewind button. Closing his eyes and stifling a groan, Saddler listened to the two voices mouth their platitudes in perfect synchronicity. When the playback finished, Saddler shuddered and glanced at Maria who wore an expression of consternation on her beautiful face. "Ray, I only hear one voice...one elegant, well modulated voice."

Saddler shook his head and glanced from Cordova to the machine in obvious confusion. With his heart thundering in his ears, Saddler rewound the message and played it again. At its conclusion, Maria merely shook her head.

Saddler repeated the process at half dozen times with similar results. Maria stood and crossed over to where he was preparing to rewind the tape. She laid a forestalling hand on his and shook her head emphatically. "Ray, I hear only one voice on this tape."

Saddler dragged his hand across his mouth, leaving livid red marks on his skin in its wake. He met her regard with you, haunted eyes. "What does this mean?"

She led Saddler back to his seat and made him sit before kneeling before him. "I won't pretend to know...nothing about the situation makes any sense, least of all a vengeful spirit usurping control of your wife. Ray, think of what you're suggesting in logical terms. Cameron is clearly a troubled man and Father Crimmon suffers from dementia."

She hesitated for a moment, until his eyes met hers. "Ray, you've been under tremendous stress the last few days. You're desperate for a solution to this nightmare. I see how every new death impacts upon you."

She fell silent, but her dark eyes conveyed eloquently the full extent of her cynicism. He could feel the nascent stirring of genuine anger, as he demanded incredulously, "Are you implying that I'm making this up...that Veronica is perfectly fine and her actions toward Crane are nothing more than a tawdry tumble with an attractive stranger?"

"Ray, since Veronica left, we've had two further deaths which precludes her as the perpetrator," Maria reminded him evenly. "Again, Crane is a troubled, lonely man. I'm certain that he sincerely believes the things he told us, but I doubt they have more than a passing resemblance to the truth. I'm saying that you can't condemn your wife on the basis of what you've been told." She inclined her head towards the answering machine. "What you believe you heard."

Saddler's burgeoning anger abruptly evaporated like steam as Maria unwittingly presented him with a convenient out. If he embraced her perspective, Saddler could turn from the unpalatable idea that Veronica...his Veronica...was under the thrall of a monster. By ignoring his finely honed instincts, Saddler could still harbor the slim hope that his old life could yet be salvaged.

Though the temptation was enormous, he was unable to seek refuge in the false sanctuary of denial...at least, not completely.

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. "Maria, I have no idea how to move forward from this moment. I feel like a man who's fallen into a raging river and is being swept along with no hope of gaining control of where he's going."

She took both of his hands in hers, their close proximity making her feel giddy and audacious. "I'm a strong woman, Ray and if you let me, I'll tell you exactly how we move forward."

Their eyes locked in and for an instant, Raymond Saddler had the excruciatingly powerful urge to kiss her...to seek refuge from his misery and uncertainty in her strength and beauty. As desperately as he wanted to succumb, Ray found himself constrained by the fleeting hope that she held forth like a beacon in a raging storm.

Instead, he heard himself ask, his voice raw edged and pleading, "Then tell me."

So Maria Cordova did, her pragmatic and rational nature re-asserting itself as she spoke. Her reasoned, logical proposal worked like a placating balm on Saddler. As he surrendered to Maria's seemingly incontrovertible arguments, the one remaining opportunity to avoid a final apocalyptic confrontation slipped away.

4

Maria Cordova pulled her vehicle into its carport at ten minutes before midnight, hoping to have at least five hours of decent sleep before the start of her Sunday shift next day.

She mounted her front stairs feeling an odd sense of exuberance along with equilibrium that had all but deserted her over the past few days. She had spoken to Saddler at great length...and he had listened, his eyes conveying his acceptance of her suggestions. She had managed to dissuade him from focusing on his wife as the mastermind behind Quinsett's rash of horrific murders. Behind the superficial reluctance, Maria could sense profound relief. She had offered him a venue of escape from a possibility too horrible to contemplate and he eagerly accepted.

In truth, her plan of action was merely a reiteration of an approach Saddler, himself, had put forward days before. They know that Jeniah intended to enact a ritual of the evocation and though the culmination of this ritual remained vague, they knew precisely where and probably when the ritual would occur.

They possessed all the information necessary to disrupt the ritual, including the method by which it could be thwarted. Maria grimaced in revulsion at the recollection of the grisly process Cameron Crane had described. She deliberately forced the loathsome prospect from her mind, hoping that there would be a less gruesome alternative.

Tamara Hood and the Feds could handle the conventional police work of protecting the surviving family members of the original vigilantes and the community in general.

Maria congratulated herself for remaining the voice of rationality. True, the situation was macabre, but nothing would be achieved by allowing the wildest of dark imaginings to run rampant. The notion that Veronica had been subjugated to Jeniah's will right under Saddler's nose was ludicrous and could prove to be a lethal distraction.

' _But what if you're wrong, Maria?'_ The question, quietly posed, nonetheless rumbled through her mind like an avalanche. She stopped abruptly, slightly stooped forward, with her key extended to unlock her side door.

Never one to vacillate or be afflicted by self-doubt, Maria straightened as the source of her sudden insecurity revealed itself. ' _Think of the ritual, Maria...the ritual and its catalyst!'_

A weak gasp escaped her lips as Cameron's description of Jeniah's failed ritual flooded her mind. The catalyst had been the sacrifice of a young child.

Raymond Saddler had two young children.

Maria clenched the wooden post head to prevent herself from tumbling back down the stairs. The insidious genius of Jeniah choosing Veronica Ashcott-Saddler as her vessel fell upon Cordova like the cumulative weight of all despair. As the Sheriff's wife, Veronica could weave her black tapestry far from the watchful eyes of any suspicion. When the time came to enact the ritual, she would have a convenient choice of two readily accessible children to sacrifice as the catalyst.

Veronica was presently on her way to Los Angeles to join her two children!

Staggered by the enormity of her misjudgment...her surrender to damnable pragmatism, Maria considered driving back to Saddler, but intense shame would not allow her to face him. Wondering how he would perceive her sudden and dramatic reversal, she opened her door and bolted inside with the intention of calling him.

The moment she heard the distinct click of the lock behind her, Maria Cordova knew that she had blundered into serious peril. To begin with, the house was completely dark and Maria Cordova was undeviating in her habit of leaving lights on when she went out at night. The second irregularity that assailed her was a high, eldritch stench of rotting meat and excrement and beneath that, the coppery smell of freshly spilled blood.

Reaching behind her, Maria attempted to turn the handle with the intention of fleeing the house. To her shock and horror, she found that it simply wouldn't budge. Fighting to repress debilitating panic, she remembered her service revolver and gun belt which she had folded on her dresser before leaving to collect Crane. To retrieve it, she would have to cross the suddenly hostile landscape of the entire house.

She uttered a rare curse and gave the handle a vigorous tug, but still it would not yield. After a moment of indecision, she decided to try for the main entrance, after collecting a butcher knife from its wooden block near the sink.

Maria moved into the short hallway that led to her living room area. Pressing herself against the wall, she peered around the corner at the end of the tiled hallway. Cordova could make out the shadow-cloaked outline of a hulking figure, blocking her egress through the front door. Suddenly, two luminous golden eyes opened near the ceiling and it took every last bit of her wavering self-control to stop from screaming. That baleful golden glare was cold and inhuman, informing Maria that there would be no escape that way.

She was not sure if the entity was aware of her presence, but she simply couldn't muster the courage to risk a dash into the living room. Instead, Maria backed away from the intersection and slowly turned back towards the kitchen.

The intense eruption of argent light momentarily blinded Maria and she never saw the blow that fractured her left cheek bone. She toppled like a felled tree and the back of her head bounced off the ceramic tiles with a sickening thud.

There followed another intense flare of argent light and in a silvery radiance, Maria saw a figure looming over her. Its eyes conjured images of the pits of hell and the silver teeth, bloody, painful death. That awful image followed Maria Cordova into the void.

5

As she slowly groped her way back to consciousness, Maria became immediately aware of three things. She was completely naked and bound, spread eagle, on her bed. Something wet and fur-covered sat on her abdomen. When she realized that this something was the bloody, mangled remains of Diego, her cat, she screamed in revulsion.

A despairing wail of anguish escaped her lips, prompting a massive burst of throbbing pain to erupt in her swollen face.

"Ah, back in the land of the living I see," a sanguine voice declared from somewhere in the darkness. The voice was distinctly feminine, but resonated in an oddly distorted way.

The pain in Maria's face was huge and disorienting, blunting her keen instincts, but even as she blurted the single interrogative, Maria realized she might well have committed a fatal mistake. "Veronica?"

That uttered name plunged the room into a profound silence. Maria could hear her rampant heart thundering in her chest. She discerned swift movement beside her just as Diego was roughly thrown to the floor. Maria grunted as a figure gracefully straddled her torso and gripped her wounded face with fingers like pincers. A face hovered over hers and while the tone remained mocking, Maria understood that this casual levity was feigned. "Now, why ever would you think that?"

In that brief instant Maria Cordova's agile mind seized on the single plausible fabrication that saved her life. In a voice fraught with shame and contrition, Maria murmured, "I've been sleeping with her husband and I thought..."

The assailant sat back and clapped her hands together, chuckling in genuine amusement. "Priceless...utterly priceless...a minority token female fucking her Caucasian boss...how tawdry."

"What do you want?" Maria rasped, furious at the malicious slur despite the enormity of her peril.

The figure, a blur of indistinct shadow in the near total darkness of Maria's room, lithely dismounted Cordova. Teasingly, she ran her index finger lightly along the inside of Maria's left leg, slowly tracing a path from the ankle bone to Maria's exposed womanhood. "I wish to send a message to those you serve. No one in this town is safe. You are all vulnerable. I must confess, it was my intention to kill you tonight, but I suspect that my mistress would like to deal with you personally."

Her fingers ceased their skilled ministration and she moved off into the darkness. Despite her solemn resolve to face whatever was to come with dignity, Maria began to cry. The figure returned and set something on her upper thigh and its cold hard texture told Maria that the object was her nightstick. The assailant then climbed onto the bed and pressed something cold and sharp into the swollen flesh beside Maria's left eye. "If my mistress is merciful, I will ask that she consign you to my keeping...a token of gratitude for loyal services rendered. I think I'll take the liberty of marking you as my personal possession."

Maria close her eyes, squeezing them shut against the acute pain that shimmered through her mind. It traced lines of cold and bitter silver as the blade traveled a curving path from the corner of her left eye, over her nose and along the ridge of her right cheekbone, to the corner of her twisted mouth. The incision was shallow but bled profusely. Maria could feel blood pooling in her left eye socket and running into her mouth, hot and coppery.

The assailant wiped her blade on Maria's left breast and observed, "I find a thin scar on a beautiful woman incredibly erotic...though perhaps your lover will be of a different opinion."

Maria Cordova began to scream then, a high keening wail that shook the walls of her bedroom. Judith surged forward and delivered a clubbing blow that sent the maimed beauty spiraling down into the void.

The familiar spent several minutes admiring her handiwork. Then she snatched up the nightstick, rolled the tip in the blood that spattered Maria's face and then position it in a way meant to maximize Maria's torment and degradation.

After spending another twenty minutes completing her arrangement, Judith slipped out the side door, content with all she'd achieved today.

5

Raymond Saddler had finally fallen asleep, still fully clothed and with the lights on, less than twenty minutes before, when the phone began to ring. He came awake with a start and stumbled over to the phone.

The small clock on the side board informed him that it was just after one o'clock, Sunday morning. He snatched up the phone on the seventh ring, his heart beating frantically as he pressed the receiver to his ear and breathed, "Hello?"

"Ray, I know it's late, but father insisted that I call you," Veronica said without preamble. Her displeasure was conveyed clearly in her tone, but Saddler experienced a moment of soaring elation. He was hearing his Veronica, pure and undiluted by the ugly specter of a long dead ghost. She was speaking to him in a tone reserved for the rare occasions when she was angry with him. "We had a long and decidedly unpleasant dialogue about your earlier conversation. Apparently, you told him that I have to return to Quinsett later today?"

"Yes," Saddler allowed. Despite his renewed optimism that his suppositions were wrong, he recalled Maria's cautionary advice to divulge nothing of his suspicions to Veronica...even obliquely. Choosing his words carefully, Saddler provided Veronica with a detailed account of the day's events. He concluded his report with the discovery of the paper bearing her name in Vincent Scallari's hotel room and agent Hood's insistence that she return to Quinsett for questioning. "The feds have the ball on this investigation now and I have little leeway on how agent Hood elects to conduct her investigation."

There was a protracted silence and finally Veronica asked in a flat, inscrutable voice, "Am I actually under suspicion here, Ray?"

"Of course not, Ronnie." The lie sprang automatically to Saddler's lips, ringing false to his own ears. "Scallari was evidently brought in to discreetly investigate the situation in Quinsett."

"Brought in? By whom?" Veronica demanded, her tone glacial.

"Stuart Crane, the brother of the man you rescued from the bout of bullying at the market," Saddler disclosed, knowing that he was scurrying perilously close to territory he didn't want to enter, but powerless to help himself.

Again, there followed an uncomfortable silence. When Ronnie finally did offer a response, she did so in a voice made sharp with irritation. "Before the night of Orlin's murder, I'd never heard of Vincent Scallari. Stuart Crane is known to me, but I've never had any form of dealing with the man. Cameron Crane, I know through the incident at the market and even then, we never actually exchanged words. Are you satisfied, Ray?"

Saddler realized that Veronica was near to erupting and part of him wanted to provoke her fury, but he promised Maria that he would refrain from deliberately goading her. "Of course it does...but it won't satisfy the feds."

"What's the name of the lead agent? I'll call her first thing in the morning. I have a business to conduct and in case you've forgotten, I haven't been feeling well. I won't cancel this appointment if there's any alternative."

Saddler provided her with Tamara's name and told her that she could be reached at his desk. This seemed to placate Veronica and Saddler could almost hear the anger dissipate from her voice like steam.

They spoke for another ten minutes, their topics of conversation confined to the children and other neutral matters. A million questions buzzed in Saddler's mind, begging to be given voice. He repressed them with an enormous exertion of will. When they exchanged goodbyes and the cursory I-love-you, Saddler struggled to maintain and even voice. He hung up the phone and wandered back to the sofa. Saddler doubted that sleep was remotely possible, but he still stretched out on the sofa. Within minutes, he had fallen in to a deep and dreamless slumber.

Chapter Six

1

As Saddler hurried up the steps to the station, a brief glance at his watch informed him that it was 9:30. It was entirely likely that he would still be asleep on his sofa had Barney not worked so diligently to rouse him. He was dismayed to have overslept by two hours, but it spoke eloquently about the toll this ordeal was extracting on his body.

Just before entering the station house, Saddler peered up at the pristine blue sky. It appeared to gaze down upon the beleaguered town with stoic indifference. He offered a fervent prayer that the change in weather would bring with it a desperately needed change in luck.

Saddler paused by the dispatcher's station to ask Erica Hayes, the weekend dispatcher, if anything of consequence had come up during the night. She pursed her lips and glanced at her log. "I received a call from Philbert Hodge, the station manager of the local ABC affiliate."

Saddler raised an eyebrow. "Trouble?"

"I'm not certain, Sheriff," Erica replied noncommittally. "It seems that Deirdre Wilkins, the station's local news anchor, didn't show up for work yesterday evening or today and he's been unable to reach her at home. Mr. Hodge was quite upset, but I told him about the standard missing person protocol. I passed the information along to Albert and Tim, along with Ms. Wilkins home address. Deputy Holland said that they would swing by her house once they finished their patrol on Winder Road." Erica paused for a moment and then inquired nervously, "Was that the proper procedure, Sheriff?"

Saddler recalled that this was his first actual conversation with the elderly dispatcher and nodded reassuringly. Deirdre Wilkins puzzling absence roused a chill in Saddler's mind. The woman had impressed him as a diligent, tenacious creature, fuelled by pure ambition. Being AWOL from work seemed totally inconsistent with her personality. Saddler was suddenly anxious to discover what Albert and Tim would report once they visited her house.

"I see we're keeping banker's hours now, Sheriff Saddler," A voice inquired with just the slightest hint of disapproval. Ray turned to see Tamara Hood standing in the doorway to his office, a faint grin twisting her generous mouth. "Perhaps we could have a word for a moment."

Saddler nodded and moved to follow Tamara into her newly appropriated office, noting Maria's conspicuous absence as he passed her empty desk. The thought of Maria conjured shameful, yet pleasant memories of how close he'd come to kissing her last night. The tantalizing recollection was sullied by the disquiet that her empty chair evoked.

Saddler closed the door and leaned against the frame. He was surprised by how little resentment he felt seeing agent Hood sitting behind his desk.

' _It's as though part of your mind is accepted that it isn't going to be yours for much longer,'_ a small voice chirped in his mind, gleefully adding, ' _This is all going to end badly, Ray...very badly.'_

"I spoke to my wife last night," Saddler began, but could get no further as agent Hood interrupted.

"I know...I spoke to her this morning. We had a long and intriguing conversation, the long and short of which is that I'm satisfied with her answers to my questions. You're fortunate Saddler...your wife is a very engaging woman," Tamara concluded with a genuinely warm smile. "She promised to make herself available for any further questioning when she returned Wednesday, though I doubt it will be necessary to question her again."

For a moment, Saddler was simply too flabbergasted to speak, and incredulous over the ease with which Veronica had extricated herself from a seemingly inescapable snare.

"So you're satisfied there's no real connection between Veronica and Scallari?" Saddler ventured hesitantly. What he was doing was akin to tiptoeing around a sleeping pit bull, but he had to know exactly what had passed between agent Hood and his wife.

Tamara regarded Saddler closely. "She recalled seeing a man watching her intently, outside the market where she met Cameron Crane. I asked if she could describe the man and the description she provided left little doubt it was Vincent Scallari watching her that day."

When Saddler's brow furrowed in confusion, agent Hood added, "Remember Saddler, Scallari was brought to town to determine who might be menacing Stewart Crane's little group. To my mind...and obviously his as well...Cameron Crane would be the logical place to begin that investigation, along with anyone associated with the elder Crane. Still, it is decidedly odd that he'd fixate on your wife, but I certainly can't hold that against her."

"So you still subscribe to the idea that this all boils down to a convoluted case of axe grinding?"

"Until I'm given reason to believe otherwise, yes," Tamara confirmed. "My team of four agents will be arriving today. When they do, I intend to have them begin by questioning this group's members...particularly Stuart Crane. I will question Cameron personally. I would like you to bring him in this afternoon."

Saddler grimaced at the prospect of facing Crane so soon after last night's debacle. Tamara seemed to detect his reluctance and asked, "Is this a problem?"

"Not at all," Saddler responded immediately, intending to dispatch Maria to physically collect Crane.

"My team will handle the investigation, while your deputies return to everyday policing duties. I will expect that they provide support as required. As a courtesy, I will keep you apprised of operational developments as they occur. You can accompany me if you wish, when I conduct press briefings, but dealing with the media will be my domain exclusively. I would appreciate it if you make your deputies aware of this procedure."

"Speaking of missing reporters, it seems our local ABC affiliate has lost their news anchor," Saddler revealed, to which agent Hood arched a tapered right eyebrow. Saddler was about to elaborate when a black seed of realization germinated in his mind, in a burst of pure horror. "Agent Hood, have you seen deputy Cordova this morning?"

Tamara glanced past Saddler to Maria's empty desk, her smooth brow wrinkling. "No, I've been here since 7:30...is something wrong?"

Saddler's apoplectic expression of horror and sinking despair made any response redundant. Without further word, he burst out into the common area and hurried over to a startled Erica Hayes, with agent Hood right behind. Trying vainly to suppress his panic, Saddler demanded, "Erica, have you seen Maria this morning...has she called in?"

Erica's watery blue eyes flicked to the daily roster and then widened. "She hasn't been in...and didn't call in."

Saddler cursed, finding it staggering and incomprehensible that a scheduled deputy's absence could go completely unnoticed. Biting back on a vitriolic response poised on the tip of his tongue, Ray instructed, "Find Maria's address, provide it to Albert and Tim and dispatch them to that location. Let them know I'm on the way."

"Sheriff, has something happened to Maria?" Erica inquired, her moon-eyed gaze suddenly infuriating Saddler.

"Do it now...now!" he bellowed and Erica Hayes actually flinched, but she quickly moved to comply.

Saddler threw open the door and raced down the stairs, before sprinting to his cruiser. Agent Hood threw opened the passenger door and leapt in, earning a questioning scowl from Saddler. "I'm coming along for the ride, Sheriff."

Her tone made eminently clear that she would brook no contradiction and so Saddler pulled out of the lot in a screech of tires and wailing sirens.

As he raced through the Sunday morning streets of the besieged town, Raymond Saddler wrestled with the debilitating fear that the woman, with whom he was perilously close to falling in love, had suffered Orlin Feldman's grim fate.

2

Albert Huxley stared out the passenger window of Quinsett police cruiser number two, trying to stave off the weariness that tugged insistently at his eye lids. As he had assessed his physical condition in the bathroom mirror earlier in the morning, Albert had been confronted by a hollow-eyed, pallid facsimile of his usual self. That robust façade was crumbling like the fragile illusion it was and Albert knew he could not sustain this pace or endure this pressure for much longer.

' _If what you're thinking is true, you won't have to,'_ he reminded himself, but found scant little comfort in the thought.

Winder Road was deserted this early on a Sunday morning. Albert shook his head as they drove by Judith Ranzman's massive and imposing fence, the gate of which now stood closed. The sight of the exaggerated barrier caused Albert to shiver. Even in the cold light of day, that fence appeared sinister...perhaps even evil. That was absurd, of course...but then again, nothing in Quinsett seemed normal anymore.

"Albert, can I ask you a question?" Tim Holland blurted suddenly, startling Albert out of his reverie.

There was an uncharacteristic gravity in Holland's normally placid tone, one that made Huxley wish that he could tactfully decline. Instead, he said, "Sure Tim...what's on you mind?"

"Are you afraid, Albert...I mean afraid of what's happening in Quinsett?" The question emerged as a brittle whisper, forcing Albert to turn and evaluate the man whom he'd recruited to the force. Tim Holland was a solid, dependable man, who acquitted himself well in settling the odd domestic dispute or pier six barroom brawl. While not the most agile thinker, he followed instructions to the letter and was stalwart in performing his duties.

The man sitting beside Huxley appeared nervous and uncertain, like a person waking up to the unsettling realization that he is totally out of his depth. Choosing his words carefully, Albert replied, "After what we've seen this week...what happened to Orlin...how could you not be a little afraid? This certainly isn't what any of us expected when we signed on for this ride."

Tim kept his eyes fixed squarely on the road, but Huxley could clearly sense the extent of the other man's disquiet.

"I wanted to be in law enforcement since I was a kid, Albert, but seeing Lynda Verin's body disfigured like it was, I think maybe I didn't understand what I was aspiring to be. Maybe I mean that I didn't anticipate what I might have to face." Holland shook his head in dismay, unable to articulate the extent to which Verin's ravaged corpse had affected him.

"No one was prepared for this, Tim," Huxley insisted. After a momentary pause, he prompted, "Sounds to me like you're having some serious reservations about this job...about stickin' to her."

Holland confirmed this with a tight nod of is large head. "Beth has been after me to take a job at the mill, the money being so much better and everything. With everything that's happening now, she's frantic and crying. She's afraid I'll be the next Orlin."

"We're in it deep, Tim," Huxley pointed out. "To lose you would make a desperate situation a lot worse."

"Would it really, Albert?" Tim wondered truculently, a thread of resentment creeping into his voice. "Kort and I have been talking about just that subject and we're both of a mind that the new Sheriff isn't exactly confident that we're of any real value. It's obvious that there's more going on than he's bothered to share with either of us."

Holland allowed the unspoken thought to hang between them and in a moment of perfect empathy, Albert understood what it must be like to view this nightmare from Tim's perspective. By not sharing his suspicions with Tim and Kort (and to a lesser extent, Art Silver) Saddler had unwittingly relegated his deputies to a position of looking in from the outside.

Tim found himself in the unenviable and precarious position of trying to protect Quinsett with no concept of the threat he or the town faced. It was an unfair and potentially lethal position to be in and Huxley understood that Holland's resentment was justified.

"The sheriff's idea's are far out in left field, Tim...and that's what they are for now...ideas," Huxley explained. "Still, you're right...you're entitled to know what he's thinking."

"This is about the old stories, isn't it?" Tim interjected forcefully, "This Jeniah woman and what happened back during the depression?"

Beneath the aggressive insistence to be included, Huxley could hear faint echoes of trepidation in Holland's thick voice.

"Yes," Albert replied simply. "It's just speculation...which is really a fancy word for hot wind, but we think it ties back to what happened that night, fifty years ago. Look Tim, I really can't say more, because it's not my place anymore, but I'm gonna talk to the sheriff and see if I can convince him to paint the whole picture for the rest of the team. The Feds are going to be covering us like a blanket, beginning today. If this agent Hood knew exactly what we we're thinking, the lot of us would end up sharing rooms with Father Crimmon up in Olympia. I'm asking you to be patient because we're going to have to arrange this huddle without Hood and her troops catching wind of it. Can you trust me and be patient for a spell longer, Tim?"

Holland tilted his eyes to Huxley briefly and nodded, apparently mollified by Albert's promise. The pair fell into a comfortable silence and rode along for several moments. They reached the end of Winder Road, a circular widening with sufficient diameter to allow most vehicles to easily reverse direction. Tim was in the process of doing just that when a glint of metal in the early morning sunlight caught Albert's eye.

"Hold up a second, Tim," Albert instructed and Holland coasted the cruiser to a halt. Tim followed curiously as Albert crossed to the opposite side of the road and stood with his hands on his hips, peering down on the compact import that had been driven into the ditch. Shaking his head, Huxley glanced back along the road to find no perceptible gouging in the dirt surface.

"Looks like someone deliberately drove this thing into the ditch, Tim," Huxley pointed out. "There's no sign on the road surface to suggest that the driver even attempted to brake."

Huxley drew his service revolver and carefully began to make his way down into the ditch. Tim Holland also drew his weapon, but circled a little wider, arcing toward the front of the vehicle.

Albert could discern the shape of a hooded figure, slumped over the wheel. When he reached the vehicle, he tapped on the glass and called, "Police officers...can you hear me?"

Albert harbored no real hope of getting a response. After exchanging nods with a visibly nervous Holland, Huxley reached for the handle and pulled open the door. Both men were assailed by an eldritch stench of rot so acute that they both turned and stumbled away. After several moments of gasping for fresh air, Huxley reluctantly returned to the vehicle and reaching in, gently pushed the body into a sitting position. The hood fell away to reveal a badly decayed, but still recognizable face.

Ashen-faced, Huxley turned back to Deputy Holland. "Call it in, Tim. It looks like we found Knox Severn. Let's run these plates and see who this coffin belongs to."

Tim moved to comply and Huxley turned his attention back to Severn's horribly decomposed face. Just the way the corpse's head lolled against its dead shoulder told the former sheriff that the young hellion's neck had probably been broken.

Huxley knelt and scanned the interior of the vehicle and quickly determined there was neither visible blood nor any sign of violent struggle. He and Tim had patrolled this very road yesterday, so Albert concluded that the car had been abandoned earlier, during the night. Severn's state of decomposition, even taking into account the accelerating affects of the heat and humidity, precluded that he had been the driver.

Huxley stood, surmising that the car was probably stolen and had been dumped here along with Severn's body. How the two had come together was simply baffling. Albert squinted at Severn's corpse and inquired peevishly, "Just what have you been up to these last few days, you little shit-disturber?"

When Tim returned, his face was pallid and his eyes were wide with obvious dread. "This car belongs to the missing reporter, Deirdre Wilkins."

Huxley pursed his lips and whistled, "This thing is getting weirder by the minute."

It was then that he noticed that Tim was staring vacantly into the middle distance. Perspiration glistened on his broad forehead and his lips seemed to twitch in a wordless cry of negation.

"Jesus, Tim, what's wrong," Huxley urged.

"The sheriff wants us to get back to town ASAP." There followed an anguished pause and then Tim added, "Something's happened to Maria."

3

Saddler pulled into Maria's driveway in a squeal of tires, killing the plaintive howl of the sirens that had shredded the neighborhood's early morning tranquility. He gripped the wheel with white-knuckled intensity and willed himself to be calm. The image of Orlin's disemboweled corpse leapt to his mind and his efforts failed miserably.

Saddler and Hood disembarked and started up the drive. Ray was staring intently at the neat bungalow that had suddenly assumed a sinister air. Tamara swept her gaze along the length of the block to see that neighbors were gathering on porches, trying to determine the cause and source of the disruption to their normal Sunday routine.

As he approached the steps to the side door, Saddler drew his weapon. Tamara shook her head, but followed suit, inquiring, "What exactly do you think is happening here, Sheriff?

"Not sure," he replied tersely. "Maria would have called in if something had come up that prevented her from working her shift. She didn't, which means something is wrong."

Tamara deferred to this with a tight nod, as Saddler mounted the steps and tried the door handle to find that it was locked. He then knocked loudly and pressed his ear to the door, but he could hear nothing through the double-paned glass. He repeated his knocking and called out, "Maria...can you hear me? It's Sheriff Saddler."

This strident salutation was again greeted by a profound silence. He glanced questioningly at agent Hood, who frowned and gently, but insistently pushed Saddler aside. She retreated a step away the door, raised one heavy-soled shoe and drove her foot into the door. The wood near the lock shattered with a shriek of protest.

A nonplussed Saddler gaped at Tamara askance, but she merely shrugged and gestured for him to proceed.

The interior of the house was steeped in darkness, every light extinguished and every curtain drawn. Saddler and agent Hood moved quickly and efficiently through the house, agent Hood flipping light switches on as she went. The light illuminated a false portrait of normalcy that only deepened Saddler's already enormous trepidation. There was no sign of struggle...everything appeared neat and orderly, a reflection of the woman who lived here.

Saddler was about to step into the living room him when a barely audible moan reached his ears from somewhere down the darkened hall that led to the rear of the house. Hood inclined her head in that direction and both proceeded slowly down a short hallway, pausing before what Saddler assumed was Maria's bedroom.

His terror was a palpable thing and he could barely muster the nerve to call out, "Maria...are you okay?"

A low, unintelligible sound reached his ears and he reached for the handle, his hand trembling visibly in the dim light of the hallway. Agent Hood noticed the tentative movements and interpreted them perfectly. Raymond Saddler was an experienced homicide detective, forged in the cauldron of Los Angeles. He was clearly distraught now and that emotional instability spoke eloquently of his relationship with a woman who might be on the other side of the door. Hood glowered at the unwelcome complication, but possessed enough empathy to insist, "Let me, Sheriff."

Saddler nodded and stepped back, while agent Hood opened the bedroom door. The room was completely obscured by an unnatural darkness. The malodorous stench that wafted out through the open doorway caused both to grimace...a pungent odor of blood and decay. "Deputy Cordova, its agent Hood, can you hear me?"

"Please, no light...please Ray, don't come in here," a frantic voice cried from the darkness. "You can't see me like this, Ray. Please!" The desperate entreaty degenerated into anguished weeping that lanced Saddler's heart. His initial elation at knowing that she was still alive evaporated, giving way to a sinking despair. The Maria Cordova he knew would never be reduced to this state of helpless misery, unless something ineffably horrible had befallen her.

Tamara holstered her weapon and turned her gaze on Saddler, her amber eyes blazing. "It doesn't sound like there is an immediate threat. Obviously your deputy's distraught, so I want you to wait out here until I've assess the situation. Do you understand, Sheriff?"

Saddler scowled at the authoritarian snap in agent Hood's tone, but recognizing its logic, merely nodded and handed the agent his service flashlight. He then bowed his head and leaned against the wall as agent Hood entered Maria's bedroom.

Seconds later, he heard a sharp hiss of shock and clenched his hands into fists. He had embroiled Maria in this nightmare and if she had suffered as a consequence, the burden of guilt would be exclusively his. He could feel tentacles of black despair tugging insistently at his resolve and fought to stave them off, if only for the sake of the woman in the next room.

Tamara came to an abrupt halt just inside the room, standing as rigid as a piece of statuary. Her flashlight revealed a tableau of horror that twisted her heart when she was certain experience had inured her against any such emotional reaction.

Maria Cordova was tied to her bed, spread eagle with a nightstick protruding from her vagina. She was completely naked and hopelessly restrained. A complex pentagram had been carefully embossed on the wall above the bed and scrawled beneath it was a single word.

Whore!

In addition to suffering this unspeakable abjection, Maria had sustained some sort of facial injury. Tamara recalled how beautiful the deputy had been, when last they had met and her heart clenched in her chest. Grimacing, she shifted the beam of her flashlight to discover the bloody remains of a small animal.

"I'll help you, deputy," Tamara intoned softly. "Just let me send the sheriff out to wait for the ambulance. Are you badly hurt?"

"I...I don't think so, just my face maybe." Her voice broke with this last declaration and she whispered, "Please get this thing out of me before anyone comes."

"I will," Tamara vowed and return to Saddler, speaking with the voice of implacable authority. "Ray, I need you to go outside and wait for the ambulance. Maria isn't seriously hurt...but she's been tied up and left in a pretty compromising position. I want to spare her any further indignity. I'm going to close this door. No one will enter until I say so...including you."

"Listen, agent Hood, she's my deputy," Saddler retorted hotly.

"It's okay, Ray. I'm okay, please let agent Hood help me," Maria called out, her tone imploring. Hearing the pleading edge in her voice, Saddler relented and with a nod, stumbled away.

Tamara found the linen closet and collected several face cloths and a towel. She then moved quickly into the bathroom, where she ran the cloths under cold water.

Striding back into the bedroom and closing the door, she instructed, "Maria, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes as I'm going to switch on the light."

Maria complied without question and agent Hood came to stand beside the deputy, trying to assess the extent of her injuries. There was blood on her inner thighs and Maria's wrists and ankles were badly abraded where they had been chaffed during her struggle against the bonds. It was the deputy's face, however, that appeared to have sustained the most serious injuries. The left side of Maria's face was a distended mass of badly swollen and bruised flesh. Yet, it was the meticulously inflicted cuts that caused agent Hood's stomach to contract into painful knots. The thin wounds were livid and red, forming a stylized X that stretched from eye to mouth and would forever mar Maria Cordova's formidable beauty.

Peering down on those cruel and terrible strokes of disfigurement, Tamara Hood required her every ounce of discipline not to whimper. Maria Cordova opened her eyes then and a moment of unfettered empathy passed between the two women. Maria began to weep wretchedly. Unable to conjure any appropriate words of consolation, Tamara reached for Maria's hand and squeezed it firmly.

4

It was just after one o'clock, but Raymond Saddler felt hollowed out and brittle as though the nightmarish day had lasted an eternity. He sat in a hard plastic chair outside the intensive care unit of the Quinsett County Hospital. His mind kept replaying the vivid image of Maria Cordova being wheeled out of her modest house on a stretcher, her face obscured by bandages.

At Maria's request, agent Hood had not allowed Saddler into the bedroom until the paramedics had attended to Maria and bandaged her face. As Tamara had described what she had found on first entering the room, she had been unable to meet Saddler's haunted gaze. That a hardened cop like Hood could not be dispassionate conveyed everything that Saddler needed to know about the extent of Maria's injuries.

As they had wheeled her down the hall with Saddler drifting along beside her like a forlorn ghost, Maria had reached out and squeezed his hand. "I'll be okay, Ray. This isn't your fault."

That sensitivity for his guilt, despite her own suffering, was more than Saddler could endure. He leaned against the wall and covered his face, unable to restrain the fall of tears.

Now he sat alone, stricken by guilt and remorse. He would've surrendered his badge to Ira Silver then and there, had it not been for his fear of how Maria would perceive this dereliction of duty.

After what she had suffered, Saddler could not bear the thought she might regard him as a coward. Thus, he sat and waited while the attending physician examined her face determine the extent of her injuries. Around him, events continued to gather speed, like an inexorable tide that could not be stemmed. Albert and Tim were handling the bizarre situation at the end of Winder road. Saddler tried to ponder the ramifications of the discovery but simply could not concentrate.

The first of Tamara Hood's investigative teams had arrived and she was leading them through the preliminary investigation at Maria's house.

Saddler found himself alone with his immutable guilt and shame, waiting for the doctor to tell him just how immense this burden would prove to be.

Maria had yet to be questioned about the specifics of the attack, but that single vulgar allegation scrawled over her bed, raised a host of ugly specters.

Veronica's name had been the first to manifest itself in that new ugly chamber that his mind had constructed to house his dark paranoia. He quickly dismissed the idea as she called him from Los Angeles about the same time Maria had been attacked. The next name that had sprung unbidden to his mind had been Cameron Crane. Again, he had rejected the notion, unshakable in the certitude that Cameron was incapable of harming another human being, even in his own defense.

This left him absolutely nowhere, even as he could feel the noose continued to tighten around his neck.

His somber reverie was broken by the sound of brisk footsteps approaching from up the hall. Reluctant to engage in any sort of conversation, Saddler glanced up to see agent Hood striding down the hall. Her face was tight and her expression inscrutable above her blue FBI windbreaker, but in her lovely amber eyes there flickered an emotion that Ray thought might well be uncertainty.

Tamara took the chair directly across from Saddler and leaned forward with her forearms on her thighs. She scrutinized him closely for several moments and then remarked, "When I first arrived yesterday, you warned me that nothing in my experience could prepare me for what's happening in Quinsett. Naturally, I thought you were exaggerating the situation for reasons of your own. Now, I'll admit you are right...in my years with the Bureau, I've seen nothing even remotely similar to what's happening here in Quinsett."

Saddler greeted this admission, which he suspected did not come easily to a woman such as Tamara Hood, with a glum nod. HoodWould frowned at his refusal to be drawn into the conversation, but forged ahead, "I'm going to ask you this again, Ray...because I think the situation has taken on a very personal tone; is there something you're not sharing with me? Even if it's only the inkling of a suspicion, I need to know what you're thinking."

Saddler regarded Hood briefly, momentarily tempted to divulge everything he suspected...and dreaded, if for no other reason than to share the onerous burden. Instead, he heard himself reply, "Agent Hood, a few days ago, I thought I had a pretty accurate idea of what was happening in Quinsett even if I hadn't a clue _who_ was responsible. After this disgusting attack on Deputy Cordova and the murders of the last two days, I can't even claim that. So in answer to your question, agent Hood...I can tell you nothing more than what I already have, except to say that a lot of what I told you is probably meaningless."

Hood studied Saddler intently for long and uncomfortable moment. At last, she sighed, seemingly satisfied that Saddler was being forthcoming. "The pentagram on the wall was exactly the same as the one burned into the side of the farmer's barn. The word whore implies that Maria's assailant had a very specific motivation in selecting her as a target. The fact that Deputy Cordova is still alive implies that this act was intended as a message, or more accurately, as a warning. Maiming her face and using a nightstick to violate your deputy...those things suggest rage...controlled rage, but rage nonetheless. Her attacker obviously intended to thoroughly humiliate and disgrace Maria. My informed speculation would be that this attack was committed by a woman."

Tamara paused briefly and allowed the ashen-faced Saddler a moment to absorb this, before allowing her train of thought to reach its destination. "A point blank question, Ray and the answer stays between you and I...are you having an affair with Deputy Cordova?"

Saddler pursed his lips, finding that he could not even muster the indignation that such an allegation would normally evoke. When he did speak, his tone was flat and listless. "Tamara, the first time I ever spoke to Maria Cordova was last Tuesday. In the short time I've known her, given the extraordinary situation we've been in, I've come to admire her on a personal and professional level, but that's the extent of it."

Hood shook her head and stood, pacing a few steps down the hall where she came to an abrupt halt with her back to Saddler. "Then you're absolutely right...we find ourselves in a situation that makes no sense whatsoever." She glanced impatiently at her watch and declared, "I'm going to head out to Winder to see how your men are doing with Knox Severn and the reporter's car. I've requested that an APB be issued on Deirdre Wilkins, listing her as a missing person under suspicious circumstances. When you're done here, I want you to go collect Cameron Crane. Severn was the only person, other than Crane, who could testify as to what happened to Alma Riesen at the cemetery on the night she was disfigured. If Crane did harm Riesen, Severn's sudden demise would be a pretty fortuitous turn of events."

Saddler lacked the requisite energy to raise an objection and instead murmured, "I'll bring him into the station later this afternoon."

The pair fell into an awkward silence that spanned several moments and then agent Hood marched off to join the battle she'd inherited.

Not long after agent Hood departed, the examining physician emerged from Maria's room, his gold-tanned countenance closed and inscrutable. Saddler stood, at once anxious to learn what the doctor had to say and dreading what he might reveal.

The doctor, Crandall by name and a veteran of these grim waiting room consultations, delivered the verdict in a cool, dispassionate voice that Saddler immediately despised. "Deputy Cordova is in stable condition...at least physically. The mental trauma associated with these types of attacks often manifests itself later, growing slowly as time passes. I would recommend careful observation over the next several days. Ms Cordova's face sustained the most serious damage. Her cheek bone was cracked, but fortunately not shattered, which means it should heal without any signs of lasting change to her appearance."

Crandall paused briefly and for the first time, his expression conveyed a degree of genuine bewilderment. "The cuts on her face are another matter. Frankly, they are rather puzzling."

"Puzzling...how so?" Saddler pressed, trying to suppress his mounting agitation.

"For one, they are superficial...inflicted with an extremely deft touch...a delicacy that is almost irreconcilable with the act itself. Whoever did this didn't really intend to completely mutilate her face. I'm not a plastic surgeon, Sheriff Saddler, but I'm familiar enough with the field to feel confident in saying that reconstructive surgery can restore her face...except of the small segments of the cut near the corners of her mouth and across the bridge of her nose. They were marginally deeper."

"You're saying that she will be permanently scarred?" Saddler demanded as an icy shadow slipped over his heart.

"I fear so, though the light scars will probably be concealed by makeup. Still, for a woman of Ms Cordova's physical beauty, this will likely prove devastating."

Saddler dragged his hands across his face, leaving livid red marks upon his skin, which had assumed the pallor of milk. "Can I speak to her?"

Crandall shook his head emphatically. "Not at the moment. She was understandably distraught and also in a fair degree of discomfort, so I've ordered a sedative. Visiting hours run between 6:30 and 8:30 this evening and she should be awake by then."

Saddler thanked Crandall and stumbled away on rubbery legs. The agonizing image of Maria's lovely countenance, crisscrossed by a spider web of scars, materialized in his mind's eye. Try as he might, Saddler could not banish it from his thoughts and Maria's brown eyes, livid with a clear accusation, pursued him as he fled the building.

Chapter Seven

1

Like a ship that strays unwittingly into the inescapable downward spiral of a raging vortex, the town of Quinsett began to sink into Jeniah's carefully orchestrated nightmare. Those fortunate few who had the wherewithal to flee the troubled town did so, slipping away like thieves in the night.

The less fortunate majority, for whom flight was not a viable option, elected to withdraw behind walls of isolation and deepening paranoia. In truth, Sheriff Saddler's imposed curfew became virtually redundant. Upon learning of the gruesome deaths of Lynda Verin and Ethan Rannout, most residents of Quinsett would have to be dragged out of their homes come nightfall.

Almost no one ventured into the surrounding woods, except in groups and even then with increasing reluctance. Primal fear had inculcated itself deep into the marrow of the isolated town. The sense of foreboding which hovered over the beset town of Quinsett was palpable...making the air of the town thick and onerous to breath.

The funeral of Orlin Feldman took place beneath a high and beautiful sky, Sunday afternoon...in the very cemetery where the deputy had met his grizzly demise. The funeral was well attended as people flocked together, inspired by the sense of community or perhaps the security that could be found in numbers in the face of senseless, inexplicable tragedy. First Selectman Ira Silver spoke, trying vainly to turn his politician's trick of suggesting there was heroic nobility to be had in violent death. The piteous tears of Orlin's wife and children served as a powerful refutation of the old and inane notion.

Albert Huxley, wearing his uniform for one final time, choked his way through a eulogy for the man he knew was patently unsuited for the job...an ignored truth that had ultimately cost his life. The mourners...both sincere and curious alike...drifted away in clusters.

If one could fly over these groups of frightened townspeople, they would hear whispers of a name evoked usually around campfires on dark, windy nights. Jeniah's name had long been spoken only in tones of dark indulgence. Now, however, the mere utterance of her name evoked a chill...like dry leaves scuttling over tomb stones on gray November days.

The people of Quinsett drifted through the streets, unconsciously trying to emulate shadows, perhaps in the hope that the stalking beast's deadly regard would not fall upon them.

Not all were willing to embrace the role of chameleon. When Philbert Hodge was informed that his burgeoning star anchor, Deirdre Wilkins, was officially considered missing under suspicious circumstances, he delivered a scathing criticism of the Sheriff department's handling of the crisis on his station's afternoon newscast.

Upon his return from Deputy Feldman's funeral, first selectman Ira Silver found himself confronted by a mob of impassioned reporters, all hoping to agitate the story into a media frenzy.

Tamara Hood interrogated both Stuart Crane and the aforementioned Silver. To her growing frustration, neither showed any inclination to divulge details regarding the nature of their relationship with the disreputable Scallari. Hood had cajoled, threatened and even tried to appeal to both men's sense of civic obligation. Predictably, both men remained stoic and uncooperative.

Late Sunday evening, Tamara dispatched the second of her investigative teams to the home of Raymond Dwyer, deciding that she would interview Judith Ranzman first thing Monday morning. Beneath her seething frustration, Tamara could not allay the nagging suspicion that she was being roundly deceived by the locals. Worse still, she found herself suddenly afflicted by the inchoate stirring of a deep and formless disquiet...the certainty that a looming, faceless evil was fast descending upon her.

Judith Ranzman placed a single phone call early Sunday afternoon, extending a last minute dinner invitation to a thoroughly surprised Stuart Crane. In an uncharacteristically subdued voice, Ranzman had informed a mystified Crane that she had unearthed the source of their woes. Judith further insisted that she could not discuss the matter on the telephone, but intimated that Stuart would be wise to trust absolutely no one around him. Ignoring his first instinct to decline, Crane had accepted Judith's invitation. More astounding still, she had managed to extract a solemn vow that he would not mention a word of their forthcoming meeting with another living soul.

As she hung up the phone, a predatory grin broke across her lean face. Judith had long fantasized about delivering a painful lesson in humility to the Crane patriarch, whose smug, condescending manner had driven Judith into a murderous rage on more than one occasion.

Now she would fulfill her fantasy in an insidious way that she could never have imagined. Collecting the remaining cylinders of blood, Judith hurried out onto the grounds of her property. As she set about making preparations for her complex ceremony of reanimation, Judith fervently hoped that Lynda Verin's blood had not lost its efficacy.

2

Raymond Saddler spent the hour after leaving Quinsett County Hospital, driving aimlessly around the town. His life was in shambles and the hounds of his failures were hard at his heels, snapping and snarling at the edges of his will to give them opposition. Agent Hood had dispatched him to collect Cameron Crane, but he found himself procrastinating in the face of Maria's unwavering image and the recollection of how he had mistreated Crane the previous night.

Instead, he wound a meandering path through the nearly empty streets, trying to conceive of a way forward through the hazard-riddled field into which he'd strayed. He found himself sitting in his cruiser, staring vacantly at the municipally erected barricade on Ringgold Lane, with no previous memory of having driven there.

As he gazed at the locked gate that prevented access to the far reaches of the road, Saddler accepted, without the slightest equivocation, that the wellspring of his present misery...the source of total ruination that had become his life...lay at the end of this fundamentally pointless stretch of dirt road.

In a moment of clarity so acute as to be stunning, Raymond Saddler understood that his only path forward came through the unconditional acceptance of the salient truths governing his bleak reality.

To begin with, Saddler knew that he must take the first (and the most difficult) step of accepting that Veronica...his Veronica...was gone. The woman, with whom he had shared the most improbable of love affairs, had been supplanted by an evil entity, intent on destroying everything Saddler cherished.

He also realized that he must abandon the debilitating hope that Veronica might be returned to him should he find the means to vanquish her usurper. Clinging to that false hope would render Saddler immobile, incapable of confronting the lethal enemy that now commanded Ronnie's flesh and bone.

Perhaps the harshest concession required of Saddler was the necessity to accept the sum content of Cameron Crane's revelation. Upon reflection, he realized that Crane had sought him out in the desperate hope that Ray would exonerate him from the terrible burden Cameron had inherited from his grandfather.

As inconceivable as Father Crimmon's proposed course of action was, Raymond Saddler understood that it was a burden he should rightfully bear. If Veronica had indeed fallen victim to the dormant corruption that had lain in wait at the end of Ringgold Lane, then the blame for her demise was exclusively his. It only followed that he should be the one to free her from the shackles of Jeniah's terrible enslavement.

With the acceptance of this dreadful obligation, there came one final insight that left Saddler feeling horribly isolated; when this hellacious drama reached its dark culmination, he would have to face it alone...a solitary light to vanquish Jeniah's evil.

He could not and would not embroil Albert or poor, damaged Maria in the climactic battle of this nightmare. By bringing Veronica to Quinsett, he had inadvertently provided Jeniah with a pliable conduit back into the physical world. The task of rectifying that catastrophic error was his and his alone. Somehow, he had to delve into his aching soul and find the mettle to wield the axe when the moment came.

Sitting alone, beneath a gorgeous blue sky on a midsummer afternoon, Raymond Saddler accepted these stark and devastating truths, just as he embraced the terrible burdens their acceptance conferred. By doing so, he was cognizant of the fact that his life...the one he had lived prior to last Monday...was irretrievably lost.

"Maria!" the name sprang to his lips like an eddying breeze...a magical incantation against whatever horrors awaited him in the days to come. Even this solace was not a true requiem because it was accompanied by the horrifying image of her lustrous black hair in stark contrast with the white bandages that concealed her wounded face.

A strident hiss escaped his lips and he swore a vow that, should she grant him the opportunity, he would devote what remained of his life to making amends for every hurt she'd endured on his behalf. Even as he swore this oath, Saddler doubted that an eternity was a sufficient span of time to make that recompense.

On impulse, Saddler threw open the cruiser door and drawing the plastic fob from his pocket, unlocked the gate and threw it open. He then drove the cruiser through, before returning to lock the gate. If he'd judged Tamara Hood's adroitness as a cop correctly, it would not be long before this barrier and its true purpose roused her curiosity.

It suddenly struck Saddler as being imperative that agent Hood not discover just what was taking shape at the end of this road. He was not precisely sure why, but Ray felt certain that any interference in the process would have disastrous consequences.

As he drove down the road, unmindful of the newly gouged ruts that jarred his vehicle, Saddler could not ignore the discernable thickening of the air as he drew closer to the site of Jeniah's black shrine.

It was considerably more pronounced than it had been when he had driven out with Maria on Friday. At his destination, he again reversed the vehicle in the event that a hasty retreat proved necessary and then pulled the cruiser to a halt. He sat thoughtfully for a long moment, both hands gripping the wheel, while attempting to analyze what had motivated him to make this impromptu journey.

' _Laying the groundwork,'_ Saddler was unsure about the genesis of this particular thought, but once it had taken shape in his mind, it seemed somehow appropriate.

Like last time, he resorted from the hollow security of drawing his service revolver as he made his way across the shallow ditch. The heat of the afternoon had yet to burn off the days of accumulated moisture and Saddler was drenched by the time he reached the opening. Even though he thought himself prepared for the dark and improbable spectacle, Saddler was still astounded by the anomaly taking shape before him.

Jeniah's house...the house where she intended to work her dark magic...was all but complete.

There was only one section of exposed plywood where the flashing and shingles had yet to manifest themselves out of the malice of Jeniah's dark ambition. Standing beneath a pristine blue sky, staring fixedly at a structure that was literally constructing itself out the earth beneath his feet, a wave of surrealism washed over Saddler. He could feel the newfound resolve start to waver precariously. He stumbled across the uneven ground, meaning to grip the door handle or peer through one of the windows.

The hair at the nape of his neck and on his forearms abruptly stood straight away from his flesh, which had risen into great hackles.

He flung himself backwards an instant before a sheet of sizzling blue-argent light erupted from the forest floor where he'd been standing.

' _Just like the barrier that protected her desk,'_ he thought as he picked himself up and brushed leaves and grass from his uniform. It stood to reason that Jeniah would not leave protection of this place to simple isolation alone. Saddler shook his head then, bemused by how quickly he'd made the transition from skepticism to acceptance that Jeniah Lightcrusher was his all too real enemy.

Wondering just how inviolable this barrier might prove to be, Saddler raised his weapon, aimed at one of the windows and fired.

There followed another blinding explosion of argent-blue light, as a tongue of pure energy leapt from the ground and snatched the bullet out of the air.

The accompanying hiss of protest caused Saddler to cover his ears and stagger back several steps. The sound very much resembled a strident howl of outrage. He holstered his gun. This demonstration had emphatically confirmed that this barrier was essentially insurmountable by conventional means.

A snapping of branches drew his attention. Off to his left, something was moving through the foliage...converging directly upon the place where he now stood. Saddler again drew his weapon and began to back slowly in the direction of the road.

There came a second snap and then a third, each significantly louder than its predecessor. Whatever was bearing down upon him, Saddler knew that it was large...extremely large.

When the first of the stryges emerged from the trees, baleful golden eyes blazing and razor sharp beak chittering furiously, Saddler turned and fled, firing one further shot at the barrier as he ran.

The subsequent explosion of energy proved a sufficient enough distraction to allow Saddler to reach his cruiser. He jumped in and threw the car into gear, offering a prayer of gratitude to the god of prudence that he'd taken time to reverse the vehicle. He cast a quick glance to the trees, grateful to find that the golden-eyed monstrosity had not bothered to pursue him.

' _At least not yet,'_ a panicked voice whispered in his ear and he depressed the accelerator as much as he dared on the still muddy dirt road. He also hit the siren in the hope that its frenetic braying would deter pursuit. As he raced back to Quinsett, it occurred to Saddler that he'd just found Lynda Verin's and Ethan Rannout's killer.

3

Veronica Ashcott-Saddler lounged casually in a recliner, staring out over the gently rolling surf that broke along the golden strand of the Ashcott family's Malibu beach house.

The afternoon sun was intense, but its hot kiss was attenuated by the incessant ocean breeze. Veronica looked down on the frolicking children, who ran before the breakers under the watchful eye of Mrs. Quilling.

The lavish beach house symbolized the extravagance that characterized the elite of the world since the days of Amathera's youth. While those over-pampered brats played in the surf, men and women scoured garbage bins for a stale scraps of crust in back alleys, not ten miles away.

' _Ah, but in just a few days, these bastions of privilege will be swept away on a tide of blood.'_

Her gaze fell on Veronica's two children...so beautiful and innocent, and again she contemplated which of the two would be the better choice to serve as the catalyst. Jeniah's first inclination was to select precocious Wendy, but she was self-aware enough to realize this was because of her dislike of the girl. There was an implied judgment in the girl's disconcerting gaze that vexed Jeniah to no end.

Still, the efficacy of the catalyst would be augmented geometrically by its innocence and that made Danny a far more enticing choice.

She was still engrossed in consideration of who would serve as a better sacrifice, when the beauty of the Malibu afternoon abruptly vanished. Veronica's entire body went rigid as the world faded to an impenetrable black.

When she next opened her eyes, Veronica found herself peering at her surroundings as though through fish eyes lenses. Her alien gaze swung left to reveal a modest house that was in the final stages of construction. It then swung back to its original perspective in time to see a uniformed man fleeing into the dense foliage, a gun in his right hand.

Recognition filtered in and Veronica cried out, though the sound that filled her ears was the screech of an owl.

The man fleeing the creature, through whose eyes she now viewed the world, was Raymond Saddler.

With this recognition, she understood precisely where she was and the circumstances in which she was seeing it.

Raymond Saddler had somehow found the house where the ritual would be enacted five days hence. He had attempted to breech the barrier and this in turn, had drawn the Stryges. She could feel her host's mad compulsion to pursue the trespasser...to rip him into bloody ribbons and feed on his entrails.

By a monumental exertion of will, she reined the beast in along with its nearby sisters, thus allowing Saddler to escape.

In the next instant, she found herself lying sprawled on the stone deck, an overturned lounge chair on top of her. She quickly scrambled to her feet and righted the heavy chair.

The entire incident had transpired in the span of mere seconds and escaped the notice of three at the beach.

' _He knows!'_ a panicked voice screeched in the confines of her reeling mind as Jeniah clutched the elevated deck's railing and attempted to calm her racing heart.

Even when they'd spoken last night, Jeniah had suspected that he was concealing something, some small kernel of knowledge. She had not bothered attempting to divine the nature of that kernel because, quite frankly, she'd essentially dismissed the host's spouse as an imbecile, who posed no real threat to her carefully contrived schemes.

What she had just witnessed was a painful testimony to just how wrong that cursory dismissal had proven to be. _'Have you learned nothing from your last bitter failure?'_

The question now was...what exactly did Saddler know and how much of a threat did it pose to the ritual? Obviously, he knew about the house and the barrier that protected it. By extension, he knew about the deadly Stryges. How he had come by this knowledge and just what he had been doing there, meddling in a process far beyond his feeble capacity to grasp?

Seething with frustration and no small degree of panic, Veronica sat down and slammed her fist on her lean, muscular thigh. Her first impulse was to return to Quinsett at once and insure that Saddler posed no appreciable threat to her plans, even if that meant ripping out his throat.

' _Calm yourself...you are the Chronicler...humanity's judge...not an artless school girl,'_ she berated herself, and the rebuke had the effect of restoring her sense of equilibrium...if only marginally. A sudden, impulsive return to Quinsett would raise suspicion and spell the ruination of the ritual of evocation.

Conversely, if Saddler had somehow managed to unearth the nature of the threat he faced, immediate and brutally decisive action would become necessary. Even then, his removal would not require her personal attention. Saddler's death, she could leave to the creative cruelty of her new familiar.

First, however, it was exigent that she gain a sense of the extent of Saddler's knowledge...the familiar and Cameron Crane could provide much of that needed insight.

The thought of the latter roused that baffling and peculiar heat in her blood...all the more perplexing because she wasn't truly certain if it found its origins in her emotions or in one of the host's fragments. She gravitated over to the railing and called out, "Mrs. Quilling, I have to make a phone call so I'll be inside for a while."

The old woman turned back and waved, smiling the simpleton's smile that Veronica so detested.

4

Cameron was sitting in the tattered chair where Veronica had so skillfully seduced him mere days before, staring vacantly into space. After Maria Cordova had dropped him off, Cameron had stumbled into his bedroom and collapsed, face down and fully clothed, on to his bed, falling into a deep, but troubled sleep.

In some of his livid dreams, he'd been relentlessly pursued by a creature with glittering pewter fangs and hellish black eyes. This nightmare would inevitably segue into a dream in which he pursued an elusive shadow, through darkened, rain-drenched streets. Cameron clutched a double-headed axe, but his quarry mocked and taunted him as he sunk into exhaustion and immobilizing futility.

This morning, he'd stumbled out of bed and settled into this chair, where he remained still because he simply lacked the energy to rouse himself. In truth, he would have no precise notion what he might actually do even if he could muster the requisite energy.

Saddler tossing Cameron into the mud had been a stark microcosm of Crane's miserable life...an emphatic and degrading rejection that characterized his every interaction with the world around him. With this blunt dismissal, Cameron now found himself isolated and alone, faced with an adversary that far better men had failed to vanquish.

It was against this pall of dejection that the telephone began to ring, an occurrence that happened so seldom, it took several moments for Crane to recognize it for what it was.

Even as he scrambled for the antiquated wall phone that was affixed, forgotten and dust covered, to the wall next to the kitchen cupboards, Cameron felt an icy wave of dread wash over him.

He snatched up the receiver with a trembling hand and offered tentatively, "Hello?"

"Hello yourself, Cameron." Her voice filled his ear like silk across bare flesh and he could sense the cadence of his breathing change. "It's Veronica, though I'd imagined you guessed as much. I thought I'd give you a quick ring to see if you're surviving without me."

For an excruciating moment, Cameron simply couldn't respond as if his throat had constricted and his faculty of speech had deserted him. The moment drew itself out until the silence became suffocating.

"Cameron?" Veronica repeated, though now there was a distinct edge in her dulcet tone that might well have been concern...or suspicion.

' _You'd better get your hand out of your ass, boyo,'_ the voice of Mordecai Crane rasped, his harsh tone a blend of irritation and unease. _'What you say and how you say it could be the entire game right here and now.'_

Grasping the fundamental truth of this, Cameron fell back on the familiar defense mechanism of apologetic helplessness. "Sorry, Veronica...I don't get many phone calls."

There was a brief pause and then her bright voice filled his ear again, at once chiding and teasing. "Then perhaps I'll ring you at thirty minute intervals just to get you in the practice of answering the telephone." The levity (which Cameron suspected was feigned) left her voice, giving way to a husky eroticism that jangled his nerves and heated his blood. "When I call you, Cameron, I want to feel your heat...your need...caress my ear. I want to know that you're aching to have me. Are you anxious for my return, Cameron?"

Though in reality the prospect of her return filled him with trepidation of near crippling intensity, he nonetheless managed, "Yes."

"Correct answer...though I find your enthusiasm to be a bit lacking," she retorted, and now the vexation in her voice was unmistakable. After a moment, she sighed and her tone reverted to its former casual, teasing self. "Being coy is pointless Cameron and I think you know that. I have a way of getting under your skin...and into your bed that you'll find simply irresistible."

Before he could restrain the urge, Cameron blurted, "Why Veronica...why would you ever want to? What could I possibly have that is of any value to you?"

"Your soul, of course," she replied and laughed lightly, before advising, "I first told you that I'm a woman who has grown accustomed to getting what I want and I've decided I want you. Leave the whys and wherefores to me and simply succumb, Cameron. Now, I haven't called just to tantalize your loins. Our little town's been making national headlines, but I haven't been able to reach my dear husband. He's off trying to protect the town, I would think. What exactly has happened since I left, Cameron?"

Again, Mordecai stirred with an entreaty to tread cautiously, as they arrived at the salient heart of the matter. Cameron suddenly felt like a man attempting to walk a tightrope in a high wind. Trying to maintain a neutral tone, he described the murders of Lynda Verin and Ethan Rannout, concluding by saying, "There's a widespread sense of fear in town...a kind of simmering panic. Apparently, people are already beginning to slip away, though only in trickles. If something isn't done soon, that stream is going to become a flood."

"And you, Cameron...are you frightened?" she asked in a tone that was grave and oddly nuanced. It was readily apparent that she was trolling for something specific, but what or why, he could not decipher.

"I'm certainly concerned, if I'm being candid," Crane ventured, deciding to take a calculated risk by divulging, "I spoke with the Sheriff yesterday."

"You spoke to my husband...why?" Veronica demanded and though she tried to conceal her agitation with impatient anger, Crane could discern the extent to which this disclosure shook her.

"He came to warn me that the lead federal investigator on this case would be pulling me in for questioning," Cameron related and his anxiety at the prospect was all too real. "She wants to grill me over Vincent Scallari and the incident at the cemetery. I think my reputation as the town misfit is about to cause me a fresh round of grief."

Now it was Veronica's turn to lapse into a prolonged, thoughtful silence. Finally, she prompted, "Why would my husband warn you that you're about to be summoned for another round of questioning? The good sheriff is a stickler for protocol."

"I think he feels sorry for me," Crane suggested truthfully.

"Perhaps," Veronica allowed with a note of skepticism. "I've spoken to the lead investigator. She has the sensibilities of a wolf, Cameron and so you'll have to be very deliberating in what you say."

"I'm not sure I understand?"

Veronica sighed. "Of course you don't, dear and that's one of the things I love about you. Agent Hood is attempting to establish a connection between Scallari and you. She's basically fishing for a scapegoat to take the fall for these murders. She knows about the incident at Hogan's market and she's going to aggressively dig for a connection between you and me."

Veronica paused to allow Cameron a moment to absorb this and when she again spoke, her tone was fraught with glacial menace. "It wouldn't do for my husband to learn about our arrangement...no, it wouldn't do at all. If agent Hood attempts to lead you along that particular path, I fully expect that you'll keep this in mind, Cameron."

"I'm not a particularly skilled liar, Veronica," Cameron replied quietly.

To Crane's surprise, Veronica reacted to that admission with a knowing laugh. "Given time, you will be, Cameron. Have no worries about that." Again, there followed another seamless shift in tone and she admonished cryptically, "I intend to be your special friend, Cameron and in return, I ask only for your discretion. Believe me when I tell you that I am not a person with whom you would want to be enemies."

In that regard, Cameron Crane needed no convincing and so he replied simply, "I do, Veronica."

"Cameron, I suspect they're going to badger you, but I promise that I won't allow them to offer you up as a sacrificial lamb. I want you to take this number down and call me once the interview is over." Veronica's tone was brisk and business like. Again, he found himself assailed by doubt that he was really speaking to a monster.

"Instinct is telling me that I may not have the opportunity," Cameron replied with just the slightest intimation of bitterness. It suddenly occurred to him that both Saddlers, in a blackly ironic twist, had extracted vows of silence from him in the past twenty-four hours.

"If they are foolish or desperate enough to detain you on such shallow pretexts, you will call the number I've given you. Agent Hood will quickly come to rue the decision to make you her personal whipping boy. Promise me that you'll call it if you have any sort of difficulty, Cameron."

"I will," he promised, seeing no other way of extricating himself from this surreal charade.

"Cameron, I swear to you that your days of being Quinsett's all purpose football are coming to an end. I'm a woman who doesn't renege on her personal oaths." With this, she rang off. Cameron hung up the receiver, and leaning against the chipped counter, buried his face in his hands.

' _You did well, boyo,'_ the spirit of Mordecai Crane commended. _'Whatever she wanted, I don't think you gave it to her. Remember, Cameron, the day of reckoning is close at hand and you can't absolve yourself of this duty. It's best you accept that and prepare yourself.'_

Reminded of this odious obligation, Crane uttered a groan, fully expecting that there was no deliverance to be had from this terrible burden.

Just then, the doorbell uttered its high, intrusive whine.

Chapter Eight

1

The last person Cameron Crane expected to find on his moldering doorstep was Raymond Saddler, especially after the acrimonious conclusion of their previous night's encounter. Yet here he stood, appearing every bit as sheepish and hollow-eyed as Cameron, himself, felt. "Cameron, I'm here on official business, but I'd like to come in and talk for a while before we get to that."

Cameron simply nodded and stood back, gesturing for Saddler to enter. He then led the Sheriff into the dreary confines of his small living room and offered him chair. When he could bring himself to glance at the other man, Crane could not help but notice the deep lines of exhaustion that were etched around his eyes and mouth. Crane was certain that those lines had been absent when they had first met, only last week.

Saddler engaged in an intense study of his hands and then offered, "I want to start by apologizing for my behavior yesterday. It was inexcusable. If you want to press assault charges, I'll verify whatever you choose to tell them."

Cameron waved this away with no small degree of alarm. "It's really okay, Sheriff. Under the circumstances, how else could you be expected to react? I've been subject to a lot worse...without any justification."

Saddler stared at the man glumly and remarked, "Your life in this town hasn't been easy."

Cameron shrugged as though the matter was incidental. "I can shoulder a good deal of the blame for much of what happened to me over the years." He swept an arm about the room in an encompassing gesture. "The way I've lived has been of my own choosing."

Saddler accepted this with a tacit nod. "I also wanted to tell you that I believe everything you told me last night...without reservation or exception. The woman...or thing that seduced you is not my wife. That seems ludicrous, but it's true. I'm not sure why Jeniah Lightcrusher has taken a keen interest in you, but I surmise it's something that would benefit us greatly if we were able to figure it out."

"I've spent the better part of a week trying to do exactly that," Crane remarked in clear bewilderment. "I still can't produce a single plausible explanation."

"The reasons may not really matter. She's attracted to you...seems fixated on you somehow, and that may be something we can exploit." He shifted his gaze until it locked on Crane's. Saddler's eyes appeared remorseless and as hard as diamonds. "I'm going to stop her, Cameron, if this thing has supplanted Veronica, then I'm going to destroy it, even if it means following your grandfathers prescribed method to the letter. I've come to ask...no, plead for your help, because I really don't know if I can do this alone."

Crane's lower mandible dropped, stupefied to wonder by Saddler's suggestion. "You actually intend to kill her...to kill her as Crimmon suggested?"

The expression on Saddler's face then was a strange construct; an incongruent mask composed of despair, resignation and grim resolve. "Cameron, if what we've seen in Quinsett over the past week is any indication, we can't afford to allow the process that Jeniah has set in motion, to reach its climax. You said that Father Crimmon believed the ritual was intended to open doors and there are very good indications he's right. Do you really want to find out what might be on the other side of any door Jeniah would see fit to open?"

Cameron merely shook his head. "Couldn't you simply tell the FBI lead about what you suspect?"

Saddler merely inclined his head and pursed his lips as if the idea was too absurd to even merit comment, which Crane realized it was. The horrific image of Veronica's headless corpse filled his mind's eye then...snippets of bloody, torn flesh hanging from base of her severed head. Those large green eyes would stare lifelessly into nothingness. In a tortured, strangled moan he exclaimed, "I couldn't do that to her...under any circumstances. It's... It's just not in me."

"Cameron, you won't have to. Veronica is...was my wife...a woman who followed me to this wretched town on faith only to be rewarded with an unimaginable end." Here, Saddler's voice wavered, but he drew a deep breath and forged ahead. Patting his holstered weapon, he told Crane, "If it turns out that I don't have the stomach to follow Father Crimmon's way, I'll use this and settle for another reprieve."

Cameron's expression was a portrait of anguish in the face of Saddler's grim determination. Still, the man was offering him the amnesty he so desperately craved...a chance to escape from beneath an unbearable weight. "I'll help you any way I can...as long as it doesn't actually involve me hurting her."

Saddler studied Crane in silence for several moments, trying to divine the nature of his reluctance...pacifism so extreme that he would not raise a hand in his own defense. Finally, he abandoned the effort with a shrug. "If events reach that particular juncture...it will be in my hands alone...and on my conscience. If you're going to help me, then I want you to know exactly what's happened thus far...all of it."

For the next forty minutes, Saddler recounted the events of the past week in a calm, dispassionate voice, sparing not detail...even his incriminating tampering with evidence. He concluded with his harrowing encounter with the Stryge on Ringgold Lane.

Cameron Crane absorbed this incredible tale with growing alarm and by the time Saddler had concluded his terrible monologue, all color had drained from Crane's face. "These things that were protecting the house...do you think Jeniah's controlling them?"

"Possibly...probably," Saddler confirmed. "My guess is that they are responsible for the last two deaths. Cameron, we really have no idea what Jeniah Lightcrusher is...or what she is capable of in terms of the abilities she might possess. Everything we believe about her is pure conjecture."

"Putting it that way doesn't leave a great deal of latitude for optimism," Crane murmured morosely.

Saddler offered Crane a vitiated grin. "Ah, but we can be sure of perhaps the most important thing...her physical body can be destroyed. We have to pray that will be enough."

"You said Maria was injured...will she be okay?" Crane inquired.

Here Saddler's mask of stolid resolve slipped to reveal the simmering despair beneath. "I don't know. Physically, the injuries were fairly minor, but the bastard who attacked her saw fit to scar her face."

Saddler faltered into silence and Cameron grimaced in revulsion. Something occurred to Crane and he observed, "If this is connected to everything that's happened in Quinsett, it would mean that Maria is the first person to actually survive an attack."

Saddler blinked. In the extremity of his agitation, he had not made this astute observation...one that Crane had discerned automatically. More than ever, it was crucially important that he speak with Maria. Saddler glanced at his watch and noticed it was ten to four. Maria would not be awake for another few hours and agent Hood would impatiently be expecting him to return to the station with Cameron Crane in tow. Reluctantly, he announced, "Now for the unpleasant business; with Knox Severn turning up dead, you've just become Tamara Hood's prime person of interest. She's instructed me to bring you in for another round of questioning. I want you to be prepared because she's going to grill you hard, Cameron?"

Cameron grimaced, but nodded in resignation before divulging, "Veronica warned me to expect as much."

"What?" Saddler exclaimed, his posture becoming rigid. Quietly, Cameron related the baffling details of his strange telephone conversation with Veronica, sparing Saddler the woman's constant sexual innuendo. Ray listened and despite his resolve to accept that Veronica was gone, Crane's narrative lanced his heart with acute sorrow and loss.

"It seemed to me that she was fishing for something specific, but I confess...I have no idea what," Cameron concluded.

"Neither do I," Saddler allowed gruffly, employing curtness to mask his hurt. Rising, he declared, "All right, Cameron, let's get this over with. Try to answer agent Hood's questions in a forthright manner and you should be okay."

Cameron rose and followed Saddler to the door and out onto his stoop, where both men stood and stared up at the pristine blue sky. The moment reminded Cameron of the sharp contrast with the previous night's encounter and he remarked, "Standing here and seeing how normal everything seems, it's hard to believe that any of this is really happening."

"It is," Saddler allowed, fervently wishing he was caught in the most lucid nightmare he'd ever endured.

Cameron locked his door and started toward Saddler's cruiser. "What will you do now, Sheriff?"

"Ray, remember..." Saddler reminded Crane in a kindly tone, before admitting, "I don't really know, but you may have given me an idea...or at least, the seed of one. Once this is over, we'll talk some more."

Cameron accepted Saddler's cryptic response with an anxious nod and then settled into the cruiser's passenger seat, steeling himself for the ordeal to come.

2

While laying the groundwork for her carefully conceived and complex ritual of re-animation, Judith was immensely pleased by how adroit she was becoming at distilling knowledge from Amathera's vast memory. This rite of necromancy was just one of the innumerable bits of wisdom that her mistress had absorbed peripherally over the course of the centuries. She was anxious to wade through that sea of dark knowledge, in search of the many forgotten treasures that could surely be found there.

Absorbed in her labors, Judith was oblivious to the gradual coalescing of energy around her, until a subtle current of chilled air whispered across the nape of her neck. She rose in one swift fluid movement and spun about to find Veronica standing behind her. Upon closer inspection, she realized that her mistress was not actually here in a tangible sense. There was a ghostly, shimmering aspect to Veronica's lovely countenance that informed Judith she was actually seeing a manifestation of some sort.

"Surprised to see me, Judith?" Jeniah inquired lightly.

"How are you doing this?" Ranzman demanded eagerly, eliciting an indulgent laughter from the other woman.

"While you've absorbed my memories, I've lived them first hand. It would be prudent not to lose sight of that distinction, Judith...in the event that you decide to renege on that agreement."

"I won't," Ranzman growled, but averted her eyes in the face of Veronica's intense scrutiny. "I vowed to serve you and I will."

Seemingly mollified, Veronica set about examining the complex intaglio that Judith was creating, "Interesting, a pentagram of reanimation."

"It's going to help me dispose of Stuart Crane," Judith declared flatly. "I thought it would be a rather ironic twist to utilize the very weapon with which you intended to kill me."

"Don't be tedious and sulk, Judith," Veronica remarked with a predacious grin. She reached out one ghostly hand and tenderly caressed Judith's prominent cheek bone. "You do have a dramatic flare for your art, dear."

Judith trembled perceptibly. Jeniah's spectral touch had been delicate and cool, but its effect heated the familiar's blood like a raging fire. Feeling a sudden desire to please her mistress, Judith provided a concise account of all she'd achieved in the short time she's been back in Quinsett. To her chagrin, Jeniah's reaction was muted, if not overtly dismayed.

"This reporter specifically asked about me?" she inquired, trying to maintain a neutral tone without any real success.

"Yes, but I'm certain she was fishing for a news story and nothing more," Judith remarked, intrigued by the cause of Jeniah's seemingly baseless anxiety. "At any rate, she's vanished into thin air...or more accurately, the earth beneath our feet."

Veronica glanced down at the manicured lawn, where she could feel resonating echoes of Deirdre Wilkins's entombed spirit screaming endlessly.

"Be careful Judith. You are tampering with forces that are far more malign than even your black heart," Jeniah advised, troubled by Judith's insatiable propensity for ugly violence. "My dear husband knows about the ritual...about the Stryges."

Judith became rigid, her black eyes regarding her mistress closely. In a voice made husky with keen anticipation, she pleaded, "Allow me to kill him for you."

Veronica frowned, "It may well come to that, but not just yet. I have to determine the extent of his knowledge and who else might share it."

Judith's dark eyes twinkled with an unaccountable disdain. "I can think of at least two people who share his knowledge."

She allowed this disclosure to linger tantalizingly between them, until a clearly vexed Jeniah demanded, "Speak!"

"Maria Cordova has been fucking your virtuous husband...and possibly Cameron Crane...perhaps even at the same time," Judith revealed with obvious malicious delight.

The blow that struck Judith was swift, like the practiced flash of a rapier. The familiar found herself flat on her back and being dragged across the lawn by the hair of her head. In the next instant, she was slammed roughly into the south wall of her house, finally ending up in a sitting position with Veronica's foot thrust against her throat.

"Your need to goad me grows tedious, Judith," Jeniah snarled. "You are a tool and when tools outlive their usefulness, they are best disposed of."

Judith's dark eyes flashed with something that might well have been excitement and she offered Veronica a bloody grin. In one fluid motion, she produced the Athame from its sheath at her waist and offered it to her mistress. "Then kill me Amathera and lose every advantage I can offer you...a loyal familiar who is not reluctant to soil her hands doing the dirty work that you consider distasteful."

The pressure on Judith's neck increased until it seemed inevitable that her throat would be crushed. Still, she gazed unblinkingly up at her mistress, the challenge vivid in her dark eyes. Finally, Veronica slapped the athame from Judith's grasp with a guttural snarl of frustration. She then removed her foot, turned her back and stalked away. Judith drew the back of her hand across her bloody mouth, grinning at the sight of her own blood. She had just achieved a slight advantage over the other woman to whom she'd pledged fealty, but there would be time later to consider the nature of that advantage.

She sprang to her feet and retrieved her ceremonial dagger, before coming to stand behind the spectral Jeniah, who intoned fiercely, "Tell me what you've learned?"

Judith recounted the events of the past night, relishing the tightening of Veronica's jaw when she related the news of her husband's infidelity.

"Why were you watching Cameron's house?"

"Curiosity," Judith confessed candidly. "I was curious why a woman of your power...your presence...would concern herself with an inconsequential dullard like Cameron Crane." She ventured closer until her lips were mere inches from Veronica's spectral ear. "You see, I want to know you intimately, Amathera. I possess your memories, but I want to know you thoughts as well. What could Cameron Crane provide for you that I would not offer gladly in his stead, Amathera?"

Veronica turned to confront Judith with a warning scowl. "Don't call me that?"

"Why?" Judith inquired teasingly. "Amathera is such a lovely name...so dignified and innocent."

"Enough!" Veronica hissed. "You will complete the collection of the blood debt and I will concern myself with discovering the extent of my husband's knowledge. You will not raise a hand against him until I say you may."

"When this is done, I want his whore," Judith demanded, her levity giving way to a stupefying madness. "I have already marked her and I would have her as payment for service rendered."

Now it was Veronica's turn to offer a feral grin as she waved a dismissive hand. "She's yours...providing she survives the scorned Veronica's wrath."

Then she vanished, her ephemeral image imploding upon itself in a rush. Judith spat a glut of bloody saliva and resumed her preparations, an unpleasant smile spreading across her face like oil on water. She had unnerved Jeniah in a complex and significant way. As she prepared her feast of treachery for Stuart Crane, Judith amused herself with visions of the day when she and Jeniah might reverse roles.

"You'll crawl to me then, Amathera," Judith vowed, "A pretty doll for my every pleasure."

3

"So explain to me again how a grown man finds himself in a graveyard...a locked graveyard at that...in the middle of the night?" Tamara Hood demanded in a tone that was both truculent and accusatory.

Cameron peered up at the federal agent, his expression both flustered and exasperated. "I'm not sure how I can answer your question more plainly than I have. I was taking a walk along Winder Road and I heard cries coming from somewhere in the cemetery. They sounded like cries of distress, so I went to investigate."

"Given the way you've been treated by the citizen's of Quinsett, you would strike me as an unlikely candidate for the role of good Samaritan," Tamara observed, her caustic tone dripping with sarcasm.

Leaning against the wall of the station's small conference room, Saddler grimaced, feeling enormous pity for the beleaguered Crane. His life seemed to have been a perpetual procession of cruel and grossly unfair moments such as the one to which he was presently being subjected.

That lengthy mistreatment might have made Hood's heavy-handed tactics less effective than they otherwise would have been. Cameron merely shrugged benignly and replied, "I'm not really sure how you expect me to respond to that?"

Hood fixed Crane with a sour frown that hinted at frustration. "Do you have anyone who can verify your whereabouts for the last week?"

Cameron shook his head, "I'm something of a loner. I don't have visitors or acquaintances...so, no, I don't have an alibi for the past week."

Tamara switched tactics, her tone becoming one of hollow commiseration. "Being isolated and impoverished in a town like Quinsett must not be easy...especially given that you come from one of the wealthiest families in the state. Living in a squalid shack, a constant victim of ridicule, it would be hard not to build some serious resentment towards your family."

Cameron met Tamara's searing amber eyes. When he spoke, his expression remained neutral and his tone moderate. "I live the way I choose to live, agent Hood. I have everything I genuinely want."

"An amazing accomplishment in frugality, considering you have $22.50 in your checking account," Hood retorted.

Cameron frowned. "I receive a monthly allowance...most of which I have no use for and currently sits in a shoe box in my closet. If you've bothered to check my bank account, then you probably already know that I have no debt and that my utilities and taxes are paid up in full. I was unaware that being indifferent to money was a criminal offence, Agent Hood?"

Saddler smiled in spite of himself, grateful that Tamara's back was turned to him. Crane had deftly derailed Hood's attempt to establish envy as a possible motive. Still, this seemed to deter Hood for only a moment and she resumed her assault.

"All right, let's switch gears...tell me about Vincent Scallari."

Cameron blinked and shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't know who that is."

"Mr. Scallari was killed at the Eternal Lights Cemetery, along with officer Feldman. As coincidence would have it, he was murdered on the very same spot you were found with Alma Riesen."

Cameron's only response was a frown of puzzlement. Tamara crossed her arms and tilted her head back in a gestured that suggested exasperation. "Mr. Scallari was brought to town by your brother to investigate a possible threat to his informal group. We have it from a reliable source that Mr. Scallari had developed a keen interest in you, Cameron."

"My brother and I are estranged. He considers me an embarrassment to the family's good name. He certainly doesn't see fit to share the details of his business associations with me. As for Mr. Scallari's interest in me...as you've just shown, given your perception of my situation, it's only logical that I would be the first person who comes to mind when doling out suspicion."

Saddler wanted to applaud. Despite his surprisingly adroit rebuff of Tamara's badgering allegations, Cameron's mild expression held no hint of smugness.

Tamara leaned on the table, with both hands curled into fists, and uttered two words that sent Saddler's jubilation up in flames. "Jeniah Lightcrusher."

That name, replete with dark power and myth, startled Cameron into committing a grave misstep. Instinctively, his gaze slid over agent Hood's shoulder to where a grimacing Raymond Saddler leaned against the wall. Tamara caught the gaze, interpreted its implied significance and lashed Saddler with a fierce scowl.

When she returned her attention to Crane, a knowing, humorless grin lit her handsome face. "How familiar are you with the stories surrounding this woman?"

"I know them as well as anyone in town. My grandfather led the group that murdered Jeniah Lightcrusher, but I'm sure you already know that," Cameron remarked calmly, though Saddler could see that Tamara's unexpected reference had badly unnerved the man.

"So then you're familiar with the circumstances in which she was killed and the nature of the allegations leveled against her?"

"Yes," Cameron admitted simply, though his tone was wary.

"Then obviously you knew that she was buried in the Eternal Lights Cemetery. You couldn't help but know that she was dabbling in the occult." Tamara retreated a step and turned her back on Cameron, apparently making an intense study of the ceiling. "That will be enough for now, Cameron.'

"I can go?" Crane inquired hopefully.

Tamara turned back to Crane, sparing a baleful glance at Saddler, and announced, "I'm afraid not."

She then proceeded to read Crane his rights. Horrified by this unexpected turn of events, Saddler came forth and demanded, "What exactly are you charging Mr. Crane with, agent Hood?"

Tamara regarded Saddler with an expression of annoyed disgust. "Malicious mischief causing bodily harm, to begin with. There may be more charges pending a search of his home.'

Saddler started to protest, but Hood cut him short with a curt, chopping gesture. "Not a word, Sheriff. Process Mr. Crane and then come and see me."

She strode from the room, exuding anger like heat from a fire. The two men watched her go in silence and Cameron remarked, "Of the two of us, I think I'd rather be in my situation right about now."

Saddler sighed and clapped Cameron on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, Cameron. I really didn't expect that she'd take it this far." He ran his finger thoughtfully over his lower lip for a moment and then added, "I mentioned earlier that I didn't have a specific plan...but now I think I do...or perhaps the beginning of one."

Cameron arched an eyebrow in interest, privately doubting that he could contribute anything of value from the confines of a holding cell. Saddler nodded, apparently gaining enthusiasm for his freshly conceived notion. "She asked you to call her if this happened. I want you to do exactly that and make it clear that you're deeply concerned and desperately want her help."

"The deeply-concerned bit won't be a particular stretch," Cameron interjected glumly. "What's your thinking with this?"

Saddler's brow furrowed as if he was still debating the relative merits of his own schemes. "I think it's imperative that we get her back in Quinsett and settle this thing before Thursday night. I have no justification for this theory other than instinct. Jeniah seems to have an odd fixation with you and here is where we can exploit that to our advantage...if you're still willing."

"I am," Cameron responded automatically, though he didn't exactly relish the prospect of speaking with his family's avowed enemy. Saddler nodded and led Cameron over to the bullpen and to Deputy Holland, who he instructed to process Crane and insure that he had the opportunity to make his phone call. Offering Crane a parting nod, Saddler inhaled deeply and entered his office, where agent Hood was furiously scribbling notes.

When she gazed up, her eyes blazed with barely restrained fury. "You and your staff are off this case...completely. You can go back to handling traffic citations and parking tickets, but as far as this case is concerned, you're done. Don't you dare insult my intelligence by suggesting that you have no idea why I'm angry. I saw the look Crane gave you when I mentioned Jeniah Lightcrusher. I warned you that I had no patience for games and I've had enough of this small town bullshit subterfuge. I know there are things that you are not sharing with me concerning this case."

"Are you actually suggesting that I or my staff is somehow involved in these murders?" Saddler bristled.

"If I thought that, Saddler, your ass would be in the cell next to your outcast friend." Tamara rejoined, her voice skirting the edges of a hysterical shout. "What I believe is that you're concealing something about this situation. While you play at whatever game you're playing, people are dying. I'm pretty sure that your Deputy was not a random target. Rest assured Saddler...when I do find out what you're hiding, you will face obstruction charges."

Saddler's face remained neutral, knowing that her outrage was perfectly justified. Her incisive remark about Maria had struck particularly close to home.

When it became evident that he would offer no comment, Tamara averted her gaze to her notes and growled, "Get away from me, Saddler, before I decide not to wait."

Seeing little to be gained by antagonizing the volatile Hood, Saddler quietly left both the office and the station. He could muster very little rancor towards Tamara, knowing full well that he had earned her scorn. Being removed from the investigation was more of an inconvenience than an actual impediment. The burden of protecting Quinsett had fallen on Tamara Hood's capable shoulders, leaving Saddler free to confront the entity that had taken Veronica from him.

As he descended the steps of the station, a horde of media descended upon him. Their haranguing, truculent tone reminded him of a lynch mob. They rained shouted questions down upon him, pursuing him as he made his way to his cruiser, most concerning the fate of Deirdre Wilkins.

Upon reaching his cruiser, Saddler abruptly turned and raised his hands. "This investigation is now under federal jurisdiction. The lead investigator on this series of cases is special agent Tamara Hood. You will have to refer your questions to her."

The reporters milled about for several moments longer, occasionally casting baleful glances at Saddler as he carefully maneuvered his cruiser out into the street.

As Saddler made the dreaded drive to Quinsett County Hospital, he experienced a surprising moment of intense relief, knowing that yet another tether to his old life had essentially been severed.

Chapter Nine

1

"And my husband is aware of your situation?" Veronica demanded in a voice that was a blend of incredulity and smoldering anger.

"He was there when I was interrogated," Cameron replied, unsettled by the extent of Jeniah's mounting fury. "He tried to intervene on my behalf, but agent Hood seems determined to cast me in the role of her prime suspect."

This was greeted with a protracted silence. Cameron could feel Jeniah's seething frustration through the miles of fiber-optic cable. It finally occurred to Cameron that Saddler's ploy might well have placed Tamara Hood squarely in Jeniah's deadly cross hairs.

"That incompetent bitch!" Veronica rasped venomously. "Obviously she's grasping at straws to placate the media and her superiors. I promised that your days as Quinsett's resident football were over. Now you'll see that I was being completely sincere. I'm going to arrange for legal counsel, Cameron and you'll be free by the end of the day tomorrow. Tamara Hood is going to choke on a most unpalatable feast of crow, I can promise you that."

Cameron was beset by a moment of burgeoning panic then, realizing that he was in peril of fumbling the ball. Cameron agreed with Saddler's reasoning that it was imperative that they find a way to induce Veronica to return to Quinsett at once. To that end, he decided to risk a direct overture. "Veronica, is there any way that you could come back to Quinsett early? I'm...I'm not equipped to deal with this. This town is more than happy to serve me up as their deranged villain and there's no one else with an inclination to help me."

The silence that followed was excruciating and Cameron could feel himself start to perspire, just as he could feel Deputy Holland's watchful gaze on his back. In that resounding silence, Cameron could almost hear the wheels of deliberation spinning as Jeniah pondered his desperate entreaty. When she finally replied, Cameron could discern a thin strand of suspicion woven through her voice. "Cameron, do you realize what you're asking?"

"For your help," he responded, channeling his long years as the perpetual, ill-used victim.

"By publicly coming to your aid, I would be making a confession that I had lied to both my husband and more importantly, to agent Hood about knowing you. The consequences of that disclosure would be...unpleasant...for both of us."

"I'm sorry, Veronica. You're right," Crane stammered, trying to sound suitably chastised. "That was stupid of me. This situation...it's like a nightmare culmination to the life I've lived since coming back to Quinsett after the war. Veronica, you're the only person who has shown me any kindness in that time."

"You're going to be fine," Veronica insisted briskly, though an undefined emotion echoed around the edges of her tone. "Tell them that you will answer no further questions until your lawyer is present." Veronica fell silent and when she again spoke, Cameron found himself ensnared for the second time that afternoon, by an unexpected question skillfully posed from left field.

"Cameron, how do you know Maria Cordova?" The question, innocuously asked, was nonetheless fraught with menace.

"Maria is a Quinsett deputy...she picked me up and dropped me off last night...when your husband warned me about being..." Cameron blurted and then came to a sudden stammering halt, cursing himself for being so utterly artless and wondered if the call was being recorded. Quietly, he concluded, "I know nothing about her beyond that."

Again, there followed that damnable silence in which Cameron felt certain that his every word was being dissected for hints of deception. "I have a few phone calls to make, Cameron, so just be calm and patient. Oh, just one last question...when Deputy Cordova collected you, was she in uniform or civilian clothes?"

"In uniform," Crane responded, the lie springing automatically to his lips. Suddenly leery of these odd questions, he inquired, "Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing at all, Cameron...just simple curiosity," Veronica said evenly. "You'll be free by this time tomorrow and you and I will be seeing each other soon."

Then she was gone, terminating the conversation without awaiting a reply. Cameron hung up the receiver, baffled by the enigmatic course of their conversation. As Deputy Holland led Crane back to his cell, Cameron could not escape the maddening certainty that he had just committed a subtle, but nonetheless grave mistake.

2

Jeniah hung up the receiver with Veronica's trembling hands, her still mortal heart racing in her chest.

' _He lied,'_ she told herself, that single deliberate lie serving as a stunning confirmation of everything her devious familiar had reported. With this simple deception, Cameron had also revealed his own treachery. Saddler knew everything, thoroughly impossible as that would seem to be. More troubling still, he had extended this circle of knowledge to Maria Cordova and for some incomprehensible reason, Cameron as well.

With this disconcerting revelation, her carefully laid plans suddenly seemed as vulnerable...as piteously frail...as a house of cards in the face of a rising gale.

It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Saddler knew about the nature of the ritual, if not its intended purpose. He certainly knew where Jeniah intended to breech the barrier. Cameron's phone call, when considered in this context, assumed a far more sinister countenance.

' _He's trying to draw you back to Quinsett...to stop you before the Sabbat. You'd have to be obtuse not to see that,'_ mad Judith declared contemptuously in the confines of Veronica's frantic mind. _'They know exactly what your intentions are and they're conspiring to stop you.'_

The obtrusive thought left Jeniah fuming, but she could see the undeniable wisdom in the familiar's contention. The spectral voice was not yet willing to fall silent. _'The blame for pushing your machinations to the brink of failure falls squarely on you, Jeniah...or more precisely, on the shoulders of that delicate flower, Amathera.'_

Jeniah laughed aloud. Amathera was the name of a faded memory...a barely audible echo from a life long forgotten. She possessed absolutely no efficacy to influence Jeniah's inured heart.

' _And yet, she finds ways to undermine the realization of your goal, just as you stand on the verge of final victory,'_ the voice declared and that laughter dried up in her throat. _'You underestimated Mordecai Crane and goaded a frightened, cowed people to take action by attending the funerals of their murdered children...children whose deaths served no purpose.'_

Jeniah shook Veronica's head in wide-eyed negation, sensing that she was on the precipice of a soul-rending insight that she did not care to suffer. Still, Judith's disdainful voice would not desist. _'Here you are granted a second opportunity to atone for your failure, only to risk suffering the same ignoble fate by engaging in an inane dalliance with a broken man-child. This is the moment for candid introspection, Jeniah...a time to shine the harsh light of truth on the shadowy motivations that occlude your judgment and weaken your self-proclaimed resolve.'_

"Get out of my head, damn you!" Jeniah wailed wretchedly as she leaned forward and clutched her head between trembling hands.

' _I will not,'_ Judith retorted adamantly. _'It was you who dragged me into your twisted, fate-cursed drama. By raping me with the full force of your accumulated memories, you have inextricably linked our souls together. I refuse to fall victim to your lingering weakness...now open your fucking eyes and see your present situation for what it truly is...a willful act of sabotage.'_

"That...that makes no sense," Jeniah protested weakly. "I have devoted my entire existence to this purpose...forsaken every pleasure and comfort in the name of this destiny."

' _In that time, you have stood in the presence of the most powerful and charismatic men and women in history...those who forged the shape of the world. Not once did you allow passion or lust to dissuade you from your purpose...not once in twenty-three centuries. Yet now, this flawed, artless gelding attracts you, stirs you to wallow in his inferiority and reveal intimations of your destiny and purpose.'_

"It is the influence of the host," Jeniah whispered, her green eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling of her family's beach house.

' _Another self-serving and pathetic lie,'_ Judith intoned remorselessly, her voice dripping with derision. _'Your host was unwavering in her devotion to her husband and family. No, it is Amathera who seeks to derail your efforts. Even buried beneath layers of despair, she still clings to the notion that man can be redeemed...that humanity is possessed of a virtue that outweighs the sum of its crimes. You must recognize and extirpate this last root of Amathera from the cold soil of your heart.'_ There followed a dramatic pause and Judith concluded, _'If you cannot or will not scour all traces of this vapid fool from your soul, then stand aside and let me finish your work._ _I assure you, I will have no such reservations...and I will be kind to you, Jeniah...far gentler than you were with me.'_

Judith began to laugh then, a high, mocking sound that grated on Jeniah's frayed nerves. It occurred to Jeniah that this chastising voice was not just the stress-induced manifestation of her subconscious. Judith Ranzman, the clever creature that she was, had actually found the means of traversing the tether that Jeniah had erroneously believed flowed only one way. Now, the familiar had furtively insinuated herself into Jeniah's mind, watching eagerly from the shadowy recesses while her mistress faltered.

Jeniah's erupting rage was attenuated by the realization that her conniving familiar's observations were unerringly accurate. Her conflicted nature was leading her along the treacherous path to failure.

Veronica rose on unsteady legs as her hands coiled into fists. "Return to your own flesh...finish the blood debt. Then I will loose you on the others as I see fit. Judith, if I should ever find you in my thoughts again, without my consent, I will flay the flesh from your bones. Now Go!"

That thundering imperative blasted through the dark labyrinth of Jeniah's mind, dislodging the unsuspecting familiar in a tumbling sprawl of astral energy. Along with Ranzman's sinister presence went the last vestiges of Jeniah's couched ambivalence.

The creature that remained in its wake was a lethal engine committed to a single purpose. Mouth twisted into a fierce slash, Jeniah declared, "You want me to come home, dear husband...and so I shall, but you will curse my coming."

3

Judith came back to herself with a gasp as the force of reuniting with her physical body pushed her beneath the rose scented water of her bath. She remained submerged until her equilibrium returned and then emerged from the water, filling the confines of her lavish bathroom with rich, triumphant laughter. She rose from her bath and strode into her bedroom, unmindful of the water that dripped from her taut flesh onto the marble floor. Like many of the things she had valued prior to her transformation, the opulent grandeur of her home had lost much of its luster.

Despite her dramatic expulsion, Judith's heart soared with elation. She'd successfully manipulated the creature who would presume to be her mistress. Constrained by her oath of fealty, Judith might be, but given time, she would make Jeniah a biddable Queen of whatever dystopian madness followed the culmination of her ritual. If Judith was forced into servitude, it would not be to a weak, vacillating fool!

Standing before the wardrobe, a smiling familiar set about selecting the appropriate attire for a feast of treachery.

4

Saddler stood in the doorway to her room, watching as Maria sat in her hospital bed, absently sipping ice water through a straw. The sight of her bandages stretched tightly over her beautiful face, twisted his stomach into painful knots. Saddler wondered briefly if he had the strength to face whatever might be revealed once those bandages were removed.

He coughed lightly and she turned her head to face him, her large dark eyes flashing in contrast to the stark white bandages around them. In the mere span of seconds, a hundred poignant emotions flashed through those beautiful eyes, but to Saddler's eternal relief...bitter accusation did not seem to be amongst them.

"Maria, I..." he began and then faltered, unable to articulate the full scope of his regret and sorrow.

She gestured to a chair in the corner and managing a wan smile, intoned, "Come and sit, Ray. I've only been awake for a short while and my head is a bit addled."

He carried the plastic contour chair over to her bed and sat. Once seated, Saddler reached across and gripped her left hand, momentarily surprised by how small and delicate it was next to his. He squeezed it gently in both of his and she returned the gesture. "Maria, I'm so sorry. This...what's happened to you is my fault. I had no idea things would get this bad...would go this far."

Like a dam whose structural integrity has been compromised, Raymond Saddler's emotional reserve ruptured then and his cumulative grief burst forth in an unexpected deluge of hot tears. Leaning his forehead against her mattress, Saddler's shoulders shook convulsively as he wept silently, not only for Maria, but also for Veronica who was lost to him as if she was now moldering in her grave. After a moment, Maria let her right hand fall on the back of his neck.

Her own tears began to fall then, though she would have sworn that she'd expended her every tear after the doctor had informed her that her face would permanently bear the scars of her assault. She leaned forward and kissing the top of his head, whispered, "Don't blame yourself, Ray...this isn't your fault. Be strong for me because if I really start to cry again, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop."

Her voice was taut as she delivered this plea, but beneath this fragile composure, Ray could discern a well spring of raw grief. As she tenderly ran her fingers through his thick brown hair and whispered words of absolution, Raymond Saddler was consumed by a rush of love so sublime...so pure and profound...that he could scarcely breathe in its rarefied air. She squeezed his hand and again kissed his head as if to signify that she had shared the same moment of intense emotional awakening.

Fortified by Maria's strength, Saddler gradually mastered his emotions and repressed his tears. He raised his head, experiencing a twinge of regret as her caressing hand fell away from his neck. For a long moment, they merely peered into each others eyes and finally Saddler murmured, "How do you feel...are you in pain?"

"No!" Maria shook her head vehemently, trying to allay his worries. "There's a bit of discomfort, but no real pain."

"Maria, do you have any idea who did this to you?" Saddler asked.

She shook her head and provided Saddler with a level, dispassionate account of what she could recall of the assault. Only when she came to the moment when the attacker began to cut her face, could Saddler detect a quaver in Maria's voice. When she reached the conclusion of her story, Maria averted her gaze to her intertwined hands.

"As I was unlocking the door to my house, I was suddenly struck by the impression that I had made a terrible mistake in advising you not to consider Veronica as a suspect. It was my intention to call you when I entered my house...but I never got the opportunity."

"And you certain that your assailant was a woman?"

Maria nodded vigorously. "Definitely, but there was something else in the room as well...something malign and indescribably terrible. I didn't see it clearly, but it smelled like death and despair. It had impossibly large golden eyes and definitely wasn't human. I know how crazy that must sound."

"No...not crazy at all," Saddler contradicted softly and when Maria inclined her head, he recounted the details of his narrow escape at the end of Ringgold Lane.

"You went back to that vile place?" Maria demanded, shaking her head in perturbed disbelief. "Alone? Ray, you have to promise that you won't take that foolish risk again."

"I won't, Maria," Saddler allowed, before adding the qualifier, "At least, not if I can avoid it." Maria stiffened and to switch topics, Ray seized upon the first question that came to mind. "So who is this woman and why would she single you out?"

Again, Maria shook her head in perplexed bewilderment and then shuddered, "I don't know...but I can say that she was the most terrifying person I've ever been in the presence of. She exuded evil like heat from infected flesh. I could feel it...taste her madness in my mouth. I never imagined that anything could be so black...so unrelentingly vile. When she cut me, she lay down upon me and I could feel her excitement...her arousal. It turned her on to disfigure me and to do that other thing to me. My suffering was a source of extreme pleasure for her."

"Jesus!" Saddler exclaimed with a grimace, stabbed by a renewed sense of guilt and shame. "I never should have brought you into this."

Maria squeezed his hand, digging her nails into the flesh at the base of his thumb...a gesture Maria employed, Saddler now realized, to convey her displeasure. When she spoke, her voice was firm and unyielding. "Don't you dare say that to me, Raymond Saddler! I agreed to help you of my own volition, so don't demean me by saying that you should have protected me. You didn't do this to me...the crazy bitch with the knife did. I have every intention of killing her for it, if I get the chance. So not one more word about your guilt...am I clear?"

"Crystal," Saddler allowed simply, though he had no intention of letting her within a mile of Veronica or the abomination at the end of Ringgold Lane. If things unfolded as he hoped, this would be all over before she was discharged from the hospital. Maria pursed her lips and her mood darkened perceptibly. "If anyone is deserving of an apology, it's you. When I first regained consciousness, I was dazed and I made a terrible mistake, Ray."

Maria fell silent then and her eyes grew watery. When she glanced up at Saddler, he nodded encouragingly and so she began haltingly...gradually recounting how she had called her attacker Veronica and the quickly contrived excuse she'd used to cover her blunder. Saddler winced internally, but managed to maintain a neutral expression, even conjuring a thin smile when he offered, "You did well...that clever improvisation probably saved your life."

"I think you're right," Maria agreed without a great deal of enthusiasm. Her next somber assertion struck Saddler like the fall of a sledgehammer. "Jeniah wants your children, Ray. It's what I realized just as I entered my house. Whatever sick ritual this monster was attempting to enact, the dead child was a catalyst...an offering of sorts. If you believe she intends to recreate the ritual, it only stands to reason that she requires the same catalyst. If your children are in Los Angeles, you have to prevent her from bringing them back to Quinsett."

Saddler stood up so abruptly that his plastic contour chair clattered to the tiles. "Veronica would never hurt the children. She..."

His mouth closed with an audible plop as an expression of intense horror dawned on his now pallid face. He had been about to protest that Veronica loved her children totally and unequivocally and would die to prevent them from coming to harm.

Veronica was gone...permanently effaced from the world by the monster that had expropriated her flesh...and his children were now in its keeping.

Seeing the distress and panic welling in Saddler's blue eyes...an acute horror fuelled by self-condemnation...Maria attempted to rise. A throbbing pain in her face and an intense burning sensation between her thighs defeated her efforts. She collapsed back to the pillows, gasping sharply as the room swam in and out of focus.

Saddler stood in the center of Maria's hospital room, staring absently at the ceiling while his horror grew in geometric progressions. In his fixation to protect Quinsett, he had failed to consider the safety of his own children. Even when he had first began to suspect that Veronica had been...dispossessed, he had never taken decisive measures to protect his children.

A low moan escaped his lips and he turned on stiff, unresponsive legs and stumbled towards the door.

"Ray!" the ragged-edged cry, a frantic mix of authority and dismay, caused him to halt and turn back to Maria, who was breathing heavily and watching him with bulging eyes. "This isn't the time to let panic send you off in a half-cocked frenzy. You have to think rationally and weigh every option and consequence."

' _That's easy to say because they're not your children.'_ That caustic and cruelly unfair response hovered on the edge of his tongue, perilously close to being given voice. Saddler realized that this, once uttered, would forever eradicate every bond that now existed between them and so instead, he rasped, "Maria, she has my children."

"All the more reason why you have to keep your head," Maria insisted. "Please, come and sit and we'll discuss this."

Saddler's nearly irresistible inclination was to ignore her and be on the next flight to LAX, but by an enormous exertion of will, he made it back to her bed and sat down on the edge. She clutched his wrist in trembling hands. It was only then that Saddler became cognizant of the perspiration that glistened on her forehead and the labored cadence of her breathing. "Maria, are you all right?"

She waved a dismissive hand. "I'm fine. Listen Ray, we're pretty certain what the end game should be. If our speculation is correct, Jeniah will not enact the ritual until Thursday night...unless something extreme forces her to do so...something like flying to Los Angeles and confronting her alone."

Maria shook his arm to emphasize exactly how foolish she considered this action to be. Intellectually, Saddler agreed, but the thought that Wendy and Danny were in the keeping of a monster that had no compunction about killing children, was a visceral matter not so easily set aside. Maria could sense his indecision and persisted, "Ray, you have to trust your first instinct on this and not do anything drastic or rash."

Saddler dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and fetched a sigh fraught with raw misery. Deferring to Maria's judgment and his initial instinct, he abandoned the notion of returning to L.A. "The way I see this situation, I have two choices...go to Tamara Hood and lay everything on the table or try to resolve this alone."

Maria squeezed his hand fiercely and intoned, "Not alone, Ray...never alone. You and I are in this together. Albert and I have had our differences, but I'm confident that he'll stand with us as well. The other deputies were born in Quinsett...they've lived here their entire lives and so I think they'll fight to save Quinsett. Whatever else Jeniah might be, Mordecai Crane proved that she can be stopped and we will find a way to stop her together. With a good night's rest, I think I can be back at work tomorrow. Promise me that you will go home and think carefully about what to do next."

Saddler knew that arguing against her return to work was futile, but promised himself that he would have a long conversation with Doctor Crandall come the morning. "I could certainly use the time to come to terms with this," he allowed. "I think it would be best if I make myself scarce before Tamara comes a calling. I'm not exactly agent Hood's favorite law enforcement officer at the moment."

Ray hugged Maria and kissed the top of her head, relishing the scent of her hair, and then moved to the door, but she called him back before he could leave the room. When he turned to her, Maria's head was bowed and her posture intimated at a desperate inner struggle between reluctance and need. "I have no right to impose this burden on you with everything else that's happening...could you...be there when they remove the bandages?"

Saddler was across the room in three brisk strides. He knelt beside her and took both of her hands in his. "Maria, from this day forward...even on the other side of this awful nightmare, anything you need or want from me is yours for the asking and the taking. When the bandages come off and you're ready to face it, I'll be there with you."

He stood then and abandoning all self-imposed restraint, bent forward and kissed her lips. She stiffened momentarily, but then surrendered and put her right hand on his neck, drawing him close despite the sharp pain the gentle pressure of his mouth induced.

They remained this way for a long moment, relishing the comfort of finally throwing open the doors of this burgeoning passion.

A scant few miles away, Judith Ranzman was in the process of closing Stuart Crane's door...permanently.

5

Stuart Crane coasted his BMW to a smooth halt immediately adjacent to the intercom box on Judith gate post and pressed the buzzer. He glanced up through the windshield to see a security camera swivel to focus on his vehicle. For once, he envied Judith's seemingly extravagant security system.

An instant later, Judith disembodied voice announced, "I'll buzz you through, Stuart. Drive up to the house and I'll be right out to collect you."

The two massive wrought iron gates swung open with a barely audible mechanical whir and Crane adroitly steered his BMW into Judith's walled property.

As he glanced to the rear view mirror and watched the gates swing closed in his wake, he was accosted by a vague, yet profound dread. That was patently absurd of course. He had absolutely nothing to fear from Judith Ranzman. She could be vulgar and volatile, but he suspected that these traits were just aspects of a contrived persona, behind which the ruthless pragmatist decided to conceal herself. Judith was an acutely skilled business woman who was all too aware of how her association with the group had helped grow her fortune. Stuart Crane trusted her as much as he dared trust anyone in this wretched, treacherous world.

Yet, that nagging feeling of impending disaster persisted. If it had still been possible to share words with Deirdre Wilkins, he could have empathized with her analogy of being swallowed by a Leviathan.

Stuart shook his head in dismay. Allowing foolish apprehension to influence his emotions was simply unacceptable to a man who viewed the world through the cold, dispassionate lens of advantage and gain versus risk.

Judith Ranzman was awaiting his arrival, standing casually on the top step of her main entrance. Stuart was perplexed by the first glimpse of the dark-haired beauty. She wore a form-fitting, blood red evening gown that revealed a scandalous amount of tanned cleavage. A large diamond pendant was nestled between her full breasts and the pearl and diamond bracelet on her right wrist was no doubt worth a small fortune.

Bejeweled and dazzling, Judith gracefully descended the steps...appearing very much like the Hollywood epitome of elegance and beauty.

Arching an eyebrow in bemusement, Stuart remarked, "Rather lavish for a casual dinner, Judith."

She threw back her head and laughed gaily, something that a perplexed Crane could not recall her having done in all the years he had known Judith. She took his arm in hers and began to squire him up the steps. Stuart was rather surprised by how strong her grip felt...as if she could crush the bones in his arm with a casual flex of her fingers. "Ah, Stuart, not at all...tonight is an evening for celebration, you see."

"Celebration?" Stuart echoed, his grey eyes narrowing to adjust to the muted light of the mansion's interior. "Given everything that's happened, I can't imagine what could possibly warrant celebration?"

Again, Judith responded to this remark with her peculiar new laughter and Stuart Crane's initial misgivings about this clandestine meeting returned with a vengeance. She clutched his arm tighter and Stuart became cognizant of the weight of her full breast. "It's a night for celebration Stuart, because I've discovered the true source of our particular problem. What's more, I've concocted a way so that you and I can turn it to our advantage...a most profitable advantage at that."

Stuart came to a stop, fixing Judith with an appraising stare...suddenly intrigued despite his reservations. "Turn carnage and violent death to our advantage?"

As Judith led Stuart into her dining room, her dark eyes glittered like polished onyx. "Come now, Stuart, you and I are beasts of the same stripe...predators that seize opportunity when good fortune presents itself."

"I still haven't the foggiest notion what you're talking about, Judith?" Crane responded, quickly growing irritated with Judith's cryptic melodrama.

Judith's disconcerting grin grew all the wider as she pulled Stuart's chair out and gestured for him to sit at the head of the long dining table.

"It seems that you and I have been the victims of a rather clever deception, Stuart. Did your dog happen to develop a keen interest in Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, in the days before his rather gruesome demise?" Judith inquired, though her tone intimated that she already knew the answer to the question.

"He did...though how did you know that?" Crane demanded, as his gaze swept the table which had been set for two. Everything, from the impeccably polished silver ware to the glittering crystal wine glasses, bespoke opulence and exquisite taste. A large, covered silver tray sat at the heart of the arrangement. Stuart's reflection was oddly distorted as he peered into the curving surface of the gilded lid...his features elongated and grotesque.

He suddenly became aware of a faint, yet pungent smell and pursed his thin lips. The smell was an unpleasant blend of tepid water and sour earth that had been freshly turned. It seemed to have stolen furtively into the air of the dining room, reminding Crane of the rising stench of decay and corruption.

Crane glanced at Judith, but his host seemed completely oblivious to the smell, which seemed to be growing more revolting by the minute.

"Oh, I have my sources, Stuart," Judith cooed in response to his forgotten question. "I loathed your dog...he was a despicable bore...but I must give him credit. He was a clever hound, uncovering the princess' secret as he did."

Stuart began to perspire as the stench rose like a miasma, until Crane felt certain that he would vomit. Still, a sanguine Judith displayed not the slightest hint that anything was amiss. Instead, her lustrous eyes shone with excitement, like a cat that has happened upon a bowl of fresh, cold cream. Stuart placed his hands flat on the table and leaned forward in an attempt to master his roiling stomach.

There were subtle sounds coming from somewhere in the house now...low, scrabbling sound like claws scraping across slate. Judith was speaking again and Stuart struggled to concentrate on her words. "Veronica Ashcott-Saddler has orchestrated our recent series of woes...only she isn't the privileged bitch anymore...no, not at all."

Judith stopped speaking abruptly, regarding the pallid Crane with concern. "Stuart, you don't look well at all...is something the matter?"

"Christ, Judith...can't you smell it?" Stuart gasped as his eyes began to bulge in reaction to the noxious stench.

Judith pressed an index finger to her chin and shifted her gaze to the covered platter, an expression of dismay dawning on her face. "Now that you mention it, I do smell something rather rank. I entertain so seldom...I hope I haven't ruined dinner."

With a small flourish, she lifted the gilded lid to reveal the ghastly offering beneath, as malodorous waves rolled forth like breakers on a foul sea.

The head of Raymond Dwyer sat perched on a bed of carefully arranged greens. The sightless, staring eyes were glazed white and the slack, mottled flesh now tinged graveyard grey. The thick-lipped mouth lolled open and the blackened tongue protruded like a dead slug.

Stuart Crane uttered a shrill scream of pristine terror, but before he could reel away from the gruesome display, Judith snatched up a heavy carving knife and brought it down in a savage arc.

The second scream that tore from Crane's twisted lips was now one of extreme agony. The blade had passed through the yielding flesh between the bones of his right index and ring fingers, leaving his hand pinned to the table.

Blood spurted from the wound, spattering Dwyer's desiccating head.

Judith savagely twisted the knife, rousing ear-splitting howls of agony from the impaled Crane, until at last, his eyes rolled up in his head and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

6

Stuart's sudden return to consciousness was greeted by a strident chorus of throbbing pain and the recollection of how it had been inflicted. He found himself lying on his back, shackled to a stainless steel, metal table by leather restraints at his neck, waist, ankles and wrists.

The room's solitary light shone directly into his bulging eyes and cast a harsh white circle around the table. Beyond this cone of illumination, there was only a menacing, impenetrable darkness.

Crane raised his head as much as his restraints would allow and discovered that he'd been stripped naked. His nudity finally broke his fragile grip on self-control and he began to shriek, "Judith, you crazy bitch, what the fuck are you doing?"

She stepped into the cone of light, every bit as naked as the bound Crane. Her nipples were turgid knots and her golden breasts heaved in apparent excitement. In her left hand, Judith clutched a black-handled dagger with an odd s-shaped blade.

Leaning forward, she parted her full lips and let a rope of thick saliva drop indolently onto Crane's thrashing face. Crane shuddered in revulsion and uttered a string of foul curses.

Judith straightened, tilted her head to one side and observed, "Dispensing with the façade of refinement and decorum, are we? It's just as well as I'd rather see a snake for what it is."

"What do you want?" Crane brayed and despite his frantic efforts to contain it, he could not disguise the enormity of his fear. Judith's exquisite dark eyes glittered like diamonds, but the light they radiated was one of madness...and hatred.

She leaned forward until her erect nipples grazed his bare chest, and extending her right arm, encircled his flaccid penis in strong fingers. She began to move her hand in a slow, indolent rhythm that evoked a dramatic response, despite Crane's fear. "I must confess that I bent the truth slightly when I told you that my discovery would be of mutual benefit. I'm afraid the benefit is all mine. You have no idea how often I've fantasized about having you exactly in this compromising position."

"What...what do you want? Why would you do this to me?" Stuart stammered in genuine dismay and bewilderment. Tears sprang to the corners of his bulging gray eyes.

Still expertly stroking his now erect penis, Judith loomed over Crane and now her eyes were completely black. When she spoke, her lips parted to reveal pointed pewter teeth. Stuart's pleading degenerated into inarticulate wails of anguish that brought a smile of pure delight to Judith's face. "You have no idea how much I loath you, Stuart. You're an officious, condescending little prick. All these years I've been forced to defer to you and those other self-aggrandizing fucks." She lowered her face until their lips were mere inches apart and bellowed, "I have more balls than the lot of you could muster between you!"

"Please, Judith, do whatever your bitterness compels you to do and then let me go," Stuart begged, his voice hoarse and distorted by fear even as his traitorous body grew closer to an explosive release under Judith's carnal artistry. "Have your victory and be done. Please, I'll never tell anyone if you let me go."

Judith's fluid motion abruptly stopped and she leaned back, an expression of amused incredulity dawning on her lovely face. "Is that what you think this is about...a perverse rape fantasy to teach you a lesson in humility?"

The sardonic roar of Judith's laughter was singularly the most terrifying thing that Stuart Crane had ever heard.

In its black mirth, Stuart Crane's slim hope that he might somehow survive this nightmare abruptly vanished. Judith's levity gave way to a glare of smoldering hatred and contempt. "My mistress might well have a fixation with fucking your brother, but I have no such predilections."

With a single graceful leap, Judith straddled his upper thighs and resumed her tantalizing of Stuart's fully engorged cock, now with greater urgency.

Crane twisted and writhed beneath her hand even as the still lucid part of his mind perceived movement beyond the cone of light. The cloying reek, now more potent than ever...returned to assail his nostrils.

"If I was a more merciful creature, I would allow you one final explosive release before sending you to the hell you so richly deserve. Unfortunately for you, I am not!"

Her pleasurable grip on his member suddenly became crushing. Judith's athame had been honed to a surgically precise edge and it completely severed Crane's rigid penis in three brutally crude, sawing cuts near the pubic bone. Hot blood spattered Judith's breasts and belly as she arched her back and emitted a howl of primal pleasure. After a moment, Judith lithely dismounted the table, still clutching Crane's bloody organ. Balefully, she glanced down on her hated nemesis, who regarded her with agonized bulging eyes and a soundless scream.

"I've always thought you were a miserable cocksucker, so this is only fitting," she hissed and swiftly stuffed his severed penis into his gaping mouth, stuffing it down his throat as far as it would go. "Jeniah Lightcrusher sends her regards."

She pivoted with a tiny flourish and walked away, the intoxicating sounds of Crane's gagging filling her ears. She waved her right arm over her head in an expansive gesture of summons. "The dinner is served children...get it while it's still warm."

Then she was gone, leaving Stuart Crane alone to face the hungry, shambling horrors that emerged from the shadows. They stumbled forth, propelled by a mindless, insatiable hunger that came with reanimation. These vivified horrors...all victims of Judith Ranzman's deadly perversion...fell upon Crane with gnashing teeth and nails. Soon the wet, tearing sounds of their feeding frenzy drowned out the strangled cries of Stuart Crane's dying torment.

Judith stepped into the large shower cubicle and let the steaming water sluice Crane's corruption from her taut flesh. Her fingers found their way to her womanhood and she deftly caressed herself to the orgasm she'd denied the condemned Crane, while the revivified children of her dark necromancy ravenously devoured every last trace of Stuart Crane's existence.

7

The ringing of the telephone startled Albert Huxley, who, like the lamentable Cameron Crane, did not receive many phone calls since the passing of his wife.

He tapped the power button on the remote, consigning the Mariners game he'd been watching to the electronic void. He threw a brief glance at the antiquated clock to see that it was twenty after nine. Then, hurrying to the phone as fast as his weary legs would allow him, Huxley answered on the seventh ring.

Raymond Saddler's voice sounded normal enough on first hearing, but as he laid out the specifics of his staggering request, Huxley could clearly discern the underlying emotional turbulence.

When Saddler made his plea, Huxley could sense a tremendous weight of obligation settle onto his sagging shoulders. Still, Quinsett was his town and Saddler's burden made his own seem inconsequential by comparison and so he willingly acceded to the other man's request.

"Very soon now, Cora," her murmured as he settled back into his chair.

PART FIVE

Chapter One

1

"You can't possibly be serious?"

"I'm perfectly serious," Saddler contradicted mildly and gently laid his holster and service revolver next to his badge. "Albert has agreed to fill the role temporarily and I would recommend that you would be wise to accept his generous offer."

"Why...why would you do this...abandon your position at a time of crisis like a miserable coward?" Ira Silver demanded, his pale blue eyes clouded with anger and dismay.

"I have my reasons, but if you require an official explanation, I suppose this one will do...the lead federal agent on the case refuses to work with me. She has accused me of deliberately concealing information regarding the case. I've been cut out of the investigation and can no longer perform my duties," Saddler offered, ignoring Silver's allegation of cowardice. "Perhaps Albert will have a better rapport with the feds."

"Have you been withholding information from agent Hood" Silver demanded, his tone combative.

Again, Saddler shrugged benignly. "Haven't we all?"

Silver slammed the flat of his hand down on his desk. "This is odious. With one deputy dead and another disabled, you're abandoning your post is criminal."

"The feds will cover the investigation. The Quinsett staff will be spread thin, but they can still easily handle routine matters, until you appoint a new deputy. At any rate, this book is closed and there is little point in debating the issue."

Silver's thin lips twisted into a sneer. "I never wanted to hire you, Saddler. One look into your eyes told me you were damaged goods. Against my better judgment, I took you on as a personal favor to Arthur Ashcott."

Again Saddler shrugged, but was privately amazed by how easily he'd slipped into a posture of indifference once he'd committed himself to this course of action. "Looks like you should have trusted your instincts, Ira."

"Get out of my sight!" Silver snarled, his complexion deepening to an alarming shade of plum.

"Gladly Silver, but before I do, you and I are going to come to an agreement about Maria Cordova."

"How dare you make demands of me after what you've done," Silver snarled. "Such audacity."

Saddler leaned menacingly across the desk, all levity gone from his expression. "Maria Cordova sustained injuries while trying to protect this town. She may require extensive reconstructive surgery to repair the damage. The town municipal budget will meet those costs and any additional costs her physician deems necessary."

Silver's anger dissipated slightly and he settled back in his chair. "I'm not the heartless bastard people portray me to be, Saddler. Here in Quinsett, we take care of our own and her needs will be met."

Though his face remained neutral, Saddler breathed an internal sigh of relief, having anticipated that this might be an ugly point of contention. Silver's unexpected concession prompted Saddler to extend a friendly word of advice to the first selectman. "Ira, don't underestimate the personal danger this situation poses to you. Whatever is happening in Quinsett is connected directly to Jeniah Lightcrusher and the oath she swore the night she was murdered. Let Morley Cruthers death serve as a fair warning. If the feds request that you leave Quinsett, accommodate them, Ira."

"Perhaps we're cut from different cloth, Saddler, because I won't abandon Quinsett or be driven from my home by a lunatic," Silver retorted, the set of his jaw declaring his intransigence.

Surmising that further discussion was futile, Saddler merely nodded and left, thus closing the door on yet another chapter in his life.

2

Tamara Hood pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes which were burning from lack of sleep. She chanced a bleary-eyed glance at her watch to discover that it was 8:25 Monday morning...meaning that she'd been awake for twenty five hours straight.

The dull pain behind her eyes was growing steadily worse, though her headache could not be attributed to lack of sleep alone. For seventeen years she'd clawed her way through the bureau rank and file, determined to rise while overcoming the perception that her being black and female were the root causes of her success.

Now, for the first time in a stellar career, forty year old Tamara Hood felt woefully inadequate to the challenges confronting her. She recalled Raymond Saddler's prophetic declaration, as her gaze fell on the blood-smeared pentagram that adorned the floor of Raymond Dwyer's living room.

It had been some twelve hours earlier when one of her investigative teams had discovered Dwyer's naked, headless corpse, nailed to the very same pentagram with rail spikes. Her two teams had spent the night scouring the house and the immediate grounds as well as the darkness would allow and still they had not located the head.

' _Which means that the sick bastard who did this probably took it along as a trophy,'_ Tamara thought irritably, but beneath that disgust there lurked a thread of disquiet. _'You're far out of your depth here.'_

She despised that note of controlled panic in her thoughts, but she could not shrug off the pervasive sense of foreboding, which kept insisting that some nebulous disaster was imminent. With the coming of sunlight, Tamara had dispatched her two teams to conduct a more thorough search of the grounds. The preliminary indications were that Raymond Dwyer had been attacked (and probably killed, judging by the volume of blood found) just outside his front door. Hid body had then been dragged into the house and mutilated, becoming part of this macabre display.

The pentagram was a cryptic clue that seemed to surface at every crime scene like the pivotal piece of an arcane puzzle. It was obviously an integral element to this grim campaign of carnage, but to Tamara's growing frustration, the meaning and implications of its constant presence continued to evade her.

' _But Saddler knows,'_ a small, petulant voice whispered in her weary mind, perhaps for the hundredth time. With this constant refrain there came a deepening bitterness towards the man, whom Tamara felt certain was concealing critical information for reasons she could not imagine.

' _Unless he's behind this...along with all the other back water yokels,'_ the voice theorized with a perverse glee, eliciting a disbelieving groan from Hood. That her mind would even conjure such an absurd thought was an illustration of just how exhausted she really was.

"Tamara, we've found something," agent Mark Hansen announced, startling Hood out of her reverie. Curious, Tamara followed Hansen out into the front yard of Dwyer's property. The bright morning sunshine made Hood blink as she was led along the front of the house.

Hansen stopped before a section of trampled flower beds and pointing down at the soil, explained, "There are three clear boot prints here, all belonging to the same boot it appears. The black earth is soft enough to have yielded a perfect impression of the sole."

"Cast an impression and send it out, after taking measurements and pictures," Tamara instructed, a slight smile playing at the corners of her generous mouth. She cautioned herself against any premature optimism, but it was impossible not to assume that she'd just gotten her first potential break.

"I'd say that's a size eight or nine boot with a pretty distinctive sole pattern," Hansen observed and Hood nodded.

"So we're looking at a woman or an exceptionally small man," Tamara observed and that ray of sunshine continued to grow in magnitude. Maria Cordova had allowed that perhaps it had been a woman who'd assaulted her, though she could offer few details about the attack itself.

"Okay, I'm going to head back to the office and see if I can convince the higher-ups to cough up another team. Finish up here and then get a few hours rest this afternoon," Tamara instructed and clapping Hansen on the shoulder, headed back to her car. Though a fresh myriad of questions now buzzed in her head, at least she now had her first tangible piece of evidence.

3

"Ray, you're not serious?" Maria Cordova exclaimed as she set her apple juice aside, spilling some in her haste.

Saddler sat on the side of her bed, dressed in a Dodgers tee shirt and a pair of blue jeans, still trying to adjust to wearing civilian clothes on a week day. "I know it seems extreme, Maria, but it really is the right path to follow. As you've said, we know how the end game is meant to play out and where. As Sheriff, I can't spend my entire time watching the barrier on Winder Road, but now that I'm a civilian, I can set up a deck chair at the end of my driveway and wait for Jeniah to make her play."

Maria opened her mouth to object, but the logic of his decision was implacable. Still, it left her feeling disgruntled and out of sorts. "I'm going to insist that Doctor Crandall authorize my discharge today. I'll set up my chair right beside you."

"You can't, Maria," Saddler insisted, shaking his head vehemently. "To begin with, you're in no condition to do anything but recuperate. Your foregoing work only to spend your days with me would only rouse Tamara Hood's suspicion further and nothing good would come of that. Even if you were ready to leave the hospital, Albert is going to need every bit of help he can get just keeping public order."

Maria's exquisite eyes narrowed and she glowered at Saddler. "I know exactly what you're trying to do, Saddler...and I won't have it."

Saddler grinned and raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Why Ms Cordova, I have no idea what you mean?"

She rapped him on the leg with the knuckles of her left fist. "You're trying to keep me away from this...to protect me. I'm not a wallflower or a shrinking violet to be cloistered while you fight the heroic battle."

Swiftly, he bent forward and kissed her generous mouth. She stiffened at first, but then opened her mouth and drew him closer. He kissed her passionately for several moments, suddenly indifferent to who might be watching. Her mouth was soft and warm and he wanted to lose himself in her kiss and might well have had she not hissed and pushed him away.

"It really stings when I open my mouth too wide," she whispered apologetically, lightly stroking the bandages at the corner of her mouth.

Saddler hung his head and inhaled slowly to calm his racing heart. When he spoke, his tone had grown somber. "I won't lie...I'm trying to insulate you from this nightmare because after all I've lost in the last week, seeing you harmed more than you already have been...it would just be more than I can bear. Still, if you can return to duty...office duty...you can be my conduit with what's happening with the investigation."

Maria arched an eyebrow, her eyes twinkling deviously. "Subterfuge...so you do have an unsavory side."

Saddler offered Cordova a crooked grin. "You can't imagine."

"Ray, do you know that Raymond Dwyer was found murdered in his home last night?" Maria asked, though Saddler's startled reaction made a response redundant.

He stood and wandered over to the window. Lost in thought, he turned back to her and inquired, "How did you hear this?"

"Art Silver came to visit this morning, just after his shift ended, I guess," Maria reported. "One of Hood's teams found him yesterday afternoon. The locals weren't allowed anywhere near the scene, but the country M.E. filled Art in over a cup of coffee. Dwyer was beheaded and staked to a pentagram...the same pentagram that's been found at every scene."

"The blood debt," Saddler exclaimed, his mind racing off on a hundred different tangents. "Cruthers and now Dwyer...Jeniah's collecting on her oath and that's two out of six down."

"Three...possibly," Maria interjected and Saddler reacted like a cat that's been scalded with a basin of hot water. "Art also mentioned that Stuart Crane has gone missing. He'd hired private security for protection, but he left his office yesterday and refused to have the escorts accompany him. Nor did he tell them where he was going. Apparently, he's not been seen since."

"Does Cameron know?" Saddler wondered, not certain if Hood would share this information with her prisoner.

"I'm not sure, Ray," Maria admitted. "Art and Kort handled the preliminary, but Hood quickly relieved them, replacing them with her own team as soon as she found out."

Saddler slumped back into his chair and shook his head, disconcerted by the pace at which Quinsett was unraveling. "There's a part of me that still wants desperately to cling to the notion that there is a perfectly mundane explanation for all of this...that all of it will turn out to be the work of a delusional psychopath...bloody, horrible, but ordinary. Veronica is who she's always been and once this is over, I can take up the threads of my old life again. As much as I want to harbor that delusion, every grim revelation makes the truth that much harder to refute. That's why I need you to stay safe, Maria, because I have to know that there's something on the other side of this."

Maria nodded without comment, her reaction lost behind the concealing bandages. "What do you intend to do next, Ray?"

Saddler considered this for a moment and then replied, "My priority is keeping Veronica away from that house at the end of Ringgold Lane...and getting the children away from her. When it comes to actually stopping the ritual, I need to get Cameron out of custody. Tamara's pretext for holding Cameron was woefully flimsy and in light of what happened last night, I don't see how she can hold him beyond today. Veronica..." Saddler began and shook his head in obvious irritation. "I have to stop calling her that. Jeniah may actually help expedite that process."

"I don't understand...how can _she_ help?" Maria inquired, clearly perplexed by the suggestion.

"Jeniah promised Cameron that she'd hire a lawyer to represent him if he was arrested. With the kind of cash behind the Ashcott name, that lawyer will be a heavy hitter indeed."

Maria shook her head, this disclosure serving only to increase her confusion. "Ray, this is the one aspect of this investigation that I simply can't fathom...why would Jeniah Lightcrusher be so fixated on Cameron Crane? She appears to harbor some perverse affection for the man."

An expression of incisive pain rippled across Saddler's face, but was there and gone in an instant. Maria knew that she'd touched upon a particularly sensitive nerve, but it was a query in desperate need of consideration. "I don't know, in all honesty and I doubt I ever will. I only know that it may be something I can exploit...a vulnerability of sorts."

They fell into a contemplative silence that lasted for several moments and finally, Saddler reluctantly pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going to see if I can discreetly check in with Albert. I'll be back this afternoon. Hopefully, Cameron will be out of custody by then and we can begin formulating a plan on how to stop Jeniah when she makes her move."

She sat forward and extended her arms to him and he went willingly into her embrace, relishing the intoxicating weight of her firm breasts against his chest. When Maria pushed him to arm's length, her eyes glistened and she intoned gravely, "Don't you dare step across that gate on Ringgold and if you come across one of those things, promise me you'll run."

He thought of offering a flippant rejoinder, but the gravity in her eyes killed the quip on his tongue. Instead, he promised simply, "I won't do anything foolish. I can't protect my children...or you, if I get myself killed."

Not trusting herself to speak, Maria nodded and then he was gone, leaving her feeling desolate and alone. She averted her attention to the blue sky beyond the window. How pristine...how beautiful it seemed in its blithe indifference to the suffering of those beneath it.

All at once, Maria Cordova began to weep silently.

4

Tamara swallowed another mouthful of tepid coffee and grimaced against the stale, bitter taste. She was running on fumes, but much remained to be done and she could hardly afford to falter now.

With the death of Raymond Dwyer and the disappearance of Stuart Crane, there could no longer be any doubt that this concerted insanity was directly related to the infamous vigilante murder of Jeniah Lightcrusher.

' _Right, and that bit of sage insight yields absolutely nothing of value,'_ Tamara thought irritably. Jeniah Lightcrusher...an idiotic name that irked the pragmatic Hood to no end...was a hieroglyph that she could not decipher. According to the public records, she simply did not exist, except for a scant inscription on a tombstone in a local bone yard. Six of the town's most prominent citizens of the day had evidently killed this reputed witch and now three of their descendents were dead or missing. While the connection was inarguably obvious, the actual relationship between events remained shrouded in mystery.

Tamara was still reluctant to abandon her initial theory that this carefully orchestrated campaign of murder and mayhem was an elaborate pretext for personal revenge or gain. Conversely, the number of plausible suspects she could logically include in that circle was rapidly dwindling. With Cameron Crane incarcerated in the holding cells downstairs, he had to be realistically discounted. In truth, Tamara knew that his docile nature precluded any serious conjecture that he had any hand in this black madness.

An earlier phone call had confirmed that Father Crimmon...the only living member of the original six vigilantes...was a resident at a senior's chronic care facility in Olympia. That left Ira Silver and Judith Ranzman as people who could potentially fit Tamara's profile. Her interview with Ira Silver had effectively expunged his name from the list.

' _Leaving only Judith Ranzman,'_ Tamara whispered and reached for the brief summary she'd written on the realtor. A quick scan of the point form notes roused an inkling of disquiet in Tamara's finely honed-mind and piqued her curiosity. The thirty-seven year old Ranzman had inherited the family fortune at the age of nineteen, after the accidental death of her parents. She'd nurtured the fortune and it had grown considerably. Judith had never married. There was something strikingly discordant in these few basic facts and Tamara Hood was suddenly very anxious to interview Judith.

Tamara was self-aware enough to realize that she was grasping at straws, but if this particular thread unraveled, she would be left with precisely nothing.

In light of everything that had transpired in the past two days, she'd been granted an additional two man investigative team. Still, with so many active investigative venues to explore, her three teams were nowhere near enough. Some of the investigative threads had only been given cursory attention as new incidents seemed to sprout in Quinsett like weeds.

Tamara was prioritizing these loose threads when a rap came at her door.

"Come in," she called, more sharply than she had intended. The door opened and the former Sheriff (Huxley, she thought his name was) entered the office, looking as uncomfortable as she thought it was possible for a man to look.

He was attired in a sheriff's uniform, side arm and all, which drew a questioning frown from Hood.

Albert's discomfort seemed to increase exponentially, but he managed, "I expect you mightn't have been told...there's been a shake-up in the local squad. Ray resigned this morning and Ira Silver asked me to fill in, until he could find a replacement."

Tamara shook her head as if she'd misunderstood. When it became evident that she had not, she jumped to her feet, the back of her thighs sending her chair crashing into the wall. "What the fuck do you mean _he's resigned..._ in the middle of a crisis? Why? This idiot Silver actually let him?"

Albert grimaced in the face of her outburst and shrugged apologetically. "I don't know the particulars, agent Hood. Selectman Silver isn't one for sharing particulars with his underlings."

Tamara slammed her fist down on her desk and spun away, staring angrily out the window as the pain behind her eyes sharpened acutely. When she trusted herself not to lay waste to the office furniture, she turned back to Huxley. "Saddler lives on Ringgold Lane, Right? How do I get there?"

Disconcerted by her aggression, Albert nonetheless provided Hood with a detailed set of directions. As he did, he stole a furtive glance at the tall, angular black woman. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot with exhaustion and Huxley knew that he would have to tread carefully in her presence. Hesitantly, he inquired, "Is there anything specific that you'd like Tim and me to look into today?"

Hood bit back on the acerbic reply poised on the tip of her tongue and regarded Huxley as if seeing the elderly sheriff for the first time. "Perhaps there is at that...how well do you know Judith Ranzman?"

"We're not what you'd call personal friends, but she is one of what passes for the big wheels here in a burg like Quinsett," Huxley allowed.

"I'm going to interview her today...what can I expect? The other big wheels have hardly been cooperative."

"If you've been asking about the Jeniah business, then they wouldn't be. I think it's a point of embarrassment with most of 'em. Judith is what the old timers would call a feisty dish."

"Would you mind translating that charming euphemism, Sheriff?" Tamara asked with obvious impatience.

Huxley shrugged again. "Judith has a bit of a temper and a sharp tongue with anyone who tries her patience...of which she has very little. When it comes to protecting her privacy, Judith is a hard core fanatic. When you see her property on Lodger Mill Road, I think you'll get a pretty good sense of what I'm trying to tell you."

Hood absorbed this thoughtfully, growing more intrigued by this Judith Ranzman with each new disclosure. "Sheriff, I would like you to come along when I question Ms. Ranzman. I'm going to have a very intense conversation with the former Sheriff and then I need a few hours sleep." She glanced at her watch. "How about I collect you here at 3:30 and we pay a visit to the volatile Ms. Ranzman."

"Sounds good," Albert replied, privately anticipating a shower of sparks when these two she-wolves collided. Something else came to mind then and his brow furrowed as he asked, "Agent Hood, does Cameron Crane know that his brother has gone missing?"

Hood's mood darkened perceptibly at the mention of Cameron's name and she eyed Huxley suspiciously. "I doubt he does."

"Then I'd like to tell him. It seems like the decent thing to do, considering that Stuart is Cameron's only close living relative."

Tamara's baleful glare made it seem that she might refuse Huxley's request, but finally she sighed and relented. "Very well...tell him if you wish."

"I've known Cameron for his entire life and for the most part, he's had a pretty rough time of things," Albert felt compelled to add, not certain why.

"Your point is, Sheriff?" Tamara snapped, clearly perturbed by the unwelcome observation.

Huxley shrugged benignly. "Cameron is a good lad...it seems harsh to keep him locked up under these circumstances."

"Let me make this clear, Sheriff; I think your _good lad_ knows things he's not telling me. Until he does or convinces me I'm wrong, Cameron Crane stays put." She glowered balefully at Huxley for a moment and then, retrieving her jacket, marched out the door.

Chapter Two

1

When Raymond Saddler saw that agent Hood's sedan was parked in the municipal office's lot, he elected to forego attempting to speak to Albert. Instead, he drove back to Ringgold Lane, with the intention of spending the morning planning out how he would deal with Jeniah, once she returned to Quinsett.

There was certainly much to think about in that regard and Saddler realized that his decision to officially lay his police career to rest had been a prudent one. In the past few days, Saddler had come to suspect that much of the bloodiest mayhem, unleashed since Friday, was only a distraction for the purpose of putting paid to the blood debt and enacting the ritual come the Sabbat of Lamas. Free of his duties as Sheriff, Saddler could focus his attention on these two priorities and concocting a way to stop them.

As he pulled into his drive, Saddler realized that there was a new element in the equation...one that he would be incredibly foolish to discount. Jeniah was not acting alone. Along with the horrors that Saddler had encountered just up the road, someone was helping Jeniah unleash her carnage. Unless she possessed the ability to be in two places at once...and Saddler offered a fervent prayer that she did not...then someone else was responsible for running up the body count that had accrued since Friday.

' _She was the most terrifying thing I've ever been in the presence of,'_ That is how Maria had characterized her assailant. The cruelty displayed by the attacker was a powerful affirmation of that truth. Somehow, Jeniah had acquired a deadly ally...one who had absolutely no compunction about committing the most heinous and deplorable crimes. Had Jeniah utilized allies during her other incarnation? Saddler would have to make a point of asking Cameron, once Crane was finally released.

Whatever the case might prove to be, Saddler now understood that he would have to factor in Jeniah's extremely deadly allies, when planning any move against the witch.

Saddler shook his head in incredulity as he mounted the steps and opened the door. Barney ran to Saddler and leapt into is arms, licking his new companion's face, while expressing his discontent at having been left alone, with a plaintive whine. The dog seemed to cling to Saddler and Ray could feel terror radiating from the animal as it trembled in his arms.

' _It senses the evil growing at the end of the road,'_ it suddenly occurred to Saddler. Animals were far more perceptive, on a deeper, atavistic level and Saddler wondered if all the domestic animals in Quinsett were more skitterish of late.

"It's okay, Barney," Saddler reassured the Terrier. "We're an inseparable team from this point out."

Saddler put the dog down and it ran in small, excited circles as though placated by Saddler's words. As Saddler retrieved bowls of fresh food and water for his new companion, he considered how the two of them had been bonded by common experience. Both had seen the moorings of their happy, comfortable lives torn away and now found they were plummeting into an uncertain future, fraught with unknown menace.

Just then, the phone began to ring, startling Saddler out of his reverie. He picked up the handset warily...another symptom of the darkness that now afflicted his life.

As he reached for the receiver, the air around the device seemed to coalesce into a frigid, viscous cloud. Saddler had no doubt who waited on the other end of the line. It took his every ounce of will to offer a desultory greeting. "Hello."

"Ray, what exactly is happening there?" came Veronica's voice, now colored by obvious displeasure. "When I called your office just now, I was told by Mariam Carter, that you had resigned. Do you have any idea how thoroughly humiliating it was to be told by the receptionist, that my husband had decided to walk away from his job?"

As he endured this display of absurd theatrics, Raymond Saddler could no longer maintain the charade of normalcy. "Why not just tell me what you've done with my wife, you miserable, evil bitch?"

There followed a protracted silence, but Saddler experienced a surge of relief. He had thrown down the gauntlet and there could be no allowance for retreat. The next voice that filled his ear was low and husky, resonating with supreme confidence and amusement. "At last, we can dispense with the posturing and pretence. I suppose it's just as well. The charade of playing the doting wife and daughter has grown tiresome."

"What did you do with Veronica?" Saddler reiterated in a hard and flat voice.

"I'm afraid that your pampered princess has gone on to the land of permanent departure, Ray," Jeniah declared, her tone sorrowful. "I didn't precisely kill her as you would understand the concept. I've subjected her to what could best be described as a soul fracture. I shattered her personality into a hundred pieces that I can manipulate and exploit at my discretion. There's little to be gained in softening the blow, Ray; these fragments can never be re-assembled into a functioning whole. What remains of Veronica lives only to serve my purpose. How utterly galling that must be, Saddler, but no more so than knowing that I command her exquisite vessel of flesh. I can bathe it in hot blood or use it to wallow in perversion...fucking a misfit like Cameron Crane comes to mind."

Saddler gripped the telephone with white-knuckled intensity and closed his eyes, refusing to be provoked into pointless raving. Still, the pain of this revelation lanced his heart. When he could trust himself to speak, he demanded, "What do you want?"

"Take the prosaic, business-like approach, shall we? Very well," Jeniah responded crisply. "I know you've been to the end of Ringgold Lane and seen my Stryges and modest abode. I suspect you also know that I have unfinished business to attend to."

"The blood debt," Saddler blurted. At this point, there was little to be gained by evasion and perhaps he could manipulate her into revealing something useful.

"My legend precedes me...yes I intend to settle that festering grievance. Once these presumptuous insects have been crushed, I have a ritual to undertake. Again, I suppose you are aware of this as well."

"What are you trying to accomplish that you would resort to this level of depravity?"

Jeniah laughed heartily. "You misconstrue my purpose. The specifics are far beyond your grasp. Let it suffice to say, my labor will bring an end to all misery and suffering...even yours."

"I'm going to kill you," Saddler promised gruffly. "When you come back to Quinsett, I'll be waiting and I'm going to do what Mordecai Crane couldn't."

"Ah, such bravado for a man whose sad life hangs by the thinnest of threads," Jeniah retorted mordantly. "Still, it's better to face the end with defiant dignity, than to cower and mewl. Now, let's cut to the salient heart of the matter...I have your children. My ritual requires that one of them will die, but the other may be granted the generous opportunity to live...if you comply with what I'm about to tell you...without deviation."

"You crazy bitch!" Saddler roared, sickened by the monster's dispassionate declaration of her intentions.

"Are you quite done?" Jeniah inquired and though her voice sounded calm, there was an underlying intimation of menace that silenced Saddler. "On Thursday night, I will return to Quinsett to enact my ritual. If you do nothing to obstruct me, I will allow one of your whelps to live. If you prostrate yourself before me on that night, I may even grant you access to fragments of Veronica's mind...fragments that you likely find the most pleasing."

"And the stick?" Saddler growled, shocked that her twisted offer roused a twinge of excitement at the prospect of being re-united with Veronica.

"If you elect to share my intentions with anyone who would attempt to stop me or deny me access to my sacred place, I will kill both of your children. Then I will unleash the Stryges and my other ally on Quinsett. The slaughter will be ineffable Saddler and every drop of blood will be on your conscience. Not that you will have long to mourn, Saddler. I have a friend that is extremely anxious to meet you. I believe that you've already witnessed an example of her zeal for her art." When Saddler did not respond, Jeniah prompted ruefully, "Come now, there's no need for circumspection. I'm aware of your tawdry dalliance with the Hispanic whore. The only thing standing between you and an extremely unpleasant death is my continued benevolence. Now, my conditions seem clear enough and the price of non-compliance is the slow, agonizing death of everyone you claim to love."

"You have my word that I'll be waiting for you at the end of Ringgold Lane...alone," Saddler swore between gritted teeth. "I won't share a word of what I know and we can settle this...just the two of us."

"Then our business is concluded for the time being," Jeniah declared in the tone of one who has reached an accord on a hard fought business transaction. "I hope you are prudent enough to understand that I will know if you renege on our agreement. I'm going to leave Los Angeles with your children. If I find that you've been scheming with your federal friends, they will bare the brunt of my wrath. You can't begin to imagine how old I am, Saddler. Over the course of my long lifetime, I've developed an infinite amount of patience and though I'm anxious to conclude my business, I will not hesitate to vanish if there's a serious threat to my purpose."

"Whatever twisted delusion you harbor, I'll be waiting to stop you," Saddler countered fiercely. "When the light goes out in your eyes, the last thing you'll ever see is my grinning face."

Jeniah laughed, a harsh, humorless sound that chilled Saddler despite his bravado. "You were never worthy of Veronica Saddler, but she regarded you as a talisman of defiance against a controlling father. The tragedy of squandering such limitless potential, such enormous beauty, all in the name of spite is difficult to conceive. She shackled herself to your mediocrity and paid an extravagant price of sorrow and regret. You can't imagine how wretched...how desperately sterile...Veronica's life had become. Being hopelessly shackled to the twin millstones of her intransigent pride and your personal failure dragged her into the abyss Saddler. Bringing her to this purgatory scoured away her last vestiges of vitality and made her all the more susceptible to my overtures. My soul fracture was really an act of mercy, because you had extinguished Veronica Ashcott's spark long before I ever found her."

"Fuck you!" Saddler croaked weakly and slammed down the receiver before he began to moan. He slid down the wall and buried his face in his hands, powerless to hold back the tears of anguish.

To hear his own misgivings...his most closely concealed fear...so succinctly articulated was beyond devastating. The cumulative weight of his grief and self-contempt threatened to crush Saddler. Only the thought of Danny and Wendy caught in a monster's merciless clutches gave him the requisite energy to overcome his lethargy.

' _Let's not forget Maria Cordova,'_ a disapproving voice chimed in his frazzled mind. Saddler sighed and pushed himself to his feet. Maria Cordova had indeed been waylaid and dragged into his circle of obligation. He had failed Veronica, but he would protect these three prisoners to his personal inadequacy...even if he had to sacrifice himself to do so.

The sound of hastily applied brakes reached his ears, informing him that someone had come to an abrupt halt near the Ringgold Lane gate. Saddler and Barney exchanged glances and the Terrier's brown eyes seemed to mirror Ray's own burgeoning tension.

"Stay here, boy," Saddler said softly and went out to investigate, suddenly conscious of the fact that he no longer even owned a gun.

2

Cameron Crane was lying on the cot of his cell, staring vacantly up at the ceiling, with his hands folded behind his head. He was the holding area's only occupant, which upon reflection, was not surprising as Quinsett was a normally quiet and orderly town.

' _Or at least it was...until she came back,'_ Cameron amended and the thought conjured the vivid image of Veronica's beautiful face...the tantalizing feel of her lips on his neck or her breasts against his bare chest. These lingering memories of tactile sensations were accompanied by intense guilt and another emotion that was perhaps more painful for its rarity in Cameron's adult life...genuine happiness. A cynical illusion they may have turned out to be, but those few hours spent reveling in Veronica's embrace were the most precious moments that Cameron had ever enjoyed. Though they proved to be false and hollow, Crane was loath to banish them from his thoughts.

They formed an agonizing contrast with this particular moment in time, where he now found himself at the nadir of his wretched existence. Just then, the door leading down into the holding area opened and someone descended the stairs. Cameron sat up, cautiously embracing the hope that he was about to be released.

A weary looking Albert Huxley shuffled into view, wearing the Quinsett Sheriff's uniform. He noticed Cameron's questioning expression and briefly informed him of what had happened since Cameron had been taken into custody.

"I don't understand...why would he suddenly resign?" Cameron mused, suddenly feeling abandoned.

"It was pretty spontaneous," was all that Huxley offered by way of reply, and then a somber shadow slipped over his expression. "I have bad news Cameron...Stuart has disappeared. He left his office yesterday afternoon and hasn't been seen since."

Cameron half rose from his cot and sat back down again. In a rare moment of total lucidity, he knew that Stuart...his cold and aloof brother and his only remaining close relative...was dead. Somehow, Jeniah had succeeded in extracting her revenge on the Crane family. Like the relationship he had shared with Stuart, the pain Cameron felt, upon learning of his brother's death, was a remote thing composed mostly of regret.

"Cameron, do you think there is even a remote possibility that Stuart would high-tail it out of Quinsett?"

Crane immediately shook his head. "No, Stuart loved the family business...so much so, that I'm pretty confident that he would rather die than abandon it."

"I figured as much," Huxley commented bleakly.

"Still, Stuart was a naturally cautious man. He recognized the personal nature of the danger stalking Quinsett. He'd hired a private firm to bolster security and he would never go off alone and vulnerable in this situation." After a moment's consideration, he added, "Unless he was extremely confident that the person he was going to see was trustworthy and Stuart was not a man to impart trust easily."

Albert, despite his weariness, realized that Cameron had just offered an extremely astute observation...one he was suddenly anxious to share with Tamara Hood.

"Sheriff, under the circumstances, will I be released?" Cameron inquired and though his voice was soft, Huxley could detect the pleading edge in his tone.

"Cameron, you've given me something big just now, I think. I'm gonna make sure the federal lady is aware of it and I predict you'll be on your way home by the end of the day," Huxley informed Crane and the eagerness in the old man's tone reassured Cameron that he was being sincere.

They spoke for a few more moments and then Huxley hurried back to the main floor, while Cameron settled back to ponder this latest dark juncture in his sad life.

3

Saddler closed the door and walked across the open side yard and up the drive, to the west edge of Ringgold Lane. To his surprise, Tamara Hood's unmarked Sedan was parked sideways in front of the barrier gate.

Wearing her blue FBI windbreaker and blue jeans, Tamara Hood was leaning casually against the driver side door with her arms folded. This relaxed posture was decried by the set of her firm jaw and the turbulence in her unblinking amber eyes.

Tamara Hood seemed like a woman being subjected to an enormous internal pressure, poised precariously on the brink of explosion. Saddler approached her warily, thinking that he'd stumbled into a potentially unpleasant situation.

Tamara was livid and he correctly deduced that he was the source of her anger. A grin, tight and humorless, spread across her face and she inclined her head in the direction of the recently erected gate. "If I was to take a ride up this road Saddler, what is it I'd find?"

"Trees, a rough road and a dead end to nowhere," Saddler replied, his heart suddenly thudding in his chest as he recalled Jeniah's overtly clear warning.

Tamara shifted her gaze to the ground and pushed herself away from her sedan. She began to walk toward Ray, who suddenly realized that she was actually taller than he was. "Why do I think you're lying to me...again?"

Saddler ignored this provocation and remarked, "I'm guessing you really didn't come here to ask about this gate?"

"I wanted to see exactly what kind of man abandons his duty in the middle of a murder spree the likes of which this state has never seen."

"Maybe, I'm just afraid," Saddler offered, not caring for Hood's posture, which reminded him of a coiled spring.

"No...I recognize a simple coward when I see one," Hood contradicted. "There's something far more complex at work here. I don't know exactly what, but before I leave here, I will."

There was a barely couched threat of violence in that last declaration that made Saddler narrow his eyes and look closely at the agent. Beneath the anger, he gleaned the tumultuous mix of confusion, desperation and fear.

"Tamara, I'm a civilian now and I don't have to engage you in this dialogue. I can see that you're exhausted, so I'd advise you to get a few hours sleep." This said, Saddler started to turn away.

The right cross struck Saddler with the speed of a striking cobra. Stunned, Saddler stumbled backward, but before he could regain his balance, Tamara was on him. She hooked her left leg behind his right knee and planting her two hands on his chest, dumped him unceremoniously on his ass in the dirt. Saddler stared up a Hood with a comical expression of shock on his stinging face. "Hood, have you lost your bloody mind?"

She loomed over Saddler and growled, "I'm responsible for six men and I'm trying to save a town that's drowning in its own blood. I think you know exactly what's happening here Saddler, and you're going to tell me even if it means I have to beat it out of you."

The last bit was delivered in a hysterical shriek and Saddler realized that Tamara Hood's composure hadn't just been shaken...it had been completely shattered. Still, in seventeen years with the LAPD, he had not once been forced to rough handle a female, but in Hood's current state of agitation, he might find himself left with no choice. Hoping that he could restrain her until she regained some semblance of control, Saddler scrambled away and quickly got back to his feet.

Tamara Hood was panther quick and incredibly mobile on her feet. She rapidly closed the distance between them, landing three stinging punches, the last of which mashed Saddler's lower lip against his teeth.

Blood, hot and coppery, filled his mouth and flew in droplets as Saddler shook his head in dazed bewilderment. _'She really intends to make good on her promise. Jesus!'_ he thought blearily as Hood advanced upon him. Her hands were up and balled into loose fists, informing Saddler that Hood might well possess some formidable martial skills. _'This could get very messy, Ray.'_

As she moved within striking distance, Saddler ducked and charged, driving his shoulder into her mid rift and looping his right arm around her lower back. His forward momentum carried them completely across the roadway and down into the shallow ditch, on the east side.

The pair tumbled into the weed-choked water, with Saddler landing on top of the writhing Hood. He attempted to seize her wrists, but failed and Tamara drove the heel of her left hand into his chin, hard enough to snap his head back. Saddler's vision was occluded by huge black blooms, but he still managed to slap her face, forehand and backhand, before pushing her head into the dirty water until her face was completely submerged.

' _Jesus Christ, Ray, what are you doing? You're going to kill her,'_ a still rational part of his mind brayed above the thunder of rushing blood in his head. Saddler's eyes widened in horror and he released her head, lurching away and back up onto the roadway. He stood on the cracked asphalt, breathing in great gulps of air and peering down at Tamara. She had raised herself to her elbows and was sputtering and coughing. A languid trickle of blood ran from her right nostril and a small cut marred her right cheek.

"Jesus, Tamara, what the hell is wrong with you?" Saddler demanded, wiping blood from his stinging mouth. Tamara climbed shakily to her feet and moved back onto the road, stripping off her sodden windbreaker and tossing it to the ground. Saddler's gaze shifted from her long, defined arms to her amber eyes. "Stop this Tamara...before one of us gets hurt."

She offered him a feral grin and said tightly, "People had been murdered in the last week and you know why. Unless you tell me exactly what you know, one of us _is_ going to get hurt and it won't be me."

Saddler spread his arms helplessly and intoned, "I have nothing more I can tell you."

Tamara snarled like a stalking cat and unleashed a series of eerily accurate punches. Saddler attempted to cover up, but the blows struck him from every angle, driving him along the roadway, toward the fence. He groped for Tamara's left arm, snagging it by sheer luck, and spun her roughly around, slamming her against her sedan. The impact snapped her head back on the thin stalk of her neck. Tamara uttered a guttural grunt, but when Saddler attempted to grab her upper arms, she surprised him with a head butt that had Ray reeling and seeing stars.

Tamara sprang forward, but ran directly into a clubbing right that Saddler had thrown in blind desperation. The heavy blow split Hood's left eyebrow and staggered her back against the sedan, where she slid to the ground with her long legs folded beneath her and her arms hanging limply at her sides. As her chin settled to her heaving chest, blood began to stream down her swollen face in a steady stream.

Thinking that she'd been knocked unconscious, Saddler stumbled over to Hood. He knelt before her and gently gripped her shoulders. She rolled her head in his direction and regarded him through a mask of gore, with glazed amber eyes. "Just give me a minute to rest, Saddler...I'm not finished with you yet."

Saddler rolled his eyes, suspecting that she was more than willing to resume hostilities given the opportunity. As he listened to her labored breathing and experienced a sharp pang of shame at the ignoble spectacle of her bloodied face, Saddler was visited by a startling epiphany. The unfettered truth was the best way to defuse this madness, because it was the one explanation Tamara Hood would never believe. He understood the audacity of this stratagem given Veronica's admonition, but decided to trust his instinct.

"All right, I'll tell you the truth, but just promise you'll stop," Saddler offered in a voice distorted by swollen, bloody lips. "Let's go inside and get cleaned up before some one sees us in this condition."

She regarded him silently for several moments and finally nodded. He stood and extended his hand, but when he attempted to pull her to her feet Tamara cried out and clutched her lower back. "I think I sprung a rib when you slammed me into the car, bastard."

"Well excuse me, but you were trying to separate my head from my shoulders," Saddler reminded her and bending down, lifted her into his arms. She accepted his embrace without resistance, putting her arm around his neck and laying her bloody face on his shoulder. Winded and laboring, Saddler carried Tamara back to his house, shocked by how solid...how substantial she was.

"I could have taken you, Saddler," she mumbled through swollen lips. "If I wasn't so exhausted, I would have kicked your ass."

"You'll get no argument from me," Ray conceded as he mounted his front steps.

He set her on her feet and guided her into the kitchen, where Barney sniffed and eyed the pair warily. In the living room, he had Hood lay down on the sofa, eyeing the gash on her eyebrow with concern. It bled profusely, even as her left eye began to swell shut.

Saddler returned to the kitchen to collect towels, ice and a basin of warm water. Catching a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror over the stove, he saw that he had sustained several cuts and bruises, the worst of which was the split lower lip.

He returned to the living room and dragged a chair next to Tamara, after setting the towels, ice and bowl on an end table. She opened her uninjured eye and muttered, "Asshole!"

"Bitch!" he responded, as he reached for the towel and dipped it into the basin of water. Both laughed, but that laughter curdled into sharp exhalations of pain.

"We really should get you to a hospital to have that cut looked at...and your back," Saddler suggested.

Hood shook her head vehemently. "Not a chance...I'm not particularly interested in trying to explain to the attending physician why we had a knock down, drag out brawl and beat each other bloody in the dirt."

"Point taken," Saddler concurred and gingerly dabbed at the cut on her eyebrow. He used a wet cloth as a compress and had her hold it in place, while he gently washed the blood from her face. Then he created an impromptu icepack and held it lightly against her swollen eye. While he ministered to her wounds, Hood winced but made no other sound.

"That lip looks nasty," she murmured and Saddler shrugged, though it stung wickedly and his face pulsed in a dull throb. "I lost it out there Saddler. I took my frustration out on you because I feel as if I'm sinking in quicksand. I know Cameron Crane is completely innocent and while holding him is incredibly petty, it also shows how desperate I feel...how inadequate. You have no idea how I loath feeling either of those things."

"I think perhaps I do," Saddler suggested quietly.

"I have no idea why you chose to walk away, but if I've judged you correctly, I'm sure your reasons are valid. I don't have that luxury Saddler, so if there's something you know I'm begging you to tell me."

The desperation in Tamara Hood's despondent voice wrenched Saddler's heart. He understood, all too well, the extravagant price this admission imposed upon her ego.

"You want the truth and I'll give it to you, but be forewarned, you're not going to like it." Saddler's cautionary preface caused Hood to brush his hand away and push herself up on one elbow, her expression fraught with need.

"I want to start by saying that I've never subscribed to the existence of the supernatural or the occult. I regarded these things as so much nonsense...delusions of desperate people, trying to bestow meaning on their empty lives."

"I sense there's a _but now_ here somewhere?" Tamara interrupted, her tone darkening perceptibly.

Saddler stared at her, his gaze unwavering, and announced flatly, "I believe that Jeniah Lightcrusher's ghost...or spirit, whichever you prefer, has returned to settle an old score and finish what she started fifty years ago."

Tamara Hood made no attempt to disguise her incredulity, unable to restrain the vulgar rejoinder that sprung to her lips. "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

"That's pretty much how Ira Silver reacted...not to mention, my own staff," he remarked and then amended, "My former staff. It sounds utterly insane...I get that...but if you examine the evidence and the circumstances surrounding each of the incidents from a purely analytical perspective, it's the only plausible explanation, Tamara."

"Jesus, you are serious," Hood exhaled in obvious consternation and settled back to the pillow with a groan of dismay. "Basically, you're telling me that, because you can't produce a conventional explanation, you've embraced a supernatural one. Do you actually have any hard evidence about this spirit?"

Saddler paused momentarily, wondering how far he dared risk pushing this boundary. He was gambling his children's lives on the conviction that Tamara Hood would never be prodded from her trenchant perception of the governing realities. The temerity of his gambit made his heart flutter, but he desperately needed to turn Tamara's constraining attention elsewhere. "If you're asking if I've seen her...or course not, but if you reconsider the possibility of her existence and examine the evidence from that angle, everything comes into logical focus. It's why I left the department...I couldn't credibly investigate these things in an official capacity. Now I can."

Tamara shook her head in a gesture that was both sorrowful and pitying. "Does anyone else share your theory, Saddler?"

Ray automatically gave voice to the one name that would insure Tamara's intransigent cynicism. "Cameron Crane."

The room descended into a silence accompanied by a palpable tension that was excruciating. "All right Ray...I'll take your theory under advisement."

Saddler's sense of relief at her tactful dismissal was enormous as yet another obstacle to his fateful collision with Jeniah Lightcrusher had been cleared.

Tamara sat up with obvious discomfort and said, "I've got to get back, Ray. I know what I did here was idiotic in the extreme. At the very least, I deserve to be turfed out of the bureau on my ass. I have no right to ask you this, but could you wait to file your complaint until all of my work here is done?"

The earnest entreaty in Tamara's tone drew a concerned frown from Saddler, who inquired, "When was the last time you managed to get some sleep?"

"I've been up since six o'clock yesterday," Tamara confessed. "I'm going to head to my hotel and catch a few hours before going back in."

Saddler reached out and took the compress from her hand to see that the flow of blood had abated to a trickle. "Listen, we've both been around long enough to know the dangers of sleep deprivation. You're here anyway...why not let me put a butterfly bandage on that cut and get you a couple of Excedrin. Then, you can catch a few hours sleep in one of the bedrooms. I've got an errand to run, so you'll have the place to yourself."

Tamara's first inclination was to refuse, but the combination of her lethargy and Saddler's genuine desire to be helpful, compelled her to accept. She nodded, "You're pretty amendable for a guy who has just been assaulted in his front yard."

"I'm just that kind of guy, I guess," he replied with a shrug that lent a ghoulish aspect to his badly bruised face.

He led her to a guest bedroom and went off to collect pills and bandages, while Hood removed her tee shirt and jeans and slipped under the covers. Saddler carefully applied the butterfly bandage and then placed the Excedrin bottle and water on the nightstand.

Tamara watched him through her one good eye, appreciating the litheness of his movements and the gentleness of his touch as he applied the bandage. "Ray, I'm sorry and ashamed of what I did here today, but I'm also sorry for the things that have happened to you since you've come to this miserable backwater."

Ray accepted this with a nod, recognizing that pity figured prominently in Tamara Hood's feelings. She gripped his left wrist and squeezed, then joked, "You know, when I decide to get physical with a man, it doesn't usually get so bloody."

"Usually?" Saddler inquired and Tamara laughed softly and then her lids fluttered closed. He stared at her battered visage until the cadence of her breathing became shallow and even. Then he left her to her rest and went to tend his own cuts and bruises.

Chapter Three

1

"Mia Madre, what happened to you?" Maria exclaimed, as Saddler entered her room at just after one o'clock, and started to climb out of her hospital bed. Both of Saddler's eyes were swollen and discolored as was his left cheek, but the split lower lip appeared especially raw and painful.

Ray gestured for her to remain in bed and explained, "I ran into a storm named Tamara Hood."

"Tamara Hood did this to you?" Maria demanded, her dark eyes flaring menacingly.

Saddler held up his hands and offered her a placating smile. "Hey, you should see what she looks like."

When Maria's forbidding frown made it perfectly clear that she was unimpressed with his levity, Saddler began to recount the morning's events. Even to his own ears, the notion that he'd been involved in a nasty fist fight with Tamara Hood seemed unbelievable.

"The bitch should be in jail!" Maria growled, her outrage growing in leaps and bounds each time her gaze fell on Saddler's battered face. Saddler correctly surmised that Maria kept a tight rein on her temper, but when she did succumb to her anger, it was a terrifying spectacle to behold.

"Actually, she is sleeping in one of my guest bedrooms," Saddler disclosed, bracing for the explosive reaction this would inevitably provoke.

"This lunatic attacks you in your front yard and you then allow her to catch up on her sleep in your bed?" Maria seethed and behind the freshly changed bandages, Ray could see that her color had turned a high, hectic shade of red. She waved her right hand around her face and growled, "If it wasn't for this, I'd be sorely tempted to go over and drag her back out into your side yard and finish what she started."

Saddler regarded Maria with a bemused frown. "Given this penchant for physical violence, I'm really starting to question the prudence of having female police officers."

"Go to hell, Saddler," Maria retorted hotly and turned her back on a thoroughly dumbfounded Saddler. Her rigid posture declared eloquently that she was livid.

Venturing closer, Saddler laid a tentative hand on her left shoulder. She stiffened perceptibly, but made no effort to shrug him off, for which he was grateful. "Maria, she lost her composure, but this may actually work to my advantage."

When she turned a quizzical gaze on Saddler, he went on to describe his conversation with Veronica and the subsequent gamble he'd taken with agent Hood. "So you see Maria, I can't afford any scrutiny and if Tamara thinks I've went around the bend...and believe me, she does...I can drop completely off her radar and focus on stopping Jeniah and rescuing my children."

Her tone softened as she contemplated this and she turned, her hospital gown sliding up her legs to reveal a tantalizing length of shapely thigh. "Ray I can't even conceive of how awful it must be to find yourself in this position. You can't face Jeniah alone."

"But that's exactly what I have to do, Maria," Saddler contradicted. "Jeniah holds all the advantages and I have no option but to respect her rules."

"I want to help you...I can't allow you to face this ordeal alone," she objected, though her plaintive tone seemed to disguise a deep and bitter resignation.

Saddler came around and sat on the bed next to her. "I won't be alone because Cameron is going to help me. Remember Maria, we're theorizing that Jeniah needs to settle her blood debt prior to enacting this ritual. Ira Silver and Judith Ranzman are the next targets and I need you to keep me informed from the inside."

Maria's intense gaze bore into Saddler for several moments and suddenly she sighed and nodded, before throwing her arms around him and softly kissing his bruised cheek. When she finally pushed him to arms length, her expression had become oddly tentative. "Albert stopped by not long after you left. I told him that I would be returning to duty tomorrow. He apologized for how he treated me in the past and I'm perfectly happy to let bygones be bygones. Still, I wish I was returning under your command and in normal circumstances. Doctor Crandall has approved my discharge and I can leave at any time."

Saddler forced a smile at this disclosure and remarked, "That's great news...I see your bandages have been changed."

"He said that the cuts are healing nicely and that the scarring should be minimal," she reported in a clearly contrived tone of brisk optimism. The last phrase was an incisive sting that struck true to the core of Saddler's spirit and he was forced to shift his gaze to the window.

When he recovered his composure sufficiently, Saddler looked back to Maria to find her staring fixedly at her hands which trembled slightly in her lap. The dispirited hunch of her shoulders was so contrary to Maria's normally confident posture that Saddler immediately deduced that she was profoundly troubled.

"Maria, what's wrong?" Saddler inquired, gently raising her chin with his right index finger. Tears stood prominently forth in those dark, beautiful eyes and her expression was a heart-rending blend of abject shame and raw terror.

"I...I can't go back there on my own...to my house and be alone, while that monster is still out there. I know I'm suppose to be courageous and strong, but I'm terrified, Ray." Her words degenerated into garbled weeping as she hung her head. Seeing Maria surrender to her misery, Saddler felt his heart constrict in his chest and cursed his monumental insensitivity. Maria Cordova, after all, was the victim of a harrowing attack that had left her scarred both physically and emotionally. Being a cop certainly didn't insulate her from the trauma that followed in the wake of such a horrific experience...especially if the assailant was still at large. Shockingly, Saddler had lost sight of this lingering torment in Maria's case.

He pulled her into an embrace and kissed the top of her head. "You won't have to because you're staying with me until this is over."

"You're sure?" she asked tentatively, the light of pure relief and gratitude shining in her limpid eyes. "This is bound to set tongues wagging."

"Then let them wag," Saddler declared dismissively. He offered her an ebullient grin and quipped, "Nothing's getting by Barney."

"Thank you," she said simply, her voice quiet and grave as she brushed absently at her tears. With a small, mirthless laugh, she reminded him, "You'd promised me dinner Saturday night. Looking the way we do, we might scare the other patrons away, but if you're willing to take the risk, I would certainly be game. It would simply be wonderful to sit and talk about anything but this for an hour or so."

Saddler merely smiled and nodded, concurring that any respite from this nightmare, however brief, would be greatly appreciated.

' _You're such a fool, Ray,'_ Veronica's glacial voice declared contemptuously, in the distant recesses of his mind. _'Even if you emerge together on the other side of this darkness, do you truly believe you'll be able to look at each other as anything other than a reminder of what you've lost. Her sullied beauty, the ruins of your life...me; these haunting mementoes will torment you without respite if you attempt to build a life together on the crumbled foundations of this nightmare.'_

Saddler's smile withered and died upon his lips as the incontrovertible truth of this crashed down upon him. Maria gleaned this dramatic shift in mood and asked worriedly, "What's wrong, Ray?"

Somehow, Saddler mustered the will to conjure a thin smile and shook his head, "Nothing...when can you leave?"

"Anytime, I suppose, but...I hate to impose on you again. I have no clothes...would you mind stopping by my house and picking up a few things and my uniform and belt?" she asked. It was obvious that something...some profoundly troubling thought...had assailed him then, but Maria found herself lacking the wherewithal to pursue Saddler's inner demon just then.

"Hey, no problem...just give me a list of what you need and your house keys."

Maria spent the next several minutes composing a list and then directed Saddler to her keys in the room's locker.

As he pushed them into his pocket, Saddler said, "Would you mind resting for another few hours. There's one small errand I need to run before I collect your clothes."

"Of course not," she replied, but her quizzical expression made it evident that an explanation was in order. Saddler came forward and bestowed another kiss on the top of her head, thoroughly enjoying this new liberty.

"I've got to go to the library to see if I can find a way to kill a Stryge," he remarked with a brilliant grin and then slipped out the door before she could unleash her barrage of objections.

Maria watched him go, beset by that strange mixture of affection and exasperation that Saddler seemed to pique in her with such ease. She closed her eyes and within minutes, fell into a fitful doze.

2

It was just past 3:30 when Tamara Hood strode purposefully up the steps and into the station house, pointedly ignoring the torrent of questions issued by the milling throng of reporters.

Inside she held her head high in defiance, making no effort to hide her battered face from the wide-eyed gazes that greeted her as she marched into her expropriated office.

"Sheriff Huxley, a word please," she asked as she passed Albert's desk. Albert grimaced in response to her authoritarian tone, but nonetheless rose and obediently followed her into the office he had occupied for the better part of twenty years. Huxley raised a shaggy eyebrow upon catching his first glimpse of Tamara's badly distended left eye. Agent Hood noticed his reaction and waved her hand dismissively. "Your predecessor and I had a...professional difference of opinion."

When Huxley's expression deepened into a concerned frown, she elaborated, "Don't worry, Albert, Saddler's a bit bruised, but no worse for wear. In the end, he knocked me on my ass, but we've since kissed and made up, so how about we move past this and get on to the business at hand."

Despite his obvious bewilderment, Huxley nodded without further comment, for which Tamara was genuinely grateful. "Are you ready to interview Judith Ranzman?"

"About that, your boys and I may have come across something that should add a little spice to the mix," Huxley disclosed. Tamara arched her right eyebrow, clearly sensing the constrained excitement behind this rather cryptic revelation.

"I'll bite...what have you uncovered?"

With uncharacteristic animation, Albert recounted his conversation with Cameron Crane, concluding with Crane's assessment of what may have lured Stuart to venture out alone. "Your agents and I questioned Crane's personal assistant. She screens and logs all of his calls. At first, she wasn't going to cough up the log, but I finally managed to convince her that it would be in the boss' best interest to let us have a gander without wastin' time to go the warrant route."

"And this exercise yielded?" Tamara prompted impatiently.

"Stuart received a ten minute call from Judith Ranzman at around ten after twelve. I asked if Judith called Stuart on a regular basis and the secretary stated that she could not recall Ms. Ranzman ever calling Crane during business hours. Some time later, Stuart dismisses his security escort for the night, leaves without telling anyone where he's going and vanishes into thin air."

"It could be mere coincidence," Tamara observed, though something in her posture suggested that she thought otherwise.

"Judith has always struck me as a bit odd," Huxley remarked. "She's gruff and abrasive, but it always seemed there was something darker...more sinister...behind that front."

Hood eyed Huxley thoughtfully, trying to disguise her mounting excitement. If something substantial came of this, it would prove to be a vindication of her initial supposition...something most gratifying for a woman who was unaccustomed to being wrong. The humiliation of being physically bested by Saddler privately rankled Hood and she would welcome the opportunity to flaunt her astuteness should either Ranzman or Silver proved to be the villain of this piece.

Tamara was anxious to put paid to this investigation and see Quinsett in her rear view mirror. There was something deeply disturbing inculcated deep into the bones of this awful place...something that was slowly eroding the armor of her rigid self-discipline. Her complete loss of control, leading to her inexcusable attack on Saddler, was a prime example of the insidious affect this place was exerting upon her.

' _And that's hardly the worst of it, Tamara,'_ a tiny, mischievous voice informed her gleefully, and that was irrefutably true. There had been a brief moment, small but there nonetheless, when she had felt a nearly irresistible urge to pull him into bed and do to him sexually what she had failed to achieve with violence. She had subjugated the urge, but her sleep had been plagued by the most intensely erotic dreams, in which they had ravaged each other in a frenzy of passion. Tamara had finally awoken, panting and shaken...aching with a frustrated need.

' _This miserable place is making me crazy,'_ she thought, her rueful expression puzzling Huxley as he awaited her response. She shook her head, struggling to dismiss the vivid memory from her thoughts, and intoned quickly, "Then let's you and I go have a word with the sinister Ms. Ranzman."

3

Judith reclined on an ornate bench with her eyes closed and her lovely face turned into the warm afternoon sunshine, basking in the afterglow of Stuart Crane's satisfying demise. She smiled as her twisted mind recalled the delightful image of Crane gagging on his own severed penis, and she complimented herself on her flair for the creative flourish.

Only two accounts remained to be settled...the mad priest Crimmon and officious Ira Silver. The former would be a simple matter that she intended to close later today, leaving only Ira Silver to deal with. Silver would pose a significantly greater challenge, constantly surrounded as he was by family and municipal lackeys. Word of Dwyer's gruesome death and Stuart Crane's disappearance would further exacerbate the difficulty of accessing Silver.

' _Ah, but perhaps you don't have to,'_ she murmured aloud, as yet another clever notion germinated in her mind. While Ira Silver would be virtually impossible to target without extremely overt measures, such as summoning the Stryges en mass, Art Silver would pose no such problem.

Like quicksilver, the recollection of Veronica weaving an enchantment on a thoroughly bewitched Art Silver, bloomed in Judith's thoughts. One dead Silver or the next...it mattered very little to Judith Ranzman and either would satisfy the blood debt.

Judith was surprised by the intense exigency...the consuming drive of her need to settle Jeniah's lingering account with those who had denied her, fifty years earlier. She correctly surmised that it was another aspect of the profound changes that were still taking place in the fibers of her being. Just what the ultimate manifestation of those changes would be, Judith could not begin to surmise, but the prospect filled her with gleeful anticipation. She was constructing an elaborate vision of the future that awaited her when the report of the gate buzzer blared through the intercom. Perturbed, Judith crossed to the security panel and activated the front gate camera, to find a uniformed Albert Huxley and a black woman she did not recognize, staring expectantly up at the camera. As she activated the intercom, Judith was assailed by the certainty that unexpected visitors were harbingers of ill-fortune.

With sudden reluctance, Judith pressed the transmit button and declared simply, "Yes?"

4

As the camera swiveled to face them, Albert remarked softly, "This place is like a bloody fortress...and a creepy one at that."

Tamara merely nodded, her sharp gaze sweeping over the spiked fence top. She agreed that this place was certainly uninviting...even sinister, when considered from the right perspective.

"Yes," a disembodied voice inquired from a speaker affixed to the gate.

"Federal Agent Tamara Hood and Sheriff Huxley to speak with Judith Ranzman," Tamara announced evenly.

"Drive to the main entrance and I'll see you at the front steps," the voice instructed. Tamara and Huxley exchanged bemused glances as the gate swung slowly open. They returned to Huxley's cruiser and as Albert slowly guided the car along the winding drive, Tamara was abruptly visited by the intuition that something of immense consequence was about to transpire in this forbidding place.

When the drive opened onto the fore court of Judith's sprawling home, the pair saw Judith awaiting their arrival on the front stairs. Judith was sprawled rather lasciviously on the bottom step, leaning on her elbows with her legs crossed before her. The raven-haired beauty was dressed entirely in black, with a black hooded jacket and a clinging crop top that revealed a provocative amount of tanned cleavage and a tight mid rift. Tamara's gaze was immediately drawn to the multi-buckled, knee-high leather boots with the heavy leather soles. As Albert brought the cruiser to a halt, Tamara could feel the beat of her heart begin to gather speed.

She stole a brief glance at Huxley before disembarking and judging by his expression of puzzlement, saw that he shared her impression that Ranzman's attire seemed decidedly odd.

Judith sprang lightly to her feet and strode forth to meet them. The smile playing at the corners of her generous mouth reminded Tamara of a smirk. When she spoke, Ranzman's words echoed with the slightest hint of disdain. "Well, I certainly feel considerably safer, though I suspect this visit is more than a cursory check on my well being, agent..."

"Hood," Tamara responded, experiencing an immediate dislike for the woman now standing before her. There was something in the woman's dark eyes that rankled Hood (and deeply unsettled her, if she was being entirely candid)...a condescension and arrogance that Tamara found insufferable. "And you're correct, this is not merely a random check on your well being, though that certainly a concern given all that's happened in the last week."

Judith's cryptic smile broadened, though she offered no response, instead shifting her disconcertingly penetrating gaze to Huxley. "Albert, I was under the impression that you'd sailed off into the happy sunset of retirement. What's become of our new sheriff?"

"He didn't find the job to his liking, I guess," Huxley said simply, hiding his surprise over Judith's new found civility. The surly, sharp-tongued princess was not in evidence.

"As you can imagine, Ms. Ranzman, we're in a pressing situation, so if we could get to the questions," Tamara interjected, her tone skirting the edges of courtesy.

"Please call me Judith," the shorter woman replied and glancing at Tamara's battered face, remarked, "It appears that the _situation_ has gotten the better of you, agent Hood. Let's make ourselves comfortable inside and I'll gladly answer your questions."

Without awaiting a reply, Judith pivoted and marched up the front steps. Hood and Huxley exchanged bemused glances and Albert shrugged helplessly.

Once inside, Ranzman led them through the cavernous interior to a drawing room, where she bid them to sit in a pair of wingbacks. She then sat in a loveseat directly opposite the two, and again crossed her legs atop an ornate teak table.

Tamara shook her head slightly, nonplussed by Judith's enigmatic behavior, but Ranzman's position offered agent Hood the perfect view of the tread pattern on the distinctive leather boots their host wore.

Tamara required only a glance to realize that the chevron pattern was identical to the impression left in Raymond Dwyer's flower bed. Struggling to repress her mounting tension, Tamara disclosed neutrally, "You may have already heard that Raymond Dwyer was found murdered in his home last night. Though it hasn't been made public yet, Stuart Crane appears to have vanished sometime after leaving his office yesterday afternoon."

Judith tented her fingers and pursed her lips, then remarked, "That's unfortunate."

"Considering they were your business associates, that's a rather dispassionate reaction," Tamara observed, thought something told Hood that empathy for others was a faculty Judith Ranzman did not possess.

Judith shrugged indifferently. "As you say, they were business associates...certainly not dear friends. I'll be frank; to Raymond Dwyer, I was indifferent...though he was obese, which I find repulsive. Stuart Crane is an officious condescending prick, who I've detested since I was old enough to see him for what he was. You'll have to excuse me if I cannot feign sorrow on their behalf."

"Yet, you were business associates with both," Tamara pointed out.

"A mutually beneficial arrangement that didn't require that we all sleep together," Judith retorted with a mirthless grin. "If you know about the group, then undoubtedly you're familiar with its genesis. I'm sure Albert has filled you in on the colorful lore and myth it spawned. I remained with the group because I felt compelled by tradition, I suppose."

"Are you alone here, Judith?" Tamara asked, forcing herself not to glance at those boots.

Judith arched a finely tapered eyebrow and replied, "Yes...now and always, as I'm sure Albert will confirm. I'm a woman who is renowned for cherishing her solitude and privacy."

"Given that two of your group's members are dead and another is missing, you don't seem overly concerned for your safety."

Judith offered Tamara a radiant smile and shrugged. "How could I possibly be afraid in such company? Besides, my home is protected by a rather imposing security system. Someone entering my grounds, with the intention of doing me harm, would probably not enjoy the company of my dogs. Still, lest you think me foolish, I've decided to stay away from my office until you've resolved this situation, agent Hood."

Hood frowned at the implied criticism, but refused to be goaded. "What can you tell me about Vincent Scallari?"

Judith's mouth puckered with obvious distaste. "He was Stuart Crane's dog...a boorish brute of a man, but useful on occasion. Stuart brought Scallari in because he believed all of this might be an elaborate blackmail scheme and he wanted his dog to investigate. Obviously, he must have turned up something particularly damning."

Tamara nodded, correctly surmising that Judith was being completely truthful on this one count. "Did you speak to Stuart Crane yesterday?"

Judith's eyes narrowed and her smile became vulpine. "Just your phrasing of the question tells me that you already know that I did."

"Mind if I ask what you spoke about?"

"The situation, in general and his intentions in regard to leaving, in particular," Judith replied flatly. That infuriatingly amused grin was back on her face and Tamara found herself struggling with the urge to slap it from her face.

"Did you meet with Mr. Crane after your phone call?" Tamara inquired tightly.

Judith leaned forward and crossed her right arm over her knee, peering into Tamara's eyes with a toothsome grin emblazoning her face. "I sense that your tone is becoming decidedly belligerent, Agent Hood, and gravitating toward something resembling an accusation."

Tamara returned the smile and leaned forward. Huxley could feel the tension grow palpable between the pair, and found his body had grown rigid, like an electrified wire.

"Are you refusing to answer the question, Judith?" Hood demanded in a voice that was deceptively calm.

Judith shook her head and settled back into her seat. "I did not meet with Stuart Crane after our conversation, nor can I tell you where he might be now. I can only say that he seemed uncharacteristically distracted while we spoke."

Switching gambits, Tamara inquired, "Have you spoken to or met with Deirdre Wilkins in the last few days. Deirdre is the local news anchor for the ABC affiliate. She was evidently doing a background story on the Jeniah Lightcrusher myth."

Judith reacted with a strong sense of aversion. "I have not. I would rather be lobotomized than speak to media jackals...especially about that asinine myth."

Tamara's gazed shifted briefly to Huxley, who recognized the predatory gleam in her eyes. "Those are some really interesting boots...they'd be about what...a size nine?"

For the first time, Judith's mantle of playful contempt appeared to waver perceptibly. Carefully, she ventured. "Size nine, yes. They're a comfortable change from spike heels, though I can't imagine how that's relevant?"

Watching Tamara, Huxley was reminded of a stalking panther about to pounce. Reluctant to embrace premature optimism, he couldn't help but wonder, _'Could this really be it...could this nightmare be as simple as a crazy, rich bitch gone psychotic?'_

"Judith, did you happen to visit Raymond Dwyer this past weekend?"

"No...not this weekend, not ever," Judith retorted curtly, her ire showing for the first time since the interview commenced.

Tamara nodded as her agile mind cycled up like a turbine. _'Wilkins' car found at the end of winder road, the call to Crane and most condemning of all, the boot prints at Raymond Dwyer's home; these incidents were too numerous to be mere coincidence.'_ She thought, deciding to take a leap of faith. "Judith, I would like to request that you allow us to view your security tapes and search your grounds and home."

"That simply isn't going to happen, agent Hood." Judith stood abruptly, her tone becoming contentious. Tamara also stood and Albert followed suit, his heart skidding in his chest. Agent Hood stepped forward and firmly gripped Judith's upper left arm. "Then I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Raymond Dwyer. There may be other charges pending the search of your property."

Judith's body coiled like a spring and for the slightest instant, Huxley felt certain that she would attack Hood. Just as suddenly, the combative tension drained from her body and she smiled radiantly at Tamara. "All right then, let's see who comes out dry at the other end of this pissing match, shall we?"

As agent Hood read Ranzman her rights, Judith turned, winked over her shoulder impertinently and offered Huxley her arms behind her back.

Albert dutifully cuffed a grinning Judith and led her to the cruiser, while Tamara followed with an inscrutable scowl on her face.

Driving back to town, Huxley experienced a surge of elation and relief. At last, it seemed, Quinsett's dark saga had come to an end.

5

When Huxley negotiated the reverse into his designated parking spot, Tamara issued a deep groan upon seeing the ever-thickening throng of reporters assembled on the steps of the sheriff's office.

"Is there access to the back door through the rear of the lot?" she inquired of Huxley, desperate to avoid the media storm until Ranzman was processed.

"There is," Albert allowed, eyeing the reporters the way one would a pack of wild dogs.

"All right, let's try to bring her in that way," Hood instructed, shifting her gaze to Ranzman, who was staring at her intently. Judith offered Hood a broad smile and for just the briefest instant, Tamara thought she saw a metallic flash of fangs. Hood shook her head in exasperation and the aberration vanished as Judith bowed her head. Hood exited the vehicle and opening the rear door, reached in and dragged the unresisting Ranzman out into the parking lot, imposing herself between Judith and the reporters. Tamara jerked the hood up over Judith's head with far more vehemence than was strictly necessary and growled, "Move!"

Seeming to comply, Judith took a few steps forward with her head bowed and shoulders hunched, like someone who is eager to avoid scrutiny. Suddenly, she threw her head back, tossing off the hood, and bellowed, "Jackals, your monster has been brought to heel!"

"Shit!" Albert muttered as the horde turned as one and descended upon the trio. A genuinely startled Hood stared incredulously at Judith, who met her gaze with a triumphant grin that spoke volumes about her sanity.

' _Don't be so quick to assume Tamara,'_ a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind. _'Something is drastically wrong here.'_

This vague admonition made Tamara shudder and she roughly propelled Judith toward the street and the approaching mob.

"That's Judith Ranzman," one startled local reporter cried and the barrage of questions grew in volume and intensity. Judith winked at a disconcerted Hood and smiled broadly at the cameras. As Huxley tried to clear a path into the station, a seething Hood pushed Ranzman up the stairs, deliberately ignoring the frantic questions being hurled at her.

At the top of the steps, Hood turned to the indignant mob and declared forcefully, "I will issue a formal statement...a preliminary one, at least...in an hours time and I'll answer your questions then."

Ignoring the strident howls of protest, she whisked Judith into the building, kicking the door shut behind her. Inside, she spun Ranzman around and slammed her into the wall, drawing the startled attention of everyone in the station. Leaning close, Tamara rasped, "I hope you found your little stunt amusing."

"As matter of fact, I did," Judith remarked blithely.

Hood's smile was fraught with dark promise. "I'm glad because there won't be a great deal of amusement in what's left of your miserable life from here on out."

Judith's smile only broadened, assuming a feral aspect. Softly, she murmured, "Agent Hood, I predict your time here in Quinsett isn't going to end well...no, not well at all."

The two women locked gazes and then Tamara shook her head in revulsion. "Sheriff Huxley, book her and we'll sort out the jurisdictional issues later. Then put her in a cell while I arrange for a search warrant. We can question her later. Oh yes, enter these boots into evidence and have her thoroughly strip searched."

Huxley's expression became one of pure apoplexy. Leaning closer, he inquired quietly, "Are you sure...I mean, is this even legal?"

Tamara scowled in annoyance and snapped, "Among other things, this woman chopped off Raymond Dwyer's head and took it as a trophy. Are you willing to take the chance that she might have a concealed weapon?"

Albert's face blanched in revulsion. "Agent Hood, Maria Cordova is my only female officer and she won't be in until tomorrow."

"Now, wouldn't that be a delicious irony?" Judith whispered, though her expression remained inscrutable.

Tamara growled in frustration. "Very well...I'll do it myself. Just get the preliminary paper work going."

"What about my legally prescribed phone call?" Judith inquired and then uttered a throaty laugh.

"You'll get it when I say you do," Tamara snarled and roughly shoved Judith into the short hallway, demanding Huxley's cuff keys as she went. She then propelled Ranzman into a small, windowless conference room, instructing Huxley to wait outside before following Judith and slamming the door behind her.

Huxley glanced about uncertainly. It was apparent that Hood was poised precariously on the precipice and given her altercation with Saddler, it was not inconceivable that she might actually throttle Ranzman. Huxley knew that would be a disastrous turn of events, but was uncertain what he might do to forestall it."

Leaning against the wall, immediately beside the door, Albert drew a quavering breath and sighed.

' _This is some mess you've left me with, Ray,'_ he thought, with only a hint of bitterness.

6

Tamara closed the door and stood scowling at the back of Judith's head and breathing heavily. A small, frantic part of her mind kept braying a strident admonition that something was seriously awry, but the now constant buzz of hornets seemed to be impeding her ability to think clearly. By contrast, Judith appeared both relaxed and strangely sanguine, as if the advantages in this present situation were clearly hers.

Ranzman stood with her back to Hood and her arms hanging casually, despite being handcuffed. Tamara approached, cupped her right hand at the base of Judith's neck and forced the shorter woman down, until her torso was pressed against the table and the side of her face crushed into the cool wooden surface. Again, the voice of reason urged prudence, which Tamara again elected to ignore. She understood that her heavy-handed treatment of Ranzman was skirting the fine line of an excessive force violation, but there was something about the diminutive beauty that ignited Hood's normally constrained volatility.

' _Or maybe it's this place,'_ she thought, both mystified and bemused by the erratic behavior she'd exhibited since coming to Quinsett. The town seemed to be exerting a macabre and dark influence on her temperament. Under normal circumstances, she would have scoffed at this notion as so much fatuous nonsense, but standing over a prone Judith Ranzman and struggling with the compulsion to repeatedly smash her delicate face into the conference table, Tamara could not be so dismissive.

"All right, I'm going to remove your cuffs and then I want you to remove your boots and place them on the table," Tamara instructed, her tone cold and business-like. "Then, I want you to walk to the other end of the room, remove your clothing and place them on the table."

In a series of fluid movements, Tamara released Judith's neck, unlocked and removed the cuffs and retreated one pace. Judith straightened and then turned to face Tamara. Where prisoners would normally react to the prospect of being strip searched with outraged indignation, Judith offered Hood a strange, knowing smile and moved to comply. Placing the heavy leather boots on the table, Ranzman moved to the opposite end of the small room and began to remove her clothing, while Tamara fought the urge to examine those sole treads more closely.

Even more perplexing than the absence of anger, was Judith's complete lack of either modesty or humiliation. She stripped with the slow deliberation of a seasoned exhibitionist, never once taking her eyes from Tamara's face. If anything, Judith's mood seemed to brighten and her smile assumed a teasing edge. Finally, Tamara averted her eyes and instructed, "Step over here, face the table and lean forward, with your palms flat on the table top and legs spread shoulder width apart.

"Now that's certainly a lewd proposition, I really didn't think you had it in you Tamara," Judith remarked with a brazen chuckle, but moved to comply with baffling eagerness. Again, Hood was assailed with the unnerving certainty that something was dramatically, but she moved forward and pulling on a set of rubber gloves, began to briskly pat Judith down. As Tamara ran her index fingers beneath the under swell of Judith's firm breasts, Ranzman inclined her head and observed, "How gratifying this must be for you, Tamara...a raised up token, black girl abusing her authority to humiliate a rich white woman. That's not an opportunity that comes along every day."

Before she was fully aware of her intentions, Tamara gripped Judith's right shoulder and spun her around before pushing her against the table with her back bowed and her breast thrust towards the ceiling. Judith uttered a derisive laugh. "Are you going to hit me now, Tamara? You know you certainly want to."

Judith's expression became speculative as she peered into Tamara's rage-contorted face, a mocking grin playing at the corners of her mouth. "Or perhaps, you'd rather kiss me instead?"

Tamara entwined her long fingers in Judith's lush hair and jerked her head forward, until their faces were only inches apart. "I'm going to dig into your sick world, Judith...starting with that asylum you call a home. I'm going to burrow into every corner...every filth filled nook of you miserable life. I'm going to expose the pathetic ugliness you've worked so hard to conceal and then I will lay them bare for the world to see. Your perverse legacy won't be that of a twisted monster...I'll personally make sure of that. When people think of Judith Ranzman, it will be as a twisted, pathetic lunatic."

Judith's grin faltered and then vanished, giving way to a smoldering glare of terrifying intensity...a glimpse into the simmering maelstrom that lurked beneath the exquisite façade. "Knowing another's intimate secrets creates an intrinsic bond...a sacred entanglement. I'm not really sure that you want to bind yourself to me, Tamara...no, not at all."

Tamara grunted in disgust and stepped back, gesturing towards Judith's clothes. "Get dressed."

Hood leaned against the wall and though her expression was impassive, internally her emotions were a roiling storm. This woman, with her aura of vague menace and overt lasciviousness, was far and away the most sinister creature Hood had ever encountered during the course of her long career.

Once dressed, Judith withdrew into reticence, for which Tamara was grateful. She guided Judith to Huxley and instructed, "Put her in a cell and release Cameron Crane. I'll arrange for a search warrant."

"What about the pack outside?" Huxley inquired. "They're raising the devil for information."

Wincing, Tamara grumbled, "I'll give them a preliminary statement in a short while."

Sparing one final glance at Judith, Hood turned and marched into her office, grateful to be out of the deprave lunatic's presence...if only for a short while.

Chapter Four

1

After finger printing and formally booking Judith, Albert led her down into the holding area. Judith did not speak, but her unnerving gaze was a constant and palpable weight on the side of his face. As he herded her before him, gripping her right shoulder as they descended into the holding area, Huxley could scarcely believe the incredible developments of the past several hours. He couldn't help but wonder how Raymond Saddler would react to this development.

' _Remember Albert, he never did think that Veronica had acted alone,'_ he reminded himself, knowing that Saddler had always suspected that Jeniah had an accomplice. _'Sure, but Judith Ranzman? That's not far fetched...it's impossible.'_

With no prior inkling of his intent, Albert heard himself ask, "Did you really do this, Judith?"

She paused at the base of the stairs, regarding Huxley with a frank gaze of appraisal. "Why Albert, I've admitted to absolutely nothing. I'm merely allowing your agent Hood to dig a bottomless pit for herself. Believe me when I say, Albert, there will be a reckoning for the indignity I've suffered here."

Huxley's eyes widened and he was accosted by doubt then. If it turned out that Hood's net of circumstantial evidence crumbled to dust beneath her, Judith could retaliate by litigating her accusers into permanent poverty. Albert nodded glumly and squired Judith into the cell next to Cameron.

Upon seeing Judith being ushered into a holding cell, Cameron sprang to his feet and looked askance at Huxley. Albert shook his head and came to unlock Cameron's cell. "Agent Hood has decided to turn you loose, Cameron. If I was you, I'd make tracks because this place is about to turn into a zoo."

A thoroughly perplexed Crane stumbled out of his cell and followed Albert towards the stairs. Before they could exit the area, Judith bound to the bars and called, "Cameron, a mutual friend sends her regards. She's looking forward to seeing you soon."

This said, Judith returned to the bunk and sat, cross-legged, on the scarred plastic cover, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

Crane and Huxley exchanged puzzled, anxious glances and then Huxley led the younger man up the stairs to freedom.

2

Finally alone, Judith rummaged through her memory, trying to isolate the error she'd committed the night she'd killed Dwyer. Hood's keen interest in her boots made it readily apparent that she'd left tracks at the crime scene that night...a damning error that grievously offended Judith's perfectionist nature. Still, what was done could not be changed and she would just have to rectify her mistake.

Even as she was being subjected to her moment of degradation by that miserable bitch (and oh how close she had come to ripping Hood's throat out with her teeth), the first seeds of an audacious plan germinated in Judith's mind. As the notion assumed definable form, the familiar realized that this debacle could well be turned to her advantage. If she could manipulate Jeniah...and there was every indication that she could...Judith might be able to sunder the bonds of obligation that existed between them.

The first order of business was apprising Jeniah of what had transpired...a task that Judith did not particularly relish.

Closing her eyes, she delved into the deeper confines of her mind and set out along the ephemeral tether that connected familiar to master. When cognizance returned, she found herself in the sterile and structured interior of Jeniah's complex mind.

"Why are you here unbidden?" an irritated voice demanded, seemingly from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"My...circumstances have changed," the familiar responded circumspectly. "I need you to come to me...quickly."

There was a tense and protracted silence and suddenly Jeniah announced, "Very well, return to your body and I'll be there shortly."

Judith made the return trip and opened her eyes, mentally steeling herself for the coming critical discussion. The wait, which seemed interminable but lasted only minutes, ended as a cool breeze eddied through the holding area. As a transfixed Judith looked on, a red mist coalesced out of thin air, spreading across the entire front of Judith's cell. An instant later, the cool, elegant beauty stepped lightly into the confines of Judith's grimy cell. As she glanced questioningly around the holding area, a disapproving frown spread across her face and she turned her daunting gaze on the familiar.

"Explain?" she demanded, but in that one simple interrogative, Judith could clearly hear the reverberations of Jeniah's thunderous fury. Judith provided her mistress with a measured, dispassionate account of all that had befallen her in the last several hours.

While she absorbed the account in silence, Jeniah's expression darkened and became somber. "Then it's done...all of my efforts have fallen to ruin because of your one moment of negligence."

"My moment of negligence could prove to be a most fortuitous turn of events...if you listen carefully to my guidance...and agree to my terms," Judith proclaimed confidently.

Jeniah's dark eyes widened and she surged forward, but her familiar defiantly held her ground and met her outrage unflinchingly. "You dare make demands on me after your foolish blunder has laid bare my intentions?"

With the speed of a striking adder, Veronica plunged her ghostly fingers into Judith's left breast. Ranzman could feel a terrible, constricting pressure on her heart muscle, but still managed to gasp, "Listen to me, you obtuse bitch!"

For a terrifying moment, Judith feared that her caustic temper had finally been her undoing. The pressure on the muscle increased until it seemed inevitable that the heart would burst. Then, as quickly as it had commenced, the torture ended and the invasive spectral presence withdrew. Judith exhaled in a wheezing burst and slumped back onto her cot. Jeniah grasped the sides of her familiar's face and savagely jerked her head forward. "Speak, but be forewarned...your life hinges on what you propose."

Despite her trepidation, Judith refused to cower or lapse into obeisance like a fawning sycophant. "Even without my blunder, the circle of those who, at the very least, suspect that you are the architect of this horror has grown. If I was to accept full blame for all that has transpired...to offer a full confession for every act and provide a detailed account of every murder, the way would be clear for your ritual."

Behind Jeniah's frightening mask of severity, Judith could sense that she was weighing the notion carefully. Finally, her eyes narrowed and she growled, "I've declared myself to Raymond Saddler, a proclamation that can hardly be recanted."

Judith shook her head emphatically and stood, ignoring the incisive pain in her chest. "Even that is not an insurmountable obstacle. How much of Veronica's fragmented soul can you re-assemble?"

The question clearly perplexed Jeniah. "Virtually all of them...by repressing the more independent aspects of her nature, I can restore most of her personality and still retain rigid control of her actions."

"Can you reconstruct or alter her memory?" Judith asked excitedly.

"Yes," Jeniah ventured cautiously, "but there is a risk of permanent mental impairment."

"If you can alter her memory of those first days and inculcate the idea that I somehow enchanted her...bewitched her, it may be possible that I can convince Saddler that she was in my thrall," Judith explained.

Jeniah pondered this for several seconds and then shook her head. "It would be preferable to abandon this moment and find another point of confluence."

Judith shook her head in a vigorous contradiction. "You have searched for centuries and never found a point of confluence as thin as this one. It would be folly to abandon this one, when your victory is within grasping distance. All of the attention could be diverted to me, and Saddler, in his desperation to reclaim his lost life, will readily accept that you were beguiled."

Jeniah regarded Judith closely, clearly ambivalent and suspicious of her devious familiar. "Why would you do this so willingly...what recompense would you expect?"

By tremendous force of will, Judith managed to repress a spate of triumphant laughter. "I would have you release me from my vow of fealty. When the ritual is enacted, I would stand at your right hand. I would also require that you would teach me the magic arts that you've concealed from me...by giving me unfettered access to your mind."

Jeniah shook her head in emphatic negation, her expression twisting into a mask of utter contempt. "Why would I ever agree to pay such an exorbitant cost?"

"Because I have the strength of conviction to do what your nature precludes you from achieving," Judith insisted. "I am unencumbered by sentiment or compassion...emotions that have robbed you of your strength of purpose. I can clear a path that will finally allow you to shrug off the millstone of obligation that you have carried for twenty-three centuries. Isn't that what you truly crave above all things, Jeniah...to discharge this cruel duty to fate and be free?"

Jeniah's inured expression softened perceptibly at the mention of freedom and a wistful light flickered in her green eyes. The effect lent a melancholy aspect to Veronica's formidable beauty and Judith knew that she'd touched upon a long-harbored ache that her mistress struggled incessantly to master. "You truly believe that Saddler can be fooled by these theatrics?"

"Without reservation," Judith replied unequivocally.

In a voice nuanced by morose reluctance, Jeniah conceded, "Very well...I release you from your oath."

"And you will allow me to guide you?" Judith persisted, pressing her advantage with a vengeance.

"Yes," Jeniah murmured and that single utterance was the most extravagant concession she'd ever made over the course of her long life.

"Why so morose?" Judith inquired, scarcely able to contain her own euphoria. With one simple misplaced boot print, Jeniah was hers. In her desperation to be free of her terrible burden, Jeniah had unwittingly been forced into surrendering her volition. "You and I are kindred spirits, Jeniah."

"Never!" Jeniah spat balefully. "My actions are motivated by the desire to bring a compassionate end to the collective suffering of a species...one that cannot bear the burden of sentience." She waved a hand at Judith in an all encompassing gesture of contempt. "You are the very personification of everything that is vile and ugly in the human spirit. You burn as an indictment of humanity's existence. You are the very blight that I was unleashed to eradicate."

"And yet, here we are climbing into bed together to help realize your noble endeavor," Judith observed sardonically. "Still, cling to your delusions if it comforts you...just as long as you honor our agreement."

Jeniah scowled, but remained silent. Judith stepped closed and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. "Remember what you did to me in Seattle...I'm about to reciprocate, only with that repository of knowledge you call a mind." She pressed a finger to her lips as a diabolical thought took shape that gave her a delicious shiver. "I think I would like you on your knees when I rape your memories."

Jeniah's eyes widened in mortified astonishment. "You would dare try to humiliate me?"

"I would," Judith confirmed with an ebullient grin and pointed to the floor in front of her. Jeniah glared a Ranzman, but then slowly sank to her knees, cursing herself for being manipulated by such a conniving and ruthless monster. Seeing Jeniah surrender to abjection before her affected Judith more intensely than any orgasm ever could and she managed to stay upright only by the most determined exertion of will. Between clenched jaws, she rasped," Now open your mind to me and bring down the walls...all of them."

Obediently, Jeniah complied and threw open the floodgates to the vast reservoir of esoteric knowledge, unleashing a deluge of accrued wisdom that easily would have incinerated Judith in her original incarnation. Beneath the unfathomable flow of primal energy, both women's bodies went rigid.

Hundreds of miles to the south, Veronica Ashcott-Saddler thrashed and twisted in the darkness of her bedroom, her perspiration-soaked legs and arms beating a spastic cacophony on the mattress.

In the confines of the holding area, both women became engulfed in a cocoon of refulgent golden light. Panic began to bloom in Judith's thoroughly beleaguered mind as it stretched to accommodate all of the hidden wisdoms that Jeniah had originally concealed. She bit back on the scream that gathered at the back of her throat and completely surrendered herself to the flow. When at last, it mercifully subsided and then stopped, Judith found herself lying on the floor, curled protectively into a tight ball beneath her cot.

She opened her eyes to see Jeniah's spectral projection, face down and unmoving, on the cold tile floor. Judith rose on unsteady legs and stumbled over to the prostrate figure. The newly absorbed knowledge battered at the insides of Judith's skull like the aftershocks of a powerful earth quake. As the newly emancipated familiar gazed down on the prone figure of her former mistress, gone was the sly disdain with which she's previously regarded Jeniah. In its place was an expression of dumbfounded awe.

"You...you have no idea what you are, do you?" Judith inquired of the unmoving specter. Jeniah remained oblivious to her true nature, but Judith beheld it with unfettered clarity and understood just how foolish her provocation of this creature had been.

Jeniah...once Amathera of Pella...had been tasked, by the universal creator, to deliver judgment on its greatest creation. As she strove diligently to do his bidding through the long centuries, Jeniah had become a deity in her own right, possessed of the puissance to level mountains...and more astounding still, to raise them up if she saw fit.

Not only had Jeniah absorbed twenty-three centuries of esoteric knowledge, it had been imbued into the very fabric of her being. In her obsessive devotion to her purpose, Jeniah had remained oblivious to this radical transformation...a process that had culminated in the creation of a veritable goddess.

"And I made her kneel at my feet," Judith whispered, staggered by the magnitude of her temerity. True, Judith now also possessed this vast repository of knowledge, but her mortal limitations meant that she could wield only a fraction of its power. Hesitantly, she knelt beside Jeniah and extended her trembling right hand. "Jeniah...it's done."

The specter stirred, peering ashen-faced at the devious creature by which it had been so skillfully manipulated. To Jeniah's surprise, Judith's expected vulgar expression of gloating triumph was conspicuously absent. Bitterly, she demanded, "I have imparted all that I withheld...are you satisfied? Will you now honor our agreement?"

"I will," Judith remarked, her tone perplexingly subdued and grave in the wake of her victory.

"Then what would you have me do?" Jeniah inquired, loathing the meek and deferential tone in her voice. Quickly and concisely, Judith elaborated on her bold scheme. Jeniah listened silently and despite the bitter taste of humiliation in her mouth, she was forced to acknowledge the insidious genius of Judith's proposed course of action.

"I will settle another of the blood debts tomorrow," Judith said in a strangely pensive voice and when she met Jeniah's puzzled gaze, the former familiar added, "You think I'm a monster...and perhaps I am, but in the world to come in the wake of your ritual...I would wish that there is no hostility between us."

Jeniah's expression remained inscrutable and finally, she offered Judith a slight nod as her projection folded back into itself. Inhaling deeply, Judith stumbled back to her cot and collapsed to the plastic pad. Despite having just acquired a formidable arsenal of weapons, Judith felt hollow and inexplicably diminished by her latest encounter with Jeniah.

Judith closed her eyes and deliberately slowed her respiration, while laboring to bring her storming emotions under some semblance of control. She could sense a thousand new avenues of arcane wisdom whispering seductively...an invitation to delve into the darkness and become intoxicated on the power to be had there. She resisted these clamorous siren's calls, instead focusing on the intricate web of deception she was about to weave.

Stepping up to the bars of her cell, Judith Ranzman threw back and began to bellow.

2

Veronica stumbled into the sprawling living room of the Ashcott's Malibu beach home, knocking over an antique praline table as she shambled forward.

Arthur Ashcott was sitting with his two grand children, while Mrs. Quilling sat dutifully near by, looking excruciatingly uncomfortable in the midst of such opulence. Every head turned as the table crashed to the tiles, reducing its ornate lamp to thousands of glass shards that spread across the floor in a fan.

Arthur lurched to his feet, as Danny began to cry, and his gaze shifted from the detritus of the lamp to his daughter and his eyes widened in shock and concern. Veronica swayed unsteadily on her feet, like a sapling in a gusting wind. Her long red hair was a disheveled tangle that hung limply in her slack face. She had been napping and wore a thin tank top and pajama bottoms that were now soaked through with perspiration.

As worrisome as this was, it was Veronica's normally expressive green eyes that turned Arthur Ashcott's blood to ice. The unfocused, vacuous expression called to mind images of addicts, whose mind had been vaporized by a steady diet of poison.

"Veronica!" he cried, his voice fraught with panic. As he began to move toward his daughter, her knees unhinged and she tumbled sideways, falling over a Corinthian leather sofa and landing in a twitching sprawl.

The Ashcott house descended into pandemonium.

3

"Sheriff Huxley, is there any further word on my brother?" Cameron inquired, and despite his soft tone, his apprehension was evident.

Albert grimaced, but nonetheless looked Cameron directly in the eyes. Huxley had always subscribed to the idea that honesty was preferable to sugar coating and so he said, "Nothing conclusive, but I won't tell you it looks promising, Cameron. Judith called your brother some time before he disappeared. If what agent Hood believes is true, it's likely that Stuart went to meet Judith."

Huxley allowed the progression of this thought to hang...unspoken. Cameron shook his head in dismay. "Are they going to search her home?"

"Yes," Huxley confirmed, but added the qualifier, "I would imagine that agent Hood will want to cross her T's and dot her I's on this warrant. Judith is rich enough to insure that her bite has teeth and she's admitted to nothing. Hood is risking everything on what could turn out to be a series of coincidences and a set of boot prints."

Cameron ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and frowned, frustration warring with incredulity. "Jesus, Albert...Judith Ranzman? I grew up with Judith...hung around her a bit, before enlisting. She was intense and oddly inaccessible, but this?"

Huxley peered directly into Cameron's mild blue eyes. "I know what you mean son, but sitting in her house and seeing that strange light burning in her eyes...I could feel my skin crawl. The place _felt_ evil, though normally, I'd say that kind of talk was just so much horseshit."

Cameron nodded glumly and something occurred to him. "Do you think Saddler knows what's happened...that there's been an arrest?"

Huxley's eyes widened. In his preoccupation with all that occurred, Albert had forgotten about Saddler. He flashed a brief glance at his watch and saw that it was ten minutes to seven. Shift change was mere minutes away, but it was unlikely that Hood would allow him to slip away, given all that had transpired. An idea occurred to him then and he asked, "Cameron, would you mind giving him a call and letting him know. If Judith really does turn out to be the culprit, Saddler's gonna be one happy man."

Cameron agreed to convey the news, though he remained privately skeptical. Something was seriously awry with this entire situation...a disparity that was maddeningly close to resolving itself in his jumbled thoughts. Needing time to think, Cameron was suddenly anxious to be back in his dreary house, with the curtains drawn and his own company. If Judith did, indeed, prove to be the perpetrator of these horrors, and if Stuart had fallen victim to her evil, Cameron was self-aware enough to realize that his life would be irreversibly altered.

It was then that a keening howl arose from somewhere in the bowels of the building.

4

Huxley, Art Silver and Tim Holland were gathered in the narrow hallway outside of Judith Ranzman's cell, along with three of Tamara Hood's federal agents. Judith stood at the rear of her cell with her hands folded loosely before her and her head bowed. Her lustrous black hair completely obscured her face.

She had not uttered a word since first demanding that she be allowed to speak with agent Hood. As Huxley surveyed the faces of the other five police officers, he noticed that they all wore identical expressions of extreme disquiet. Despite her diminutive stature, the woman in the cell seemed to radiate malevolence in palpable waves.

Finally, Tamara Hood entered the holding area, frowning at the throng of officers. "I would think that you boys have better ways to gainfully occupy your time."

The three federal agents nodded sheepishly and headed to the stairs. Albert gestured for his two deputies to follow him, but agent Hood asked for him to remain. When the door closed, Tamara stepped to the bars and growled, "You asked to see me...I'm here...now speak."

Judith slowly raised her head and offered Hood a radiant grin. "No need to be surly, Tamara? I've decided to cooperate...to provide information that will quickly resolve your considerable problems here in Quinsett. Of course, I have one condition...one strictly non-negotiable condition."

Tamara did not waste the requisite breath to point out that Judith was hardly in a position to make demands. Instead, she grumbled impatiently, "Let's hear it."

Judith stepped closer, her intense gaze locked squarely on Hood's battered face. "I want to speak to Raymond Saddler...alone."

Chapter Five

1

"Did you have any luck with your research?" Maria inquired as Saddler slid into the booth and handed her a Corona.

"Not really...I found a picture of something called a Stryge," Saddler reported, "but there was scant little information beyond a description of the creature and some speculation about its lore origins."

"And you think this is what you saw at the end of Ringgold Lane?" Maria pressed, her limpid eyes shining intently. They were seated in the back booth of the Crooked Cue, a roadhouse on the west edge of town. It was just after seven o'clock and there were perhaps a dozen other occupants, most of whom were huddled around the bar or playing pool near the front of the tavern. Maria had suggested this place and upon first entering, Saddler suspected that her selection had everything to do with the subdued lighting. Before leaving the hospital, Doctor Crandall had made Saddler wait in the reception area, while he examined Maria's facial cuts and applied thin strip bandages to protect the healing wounds. He had not offered to let Maria see her face, nor had she asked to do so."

Saddler forced his thoughts away from what might await her, when she finally mustered the courage to look upon her own damaged visage. He took a long draught of his beer and replied, "There's certainly a strong resemblance. One thing that did stand out was how these creatures feasted on entrails...which would account for the condition of Lynda Verin and Ethan Rannout's corpses."

Maria's brow furrowed in revulsion, recalling the inhuman golden eyes that had watched her from the darkness of her front hall. This was followed by the graphic memory of Verin's eviscerated corpse and Maria shivered violently. "I think I'm very lucky to be alive, Ray. The attacker could easily have killed me or let that thing tear me to bloody ribbons. Was there anything on how these Stryges can be killed?"

"Nope," Saddler disclosed and took another swallow of his beer. "The material at the library was not exactly extensive. I suspect that the town librarian frowns on mythology and the occult."

Maria nodded grimly and the pair fell into a gloomy silence, each grappling with the incredible idea that these monstrosities of myth might actually be stalking the town.

Finally, Maria shook her head and remarked softly, "I can't imagine what it must be like to be in your situation, Ray. To lose the woman you love and to see your children threatened...it's a nightmare that's almost inconceivable. That's why I want to thank you again for letting me stay with you. That you could spare even a thought for anyone else's plight...given the circumstances...it speaks eloquently about the kind of man you are."

Saddler averted his eyes, unable to meet her penetrating gaze. "Maria, the prospect of being alone to dwell on what is likely to happen in the next few days...let's just say that I'm pretty grateful for the company."

Maria settled back into her seat and suddenly disclosed, "I haven't told my family what's happened yet...to me, I mean."

Saddler's eyes widened at this admission and Maria nodded, unconsciously tracing the bandage on her right cheek. "I know I should, but I simply can't bring myself to do it...not until I've come to terms with what's happened. My father would want me to quit and come back home at once...as I've said, he always disapproved of my decision to come here...not to mention, the path I've chosen for myself. I have two older sisters, both of whom are lawyers and happily married. I'm neither, and though they would rather die than admit it, I'm sure they consider me the black sheep of the family...the disappointment."

"I can't imagine anyone who would consider you a disappointment," Saddler assured her.

"Thank you," Maria said simply, though she wore a bitter smile that offered Saddler a poignant insight into the nature of her relationship with her family. I'm twenty-eight years old and I've never been in a serious relationship and to the casual observer, a good many of my life decisions wouldn't seem particularly well thought out. After what happened Saturday, I feel very fragile and insecure. I just couldn't handle my father's disapproving glances."

"That's perfectly understandable, Maria," Saddler remarked. "After what's happened to you, you're entitled to deal with things on your own terms and in your own time."

"You do have a habit of saying all the right things, Saddler," Maria commented and favored Saddler with one of her heartbreakingly beautiful smiles. That smile faded and her expression became contemplative. "I'm going to say something and though it might come out sounding vain, I really don't mean it that way. I know I'm a beautiful woman...my mother is beautiful and so are my two sisters. I've grown up surrounded by beauty. I'm cognizant of the way men...and yes, some women as well...stare at me. Of course, it's complimentary, in a manner of speaking. If I was a different kind of woman, it would be an advantage that I could exploit. There were other times when it struck me that being beautiful was a nuisance...that the way in which I was perceived began and ended there. I'm sure you're thinking... _poor Maria, cry me a river."_

Saddler smiled and held his index finger and thumb a fraction of an inch apart. "Maybe just a little."

Maria grinned slightly. "The point I'm trying to make is that I was always aware of being beautiful, but I never wanted that to be the primary feature of my identity."

Maria fixed him with an unblinking stare of total candor that Saddler found unnerving. "When that monster cut me...marred my face...only then did it occur to me just how important it was to me. Despite my declaration to the contrary, it really did matter to me that I'm beautiful...like a gift I've taken for granted and even scorned at times. Now, even without knowing how bad it really is, I feel that I've been diminished somehow. I can only imagine how shallow and selfish that must sound, compared to what you've endured, but I can't help feeling that way."

She lapsed into a distracted silence and Saddler could see that she was struggling mightily to hold back her tears. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "Who has the right to judge someone else's pain...to decide whether or not it's worthy? I certainly don't."

Maria laughed and quipped, "Maybe you can empathize...that handsome face of yours has certainly looked better."

Saddler joined her laughter and they fell into a companionable silence, recognizing how easy and natural it was to be in this amazing creature's company. Maria might have been experiencing the same feelings as well, because her tone grew serious as she asked, "Ray, what is this thing between you and I?"

Saddler shook his head slowly, "I...I don't know...if I'm being perfectly honest. I've lost the only woman I've ever truly loved...our children are in danger...and the only job I've ever had is permanently gone. It's the last thing I should be thinking about, but the prospect of surviving this together...of being with you when it's over...it's all that stops me from giving in to total despair."

She nodded thoughtfully as if she could commiserate totally with his confusion.

"We've only know each other for a week," she allowed.

"Not to mention that I'm fourteen years older...and unemployed with two children," he pointed out with a grin, trying to defuse the tension of the moment with self-deprecating humor.

"That doesn't matter to me...the being older, I mean," she said resolutely. "The kind of week we've endured together...it would take years to divine a person's nature under normal circumstances. I'm attracted to you...more than I've ever been to anyone, but I'm also frightened."

Saddler merely nodded as Maria looked to him for a reaction. His own feeling mirrored hers exactly. She averted her gaze to her folded hands and continued, "I'm frightened because I don't know if anything healthy can grow and endure, when its seed has been planted in this kind of bitter soil."

Saddler grimaced, recalling that he had been visited by similar misgivings. "Maria, its okay...nothing has to be decided now. Until this is over and we emerge on the other side of this nightmare, what would be the point?"

Maria's glance shifted quickly to Saddler and her expression became rueful. "On the face of it, what you're saying seems to make sense...but it really doesn't. We need to cling to the prospect that there will be something to look forward to...a small measure of compensation for the loss and heartache. Maybe that's what this _thing_ between us comes down to...a beacon of hope to sustain us."

She squeezed his hand, while slowly caressing his palm with her thumbs. "More than anything, I want you to take me home and make love to me, slowly and gently...to hold each other all night. As desperately as I want that, the prudent, cautious part of my nature is insisting that I would risk jeopardizing something potentially precious if I succumb to this urge now. I believe that this...you and I...could evolve into something precious, but there are so many complications that we have to take this very slow."

For several moments, Saddler simply couldn't speak. Her eloquent, candid expression of harbored desire and passion had set his heart racing and his blood rushing in his veins. When he could finally trust himself to speak, he said, "Agreed, slow it is. One thing I can do is take you home and make you dinner while you settle in."

She smiled broadly and nodded, "That would be wonderful and a bath would be divine."

The thought of Maria Cordova soaking in his bath did little to douse the fire she'd ignited. They finished their beers and made their way out into the warm Quinsett evening. The door had no sooner closed behind the pair, than a news flash interrupted local programming. On the television set, above the bar, a local newscaster's somber countenance filled the screen and announced that an arrest had been made in the series or murders that had plagued Quinsett in the last week.

As the screen segued to a live location shot of the Quinsett Police Building, Federal agent Hansen informed an agitated throng that an arrest had, indeed, been made. A disbelieving silence descended on the road house patrons when Hansen identified Judith Ranzman as the detainee.

The stunned silence persisted for several moments and then a series of animated conversations broke out all through the tavern.

2

When Saddler turned into the drive on Ringgold Lane, he was surprised to find a Quinsett Deputy Cruiser parked in his side yard. He and Maria exchanged puzzled glances and both stepped out of the vehicle to find Kort Ranlin standing on Saddler's veranda. Kort's eyes widened when he saw Maria exit the vehicle and widened even further when he saw the stark x-shaped bandages that covered her face.

"Hello Kort," Saddler began evenly, trying to subjugate his welling anxiety. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Good evening, Sheriff," Kort replied and then faltered, cursing his blunder. "Albert sent me over to fetch you. He wants you to come back to the station." He considered this and then amended, "Actually, agent Hood made the request and I don't think declining is an option."

Saddler exchanged tight glances with a puzzled Maria and then inquired sharply, "I trust there's a damn good reason for this?"

Kort blinked and then his blue eyes gaped in dawning comprehension. "You haven't heard? It's all over town, so I just assumed you knew. Agent Hood and Albert arrested Judith Ranzman this afternoon for the murder of Raymond Dwyer...to begin with."

Shaking his head, Saddler merely stared at Kort with an expression of dumbfound wonder. Beside him, Maria Cordova's expression darkened perceptibly as the implication of Ranlin's disclosure hammered home. "You're telling us that Judith is responsible for...all of this?"

He shifted his gaze to Maria and remarked, "It could be. She's agreed to talk...to tell Hood everything." After a pregnant pause, Kort returned his attention to Saddler and added, "But only if she is allowed to speak to you first. Hood has agreed."

Saddler found his voice, though he seemed completely flummoxed. "All right...I'll do it. Maria, do you want to stay here?"

"Not a chance," Maria growled, her tone feral. "If this proves to be legitimate, Judith Ranzman is the bitch who did this to me. I want to be there when she confesses."

Saddler nodded urgently and turned back to Kort. "All right, we'll follow you back to the station."

Maria Cordova climbed into the vehicle and stole a furtive glance at a thoroughly distracted Saddler. In his blue eyes, she gleaned something that caused her own heart to plummet...cautious optimism.

"As incredible as it might seem, Judith could be the accomplice we believed Jeniah's had all along," Maria ventured, carefully trying to delve into ground she feared would hold a devastating truth.

"Maybe...we'll see soon enough," he replied distantly and in that noncommittal response, Maria could feel her fragile illusions crumble into dust. Raymond Saddler, in this unexpected turn of events, had resurrected the hope that Veronica...his Veronica...could yet be saved.

Castigating herself as a fool, she averted her gaze to the side window and struggled mightily not to weep.

3

The scene at the police station was, indeed, pandemonium. The horde of media that crowded the building was larger and more vocal than ever. Their numbers had been bolstered by perhaps a hundred townspeople who had come in hopes of learning more, or perhaps to catch a glimpse of Quinsett's resident monster.

Art Silver stood before the doors into the building, staring out over the heads of the crowd with an inscrutable expression on his pleasant face. The atmosphere inside the station house was incredibly tense and electric with a palpable air of anticipation.

Saddler and Maria followed deputy Ranlin through the rear entrance and out into the bullpen area. When Tamara caught her first glimpse of Saddler, she marched over to meet him and declared without preamble, "I'm going to allow this against my better judgment, but if she divulges anything even remotely incriminating, I expect to hear it Saddler."

"You will," Saddler replied shortly, "but I have no idea what this could possibly be about because I've never spoken to this woman."

Tamara noticed that Maria was glaring at her, those lovely dark eyes conveying an unspoken challenge. Sourly, Hood snapped, "If you're not on duty, then you have no reason to be here, Deputy Cordova."

Saddler imposed himself between the two women and faced Hood, his face set in an implacable expression. "For that matter, neither do I...if she goes, I go with her."

Tamara's eyes widened slightly and she raised her hands. "All right. She's waiting for you in the lunch room. She's cuffed, but I would suggest that you remain alert. This woman is completely deranged and the thin veneer of civility has worn off."

Saddler nodded and then gave Maria a reassuring grin. Her returned smile was wan and her limpid dark eyes appeared to have lost their former luster. Saddler's brow furrowed and he arched an eyebrow, but she averted her gaze and moved off to take a seat at her desk. Frowning, he started down the short hall, feeling his heart beat begin to accelerate in his chest.

An ashen-faced Huxley was standing guard outside the lunchroom door, along with one of Tamara's agents. As Huxley opened the door to admit Saddler, he whispered, "Be careful Ray...this bitch is crazy."

"I heard that, Albert," came an amused voice from within the room. To Saddler's surprise, Huxley actually flinched and a shadow of genuine fear rippled across his face.

Then the door closed behind Saddler and he found himself alone with madness.

4

The door closed behind Saddler with a disconcerting implication of finality. Saddler glanced back and frowned. He turned to Judith Ranzman, who was seated at the far end of one of the tables with her cuffed hands resting lightly before her.

On first glance, Saddler was struck by her substantial beauty. She gazed back unblinkingly as a slight smile played at the corners of her generous mouth. There was a decidedly menacing aspect to that ghost of a smile...a grin that was both knowing and disdainful.

Despite the cool air that circulated through the room, Saddler could feel beads of perspiration forming on the nape of his neck. In his years with LAPD homicide, he had interrogated many menacing suspects...men and women who killed without the slightest hint of remorse. Some were cold, dispassionate killers, who murdered for gain, while others were locked in the thrall of psychosis, brutally taking lives in answer to some exigent compulsion.

In all those years, no one had ever exuded the air of malevolence that now radiated from the diminutive beauty seated on the other side of the room. Trying to conceal his disquiet, Saddler took the seat at the opposite end of the table. "You've asked to speak to me and I've come, though I can't possibly imagine what you and I would have to discuss."

Judith only smiled and raised her arms, her gaze intensifying as she considered the cuffs binding her wrists.

"These really are annoying," she remarked and the manacles unlocked and fell to the Formica table top with a clatter. Saddler uttered a curse and he started to rise, but Judith raised her right hand and pressed her left index finger to her lips in a demand for silence. "Not a sound, Saddler."

There was a barely audible click from somewhere behind Saddler and he jerked his gaze back to the door to find that the lock had engaged of its own accord.

"Sit...down!" Judith commanded forcefully and Saddler complied. He turned back to find Ranzman sitting cross-legged, atop the table, a predacious grin lighting her face. "Raymond, if you cry out, I'll rip your throat out while Huxley fumbles for the key to the door. Do you believe me?"

Ray merely nodded, feeling very much like a man who awakens to find himself in a cage with a tiger. "How...how did you do that?"

"Why, I'm magical, of course...or is it maniacal?" She shook her head in feigned confusion and then chuckled, "I guess a bit of both. I engaged in this bit of theatrics to demonstrate the precarious nature of your present situation...though I really have no intention of harming you. Judging by your face, I would say that you've suffered all the abuse you can handle for one day. I suppose it's no coincidence that Tamara Hood's face is in the same condition." Judith leaned forward and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You really should avoid her, Raymond. She's one crazy bitch."

She threw back her head and laughed indulgently, while Saddler frowned. "What is it you want with me?"

With startling swiftness, Judith scrabbled toward Saddler like a four-legged spider. Sitting on the edge of the table, she planted the soles of her bare feet on the arms of Saddler's chair and leaned forward. "I want to do something nice for you, Raymond...I want to give you your wife back."

Saddler swore and attempted to rise, but abruptly found himself caught in the vice of Judith's thighs. The index finger and thumb of her left hand were pressed into the corners of his right eye. When she spoke, all mock levity was gone from her voice. "Sit down and shut the fuck up!"

Ray slowly raised his hands to signify that he would comply and the constricting pressure on his skull abated. She pushed Saddler back into his chair with her right foot and kept it planted on his chest. After a moment, that mercurial grin returned. "I'm going to tell you a short tale and when I'm done, I'm going to return to my seat and clamp those cuffs back on my wrist. You are going to walk out the door and go back to you old life. You may have noticed that your precious Veronica began to exhibit some rather erratic behavior last week...am I correct?"

Saddler nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Judith grinned her grin of all-consuming madness and carried on. "She came to see me about the house, claiming that she had _concerns_. I must say that I didn't particularly care for you wife at first. It wouldn't be unfair to say that I loathed her. That cultured beauty and that subtle sense of superiority...it made me sick. As you well know, I've been rather busy this last week. On impulse, I decided that it might be amusing to employ your beautiful wife as a pawn...a patsy should I make a misstep."

"When...when did she come to see you?" Saddler heard himself ask, hating the eager optimism in his voice, but powerless to suppress it.

"Early Tuesday afternoon," Judith rasped, with a hint of impatience. There was something fundamentally wrong with this disclosure, but Saddler's beleaguered mind failed to grasp the disparity. "It's a surprisingly easy matter to fracture someone's mind, Saddler...the first thing I made her do was seduce and fuck poor, pathetic Cameron Crane. What dark irony...the town's mentally unbalanced misfit banging the rich oh-so-proper heiress...simply delicious."

Saddler tried, but failed to stifle a groan. He stiffened as Judith leaned forward and gently caressed his bruised cheek. "I know that was a rather petulant thing to do, but I simply couldn't resist. Implanting the idea in poor, beguiled Veronica's mind that she'd been possessed by the spirit of the infamous Jeniah Lightcrusher...well even you have to admit that was a stroke of inspired genius. Oh, how precious Veronica embraced the role with a zeal that was beautiful to behold."

Dreading the answer, Saddler inquired softly, "Did she...did she do any of those things...the murders?"

Judith threw back her head and laughed heartily. "Veronica soil her hands with blood? Of course not. I relish that part of the game far too much to ever share that part of the experience...slaughter with a smile. I certainly sowed the seeds though. I can only imagine the conflicted anguish you must have endured...the note in Scallari's hotel room and the license number in Feldman's patrol book."

"You're saying that she's done nothing wrong?" Saddler whispered, both afraid to believe it and desperate for it to be true.

"Other than debasing herself by fucking the town idiot...and even that, she didn't do of her own volition," Judith confirmed, relishing the spasm of anguish this barb provoked.

A shadow passed over Saddler's smooth brow and he demanded suspiciously, "Why tell me any of this?"

"That is the salient question," Ranzman observed mockingly, as she slid from the table and onto his lap, while draping her arms over his shoulder. "It certainly isn't for your personal benefit. Let's just say that I've become quite enamored with your exquisite wife. I beguiled her and wouldn't you know it, she turned the trick right back on me."

Saddler shook his head in earnest confusion and Judith offered him a pitying smile. "Her impromptu business trip to Seattle last Friday night was pure fabrication, as I'm sure you already know. There is a place in the city that caters to my rather eclectic tastes called _Subtle Distinctions_. Dear Veronica and I spent an intensely passionate night there, Raymond. Actually, she spent most of the night with her face buried deep between my thighs...among other places. Once she warmed to it, our dear Veronica demonstrated a tremendous propensity for debauchery."

Judith shifted her hips teasingly and leaned back with a contrived expression of shock on her face. "I believe you just stirred? Do you find the thought of your wife pleasing me arousing, Saddler?"

As she burst into laughter, Saddler hung his head and began to weep, tears of relief intermingling with tears of profound sorrow that his wife had been debased by this monster.

Judith raised his chin and studied his face with an expression of genuine perplexity. "Why are you crying? I'm returning your wife to you...slightly used, but none the worse for wear."

"You miserable bitch!" Saddler spat, knowing that it was foolish to antagonize this creature, but powerless to restrain himself.

Instead of anger, Judith's reaction was one of amused acceptance. "Guilty as charged, Saddler, but be that as it may, I'm returning your wife to you. She will be profoundly traumatized by the experience of being under my thumb. You will comfort her. I would also compel you to be worthy of her, but given that you're a flawed, inconsequential little man that would hardly be possible. Still, I expect that you will do everything in your power to comfort her and insulate her from your personal failure in Quinsett."

Judith lithely dismounted Saddler and bestowing a tender kiss on his cheek, returned to her original seat. A thoroughly bewildered Saddler watched the poetic undulation of her tight hips as she crossed the room. She slid into her chair and clamped the cuffs on her wrist in one fluid motion. "We're done here, Saddler. Remember, it would be a grave mistake to repay this egalitarian gesture by revealing that there's more to me than a simple mad woman."

"Tamara will want to know what passed between us," Saddler stammered and pushed himself heavily to his feet.

"Then I strongly suggest that you channel your creative side, Saddler," Judith warned darkly. "I'm done in Quinsett and it really would be best if you and I never set eyes on each other again."

Saddler, unable to conjure a suitable response, merely nodded and stumbled to the door like shell shocked man emerging from a bunker after a prolonged artillery bombardment. As he reached for the handle, Judith spoke again. "Ah yes, one other item Saddler...your dalliance with the Hispanic whore ends now. I've marked her as my property and you'll not sully her with your mediocrity."

When the full implications of her threat resolved itself in his frazzled thoughts, Saddler's eyes widened and his face constricted in fury. "You're the one who attacked her!"

He took several steps back into the room, but stopped abruptly, when Judith exposed black eyes and glittering pewter teeth. "Think twice, little man...every drop of blood I spill from this point forth will be on your conscience."

Saddler glared at Ranzman. "Judith, they're going to bury you so deep in the prison system for the things you've done, that you'll never see the light of day again. You're hardly in a position to make threats."

Judith uttered a spate of laughter around a broad smile of genuine amusement. The laugher eventually subsided, giving way to a malevolent smile. "Given the small glimpse into my true nature I've given you, do you really believe I have any intention of allowing that to happen, Saddler? Tell Tamara that I'm ready to hold up my end of the bargain."

Judith's chin settled to her chest and she closed her eyes, dismissing Saddler from her thoughts. Watching her, Raymond Saddler drew a quavering breath and fled the room.

5

Tamara was waiting impatiently in the bull pen area as Saddler and Huxley emerged from the back hall. She required only one glance at the pallid Saddler to discern that his equilibrium had been effectively shattered by whatever had passed between him and mad Judith.

Saddler shifted his haunted regard to meet hers, and intoned flatly. "She says that she's ready to talk to you now."

"What did she want?" Tamara demanded without ceremony.

An expression of acute misery rippled across Saddler's bruised face, but when he spoke, his voice toneless. "She said nothing that is in any way relevant to this investigation."

"Let me be the judge of that, Saddler," Hood growled irritably.

Saddler regarded Hood in silence, while the tension in the room gathered like a thickening fog. Finally, he disclosed flatly, "She told me that she'd been having an affair with my wife. Then she went on to describe the kind of things she made Veronica do to her and how much my wife enjoyed them. If you're going to ask me to rationalize why she would do this, then I suggest you go ask her your fucking self."

Tamara grimaced and then Saddler's inscrutable gaze swept the room to find that every face wore an identical expression of discomfort. Without further word, Saddler walked slowly to the door and left the Quinsett Police Station for what he thought would be the final time.

Seconds later, Maria Cordova bolted for the door in pursuit of the man she'd come to love.

The silence persisted for several moments after the pair had made their dramatic exits and then Tamara grumbled, "All right...get her into the interview room...and get a fresh pot of coffee going. This is going to be a long night."

Chapter Five

1

Maria found Saddler standing beside her car, staring up into the gathering gloom. His battered visage was partially concealed by shadow, but still Maria could see that something of great consequence had passed between Saddler and Judith. He turned to her, his face an indecipherable mask. "Could you drive me home, Maria...I need a moment to think...to digest what that monster told me. When we get back to the house, I'll tell you everything."

Maria responded by way of a tacit nod. As the pair drove across town, a dismal silence descended on the car. Maria stole occasional glances at Saddler, who appeared to stare vacantly through the passenger window. Watching him and sensing the emotional distance to which he'd retreated, since emerging from his strange meeting with Ranzman, a despondent Cordova could feel their burgeoning spark fade. She felt as thought they were two people who suddenly found themselves on the opposite sides of a yawning chasm...one so vast that it could not be bridged.

Unable to endure the cacophonous sound of her own troubled thoughts, she seized on the first thing that came to mind. "Is Quinsett really safe again...is it really over?"

Saddler slowly turned his attention to Maria and in a strange, distracted voice, replied, "I think perhaps it is."

He then went back to his study of the empty streets, which were still under municipal curfew.

When she finally pulled her car into his driveway, the palpable tension in the vehicle was threatening to suffocate her. She turned toward him and in a voice that was half commanding and half imploring, asked, "Ray, what did that woman say to you?"

For a protracted time, he merely stared at her with his battered face painted by shadows of raw misery. Slowly, haltingly, he began to describe what had passed between the pair.

"And you believe her...simply take her at her word, as if she's an unimpeachable source?" Maria flared in a sharp tone that was at once angry and incredulous.

"I do, Maria," he replied quietly and averted his gaze to his shaking hands. "What other choice do I have?"

There could be no mistaking the implicit meaning of that simple interrogative. Judith had offered Raymond Saddler an unexpected opportunity to reclaim his old life...a clear and unencumbered path back to his erudite princess, with her wealth and flawless beauty. How could she possibly hope to compete? A small part of her mind understood how petulant and grossly unfair this sentiment was, but feeling discarded and ineffably cheapened, Maria easily ignored the suggestion.

"What a fool I've been," she muttered with a self-deprecating laugh.

Sensing her anguish, Saddler reached for her shoulder, but she savagely batted his hand away and thrust her right index finger in his face. "Don't! I have no one to blame for putting myself in this position. You have every right to go back to your wife and family...but don't make it worse by trying to console me."

"Maria, come inside and let's talk...you can stay here for the night," Saddler offered pleadingly, even as he recalled Judith's final grave admonition.

Maria shook her head vehemently. "Let's not complicate this any further. Besides, the monster that did this to me is in custody, so I've nothing to be afraid of. Goodbye Ray. I really do hope that everything works out for you and your family."

Maria turned her face straight ahead and stared into the darkness for several moments. Saddler watched her intently, and when it became evident that nothing productive would be gained by lingering, Saddler simple said, "Goodbye Maria."

He stood on his veranda and watched as she carefully backed her car out onto Ringgold Lane, never once sparing him a glance.

Saddler spent several moments staring up at the star-spattered firmament...despising himself for the one emotion that thoughts of Maria's angry departure roused...relief.

2

Fifteen minutes later, Maria stood on the stoop of her side split, staring bleakly at the police tape that stretched across the door. Shame and humiliation had given way to panic and fear as Maria had mounted the steps.

"Well, at least you didn't sleep with him," she grumbled and offered a fervent prayer of thanks that she hadn't compounded her stupidity. Her heart was thundering in her chest and her breath came in short, frenetic gasps as she regarded the door. Her terror was foolish, of course...from a strictly pragmatic perspective. Judith had confessed to the assault and in retrospect, the thing she'd seen in the hallway that night was likely a fear-induced hallucination. It was over...except for the resonating memory of that night's ordeal.

"I won't be shackled by trauma," Maria growled and tore the police tape down and crumpled it into a ball. Resolutely, she unlocked the door and marched into the house, stalking from room to room, turning on lights as she went.

She hesitated in front of her bedroom door as those nagging misgivings attempted to creep back into her thoughts. She summoned the recollection of the conversation she and Saddler had shared, in the back booth of the road house only hours before. Anger and self-contempt surmounted her reluctance and Maria threw the bedroom door open with a snarl. She groped for the switch, a hiss escaping her lips as the sudden burst of illumination revealed an untouched crime scene.

That single strident word of accusation glared at her from the opposite wall...Whore.

Face twisting into a determined scowl, Maria strode into the room and stripped the sheets and pillows from the bed with brisk, oddly mechanical movements. She then carried these items out into her back yard and stuffed them into her trash bin. Returning to her house, she retrieved a bucket filled with scalding hot water, detergent and a coarse-bristled scouring brush.

Donning a pair of rubber gloves, Maria plunged the brush into the water, ignoring the protest of pain. She then attacked the wall with a fury, scrubbing until every last trace of the pentagram and the condemnation had been effaced.

"Fuck you, Judith!" she spat as she stood back and considered the badly abraded wall.

When all traces of the assault had been thoroughly erased, Maria closed the light and exited the room. She briefly contemplated calling her family...it was shortly before ten by then...but understood that little would be gained by plunging into those waters in her present state of mind.

Instead, she went in search of a pillow and blanket from the closet in her rear hall. If this was truly over, tomorrow, she would take up the threads of her new life. If nothing else, she could thank Raymond Saddler for giving her the opportunity to join the full time duty roster. Maria was determined to make the most of that opportunity and hopefully forget the circumstances that spawned it.

' _He promised you he would be there when the bandages came off,'_ a plaintive voice whispered in her thoughts. Maria growled aloud and bludgeoned it into silence. She adamantly refused to indulge these kinds of venomous reflections, knowing full well that harboring bitter recriminations would ultimately be self-defeating.

How could she realistically expect Saddler to eschew his family and forego this unexpected reprieve? Any other expectation was just so much capriciousness foolishness. She had long contended that she was a strong woman, constructed of sterner stuff. Fate had given her the occasion to prove her mettle and Maria was determined not to shame herself.

Remembering that shift began at 7:00 am, Maria set the alarm on her end table and closed the light. As she curled up on her sofa, she was certain that sleep would evade her...that she would spend most of the night staving off a flood of resentful emotions. Surprisingly, sleep took her quickly and as she tumbled into its welcoming depths, a frantic voice cried, _'something is drastically wrong, Maria. Quinsett is not safe...Raymond Saddler is not safe.'_

3

Judith Ranzman sat facing forward, with her hands resting on the table before her. Though the room was crowded and uncomfortably warm as a consequence, Judith's disconcerting gaze was fixed squarely upon her interrogator.

Tamara Hood spoke very little, interjecting the odd clarifying question. Judith held court in a flat monotone, her face impassive, as she provided her jailors with a detailed account of every murder and criminal occurrence that had befallen Quinsett in the last eight days.

Though utterly exhausted, both Tamara and the elderly Huxley were kept vertical by the horror-fuelled adrenalin surge that Judith's brutally graphic confession evoked. Ranzman's complete lack of empathy or remorse was incomprehensible to Albert, who found himself sickened by Judith's deportment as she related the gore-spattered specifics of her crimes.

Only once, during the six hour confession, did Judith display any hint of animation. As one of the agents inserted a new cassette tape into the recorder and repositioned Judith's microphone, she fixed Tamara with an expression of concern and inquired urgently, "You appear quite unwell, agent Hood...we can always continue this in the morning...it's not like I'm going anywhere."

Judith then threw back her head and brayed indulgent laughter. Tamara scowled at the woman, who she now considered a devious lunatic, perplexed by the intimation of irony in that derisive laughter.

During the course of the torturously long night, Judith revealed the unerringly accurate minutiae of each crime, in perfect chronological order. Her revelations not only coincided precisely with key details that had been deliberately concealed from the public, but elaborated on specific elements of crimes for which authorities could produce no logical explanation. In discovering how Ranzman had inscribed the pentagram onto Lars Ingstrom's barn, killed his herd of cows and burned the eyeballs from Alma Riesen's sockets, Tamara was staggered by the depth of Judith's criminal madness...and the baffling ingenuity with which it was manifested.

Despite her numbing weariness, Tamara experienced a growing sense of satisfaction as Judith catalogued her murderous campaign. Her initial theory had proven correct, thus validating her keen instincts...and banishing the unsettling anxiety that had plagued her over the last forty-eight hours.

Even the jaded Hood was shocked when Judith disclosed that she had also murdered another half-dozen itinerant workers over the last decade. These men and women, whom she had employed as house-keepers and grounds-keepers, were now interred on the grounds of her property on Lodger Mill Road.

This grim admission, freely given, raised a dull cry of alarm in Hood's mind. Judith appeared strangely eager to solidify the foundations of her guilt...even confessing to crimes of which the police had no prior knowledge.

When Judith finally completed her exhaustive monologue of murder and mayhem, she sat back in her chair and offered her bleary-eyed captors a radiant smile. Draping an elbow over the back of her chair, she declared blithely, "There is something...liberating in unburdening ones self. I feel positively energized."

Tamara scowled in revulsion, wondering if Judith's stupefying behavior was the prelude to an insanity plea. Eager to be done with this and be back in her hotel room, Tamara asked for the benefit of the tape, "Judith Ranzman, will you confirm that you were repeatedly informed of your rights and that you voluntarily elected to provide this confession without prior access to legal representation?"

Ranzman leaned forward and declared briskly, "I was and I did."

Tamara made an abrupt slicing gesture, across her throat with her index finger, and Albert depressed the stop button on the recorder. "Take her back to her holding cell and let's wrap this thing up until..." She glanced at her watched. "Eleven a.m."

Art Silver placed a hand on Judith's shoulder and instructed her to rise. Her head whipped around and she fixed the deputy with a glare of such intense malevolence that Silver abruptly drew his hand back. A chillingly sharp image blossomed in his startled mind...his bloated corpse, laying on the pavement as his sightless eyes stared vacantly into the eternal void. His chest was a repulsive mass of minced and shredded flesh and pulverized bone.

Art blinked and the harrowing image dissolved. Silver found himself staring into Judith's grinning face.

' _She knows exactly what I saw,'_ came the thought, unbidden, to his mind, though surely that was ludicrous. Being confined in a room for an extended period of time, with a deranged lunatic, was giving him the creeps.

"Let's go, Judith," Silver grumbled irritably and she complied readily. As she came abreast of agent Hood, Judith leaned forward and taunted, "How gratifying this must be for you, Tamara? I would imagine that this must be that career defining moment that every junior g-man salivates over."

"You give yourself far too much credit, Judith," Tamara countered gruffly and turned away in a curt gesture of dismissal, oblivious to the dark shadow that rippled briefly across Ranzman's beautiful face.

When Judith had been escorted from the room, Huxley shuffled over to Tamara and offered in a voice slurred by exhaustion, "Looks like that just about puts paid to her, then."

Tamara nodded with a wan smile. "The heavy lifting maybe, but now comes the avalanche of tedious paperwork and jurisdictional wrangling."

Albert grimaced at the prospect of facing that tide of bureaucratic and legal red tape, sincerely hoping that he had seen the last of police reports. He nodded and started to turn away, when Tamara suddenly asked, "Huxley, how do you think Saddler went so far off the mark on this case? I mean, it was immediately apparent to me that the perp was probably a member of Crane's inner circle and yet, Saddler never seemed to consider this venue of investigation. Why?"

Huxley shrugged and replied tartly, "Maybe he's just not the cop you are, agent Hood."

Tamara flashed the man a sour frown, but Huxley had already started for the door.

4

Barney's yip of delight greeted Saddler as he stepped into the darkened kitchen. His final exchange with Maria kept repeating itself in his mind, magnifying his sense of personal shame with each successive repetition. Only hours ago, he'd hailed her as his one reason for enduring, only to cast her aside at the unexpected prospect of Veronica's return.

His treatment of Cordova was simply deplorable, as were his feelings of shame and self-loathing, but he would bear them willingly if it meant Ronnie would be returned to him.

' _And you believe her?_ ' Maria had demanded disbelievingly, when Saddler had apprised her of Judith's revelation. Upon reflection, Saddler found that he did...without the slightest hint of equivocation. He believed Ranzman, not only because his acceptance would garner a return to his old and cherished life, but also because there was a certain irrefutable logic to Judith's claim.

Veronica had lived in Quinsett for less than a week. It hardly seemed plausible that she would attract the attention of and subsequently fall victim to, the corruption of Jeniah Lightcrusher. Judith had lived in Quinsett her entire life and was a direct descendent of one of the six vigilantes who had destroyed Jeniah fifty years ago. By all accounts, Ranzman was a tempestuous, compulsive woman...possibly the perfect foil for possession.

' _So you've become an authority on the prerequisites for spiritual possession, have you now Saddler?'_ Maria's sardonic voice demanded in his mind. _'Do you really believe it was Jeniah Lightcrusher you were speaking to back at the police station?'_

Saddler grimaced in response to these inconvenient and complex queries. They were invitations to explore a dark territory that he presently had no interest to enter. He desired only to focus on the miraculous return of his wife, though Maria's sultry voice kept whispering about disparities and puzzling anomalies.

Saddler was astute enough to understand that a small, pragmatic and cynical part of his mind was really the source of these troublesome misgivings, but he managed to smother it with the weight of his relief and elation.

The exigent bray of the phone shattered the silence and Saddler snapped it up on the fourth ring to find a perceptibly agitated Arthur Ashcott on the other end. "Saddler, finally...I've been trying to reach you for hours."

Saddler winced at the abrasive, vaguely accusatory tone. "Things have been rather hectic here, Arthur. There's been an arrest in the murder investigation."

"So I've heard...but Veronica told me that you were out of that particular picture," Ashcott remarked and the unspoken segment of that last phrase grated on Saddler's nerves.

"Multiple homicides aren't an easy thing to disentangle from, Arthur," Saddler replied, trying to maintain a civil tone...with marginal success.

Ashcott offered Ray a grunt to signify his indifference and then his tone shifted, resonating with emotions of which Saddler had not thought the other man capable. The foremost amongst these uncharacteristic emotions was fear. "Saddler, I called to tell you that Veronica is in the hospital."

"Hospital?" Saddler echoed. "When...Why?"

"She collapsed this afternoon...just before dinner. We rushed her to the hospital. She's resting now and in stable condition." Arthur then went on to recount the traumatic events of Veronica's sudden collapse. Even as a frantic Saddler absorbed this news in anxious silence, his sharp mind did the mental math and discerned that her collapse had occurred shortly before his macabre conversation with Judith.

' _I want to give you your wife back,'_ Judith had divulged and he envisioned Veronica's collapse as the physical manifestation of that desire. Ronnie had collapsed because Ranzman had abruptly relinquished control of her mind and body. Saddler could barely suppress his desire to burst into joyous laughter.

"I'm on my way, Arthur," Saddler declared, but Ashcott raised an adamant objection.

"Listen Saddler, Veronica asked me to call you and prevent you from charging down here in a mindless panic. She was extremely disoriented and had a bout of vertigo...that is apparently what caused her to collapse...but she seems perfectly fine now. Okay, that isn't precisely true...she can't recall much of what happened in the last week. She doesn't even recall making the trip to Los Angeles."

"Jesus!" Saddler exclaimed. "I'm still not hearing a valid reason why I shouldn't come tonight?"

Ray thought he could actually hear the old man struggling to rein in his temper. Arthur Ashcott was not a man who suffered defiance readily. "She's been through an extensive battery of tests and they've found nothing amiss...which quite frankly mystified the doctors. I needn't tell you how assertive my daughter can be when she's determined to have her way. She's going to be discharged tomorrow and basically commanded me to charter a jet so that she could return home with the children and her servant. She'll be back in that slum by dinner time tomorrow night. She was insistent that I convince you to await her return and pick her up at the airport. Just indulge me and be accommodating this once."

"How are the children, Arthur?" Saddler inquired gravely.

"Danny was frightened of course. Obviously, he didn't understand what was happening to his mother." Ashcott hesitated then, as though groping for the appropriate words to express his next thought. "Wendy was clearly upset, but when she spoke to Veronica at the hospital, she became oddly reticent. It was almost as if she was...displeased that her mother was okay. I know just how incomprehensible that must sound, but I don't know how else to describe her reaction."

"Wendy is a complicated girl, Arthur," Saddler allowed, even as this disclosure sent an icy chill traversing along the length of his spine.

"They're both asleep. I'm going to arrange for that charter, Saddler. I'll call you once I have the details." After a protracted silence, Ashcott delivered a stunning entreaty. "Look, I know we've had our differences...and I probably have been harsh in the way I've treated you over the years. I'm asking you to set that aside and bring my daughter and grandchildren home...back to Los Angeles."

For a moment, the faculty of speech actually deserted Saddler. This was as close to an overt plea as Arthur Ashcott was probably capable of coming. "There's certainly nothing to hold us here, Arthur and I'm sure Ronnie will be anxious to be away from this place."

"Thank you, Saddler," Ashcott replied tightly. "I'll be in touch tomorrow with the flight information."

Then he hung up, leaving a bemused Saddler staring at the receiver. Calling Barney, Saddler meandered into the living room and settled onto the sofa with the Terrier on his lap.

For once, he was in total concurrence with Arthur Ashcott. Scratching Barney's right ear, he declared, "Leave Quinsett...why not...and the sooner the better."

5

Cameron Crane came awake with a partially stifled cry, unable to recall what had driven him into his state of fearful agitation.

He sat up and ran his fingers through his perspiration soaked hair, drawing a deep breath as he did.

"Cameron?" a voice inquired and his head jerked around to the right, only to find the shimmering, ghostly forms of Mordecai Crane and Stuart Crane standing in the doorway to his bedroom. Both apparitions were surrounded by an argent glow. Mordecai had his right arm draped protectively around Stuart's insubstantial shoulders. Cameron's younger brother wore the vacant expression of total catatonia.

"Does this mean he's..." he heard himself inquire of Mordecai. "What's wrong with him?"

"Yes, Stuart is dead, Cameron," Mordecai reported, his tone mournful. "As to why he looks the way he does...these transitions are never easy and his end was...a difficult one."

"Why have you come?" Cameron queried, fearful of the answer.

Mordecai smiled kindly and announced, "Because it isn't over, Cameron...as desperately as everyone wants it to be."

Cameron's heart plummeted in his chest and he shook his head in vigorous negation, even though he knew denial was futile. "Judith Ranzman is in jail...she's confessed to everything."

Mordecai shook his head regretfully. "A clever ruse, Cameron. The one you name is the embodiment of evil, but nothing more than a sadistic pawn. It will pain me eternally to tell you this, boyo...only you can prevent what's to come. This miscreant is clever and it may be that you will have to do this alone."

Cameron's response was an inarticulate groan of anguish, followed by a deep sigh of bitter resignation. At last, Cameron Crane nodded, beginning to realize that this final grim battle, yet to be fought, was the sole reason for his wretched existence. "I understand."

Mordecai offered his long-suffering grandson a smile of unadulterated love. "I'm sorry it's come to this, Cameron...mostly because it's my failing that put this awful burden on your shoulders. I won't be able to see you again in this world. Stuart is going to need my help moving on. My hope is that, long years from now, you'll join us here and we'll all be together again."

"I hope so too," Cameron managed, before the fall of tears began.

Mordecai nodded and gently turned Stuart around, whispering words that Cameron could not hear, and together the apparitions set off down the hall. Cameron watched them through tear-distorted eyes, until the silver luminescence faded into darkness.

Chapter Seven

1

Maria entered the station house at ten minutes to seven on Tuesday morning. She had awoken shortly before six and even as she showered and prepared for her return to duty, she had been beset by the baseless thought that had pursued her into sleep...Quinsett is not safe...Raymond Saddler is not safe.

Since then, that fatuous warning nagged her like an incessant itch. She entertained the possibility that this notion was the pathetic manifestation of her subconscious refusal to accept the abrupt disintegration of her relationship (if it warranted the label) with Saddler. Grimacing, she sincerely hoped this wasn't the case, but still this annoying thought swirled in her head like a swarm of bees.

Maria was surprised to find the station house draped in silence as she entered through the rear door. After the frenetic activity of the last few days, the silence was a welcome relief.

She started into the bullpen area and saw that Art Silver was engaged in a quiet conversation with the two dispatchers. When he became cognizant of her presence, Art crossed the room to join her. "Good morning, Maria...you missed quite the night. I still can't believe it, but Judith has confessed to everything...all of it."

Maria's gaze swept the deserted office. "Where is everyone?"

"Huxley and Hood went home to catch some sleep. One of the FBI teams is out at Judith's place...it looks like they're going to tear the place apart, brick by brick. Judith even admitted that there were a half dozen bodies buried on her grounds."

Maria's brow furrowed at this bit of information. "Why ever would she make that kind of admission?"

Silver frowned and shook his head. "It doesn't make a whole lot of sense...unless she's angling for an insanity plea." Art paused and met her gaze directly, unconsciously wincing at her stark white bandages. "You should know that she admitted to doing this to you, Maria."

Not certain how to respond, Maria merely nodded and inquired evenly, "Is there anything specific that Sheriff Huxley wants me to do?"

Silver nodded, his tone becoming sheepish. "Albert thought it would be good to have you in the office for the remainder of the week, while I work the field patrol. He said that priority one is transcribing last night's taped confession so that we can get it signed today. You can work, undisturbed, in the interview room and Mariam will forward all field calls to me. Tamara Hood is holding a one pm press briefing and I will bet this place will become a zoo from that point out."

Maria managed a wan smile, not surprised that the tedious paper work function would fall to her. In the coming weeks, she visualized that a veritable avalanche of paper would be generated by this case, and correctly surmised that the majority would fall on her capable shoulders. "I'll get started...thanks Art."

Silver nodded, but did not leave and Cordova sensed that there was something else preoccupying his thoughts.

"Is there something else, Art?" she prompted gently.

Silver's discomfort seemed to increase exponentially. Finally, he revealed, "As soon as this situation settles, Albert wants to get back to retirement. He asked if I would be willing to accept his endorsement as Quinsett's next sheriff. I told him that I would want to canvas the other deputies...to see if they'd be okay with the idea."

That simple, innocuous inquiry served as an incisively painful reminder that Raymond Saddler would not be part of her future life. Still, in the face of Silver's expectant grin, Maria conjured a bright smile. "For what it's worth, you have my blessing and the promise that I'll serve to the best of my ability under your watch."

Art smiled shyly and thanked her, before heading out for patrol duty. Maria sighed, and after hanging her jacket and hat, retrieved the necessary supplies and headed to the interview room.

From the very moment that Maria closed the door behind her, she was suffused by the unsettling sense that she was being watched. She could feel the weight of an unseen regard on the nape of her neck.

' _She's here,'_ it suddenly occurred to her. _'The monster that did this to you is in a cell downstairs.'_ This realization caused the flesh on Maria's arms to break into great hackles and her heart to accelerate wildly.

She was suddenly cognizant of a thickening of the very air in the room, as though Judith Ranzman was emanating evil like a poisonous fog. In those eddying currents, Maria thought she could detect an unspoken summons...a siren's call to descend and face the woman who had become her personal demon.

Rejecting the strident adjuration to flee was the single most difficult thing that Maria Cordova had ever done in her life. She stumbled to the desk and sagged into the chair, where Judith had sat only hours before. Inhaling to calm her ragged breathing, Maria hit the play button and set about transcribing the first tape.

Mercifully, that sense of being compelled...of being drawn into the monster's den...subsided to manageable levels. The work was painstaking and repetitive, but Maria quickly settled into an efficient rhythm and the full portrait of Judith Ranzman's purported campaign of horror rapidly took shape on the pages.

Maria shuddered perceptibly each and every time Judith's voice filled the room. There was a quality in that smoky tone that roused icy waves of terror in Maria, though it took several moments before she could identify its precise nature. Beneath the constant stream of bravado and disdain, Maria could discern something far more sinister. ' _It's as if she knows this whole process is a charade...her arrest and the subsequent confession...it's almost as if she's certain she's immune to the consequences.'_

Profoundly shaken by this abstract notion, Maria still forged ahead with the transcription, even as this disturbing impression grew more tangible by the moment.

Deputy Cordova was sickened by the horrifying detail that Judith blithely provided for each murder. Maria had read each of the police reports pertaining to the individual incidents. Judith's confession had hit upon all of the key evidence collected...and elaborated on the ambiguities the police had failed to resolve.

That pattern held true without deviation, until Maria transcribed the accounts of Lynda Verin and Morley Cruthers' murders. When she had completed this section of the transcription, Maria blinked and sat back in her chair, a pensive expression dawning on her face. After reading these segments an additional time, Maria rose and went in search of the active case files for these two particular homicides.

Her eyes widened as she quickly scanned the reports. There was a pronounced disparity between Judith's confession and the gathered crime scene evidence...not actual disparities, but a paucity of details, compared to those of earlier accounts. Judith's description of the Verin and Cruthers murders was murky and vague...almost as if she was reciting a sanitized newspaper account.

Wearing a frown of puzzlement and sensing that she was on the verge of a significant epiphany, Maria returned to the interview room. She listened intently to the remainder of the tape, which included the accounts of Judith's murders of Dwyer, Wilkins and Stuart Crane. Recorded in the cool, dispassionate voice was Judith's lurid and graphic attack on Maria. In keeping with the earlier segment of the tapes, Ranzman accounts were replete with minute detail, including the harrowing manner in which Maria had reacted, while Judith disfigured her face. Maria need only close her eyes to attest that this version of events was unerringly accurate.

"But what exactly does this mean?" Maria inquired of the expectant silence. If anything could be said of Maria Cordova, it was that she was far and away the most mentally adroit and creative thinker of any of the authorities presently involved in the investigation of Quinsett's cumulative woes. Unencumbered by cynicism or narrow-mindedness, Maria's agile mind fastened on the first logical conclusion that came into her head. Judith had not provided the same level of detailed testimony for the Verin and Cruthers murders...because she had not committed them.

Maria stood up quickly, her thoughts chasing each other in a frenzy. Judith Ranzman claimed to be the sole architect of this atrocious murder spree, but this glaring disparity effectively punched a gaping hole in her claim.

Like a dying star bursting to nova, another of Maria's persisting points of contention resolved itself with a resounding clatter. Saddler had told her that Judith claimed to have beguiled Veronica, when the latter had visited her office last Tuesday. During that visit, Judith had purportedly implanted the idea in Veronica's mind that she was possessed by the spirit of Jeniah Lightcrusher. Yet, in an earlier conversation, Ray had told her that Veronica had first exhibited erratic...even menacing behavior, last Monday afternoon.

"Mia Madre!" Maria breathed. While the ramifications were veiled in shadow, one thing was irrefutably true...Judith Ranzman had deliberately lied. She had falsely claimed to be the sole perpetrator and had fabricated an explanation for Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's bizarre personality trauma.

"But why?" Maria wondered aloud, knowing that this was the salient question.

' _There's only one person who can provide the answer,'_ her mind declared, its tone implacable and brutally harsh. Maria Cordova shook her head in negation, even as her traitorous feet began to carry her toward the door.

' _I can't go down there,'_ she protested, the thought tremulous with apprehension.

' _But you have to,'_ an intransigent inner voice retorted. _'To save Quinsett...to save Raymond Saddler. Only by looking in her eyes can you glean the truth...can you know if there's any validity in this wild speculation of yours.'_

She entered the bullpen area, and crossing over to the dispatcher's station, placed her transcription sheets on Mariam's counter. "My hand's practically gone numb. I'm going to take a break for five minutes. Would you mind typing these up? I have one tape left to transcribe."

"Of course, Maria," Mariam replied, her frank and unwavering gaze never leaving Maria's bandaged face. "I wanted to tell you that it's going to be nice having another woman on staff. Between you and I and the wall, being surrounded only by men can be...trying."

Maria offered the older woman a tentative smile, sensing that there was a couched invitation in that seemingly simple declaration. Maria's keen instinct warned her that Mariam Carter was a woman of whom she would be wise to be wary.

Drawing a tremulous breath, Maria briskly strode down the rear hallway and deftly unlocked the door, which led down into the holding area.

' _Do you really want to do this, Maria?'_ a voice asked. Ignoring the imploring edge to that internal voice, she lightly descended the stairs before her frayed nerves could undo her resolve.

2

Maria paused before the door at the bottom of the stairwell and peered through the re-enforced glass of the door's rectangular window. Judith was perched on her cot in a fakir's pose, with her head bowed. Watching her assailant, Maria was deluged by a flood of emotions that traversed the spectrum from mindless fury to paralyzing fear.

Maria glanced down at her hands to find that they were shaking badly.

Eventually, the tremors subsided and she opened the door and stepped inside, standing silently at the threshold.

"So the intrepid mouse has come to peek at the caged alley cat from the shadows," Judith remarked, without looking up, amusement prominent in her mocking tone. Judith raised her head and offered Maria a smile. Maria gasped and pressed herself against the brick wall. Judith's eyes were onyx black and her pointed teeth gleamed pewter beneath the harsh lights. "Or perhaps you've mustered some courage and come seeking a measure of revenge...in which case..."

The door to Ranzman's cell abruptly swung open, startling Maria into actually emitting a frightened cry. She instinctively reached for her service revolver. Judith remained stationary, thought her impassive face had reverted to its normal state. Maria quickly darted over to the cell door and slammed it shut, before retreating back to the opposite side of the corridor.

Judith frowned and stood suddenly, her demeanor becoming surly. "I've been confined here for fifteen hours, without food and water and I've been left barefoot in this filthy cage."

"Far better treatment than you deserve," Maria retorted, finding her voice at last.

"I want to arrange for legal counsel," Judith demanded, ignoring Cordova's barb.

"Albert will be in at eleven...I'll pass your request on to him," Maria retorted, her tone glacial.

"Do you miss your mentor, Maria? Is that a wistful glint I see in your eye...pining for Raymond Saddler? It must have been so intoxicating taking liberties with the husband of a woman the caliber of Veronica Ashcott? When you were on your knees earning your opportunity here, did it help you to forget that you were just another tawdry, pathetic whore?"

"Fuck you!" Maria snarled and when Judith scowled and surged forward, she drew her service revolver and leveled it at Ranzman's chest. "If you open the cell door again, I'll shoot you where you stand."

Judith's eyes widened slightly and she raised her hands in a gesture of placation. "I believe you would at that. Let's refrain from this adversarial posturing. We've shared such intimate moments...there really is no need for belligerence. Now, you haven't come here to extract revenge and I doubt even you would stoop to gloating. Have you come to bolster your flagging courage by confronting me from the opposite side of a gun?"

"I have a question I want you to answer," Maria said flatly, trying mightily to hold Ranzman's intimidating gaze.

"I'm intrigued...ask your question, mouse," Judith invited, though he expression had grown suddenly watchful.

"Veronica Ashcott-Saddler met with you in your office last week...what day was that?"

"Now, why ever would you want to know something like that?" Judith inquired with a casual smile, though Maria realized that her levity was contrived.

"Will you answer my question, Judith?" Cordova persisted and though her external manner appeared calm, her stomach was churning with anxiety.

"Veronica came to see me late Tuesday afternoon, mouse...though I can see no reason why that might matter to you." Judith hesitated and her nostrils flared slightly. "Unless Raymond Saddler has been indiscreet...dangerously so. You're skating on thin ice, little mouse. More than anyone still living, you know what I'm capable of...and though you fascinate me on some base level, that will not make you immune to my displeasure."

Maria holstered her weapon and fixed Judith with a truculent glare. "Sling threats all you want, Judith. Once they cart you off to which ever pit you're going to be buried in, I'll forget you ever existed."

"Then you're truly delusional, mouse. Even if you could conjure the fortitude to draw your weapon and kill me...I wouldn't truly die. Every time you gaze into a mirror and see my handiwork, you'll remember me. Every time a prospective lover gazes on that beautiful face and you see their eyes widen in reaction to that indelible brand I've left on your skin, you'll imagine my smiling face. I will live in your memory like a light that nothing can extinguish...except your death."

Maria started to respond, but felt her emotions twist her aching heart. Desperate not to cry in front of the monster that had maimed her, Maria turned and fled blindly for the stairs, with Judith Ranzman's denigrating laugher pursuing her as she ran.

3

The laughter died on Judith's lips the instant Maria Cordova slammed the steel door behind her. She padded back to her cot and settled into her cross-legged pose. Though she had managed to conceal it well, Judith had been profoundly shaken by Cordova's unexpected query.

Instinct was warning her that clever Maria had drawn a potentially troublesome association between the day of Veronica's visit and the tale Judith had woven for Saddler.

' _Get out, Judith!'_ a panic-stricken voice advised. _'Find your way clear of this entanglement before Jeniah's mad commission consumes you.'_

Ranzman frowned sourly, despising these unwelcome thoughts. She had lived her entire life in a vacuum of self-indulgence, constrained only by the fear that her depravity would be discovered. Yet in a matter of scant days, she had eschewed everything she had meticulously constructed over the course of her adult life. Her privacy and substantial wealth, she had discarded it all to serve the obsession of a creature who was part child-like ingénue and part goddess.

Sitting in the disgusting holding cell of this inconsequential, fly speck of a town, Judith could produce no coherent reason why she had allowed this to happen.

That inability was perhaps the most galling aspect of her current dilemma.

It occurred to her that this atypically indecisive behavior found its source in her ambivalence toward Jeniah's avowed goal...the eradication of humanity from the face of the planet. On one hand, Judith viewed this as the ultimate culmination of her darkest fantasy...an orgy of extermination that could be seen as a fitting punctuation for a species hopelessly enamored with mindless violence.

' _Ah, but what then, Judith,'_ she demanded of herself. _'Once they had gorged themselves on human fodder, will the demons return to their purgatory...or would they elect instead, to make a new home here...in the name of variety, if for no other reason? If they refused to return to their cage willingly, did Jeniah possess the requisite puissance to compel them by force?'_ Even if she did, could Judith bear the tedium of living in the idyllic, but mind-numbingly boring paradise that the ritual would produce? Would she go slowly, but inexorably mad without the dark, rich tapestry of flawed humanity to amuse her?

The sudden and irreversible loss of a nearly limitless supply of victims upon which to unleash her newfound power seemed...well...a squander of resources.

These hard questions plagued Judith without surcease, since she had come to find herself incarcerated in this wretched cell. Should she honor her pledge to help dour Jeniah achieve her fate-cursed commission or should she weave a subtle web of treachery to deny the chronicler her coveted prize? Both eventualities were within her insidious grasp to realize, but she found herself conflicted and torn between the two divergent paths. Both were fraught with pitfalls that could prove her undoing, should she make a misstep.

And then there was the puzzling matter of her pet mouse.

Her first instinct, born of prejudice and contempt, was to dismiss Maria Cordova as an inconsequential drone. The old, impetuous Judith certainly would have done exactly that, but her enhanced instincts now warned her against a cursory dismissal. If Cordova had recognized the intrinsic flaw in Judith's hastily conceived fabrication for Veronica's behavior, it was only natural that Saddler would reach the same conclusion.

' _And would that really be such a bad thing, Judith?'_ she wondered, a devious twinkle dawning in her dark eyes. _'If you intend to throw a spanner into Jeniah's delicate machinery, would this not be the ideal means of doing so?'_

If she intended to adhere to her agreement, Judith should apprise Jeniah of this potential hazard, just as she should crush her mouse under heel.

Impulsively, Judith decided that she would do neither of these things and allow the random variables of fate to manifest themselves as they would. Leaning against the cool green bricks of her cell, she decided that she would embrace this ambivalence. For the next forty-eight hours, she would deftly walk the tightrope of indecision, between loyalty and betrayal, giving the flow of events a gentle nudge in whatever direction best suited her needs.

Calm descended on Judith as she resolved herself to this path of deliberate fence-sitting. Irrespective of the course she might eventually elect to follow, there were still two tasks demanding her immediate attention. Closing her eyes and embracing the tether that connected her to Jeniah, Judith set out to accomplish the first, though it was the prospect of the second that set her heart racing.

4

A grim-faced Maria rose from her desk and gestured for Huxley to join her as the interim sheriff shuffled into the station just before eleven am.

There were dark circles around Albert's eyes and Maria experienced a twinge of guilt over the dialogue she intended to open with the old man.

"Good morning, Maria," Albert remarked softly, the pervasive weariness apparent in his voice. "It's good to have you back...as long as you feel up to it."

"I'm fine, Albert," Maria commented more brusquely than she'd intended and then softened her tone to inform him, "Sheriff, I've finished the transcription and they're on your desk, awaiting signatures."

"Hopefully Judith will sign off on these and we can put an end to this awful business," Huxley observed in a tone that implied he was anticipating something to the contrary.

' _He's accepted Judith's fabrication,'_ she realized dejectedly _. 'In his desperation to bring this nightmare to an end, he's accepted it the way a drowning man would cling to a life preserver.'_

"Judith has demanded that she be allowed to contact her lawyer," Maria reported gravely. "She also demanded that she be fed and provided with footwear."

Albert's eyes widened and he ran his right hand through his thinning hair. "You actually went down and spoke to her?"

"I did," she allowed simply, but did not elaborate further.

"Okay, she's entitled to both, I guess," Huxley said with a wary sigh. "We're out of our depth here, Maria and I'm worried that Tamara's...unorthodox handling of this arrest is going to come back and bite us in the ass. Agent Hood will be in shortly and I'll let her okay the lawyer deal, but we can at least feed her and give her shoes. I know this can't be easy and it's probably insensitive that I ask, but are you up to handling this?"

The black irony of Huxley's request nearly caused Cordova to laugh aloud. In a cruel twist of fate, she was asked to play foot maiden to the monster that had left her permanently scarred. After a slight hesitation, she nodded resolutely, "No problem Sheriff...I'll take care of it."

"Sandwiches and juice only...nothing that requires utensils," Huxley instructed and started to turn away, but Maria gripped his forearm and leaned closer to speak in a subdued whisper.

"Albert, do you not see that there's something seriously wrong with all of this?"

"I'm not following, Maria," Huxley ventured and Maria thought she could detect a flinty cast steal into his watery blue eyes. "Judith has made a full confession."

Maria struggled to quell her mounting frustration, "Albert, Saddler showed both of us that abomination growing out of the ground at the end of Ringgold Lane...it was unnatural...unholy. Not once did Judith make mention of it during her confession. How can you not ask yourself why?"

Huxley's brow furrowed at the implicit criticism, but he could hardly deny that her point was valid. Sensing that he was at least receptive to her argument, Maria forged ahead, "Not once in the course of her confession did Judith suggest that this was related to the Jeniah incident...not even obliquely...again, why?"

"I have no answer to that, Maria?" Huxley confessed as a cloud of disquiet settled over his mood. "What are you suggesting this all means...that Judith might not be the killer?"

"In part, yes." Maria then went on to explain her theory on the murders of Lynda Verin and Morley Cruthers.

Albert absorbed this narrative thoughtfully, a pained expression slipping over his haggard face. He wanted simply to negate Maria's catalogue of disparities...or better yet, efface this conversation from his mind. "Why would Judith deliberately take the blame for everything? She might be many things, but she's not a fool."

"The obvious answer would be to intentionally misdirect us," she replied urgently and then, as another piece of the puzzle slipped into place, she added, "and to make us think that this is an ordinary case of a common psychotic going postal."

"Even if you're right, what can I do with this theory?" Albert asked pointedly, "If I take this to Tamara Hood, she'll have me escorted off the property. As far as she's concerned, this deal is sealed. Her run in with Saddler shows just how volatile she can be."

Maria scowled fiercely at the recollection. "For now, there's little we can do and I agree that Hood will never accept that Judith has out-witted her. I think this is Quinsett's problem, Albert...I suppose it always has been. I'd like to quietly speak to Raymond about this, if you'll allow me."

Huxley considered this for a moment and nodded, despite his obvious reluctance. "All right...but under two conditions. Firstly, you will do nothing without my say so and secondly, you don't take a step past that gate on Ringgold Lane. Do you understand, Maria?"

Maria offered Huxley a dutiful, humorless grin, "You're the boss, Sheriff."

Huxley greeted the remark with a thin smile. "Right about now, you're making me wish that I wasn't. Listen, I'm going to give this some thought and maybe we can get together after work and go over it again."

Maria agreed and Huxley turned away, before Cordova again delivered another stunning pronouncement, "One last thing, Albert..."

He turned back to her with an exaggerated groan. "You're killing me here, Maria."

In a somber voice, she admonished, "Be wary of Judith, Albert...I don't think that she's strictly human anymore."

Having delivered this arcane warning, Maria walked away to run her errands, leaving a thoroughly discouraged and bemused Huxley staring after her.

Chapter Eight

1

Jeniah was gazing out over the smog-obscured skyline of western Los Angeles, her exquisite face twisted in a rueful frown.

' _Once the ritual is complete and purgatory's ravenous hordes have slaked their mindless thirst for humanity's blood, how long will it be before all traces of their corruption are effaced from the long-suffering world?'_ she wondered bitterly. She suspected that some of the human blight was indelible and there would be portions of the world that would never be restored to their pre-humanity glory.

That now familiar inkling of presence tickled the fabric of her conscious mind and she knew that Judith had joined her.

"It's done," Ranzman declared flatly. "I've cleared the path for your return. I assume you've cast your clever spell of deception on your dear husband?"

"I never imagined I possessed any aptitude as a thespian," Jeniah offered, amusing Judith with her antiquated reference. "Perhaps I've underestimated my talent for subterfuge. When I leave this wretched institution, I will recede into the farthest reaches of Veronica's mind and reassemble all of the requisite fragments of her shattered consciousness necessary to convince Saddler that his beloved wife has been restored to him. Veronica will conduct herself like a woman emerging from a half-forgotten, but traumatic experience...eager to find solace in the arms of her husband. Saddler's lingering misgivings...should he harbor any...will melt before the heat of this need. My host is a creature whose indomitable will is not easily resisted."

Suddenly, unnerved by Jeniah's aura and anxious to be out of her unsettling presence, Judith muttered, "I'll return then...I intend to settle the matter of Crimmon before the scrutiny becomes constant."

"Yes...the lost priest," Jeniah murmured distantly. "I suppose it's really a formality...he's merely a living husk. Still, if it helps bide your time, do as you will."

After a tentative pause, Jeniah added, "I want to thank you, Judith. I know that must sound incredibly hollow, considering the Genesis of our relationship, but I'm being perfectly sincere. For what it's worth, you have my gratitude."

"It's...it's okay," Judith stammered, thunderstruck by this unexpected expression of emotion from a woman whom she assumed was emotionally sterile.

Jeniah's tone became oddly capricious. "You are the first person with whom I've developed even the most rudimentary attachment in twenty three hundred years. Even Amathera...for all of her wistful fancy...lived a life detached from the world around her. I've scrutinized humanity intensely, but somehow managed to lose my own in the process. I realize that it changes nothing, but I'm genuinely sorry for the things I've done to you...as necessary as they might have been."

Judith Ranzman could not speak for fear that she would begin to degenerate into an inarticulate fit of anguish. In her own dysfunctional existence, Judith had never developed the faculty of empathy, but in the face of such epic sorrow and poignant, heart-wrenching melancholy...even she grasped the heinous cruelty of the fate imposed upon this delicate creature.

In that instant of unprecedented empathy, Judith was struck by an epiphany of such preternatural clarity that she nearly groaned aloud.

Amathera, perhaps the divine's most gentle and innocent of creatures, was not humanity's judge...she was its unknowing barometer. Thinking she had been commissioned to judge its worth, poor, ingenuous Amathera had been cynically dragged through the muck and mire of the ugliest reaches of the human psyche. She had been subjected to the worst depravities that the human spirit could conjure...all to determine if her purity could resist its taint. In the face of such incessant horror as that to which she had been a witness over the long centuries, slowly but inexorably, the last vestiges of Amathera's humanity had been leached away. In her stead, there now stood Jeniah Lightcrusher, the very quintessence of the monster she had supposedly been dispatched to judge.

The enormity of that injustice defeated Judith's ability to internalize its incomprehensible scope. Still, Jeniah went on with her heart-flailing monologue, oblivious to its devastating impact on Judith. "I have wandered through the flowing river of time, Judith...hither and yon, through dust and rain, wind and snow...waded through a seemingly endless tide of human despair and misery. I have carried this black stone of obligation, until its remorseless weight crushed Amathera's beautiful soul. I have borne witness to events that no human eye was ever intended to look upon...and now I am so...very tired. I want only for this to end...for this mountainous obligation to roll from my shoulders and to be free."

Her tone grew melancholy as she murmured words that were sepia-edged with vivid memory. "Not long after I began this journey...when I was still truly Amathera...I came to the ocean for the first time. I was mesmerized...I ran, naked and alone, through the rolling surf, with the blazing stars above me, the wind in my hair and the salty tang of the ocean in my nostrils. I vividly recall how I felt so alive...so thoroughly content with the simple fact of my joyous existence."

She paused and then remarked, "When this is done, I want to travel these paths again...to revel in everything that is beautiful...to recapture those lost feelings of euphoria that I once felt as a young girl, who burned so brilliantly with optimism and joy."

"Do you think such a thing is possible, Judith? Can we ever recapture the vitality of our innocence, once we've surrendered it to cynicism and the remorseless obligation of inexorable purpose?" she inquired in a voice that was fraught with such desperate longing that Judith feared she would be crushed beneath its infinite need.

"I...I don't know," she managed thickly.

Veronica offered Judith a sorrowful smile. "Still, I must try...perhaps you and I can find the answer together...companions in search of all we have lost."

Unable to bear the immensity of Jeniah's pain any longer, Judith fled back to the sanctuary of her own flesh.

2

She came back to herself with a convulsive shudder, her taut body trembling in response to the unimaginable sorrow of Jeniah's long, empty existence. She absently brushed hot tears from her eyes, vexed by the profundity of her reaction to the other woman's plight.

This new vulnerability disturbed Judith, who had long regarded empathy and compassion as traits of a weak personality. Yet, she now found herself shedding tears for the very creature that had reduced her life to shambles. The improbability of this paradox caused Judith to shake her head in consternation.

' _Perhaps you and I can find the answer together...companions in search of all we have lost.'_ That last whimsical declaration echoed in Judith's mind and chilled her black heart. She was visited by a harrowingly vivid image of two diaphanous creatures drifting endlessly over the verdant, but empty, expanse of the post-ritual world, in search of some lost quality, pursuing a resonating echo of past beauty they would never find.

Judith experienced a premonition of her life as an infinitely vast void that only her inevitable madness could ever hope to fill. Her future held the prospect of passing eternity in the company of a companion, who had long since surrendered her tenuous grip on sanity.

Confronted by that unpalatable future, Judith Ranzman made her choice. She would devise a way to subtly undermine and thwart Jeniah's ritual...and if she could concoct the means, she would end Jeniah's long centuries of sorrow. To her surprise, Judith understood that she would undertake this last endeavor inspired by a sense of genuine compassion.

In the interim, she would maintain the outward façade of duplicity in Jeniah's delusional machinations. To that end, her turbulent thoughts turned to the matter of the demented priest.

3

As was the case for the past three years, day in and day out without variation, former Catholic priest James Crimmon, sat alone in a wheel chair. He gazed vacantly out over the rear yard of the chronic care facility, where he had been incarcerated by dementia and physical decay and would remain so for whatever life was left to him.

None of the attendants were quite certain how this pattern had begun, but they nonetheless propagated it without thought of variation.

After Crimmon had been fed his breakfast, an attendant would wheel him into this seldom-used recreation room, and position him near the bank of windows that overlooked the expanse of manicured lawn on the western edge of the property.

There, he would remain in quiet solitude, staring out into the western sky, until the sun dipped beneath the horizon. The attendants had even taken to feeding the elderly former priest his midday and evening meals there, so certain were they that he found solace in the beautiful view.

When they came to check on Crimmon, the attendants would often find him with the ghost of a smile playing at the corners of his thin mouth. On rare occasions, they would find Crimmon with red-rimmed eyes and tears streaming down his hollow cheeks.

Three years locked in a vault of unbroken silence...an inadequate remuneration for a man who had given his passion...his zealous voice to spreading the blessed word.

Trapped in the inescapable prison of his failing body and deteriorating consciousness, the vibrant, robust mind of James Crimmon lived on. His affliction separated him from the external world with ever thickening filters that only served to exacerbate his terrible isolation.

Only through his occasional tears could James Crimmon convey the enduring horror of his wretched existence. Even then, his tearful pleas of pure anguish fell on deaf ears...these expressions attributed to the constricting disease that bound him tighter with every passing day.

Alone with his vivid memories and the terrible curse that his life had become, Crimmon often reflected on the cause of this cruel state of living death. Through the torturous crawl of time, he came to the conclusion that his current state was his penance for the failure of that night, now some five decades gone. During the course of those fifty years, Crimmon had believed (erroneously, as events would prove) that his scarred and twisted hands were his means of contrition for that horrible night. The pink, puckered flesh had caused him incessant pain, but he had suffered it stoically, believing that it was a fitting punishment for the grave transgression of failure.

How wrong this certainty had proved to be. Crimmon had come to glean just how terrible the righteous wrath of the great god could truly be.

Thus, he languished in this empty room, day after day, his only companions dust and the despair of abandonment...waiting for his body to fail at last and grant him the cold and dubious mercy of death.

He was surprised to feel a sudden flicker of cognizance, abrupt and startling, as a tiny aperture opened through the prevailing fog of disassociation, providing a window of complete sentience into the outside world.

He could hear a barely perceptible voice through the obscuring clouds of catatonia...growing progressively louder as that aperture steadily widened. Finally, he was afforded a clear and unencumbered view of the lawn over which he had held an unseeing watch for the past three years.

As he gazed on, blinking owlishly, like a man awakening from a deep and profound sleep, an arched doorway materialized in the center of the green expanse. When the doorway had fully taken shape, a warm, golden effulgence spilled through its opening...suffusing Crimmon with a sense of deep contentment...of burgeoning joy.

Familiar voices carried on the warm breeze...reaching his ears like the sweetest strains of glorious music. He recognized the voices of Mordecai Crane, Inar Silver and the others.

As they whispered, hot tears began to course down Crimmon's care worn face...though these were tears of undiluted joy.

"Come through, James..."

"Here, you will find hope for redemption..."

"The shadow looms and you have been called...as have we all."

On and on it went...a litany of entreaty that was part hope and part desperate need; flip sides of the same terrible coin.

"I...I can't move," Crimmon cried wretchedly, his voice rusty and grating from a prolonged lack of use.

"You can and you must," Crane insisted, with a hint of impatience...a tone reminiscent of the man who had helped build Quinsett by force of will alone. "She's come back...and we must return and set right our past mistakes. Now, crawl if you must. Once inside, you will be restored."

Abruptly, a latch twisted with a clatter, and two of the large windows swung open. Warm, fragrant air swept through and enveloped Crimmon. He recognized the clean smells of sawdust and air so sweet and pure that it could only have come from a time long past.

With his fragile heart hammering in his chest, James Crimmon mustered his concentration and willed himself to move. The best his badly wasted body could manage was a spastic lurch and he fell forward, tumbling out of his chair and landing in a twisted sprawl of atrophied limbs.

He lay, unmoving for several moments, attempting to draw on the wherewithal to drag himself forward. With the encouraging exhortations of his lost comrades ringing in his ears, Father Crimmon began to crawl. With a titanic effort that left him gasping for breath, he pulled himself up and over the low window casing.

His face settled into the sun-kissed grass and he sighed in pure pleasure. The thought of finally being free of this wretched place affected the aging priest like a balm. Swiftly and miraculously rejuvenated, he was able to raise himself to his hands and knees. The closer he came to the doorway and its cascading golden effulgence, the stronger he became...as though the debilitating weight of years was sloughing away like dead skin, to reveal the true man imprisoned beneath.

As he came to within arms' reach of the archway, James Crimmon managed to stand erect for the first time in nearly three years.

"Welcome home, Father Crimmon," the five others declared in unison and a smiling Crimmon strode briskly through the doorway and out of this world.

4

The moment that Father Crimmon stepped through the archway, that sense of soaring euphoria vanished like water through a sewer grate.

Suddenly, the golden light dissipated, leaving Crimmon in total darkness. Panic clutched at his narrow chest as he spun around with the intention of fleeing back into the daylight, only to find that the exit had vanished.

Breathing heavily, Crimmon turned in place, executing a graceless pirouette, as his mind grappled with the improbability of what had just befallen him.

Gradually, a muted silver light bled into the edges of the total darkness, until it cast a glow of sufficient magnitude to reveal a long stone corridor that stretched off in either direction.

Crimmon was startled when a figure, clad in black and blood red leather, stepped into a pool of iridescent light. The beautiful face was vaguely familiar, but Crimmon could not conjure a name to match the lovely visage.

"Hello Father Crimmon and welcome to your new home," the woman declared cryptically in a voice that was smoke drifting over black water.

"My new home?" he echoed uncomprehendingly, as tendrils of formless dread began to creep along his spine.

"Indeed...Jeniah has rescued you from you crumbling temple of flesh and that wretched mausoleum for the living dead, where you'd been abandoned to die," the woman explained in a light and jovial voice. She swept her arm around the corridor in a wide, expansive gesture. "Here, your lost youth has been restored."

Crimmon shifted his incredulous gaze to his two hands and holding them out before him, his now clear eyes found that they were unmarked by the passage of years. He ran the tips of his trembling fingers over his face to discover that the flesh was tight and firm.

"Yes!" the woman exclaimed encouragingly. "Despite your transgressions against her, Jeniah has graciously returned you to the days of your vigorous youth."

"Why...why would she do this?" Crimmon demanded, his unlined brow furrowing in suspicion.

"Such ingratitude!" the woman remarked with a theatrical gasp of shock and exasperation. "Jeniah has restored your youth and vitality, because only in youth does the flesh truly experience the acute and exquisite beauty of pain in all its dark splendor...and oh, the majestic pain you shall suffer. You will know eternal torment in this device I've created just for you...for your timeless damnation. Enjoy this hell box, Crimmon...it was conceived especially for your endless misery."

With this, the familiar apparition evaporated like mist before a gale.

Struggling to subjugate his fear and preserve his faculty of logical thought, lest he succumb to mindless panic, Crimmon turned his attention to examining the stone corridor.

The light was without discernable source and barely adequate to see beyond a few yards in either direction.

"Hello?" Crimmon cried experimentally and grimaced when the sound reverberated down the stone corridor, only to fade into the distance. He shook his head in dismay, but began to walk in the direction from which the apparition had first appeared. As he glanced down, he was startled to discover that he was no longer wearing light blue pajamas and that ghastly burgundy robe. Instead, he wore the black suit and Roman collar that had been his uniform for forty-five years.

Ensconced in the cerements of his true vocation and restored to the vigor of his youth, James Crimmon...Father Crimmon...felt his fear recede like a fading nightmare.

He strode purposefully forward, warded by the belief that his resurgent faith would extricate him from the witch's snare.

At last, his eyes perceived an infinitesimally small speck of light somewhere up ahead...an impossibly distant point of reference that inspired Crimmon to quicken his pace.

With unsettling alacrity, the light grew closer and Crimmon correctly surmised that this was not simply because he was moving toward its fixed position. Just as he was moving to it, the light was converging upon him. If he'd judged the initial distance correctly, whatever the source of the light might prove to be, it was bearing down upon him at an unimaginable speed.

As it approached, the light...a fierce golden glow that became progressively more difficult to gaze upon...assumed a discernable form; a tightly rendered diamond pattern mesh that appeared to encompass the entire throat of the corridor.

Grasping the mesh's malign purpose, Crimmon cried out and fled in the opposite direction...only to discover that an identical mesh was racing toward him from that end of the corridor as well.

' _Enjoy this hell box.'_ This sentence manifested itself in his mind will all of its sinister ramifications. James Crimmon did, indeed, find himself trapped in this cruelly inventive box with no visible means of escape.

When both of the mesh barriers had come to within ten feet of the stricken priest, the pace of their convergence slowed to a torturous crawl. In his state of extreme terror, Crimmon could clearly hear the sizzling hiss of the glowing molten strands. The two barriers radiated heat that was increasingly painful the closer they came.

"Feel free to scream, Crimmon," the disembodied voice recommended. "Your end will be every bit as excruciating as you imagine it will be...except it really won't be your end, if you haven't already guessed as much."

Moving in slow increments that were barely perceptible, the barriers crept closer to the horrified priest. In his desperation, Crimmon considered attempting to charge through the mesh, but knew instinctively that he would simply be immolated on contact.

Seeing no other recourse, he fell back on the one reserve that had sustained him through his long life. Closing his eyes and bowing his head, Crimmon began to pray.

Seeing this, his unseen tormentor began to chuckle disdainfully. "Don't bother...if you understood the creator as I do, you would realize that all mortal pleas fall on indifferent ears."

Crimmon tried to ignore the taunting, increasing the tempo and volume of his adjuration.

The pain had risen to excruciating levels as the skin on his face had turned a deep red and began to blister, even as the hair on his head began to smolder.

Remorselessly, the barriers continued to close.

Crimmon's prayer degenerated into a braying cry of agony. His raised his arms to shield his raw, oozing face, but the sleeves of his jacket and his smoking hair simultaneously erupted into flame.

Crimmon began to dance a death jig as the pyre consumed his flesh...filling the hell box with piteous cries and the acrid stench of burning hair, fat and muscle.

In an instant, the barriers slammed together with a resounding crash and reduced Crimmon to charred chunks of meat, gristle and bone.

5

Time was a concept that had no legitimate application in the hell box, and thus Crimmon had no yard stick against which to measure the time between his catastrophic undoing and his reawakening.

He found himself lying on his back in total darkness. There was no pain...only the harrowing memory of the agonizing death he'd suffered. Looking to his left and then his right, Crimmon saw the distant pin pricks of light spark to life and begin to converge. With dawning comprehension, there came the recognition of the totality of his cruel fate.

Consumed by mindless terror, James Crimmon began to scream.

Chapter Nine

1

For the second time that day, Maria made the solitary descent into the holding area, carrying clothes and food to the prisoner.

' _Ah, but that's really the problem, isn't it?'_ Maria thought churlishly, frustrated that these veteran officers could not glean the shape and immediacy of their peril. Judith wasn't a prisoner at all, but rather, a willing occupant, though to serve what precise purpose, Maria could not hazard a guess.

Cordova opened the door and stepped into the narrow corridor, to find that Judith was lying on her cot with her right arm draped across her eyes.

She appeared to be resting and the incongruity of that image should have been sufficient to raise strident alarms that there was something seriously awry with this situation. Judith Ranzman was a woman of privilege, born into a degree of opulence that the average person could scarcely imagine. Judith had wallowed in her wealth, draping herself in fineries and flaunting her good fortune at every possible opportunity. Yet, there she was, reclining casually on a plastic pad that would have given a homeless man pause, stained as it was by things that Maria was loath to consider. To Maria's nimble mind, these two extremes were simply irreconcilable.

Whatever the creature in the holding cell might prove to be, it was not a pampered princess, who would faint at the very thought of having to sleep on a corruption-stained jailhouse mattress.

This monster was incarcerated of its own volition, blithely biding its time for reasons that Cordova had yet to discern. Watching the supine Judith, the first stirrings of a notion germinated in Maria's mind. The audacity of her scheme shocked Maria and sickened her with the course of action it would require. Still, she saw no other way to induce Judith to perhaps reveal the shape of her machinations.

Judith, upon hearing Maria step into the corridor, allowed her arm to drop and raised her head. "The mouse has returned bearing food and clothing."

Maria did not respond to the disparaging metaphor, instead shifting the running shoes and blaring orange jumpsuit to her left hand, while she detached the key from her utility belt. She stopped and eyed Judith with a knowing grin. "You could always save me the trouble and do it for me."

Judith swung her legs over the edge of her cot and regarded Maria suspiciously. Her expression became flinty as she snapped, "I'm not in the mood."

Maria shrugged and unlocking the door, stepped inside and came to stand next to Judith. She dropped the sneakers and jumpsuit onto the cot and then dropped the bag, containing the two sandwiches and the plastic bottle of apple juice, into an openly bemused Judith's lap.

Ranzman's gaze slid from Maria's bandaged face to the open cell door. "Is this a misguided test, mouse?"

"Not at all," Judith remarked evenly, though being in such proximity to this evil creature made her flesh crawl. "We both know that you could walk out that door whenever you choose, so why pretend?"

Judith offered Maria a tight, menacing smile and inquired, "Are you not afraid, mouse?"

"Petrified," Maria admitted, quite truthfully, but then she stepped closer until their legs touched and her right hip was only inches from Judith's astonished face, "but another part of me is confident that you won't hurt me."

"Given what I've already done to you, why would you ever believe something so perilous, should you be wrong?" Judith asked and Maria could sense the indecision lurking beneath the surface of those sinister dark eyes.

Maria leaned forward and murmured, "I think that you'd much rather fuck me than hurt me, Judith."

Again, Judith's sharp reaction was one of unfettered surprise. "Oh little mouse, you are extending an invitation to engage in a contest I don't believe you are at all prepared to play."

Quickly, Judith's right hand clamped down on Maria's firm left buttock and her left hand cupped and roughed squeezed Maria's full right breast. Maria somehow managed to repress the urge to scream, instead conjuring a credible sigh. Only by recalling everything that was at stake was Maria able to find the fortitude to overcome her revulsion. Tenderly laying her right hand on Judith's upturned cheek, she bent forward and pressed her mouth to Judith's parted lips.

Judith inhaled sharply, clearly startled by Maria's overture, but as Maria ran her tongue over Judith's teeth, Ranzman succumbed to her lust and pulled Cordova into a tight embrace. After what seemed like a hellish eternity to Maria, Judith plunged her fingers into the other woman's thick black hair and roughly jerked her head back. Eyes blazing with barely constrained lust, Judith growled, "What game are you playing at, mouse?"

She opened her mouth to reveal two rows of gleaming pewter teeth that were clearly designed to rend and tear flesh. Maria bit back on the exclamation of fear that was welling in her constricted throat, and gripped Judith's tight hips, if only to quell her trembling hands.

"You asked if I was frightened of you and I am...but I've given a great deal of thought to what you told me earlier, and I know it's true. By scarring me, you insured that no one will ever look at me the same again...except you, Judith. You did this to me because you want me for your own."

A menacing, guttural growl escaped from deep in Judith's chest, but the expression in her large dark eyes was speculative. She closed her mouth with an audible snap and to Maria's eternal relief, when her lips parted again Judith's teeth were quite ordinary. "What exactly do you expect to gain from this bit of insight, my inquisitive little mouse?"

"Stop calling me that...my name is Maria," Cordova insisted vehemently and gripped Judith's wrist with the intention of disentangling the other woman's fingers from her hair. Judith did not resist and simply allowed her hand to fall onto Maria's inner right thigh, which she began to caress lightly.

"You constantly denigrate me and dismiss me as a whore and a mouse," Maria complained, peering directly into the maelstrom behind those dark eyes. "Yet, you left me alive that night, even though you easily could have killed me, after debasing me as you did. I could feel your arousal that night, Judith...just as I can feel the heat of your lust now. You want me to the point of obsession and I don't think you're the type of creature to sully yourself with someone you hold in contempt...so dispense with the contrived disdain and call me by my name...Maria!"

Judith glared truculently for several moments and Maria feared that her charade of bravado would be betrayed by the thunder of her pounding heart. Finally, the ghost of a smile surfaced on Judith's face. "Very well...Maria, but you still haven't told me what you want and I'm a woman of limited patience for coyness."

Without averting her gaze, Maria reached for one of the blue canvas sneakers. She then extended Judith's right leg, made a protracted show of tracing the curving arch of her foot, and slowly slipped the shoe onto Judith's foot and tied the laces. Judith's body stiffened perceptibly and she uttered a soft, tremulous gasp that caused Maria's stomach to clench in protest. Despite her revulsion, she forced herself to repeat the sensual ritual with the other shoe. "I've come here because I want to submit to you, Judith. These fools may be oblivious to the truth...and I doubt that they would accept the truth even if it was carved in stone before them...but I know you're only in this cell because you choose to be, just as I know you'll come to lay claim to me one day. When that day inevitably arrives, I would rather there be no rancor between us, and so I'm surrendering myself to you...willingly."

After a slight hesitation, Maria added, "All I ask is that you tell me what it is you intend to do here?"

Judith watched as Maria finished lacing her shoe and with the swiftness of a striking tiger, she clutched Maria's throat and leaned forward, until the tips of their noses touched, and growled, "Do you think me so obtuse that I would disclose my purpose and not believe that you wouldn't scurry to your masters with the news?"

Daring not to speak for fear the constricting fingers would crush her larynx, Maria slowly reached for Judith's left hand. She then guided it to the butt of her service weapon as a disconcerted Ranzman reacted with open bemusement. Maria helped guide Judith's hand to pull the weapon free of its holster. She raised Judith's arm until the muzzle was pressed into the tight flesh beneath Maria's chin.

Judith's other hand fell from Maria's throat as Cordova carefully disengaged the safety. Staring intently into Ranzman's mystified face, Maria adjured, "If you think that's my intention, then kill me now. One more death will hardly matter and I'd rather be dead than spend the rest of my life glancing over my shoulder, wondering if this is the day you'll return to torture and kill me."

Time came to an abrupt halt as the tension-fraught moment spun itself out. Maria waited breathlessly for the conflict behind Judith's dark eyes to be resolved. After an interminable wait, Judith lowered the gun, engaged the safety, and slid the weapon back into its holster.

She then laced her fingers around the base of Maria's neck and drew her into a tender kiss that left Cordova reeling and dizzy, despite her aversion to the woman who had bestowed it upon her.

At last, Judith pushed Maria away and stood on legs that trembled discernibly. In a voice made husky with passion, Ranzman stammered, "I accept your surrender, Maria, but from this moment forth, you are mine. I will tell you that the story in Quinsett has yet to be told. I remain in this cell because I haven't quite decided how I wish to see it resolved."

"Are you Jeniah Lightcrusher?" Maria asked pointedly.

Judith reacted with an unconscious shudder, and to Maria's mind, the gesture was an incontrovertible affirmation of everything she suspected. Ranzman's expression became contemplative. "Which ever path I choose to follow, I will protect you, Maria."

Maria's brow furrowed as she gazed up at Judith in earnest confusion. Ranzman lifted her chin and gestured toward the open cell door. "Get out, before I forget where we are and take you right here."

Maria repressed a grimace and with a slight nod, started for the door. As she passed Ranzman, Judith wrapped her right arm around Maria's neck and pulled the taller woman closer. She brushed back Cordova's hair and brought her lips closer to the exposed ear. "If I find that you've deceived me, I'm going to peel strips of flesh from you body and feed them to you, Maria."

The horrifying promise, delivered with such dispassionate certainty, shattered the last of Maria Cordova's considerable mettle. Hot tears began to course over the high ridges of her cheek bones in a deluge and she began to blubber. "Please...I've given myself to you...why do you have to humiliate me more than you already have."

"Because I'm every bit the monster you think I am," Judith intoned blithely. She cupped the warm, lush promise of Maria's right breast and whispered, "Still...as you've said, I'd rather fuck you than hurt you."

Maria found herself being propelled out into the hall. As she stumbled blindly toward the stairs, she heard the cell door slam shut.

"Speak to Cameron Crane, Maria," Judith advised cryptically, just as Cordova threw herself through the holding area door.

2

Maria bolted up the stairs, hurried through the still deserted common area and into the woman's restroom. Throwing open the stall door, she fell to her knees and regurgitated the entire contents of her stomach in one long, explosive burst. She slapped blindly at the handle, slammed the lid down and collapsed onto her back.

She lay on the cool tiles, perspiring heavily as convulsive sobs wracked her body. She could taste Judith's corruption in her mouth...an acidic, sour madness that Maria feared would permeate her soul.

Only a stark and vivid image of her current state of abjection provided her with the strength to rouse herself from where she knelt. How utterly broken and pathetic she must appear, prostrate on the bathroom floor, sobbing like a terrified child with vomit and spittle glistening on her chin.

Only the fear that Mariam might walk in and discover her in this appalling state, allowed Cordova to roll over and crawl to the nearest sink. She rested her face against the cool porcelain for a moment and then pulled herself vertical.

She gazed into the mirror and was confronted by a frantic, wide-eyed creature she could scarcely recognize. Still, the sense of taint persisted, as if Judith's kiss had communicated a pernicious infection that was already working its vile magic.

"I'd rather die!" Maria rasped and turned on the cold water tap. She rinsed out her mouth and then gingerly washed her face, restoring at least the outward appearance of normalcy.

' _You have to save Quinsett, Maria...you have to save Raymond Saddler.'_ This thought reverberated in her mind like a Mantra from which she might draw strength and resolve.

Knowing that this next meeting could be every bit as painful as the torture she had just suffered through, Maria drew a deep, slow breath. When she felt confident that she could walk without stumbling, Maria left the station.

3

Emery Rhimes had worked in chronic patient care for twenty years. In that time, he had become intimately familiar with every ugly nuance and subtlety of disease, lingering decay and death.

The prevailing tragedy of end-life decline, with its multifaceted misery and degradation, was a constant shadow over his life. Even at forty-eight, Emery could feel the slow, but inexorable approach of the malicious specter. In every beautiful and youthful face, he glimpsed a shadowy reflection of what the future held...a pale, horrifying facsimile that made a mockery of the vitality of youth.

Yet, even beneath this stifling pall of hovering death, Emery Rhimes had not lost his compassion for the tortured souls who endured this protracted suffering...often alone and abandoned.

None roused his pity and profound sorrow more than the man to whom he now carried a lunch tray. James Crimmon, the former Catholic priest, had spent three and a half years interred in the coffin of his own flesh, which had stubbornly refused to succumb to the inevitability of its own demise.

Balancing the plastic tray with his left hand, Emery deftly unlocked the door to the recreation room.

Stepping inside, his lower mandible dropped in shock and the forgotten tray fell from his hand. It tumbled to the scarred and gouged hardwood floor with a clatter.

Rhimes hurried over to the empty wheelchair and gazed through the open windows. The sun-dappled rear yard was silent and empty.

His eyes slid back to the empty chair and he shook his head in consternation. "What the hell is this?"

It was then that his ears detected the ghost of a cry, so low as to be barely audible. Emery frowned and redoubled his efforts to concentrate. For several moments, he could hear nothing other than the sound of his own stress-roughened breathing. He was about to abandon the effort and go in search of the head nurse, when the sound came again. On this second occasion, the volume was sufficient to enable Rhimes to grasp the shape of what his ears perceived. As contradictory as it seemed, the cry seemed close and at the same time, impossibly distant. To Emery's bewildered ears, this ghostly wail seemed fraught with stark terror and inconceivable agony.

The sense of proximity to something ineffably terrible scudded along the length of his spine, sending Rhimes sprinting for the door.

4

Tamara Hood stood in the shadow of Judith Ranzman's repository of insanity, watching in bleak disgust as two workmen hefted yet another tarp-covered body out of the trench.

They both climbed out of the pit and carried this latest corpse over to the line of bodies that now numbered eight. Tamara was oblivious to the flurry of activity around her, though the side yard was congested with ambulances, excavation machinery, emergency responders and workers.

Her amber eyes remained fixed on the growing number of bodies shrouded in identical orange tarps. While experience had succinctly and chillingly taught her otherwise, Tamara simply could not reconcile the scope of this perverse atrocity with the notion that the perpetrator could carry on with the façade of normal life.

How could one eat, bathe, sleep and perform all the other mundane tasks associated with normal life, when the detritus of your evil moldered in the ground, less than a hundred feet from where you stood?

The idea defied Tamara's sensibilities, even when it was laid before her in such graphically succinct terms.

Agent Hansen approached her tentatively and she gestured him forward, noting how pallid he appeared in the wake of such carnage.

"It looks like the last victim was the missing reporter...Deirdre Wilkins," he disclosed shakily. "Her face is more or less in tact, but she's been eviscerated."

Tamara grimaced and inquired, "And the other seven?"

"All are in varying states of decay...from husks to moldering bones. If they really are itinerants, as she claimed, it's not likely we'll ever identify them."

"That should be the lot of them, if Judith's confession is accurate," Tamara observed. "Still, let's expand the dig a bit, just in case the crazy bitch lost track."

Hansen nodded and asked, "Did the search of the house yield anything?"

Tamara shook her head vigorously, an expression of puzzlement furrowing her swollen brow. "Nothing out of the ordinary...certainly nothing as flagrant as weaponry or even occult paraphernalia. Judith didn't even own a handgun. So far, we haven't come across a single piece of paper that related to either the occult or Jeniah Lightcrusher...no newspaper articles...no trophies...not even a single shred of tangible evidence that connects this woman to the murders. Absolutely nothing here is consistent with the behavior associated with this type of psychosis."

"But we have her full confession," agent Hansen pointed out and gesturing toward the array of orange-shrouded bodies, added, "and of course, those."

Tamara offered Hansen a sour grin. "Only Wilkins has a connection with the present situation...and even that is oblique. Okay, I'm going to head back to make sure Judith's confession is a done deal, and then I'll address the media. Take one of the other agents and head over to Ranzman's office. Maybe we'll find something there. If all goes well, perhaps we can be out of this back water sewer by the end of the week."

Agent Hansen nodded dubiously, and Tamara left him to his grizzly task.

5

Saddler had just concluded his telephone call with Arthur Ashcott, who informed him that his family would be landing at Quinsett's airport at seven p.m., when a soft knock came at his kitchen door.

He followed Barney into the kitchen and peering through the sheer curtains, saw that Maria Cordova was standing on his veranda, with her back to the door, gazing out over his side yard.

She was attired in her deputy uniform and her cruiser was parked near the foot of the steps that led up to his side door.

' _Don't answer, Ray...pretend you're not here and wait for her to go away,'_ a tiny, despicable voice advised, causing him to question the source of this sudden unscrupulous behavior. He suspected that it had much to do with shame and guilt. Shaking his head in self-denigration, but fearing that this might be an acrimonious encounter, Saddler opened the door and said simply, "Maria."

She spun around and greeted him with a broad smile that only exacerbated his sense of self-loathing. At the sight of his face, which was a mass of yellow, livid bruises, that smile became an expression of concern. "Jesus Ray, your face?"

"It looks worse than it is," he assured her. "The lip stings like a bitch and I can't really eat, but I'm not particularly hungry anyway. Would you like to come in?"

Her glance shifted to the open doorway and a wistful gleam flickered in her beautiful eyes, but then she shook her head. "No...I'll only keep you a moment. It's chaos at the office and I'm on paper patrol of which there's a truck load."

Saddler's tone grew sober. "Maria, about yesterday...the conversation at the road house, I..."

Maria waved her right hand and shook her head insistently, "Please Ray...we've both been under an incredible amount of stress this last week. We were both feeling vulnerable and let our guards down...please, let's just leave it at that."

Saddler merely nodded, but the relief in his eyes was glaringly evident. Seeing his reaction, Maria came close to losing her grip on her turbulent emotions. Only by conjuring the mantra was she able to retain her composure. Crossing her arms beneath her full breasts, she leaned back against the wooden railing and explained, "Actually, I've come to ask your advice on Judith Ranzman's confession. In case you're wondering, Albert knows that I intended to discuss this with you...and he's condoned it."

"And Tamara Hood," Saddler inquired with a tight grin.

Maria merely scowled and shook her head. "Agent Hood is anxious to put paid to this case and be on her way. I doubt she would be particularly receptive to the questions I'm raising."

Saddler nodded his understanding and then took a position leaning next to her on the railing, while Barney settled at his feet. "I suspect you're right. So Judith has confessed, but something about her confession is troubling you?"

Maria nodded gravely and began to itemize the specific disparities in Judith's confession, along with her perplexing omission of anything that could be construed as supernatural in nature. "She's trying very hard to depict this as a simple case of homicidal rampage. It's almost as if Judith doesn't want the authorities to focus on the Jeniah Lightcrusher connection."

"And what would be her motivation, do you think?" Saddler asked in a guarded tone. Like Tamara Hood, he was not certain that he wanted to entertain this particular avenue of thought.

"I'm leaning towards two conclusions, but they're really different aspects of the same theory. The inconsistency in Judith's testimony indicates that she did not commit at least two of the murders...possibly more."

"And yet she's taking credit for them all...why would she do that, Maria?" Saddler ventured.

"Because she wants to divert Tamara Hood's attention exclusively to her."

"Again, why?" Saddler persisted and Maria could discern a subtle hint of dawning belligerence in his voice. It suddenly occurred to her that coming here could well prove to be a futile undertaking that could become decidedly ugly if Saddler retreated behind a wall of intransigence. She simply could not allow it to come to that.

Patiently, she explained, "Judith did not act alone, but she wants to distract Hood and the authorities long enough for her accomplice to finish their work."

Saddler turned to the deputy and remarked evenly, "Maria, I understand how Judith's testimony would rouse your suspicion, given what we know, but what you're suggesting is pure conjecture. You're extrapolating the facts to fit your theory."

She drew a deep breath, biting back on the caustic retort that would have ended the prospect of all further reasonable dialogue. Instead, she recounted the details of her two tempestuous encounters with Judith earlier in the morning. As he listened, the blood drained from Saddler's face and his mouth twisted into a frown of incredulity. "Jesus, Maria...what were you thinking? For that matter, what the hell was Albert thinking, sending you to wait on her like a maid?"

"I know that Judith is playing at something subtle and dangerous, Ray. We both know that she's still in that holding cell because she wants to be. The others are oblivious and you've decided that you're not going to acknowledge this because it would be inconvenient. I refuse to ignore that fact because I think it would be disastrously irresponsible," she retorted defensively, feeling the moorings of her temper begin to fray.

Saddler stiffened and his blue eyes flared in a rare display of temper. "Maria, I'm going to give you some advice that you may be disinclined to take, but need to hear anyway. What you did this morning was just plain stupid. Judith Ranzman, whatever else she may be, is manipulative and cunning...and obviously lethal. Willingly handing her your service revolver was reckless and irresponsible. Not only could you have gotten yourself killed, your rash action could have gotten others killed as well."

"I did it...to protect you," Maria interjected in a tiny voice, crushed by his stinging reproof.

Saddler's expression became scornful and his tone derisive. "I know where you're headed with this and I'm simply not going to hear it. My family is coming home tonight and I have every intention of getting them out of Quinsett as quickly as we can pack up and leave. Veronica's suffered enough and I'm not sure what your agenda is here, but you won't cause her further harm...do you understand, Maria?"

She tried to speak, but could only raise her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp of dismayed shock. Finally, she managed, "How could you speak to me this way...be so cruel?"

His tone became gallingly patronizing. "Maria, you've been under a lot of stress. After what's happened to you, there's no way you should be on active duty. My advice would be to take leave until this is over...spend time with your family. If you do decide to come back, then you should take the time to learn the position. You're a bright woman with great natural instincts, but you've overstepped your bounds."

Maria gaped, unable to recognize the man standing before her and too stunned to muster an outraged response. "So that's it...you're simply going to dismiss me and ignore the danger?"

"I'm going to take care of my family," he countered harshly. "I think it's best if you and I don't see each other again."

With this curt and unequivocal dismissal uttered, Saddler strode into the house and slammed the door behind him. Maria's moon-eyed gaze shifted to Barney, who regarded her with uncertainty and then whimpered softly.

Maria bowed her head, closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to quell the urge to scream. She lingered at the threshold to Raymond Saddler's home, like an unwelcome spectator on the periphery of his life...a life of which she had no part.

Abruptly, she turned on heel and stumbled down the stairs to her cruiser. As she drove away, it occurred to her that she'd been proven painfully truthful...this conversation had been even more agonizing than her perverse encounter with Judith.

Chapter Ten

1

As Albert Huxley and Art silver had so sagely predicted, the atmosphere surrounding the Quinsett Police Department quickly came to resemble a wild circus.

Judith Ranzman dutifully signed her confession and made her request for a phone call. When Tamara Hood informed her that eight bodies had been recovered the grounds of her property, Judith's cryptic response had been, "Be careful that they don't bite, Tamara...these sort of things have ravenous appetites."

As Ranzman was led back to her holding cell, the sound of her sardonic laughter echoed in Hood's ears.

Tamara's media conference was a fractious affair which, to her credit, Hood handled with tremendous aplomb. Hood was savvy and experienced enough to know that the case would provoke a media frenzy that would persist until another story piqued the public's fleeting attention.

Not long after the conclusion of the press conference, Agent Hood received a decidedly adversarial call from Norman Gogain. Gogain was a Seattle defense attorney, renown on the west coast for freeing his catalogue of flagrantly guilty clients from their seemingly inescapable legal snares. In a cold, officious voice, Gogain had chastised Tamara for her unconscionable violation of his client's rights. With record shattering alacrity, Gogain had secured a court order forbidding authorities from further questioning Judith without his presence. Furthermore, it expressly forbade any arraignment hearing until Judith had undergone a psychiatric evaluation. As he had terminated the conversation, Gogain had informed a fuming Hood that her mishandling of his client's arrest, including the blatantly unjustified strip search, would insure that his client would soon walk free. He further predicted that she and her superiors would vanish beneath an avalanche of litigation.

Hood had borne this diatribe with uncharacteristic stoicism, knowing that it was not beyond the realm of possibility that the obnoxious bastard might make good on his threat.

Her day continued to slide down the slippery slope of decline, when her superior had informed her that the department had decided to cede jurisdiction back to the locals.

She had registered a vehement protest, but had been told, correctly, that there were no further grounds for federal jurisdiction. She was informed that she would remain in Quinsett for the remainder of the week, to provide advice and guidance to local authorities. Her three teams were to leave Quinsett by the end of business day tomorrow.

Only Albert Huxley reacted to the news of this jurisdiction shift with greater dismay.

"Would you like me to vacate your office, Sheriff?" she inquired glumly.

Huxley's reaction of total apoplexy might have been comical under other circumstances. "Christ no...I ain't too proud to admit that I'm way out of my element here. I'm more than happy to let you drive this train as long as they'll let you."

Near five o'clock, agent Hansen had informed Tamara that their search of Judith's office had yielded nothing that could be construed as incriminating. Tamara had greeted this news with a quizzical frown. The irrepressible itch...that vague inkling that something was amiss...returned after this disclosure. With all that Judith had claimed to have done...it was virtually inconceivable that they could not find a single piece of tangible evidence to substantiate her confession.

Tamara closed her eyes and shook her head, adamantly refusing to open the complex internal dialogue this improbability invited.

2

Maria returned to the station, still reeling from her blunt dismissal by the man whom she believed she had been coming to love. The encounter had left her feeling ridiculous and pathetic, like a teenage girl who had been devastatingly rejected by her first infatuation.

She sat at her desk and glanced at the pile of files and the note of instructions. Sighing, she snapped up the note and set herself to the menial clerical task. A constant tide of humanity surged around her, comprised mostly of Tamara's agents, who suddenly seemed eager to complete their business and be on their way.

Feeling disconsolate and thoroughly defeated, Maria found herself envying them. They would leave the dreary town of Quinsett far behind and set off toward the next challenge...the next injustice to be set right. She would remain here... processing tedious paperwork and handing out traffic citations...alone and scarred...struggling to keep the inevitable bitterness at bay for as long as possible.

' _So this is what my beautiful daughter has come to...a resentful, defeated failure?'_ her father's voice demanded with obvious disdain. _'You have to save Quinsett...you have to save Raymond Saddler, Maria.'_

The mantra, when paired with the voice that had uttered it, was so absurdly incompatible that Maria could not help but spit a cynical laugh. That outburst garnered a puzzled glance from a passing agent, but Maria only shrugged and averted her eyes to her work.

Eduardo Cordova would never give his blessing to her entanglement with Raymond Saddler (even if he had not been a married man...a fact that would have earned her outright banishment). That her subconscious would conjure his voice to implore her to persist in her quest to save Saddler, spoke eloquently of how skewed her thinking had become.

' _You lament about the sterility of your future here, but do you really think you have a future if you can't solve the puzzle set for you by the monster down stairs?'_ That fundamental question materialized in her thoughts like clear air turbulence. It cut to the salient heart of the matter with a precision and subtlety of a chainsaw. Setting down her pen, she blinked and pressed her index finger to her full lips.

That refrain was not rendered invalid by Saddler's strident rejection. The prevailing realities of Quinsett's present situation remained essentially unchanged...even if she was the only one to acknowledge that essential truth.

' _What are you suggesting all of this means?'_ Huxley had asked her, when she had first approached him with her concerns. If ever there was a time for clarity of thought, it was now and so Maria set herself to the task of defining suspicions in clear and equivalent terms.

Judith Ranzman claimed that she had acted alone, but Maria dismissed this out of hand for a host of reasons, the most prominent of which was Judith's own admission that events in Quinsett had yet to be resolved.

Judith had told Saddler that she had mesmerized Veronica, setting her up as a possible dupe, but did Maria accept this unlikely explanation? Here, Cordova understood that she would have to be careful to separate cold and unbiased logic from the complex tangle of emotions she harbored for Saddler. Believing that she was considering this question through the lens of cold detachment, Maria found that she was inclined to reject Judith's tale.

Maria could not clearly qualify the nature of the relationship that existed between the two women, but intuition told Cordova that Veronica wielded the power between the pair.

Taking this last conclusion as an article of faith led Maria to theorize that Judith was deliberately assuming the blame in order to allow Veronica...or Jeniah Lightcrusher...free rein to complete her ritual.

The logical question then became _why go through the trouble of creating such an elaborate diversion?_ The answer could be found in the growing number of individuals who, at least unofficially, had made the leap across the divide of credulity, concluding that Jeniah had returned to weave her dark magic anew. Both Veronica and Judith had become cognizant of this threat, but with one brilliantly conceived ruse, they had brushed it from the playing board.

A still-enthralled Veronica had returned to play the role of confused and tearful victim, completely exonerated of all damning suspicions. Saddler, in his desperation to retrieve his lost love and life, would succumb to this deception whole-heartedly. If their original suppositions were correct, Jeniah would abduct one or both of Saddler's children sometime Thursday night. She would then take them to that abomination at the end of Ringgold Lane and sacrifice them to her perverse ritual...the shape and purpose of which remained a mystery.

This scenario resolved itself into her frantic mind in a searing flash of apocalyptic lightening and then inculcated itself into the soil of her total acceptance, germinating into horrifying certainty.

She shook her head, scarcely able to breathe in the rarefied air of this terrible epiphany.

Another thought blossomed in her racing mind then...an idea that exonerated Saddler from the burden of his earlier deplorable behavior; who could say what had actually transpired between Saddler and the nefarious Judith. It was not beyond the realm of plausibility that Raymond Saddler was every bit as beguiled as his precious Veronica.

This notion filled her with an unaccountable surge of elation and the mantra resonated in her mind again, now granted fresh exigency by this shift in perspective. _'You have to save Quinsett. You have to save Raymond Saddler.'_

On the heels of this moment of perfect clarity, reality crashed down on Cordova like a collapsing building. How exactly was she supposed to achieve this dramatic rescue of both the beleaguered town and the man who had thrust her aside with such brutal finality?

There was no one to whom she could turn and that left her hopelessly and utterly alone to give opposition to not one, but two monsters. The gravity of her predicament immobilized Maria with its enormity, but then she recalled the last thing Judith had said to her that morning. ' _Speak to Cameron Crane, Maria.'_

That rather perplexing suggestion made very little sense to a baffled Cordova. Cameron was far less likely to stand as serious opposition to Jeniah than Maria. She was also fairly confident that he had divulged everything he knew about her arcane ritual...so what would be gained by approaching him with her fears?

' _At least you wouldn't have to attempt to derail Jeniah's black ritual alone,'_ she thought, shivering at the daunting prospect of heading to the end of Ringgold Lane by herself.

' _It might actually come to that,'_ she cautioned herself, even as she offered a fervent prayer that it would not.

Seeing little other viable alternative, but placing little stock in the one she had, Maria decided to pay a visit to Cameron Crane once the shift was over.

3

An extremely anxious Raymond Saddler stood near the arrivals doors, with an equally nervous Barney in his arms, watching as the chartered Gulf stream Astra taxied to a halt less than fifty feet from where he stood.

Watching the sparkling new jet power down, Saddler was assailed by an unpleasant bout of surrealism. Here he stood, an unemployed ex-police officer, awaiting the arrival of a wife and children, who possessed the means to charter a private jet as easily as most people would hail a cab.

Even though they were a third of the way through their second decade of marriage, there were still stark occasions when Ray felt that his life was an illusion...that Veronica would awaken to recognize the absurdity of their union. When he was in the thrall of this bout of inadequacy, Saddler could not help but think that the demise of his marriage was inevitable.

As even Judith Ranzman had reminded him, he could never truly be worthy of the beautiful and erudite Veronica Ashcott.

Through all of these episodes of agonizing inadequacy, none had been as acute as the one he now experienced watching the hatch open and the stairs unfurl. His traitorous mind juxtaposed a breath-taking image of Maria Cordova as she had sat in his living room last Saturday night...her raven-haired, olive-skinned beauty nearly painful in its magnitude.

' _This is a woman of whom you could be worthy.'_ He grimaced at this unwelcome assessment and savagely forced the image from his mind.

Mrs. Quilling disembarked first, followed by Wendy and finally, Veronica, who carefully carried Danny on one hip. Seeing his family marching across the tarmac in the gorgeous early evening sunshine, Saddler was overcome by an intense love for his family and that feeling of anxiety vanished.

Wendy, upon seeing her father and the terrier in his arms, broke away from the others and ran to Saddler. Regarding Barney with unfettered excitement, she cried out, "Daddy, who is this?"

"His name is Barney and he is a dog in need of a home full of loving children," Saddler explained by way of introduction. "You wouldn't happen to know where we could find one, do you sweetheart?"

She fixed him with one of her _I'm not a child_ looks and remarked, "So he's ours...can I hold him?"

"Well, that will depend on mom, but of course you can hold him," Saddler replied and lowered the terrier to the floor, handing Wendy the leash. He watched with almost unbearable affection, as his daughter led the excited terrier over to the row of seats.

"Barney, you wouldn't happen to have met a cat named Smucky, would you?" he heard Wendy inquire of the terrier and drew a quavering breath. Mrs. Quilling smiled and nodded, though her pinched expression and tired eyes intimated that her time as the Saddler household's nanny/housekeeper was coming to an abrupt end. In light of all the drama of the last week, Saddler could hardly blame her.

Then Veronica was there, holding their son on her hip.

Saddler met her expectant gaze and gleaned that she was every bit as anxious as he felt. Those large green eyes, normally so radiant, were muted and in them, he saw a tentative hopefulness and poignant vulnerability. That simple expression of confusion and quiet need banished every doubt from Saddler's mind.

She held her right arm out to him and offered him a hesitant smile. Saddler crossed the distance to his wife and son in three brisk strides. Danny greeted his father with a wide-eyed grin of wonder and a mirthful toddler's chuckle. Saddler kissed the top of his head and then his eyes slid to Veronica's beautiful face that now appeared wan and drawn beneath the fluorescent lights of the terminal building.

"Are you all right, Ronnie?" he inquired in a voice roughened by emotion. By way of response, she threw her arms around his neck and drew him into a deep and ardent kiss. He capitulated fully to the passion of the moment, not particularly caring who might be watching. She was back...his Veronica...the immutable, indomitable force that had anchored his world for a good portion of his adult life.

She finally drew back and scrutinized his battered face, placing a long index finger on his lip, beside the ugly cut. "Ray, what in God's name happened to your face?"

Saddler offered her a reassuring grin and replied, "A work-related dispute...it doesn't matter anymore. You're back and that's all that matters."

She bestowed a tender kiss on his bruised cheek. "Take me home, Ray. We'll spend time with the kids and then we'll talk."

"There's nothing I'd rather do more," he breathed, intoxicated by her proximity.

She tilted her chin slightly, causing her shimmering mane of red hair to sway fetchingly. With a lecherous wink, she whispered, "Well, perhaps there is one more thing you might prefer."

A vivid and stirring image took shape in his mind, and Saddler's step quickened perceptibly.

4

Cameron sat on his back deck with his chair tilted back and his feet up on his railing. Glorious evening sunshine beamed down on the expanse of yellow grass and vibrant green weeds that served as his rear lawn.

As his gaze crept listlessly across the small patch of feeble vegetation, Cameron considered it to be a microcosm of his own sorry life. The rear fence had not been painted in several years and many of the boards were grey and black with dry rot. The deck, in which he sat, was in much the same condition.

' _How did you let it come to this?'_ he wondered dejectedly. He had locked himself in a cloister of pointless personal rebellion, while his life had disintegrated from neglect. To prove that he was somehow superior to and aloof from the self-condemned worthlessness of the material-obsessed world, he had allowed his entire life to fall to shambles.

' _So here you've meandered to another sorry juncture in your life...can you say with any degree of genuine conviction that it was worth it?'_ the voice of Stuart Crane demanded in his mind. _'Was the small victory that came with this expression of contempt really worth the cost, Cameron? Alone, in a dilapidated hovel, surrounded by constant reminders of your negligent indifference...is this a suitable recompense? Unloved...unwanted...with not a solitary person caring whether you live or die...is this how you envisioned the great denouement of your grand statement of defiance?'_

Cameron drew a despondent sigh and sipped his cola. For the vast portion of their adult life, Stuart had been remorselessly disdainful of his older brother, who he regarded as an embarrassing failure.

' _Looking at my present circumstances, it would be difficult to disagree,'_ he thought, wondering if Stuart would have derived any satisfaction from Cameron's realization.

Now Stuart was dead, the victim of a gruesome murder that was sickening and inconceivable to Cameron's pacifist soul.

"Cameron?" a voice inquired, startling Cameron into nearly fumbling his soda and tipping over in his chair. Turning, he found Maria Cordova, regarding him quizzically from a spot near his house.

She was dressed in faded blue jeans and open-toed black heels. Her blood red tee shirt was adorned with as gold dragon with fiery red eyes. Only the thin, stark white bandages marginally detracted from her stunning beauty. Startled by her unexpected appearance, Cameron was visibly affected by Maria's formidable presence...a presence that was every bit as substantial as Veronica's. Maria noticed his intense reaction and misconstrued its cause. Judith's viscious prediction manifested itself in her thoughts and she grimaced.

"Cameron, do you have a few moments? I'd like to talk and I did bring dinner." Maria held a large take out bag aloft and smiled disarmingly.

Cameron answered that smile with one of his own, grateful for the unexpected company. He gestured her up and she followed him into the kitchen.

"Sorry about the state of the place, Maria...I've let things go lately," Cameron mumbled.

Maria's expression remained impassive as her gaze swept over the dingy interior. It was evident to her that she was seeing the result of long term neglect. It touched and saddened her to think that this gentle and fragile man languished in this dreadful place. Somehow, the understanding that he was here of his own volition made his circumstances infinitely worse to consider.

"Cameron, how about you open a few curtains and I set the table and get the food ready? I need to speak to you about...about everything that's happened."

"Thank you Maria...for coming, I mean...I really could use the company," Cameron remarked softly and Maria could glean the vast and empty loneliness that dwelled behind his eyes.

' _He really does have such beautiful grey eyes,'_ she thought, rather disconcerted by her visceral reaction to the physical reality of how handsome Cameron was.

As Cameron sat, Maria ladled out bowls of pasta, cut a loaf of still-steaming garlic bread and poured two large glasses of mineral water. As he watched her move with a fluid grace that was dizzying to behold, his mind drew the automatic comparison with the previous week's visit from Veronica. The two women reminded Crane of graceful butterflies that had refined dignified elegance to an art form.

She placed his plate before him and inquired, "Cheese?"

He nodded, simply too mesmerized to speak. She sprinkled the small packet on with a flourish and seeing that glazed look in his eyes, laughed and said, "If this deputy thing doesn't pan out, I'll need something to fall back on. If I can get a job at an upscale place, I'd probably earn more anyway."

They both laughed, but when Maria served herself and took her seat on the opposite side of the small table, her expression had grown sober.

He sensed that she was struggling with something...a subject that she was reluctant to raise. Though a part of him dreaded her possible disclosure, he nonetheless smiled encouragingly and prompted, "Thank you for this, Maria...I can't tell you how much I appreciate this gesture."

Maria frowned and averted her eyes to her plate, feeling a twinge of guilt over her ulterior motivation. "Cameron, I won't deceive you by suggesting that I came here solely out of concern for your wellbeing. I need your help and though I can't imagine what you must be suffering right now...after what that vile bitch did to your brother...I have nowhere else to turn."

Maria's voice quavered perceptibly during that final admission of helplessness and Cameron offered soothingly, "It's okay, Maria...actually it feels...good to be needed for once."

Maria swallowed and raised her gaze, settling on Cameron's lean, angular face. "Judith has deliberately misled the police...her confession is a ploy. She's an unspeakable monster, but she is not the guiding hand in this nightmare."

"Nothing has really changed from the way we perceived the situation before Judith's confession, has it?" Cameron asked softly. "Jeniah still controls Veronica and intends to complete this ritual come Thursday night."

Maria merely nodded, both surprised and duly impressed by the mental acuity Cameron displayed in divining the situation. She provided and increasingly unsettled Crane with a selectively edited account of her two encounters with Judith, as well as her specific concerns with Ranzman's confession.

When she had concluded her story, Maria lapsed into an expectant silence and watched him massage the hollow of his right temple. "The first thing that comes to mind is a question; why would Judith reveal herself to you...why tip her hand after concocting this elaborate deception?"

Maria's brow furrowed, knowing that she'd been avoiding precisely this perplexing question. "I really have no plausible explanation, but I do understand your point. Why go to such elaborate lengths to convince Tamara that she's simply a deranged killer and then demonstrate to me that she's anything but? The only thing I can think of is that Judith Ranzman is a living repository of disdain. Perhaps this is just her way of expressing her total contempt for me...for my helplessness."

Cameron absorbed this theory thoughtfully, while absently picking at his rigatoni. Finally, he shook his head and set his fork aside. "That may be a part of it...but I don't think it was her entire motivation. She sent you to me specifically and again, I have to ask why?"

Maria shook her head, her dark eyes fixated on Crane's face. His normally dreamy expression had given way to a quiet intensity that was...arousing. "Again, I have no real explanation that makes any sense."

Cameron's eyes narrowed. "I think my two questions are facets of the same possible answer." When Maria looked at him questioningly, he elaborated, "We believe that Jeniah has somehow supplanted Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, though that term might not be quite accurate," Cameron suggested and looked to Maria for concurrence, which she provided with a thoughtful nod. Cameron's expression became quizzical and he placed his index finger on his lower lip. "Why not take that progression to the next logical level? Is it unthinkable that Judith may have been coerced into helping Jeniah...to taking the fall for the murders to shift the spot light away from the Jeniah Lightcrusher connection?"

Maria's expression darkened and she remarked, "That would somehow imply that she could be absolved for what she's done...to me...and to Stuart. I've peered into her eyes, Cameron and I can tell you that Judith Ranzman is the personification of pure evil. She certainly isn't a victim."

Cameron raised his hands in response to her vehemence. "That's not what I'm suggesting, Maria."

Cordova arched an eyebrow. "Then I guess I'm not following, Cameron."

"Let's agree to conclude that Judith Ranzman is a full-blown psychopath...the pertinent question then becomes; did she do Veronica's bidding because she chose to...or because she was forced to? The distinction is a significant one."

Grasping the topography of his thought pattern, Maria took up the thread of his notion. "So you're thinking that, if Judith was somehow coerced into helping Jeniah, she might be resentful and looking for a possible way to extricate herself from Jeniah's clutches?"

Crane nodded, an absent grin playing at the corners of his mouth. The two lapsed into a contemplative silence, eating their meals while Maria attempted to grapple with this possible new wrinkle in the weave. If Judith had been forcibly subjugated, her antipathy toward her oppressor could perhaps be exploited. Maria shook her head and massaged her left temple. "Okay, just say that Judith is tugging at Jeniah's leash and subtly attempting to undermine this misdirection...why would she have submitted in the first place? When she did this to me, I can assure you that there was no hesitation...no compunction whatsoever. Judith derived immense pleasure from the act."

Cameron winced at the thought that someone could experience delight in savage disfigurement. "If I had to speculate, I would think that it has to do with Jeniah's blood debt. Remember, Judith is the only living descendent of one of the six vigilantes who stopped Jeniah last time around. That should make her a prime target for revenge and yet she is very much alive. If what you and Saddler witnessed is any indication, she's been...augmented and may no longer be strictly human."

"When stated so bluntly, that sounds incredibly idiotic, doesn't it?" Maria wondered morosely.

Cameron merely shrugged. "Only if you consider it in a context which we both know at too well, is not longer really relevant. It seems to me that Judith is walking a very precarious tightrope...obliquely fomenting opposition to Jeniah's ritual, even while she clears a path that will allow it to happen." A pained expression clenched his features and he added, "I'm not sure what directing you to me was intended to achieve?"

Maria's crestfallen look confirmed that she was entertaining the same thoughts. She fetched a sigh, trying not to succumb to pessimism. "Maybe I should speak to Judith again...see if I can induce her into revealing more."

Cameron reacted to this with a horrified hiss. "Stay away from her, Maria," he admonished gravely. "Nothing good can come of trying to forge an alliance with a monster like Judith. Have you spoken to Saddler?"

Maria responded with a sour grimace and related the details of her earlier conversation. Watching the flashes of acute pain in her limpid eyes as she recounted how Saddler had rejected her concerns, Cameron gleaned the nature of her feelings for Quinsett's former sheriff. She pushed plate aside and offered Cameron a forlorn grin. "He wants her back and that desperate need has made him immune to any argument...no matter how compelling."

Cameron's soft reply was a mild reproof. "Maria, what other reaction could you reasonably expect?"

When an intense anguish flared in her exquisite eyes, twisting her features into a rueful scowl, he ventured, "You love him, don't you?"

Her first inclination was to brush this forward query off with a cursory denial, but the ingenuous gaze held no condemnation and she admitted simply, "Yes...I do."

Cameron nodded, managing to keep his expression neutral, knowing that nothing constructive would be gained by pointing out how the dynamics of all that might follow would be radically altered by this complex emotion. Instead, he inquired, "So where does this leave us?"

Dismayed, Maria shook her head. "I honestly don't know, but we have precious little time to find out. I'm going to speak to Huxley tomorrow and see if I can enlist his help."

Cameron's handsome face became pensive and when he spoke, his voice was both regretful and apologetic. "I can't hurt Veronica, Maria and I certainly can't do to her the things that my grandfather claimed were necessary to vanquish Jeniah permanently."

Maria reached across the small table and squeezed his hand in reassurance. "You don't have to Cameron...I will."

Crane pursed his lips, the echo of a similar conversation causing him to smile thinly. "Ray told me pretty much the same thing two days ago. Maria, Saddler is not going to let you harm Veronica...you understand that, right?"

Maria stiffened, unprepared to confront the horrible possibility that their next encounter could cast them in the role of foes. "I do, but I still have to try to stop Jeniah and I need your help."

"For what it's worth, you have it," Cameron vowed without the slightest hint of reluctance. In truth, he had long since come to believe that his volition in the matter had been unwittingly surrender long before. Maria thanked Cameron and they gravitated into the cramped living room, after clearing away the dinner dishes.

They spoke for several hours and Maria was surprised and delighted by the ease with which she unburdened herself to Crane. Cameron possessed a certain quality that seemed to invite a soul-baring honesty and she willingly shared the deepest feelings and carefully guarded emotions that Maria had long considered sacrosanct and private beyond any thought of sharing. Yet, while staring into those earnest grey eyes, these long sequestered emotions, both bitter and sweet, began to flow like water, leaving her feeling both drained and oddly content.

Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to discover that it was just after eleven. "Wow, I'm sorry Cameron...I'm usually not so expansive."

Cameron waved off her apology and favored her with a dreamy grin that Maria felt certain would melt the most vitiated of hearts. He walked her back to her car and they stood on the sidewalk, both staring up into the clear night sky.

Standing in Cameron's oddly hypnotic presence, Maria came to understand what might have attracted Jeniah (and possibly Veronica, as well) to this beautiful, enigmatic creature. He seemed to exude a certain tranquility...an infectious calming affect that assuaged her misgivings like a balm...as if he could banish pervasive anxiety through proximity alone. Maria could easily visualize becoming hopelessly addicted to that intoxicating affect...to simply abandon herself in the aura of his gentle nature and masculine beauty. Observing him from the corner of her eye as he stared contentedly up into the star-jeweled sky, Maria came to two startling conclusions; Cameron was genuinely blind to his potent magnetism and more unnerving still...she was dangerously susceptible to his strange allure.

Without shifting his gaze from the heavens, Cameron began to speak. "I guess it would be easy to misconstrue this as a disparaging insult, but please don't take it that way...you and I are very much alike. We've spent most of our adult lives struggling to define ourselves, while staving off the expectations and disapproval of those who should love us for what we are. Our situations are different, but the dynamic that shaped them is not."

He inclined his head toward her and beneath the muted halogen glow of the street lights, his grey eyes were focused with a crystalline clarity that caused her heart to flutter. "I can tell you from personal experience that it is a painful and excruciatingly lonely road through the fringes of expectation. In the end, that road may lead us to places we don't particularly wish to be and into circumstances that can only yield misery."

As Cameron spoke, his electrifying words ran rampant through her mind, bringing the prevailing contradictions and inherent sadness of her life into acute and terrible focus. Crane was smiling at her then, a fey parody of a joyful grin, fraught with infinite sorrow and vaguely-defined longing. "You and I have been cursed with the same affliction, Maria...we are the rare breed of people who cannot settle for being anything other than what we are...even if it comes at the exorbitantly heavy price of our happiness and comfort."

His next words reverberated with the terrible intimations of augury. "You and I have come to this moment by following similar and parallel paths that were always intended to lead us to this juncture...that dark confluence at the end of Ringgold Lane." He offered her a ghastly, knowing smile and concluded, "Whatever is meant to transpire there, you will emerge on the other side with a clear and precise understanding of who you are and through that awareness, you will attain perfect contentment."

The sheer efficacy of that unflinching declaration caused Maria to shudder and close her eyes. Her flesh rose into great hackles, despite the sultry warmth of the summer night. When this sensation faded, Maria opened her eyes to find Cameron regarding her with those dreamy, ingenuous eyes and that infectious and disarming smile.

Impulsively, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. Luxuriating in his scent and the suffusing heat of his strange aura...that dangerous sensation of absolute contentment that Maria feared might simply drown her. With incredible reluctance and a titanic exertion of will, Maria Cordova broke the kiss and retreated on rubbery legs. "I'll come by tomorrow, after shift, and we'll decide exactly how we're going to stop her."

Cameron's smile broadened and he nodded. Afraid of the maddening urge to succumb to Cameron's enchantment...to delve into the source of his mysterious attraction, Maria literally ran to her car and drove away.

Cameron stood on the sidewalk and stared after her, a bemused grin on his lean face, until long after the tail lights vanished into the darkness. A cold, dispassionate voice informed him that, with that one ardent kiss, his path to Jeniah Lightcrusher and their shared destiny had been irreversibly set.

Walking back to his sad, neglected house, Cameron discovered that the prospect no longer suffused him with atavistic dread. Though the specifics remained in shadow, as did the eventual outcome, he now understood who he was and what purpose he'd been fated to serve. Somewhere, the ghost of Mordecai Crane began to smile.

Chapter Eleven

1

At about the same time that Maria and Cameron Crane exchanged their impromptu kiss and forged their alliance, Raymond Saddler and Veronica were trying to come to terms with the latter's emancipation from Judith's thrall.

Veronica was seated behind her desk, while Saddler watched her from the leather wing back that sat in the corner of her office. To his own chagrin, he found himself searching her lovely, but pallid face for the slightest hint of deception. To his relief, he could not glean the most miniscule indication that the woman before him was anything other than the person he'd fallen so hopelessly in love with years before.

He could clearly hear the strain of bitter trauma echoing in her quavering voice, as she recounted what little she could recall of the past week's events.

"It started the first day you took office...a barely perceptible whisper. It was intermittent at first, but as the day wore on, it became an incessant drone. It's what compelled me to take that disastrous drive on Monday afternoon." Her limpid green eyes became clouded with confusion then. "I'm not exactly sure what happened after that. I seem to recall having a flat and struggling to change the tire, but now I'm not even certain that actually happened."

She paused, clearly troubled and disgruntled by her inability to recall.

"Ronnie, why didn't you mention something?" Saddler asked softly.

"What would I have told you, Ray...I've suddenly begun to hear voices and their compelling me to do things...though I can't quite remember what?" she retorted with the slightest hint of impatience. "Besides which, I imagined you had quite enough on your plate with that reporter's suicide falling in your lap on the first day."

Saddler managed to maintain a neutral mask, but internally, he could feel that implicit stab of inadequacy lance him to the core. She had spared him any mention of her disturbing episode out of concern for his own emotionally fragile nature. This refusal to even mention such a severe episode of disassociation spoke volumes about her opinion of his reliability.

"How do you think this drew you to Judith?"

Veronica shook her head, her face contorting at the mention of Ranzman's name. She shook her head, clearly perplexed by this aspect of her ordeal. "Again Ray, I can't really say with any degree of certainty." She placed the flat of her palms on her desk top and swept her troubled gaze over its polished wooden surface. Saddler was left with the distinct impression that she was actually peering back through time. "I vividly recollect working here last Tuesday and all at once, I had the idea to visit Judith Ranzman. I can't even say to what end, but the need to see her was exigent...irrepressible. Finally, I stopped fighting to resist and went to see her...if only to try and understand the compulsion."

Here, she stopped and drew a tremulous breath. Saddler could see the tears glistening on her cheeks. "Veronica, you don't have to do this tonight."

"I do!" she insisted vehemently. "Having this inside me...it's like a poison that I have to expel."

Her hands curled into tight fists and she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply in an attempt to regain her composure. "I can recall nothing specific about the meeting, other than being left with the unsettling impression that she was not especially surprised to see me."

She paused, her beautiful face sullen and drawn in the office's muted light. "Beyond that meeting, my memory is very fragmented...sporadic images that I'm not sure are even real memories. When I did seem lucid, it was almost as if I'd become a vicarious bystander in my own flesh. That happened with Cameron Crane...and again with Judith, on the night we spent together in that awful place."

Veronica looked directly at Saddler and her green eyes were alive with shame and revulsion. "The things she made me do with Cameron...and more revolting still, the disgusting things she subjected me to in that...that dungeon...were ineffable. I was fully conscious then, but helpless to resist. It was like participating in your own rape. She wanted to debase me...to humiliate me."

She fell silent and averted her eyes to the window and darkened Ringgold Lane beyond. "The rest of the week is a blur...a narcoleptic haze. Apparently, I functioned, but I have no recollection of how...or the things I did while in that state."

"Judith referred to it as a mind fracture," Saddler informed her quietly and Veronica reacted as though physically struck. Sensing that some form of elaboration was necessary, he attempted to explain the concept as he understood it. "The way she explained it to me, the conscious mind is broken into fragments. She drew on those fragments to have you behave in a way that would not rouse suspicion...even in those who knew you intimately."

"You're saying that she basically used me like a marionette?" she interjected as her body was accosted by another wave of revulsion. "How is that even possible?"

"Ronnie, I've witnessed things in the last week that have forced me to radically re-evaluate what is and what isn't possible," Saddler remarked. "I have no explanation for how she managed to do this to you...just as I can't say precisely what she is...other than a vile monster."

Veronica absorbed this in grim silence. "Why me? For that matter, why did she suddenly decide to free me?"

Saddler reluctantly recounted Judith's purported rationale for selecting Ronnie for her twisted experiment with mind-fracturing. "Judith is a psychopath, but an extraordinarily clever one. She wanted to set you up to take the fall, using the local legend of Jeniah Lightcrusher as a mean to facilitate her ploy. The most perplexing aspect of her incredible scheme was that she managed to inculcate the idea into your subconscious...to convince you that you had been possessed by this supposed witch."

Veronica's right hand appeared to stray to her mouth of its own accord. Aghast by the possibility, Ronnie asked tentatively, "Did I...hurt anyone?"

"No!" Saddler assured her quickly. "Judith admitted to every single murder and act of violence that has occurred in the last week. She did, however, go to great lengths to make it seem that you did. He then went on to detail the web of adroitly arranged false clues that Judith had planted...from the license number in Orlin's book to the name beneath Scallari's hotel room pillow."

She nodded thoughtfully and abruptly, her green-eyed gaze became uncomfortably intense and cold...like a raging winter storm. "And did you believe it, Ray...believe that I'd been possessed by this witch?"

In that unblinking regard, Saddler understood that there could be no room for equivocation or deception. Quietly, he nodded and admitted, "I did."

Her only immediate reaction was a slight flaring of her nostrils. She stood slowly and crossed to the window, where she stood with her back to him, staring out into the warm night.

"And this is why you rummaged through my desk...broke the locks...to find some piece of evidence to corroborate your theory?" she asked in a deceptively calm voice.

"Yes," Saddler confessed. When he had first come to recognize the extent of her disassociation...her stunning inability to recall the majority of her actions over the last week, it had been his intention to insulate her from many of the heinous aspects of her aberrant behavior. He now realized that to do so could well spell the emphatic undoing of everything that had been returned to him. He described the incident with the ward that had been set to protect her desk. Then, as delicately as he could manage, Saddler recounted the telephone conversation with Jeniah on Monday morning.

Still gazing through the bay window, Ronnie stiffened as Saddler related how he had nearly been maimed by the ward. When he spoke of how she had threatened to kill the children if he attempted to interfere in the ritual...and her intention to sacrifice one during its enactment...Veronica recoiled and uttered an anguished gasp of horror.

Turning gracelessly, she sagged against the window casing and inquired, "I actually said that I intended to kill either Danny or Wendy?"

"Yes, but it wasn't you speaking," Saddler reminded her adamantly. "Nobody is capable of loving their family more than you do."

"Nonetheless, you would have killed me had I returned to Quinsett," she declared flatly, unmoved by the expression of pure misery that twisted Saddler's face.

"Ronnie, I...I thought you were gone," he mumbled, with a wretched, pleading edge in his voice. "Jeniah claimed that she had permanently shattered your mind...broken it into fragments and evicted you from your own body. Given everything that was at risk...Wendy and Danny...how could I not take her at her word?"

Veronica did not reply, only continued to stare at him with that penetrating gaze. After an interminable moment, she nodded slightly. With that tacit gesture of acceptance, Saddler was able to breathe again.

Her next stunning declaration pulled that rug of equilibrium out from under his feet. "I want to see her."

Saddler shook his head, thinking that he'd misheard. "I'm sorry...what?"

"I want to speak to Judith Ranzman," she remarked, her tone volatile and intransigent. "I want her to explain to me why she went to such lengths to destroy my life."

Saddler sprang to his feet and came to stand before his glowering wife, mortified by the suggestion. "Ronnie, absolutely not...there is no way I'm letting you get anywhere near that woman!"

"If I want to see her, Raymond, I don't actually think you can prevent it," she retorted and Saddler recognized the obstinate set of her jaw.

He gripped her shoulders and squeezed slightly as her eyes widened and slid to his hands, clearly perturbed by the gesture. "Ronnie, I won't pretend to understand what it must have been like to have suffered through your ordeal, but this woman is dangerous beyond the ability of words to convey."

Veronica frowned and averted her eyes, that infamous Ashcott intransigence rearing its ugly head. The prospect of Veronica actually coming face to face with Judith was simply inconceivable and so Saddler persisted. "Ronnie, you have an indomitable spirit, but still Judith usurped control of your mind with ease. She released you, but it would be foolhardy to risk giving her a reason to change her mind. Whatever Judith Ranzman might prove to be, she is volatile and extremely dangerous. Besides, what would be gained by provoking her?"

"I'm not afraid of Judith Ranzman," she hissed stubbornly.

"You should be...I certainly am. She warned me that she could reclaim you any time the inclination moved her...and I believe it. Please Ronnie...why tempt fate?"

"Why...why did she let me go, Ray?" she asked in a confused, beseeching voice.

Saddler responded with the one explanation that he privately found to be the most terrifying. "She told me that she was releasing you because her work in Quinsett was done...and that she had grown to care for you, while you were under her thrall."

The color drained from Veronica's face and her entire body shook in a spasm of pure revulsion. Though his expression remained neutral, Ray was both delighted and relieved by her horrified reaction. She studied him for several moments, her countenance grave and then observed quietly, "You believe that she's still dangerous...that she might still pose a threat to this town?"

"Yes," he allowed, "But that isn't my problem anymore. My chief concern...my only priority is keeping you and the children safe. Others will have to devise a method of dealing with whatever type of monster Judith might eventually prove to be. I just want us to leave this town behind."

Veronica pursed her lips and that slightly truculent glint gave way to a radiant smile. "Then that's exactly what we'll do...put this dreary backwater behind us. I'll begin making the arrangements, including finding an agent to sell this house." Her tone became solemn and resolute then, and she added, "We're going to go back to Los Angeles, but we're going to start living in a manner that is in keeping with my means. No more pretending to be another middle class family then...it's a kind of reverse hubris I won't tolerate anymore. I want my children...and my husband to benefit from my wealth...to have the advantages that I'm able to give them. That's a condition that's strictly non-negotiable, if you're sincere about putting this behind us and moving on."

Saddler's gaze fell on his hands, which he let fall away from her firm shoulders. Forced to confront the realities of his personal situation, a dejected Saddler admitted, "I'm finished as a police officer, Ronnie. After this debacle, I would be fortunate to find a job as a security guard."

Veronica firmly gripped his chin and raised his head until their eyes were level. In a tone that would brook no contradiction, she declared, "Then you'll come to work for me and store your foolish male pride."

He tilted his head and eyed her quizzically. "Work for you...what possible value could I be to your business?"

"Before we decided to move to Quinsett, I'd been tinkering with the idea of expanding the scope of my galleries...adding more facilities and offering more expensive and exclusive pieces, both for exhibit and private sale. My vision for this project is extremely ambitious, but Arthur trusts my instincts and has agreed to contribute a substantial stake in the venture."

"I'm still not seeing how I would fit into those plans?" a perplexed Saddler interjected.

"The art world, for all its veneer of civility, is a ruthless, cutthroat business. That is especially true once you gravitate to the more rarefied levels of the business. Until now, my galleries have utilized fairly low-end, cursory security measures. This new venture will require far more elaborate systems...and that's where you come in. I want you to design, implement and oversee the maintenance of the security aspect of my galleries. I am fully aware that the learning curve will be significant, but you're a capable man. In truth, this is simply a different form of policing. Instead of reacting to crimes, the emphasis is shifted to anticipation and prevention."

She fell silent, awaiting his reaction in a manner that clearly suggested that there was only one acceptable response. She was offering him the opportunity to salvage his dignity and though he found the prospect daunting, he could already sense the burgeoning eagerness to plunge into the endeavor. "Will I have to call you boss lady?"

Her smile became positively feral. "Only when we're alone."

"Then I'm in...and thank you for giving me the chance," he whispered sincerely, his voice choked between abjection and gratitude.

' _Rescued by my daughter again,'_ he could almost hear a disgusted Arthur Ashcott mutter, but smothered the thought, knowing that it could only lead to resentment and bitterness.

Veronica kissed him suddenly, her luminous green eyes flashing. "It's been a long, trying day, Ray. I'm anxious to be in bed."

Saddler nodded his agreement and remarked, "It has been at that. You have no idea how happy...how relieved I am to have you back."

Veronica reacted to this with a perplexing frown, the intimation of acute anger slipping across her face like a wind-driven cloud. Then, as quickly as it had surfaced, the shadow was gone.

"I'll see you upstairs...don't be long," she intoned, her voice husky as she extended the not so subtle invitation.

Then she was gone like a wraith, leaving a thoroughly beguiled Saddler staring after her.

2

Saddler stood beneath the shower head, eyes closed and face lifted into the warm spray, feeling his anxiety wash away along with the day's grime.

Somehow, miraculously, it appeared that he might emerge from this nightmare...this slippery precipice...more or less unscathed.

' _Why did you not mention the abomination at the end of Ringgold Lane...or the Stryges, Ray?'_ Maria's voice inquired softly, challenging him to consider things that he would much prefer to ignore.

He was still laboring to banish this unwelcome question, when the glass door to the shower enclosure opened and Veronica stepped into the tiled shower.

"Did I mention that I wasn't actually sleepy...and much too impatient to wait," she murmured as she glided forward and pressed herself against him. He could feel her erect nipples and firm breasts against his upper back. The slow sway of her hips across his ass was maddening...intoxicating. She gently kissed the angle of his neck as her arms encircled his waist and her long fingers found his rapidly rising manhood.

"Everything is going to be okay," she cooed seductively. "I'm going to take care of everyone...starting with you."

She gently turned him to face her and he inhaled sharply, still amazed by her beauty, as though beholding the lush splendor of her nubile body for the first time.

Peering unblinkingly into his eyes, Veronica sank to her knees before him and placed the flat of her palms on his thighs. She brushed her cheek against his up thrust erection, uttering a throaty laugh when he gasped.

Through his ragged breathing, Saddler could not recall her having been so brazen...so wanton in her lovemaking.

Then she took him in her mouth and all such considerations vanished in an eruption of heat and animal sensation.

3

Much later in the wee hours of the morning, when Veronica's insatiable appetite had been sated, the two lay naked together, basking in the post-coital haze. Veronica was curled against him, with one long, shapely leg draped over his thighs.

"Among other things, there'll be a good deal more of that in our future...so be prepared," she advised him tartly. Saddler feigned a groan and they both shared a laugh, but an instant later, she raised herself up on one elbow and regarded him with a solemn intensity that was chilling. "There is one other thing that I haven't mentioned."

Saddler glanced at her questioningly, sensing that she was about to impart something of consequence. Her expression became inscrutable and she intoned ominously, "Judith told me about your...relationship with Maria Cordova...though it might be more accurate to say that she bludgeoned me with it, deriving tremendous personal satisfaction from your...indiscretion."

Saddler started to object...to protest his innocence...but Veronica placed a long index finger on his lips and shook her head sternly. "Not a word of denial or rationalization...true or not, I don't want to hear a thing about it. If you fully accept and agree to what I'm about to say, there'll be no need to speak of this again."

She paused and he signaled his acquiescence with a tight nod. She leaned forward until their faces were only inches apart. Her green eyes appeared to span the limits of his vision like twin suns. "Whatever existed between you and Maria Cordova...it's done. If I find you've even spoken to her...simply in passing on the street...we're done. I will take the children away and then I will use my resources to completely break you. I've given myself to you completely over the years...in every way I can...and I will not be repaid with humiliation. Do you understand me, Ray?"

Dumbfounded by the uncompromising ultimatum, Saddler merely nodded. "I do."

Veronica smiled ebulliently and kissed him hungrily on the mouth. "Then we can put this behind us and move on. We've always been happy, but I think our future will make this past happiness seem like a pale shadow."

She glanced down along their intermingled limbs, her hand traveling down to his flaccid penis. "Now perhaps you can send me off to sleep with one last treat."

Even as his cock responded to her expert ministrations and he moved dutifully to take her, Saddler could hear a subtle whisper of dread resonating in the darkened corners of his mind.

Chapter Twelve

1

Maria Cordova awoke with a cry, though whether her cry was one of terror or exuberance, she could not say with any degree of confidence. She sat in the pre-dawn darkness with her breathing coming in great gasps and her chest heaving.

Her night had passed in a disjointed flow of convoluted, wildly bizarre dreams, many tinged by a vivid eroticism that was as exciting as it was bewildering. In one dream, she had made love to Raymond Saddler with wild abandon. In another, it had been Cameron Crane who had been her partner in unbridled lust. In one particularly arousing fantasy, she'd been willingly ravaged by both.

"You really do need to get laid, Maria," she muttered shakily.

As powerful (and deliciously titillating) as those dreams had been, it had been the final nocturnal drama that had left her gasping like a fish out of water.

In this startlingly lucid dreamscape, Veronica Ashcott had been advancing upon her as Maria, regaled in her deputy uniform and pushed up against her cruiser, pointed her service weapon at the menacing woman. Veronica's beautiful face was twisted into a mask of pure malevolence and hatred. Her hands were hooked into claws, but instead of manicured nails and long, elegant fingers, ten curving, razor sharp blades gleamed beneath the silver moonlight.

Dispensing with the concept of fair warning, the dream-Maria had emptied her entire clip into the snarling horror. The first three shots had staggered Veronica, but somehow she remained vertical and kept coming forward. The subsequent rounds caught her high in the chest and sent her reeling backward. She swayed precariously for a moment and then toppled onto her back like a felled tree.

Cautiously, dream Maria had approached her fallen adversary, only to discover that Veronica was still alive. Her exquisite green eyes were clouded with pain and her generous mouth worked silently.

She then turned to Cameron Crane and gestured him forward. Voice rough with exigency, she prompted, "Now Cameron...before she dies!"

Cameron merely stood there, a moon-eyed expression of paralyzing horror on his lean face as he gaped at the fallen woman. A two headed axe hung, forgotten, in his right hand and his head shook in an unconscious gesture of negation.

It took but one brief glance to know that the requisite action was far beyond Cameron Crane's delicate sensibilities.

Gritting her teeth, Maria strode over to Crane while holstering her weapon. She gently took the axe from his hand and squeezed his left shoulder. "It's all right, Cameron...I'll do it. Just turn away."

She quickly returned to the dying entity and placed her boot on Veronica's bloody chest. The woman peered up at Cordova through fully aware and terror-stricken eyes. As Maria hefted the axe above her head, a huge, reptilian grin spread over her face like oil over water and...

She had come awake before delivering that final lethal blow and now wondered if that could be construed to be a sign of augury. Maria reached for the bedside light and then sat, breathing heavily, and tried to decipher the meaning of that ghastly grin.

It occurred to her that she would have to break her promise to Cameron...she would have to speak to Judith again.

2

As is always the case in the aftermath of tragedy and tribulation, those who survived often sought an expeditious return to normalcy. The blacker the ordeal, the more compelling was the desire to return to the comfortably familiar...to rise from the detritus of disaster and darkness and resume the comforting everyday ritual of life.

The town of Quinsett was no different in that respect. Once the shocking news of Judith Ranzman's guilt had been assimilated and the perceived threat gone, the townspeople moved quickly to take up the threads of their small town lives. None was more eager than Ira Silver. On Wednesday morning, he ordered an immediate lifting of the dusk until dawn curfew. He then met briefly with Albert Huxley and his nephew Art to settle the transfer of Sheriff's duties, which would occur one month hence. Ira then gave Albert permission to hire three new deputies from the reserve list, to bolster the local contingent.

He made the spontaneous decision to allow the barrier on Ringgold Lane to remain in place. Silver's reasoning was that the gate would serve to deter thrill seekers from ferreting out the remains of the old woman's crumbling shack. Silver was cognizant of the fact that, with the death and demise of the other members of the group, he was left as Quinsett's single most powerful citizen. Ira was not certain how this new governing reality could be employed to his advantage, but there would be time to explore that in the coming months...once the dust had settled.

On the inexorable march to normalcy, three funeral services took place during the day. The funerals of Raymond Dwyer and Lynda Verin were well attended rituals of grief and remembrance. Unloved and forgotten, Ethan Rannout had been interred in the potter's field section of the Eternal Lights Cemetery...at the town's expense. He was consigned to the void, not three rows over from where the bones of Jeniah Lightcrusher moldered.

For the families of those who had met with horrendous, brutal ends in the last week, this day marked the first painful step along the road to acceptance and subsequent healing. For some, such as the parents of Alma Riesen, theirs would be a road with no ending. They would be harried and dogged by the immutable pain of their loss until the end of their days.

Still, Quinsett eagerly embarked on the journey of loss and reconciliation and returned to its mundane and comfortable life, with a collective sigh of relief.

3

A surly and out of sorts Tamara Hood entered the station at just past nine o'clock, having overslept her alarm for the first time in memory. She bid farewell to one of her teams that would be returning to Seattle this morning. She then entered her office...expropriated office...and slumped into the chair, feeling unaccountably disconsolate.

' _What the hell is wrong with you girl?'_ she chastised herself. She had all but put the wraps on arguably the biggest murder case in state history and yet, she found herself feeling maudlin, like a child that had lost her pet.

Morosely, she scooped up the collection of messages, though rummaging through them did little to brighten her mood. The prosecutor would be in this morning at eleven, to discuss formal charges and arraignment. Judith's lawyer would also make an appearance today to meet with his client.

The third message...labeled FYI by the vaguely irritating woman behind the dispatcher's counter...piqued her interest. Olympia police had forwarded a courtesy notification to inform the locals that James Crimmon, former Catholic Priest, had gone missing from a senior chronic care facility, sometime yesterday morning.

In addition to being the local Catholic parish priest for nearly forty years. Crimmon had been amongst the six men who had purportedly killed Jeniah Lightcrusher fifty years ago. The vexing inkling that had been troubling her since the moment Judith had signed her confession, now bloomed into an urgent drone.

' _Coincidence my ass!'_ Tamara grumbled irritably as she picked up the telephone and asked Mariam to place a call to the facility director. She waited impatiently, a torrent of confused and nebulous ideas rolling through her mind like rogue bowling balls. Finally, a woman's voice filled the line and announced herself as Doctor Abigail Borden. When agent Hood identified herself and the purpose of her call, the doctor's tone became guarded. With a suggestion of irritation, she remarked, "I've provided everything germane to the Olympia Police, agent Hood."

"I understand, Doctor Borden," Tamara replied with a cheer she did not feel. "This incident may have a tie to our situation here in Quinsett, so if you'd indulge me, I'd like to ask a few questions, if only for the sake of clarification."

"Very Well," the doctor replied, clearly displeased. Yet, Tamara discerned another emotion capering beneath the brusque demeanor...carefully concealed disquiet.

"I've read the preliminary account, so I won't ask you to go over everything...but I did want to confirm that father Crimmon could not have left the facility on his own?" Tamara asked.

"Most definitely not...father Crimmon had been confined to a wheelchair for the better part of three years. In addition to this, he suffered from advance dementia and was no longer cognizant of his surroundings," Borden reported, her lingering confusion evident.

Tamara scanned her message, which stated that the window had been found open and Crimmon's wheelchair was empty, which implied that Crimmon had been carried off by someone who had entered his room from the inside.

"Doctor Borden, does your facility maintain a visitor's log?" Tamara asked.

"Of course...meticulously," Borden confirmed, "for the security of both the residents and the staff. All visitors must sign in at the central reception desk."

"Did father Crimmon receive any visitors the day of his disappearance?"

"No," Doctor Borden replied at once. "That was the first thing I referenced when I was apprised of his disappearance. Like many of the residents of this facility, father Crimmon had no family and very rarely received visitors." The doctor paused and Tamara could hear her rummaging through pages. "Oddly enough, he did receive a visitor just last Friday, but I'm technically not at liberty to disclose this type of information."

"Doctor Borden, there is a very good possibility that James Crimmon has been removed from your facility by people who intend to do him serious harm...or worse. I'm going to appeal to you not to aggravate this situation by forcing me to go through the time consuming process of arranging for a warrant," Tamara persisted urgently.

There followed a drawn out silence and finally Borden revealed, "Cameron Crane."

Tamara tightened her grip on the phone for fear that it would slip through her suddenly wooden fingers. Despite the braying of discordant and agitated voices in her mind, she managed, "Doctor Borden, I'm going to be dispatching a team of agents to your facility shortly. They will need to interview any staff member who may have had contact with father Crimmon, immediately prior to his disappearance."

Doctor Borden agreed, though with obvious displeasure. As she hung up, Tamara became acutely aware of the whirl and hum of her internal investigative machinery as it began to cycle.

' _Why aren't you letting this go, Tamara?'_ she inquired as she rose from her seat and headed toward the bullpen in search of agent Hansen. _'This deal is sealed and done, so why the dogged persistence?'_

' _Because it really isn't done, is it?'_ she thought irritably and realized that this conviction had been the source of her festering dissatisfaction with the ostensible conclusion of this case. As she approached Hansen, who was in the midst of preparing to depart for Seattle, Tamara declared, "Mark, there's been a change of plans. I'm afraid you're going to be taking a detour on the way home."

Hansen raised a speculative eyebrow and Tamara apprised him of the situation surrounding father Crimmon's disappearance. Hansen absorbed this with a knowing grimace and inquired, "You're thinking there's a concrete connection with this investigation?"

Tamara pursed her lips ruefully. "Given Judith's full confession, it's hard to see how, but my instinct is telling me not to discount the possibility."

Hansen nodded dutifully. He'd worked with Tamara on numerous cases and had come to develop a healthy respect for her intuition. She gave instructions regarding protocol and sent him on his way, not certain if this excursion would ultimately prove futile.

She was about to return to her office when Huxley hailed her from a spot near the dispatcher's station. Albert sauntered across the station floor, with a message slip extended before him like a greeting card. "A message from the medical examiner...he said that he'd called a bit earlier, but he's extremely anxious to talk to you."

Hood frowned as she accepted the message slip, correctly surmising that he'd discovered something of interest while examining the bodies recovered from the grounds of Judith's estate. "I'll call him back now. Oh yes, the prosecutor will be in at eleven, Albert, and you'll have to sit in on the meeting."

Huxley reacted to this news with a sour frown of discomfort, but offered Tamara a nod of resigned acceptance. Still grateful that she was here to run point on these liaison duties, Huxley asked amiably, "You must be anxious to get back to the city?"

Tamara's answering gaze was unexpectedly cold and austere. "Actually, I'm going to request that my presence here be extended." She made a lavish gesture with the message slip and disclosed, "I have a strong sense that this situation is...more complicated than it appears to be."

Huxley frowned quizzically, shifted his gaze to deputy Cordova's desk and remarked irritably, "You've been talking to Maria then?"

Albert immediately regretted his clumsy verbal faux pas. Tamara's severe scowl was unnerving and she demanded, "Why exactly would I have spoken to deputy Cordova, Sheriff?"

Huxley cursed himself as a bumbling fool, but seeing there was little point in attempting to deceive the perceptive Hood, admitted simply, "Maria came to me with concerns over Judith's confession. I thought perhaps she'd mentioned them to you as well."

"And you didn't share her misgivings with me because..." Tamara prompted gruffly.

Albert shook his head sheepishly. "I honestly didn't think there was a point...considering Judith's confession."

Huxley braced himself for an acerbic down dressing, but Hood merely frowned icily and reminded the veteran, "I'm not the enemy here, Albert. I only want to make your town safe again. Now, if it's amenable to you, I'd like to discuss her concerns with your deputy this afternoon."

He agreed and Tamara stalked off, leaving a thoroughly flustered Huxley in her wake.

4

Back in her office, Tamara shook her head in vexation, lamenting on the onerous burden of working with plodding dullards. From their few encounters, Hood gleaned that Maria Cordova was intellectually more nimble than the rest of the local constabulary combined. That Albert would discount her concerns out of hand was both chauvinistic and discouraging.

Sighing, she picked up the telephone and returned the county medical examiner's call, unaware that his disclosure would irreversibly alter her trenchant perceptions of the world's governing realities. Hood's first impression of medical examiner was that he was yet another in a long procession of eccentric corpse minders that she had been forced to deal with over the course of her career. Yet, as he revealed the reason for his call, Tamara came to understand that his disquiet was justified.

"Do you think it's likely that forensics will help us identify any of the bodies?" she asked without any real optimism.

"Other than Deirdre Wilkins, I'd say that it would be highly doubtful. Five of the seven were very probably killed by blunt force trauma to the cranium and facial area," he disclosed and then lapsed into a dreary, brooding silence.

Tamara gleaned that he was debating whether or not to share his next bit of information, which she guessed was the primary motivation for his call to begin with. In an attempt to compel him to do so, she prodded, "Interesting...though not particularly helpful. I take it there's more?"

"Yes, there is...but I'm not really certain what context I should try to frame this in. It's...extremely puzzling," Davies remarked vaguely and then retreat into silence once more. Beneath the eminent confusion, Tamara could detect the presence of another stronger emotion...fear. At last, the M.E. gathered himself with a tremendous breath and plunged ahead. "There is no way to phrase this that won't sound irrational, so I'll be blunt...fresh human blood was found around the mouths of all eight corpses. Snippets of human flesh...also recently consumed...were found between the teeth of all eight corpses. I'm talking about pieces of skin, fatty tissue and even viscera."

"Viscera?" a flabbergasted Hood echoed.

"Intestinal tissue," the M.E. elaborated.

"I know what it is!" Hood snapped churlishly. "How is that possible?"

"Well, logically speaking...it isn't," Davies stammered uncertainly. "Be that as it may, all eight corpses have evidence of very recent mastication."

Tamara massaged the bridge of her nose to quell her anxiety. "Any theory on how this might have happened?"

"None that could even remotely be construed as plausible, when you consider that the bodies were exhumed from undisturbed ground. There is no other way to qualify this...it simply isn't possible."

Tamara absorbed this last remark with an escalating feeling of primal dread. Something occurred to her then and she inquired, "Is there any way this blood or tissue could be used to conduct a comparative DNA test?"

"Sure, if you had a comparative sample. Are you implying that you may know where or who this material may have come from?"

Hood ignored the question, instead posing one of her own. "Are you equipped to conduct this test, if I could provide a sample? Exactly what would be required?"

"Yes, I can run a basic DNA test. As to what would be required...blood would obviously be preferable. Hair or saliva would do if you can't obtain blood. Can I ask what you're thinking, agent Hood?"

"No...at least, not yet," she retorted sternly, dazzled as her pragmatist's mind raced over dark and unfamiliar territory. "I'll have a sample to you later this afternoon and I would need the results ASAP. This stays between you and I...is that clear?" she demanded adamantly. "You're to discuss this with no one else...including members of the Quinsett Sheriff's Department. Test results will also come directly to me and me alone...understand?"

"Of course...yes," Davies replied, thoroughly nonplused by Tamara's vehemence.

"One other thing...none of these bodies is to be released until I've given clearance to do so. If anyone has an issue with this, direct them to me."

Tamara rang off and summoned her remaining investigative team to her office, struggling to keep her rampant thoughts and emotions in check.

Agents Armand and Cellars eyed each other warily as they stood before Hood, who seemed lost in thought. When she finally shifted her amber-eyed regard to the pair, the tension in her expression was palpable. "I want you to go to Stuart Crane's home and gather a set of forensic samples. Hair would probably be the most obvious, but see what else you can uncover. Be thorough, but be quick, because time is of the essence here. After you've collected the samples, run them over to the county M.E., and then check back with me."

"Will someone be there to grant us entry?" agent Cellars inquired.

Tamara shook her head. "Unlikely...force entry. I'll take full responsibility."

The two men exchanged puzzled and uncertain glances, but nodded and headed off without giving voice to their concerns over this flagrantly illegal breech of protocol.

' _What exactly are you thinking here, Tamara?'_ her internal monitor demanded shrilly. The question was valid enough, but Hood refused to ponder it...beyond the inchoate notion that Judith had lied about the manner in which she'd disposed of Stuart Crane.

To explore the progression of her thinking beyond this was to entertain considerations that she was not yet prepared to explore.

Instead, she picked up the telephone and called her superior in Seattle, swiftly formulating the justification that would allow her to remain in this increasingly disturbing town for the indefinite future.

Chapter Thirteen

1

As Maria labored through the gathering piles of departmental paperwork, she could not help but notice the increasingly frenetic buzz of activity surrounding Tamara Hood. She watched peripherally as Hood dispatched two teams with a glaringly obvious sense of urgency.

' _Something of consequence has transpired,'_ she told herself, while she furtively scrutinized Tamara's intense face, as Hood spoke to Albert in the bullpen area. After their conversation concluded, Huxley drifted over to her desk, appearing uncharacteristically dour as he informed her, "Agent Hood wants to speak to you about Judith's confession."

"Albert, this was between you and me. There is no way I can share much of this with Tamara," Maria commented, not bothering to conceal her displeasure.

Huxley accepted this reproach with a shrug of embarrassment. "No denying that I put my foot in it, Maria. Even if you confine the discussion to the inconsistencies in Judith's testimony, it could probably be enough. Whatever else she might be, Tamara Hood is quick on the uptake...and I'm guessing that she'll be receptive."

"She seems especially wound up today," Maria observed. "This flurry of activity suggests that something is happening. Did she mention anything?"

Huxley shook his head. "Nothing specific, but she did say that she now thinks that the situation in Quinsett is more _complex_ than she first imagined." Albert's brow furrowed and he added, "Mariam mentioned that Tamara received a message from Olympia PD regarding James Crimmon."

When Maria greeted this news with a blank stare, Huxley elaborated, "Father Crimmon...vanished from a chronic care facility in Olympia sometime yesterday morning."

"Mia Madre!" Maria exclaimed between clenched jaws. "Cameron told Saddler and me that Crimmon was confined to a wheelchair and barely lucid. This can't be coincidence, Albert," she concluded fiercely.

Huxley nodded his grim acquiescence. "Probably not, and I doubt that agent Hood thinks so either." He peered at Maria then, his eyes narrowing into speculative slits. "That's really what your concern boils down to, isn't it...that idea that Judith didn't act alone? You believe that someone is out there and finishing her work, while we engage in an orgy of self-congratulatory back-slapping."

"Basically," Maria confirmed simply. Huxley absorbed this with a sigh of dejection, cursing his damnable optimism for allowing him the small hope that this nightmare was actually over.

"I'm dreading the answer, but I might as well lay all the cards on the table. I'm guessing that you still believe Saddler's wife is the villain in this horror show?"

"Jeniah Lightcrusher is controlling Veronica Ashcott-Saddler like a Marionette, to put it succinctly," Maria amended, her incisive, unblinking gaze never leaving Huxley's troubled face. "Ray will never accept that and neither will Hood, but you and I don't have the luxury of blind denial. You and I and Cameron are the only ones standing between Jeniah and whatever she has in store for Quinsett come midnight tomorrow."

Confronted with this unwelcome burden, Huxley recoiled from Maria's unequivocal declaration as though slapped. Still, the truth of Cordova's contention was incontrovertible...they were all that stood between that vile bitch and what Albert assumed was her thirst for vengeance. He sat on the edge of her desk and drew the back of his hand across his mouth in a savage gesture of consternation. Eyes ablaze with torment, Huxley admitted candidly, "Maria, I have no idea what to do here...this is one fuck of a mess!"

Maria nodded her head in commiseration and then placed her hand over Huxley's and squeezed reassuringly. "I think perhaps I do, Albert. Will you meet with Cameron and me tonight...it would be good if we could compare notes."

Huxley's expression was one of undisguised anguish, but he managed a wan nod. He felt woefully inadequate and even contemptible for allowing Maria to absorb this terrible burden...but he also experienced a private sense of relief.

' _This sorry town is mired in a spot of trouble if all that stands between it and ruin is a rookie deputy, a dilapidated old man and the town sad sack,'_ he thought with no small measure of depredation.

Just then, the prosecutor strode into the office in a blaze of smug, self-importance and harried impatience. Huxley cursed softly and stood, whispering, "All right, we'll meet tonight at Cameron's."

Huxley fell into step with the prosecutor and they both entered Hood's office without the basic courtesy of a knock.

Maria found herself alone in the suddenly silent common area. She glanced down at her hands to find that they were trembling like saplings in a cold wind. Her body was reacting viscerally to the task of confronting Judith again. Inhaling deeply and slowly, Maria rose and again descended into the monster's lair.

2

Despite the summer heat and cloying humidity, the holding area was oddly cool and dry. As Maria opened the door and stepped inside, the strange chill burrowed deeply into her bones and caused her to shiver violently.

Upon seeing Cordova, Judith stood and appeared to float lightly over to the bars, regarding the approaching deputy with an inscrutable expression on her lovely face.

"My pet mouse strides forth with clear purpose," she declared artfully. Maria came to a halt before the bars, puzzled by this strange utterance. She needed but one glance at Judith's lean, angular face to realize that the woman had undergone...or was still undergoing...a radical metamorphosis. Gone was the constant expression of arrogant condescension and disdain. In its place, Judith's dark eyes shone with a keen intelligence and a subtle intimation of unimaginable power.

Trying to disguise her disquiet with flippancy, Maria intoned, "Now Judith, I thought we were past this mouse thing. You promised that you would call me Maria."

"Indeed I did...you have my apologies, Maria," Judith declared with mock solemnity and offered Cordova a formal bow. When she straightened, Judith's gaze settled on Maria's bandaged face. Her expression became sly as she remarked, "I believe that I can heal that exquisite face of yours...restore it to its former glory."

Maria's heart leapt in her chest at this suggestion, but she managed to maintain a façade of neutrality. Ignoring the tantalizing remark, she said, "I need to speak to you...I need your help."

"Unimpressed by my egalitarian gesture of recompense?" Judith quipped and then shrugged her shoulders in indifference. "You want my help? How could I not be intrigued?"

Gathering her wavering courage, she demanded resolutely, "I need you to help me stop Jeniah Lightcrusher...or at least, tell me how to stop her."

Judith's dark eyes widened slightly, declaring that she had been clearly surprised by this unexpected entreaty. Then her face settled into a flat and inscrutable mask. After a long silence, she observed, "You overstep yourself...dangerously so. To be exceedingly clever, but effectively powerless...is a lethal combination."

Maria winced, stung by the similarity of this remark to Raymond Saddler's final rebuke. Still, she refused to avert her eyes and repeated her plea. "I want you to tell me what she is and how I can stop her."

"Now, why ever would I agree to help you...to display such blatant ingratitude, when she has given me this?" As a mystified Maria gazed on in wonder, Judith raised her face to the ceiling, spread her arms wide and arched her back. Maria could sense a tangible thickening of the air around her and gasped in shock when Judith began to exude a golden glow.

Slowly, incredibly, Judith lifted from the concrete floor, rising until she hung, suspended, a foot in the air. She then opened her eyes and glowered at Maria through eyes as black as human despair. Judith's smile was a horrifying construct of glistening pewter teeth and malice.

"Come here...mouse!" she commanded in a grating, inhuman voice and Maria could feel her body being drawn forward by some irresistible force emanating from the hovering creature. She found herself being pulled forward until her face was wedge painfully between two bars.

Judith floated forward and gripped Maria's contorted face in fingers that bit like steel pincers. "You have no idea what it is you aspire to oppose, Maria...you are indeed very much like an impertinent mouse, scurrying belligerently around the feet of a goddess. She has bestowed upon me knowledge and thus power, that lies beyond the pall of the human mind to comprehend. I will ask you again...why would I help you?"

Judith's crushing grip on Maria's face relented. Despite the extremity of her fear, Maria managed to give voice to her perception of the relationship between Ranzman and the creature that had transmogrified her into whatever she had now become. "I believe you want to help me, Judith, because, whatever she's given you...it came at the price of your subservience."

Judith growled menacingly and those terrible black eyes flared like erupting suns, but she did not contradict Maria, who forged ahead. "She bent you to her will...let you languish in this cage like an animal, and that's something you simply can't tolerate."

Cordova found herself being thrust backward, slamming into the brick wall with enough force to expel the air from her lungs. She slid to the floor and sat gasping, while the room swam in and out of focus. When she regained her senses and staggered to her feet, she found a very ordinary Judith Ranzman watching her through the bars. "I'm sorry Maria...I lost my temper, though in all fairness, I did warn you about provoking me."

"I have no desire to provoke you," Maria breathed heavily. "I want your help because I think that a part of you wants to stop Jeniah."

Judith inclined her head, her expression becoming thoughtful. "I haven't necessarily decided what I want yet." Her face twisted into a lecherous grin and she added, "Other than making you my personal and very intimate pet."

Maria ventured closer and gripped Judith's right wrist with an urgency that banished the levity from Ranzman's face. "I'm going to try and stop her tomorrow night. If you won't help me, then it's highly probable that your _pet_ is going to end up dead. Be that as it may, I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent her from killing her children or carrying out her insane ritual."

Judith regarded her flatly and detecting not the slightest hint of equivocation, began to applaud. "Bravo, such selfless nobility...good luck with that by the way. Mine is a pale facsimile of Jeniah's power."

Maria frowned, not doubting the veracity of Judith's assessment for an instant. "At least tell me about this...this ritual. Does she intend to destroy Quinsett?"

Judith reacted to this somber query with a spate of amused laughter. "Oh, how utterly small you are? Do you really think that a creature of Jeniah's ilk would squander her energy on an inconsequential endeavor such as decimating this fly speck of a town?" She hesitated briefly and Maria was disconcerted to see genuine awe and admiration shining in her dark eyes. "You want to glean the purpose of Jeniah's ritual, mouse...turn your gaze skyward and envision the apocalypse."

Maria's eyes widened in incredulity and dawning horror and she rasped, "You're toying with me."

Judith pulled her wrist free and raised her hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. "Believe as you will, but if Jeniah successfully enacts her ritual, the sun will rise on a radically altered world come Friday morning."

"Knowing this, you still won't lift a finger to intervene?" Maria spat, still not fully able to assimilate the implications of Judith's astounding revelation.

Judith spun in place and leapt nimbly onto the cot, walking along its edge on tiptoes. "I'm dancing on the razor's edge of ambivalence. Jeniah's failure or success will prove a benefit to me...after a fashion. I'm afraid you'll have to wait and see how I decide to play my hand."

Maria's scarred face twisted into a contemptuous scowl. "I figured you for many things, Judith...a cruel monster first and foremost...but never a craven...or a timid boot licker."

Judith sprang to the bars, her face frozen in a glare of rage. "You're going to live to regret every word of that ill-advised outburst."

"Not likely...tomorrow night I'll probably be dead," Maria declared without emotion, as she began to walk toward the door, but when she reached for the handle, she paused and fixed Judith with an uncompromising glare, fraught with terrible promise. "If, by some miracle, I find a way to stop Jeniah...to destroy her...I'll come back here tomorrow night and I will end you."

Maria then turned away and opened the steel door, but before she could step through, Judith's subdued voice reverberated...not through the air, but in her mind. "Jeniah Lightcrusher is a timeless entity...but Veronica Ashcott-Saddler's flesh is still vulnerable. Though a slim chance at best...Cameron Crane could prove to be Jeniah's undoing."

"Reflect on this carefully, mouse," Judith advised gravely. Maria acknowledged this with a slight nod and closed the door, leaving a somber Judith Ranzman alone with her misgivings.

3

As Maria applied herself to the arduous and menial task of preparing case files, her roiling thoughts replayed Judith's vague, but troubling disclosures.

' _The sun will rise on a radically altered world come Friday morning.'_ Like a sound bite programmed into an incessant loop, this thought stormed through her mind like a rampant pinball. Surely this was a hyperbole...an extravagant contrivance meant to impress? A deeper, atavistic instinct cautioned Maria against subscribing to this trite dismissal...and so the two diametrically opposite perspectives rumbled through her mind like rolling thunder. Like a wild metronome swinging between incredulity and absolute acceptance, Maria's thoughts were buffeted between the two extremes, leaving her feeling dizzy and disoriented.

In the end, if only to pacify her disquiet, Maria Cordova decided that the scope of Jeniah's evil ambition was irrelevant. Whether she intended to unleash an apocalyptic conflagration or sacrifice her children to her delusion of power...Jeniah had to be stopped.

Only the stakes and price of failure changed.

Around her, the tide of frenetic activity continued to flow, like water in a wind swept lake. The prosecutor left shortly after one o'clock, leaving an ashen-faced Huxley and a visibly livid Tamara Hood in his wake. Albert glanced at her briefly and in his soft and fleshy face, Maria saw a living portrait of shock and misery.

Just after two o'clock, Norman Gogain, along with two assistants, descended on the station house like a tornado out of blue skies. The trio entered Hood's office, but the glass and plaster were not condign to the task of containing the vitriol-laden exchange that passed between Gogain and Hood.

Finally, Albert emerged, appearing pallid and shell shocked. He instructed Art Silver to bring Judith to the interview room. A shadow of trepidation rippled swiftly across Silver's face, but he quickly moved to comply.

A few moments later, a visibly wary Silver led a handcuffed Ranzman through bullpen area. Judith's eyes were downcast and she refused to meet Maria's glare.

Tamara Hood marched down the hall with Gogain and his two assistants trailing after her like well attired jackals in pursuit of their next meal.

"You have denied my client access to basic sanitation like a jailor from a third world country. She has gone days without a shower or change of underwear...a gross mistreatment for which you will be held accountable." Gogain continued to harangue Hood as they moved down the rear hall. The FBI agent absorbed this diatribe stoically, but by the set of her firm jaw, Maria could see that Tamara desperately wanted to thrash the lawyer.

Albert paused by Maria's desk and informed her quickly. "It's been decided that Judith is going to be transferred to Olympia. She will be arraigned and held there, but she will eventually stand trial here in Quinsett."

Maria fixed Huxley with a rueful stare. "We both know that isn't going to happen, Albert."

Huxley flinched, but nodded his concurrence. "We'll meet tonight at Crane's house...decide what to do next."

Maria nodded and Huxley shuffled up the hall with the enthusiasm of a man on the way to the electric chair. Tamara was standing at the door to the interview room, staring back at them with a baleful glare twisting her bruised face. She whispered something to Huxley and ushered the man into the interview room, flicking an unaccountably petulant glance at Maria, before closing the door.

Bemused, Cordova shook her head and returned to her paperwork. Engrossed in the task, it was a while before she became aware of a presence hovering near her desk.

She glanced up to find Raymond Saddler standing quietly, looking down on her as though unsure how he should open a dialogue.

"Ray," she stammered and quickly averted her eyes to her hands that had begun to tremble.

"Hello Maria," he said in a voice tentative and slightly distorted by his badly swollen lower lip. "I just stopped by to collect a few personal possessions from...the office, but I don't see Albert or agent Hood."

"They're back with Judith and her team of lawyers," she remarked, stealing a sideways glance at the empty cardboard box that he was holding. "I doubt either would mind if you collected your things."

"Judith...she's extremely dangerous, Maria." Saddler warned gravely.

This single remark roused an acute bitterness in Maria's aggrieved heart. With more rancor than she intended, Maria raised her bandaged face to Saddler and rasped, "I think I know that, Ray...better than anyone, perhaps."

Saddler accepted this rebuke with a self-deprecating shrug. "Yes, I suppose you do." He glanced at the office that had been his for a brief time. Maria could sense his inner turbulence as he struggled with what he might say next. At last, he sighed softly and spoke quietly, "Maria, I'm sorry for everything that's happened...to you...between us. The way I grossly mishandled this investigation is a pretty clear confirmation that my days of being a cop are done. On a personal level, what I did to you...and to Veronica...is unforgivable...inexcusable. I can offer no legitimate defense and can only say that I'm deeply sorry. I misled you...and though it wasn't intentional, that doesn't make it any less despicable."

Saddler fell silent and Maria heard herself respond with the customary meaningless platitude. "It's okay, Ray. I...I let my emotions get the better of my judgment...so I'm no less culpable."

Saddler nodded bleakly. "We'll be leaving Quinsett as soon as arrangements to put the house on the market are complete. I think things are going to be okay...for all of us." Maria absorbed this glaringly erroneous prediction without comment and again Saddler nodded as if acknowledging how foolish the remark must have sounded. "What I said to you yesterday...about overstepping your bounds...that was my spiteful and angry response to your raising a valid issue that I didn't want to hear. Nothing could be further from the truth, Maria. You're a naturally gifted cop with a keen instinct and an agile mind. You should never stop following your instinct or questioning perceived inconsistencies. If you choose to stick with this, you'll end up being a far better cop than I ever was."

She need only look into his mild blue eyes...and discern the genuine regret flickering there...to know that he was being perfectly sincere. Unable to conjure a fitting response, she murmured, "Goodbye, Ray...and be careful."

"Goodbye Maria," he replied and perhaps it was whimsical fancy, but she thought she could detect genuine sorrow in his voice.

She deliberately kept her head down and her unseeing gaze on the folder opened before her as he returned from the office. She could feel his proximity as he paused by her desk, but she willed herself not to acknowledge him.

After a moment, he moved on and he exited the station, carrying the box of memories from his time here.

When she was certain that he had gone, Maria set her pen aside and buried her face in her hands. She wept silently until the last of her tears for Raymond Saddler had been spent. Fiercely dragging the heels of her palm across her red eyes, Maria Cordova picked up her pen and resumed work.

PART SIX

Chapter One

1

Tamara Hood sat on the bed of her nondescript hotel room, staring vacantly at the game show, the name and object of which she could not recall. Her take out dinner sat forgotten, on a small writing desk near the window. Tamara's long muscular legs were stretched out before her and crossed at the slender ankles. Dressed only in a blue tee shirt and panties, she sipped her diet coke, while striving mightily to pretend that she was not afraid.

The source of this burgeoning apprehension had two distinctly different, but nonetheless related aspects. The first was all too familiar to Tamara and found it's origins in Hood's egocentric nature...the fear of failure. Over the course of her long career, Tamara Hood had seldom been wrong, and on the rare occasions when her judgment had proven faulty, no life had been lost as a consequence.

' _Oh, but there's always a first time, girl,'_ she thought with a contrived levity that sounded both desperate and slightly mad. Her prevailing fear of failure...of humiliation in the eyes of her superiors...had been one of the drivers that had relentlessly steered her rise. In truth, that drive and the zealous energy it generated were the primary engines that had driven Hood's model career.

Tonight, however, sitting alone in her underwear, in this vanilla yogurt hotel room...in this culturally impoverished backwater town...Tamara felt like the poster girl for abysmal failure.

In her uncharacteristically visceral reaction to the perversity of Judith's crimes, she had mishandled and mistreated Ranzman and Gogain was going to make sure that she was well and properly skewered for that abuse.

"Fuck him!" she spat belligerently. With her exemplary record and consideration for the magnitude of Judith's horrendous crimes, Tamara was reasonably confident that she would survive any inquisition unscathed.

It was the other aspect of her fear that twisted her guts into knots...an unformed, but still potent dread that left her feeling like a small, terrified child. Tamara had become haunted by the certainty that something far darker than the lethal expression of a psychotic was at work in isolated Quinsett.

Sighing tremulously, a reluctant Hood realized that this certainty and its macabre implications, would assail her through the long night to come. Better then to face this ambiguous fear and puzzle through its riddle.

Hansen had called her, just after six o'clock and filed a preliminary report. James Crimmon had indeed vanished without a trace. Hansen, clearly perplexed, had concluded that there was nothing to indicate that anyone on the facility's staff was in any way involved in his disappearance.

Tamara's other team had illegally collected DNA samples from Stuart Crane's home. Before departing for Seattle, the team had delivered the samples to the M.E., who had called to inform Hood that he should have the results by late tomorrow or early Friday.

' _Are you seriously thinking that moldering corpses ate the remains of Stuart Crane, Tamara?'_ she wondered aloud, _'because, if you are, then you're a long way down the path to a padded cell.'_

With late afternoon sunshine streaming through her hotel room window, the idea did seem preposterous. Be that as it may, Tamara could not purge it from her thoughts.

Then there was the disturbing (and yes, paranoid) belief that everyone around her was party to a dark secret...a terrible, but crucial knowledge from which she was excluded. She had often noted the sly, surreptitious conversations that frequently occurred around the station house, the last of which had been Maria's brief exchange with Huxley earlier this afternoon.

When she had spoken to Maria, regarding her concerns over Judith's confession, Cordova had discussed differences in detail level and suggested disparities. As Hood had studied Maria's lovely face, she grew increasingly certain that the deputy was holding something back...some substantial insight that could clarify this unsettling mystery.

' _That's just paranoid nonsense,'_ she scolded herself ruefully, but even as she delivered this scathing condemnation, Tamara understood...on a deeper, elemental level...that her suspicions were justified.

Tamara shook her head disdainfully and took another long swallow of her cola. Such Byzantine considerations ultimately led her back to the one juncture...Raymond Saddler's bizarre theory about the cause of Quinsett's nightmare. She had dismissed him as a delusional fool and walked away, but only days later, she found herself alone, isolated, beset by black musings...and afraid.

Saddler had contested that the spirit of Jeniah Lightcrusher...this malign and enduring local urban legend...was the architect of Quinsett's horror. He also claimed that Cameron Crane...who tottered on the precipice of mental illness...also subscribed to this ludicrous idea.

Down the rabbit hole of mad progression Tamara now plunged. Cameron had been the last know visitor of the missing James Crimmon. James Crimmon...then known as Father Crimmon...had been one of the six vigilantes who had purportedly killed Jeniah fifty years ago, tomorrow night.

The shadow of this hieroglyph of a woman hung over Quinsett like a funeral shroud. Crane's visit to the old priest had been no coincidence. Tamara had little doubt that the purpose of his visit pertained to Lightcrusher's murder, though in what context, she could not imagine.

"Though before the night is over, I intend to find out," she vowed through gritted teeth.

Slipping on her jeans and running shoes, Tamara donned her holster and FBI windbreaker, and headed out into the descending gloom.

2

"Maria, are you actually saying that Judith isn't...human?" Huxley exclaimed, his tone somewhere between uncertainty and derision. "That doesn't make any sense."

Maria, Albert and Cameron Crane were seated around Cameron's wobbly kitchen table, each with an untouched beer before them. Maria shook her head contentiously. "You have to abandon that narrow-minded view of what can and can't be, Albert...if we want to stop Jeniah and come out on the other side of this thing alive. You've witnessed enough in this last week not to be constrained by rigid thinking."

Mechanically, Maria recounted the phenomenon she had witnessed in Judith's holding cell. Cameron's brow furrowed at this disclosure and he remarked reproachfully, "You promised me that you wouldn't approach her again."

"Promises don't hold a lot of currency in our present situation, Cameron," she retorted harshly, in a voice fraught with an irony that was lost on Crane. "We have no real concept of what we're up against here. Judith's vulgar display made it perfectly clear that she now possessed capabilities that defy logic. She conceded that Jeniah is far more powerful."

"I can't say that's too encouraging Maria," Huxley interjected grimly.

"She also said that Veronica...her body...is still mortal, and thus vulnerable," Maria reminded him. Huxley shook his head in dismay and took a long draught of his beer.

"You can't simply walk up to Veronica and shoot her," Cameron objected, displaying a rare degree of intense animation. "We're basing this theory on the word of a woman who is not exactly an unimpeachable source."

"The woman...creature...in our holding cell is vile beyond words...but I still believe her."

"Why?" Cameron demanded, spreading his arms in genuine bewilderment. "What if the story that she told Saddler is the truth and the version told to you was the diversionary ploy? It's not inconceivable...quite the opposite...it makes sense in a sick, twisted way."

Maria glowered at Crane, knowing that they couldn't afford to squander time bickering. "All right, so how exactly do you see the situation?"

"I have never doubted Mordecai's story...not a single word. I have no doubt that Jeniah Lightcrusher's hand is in this. Be that as it may, how can we be certain that she hasn't possessed Judith and beguiled Veronica...instead of the other way around? I spent the entire day contemplating this, turning it over and over in my head like a puzzle box. By convincing Saddler that his wife was mesmerized, while obliquely telling you the opposite, she has masterfully divided the few people who might actually try to stop her. You said yourself...she could walk out of custody at any time. So, while we focus on Veronica, she simply waltzes away, selects a child at random and enacts her ritual, while we joust with the whys and wherefores of stopping her victim."

Maria glowered at Crane, but did not challenge his theory, which stymied her own with its implacable logic. Huxley squinted and rubbed his chin, before offering, "Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but it seems to me that it doesn't actually matter which of the two of you has the right of this thing."

Huxley hesitated in the face of the sharp, puzzled glances his remark had drawn from both Crane and Cordova. Cameron gestured for Huxley to continue, and after a moment, the old Sheriff elaborated, "I guess I'm saying that it doesn't really matter which one is the monster and which one is the puppet...our purpose and approach remain essentially unchanged. Whoever ends up at the end of Ringgold Lane, with a child in tow...or worse case scenario, if both of them do...we have to stop them before they can complete this ritual. To my mind, that's what we should be concentrating on here...how exactly do we stop them?"

Maria and Crane exchanged glances that were both embarrassed and chastened. Huxley was right. With his colloquial and slightly ponderous manner, it was an easy matter to forget just how sharp Albert was.

"You're right, Albert," Maria conceded quietly. She arched a tapered eyebrow and asked, "You've both lived in Quinsett your entire lives. Is there any other way to get to the end of Ringgold Lane, other than by actually traveling along the roadway?"

Huxley shook his head. "Not unless you can fly."

Maria absorbed this with a contemplative glint alight in her brown eyes. "Then I propose that the three of us head to the end of Ringgold Lane tomorrow...around eight o'clock. If Veronica or Judith show up there...we stop them...emphatically."

"If our suppositions are any where near correct, Jeniah will have a child with her...a hostage," Cameron reminded Maria. "How exactly do you intend to deal with that possibility?"

"This situation is going to be fluid, Cameron," Maria declared in a flat dispassionate voice. "We can't control all of the variables and so I can't provide you with neatly packaged answers. Obviously, we want to save the child, but if what Judith claims is true, our overriding priority has to be stopping Jeniah...first and foremost."

Cameron frowned and when the grave implications of Maria's vehement assertion filtered through, he stood swiftly, his face twisted in a moue of extreme distaste. "You're talking about children as collateral damage! I've seen this kind of evil bullshit before...sacrifice in the name of the greater good...and I won't have it!"

Maria, her anger finally breaking in the face of Cameron's perceived obstinacy, started to rise, but Huxley placed a placating hand on her forearm. "Hold on, Cameron...we're not proposing sacrificing children to stop Jeniah." He cast a weighted glance at Maria, who pursed her lips and shifted her gaze. "This is a complex situation with a lot of questions, but precious few answers and we have to tread very softly. Tomorrow, I'm going to open up the arsenal and we'll head down Ringgold Lane with all the fire power we can muster. I'm also going to have a quiet conversation with Art Silver to see if he'd be willing to stay on tomorrow night and make sure that Judith stays put in her cell." Abruptly, Huxley's voice became fierce and uncompromising. "I'll tell you both one thing that you'd better believe...we will not take any action until it's clear exactly what we're dealing with. I don't want the murder of an innocent woman on my conscience any more than you do, Cameron."

Now it was Maria who shook her head in disgust. "Judith made it eminently clear that Jeniah intends to unleash an apocalyptic evil tomorrow night...can we afford to discount that? Those creatures...Stryges...are out there. Albert, you saw what they did to Lynda Verin and Ethan Rannout. It's highly probable that we're going to have to contend with them as well. We'll be extremely fortunate to even get a chance at Jeniah and if we hesitate, that one chance will be lost."

"Maria, have you ever stopped to consider that Veronica is every much a victim as anyone who died this week," Cameron suggested softly, his placid grey eyes holding her intense glare. "Even if your theory proves correct and Jeniah has possessed Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, her will has been subjugated and she's been compelled to commit unspeakable acts of evil. Can you even justify that killing her is fair?"

Maria rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in consternation, knowing that she had collided with the insurmountable limit of Cameron Crane's ethical sensibilities. "So then what do you suggest Cameron...do we wrestle her to the ground and drag her to an exorcist? Perhaps Jeniah will willingly send the Stryges back to whatever nightmare they were conjured from...if we ask her politely. What we're dealing with here is reality...a new reality...and it's ugly and remorselessly brutal. You talked about opening doors...unless we want to find out exactly what's on the other side...we'd better be willing to take some hard action."

Cameron began to object, but seeing the harsh, intractable expression on Maria's face, he merely shook his head and took his seat.

Maria planted her fists on the table and leaned toward both men. There was a savage aspect to her gaze that Huxley found profoundly disturbing. In those blazing brown eyes, Albert discerned that Maria was far and away the strongest of the three. Cordova was a juggernaut who would take the requisite action without compunction or regret. Her next revelation was a chilling affirmation of that fact.

"Mordecai Crane failed to finish Jeniah fifty years ago because he couldn't bring himself to follow the native's advice," Maria remarked in a voice that was as cold and unyielding as a piece of iron in winter.

Cameron's head jerked up and his eyes bulged in dawning horror. Albert's eyes shifted between the pair, his face reflecting his inner confusion.

"I spoke to an anthropologist today," Maria disclosed. "I described your grandfather's ritual in detail and asked...from a purely academic perspective...why it would involve such an extreme measure as decapitation of the living."

"I don't want to hear this," Cameron protested, shaking his head in vigorous negation.

Maria ignored his protest, boring into Crane with a ruthlessness that astounded Huxley. "It was believed that, if the entity was simply killed...or more precisely, the host was simply killed...the possessing entity would simply flee the body. If, however, the same entity is present in the body while the host is beheaded, the entity's spirit is essentially truncated and remains trapped within the mortal vessel. This was the basis of the Indian's advice to your grandfather. Jeniah is intent on completing this ritual. If we merely shoot her, we guarantee that someone else will bear the burden of our failure...just as we are carrying Mordecai's now."

An inarticulate groan of pure anguish escaped Cameron and he buried his face in his hands. A deafening silence descended on the small kitchen. Finally, Cameron lifted his face and regarded the pair, his handsome visage twisted into an expression of pure anguish. "I can't be part of this...it's monstrous. You're on your own if this is your intention."

Albert glanced from one to the other, appearing pallid and sickened by the direction events seemed to have taken. "Maria, I have to agree with Cameron. Trying to stop the abomination is one thing, but what you're proposing is a beast of an entirely different stripe."

"Then I'll ask you to protect my back, while I do what has to be done, Albert," Maria retorted coldly. "I want your help, but if you both refuse, then I'll try to do it alone. I've got Judith's filthy mark on me, like an indelible blight. So you see, I don't have a convenient out on delicate moral considerations."

"Interesting conversation...would anyone care to let me in on the discussion?" All three spun in unison, wearing identical expressions of shock, to find Tamara Hood leaning against the door frame of Cameron's front entrance. The statuesque agent's arms were crossed and a deceptively amicable grin played at her generous lips, though her amber eyes blazed with controlled fury.

As the trio gawked in utter bewilderment, Hood casually crossed the room and retrieved a Corona from Cameron's fridge. She carried the beer over to the kitchen table and sat, uninvited, in the one remaining empty chair. Once seated, she remarked cheerfully, "Sorry for busting in unannounced, but you all seemed engrossed in your fascinating discussion."

With a deliberate flourish, Tamara drew her service revolver and laid it on the kitchen table before her. "Now, ever since I arrived in this shit hole, we've been playing an annoying little charade. You yokels have been harboring your little secrets and I've chosen to ignore the fact. That ends here and now. You're going to tell me everything...every sordid detail, including the topic under discussion at this impromptu meeting. If I have even the slightest inkling that you're lying or being deliberately evasive, the three of you are going to share the holding area with our dear, sweet Judith."

Her amber eyes met Maria's and she rasped gruffly, "You'll be sharing the cell with Judith and I sincerely doubt that is an experience you'll remember fondly."

Maria recoiled in the face of Hood's deliberate cruelty and remarked sourly, "Tamara, you'd never believe what we'd divulge. You're mistreatment of Raymond Saddler proves that."

Hood leaned toward Cordova, her mirthless smile broadening. "Sister, you have no idea what I'd accept right about now." Deliberately emphasizing every syllable, she growled, "Now tell me exactly what the fuck is happening in this town."

Maria shifted her gaze to Cameron and Albert, who both signaled their acquiescence with a tacit nod. She returned her attention to Tamara Hood and her inexorable need. In those raging amber depths, she glimpsed a hint of poised madness and something else...an emotion that made Maria smile; an unfettered and open-minded desire to understand.

In a calm, reasoned voice, she told a receptive Hood everything.

3

The light over the vanity mirror cast a muted yellow glow over the bathroom. Maria Cordova stood before the mirror, her gaze fixated on the bandaged reflection that stared back at her with dark, cold eyes that she could scarcely credit were her own.

Something profound had occurred tonight during the course of her heated, acrimonious exchange with Cameron. In the face of Cameron's unflagging humanity...his compassion that constrained him even to his own obvious detriment...Maria had been transmogrified. She had been transformed by the bleak realization that she would be the one to bear the burden of ending Jeniah Lightcrusher. Once this exigent charge had been instilled into her consciousness, Maria could feel both her resolve and heart become vitiated.

She stared into the eyes of this new incarnation and recognized a ferocious resolve that would not be deterred by sentiment of a misguided sense of compassion.

Somewhere in the darkened depths of her house, a clock chimed midnight, its insistent declaration ringing through the empty silence like a strident warning.

The Sabbat of Lamas was twenty four hours away and when the clock struck midnight tomorrow, either Maria or Jeniah would be dead...circumstances would brook no other outcome.

Maria's gaze crawled appreciatively over the splendid landscape of her torso. In the lush perfection of her nubile body, she sought the fortitude to confront the indelible legacy of Judith's savage branding.

' _He promised that he would help you through this moment,'_ a small, sullen voice whispered, but this newly inured Maria Cordova dismissed it with a contemptuous sneer.

From this day forth, she vowed that she would find solace and fortitude exclusively from within.

This newfound determination would be rendered meaningless and impotent unless she could summon the courage to confront the visage concealed beneath these bandages.

Her hands trembled and her heart skidded painfully in her chest as she gingerly reached for the edge of one of the bandages. Closing her eyes, she carefully peeled back the top bandage. It came away from the corner of her mouth, accompanied by an acute twinge of pain. Without opening her eyes, she discarded the bandage and delicately reached for the corner of the other narrow strip. When that, too, had been removed, Maria stood with her eyes closed, mentally steeling herself against what would be revealed when she garnered the courage to look.

Finally, she opened her eyes to be confronted by the hideous countenance of a monster.

The stylized X that Judith had inscribed into Maria's supple flesh drew a wounded hiss from Cordova. The cuts that ran from the corners of her limpid eyes, over the ridges of her cheek bones and to the edges of her nose, were razor thin. Already, scab tissue had formed and Maria could see that they would probably heal with virtually no residual scarring. The same could be said for the segment of the cuts that emerged on the opposite side of her nose and ran to with in a half inch of the corners of her generous mouth. Here, Maria recognized the prospect for the full restoration of her natural beauty.

The true and enduring horror of Judith's maiming came in the intersecting wounds to what had once been a thin and flawless nose and the two areas near the corners of her mouth. These (at least, to Maria's traumatized mind) were raw, gaping chasms over the bridge of her nose. The flesh had been parted to the bone and was the dull, angry red that was often the precursor to infection. Drops of clear fluid oozed languidly from these cuts.

At the corners of Maria's mouth, Judith appeared to have finished her evil handiwork with a petulant flourish. Maria's prevailing expression would now be a ghastly twisted grin or a permanent rictus of agony.

Maria gripped the edges of the sink with white-knuckled intensity as hot tears of grief and self-pity poured forth in a deluge. She made no effort to curtail this outpouring of sorrow, nor did she close her eyes. Like a terror house kaleidoscope, the tears distorted her marred reflection into something truly monstrous.

Maria had no idea how long she remained this way, naked and trembling in the grasp of her outpouring of despair. When the last her tears had been expended, she was left feeling scoured and hollow. Into the dark void there came the rush of black hatred and an insatiable hunger for revenge.

Maria smiled, an expression made ineffably horrible by the partially healed wounds, and vowed fiercely, "You wanted to make me into a monster, Judith...then a monster I shall be. By tomorrow night, both you and the bitch that created you will be every bit as ugly as I am."

Not bothering to re-bandage her wounds or get dressed, Maria padded into the bedroom and climbed, naked, into bed.

Within minutes, she had fallen into a deep and dreamless slumber.

Chapter Two

1

Albert Huxley arrived at the station house early Thursday morning, pausing on the top steps before actually entering the building. The dawn sky was a cerulean blue, bled through by an odd and unsettling shade of green that Huxley could not recall ever having seen before today. A wind had begun to stir out of the west and its occasional gust would send sheets of abrasive dust and sand spinning down the empty streets.

These subtle signs troubled Albert, as though they were a presage of a deeper, darker calamity yet to come.

The unsettled weather seemed particularly well suited to Huxley's turbulent mood. He had spent the vast majority of his adult life scrupulously laboring to uphold the law, but tonight, he and the others had laid plans to become vigilantes...judge, jury and executioner of a woman who may or may not be the victimized puppet of Jeniah Lightcrusher.

As horrifying as this was, it paled in magnitude to the terrifying recollection of the light that had burned in Maria Cordova's eyes as she laid forth the blue print for her proposed course of action. Huxley had actually been relieved when Tamara Hood had arrived. Her presence had seemed to exert a dampening affect on Maria's disconcerting eagerness to unleash ineffable violence on Veronica Ashcott-Saddler.

Tamara had listened to the three, inscrutable behind a wall of silence, and then posed a series of astute questions about Jeniah, her dark legacy in Quinsett and the trio's proposed plan to stop this arcane ritual.

Certain that Tamara would denounce the three as lunatics...violent and dangerous lunatics at that...Albert had been thoroughly startled when Hood had basically accepted their macabre interpretation of events. That surprise had deepened to complete amazement when Hood had declared that she would be accompanying them on tonight's insane nocturnal excursion.

Huxley paused by the dispatcher's station and greeted Sturgis and Miriam. "Did Tim and Kort pass a quiet night?"

"A minor traffic accident and a dust up at Topper's," Sturgis informed Huxley.

"Sounds like things are settling back to normal," Huxley observed disingenuously, knowing that nothing could be further from the truth.

Sturgis frowned in bemusement. "It wasn't a full moon, but you might have thought it was. We received a half a dozen calls from people claiming to have seen large, bird-like creatures circling over town, during the night. If that wasn't strange enough, I received a dozen others from people claiming to have seen green and silver lightening streaking _up_ into the sky from somewhere off to the north west of town."

"Did you dispatch the boys?" Huxley asked and something in his grave tone caused Sturgis to regard the veteran sheriff questioningly.

"I did, but naturally they came across nothing out of the ordinary...no birdmen and no lightening in reverse."

Albert nodded thoughtfully as his gaze happened on his former office. Through the glass, he could see that Tamara and Maria were huddled in an intense conversation, which he suddenly found that he was anxious to avoid. Distantly, he heard himself ask, "Is Art in yet?"

"I think he's still in the lunchroom," Mariam told Saddler as she studied the old man's face as though attempting to divine the inner workings of the universe. Shaking his head, Albert went in search of his deputy.

2

Raymond Saddler watched silently as Barney sat next to Wendy, who was engrossed in reading the terrier a Beatrix Potter story. She absently caressed the nape of Barney's neck as she read and the appreciative dog stared up at the serious, pretty red haired girl with open adoration. Saddler was delighted when his precocious daughter had bonded with the terrier. He was even happier when Veronica had been not only receptive, but encouraging of their daughter's rapidly burgeoning affection for the new Saddler pet. More wondrous still, she had even allowed the dog to sleep with Wendy in a direct contravention of their long standing rule of no pets on a bed.

Other than his brief, yet awkward encounter with Maria at the sheriff's office yesterday had passed in such a reassuringly calm fashion that Saddler could scarcely believe that his life had tottered on the brink of ruin, only days before.

They had made love again last night...Veronica giving herself with a hunger and exuberance that was dizzying. Yet, as they lay, limbs entwined, in the afterglow of that intimacy, Saddler had unexpectedly been assailed by the first tremor of disquiet.

That sense of disquiet had germinated to become an irrepressible itch...a nagging insistence that, by ignoring Maria's parting admonition to be careful, he was committing a grievous...possibly fatal error.

As he watched Danny in his play pen and Wendy read to her new companion, a vexed inner voice rebuked him for entertaining these discordant thoughts. _'Jesus Ray...you've got your family back...don't manufacture issues where there aren't any.'_

The prudence of that seemed irrefutable, but still the damnable misgivings persisted like a cloud of biting insects that refused to be driven away.

Veronica swept into the room then, enlivening it with her brilliant smile that momentarily relegated these niggling doubts to insignificance. She bent forward and kissed Saddler on the mouth and then announced, "I'm going into town for an hour or so to make arrangements to have the house listed. I should be back in time for lunch."

Saddler nodded contentedly, casting a long, appreciative sweep of the way her charcoal grey dress clung lovingly to her tight curves. The intertwined silver belt that cinched her waist served to accentuate the contrast between it and her flaring hips. Ronnie's long red hair was swept away from the left side of her face and gathered into a loose spill over her right shoulder. Her portrait of casual elegance was more suited to a dining excursion in Beverly Hills than an errand in Quinsett.

Veronica became cognizant of his scrutiny and correctly gleaned its underlying subtext. "I suppose this might be a tad formal...but the last week has been difficult and I felt the compulsion to preen. As I said, Ray...no more pretending to be something I'm not."

Saddler gently took hold of her right hand and inquired solemnly, "Ronnie, are you really feeling all right? If things require attention, I can take care of them."

She answered Saddler with a bright and easy smile of reassurance. "I'm perfectly fine Ray and you have to stop worrying about me. I have been laggard in dealing with my affairs, so I'll be returning to Los Angeles Monday. If you could stay behind and take care of the house sale and arrangements for a mover, it would be a tremendous help."

"Of course," Saddler agreed at once, trying to stomp down on the ugly weed of resentment that accompanied his new position of subservience.

Veronica smiled and bestowed another of her dazzling kisses on Saddler's mouth. The she moved to hug both Wendy and Danny and even scratched Barney's ears, before sailing off in a blaze of light.

Ray inhaled and shifted his gaze to Wendy, who watched her mother make her exit with an indecipherable smile on her pretty face. Quietly, she remarked in her oddly solemn voice, "Mother seems very happy now."

Saddler gave a start and felt something sly and furtive insinuate itself into the air around them. Without precisely knowing why, he heard himself ask, "Wendy...is everything okay with your mother?"

The girl shifted her disconcertingly incisive gaze to her father. In her large blue eyes, Saddler could clearly see the indecision and felt a sharp stab of regret for a child's inability to fully trust those who cared for them. Ray smiled encouragingly and prompted, "You can tell me Wendy. Sometime children see things...sense things...that adults can't."

Wendy nodded as though in acknowledgement of this innate truth and then observed, "I...I think so, but..."

The she fell silent, clearly reluctant to divulge the precise shape of her misgivings.

"Wendy, if you mother needs help, then I want to give it to her...but I can't do that if I'm not sure what's wrong...not certain what she needs. If you feel something, however small, then I need you to tell me."

She watched him silently for several moments and then disclosed, "Last week, I felt that there was something else in her...something bad that made her do...scary things."

"Like threaten you last Monday...in the yard?" Saddler inquired softly.

Wendy nodded vigorously. "That person is...gone, but at times, I have this feeling that something is missing...like mommy is...not all there. A part of her seems...gone."

She fell silent and regarded her father expectantly, gravely searching his face for some sign of understanding. For his part, Raymond Saddler fought to remain outwardly stoic, though Wendy's astute insight had thrown his emotions into turmoil.

In his all-consuming need to regain his old life, he had remained oblivious to the conspicuously absent traits that helped define Veronica. The casual expressions of humor, the easy, light-hearted disposition and the frequent displays of affection; none of these things had been in evidence in the past two days. In their place, Saddler saw an efficient and determined pragmatism. Upon reflection, even her firestorm of intimate passion seemed...contrived. He could share none of this with his daughter of course, and so he simply requested, "Wendy, your mother has had a difficult experience, but I think she's going to be fine. Let's keep this a secret between you and I. Remember honey, if you see anything that troubles you...no matter how small...you can come and talk to me."

"I will," Wendy promised with a resolute nod and picked up her book, but before she could resume reading to a patient Barney, she suddenly blurted, "Daddy, why did that bad woman beat you up?"

Saddler frowned. "Wendy, who told you such a thing?"

"Mother did...when I asked why your face looked so bad. She told me that a very mean lady had hurt you. Then mother said that she was going to make sure the bad lady was punished for what she did to you. She seemed very angry."

"It's not really so bad, Wendy. At times, adults can behave like children. The lady was very upset. She didn't really mean to hurt me and she's not really a bad lady," Saddler explained. "She was very sorry for her mistake."

Wendy tilted her head, shrugged and went back to her reading. Saddler slumped back into his chair and absently massaged the hollow of his right temple.

' _She was going to make sure that the bad lady was punished for what she did to you.'_ That angry vow reverberated in his head like apocalyptic thunder and his misgivings returned in a frenzied swarm.

3

Albert sat in a chair across from Tamara Hood, who was furiously scribbling notes. "Okay, so your deputy Silver has agreed to keep a close eye on Judith for tonight."

"Yes," Huxley confirmed. "The only basement exit will be sealed and Art will make sure that no one enters or leaves the holding area, until one of us tells him it's clear."

"He wasn't curious why this over-zealous measure was necessary?"

Albert merely shook his head. "Art is pretty swift on the up take. When I asked him to do this, he agreed and asked if this had to do with Jeniah. I allowed that it did and he agreed without demanding any further explanations. The people of this town have lived under the bitch's shadow for fifty years now. You'd be surprised how many people here accept the old tales as gospel."

She absorbed this with a distracted nod. "And your part of the preparations is complete?"

Albert nodded, his expression sober. "I've packed three shot guns, three assault rifles, along with enough ammunition to fight a short war...all loaded and ready to go."

"That's excellent, Albert...excellent," Hood intoned in a voice that suggested she was trying to convince herself of the rationality of their proposed action.

Albert diverted his gaze to his folded hands and in a subdued voice, asked, "Forgive my French, Tamara, but just what the fuck is it we're doing here?"

Tamara scowled as she set her pen aside, clearly perturbed by the question, "What's your issue Albert...the jitters...sudden scruples?"

Nonplussed by Hood's derision, Huxley still forged ahead. "The four of us are actually planning to kill a woman because we believe she's possessed by a supernatural spirit...intent on unleashing the apocalypse. Setting aside how completely insane that sounds, even if we actually believe that this woman has the power to achieve this, why would we ever try to stop her alone? Why would you not call down an army to seal Ringgold Lane tight?"

"Albert, do you honestly think that anyone in authority would take us seriously...even if I was so foolish as to approach them with the story?"

"You did," Huxley pointed out defensively.

"Only because I was given a first hand proof that was too compelling to be ignored," Tamara disclosed and provided Huxley with an abbreviated version of the M.E.'s findings pertaining to the bodies discovered on the Ranzman property.

"Fuck!" Albert muttered incredulously as the color drained from his face.

"We just don't have time to overcome the barrier of disbelief. Maria was right when she said that this was Quinsett's problem...a problem that would have to be resolved here," Hood concluded in a tone that made it clear that there was no latitude for debate.

Albert glanced over to where Maria sat, his expression darkening perceptibly. "While we're on the subject of issues...Maria worries me. I'll be candid; her behavior is frightening. When she described the measures necessary to permanently stop Jeniah...beheading her while she is still alive...her eyes were burning with anticipation...eagerness."

Having given voice to his concern, Huxley shivered in revulsion.

Hood turned a troubled gaze on the hunched form of the wounded deputy. "After what's been done to her, I can't imagine how she could feel anything other than intense hatred. Still, your point is valid, so she and I will be attached at the hip tonight."

Huxley bobbed his head glumly. "When Crane and the others did Jeniah and buried her in the potter's field, she was a virtual unknown and her death went...unnoticed. Veronica Ashcott-Saddler is the daughter of one of the richest industrialists on the west coast. Her death won't be swept under the rug. There are going to be hard questions...a lot of them."

Tamara fetched a weary sigh. "Look Albert, I can't dismiss any of your concerns because they are all valid. Unless I see evil on a scale that dwarves anything we've ever witnessed, no one is beheading Veronica Ashcott-Saddler. Tonight, the four of us are going to take a ride down Ringgold Lane and we will basically react to what we encounter. If nothing happens, tomorrow we'll ship Judith off to her deep hole and I'll have that structure at the end of the cart path leveled. You and I can resume our regular lives and the Jeniah myth can permanently be laid to rest. If something else happens...we can deal with it as sanely as circumstances allow...fair enough?"

Albert nodded his acquiescence, seeing little other alternative. In the back of his mind, he doubted that the settling of this affair would be so simple.

Chapter Three

1

Cameron stared vacantly into space, stirring occasionally whenever a gust of wind would rattle the loose pane of glass over the kitchen sink. The night had been a protracted and tortured crawl, fraught with gruesome and vivid nightmares and periods of wakefulness that were far worse.

Near seven o'clock, he had given up on the futile attempt to sleep and stumbled into the shower. Now he sat, cold coffee forgotten on the table beside him, trying to reconcile himself to the prospects that this vile day held forth. His heated debate with Maria Cordova re-played itself in his mind incessantly, until he feared that he would begin to scream and not be able to stop.

Maria Cordova had changed...in the small space of twenty-four hours...a malign darkness had inculcated himself into the fabric of her psyche...twisting her into something terrifying and dangerous.

Cameron could not be certain if this could be attributed to her maiming at the hands of Judith, her rejection by Saddler or possibly (a scenario that occurred to Crane only this morning) that Maria had been infected by Judith's evil. This last horrible possibility was not beyond the realm of credibility and it would certainly add a new element of peril to tonight's lunatic undertaking.

Yet, even this horrifying prospect was not the contingency that troubled Crane the most and plagued his thoughts and nightmares. That awful distinction fell to the irrepressible realization that Veronica...she of sublime beauty and elegant grace...was the victim of Jeniah's evil for whom no one, except him, seemed to have any regard. To stop Jeniah, they would be forced to kill a perfectly innocent creature, whose only transgression was finding herself in this accursed town...cruel circumstances that Cameron found insufferable.

A soft knock came at the front door and Crane winced, a sour shadow passing across his face. It was, in all probability, one of his co-conspirators and he presently lacked the wherewithal to face them...or their grim resolve.

He climbed wearily to his feet as the weight of his lethargy crushed down upon him, making him suddenly feel old and decrepit.

He opened the door to a gust of wind, which seemed to exert no effect on the flame-haired, statuesque beauty who now stood on his doorstep. Too shocked to speak, Cameron could only gape wordlessly. Veronica's large green eyes narrowed in fury and she slapped him across the face, the report of skin on skin resounding like the crack of a whip.

The surprise and ferocity of the blow sent Crane stumbling backward, while Veronica stalked into the house and kicked the door shut with her right heel.

Cameron recovered his balance and straightened, but still he could not muster the words to react to her tempestuous presence. Veronica glowered at Crane, but then bowed her head and stood breathing heavily. When she next lifted her head, those beguiling green eyes were tearful and her lovely face was a portrait of raw anguish. "I'm sorry, Cameron...I had no right to do that. I know what I happened between us...what she forced me to do with you and I feel so...angry and so disgustingly filthy."

The last remark ripped Cameron like barb wire tearing flesh, but he managed, "I'm sorry Veronica...for what was done to you...and the part I played in it. I'd like to say that I didn't know something was...wrong, but I can't even honestly claim that."

His voice trailed off and they both simply stared at each other from opposite sides of Cameron's small living room, both isolated in their own individual shackles of regret. Cameron searched her misery-fraught countenance for the slightest hint of deception and seeing none, offered hesitantly, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Veronica's eyes widened and brushing away a stray tear with a long index finger, laughed and said, "No one could ever accuse you of not being gracious, Cameron. Yes, thank you...that would be lovely."

He gestured for her to have a seat in one of the shabby wingbacks and then moved into the kitchen to prepare their tea. He deliberately worked with his back to her, hoping to regain his equilibrium, but he was fully cognizant of her silent scrutiny as he waited for the water to boil. He carefully poured the boiling water into the two chipped mugs and then dipped the bags into the boiling water. He gingerly carried the two cups into the living room and placed them on the end table that was positioned between the wing backs.

When he settled into his seat, he finally forced himself to meet her frank gaze. In a grave voice, she explained, "I'm not really sure why I came here, but I woke up this morning feeling that I had to come."

"Does Ray know you're here?" Cameron ventured, suspecting he already knew the answer.

"No," she admitted candidly. "I doubt very much that he would understand. We'll be leaving Quinsett in the next week and will try to put this...this situation behind us. Ray accepts what Judith did to me." Here Veronica shuddered violently, though Cameron was unsure she was even aware of having done so. "But I don't think he could ever truly understand...not on the visceral level, where genuine understanding of such things finds its origins. I guess I came here because I needed a sense of closure between you and me. Does this sound like complete drivel, Cameron?"

Her sincere need for affirmation moved him profoundly and he could feel a lump forming in his throat. "No...not at all."

She smiled in gratitude, her limpid green eyes flaring like twin suns, but then her mood shifted...became pensive. "While I was in her thrall...there were times when I could feel nothing...sense only the void. It was like being in a state of disassociation that left me feeling utterly segregated from the world around me. Being buried alive must feel like that, I think."

She retrieved her mug and took a sip of her tea. Cameron noticed that her fine-boned hands shook ever so slightly. When she returned her cup to its spot on the table, she slid her hypnotic gaze to his face and Cameron could feel himself blush under its palpable weight. "When I was with you, I experienced everything with a degree of clarity that was preternatural...every touch, taste and sound. She wanted to force me to wallow in the act...to debase me to the point of total abjection. She wanted me to be fully aware of what she was subjecting me to...it was like vicariously enduring rape."

Cameron grimaced at this biting simile and dropped his gaze to the frayed rug. Sensing the extremity of his discomfort, Veronica reached across and gently squeezed his left forearm. "Cameron, I'm not blaming you at all...though you would never suspect it from the way I stormed in here. You're every bit the victim of Judith's perverse cruelty as I am."

He stared at the flame-haired beauty, his face clearly conveying the war of ambivalence waging behind his placid grey eyes. Cameron rose and paced across his living room, staring out onto the wind-swept street, while trying to organize the complex emotions he hoped to express, into something coherent. "I've lived most of my life in self-imposed isolation because I believed...perhaps erroneously in retrospect...I had a moral obligation to reject the shallow addiction of the material-obsessed culture around me. I've since come to understand that there may be more obscure reasons for why I've lived as I have. Whatever the reason, my recompense for adhering to my principles has been isolation, ridicule and loneliness."

He turned to her, a fey smile adorning his lean, handsome face. "Though the fault is primarily my own, the life I've lived has afforded me very little occasion for happiness. This is probably horribly insensitive...especially in light of the pain I've caused you, but the moments we spent together last week, were the happiest of my adult life. Knowing the circumstance that brought them to pass should change that, but as shameful as it is to admit...it doesn't."

Veronica rose from her chair and strode over to where he stood, her lovely face inscrutable. Knowing how obdurate his confession must sound to her aggrieved ears, Cameron fully expected that she might slap him again. Instead, she laid the flat of her right palm along his left cheek and gently kissed his mouth.

Cameron closed his eyes and surrendered to the moment, not daring to touch her for fear that he would be unable to restrain himself. He hoped the moment would draw itself out for an eternity, but like most of the instances of pure joy in his life, it was all too brief.

She stepped back, watching him thoughtfully, through slightly glazed eyes. Then she collected her clutch purse and fumbling with the clasp, drew out an embossed pewter and silver medallion on a sturdy silver chain. Slowly, she slipped the chain over Cameron's head. He caught a brief glimpse of the complex intaglio that had been embossed onto the face of the medallion...an intricate, stylized pentagram...and glanced at Veronica questioningly.

"It's a ward...a talisman, I suppose some would call it," she offered by way of explanation. "It is said to protect the wearer against any and all external calamity. It's my gift to you, Cameron. I want you to promise me that you'll never take it off...that you'll wear it as an enduring symbol of those moments. Can you promise me that Cameron?" she inquired, her tone both solemn and imploring.

He held the medallion between his right index finger and thumb, studying the elaborate pentagram intently. Quietly, he vowed, "I'll wear it...always."

She beamed a radiantly smile that caused his heart to gallop and then kissed his cheek. "Goodbye Cameron Crane. Be kind to yourself."

Crane turned and watched her walk to the door. Holding the door handle, she paused and without glancing back, said, "I want you to know that I don't regret what passed between us, Cameron. I regret only that it happened under the circumstances that it did."

And then she was gone like dust on the rising wind.

He remained stationary, staring at the keepsake she'd given him, for a long time after she left.

He was only obliquely aware that he had begun to weep. While hot tears coursed through the stubble on his cheeks, Cameron swore a silent oath that he would protect Veronica Ashcott-Saddler...from anyone who would do her harm.

2

Judith mouthed a vile epithet and sprang lithely to her feet, abandoning her attempt to meditate...a process by which she could further unlock more of Jeniah's arcane knowledge. Intrusive doubts and persisting misgivings kept disrupting her efforts to concentrate.

The clock ticked inexorably toward the Sabbat of Lamas and Jeniah's rending of the boundaries...barriers that, once sundered, could never be reconstructed. The only pertinent question that remained to be answered was would Judith help facilitate Jeniah's vision of apocalyptic devastation or would she militate against it?

As the critical moment rapidly approached, she stood at the head of two divergent paths, grappling with this paralyzing ambivalence.

As Judith hungrily explored the vast repository of knowledge that she'd coerced from a reluctant Jeniah, she became cognizant of the profound changes that had overcome her...both physically and psychologically. This reconstructed Ranzman detested the supercilious creature she had been...a perversely shallow libertine, wallowing in her own wretched decadence.

She had been instilled with a vast power, which...if properly cultivate...could make her a virtual deity.

Yet, if Jeniah fulfilled the insane creator's sanction however, Judith would find herself wielding tremendous power...over an empty world.

Conversely, if she did elect to openly oppose Jeniah, what exactly would she be aligning herself against?

While it was true that Mordecai Crane and his collection of country simpletons, had actually managed to best Jeniah, this new incarnation was a radically more evolved creature.

Even if she actually managed to vanquish Jeniah in a fiery contest of black magic, would she then incur the wrath of a thwarted universal creator...who would pulverize her to dust with a casual flick of the wrist?

It would be suicidal folly to openly oppose Jeniah and thus she would be more prudent to resort to subterfuge and manipulation. She was still wrestling with this quandary when she experienced a tickling sensation in her cerebral cortex.

She blinked in confusion and then found herself facing the spectral image of Veronica Ashcott-Saddler. The flame-haired beauty's brow furrowed in distaste at the sight of Judith's ugly orange jumpsuit and cheap canvas sneakers. In a subdued voice, Jeniah offered, "I'm sorry you've been subjected to this, Judith?"

Ranzman greeted this with a dismissive wave, feeling the odd affect of the creature's aura begin to exert its influence over her. "Actually, it's been a rather amusing experience, in its own right."

Jeniah considered this with a perplexed frown. "Are you prepared to leave this place and help lay the groundwork for the ritual of rending?"

Judith nodded. "Yes, I've created a rather shocking diversion that should keep the local cops fully engaged. When you set your segment of the night's festivities in motion, I will leave this place. I will then extinguish whichever Silver is the most readily accessible. That will settle the blood debt and I'll join you before the clock strikes midnight."

Jeniah nodded thoughtfully, though her host's green eyes shone with obvious gratitude. "You have my thanks, Judith. When I'm ready to begin the ritual, I'll signal you through the tether. After you've disposed of Silver...I would ask that you collect Cameron Crane...unharmed...and bring him to me at the end of Ringgold Lane. Then I would have you defend the site against intrusion. The Stryges will be present as well."

Judith replied with a tacit bob of her head and then on impulse, inquired, "Jeniah...have you never questioned the legitimacy of the creator's demand upon you? Have you never once contemplated rejecting his commission and simply walking away?"

Veronica's eyes narrowed and her generous mouth contracted into a puckered knot of consternation. Then the shadow of something that might well have been profound regret stole over her exquisite features and her eyes clouded with pain, the extent of which Judith could not contemplate.

"I could no more eschew my oath than I could draw down the sun from the heavens. Judith, don't misconstrue my weariness with lack of conviction. To this day, I remain steadfast in my certainty that humanity is a blight upon the natural world...a scourge that must be eradicated. This is a species that has perpetrated the most heinous acts of evil. Man, even to this day, still perpetuates the ignoble myth that there is nobility to be had in dying for perverse institutions or committing acts of mass murder, as if to do so was a higher virtue. Century after blood-drenched century, humanity propagates the same tired rhetoric, infecting each generation like virulent poison and through it all, I hear the same strident cry in every voice and see the same desperate need glaring from every eye...please, let this be done. I cannot turn away from that piteous entreaty, Judith. Humanity is like a suffering dog, howling a plea to be put down. Come the Sabbat of Lamas, that wish will be granted."

Slowly, the capering, spectral image dissipated, leaving a badly shaken Judith Ranzman alone to ponder the intrinsic truth of Veronica's fatalistic soliloquy.

3

The small Alfa Romeo had just negotiated a left turn onto Westborough street, when the Quinsett Sheriff Department's cruiser activated its siren and flashing blue and red lights. Veronica jerked an impatient glance to the rear view mirror and discerning that the sirens were intended for her, muttered a curse, but complied and pulled her car over to the side of the quiet, tree-lined street.

Upon seeing the deputy exit the vehicle and slowly place her hat on her head, Veronica knew exactly who had pulled her over. Gripping the wheel in smoldering anger, she waited while Maria Cordova drew parallel with the driver side window.

Maria rapped sharply on the glass and Veronica depressed the power window button and glared up into Cordova's scarred and partially bandaged face. The thin wounds that were visible were scab-covered and dull red around the edges. "Deputy Cordova, we both know that you don't have even the flimsiest pretext for pulling me over, so I would imagine that this is to be a personal interaction?"

Maria retreated a step toward the rear of the vehicle, her gaze sweeping the deserted street. In a cold, mechanical voice, she instructed, "I would like you to step out of the vehicle, please."

"Without grounds, why ever would I agree to do that?" Veronica demanded, matching Maria's glacial tone.

Maria bent forward and offered Veronica a hideous grin that never touched her intense dark eyes. "If you don't step out of the vehicle, I'm going to reach in and pull you through the window by the hair of your head."

Veronica's green eyes widened. The implacable tone of Cordova's voice made it clear that Maria had every intention of honoring her threat, should she not comply. Glowering, Veronica opened her door and stepped out into the bright morning sunshine. In her heels, she was a full head taller than Maria. She folded her arms beneath her full breasts and lashed the shorter Cordova with a baleful scowl.

Standing before Veronica for the first time, Maria felt the full weight of the other woman's beauty...her cultured poise and elegance. By contrast, Maria felt tawdry and frumpish, which only emphasized the extent of her delusion in believing that she could ever have been an acceptable substitute in Saddler's eyes. The urge to lash out at the woman, who had become the living embodiment of her shame and humiliation, was well near irrepressible.

' _Kill her!'_ a shrill voice railed hysterically in her skull. _'Shoot her here and now and be done with it!'_

Maria's right hand actually began to gravitate toward the butt of her gun of its own accord, but she gripped her taut thigh to prevent herself from committing an act of monumental stupidity. The wind gusted, forcing Maria to squint as another sheet of dust scoured the empty street.

"So, have you pulled me over merely to wither me with your intimidating glare or are we going to start brawling in the street like two tavern whores?" Veronica demanded coldly, seemingly unaffected by the gusting wind or the biting grit. "I would imagine that's how women of your breeding settle these types of disputes."

Maria glowered, but refused to be goaded by the deliberate provocation. She stepped closer, deriving a measure of satisfaction, when the taller woman tensed perceptibly. "I wanted you to see, first hand, what your puppet did to me."

Veronica removed her sunglasses and tossed them into the passenger seat of the Alfa Romeo, without diverting her gaze from Maria's face. "What that...that monster did to you is odious and I'm sorry that you've suffered, but I'm as much a victim as you are."

Maria's answering sneer was fraught with sardonic contempt. "You may have fooled Raymond...and Cameron, but I see through the façade, bitch...I can smell your corruption like sewage."

Veronica shook her head in disdain and stepped closer until the two were almost touching. "I can understand how my husband would develop an infatuation with you. You're beautiful...in that crude, vulgar way that your kind often is. After you were injured, no doubt soft-hearted Ray would have been stricken by guilt and felt the need to comfort you...if only to appease his conscience. Still, how could he not see what a pathetic, grasping little parasite you are? If it was not for the fact that I'm leaving this town, I would take great pleasure in crushing you beneath my heel...simply for daring to sully what's mine. Ultimately, you don't even warrant that effort."

Maria's jaw clenched and her mouth drew down into a petulant frown, but somehow she managed to restrain the urge to gouge those condescending green eyes from their sockets. In a neutral voiced, she remarked, "There is something I'd like to show you and then you're free to go."

Maria took a step to her left and gestured Veronica to the rear of the cruiser with a broad sweep of her right arm. Veronica regarded Cordova with obvious distrust, but deciding that Maria was unlikely to assault her in public, strode briskly to the rear of the vehicle. Watching the undulating sway of her tight ass beneath the clinging gray dress, Maria experienced another surge of acute black hatred for her nemesis.

Inhaling deeply, she joined Veronica, who regarded Maria guardedly. Maria opened the trunk lid, which sprung up to reveal a collection of accoutrements that drew a satisfying hiss of shock from the statuesque beauty.

"Recognize these, do you?" Maria inquired gleefully, as her gaze swept across the odd assortment of implements in the recess of her trunk; a new two-headed axe, rail spikes, a five pound sledge hammer and a five gallon plastic container of gasoline. Maria patted her holstered weapon and rasped, "These are the things that Mordecai and the others used to end you fifty years ago, aren't they, Jeniah?"

Veronica's right hand fluttered to her mouth, her beautiful face contorted with outrage. "You sick, twisted bitch...are you actually threatening me?" She tilted her chin toward the trunk, "With these?"

Maria shook her head and offered the disconcerted Ashcott-Saddler a sanguine smile. "Not a threat at all, but a clear and unequivocal promise. Take a single step down Ringgold Lane with one of the Saddler children and I will do to you what Mordecai Crane lacked the balls to do. I will shoot you...but not kill you. Then I'm going to stake you to the floor of that abomination growing out of the earth...and chop that pretty head off. Oh yes, while you plead for mercy, I'll be giggling like a school girl. My laughter will be the last sound you ever hear."

Harrowing vow delivered, Maria pursed her lips and spat a glut of thick saliva into Veronica's astonished face. The taller woman recoiled as if spattered with acid, while Maria slammed her trunk shut and declared amicably, "You're may return to your vehicle ma'am...you're free to go."

She then returned to her cruiser and settled into the driver seat, a triumphant grin emblazoning her scarred face. Veronica remained stationary for several moments, before wiping away Maria's saliva with her left sleeve. Then, she too, returned to her vehicle, her posture rigid and her eyes fixed straight ahead.

Cordova watched her, feeling giddy with euphoria that the still rational part of her mind understood was born of petulant spite. Still, she'd thrown down the gauntlet and unless she'd drastically misjudged the scope of Jeniah's ego, Maria was certain that the monster would respond to her overt challenge.

Unexpectedly, Veronica did not immediately drive away. Instead, she sat staring at Maria in her rear view mirror. A titanic gust of wind abruptly shook the cruiser...though inexplicably, the tiny Alfa Romeo remained utterly still. Cordova blinked, suddenly sensing a huge and belligerent presence in her vehicle. Her eyes widened in dismay as an invisible force clamped down upon her, constricting the entire length of her body in invisible hoops of steel.

She attempted to cry out, but the air was forcibly expelled from her lungs...the pressure on her rib cage intensifying, until it seemed inevitable that her ribs and organs would be pulverized.

Then, with a deafening roar, that crushing energy reversed itself and exploded outward with the force of a detonating bomb. Every window in Maria's cruiser simultaneously exploded, sending tiny fragments of glass flying a hundred feet in every direction. As all four tires exploded in a hail of rubber and steel belts, the air in Maria's lungs was violently sucked into the vacuum left behind by the explosion. Huge black flowers bloomed in Maria's skull, occluding her vision as her devastated cruiser leapt a full four feet into the air, before crashing back to the pavement with bone jarring impact.

In the instant before Maria Cordova lost consciousness and slumped over the steering wheel, she saw Veronica turn in her seat and waved a mocking farewell before driving away.

4

Albert and Tamara Hood stood on the sidewalk, both watching in stunned, solemn silence as an unconscious Maria Cordova was gently lifted into the waiting ambulance.

Further up the street, Quinsett Sheriff Department's cruiser number three had finally been secured to the bed of the towing vehicle. Municipal work crews labored to sweep up the glassy detritus, their efforts hampered by the gusting wind that grew stronger as the day progressed.

Both Hood and Huxley were forced to turn away from a massive curtain of wind-propelled dust. When the gusting had abated, Huxley turned his troubled gaze on Hood and demanded, "What in the name of Christ happened here?"

"I haven't a clue, Albert," Tamara remarked distantly, shaking her head in bewilderment as the ambulance pulled away, it's siren howling to life beneath the pristine blue sky. "It honestly looks like a giant picked up her cruiser and slammed it back down to the ground. Did you notice how deeply embedded the rims were in the pavement?"

Albert's glance slid to the four three inch deep ruts in the asphalt and he frowned sourly. "This just doesn't seem possible. Do you think this has to do with the business we have planned for tonight?"

Hood fixed him with a look that made it clear she deemed his question fatuous. "Honestly, Albert, can there be any doubt? Were there any radio communications from Maria after she left the station?"

Huxley shook his head. "None...she was making a quick run to the county hospital for a follow up on her injuries."

Tamara scowled in consternation, feeling that damnable nebulous dread begin to gnaw at the edges of her resolve. She had absolutely no doubt that this perplexing incident was anything other than a flagrant and deliberate attack on Cordova.

' _Culling the pack,'_ she thought and grimaced at the unsettling metaphor.

As if sensing her disquiet and fledgling fears, Albert inquired, "What now...I mean about tonight?"

Tamara turned to the veteran sheriff, feeling a momentary stab of pity for the horrible burden he'd been forced to shoulder. Yet, when she spoke, her pronouncement was delivered in the unflinching tones of one for whom all viable alternative had been expended. "Nothing has changed, Albert."

Huxley paled noticeably, his reaction clearly conveying his displeasure. Albert didn't consider himself to be a coward, but neither was he a simpering idiot. Trying to confront something capable of this...with only two people...exceeded the limits of foolishness and strayed into the realm of suicidal disregard for common sense. Tamara Hood, the inexorable and intransigent force that she was, seemed to possess no such reservations.

Something dawned in Tamara's amber eyes and she demanded urgently, "Albert, where are they taking the cruiser?"

Huxley glanced at Hood askance and answered, "Municipal shops, I'd guess."

Tamara frowned severely and insisted, "We have to follow them, Albert. Maria told me that she'd loaded the tools necessary for Mordecai's...indelicate solution...into the trunk of that cruiser. We need to get them into your car."

Huxley shook his head, visibly distressed by the grace implications of her demand. "You aren't seriously considering old Mordecai's advice?"

Tamara fixed Huxley with a hard and exasperated stare. "Albert, after what I've witnessed in the last week, I'm not taking anything off the table. Now, let's get after that cruiser before some wrench jockey opens the trunk and starts to wonder what kind of cops they have in Quinsett."

Chapter Four

1

The wind had risen to a howling gale by eight o'clock, snapping branches and downing power lines all across central Washington. The meteorologists monitoring the perplexing wind aberration noted that some of the strongest gusts were concentrated in a small, turbulent stream over the isolated town of Quinsett. This rather bizarre weather anomaly had grounded all air traffic in the vicinity, while prompting a great deal of head scratching.

The blanket of gusting wind appeared to have settled over the state, but was accompanied by neither cloud nor rain. As time crept by and the gale showed no sign of diminishing, a deep sense of foreboding crept into those in the affected areas, as though the unrelenting howl was the harbinger of some terrible calamity on the horizon.

In Quinsett, the streets were virtually deserted as if Raymond Saddler's curfew had never been abrogated. Wind blew sand and detritus along the empty streets with seemingly conscious malice, making even driving a risky proposition.

The townspeople of Quinsett hunkered down in their houses, waiting for this latest frightening episode to run its course. The sense of relief that had accompanied word of Judith Ranzman's confession quickly dissipated, giving way to a profound disquiet. That unease was further exacerbated when the power died in Quinsett near seven-thirty, Thursday evening.

Even the trenchant cynics and zealous adherents to world of concrete, steel and fluorescent light knew that something was afoot by the time darkness descended on the town.

2

Jeniah lingered near the bay window with the cloak of shadow draped loosely over her right arm. She stared out over Ringgold Lane, an uncharacteristically pensive expression set on the host's sublime face.

The moment of culmination was rapidly approaching...she could hear the anxious gibbering and braying of purgatory's denizens...but still she could not rouse herself from her lethargy.

Her wistful gaze fell upon the ancient cloak and she smiled fondly. This relic...this enduring wonder...had been her life's one constant companion, through which she'd borne witness to moments of glorious beauty and ineffable horror. Both extremes had been heart-wrenching in their intensity and had served as definitive mile posts on the journey leading to this apocalyptic juncture.

The cloak seemed to beckon to Jeniah...a visceral siren song that the weary chronicler longed to heed.

' _And what if you were to simply capitulate to its seductive whisper...to throw on this cloak like a symbolic repudiation of every belief you've subscribed to over these long, dreary centuries?'_ she wondered, a wistful gleam in her eyes as she caressed its odd fabric. _'How would it feel to walk out of this provincial house and effectively pass out of the world?'_ With one rebellious gesture, she could eschew obligation, elude the shackles of unwanted destiny. She could seek solitude and solace in the empty corners of the world. She could become Amathera of Pella again...deriving infinite pleasure from drifting aimlessly through the wilds in search of herbs and flowers of her long forgotten vocation, if for no other purpose but to hold them anew.

In the gathering gloom of her bedroom, she held the cloak out to arms length, tottering on the edge of surrender.

Before she could toss the ancient artifact around her shoulders, the door behind her opened and Raymond inquired, "Veronica...are you okay?"

"All a fanciful delusion then _,_ " she whispered as a bittersweet smile broke across her face. She turned to face Saddler and her countenance transmogrified into a mask of glacial resolve.

The moment of judgment was at hand.

3

Art Silver was afraid, though upon candid reflection, he was forced to admit that fear was a poor synonym for the emasculating terror he was presently experiencing.

' _What have you gotten yourself into?'_ he asked himself, barely recognizing the plaintive whine of this own thoughts. Clutching a Remington pump action shotgun, while sitting in a chair and staring owlishly at an apparently dozing Judith Ranzman, Silver could not begin to speculate.

A rational part of his mind denounced this extracurricular guard duty as ludicrous. The diminutive Ranzman was locked in a cell, unarmed and sleeping, but here he was...watching her the way one would watch a raging predator. He need only touch upon the recollection, to conjure the gruesome image that had materialized in his mind on the night of her long, rambling confession. As the ghastly, vivid conception of his ruined corpse bloomed in his mind, rational dismissal of his apprehension suddenly seemed...imprudent.

From somewhere above Silver, a low, guttural rumble shook the building, intensifying his disquiet. The cannonading wind pounded the building, sounding very much like a sustained artillery barrage that further jangled his already frayed nerves.

Another titanic gust pounded the brick building, followed by the sound of shattered glass. Silver leapt to his feet and started towards the stairs, but he'd taken only a single, ungainly step when the power failed, plunging the holding area into tomb-like darkness.

An inarticulate, shrewish cry of raw panic burst from a startled Silver's lips an instant before the emergency lights in the corridor kicked in. Seconds later, the station's generator followed suit and the lighting in the corridor was returned to its customary magnitude.

Art drew a quavering sigh of relief, castigating himself for his childish bout of anxiety.

"I'll take that as a signal that the evening's festivities have commenced," Judith intoned cheerfully. Silver pivoted to find Ranzman, still in her now customary cross-legged position, regarding him with an unnervingly feral grin.

Lithely, she sprang to her feet and stretched like a cat awakening from a particularly satisfying nap. Gesturing toward the door to the stairwell, she intoned teasingly, "Sounds like there might be a spell of commotion up top, but if the sky is falling, you weren't planning on leaving me alone and helpless down here...were you, Art? That would be most...ignoble."

Silver shook his head in disgust and started toward the door with the intention of investigating the disturbance above. As he reached for the handle, the sound of shattering glass drew his attention. He jerked around to find the door to the emergency fire hose compartment had exploded in a fan of glass and thin re-enforcing wire. The heavy canvas hose unfurled, tumbling onto the painted concrete floor. As a moon-eyed Silver gaped in incredulity, the copper hose head reared into the air, undulating five feet above the ground like a poised cobra.

"I would advise you to run, Art," Judith declared gravely, "but it would be a futile effort as I sincerely doubt the door is going to budge."

He shifted his gaze to a grimacing Judith, who was clearly deriving an enormous degree of amusement from his plight. Swiveling the Remington to center on her chest, he demanded frantically, "Are you doing this?"

"Really Art...be serious," she intoned reproachfully. "I'm just an unarmed, defenseless woman, trapped in a cell with a cop who has apparently parted ways with his sanity. Just what is it you're seeing anyway?"

Above the harsh rasp of his own respiration, Art became aware of a whisper of movement...furtive and incredibly swift movement. Before he could even react to this sensory admonition, Art found himself caught in the constricting embrace of the fire hose, the copper nozzle capering only inches from his face like a basilisk. In the blink of an eye, the heavy canvas hose had twined its way around his entire body, beginning at his ankles and spiraling upward, to pin his arms at his sides.

Silver uttered a strangled gasp of visceral dread, but before he could cry out for help, the copper nozzle plunged into his gaping mouth. The force of its violation shattered his front teeth and partially severed his tongue.

Judith laughed and clapped her hands as though watching a particularly amusing slapstick comedy.

She gesticulated and the door of her cell swung slowly open. Judith then floated over to a bound Silver and gently removed the Remington from his grasp. She pondered the shotgun for a moment and then turned her attention on the thoroughly ensnared Silver, who peered back through terror-stricken moon eyes. "Well, I will have to thank Albert for sparing me the nuisance of having to hunt you down tonight. Oh, but don't be bitter Art...I have every intention of killing him as well. It really is nothing personal Art...sins of the father and all that rubbish. Unfortunately for you, Jeniah is a stickler for settling accounts."

Hearing his fate so plainly stated, Art began to struggle, but the hose held him fast. Seeing that there was no hope for extrication from this insane bitch's snare, Silver began to blubber, his eyes issuing a desperate plea for mercy.

"Meet your end with a modicum of dignity, for fuck sakes," Judith spat disgustedly and savagely swept the feet out from beneath the immobilized Silver. His head struck the brick wall as he toppled, shattering his skull and mercifully sending him spiraling into unconsciousness.

Silver slid down the wall and slumped to the floor in a boneless sprawl. Blood began to spread beneath him in a languid fan. Reaching down to grip the nozzle while planting her right foot on Silver's chest, the cruelly inventive Ranzman pushed the copper fitting deeper into Art's throat.

She then bound over to the tap and turned the spindle to half capacity. Judith then returned to Silver and watched as the hose tightened its grip on its helpless victim.

While some of the excess water burst out around the nozzle, the majority forced its way down Silver's throat...relentlessly filling his lungs and stomach.

"What better way to end one's time than with an emphatic bang," Judith whispered as she stepped over the prone body and started for the stairs.

She was halfway up, when the internal pressure on Silver's vessel of flesh exceeded its capacity to absorb and purge the flow. His body exploded with a sickening liquid pop that spattered the holding area with gore and viscera.

As Judith quietly entered the bullpen area, she reached out to her slumbering children and began to smile.

4

Saddler entered the master bedroom to find Veronica leaning against the frame of the east-facing bay window. She stood with her back to the door, holding out a full length, hooded cloak. Something the tilt of her head intimated that she'd been contemplating the unfamiliar cloak for a considerable length of time.

So absorbed was Veronica in the inspection of this vaguely ominous article of clothing, that she seemed oblivious to the menacing rattle of glass just a foot from where she stood. As the intensifying wind howled and screamed around the eves, Saddler grew increasingly concerned about the integrity of the larger windows...especially on the upper floor.

That pragmatic fear was quickly supplanted by the burgeoning dread he experienced while watching his wife gaze at this cloak as if mesmerized.

"Veronica...are you okay?" he ventured hesitantly.

She uttered an inaudible response and slowly turned to face him, her movements suggesting inconceivable weariness. Yet, when she regarded him, her limpid green eyes were alive with an intense vitality. "I'm perfectly fine, Ray. In fact, it might not be an exaggeration to say that I've never felt better."

This odd qualifier caused Saddler to frown and he advised, "Ronnie, it's best that you come away from the window. The prevailing winds are from the west, but they're erratic...gusting and swirling. I'm afraid that some of the larger panes won't hold."

Veronica glanced back over her shoulder, regarding the perilously beleaguered window thoughtfully. After a moment, she turned back to Saddler and with an indecipherable grin, informed him, "You worry far too much, Ray...there really is nothing here that can harm me."

In the shadow-steeped gloom of the bedroom they shared, Saddler's puzzlement only deepened with this cryptic response.

"I've not seen that particular coat before...is it new?" he heard himself ask.

Veronica glanced down at the garment, which seemed to shift color depending on the angle and intensity of the ambient light. "This cloak is old beyond words...a precious treasure and a true wonder."

There was such reverence in Veronica's voice...such undisguised awe...that Saddler could not help but shudder. Veronica crossed the room and extended the cloak to a bemused Saddler. "Feel the fabric. It's unlike anything you've ever touched."

Saddler suddenly found himself desperately wanting to avoid even the slightest contact with the material, which he found inexplicably, but undeniably repulsive.

Still, those luminous green eyes gazed at him expectantly, beseeching him to place his hands on her new treasure.

Shaking his head and scornfully berating himself for being foolish, Saddler reached out and touched the cloak of shadow. The very instant his hand made contact with the fabric, a deluge of intense and vivid images burst in his mind like a flare over a lake on a moonless night.

Saddler cried out in shock and alarm and drew his hand back. The overwhelming flood of images abruptly terminated as he broke contact. There was a repulsive quality to the material. It was warm and supple...yet firm.

' _Like living flesh,'_ he thought and nearly gagged at the horrible simile. "Ronnie, where did you get this thing...and exactly what is it made of?"

Again, that strangely capricious smile adorned her lovely face. With a love normally reserved for a new born child, she intoned, "This was given to me by an acquaintance...a lifetime before you and I ever met. As to what it is made of...I've come to conclude that it is made from the stuff of dreams."

The response was so whimsical...so fanciful and foolish that Saddler could muster no appropriate response. He could only shake his head as panic, cold and incisive, clutched his heart. Veronica met his troubled gaze and in her eyes, he gleaned neither delusion nor whimsy...only the cold light of intense speculation.

In one swift motion, she donned the coat and drew up its deep hood...and before Saddler's disbelieving eyes, vanished as though swallowed by the very air.

"Veronica?" he cried frantically, instinctively taking a step in the direction of the door, which slammed behind him with a resounding bang. Saddler jerked his gaze to the door and then back to the spot where Veronica had so recently stood.

Grappling with immobilizing panic and indecision, Saddler began to extend his right arm, but a fine, yet abrasive powder filled his mouth and nostrils. He sputtered and coughed to expel the foreign substance, but only succeeded in drawing it deeper into his lungs.

The room began to spin like a rampant dervish and Saddler pitched forward unto his face...his head bouncing off the area rug with a muffled thud.

Saddler groped to retain his grip on consciousness, but whatever he'd ingested now tugged him deeper into the swirling vortex.

"Don't resist, Raymond. Accept this small mercy I've bestowed upon you." The melodious voice of Jeniah Lightcrusher seemed to fill his head, resonating in the chamber of his fading awareness with the omnipotence of a deity. "Embrace the void, content in the knowledge that I will elevate your beloved Veronica to the mantle of queen...reigning over the new world that shall, this night, be born."

Saddler tried to respond, but the dark magic turned his words to gibberish. As the prying fingers broke his tenuous grip and dragged him into the darkness, one final thought echoed in his despondent mind...Maria Cordova had been right.

5

When Saddler finally succumbed to her sleeping cantrip, Jeniah threw back her hood and peered down on the unconscious man, who represented the last meager obstacle to the culmination of her long journey.

On impulse, she reached into the deep pocket of her cloak and drew forth an identical talisman to the one she'd bestowed on Crane earlier in the day. It had initially been intended as a ward for Judith and though her former familiar had been invaluable in divesting Jeniah's path of obstacles, so too was she incorrigibly evil. The world to come would hold no place for such a creature and thus Jeniah had deemed her betrayal of Judith as a distasteful, but necessary action.

She considered the prone form of Raymond Saddler, vacillating between mercy and cold detachment. After a short, but intense struggle, Jeniah pushed the talisman back into the shadow cloak, deciding that one of Saddler's children would make a more appropriate choice.

Tugging the Hood over her head, Jeniah stepped over Saddler and quickly descended to the main floor. Midnight was rapidly approaching and there was much yet to be done.

6

"She seems so peaceful...so tranquil...it's almost as if she's asleep," Tamara remarked as she gazed down on the unconscious form of Maria Cordova, who had yet to emerge from the torpor, where she had languished for the past eight hours or so.

"Crandall is stumped," Huxley murmured. In repose, there was an angelic aspect to Maria's beauty that could not be diminished by the scars of Judith's hideous act of evil. "He doesn't understand why she hasn't regained consciousness. Her brain activity is...how did he put it? Hyper-accelerated."

"Like the REM state of sleep cycle," Tamara interjected thoughtfully.

Huxley glanced at her inquisitively, but she was too absorbed in her scrutiny of Cordova to notice. Glumly, he summarized, "It's like she's asleep, but simply can't be induced to wake up. When I asked him if this wasn't a coma, he said that is wasn't. The condition may look the same, but technically, they are very different."

"Whatever the case, Maria is sidelined for tonight," Hood observed. "Given her erratic...belligerent conduct of the last twenty-four hours, that might not be such a bad thing." She glanced at her watch and her brow furrowed. "Time to collect Crane. If everything goes well, we can attribute this entire adventure to a case of chasing shadows and laugh about it over a few beers."

Albert, who had long since abandoned any hope that there would be a simple resolution to this nightmare, simply nodded.

He gently squeezed Maria's hand and started toward the door. "How did Cameron seem when you spoke to him this afternoon? After his run in with Maria last night, he was as agitated as I've ever seen him."

"He actually sounded...serene," Tamara replied, a discordant echo of doubt in her voice. "It was almost as if he'd resigned himself to...something. Anyway, he promised that he would be ready and waiting."

"I still don't exactly know what Cameron can contribute...other than getting in the way," Huxley observed in a slightly querulous tone.

Tamara, whose patience with Huxley's incessant negativity had been worn to the quick, was about to lambaste him with a caustic rejoinder, when the lights went out.

There followed a brief instant of perfect darkness, and then the emergency lights and backup generator returned the hospital to a semblance of normalcy.

"The power's down...this just keeps getting worse," Huxley lamented ruefully.

"What do you expect, Albert...the wind has been howling like a banshee all day? Losing power in Quinsett was inevitable. Let's get our asses to the end of Ringgold Lane while there is still light."

Sensing her exasperation and correctly surmising that he was the cause, Huxley said, "You know agent Hood, in my years as a cop here in Quinsett, I drew my gun maybe a dozen times and fired two warning shots. The only thing I actually shot and killed was a rabid fox. I'm way out of my element here and not too proud to admit it. I really thought that I was done with all of this...that Saddler would do whatever was needed. Life has a way of making a mockery of those kinds of hopes...and so here I am. I know I'm trying your patience here...but I'm doing the best I can to stay functional."

Hood stopped mid-stride and looked closely at Huxley. His red-rimmed eyes were slightly glazed and hollow with exhaustion...and barely contained trepidation. In that one glance, Hood understood that, while she was being driven by obsession, Huxley plodded forward, compelled by a sense of duty and obligation. Sighing, Tamara squeezed his shoulder and offered, "I'm sorry Albert. I have a tendency to let my driven nature trample my sensitivity into the dirt. I've followed dozens of SWAT teams through doors, been in countless firefights and shot and killed more than a few sick bastards who deserved no less. Trust me and stay close...and we'll both get through this."

Seeing only implacable confidence in her amber eyes, Huxley inhaled and nodded. The pair hurried toward the hospital's main exit, leaving Maria Cordova to her turbulent slumber.

They has passed through the central reception area and were about to exit through the main doors, when someone frantically hailed them from behind. Both Huxley and Hood spun about as one to find an unarmed, elderly security guard hurrying toward them as fast as his portly frame would allow.

He came to a stumbling halt before the pair, wheezing and huffing like a steam engine on the verge of catastrophic failure. "Sheriff...there's trouble at the back of the hospital...on the basement level. A 911 call has been placed, but then I saw you here," he gasped, his labored speech raw-edged with panic. "There's screaming coming from down the stairs...and some other sounds...I can't really describe them, but they're horrible."

Tamara was assailed by a terrible prescience and demanded, "What's down there?"

The bewildered guard regarded her in open confusion. "Storage, utility rooms and a few labs." He seemed to consider this for a few moments and then added, "Oh yes, and the county morgue."

Huxley and Hood exchanged knowing glances and then Tamara's natural leadership instinct asserted itself and she instructed, "Albert, get to the cruiser and retrieve two pump action shotguns. Then meet me downstairs. I'll go ahead and see exactly what we're dealing with."

Huxley opened his mouth to speak, but Hood lashed him with a withering glare and gently pushed him in the direction of the exit.

Tamara then seized the security guard by the left forearm and roughly dragged him over to the large, color-coded floor map. "Show me exactly how to get to the rear stairs."

As Huxley ran down the exterior stairs, he glanced back to see Tamara Hood sprinting down the central corridor, her service revolver weapon for battle.

Chapter Five

1

Judith stepped quietly into the bullpen area and paused. On the edges of her consciousness, she could sense her eight children begin their tenuous awakening and felt the nascent stirring of their insatiable hunger...a hunger that would soon become ravenous.

The bloody carnage her children would inevitably unleash should provide a sufficient distraction to allow events at the end of Ringgold Lane to come to fruition.

She slipped around the corner and into the hallway that led to the interview room and the closet that served as an evidence locker. On her left, the door leading into the dispatcher's station was open. Judith could hear the low strains of a tepid pop band issue through the open doorway, its grating, monotonous rhythm lost beneath the howling wind.

Judith floated like a specter to the opposite side of the doorway and then peered back into the well-lit dispatcher's area. Sturgis thumbed absently through a glossy periodical, gazing nervously at the front door whenever a gust of wind would hammer the heavy glass and wood construct.

' _Easy pickings,'_ Judith thought to herself as she raised Art Silver's 9mm service weapon and fired two shots. The report was surprisingly loud in the cramped confines of the dispatcher station. The two rounds vaporized the rear of Sturgis' skull, covering the service counter in a find red mist. Judith grabbed the collar of Sturgis' shirt and jerked him out of his chair, before firing another three rounds into the dispatch radio, which died with a strident electronic hiss.

"Off with their heads and let them scurry after shadows like headless chickens," Judith observed blithely and after a moment, she re-entered the hallway in search of her boots and clothing, which she located in the evidence utility closet.

As she pulled on the heavy-soled black leather boots, the primal, savage part of her mind speculated on how thoroughly satisfying it would be to embed the tread mark on Tamara Hood's smug face.

' _Now, don't get ahead of yourself, Judith...remember, business before pleasure,'_ she advised herself with an indulgent grin for the creature she had once been.

Slipping her clothes and boots on was like donning a uniform, endowing her with an odd sense of capability. Her gaze fell on the discarded pile of prison clothes, symbols of her brutal subjugation to Jeniah's mad obsession. She performed a series of intricate gestures and the garish orange jumpsuit burst into flames.

Back in the dispatch station, Judith rummaged through Sturgis' pockets until she located the keys to his Toyota Corolla. Then she left the station, pausing briefly at the top of the steps to close her eyes and inhale the night air.

As dusk began to descend, the power-deprived town of Quinsett had been plunged into utter darkness. Plastic garbage cans and tree branches rolled through the deserted streets like tumble weeds.

The howling gale carried with it the muted stench of charnel houses and Judith correctly deduced that she was feeling the impatient stirring of this world's purgatorial twin. Somehow they sensed that their moment of emancipation was at hand and their eager clamoring was resonating in this unsuspecting world.

Judith dodged nimbly to her left, narrowly avoiding being impaled by a flying stop sign.

Bent over at the waist and struggling to stay erect, Judith raced into the parking lot and plunged into Sturgis' ugly, squat car.

As she carefully maneuvered out into the hazard-strewn street and headed toward Cameron Crane's house, Judith realized that even she was not immune to the ravages of random mayhem now stalking Quinsett.

2

Only her deeply engrained loved of children and their welfare cultivated over the course of her sixty years, prevented Bernice Quilling from succumbing to total gibbering panic.

Beyond the rattling window of the Saddler's family room, the bombastic thunder of the gusting wind sounded like a willful declaration of oblivion. Bernice repressed a shudder and hugged the two children closer. The ever perceptive Wendy glanced up at Bernice, scrutinizing the woman's round, kindly face for the slightest sign of fear. For the girl's sake, Bernice managed to muster a reassuring smile that she doubted fooled the girl for a moment.

' _A keen one, the girl is,'_ Bernice thought, recalling an antiquated phrase her father had often used.

Wendy's father had gone up stairs twenty minutes earlier to check on his wife. Bernice was certain she'd heard a muffled thud shortly thereafter. Saddler's continued absence, when combined with the gathering gloom and the intensifying windstorm, only exacerbated Bernice's anxiety.

' _That's because something...unholy is afoot tonight,'_ she told herself reproachfully. _'You know it...and this precocious little girl sitting beside you knows it.'_ Here the three of them were, vulnerable and alone in this accursed house...with a terrifying and troubled woman and her lost, mesmerized husband.

"Mrs. Quilling, can I see you in the kitchen for a moment," Veronica's disembodied voice requested from out of the darkness. Bernice's heart leapt in her chest and she uttered a strangled gasp, before laughing to disguise her disquiet.

"Coming Veronica," she replied and rose on slightly trembling legs. The short hallway that led to the kitchen and side entrance area was steeped in thick, impenetrable shadow.

On impulse, Bernice turned back to Wendy, who was regarding her intently, and instructed, "You mind your brother now, girl. No matter what happens, you stay with him."

Wendy nodded solemnly and drew Danny to her side. Bernice inhaled raggedly...a quavering breath that seemed to rattle in her lungs like an airy precursor if damnation.

' _How did she get to the kitchen?'_ her fear-sharpened mind demanded. _'Even if she'd come down the back stairs, you know how this old house amplifies sound...you would have heard her.'_

Bernice shook her head in bemusement. Entertaining these types of thoughts did nothing to placate her fear, so ignoring them as best she could, Bernice strode briskly into the short hallway.

She entered the kitchen, which was mired in purple shadows...and very much deserted. Glancing through the rectangular window above the kitchen sink, Bernice thought she glimpsed two sets of golden lights, hovering in the darkness, near the garage.

She blinked uncertainly and those floating golden orbs vanished like illusions glimpsed through shadow.

"Veronica?" she ventured, wincing at the grating note of trepidation in her thin voice. No response...other than an unpleasantly charged silence, punctuated by a titanic gust of wind that shook the entire house.

Bernice flicked a longing glance toward the hallway, but nonetheless took several steps deeper into the kitchen. She sensed...more than actually saw...a shimmer of motion off to her right, in the instant before steel fingers plunged into her wispy hair and jerked her head back.

Her cry of alarm was forestalled by a swift drawing of the blade across her exposed throat, opening the mottled flesh from ear to ear.

"It may not seem so, but I've granted you a cold mercy, Bernice," a melodic voice whispered in her ear as blood began to spew from the severed carotid artery in a pulsing jet.

As pain, acute and coppery, carried Bernice Quilling into the final darkness, her last conscious thought was, _'I've failed the children...I'm so sorry!'_

Veronica encircled the old woman's thick waist, preventing the shrew from tumbling to the floor and alerting the troublesome child in the other room. Effortlessly, she lifted the old woman from her feet and carried her over to the rear stairwell, where she allowed the body to slide noiselessly down the carpeted stairs.

Jeniah threw back her hood and smiled, disassembling the fragments of Veronica's shattered personality and sweeping them from her mind with a sigh of grateful relief. From this moment forth, the need for pretension and deception was past. She did not despise Veronica Ashcott-Saddler, but she did regard her as a supercilious flit whose privileged upbringing had cloistered her in a persisting illusion that Jeniah could scarcely bear to suffer.

Striding purposefully into the darkened family room, she offered the two huddled children an exuberant grin, and declared, "What a wonderful night for an adventure!"

She spread her arms in an expansive gesture of encompassment. In response, a billowing green mist seemed to materialize out of the area rug near a startled Wendy Saddler. The girl immediately slumped over, protectively covering her now unconscious brother.

Jeniah crossed the room and stood over the fallen children who appeared so serene and innocent in repose...the perfect catalysts.

Reaching down, Jeniah scooped both children under her arms, carrying them like sacks of grain, and left the Saddler-Ashcott home for the final time.

3

Cameron Crane paced nervously throughout the confines of his small house, trying to repress his mounting fear. He spared one final glance at the clock above the stove, horrified to discover that it was twenty after nine.

' _Something's gone wrong,'_ was his first reaction. Hood and Huxley should have been here forty minutes ago. Their continuing absence spawned a myriad of dark scenarios in his turbulent thoughts...each more dire than the last. Had they both been killed or had they simply decided that he would be more of an obstruction and gone without him?

He absently thumbed the talisman under his shirt, recalling his oath to protect Veronica. That vow relented to the unnerving image of the malevolent mask that had slipped over Maria Cordova's face as she argued the exigent need for Veronica's gruesome execution.

Hood had apprised him of the bizarre _accident_ that had befallen Maria, during the course of their telephone conversation earlier in the afternoon. There was little doubt in Crane's mind that the incident was anything other than an intentional attack on Maria. It would not be an illogical extrapolation to conclude that Hood and Huxley had fallen victim to the same malefic fist.

' _Which leaves you alone to stop the ritual,'_ a tiny voice informed him with perverse delight.

' _Really and while you grapple with this burden...this weight of Himalayan proportion...has it once occurred to you that you don't even have a car to get you to this epic climactic battle?'_ Maria's voice inquired, evoking an agonized grimace of self-contempt from Crane.

He shook his head in consternation, wondering why the human psyche went to such great lengths to flagellate itself...to flail its beleaguered soul with endless variations of its inherent inadequacies. Still, the caustic barb was not without its practical considerations. If indeed he was alone to face the evil manifestation at the end of Ringgold Lane, how could he actually get there in time to intervene?

He was still pondering this conundrum, when his front door blew inward in an explosion of wooden fragments.

Attired in black, her hair tousled by the raging gale, a grinning Judith Ranzman stepped through the jagged opening and announced grandly, "Come along Cameron...time to save the world."

4

Tamara Hood raced up the length of the central corridor and veered right, following the blue guide line that had been embossed into the floor. As was her natural gift in times of crisis and stress, her mind was automatically divested of all cluttering emotions and superfluous thoughts. Instead, she focused strictly on moving forward and not wasting energy on distracting speculation on what might await her in the basement.

When she reached the stairwell that descended to the lower level, she saw that the lights there were no longer functional.

She drew her flashlight and cupped it in the palm of her left hand, while holding the 9mm in her right, arm fully extended before her. Descending the stairs, Tamara was assailed by a plethora of unpleasant odors that caused her empty stomach to churn queasily. She could clearly distinguish the coppery stench of blood, informing her that life had been freshly spilled. Beneath this, there arose the even more repulsive reek of excrement, sour earth and something her refined sense of smell identified as suppurating flesh.

As she reached the base of the stairs, Tamara coughed and spat as this cloying stench had become palpable, hanging in the air like a miasma.

Pushing through the double doors was like stepping into a lunatic's abattoir. As she systematically swept her flashlight from wall to wall, its silver beam cast a ghoulish light over the sporadic piles of human detritus that littered the length of the hallway. Several bodies had been literally ripped to pieces. She compelled herself to move forward to avoid the dripping ropes of intestine that were festooned across the blood-slicked tiles. A legless and headless torso lay at the angle of the main corridor and a secondary hallway, its organs spilled across the floor in a glistening drift.

The medical examiner's terrible revelation leapt to her mind then...snippets of flesh and viscera between the teeth of long dead corpses...and her courage very nearly faltered. Breathing in a great gulp of foul air, she crept around the corner in search of the morgue, where her most terrible suspicions would be confirmed or refuted.

When she reached the single metal door, Tamara placed the flat of her palm on its cool metal surface and pushed it open. The room was steeped in brooding silence. Tamara's questing beam revealed what she guessed was the ravaged remains of the morgue attendant. His left arm was conspicuously absent, as was his right leg below the knee. A further sweep of the beam revealed that this initial impression was incorrect. The flesh and muscle had been stripped away, leaving only a dull shin bone. Hood groaned and shifted her beam to the rear of the room, where her worst fears were resoundingly confirmed...eight stainless steel doors hung open. The doors were bowed outward as if they had been assailed by the fists of an enraged giant.

Backing away, her lower mandible hanging open in negation, Tamara detected movement an instant before a dark shape came scrabbling out of the darkness. She threw herself to her right as fingers like blackened, age-decayed leather reached for her throat.

5

The minute Huxley emerged from the hospital, he was unceremoniously hammered by a gust of wind that staggered him back against the door. His hat was blown off and went sailing into the darkness, rolling on its brim like a lost wheel.

Albert briefly considered pursuing the hat, which had been with him through his entire tenure as sheriff, but decided against it. There seemed to be something...obscurely symbolic in that decision, but Huxley was not certain what.

He descended the stairs in a running half crouch. In the distance, the frenetic cry of sirens rose above the cacophony of the storm. As he retrieved the two Remington pumps, Albert briefly considered waiting for Tim and Kort to arrive, but recalling the expression of pure horror on Hood's face upon hearing the security guard's disclosure, he decided to follow Tamara immediately.

As he hurried by the gape-jawed security guard, carrying a pump action shotgun in each hand, he instructed, "When the two deputies arrive, direct them to the rear stairs...and let them know that there are two officers already down there."

The guard signified his understanding with a brisk nod, though his eyes were huge and his face ashen. Huxley set out after Hood as fast as his sixty year old legs could carry him.

6

Tamara lithely rolled out of range of the grasping hand, barking her shin on the corner of a steel work table. Undeterred by the subsequent flare of pain, she came up and quickly fired three shots into the chest of her assailant. Yet, when her mind registered what her eyes had conveyed, Tamara realized that her efforts would have no effect. The thing before her was little more than a skeleton, covered by leathery strips of desiccated flesh. A dull, yet malefic green light glowed in its empty eye sockets.

Tamara screamed and backed away, but still retained the presence of mind to fire two more rounds directly into the bony construct's face.

Shards of bone flew and the light in its right eye was abruptly extinguished and the horror collapsed to its knees. Seizing the opportunity, Hood raced around the fallen horror, but before she could reach the door, the downed creature caught her left ankle in a crushing grip.

Hood again unleashed a cry of pure revulsion, but her unflappable composure did not desert her. She pressed the muzzle of her weapon into its wispy hair and fired.

The shot pulverized the skull and at once, the clutching, bony fingers went limp. Tamara drew a tremulous breath and massaged the hollow of her left temple. ' _Seven more of these things, Tamara and god help us if they make it to the main floor.'_

She glanced down at her service weapon. She had discharged six rounds, which left another six in the clip, plus a full twelve round clip on her belt. _'Not enough,'_ she estimated woefully. _'Come on, Huxley...where the hell are you?'_

Discarding the idea of awaiting Huxley's return in the morgue, Hood stepped out into the hallway and abruptly froze.

Drawn by her battle with their fallen brethren, six of Judith's horrors were shambling toward her...three each from either end of the short hallway.

"Fuck!" Tamara rasped miserably, doubting that she could fend them off for long. In that instant, Hood decided that she would go down fighting, but eat a bullet before allowing herself to be torn to pieces by these vile abominations.

"Tamara...along the floor...catch it," a voice...belonging to a frantic Huxley...cried. There followed a scuffling sound and Tamara trained her flashlight beam to find a shotgun skidding down the tiled floor. She holstered her weapon, stopped the shotgun with her right foot and scooped it up in one deft movement.

Retreating two paces into the room, Tamara bellowed, "I'm safely out of range. Shoot for the head, Albert."

Breathing heavily...both from exertion and adrenalin...Albert nonetheless complied without hesitation. He pulverized the skull of the first with a perfect shot...its body collapsing like a marionette, whose strings have suddenly been severed.

Surprised by the alacrity with which the entities moved (not to mention, the simple fact of their existence), Huxley's second shot fragmented the nearest monster's right shoulder. Its severed arm fell to the tiles with a clatter and it reeled back into the other ghastly construct. Bellowing an inarticulate howl of revulsion, Albert advanced...firing three rounds that dispatched the pair in a cloud of bone and leathery strips of grey flesh.

"Clear, Tamara!" Huxley gasped and gazed on in admiration as Hood emerged from the morgue and felled the three remaining entities with an equal number of perfectly placed blasts. The reek of cordite filled the hallway and when the echo died, Tamara pivoted about and declared, "That's seven down...that leaves Deirdre Wilkins."

An agonized scream reverberated down the length of darkened hallway and Albert Huxley was no longer standing at the intersection of the corridors.

Chapter Six

1

Maria's Cordova's return to the land of the conscious was ushered in by the muffled, distant report of what sounded like shotgun fire. She jerked into the sitting position, her face contorted by an expression of moon-eyed confusion.

Her return to wakefulness was accompanied by a sickening spike of pain that threatened to crush her skull...or so it seemed. Maria closed her eyes and hung her head, drawing in slow, deep breaths until the pain abated to tolerable levels. She listened intently and after a moment, another distinct shotgun blast whispered through the ventilation grate...followed by a second, only moments later.

Glancing to the room's single window, Maria was mortified to discover that night had descended on Quinsett. The recollection of her tense, belligerent confrontation with Veronica filled her thoughts, prompting Cordova to snarl like an enraged animal.

A glacial calm descended upon her then and she carefully climbed out of bed, allowing her legs an instant to acclimatize before stripping off her hospital gown. Quickly pulling on her uniform, boots and holster, Maria raced off in search of the source of the tumult.

2

For a moment, Cameron Crane found himself incapable of the slightest of movements. He stood as rigid as a piece of statuary, as a grinning Judith Ranzman advanced into his house with her right hand extended in an odd gesture of encouragement.

Seeing her expression of smug self-assurance finally broke Cameron's paralysis. In that hateful gaze fraught with condescension and disdain, Cameron Crane saw every petty act of cruelty...every petulant spite that he'd ever been forced to endure.

All of the long-harbored rage and suppressed bitterness boiled up into a blind fury, focused squarely on the monster that had slaughter his one remaining family member.

"You loathsome, murderous bitch!" he roared, livid with anger, and charged an unprepared Ranzman. Caught unprepared by this unprecedented eruption, Judith raised her arms in a vain effort to defend herself. Cameron ducked as he trundled forward and drove his right shoulder into her sternum. His forward momentum carried the pair through the ruined doorway and out into the raging wind.

Without touching a single step, the pair landed heavily on the uneven concrete slabs, with Cameron atop Judith, whose head bounced off the walkway with a sickening thud.

Snarling and cursing, Cameron hauled the dazed Ranzman to her feet and drove a vicious knee into her sternum and another into her exposed face. Judith crumbled to her knees and slumped face down at his feet. Still, Cameron's immutable fury would not be sated by the sight of Judith lying prostrate at his feet. He fell to his knees before her and began to rain wild, clumsy blows that landed indiscriminately on her shoulders, back and head until she uttered a guttural groan and went still.

Cameron sat back on his heels, enervated by his outburst and shaking badly as his fury drained away. He was barely aware that he was weeping.

Judith suddenly rose to her hands and knees, spat a great gout of bloody saliva, and sprang lithely to her feet. Grinning at the thoroughly bemused Crane, she declared blithely, "Now that was unexpected...and truly invigorating."

Swiftly, she struck the kneeling Crane with a precisely delivered right hand that broke his nose and sent him sprawling onto his back. Cameron peered up through the fog of pain to find Judith looming over him, a playful grin on her lips, "If you can conjure that kind of spirit when you face Jeniah, there's a slight possibility that you may actually live to see tomorrow."

Before he could forestall her, Judith gently closed the fingers of her right hand over his broken nose. Soothing warmth suffused his injured face and all pain miraculously vanished. She gripped his forearm and effortlessly hauled him to his feet. "Don't be tedious, Cameron," she admonished sternly. "I don't have the patience and you don't have the time. We have to go now."

"Go?" he echoed dumbly. "Why would I go anywhere with you?"

She stopped dragging the larger Crane and fixed him with an impatient scowl. "Because Jeniah Lightcrusher instructed me to bring you to her and that's precisely what I intend to do. You are the only person with a remote chance of stopping this insane ritual she intends to enact."

"Jeniah...you mean Veronica?" Crane demanded with dawning horror.

Judith regarded Crane with a mixture of contempt and pity. "You poor, love-struck fool...Veronica Ashcott-Saddler is every bit as dead as poor Stuart. The woman you've been drooling over is none other than Quinsett's enduring nightmare."

Cameron shook his head in desperate denial that quickly gave way to self-loathing when he realized that she was being truthful. "Jeniah? I...with that monster?"

Judith inclined her head in curiosity and then burst out laughing. "You and she...actually did it? There really is no end to life's little surprises. Cameron...do you really believe that Jeniah Lightcrusher is a monster?"

"After what she's done to this town...the misery she's caused...what else could she be?" Cameron shrieked hysterically.

Judith clamped her left hand over his mouth and roughly drew him forward until he could feel her hot breath on his skin. Dispassionately, she intoned, "I am a monster, Cameron. Jeniah, whose true name is Amathera of Pella, is the most vilely abused, treacherously aggrieved victim this world has ever known."

When Cameron greeted this flat disclosure with a skeptical grunt, Judith unleashed the full weight of Jeniah's collective memory on Cameron's unsuspecting consciousness.

When the ineffably vast flow of fraught human experience at last subsided, Cameron Crane had been reduced to a trembling, weeping vessel of vicarious misery. How could any living being endure the cumulative weight of such sorrow and bear witness to evil and insanity, the magnitude of which was beyond all imagining? Yet, this beautiful, pristinely innocent soul had been subjected to this incomprehensible hell and its unrelenting malice had twisted her pure heart until it could see only darkness.

"And now you see, Cameron...the one salient truth that you, of all people, should recognize all too well." Judith intoned harshly. "The rendered judgment derived from superficial appearances often obscures the truth hidden beneath. Jeniah Lightcrusher is precisely what a cruel master forced her to become."

"Why have you shown me this?" Crane croaked, shouting to be heard above the gale.

Judith met Crane's inquisitive gaze, her expression sorrowful and solemn. "As grave as the injustice heaped upon Jeniah might be, she still can't be allowed to unleash her judgment. You are the only one who can prevent it."

"How?" Crane cried frantically.

For the briefest instant, a flicker of doubt rippled across Judith's lovely face like a shadow. "I don't know," she admitted candidly and then that mantle of supreme confidence slipped back into place. "Instinct tells me that you'll recognize the moment when it comes. Now...move!"

3

Tamara sprinted up the hall and rounded the corner with the Remington in firing position...only to be confronted by an improbable tableau of pure horror.

Surrounded by the detritus of human ruin, Deirdre Wilkins pinned a flailing Albert Huxley to the gore-spattered tiles. The reanimated monster mewled and snarled, while Albert screamed and fought to keep the snapping mouth away from his throat.

Seeing that she could not risk a shotgun blast, Hood bound over to the pair and drove the butt of the shotgun into the base of Deirdre's skull. It uttered a harrowing shriek and scrambled away, but as it passed over Huxley, it drove two fingers deep into Albert's bulging blue eyes.

The two orbs exploded with ugly, audible plops, punctuated by the sound of Huxley's agonized shrieks.

Horrified, Tamara stumbled backward and in an inopportune moment of gracelessness, her left ankle hooked on Huxley's twitching right foot. She fell heavily on her ass, inadvertently firing a round into the sound dampening tiles as she went down.

A black parody of a smile blossomed on Deirdre's grey face as she drove her fingers deeper into Huxley's brain, before sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of Albert's exposed throat.

There followed an indescribable liquid tearing sound as Wilkins tore Huxley's throat out.

"Noooo!" Hood wailed wretchedly, as she scrambled away on her heels and elbows. Deirdre lifted her blood-smeared face to the bellowing Hood, her ghastly smile framed by glistening gore.

Then, with logic defying speed, it was up and blazing toward Hood, arms up and fingers hooked into claws. Hood had a brief instant to register the huge y-shaped incision that marred the grey flesh of Deirdre's torso and then Wilkins launched herself at the sprawled agent.

Tamara sat slightly up and pumped and fired. Not properly braced, the kick back drove her into the tiles. The shot completely vaporized the grinning horror's head, but its forward momentum carried the headless body on top of Hood.

As oozing gore spattered her contorted face, Tamara Hood completely lost her composure for the first time in her professional career. She began to scream...her unrestrained shrieks of horror echoing down the now silent hallways and into the darkness.

4

Jeniah allowed the Spyder to coast to a halt directly across from the wide path that had just this very day manifested itself out of the undisturbed forest.

She stepped out into the wild night and tilted her gaze to the starry firmament. Trees, massive and ancient, creaked and groaned under the gale's frantic breath, but Jeniah remained insulated from its fury.

The journey that had begun twenty three hundred years before, in a cave outside of Pella, would find its end tonight on the other side of the world.

Coming around to the other side of the small car, Jeniah lifted the two unconscious children out of the vehicle and carried them down the path. As she progressed, the Stryges emerged from the trees, each offering Jeniah a deferential bow of fealty as she passed. In return, she favored each with a vague smile.

As Jeniah entered the open space surrounding her shrine, she mouthed an incantation and the protective ward came down. The front door swung slowly inward and Jeniah carried the two Saddler children over the threshold.

She paused just over the threshold and drew a quavering breath...everything was as it had been on that fateful night fifty years ago. The only change was the two sparkling stainless steel gurneys that sat, unoccupied, near the east wall of the single room structure.

She carried the Saddler children over to the gurneys, roughly depositing Danny in one and Wendy in the other. She then secured the unconscious children with the heavy leather restraining straps. After completing the binding of Danny Saddler, Jeniah gently stroked the boy's smooth cheek...how beautiful...how flawlessly innocent he appeared in his induced slumber. His sublimely beautiful face held all the vast potential that was inherent in humanity...but invariably went unrealized.

On impulse, Jeniah drew the one remaining talisman from the cloak of shadow and placed it around Danny's small neck.

Crossing back to the door, she stripped off the cloak of shadow and folded it onto the floor. Spinning in place, she gesticulated and the large fireplace, which dominated the west wall, blazed into life.

As she strode toward the center of the room, a flowing black and blood red dress materialized to cover her body like a second skin.

Eyes flaming with keen anticipation, Jeniah commenced the ritual.

5

As Maria found her way into the main reception area, Tim Holland and Kort Ranlin pushed through the main doors. A crowd of nurses and hospital staff were clustered around the visibly flustered security guard, bombarding him with questions and demands for information.

The group turned as one and then vented these frenzied demands on the three approaching deputies. On every face, Maria gleaned barely contained panic. She flicked a hard, nuanced glance at Tim and Kort, who seemed to interpret its meaning perfectly. Maria grabbed the security guard by the right arm and led him away from the cluster. Tim and Kort automatically imposed themselves between the agitated group and the pair, raising their voices in an appeal for calm.

"What's happened here?" Maria demanded in a low, exigent voice. The guard recounted what he knew...as disjointed and confusing as that was...and then conveyed Huxley's instructions.

Maria absorbed this with a grimace and the instructed, "Stay with these people and don't allow them to leave unless they're in immediate danger."

Cordova returned to the other deputies and immediately exerted her authority over the ponderous pair. "Huxley and Hood entered the basement level from the rear of the hospital. At least a dozen shots have been fired...but nothing since I left my room. Let's find out what's happened...follow me."

She moved off down the central corridor on the dead run, drawing her service weapon as she went. Tim and Kort exchanged bemused glances, but set out after her, willingly deferring to her lead.

As Tamara had done, the trio followed the direction guides and rounded a corner to come face to face with agent Hood. A Remington pump action dangled, forgotten, in either hand and Tamara lurched forward like a sleep walker. Her amber eyes appeared glassy and dazed, and her jeans and FBI windbreaker was slick with gore.

Her vacant gaze fell on the three and something flickered in her eyes. "Holster the weapons. It's over down there...but Huxley is dead."

Holland hissed in denial and Ranlin cursed, while Cordova's expression remained hard and inscrutable. Tightly, she asked, "This was Judith's doing...wasn't it?"

Tamara nodded. "Yes, the things from her grounds. It was Wilkins that got Albert." She hesitated and her tone became shrill. "She tore his throat out before I could stop her."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Holland demanded, tottering on the edge of hysteria.

Tamara stepped closer, her unblinking gaze locking on his fear-clouded eyes. "Deputy...has anything happened in the last half hour?"

Holland's heavy brow furrowed and he exchanged glances with Kort, who nodded slightly. "This call came to us directly to our car...which means dispatch is down. We thought maybe it was a power issue with this wind and all, but then the fire department informed us that the police building was in flames."

"Judith is loose," Maria declared flatly from over Hood's shoulder. Hood gritted her teeth, but raised no opposing conclusion.

"Listen deputies, your sheriff is dead...it's very probable that deputy Silver may be dead as well. I'm taking charge of this situation...do any of you have an objection?" Both Ranlin and Holland shook their heads meekly, grateful to pass the burden of leadership on to the obviously better-suited Hood. While Maria shrugged indifferently, Hood drew out her badge and handed a laminated card to Kort. "Deputy Ranlin, go back to central reception and call that number and then call the state police office. Tell them that we have a...deadly, but unclear situation in Quinsett. Tell them that several lives have been lost...direct them here to begin with. Oh yes, tell them to come in force."

She seized a bewildered Holland's bicep and shook him vigorously. "Tim, get over to the station and determined what's happened, but be cautious. Once you're done, get back here and hunker down until the cavalry comes."

Tim and Kort nodded dutifully and moved off at a trot, but when Maria started to follow, Tamara clasped her right wrist and held her back.

"What?" Cordova hissed truculently, her voice strident with animosity. "There's no more time for talk."

"What the fuck happened to you today?" Hood demanded, matching the shorter woman's belligerent glare with her own.

Maria offered Hood a razor grin, made hideous by her facial wounds. "I threw down a gauntlet and Veronica picked it up...emphatically! Now, one of us is going to die."

Hood recoiled before the intensity of the madness roiling behind Maria's brown eyes. She released Maria, who stalked away. Still holding the Remington's, Tamara hesitated and then followed.

Chapter Seven

1

Jeniah stood in the precise center of the room, mentally envisioning the complex pentagram which she had designed to conjure the doorway. Once the image had solidified in her mind's eye, she began to describe the magical device.

She bent down and touched the tip of her athame to the floor boards. Beginning on the western edge, Jeniah then described a perfect circle some fifteen feet in diameter which would serve as the containment perimeter for the doorway. In the wake of the tip's passing, the floor boards seemed to liquefy and upon her closing of the figure, the circle was embossed into the wood in an inch deep runnel.

Jeniah then described the interior pentagram and the elemental flourishes that would serve to focus her magical energy like a lens. Regarding her work and cognizant of its ramifications, Jeniah smiled. There was a terrible, yet beautiful symmetry to this design, the likes of which the world had never seen...nor ever would see again.

Finally, she completed the elaborate construct by inscribing a small protective circle just south of the main pentagram.

It was from here that she would conduct the ritual and facilitate an end to humanity's prevailing torment.

Jeniah then positioned the gurneys holding Danny and Wendy Saddler around the circle's perimeter...Danny's gurney near the west edge of the perimeter and Wendy's near the east.

This done, she worked her visualization magic, transmuting mental images into tangible reality. In her hand, she now held two lengths of hollow plastic tubing, at one end of which was a thin, hollow needle and the other end of which was a flow valve.

Beginning with Wendy, the complex, precocious child who seemed to have a special intuition few humans possessed, Jeniah inserted the needle into a vein near the girl's right elbow. She then unfurled the tube and laid the valve end in the furrow of the perimeter's circle. Straightening, she watched as the transparent tubing filled with precious blood.

Perambulating the circle, she then repeated the process on Danny Saddler.

By using live, warm blood from a living child, Jeniah would dramatically augment the efficacy of the blood magic. A slow, steady flow from both would serve as the perfect catalyst for this ritual of intermingling, while harming neither child.

' _And yet, one would be torn to pieces the instant the first entity crosses into the world,'_ a scornful voice reminded her ruefully. It took her a moment to recognize it as the voice of her centuries dead mother...a voice she'd felt certain she had forgotten millennia before.

"At least she won't suffer," Jeniah offered by way of validation. Purging all distractions from her mind, Jeniah Lightcrusher returned to the circle of protection.

Slowly, she knelt and closed her green eyes. With fluid, delicate movements, Jeniah traced complex intaglios in the air using her athame. In a husky, melodious voice, she began to speak the words of invocation.

2

Maria Cordova drove Albert's cruiser through the wind-ravaged streets of Quinsett. The act required the sum total of her concentration just to avoid the flying detritus and downed trees and power lines that clogged most streets. Some were impassable, forcing an increasingly frustrated Cordova to double back and select another route.

Tamara surreptitiously scrutinized the younger woman as she drove. There was something terrifying in Maria's countenance that had absolutely nothing to do with the scars on her face. The woman radiated a malevolent zeal in palpable waves...a horrifying focus of purpose that would not be deterred or yield to reason.

Maria Cordova had surrendered her soul to the single purpose of killing Jeniah Lightcrusher...irrespective of the cost or consequences.

' _Or is it really Veronica Ashcott-Saddler she's obsessed with killing?'_ Tamara thought and scowled at the disturbing formative notion.

Tamara had not been entirely oblivious to the intimate dynamics that had existed between Saddler and this complex, frightening woman.

On the heels of this troubling idea, came an even darker one...what would Cordova do if Hood attempted to prevent her from harming Veronica?

Narrowly avoiding a steel mailbox that had been blown to the center of the roadway, Maria turned into Cameron's street, demanding, "What's the time?"

Tamara raised her watch to the window and reported, "10:40."

Maria uttered a crude epithet and coasted to a halt directly across from Cameron's house. One glance at the darkened hovel and the gaping hole where the door had been, succinctly announced that there was nothing of value to be had here.

Without exchanging a word, Cordova slammed the cruiser into drive and resumed her trek to the final battle.

3

Cameron huddled against the passenger door with his eyes fixed on the storm-ravaged darkness...anything to avoid glancing at the sinister presence beside him.

The pair did not exchange a single word during the course of their surreal journey. They were creatures from opposite ends of the spectrum that defined good and evil...uneasily united in common purpose.

Cameron glanced over his shoulder as they passed the Saddler home on Ringgold Lane. The house was plunged into total darkness and not even candlelight could be seen flickering through the darkened windows. The side door, through which Saddler had tossed Crane only days before, hung open and banged a frantic tattoo against its frame.

The drama had already been played out here and had since moved on to the last world-defining juncture.

Lethargy seemed to settle over Cameron then, as his mind strayed back through the junctures of his own sad existence...a meandering path that had invariably led him downward to this excruciatingly terrible moment.

When the interminable ride reached its end, Judith parked the stolen car directly behind the Spyder and leaned toward Cameron. "I know that you despise me and you have every right to...just as I can tell you that I sincerely don't give a fuck. Stuart Crane was a detestable piece of shit and I derived incredible pleasure seeing him die."

Cameron blanched at the cold, remorseless declaration, while Judith gestured toward the newly manifested house. "This has nothing to do with you and me. As absolutely asinine as the notion would seem, you are the only one who might...might be able to stop this sick perversion of justice. Though I can think of no plausible explanation as to why, she is infatuated with you."

She paused, allowing the incomprehensible truth of this to sink in. "You must find a way to exploit this. When I bring you before her, express your gratitude for her mercy...kneel and kiss her slender feet if that is what is required to earn her trust. Settle into a corner and remain watchful, until the opportunity presents itself."

Despite the stupefying incongruity of the moment, Cameron nodded his understanding.

They marched down the short gravel drive, with Cameron stumbling in the lead and Judith following behind to administer a push between the shoulder blades whenever he faltered.

Crane cried out in alarm when the first of the Stryges moved to block their path, beak chattering menacingly and massive talons raking the gravel. The large golden eyes shone with acute sentience as the creatures tracked the pair's approach.

Judith stepped to the fore and spoke in a language that Cameron did not recognize, though there was no mistaking the resonating snap of authority in her voice. The monstrosity regarded her for a moment longer and then retreated into the obscuring shadows.

Cameron exhaled sharply and Judith marched him into the house. Jeniah rose swiftly and spun to face the pair, greeting their arrival with an exuberant smile.

Seeing that triumphant smile on poor Veronica's beautiful face nearly shattered Cameron's fragile composure, but Judith dug her fingers painfully into his left bicep and prodded him forward.

"As you desired, Cameron is here and unharmed...more or less," Judith remarked with a mix of solemnity and disdain that startled Crane.

Jeniah flabbergasted Crane by coming forward and embracing him as if they were lovers, reuniting after a protracted and difficult separation. She gripped his shoulders and held him out to arms length, searching his face intently. "I wanted you to share this moment, Cameron...to bear witness to the culmination of long centuries of labor...of questing for epiphany."

Recalling Judith's gruff advice, Cameron mustered a wan smile and mumbled, "Thank you, Jeniah...for showing mercy and allowing me to share this moment with you."

Her eyes narrowed and she fixed him with a penetrating gaze...as though attempting to divine his sincerity. After a moment, a dazzling grin broke across her face, setting her eyes to sparkle like emeralds.

Kissing Cameron's cheek, she stepped nimbly to the side and still gently holding his left hand, drew a startled Judith into a one-armed embrace. She kissed Judith's full lips and Cameron could feel Jeniah's long fingers intertwined tightly with his. He wondered just who it had been that had come to visit him earlier in the day.

Jeniah finally broke the kiss and a confused and a beguiled Judith retreated on legs made rubbery by arousal. "Thank you, Judith, for all that you have done for me. I would ask one final thing...stop those who would move to disrupt this deliverance of judgment. Even now, I can feel them gathering to move against me."

"I will, Jeniah." Judith declared with ferocity, the sincerity of which Cameron could not discern. Jeniah's fingertips played gently over the contours of Judith's face and then she smiled and turned away.

In the moment, Cameron gleaned an inherent truth that circumstances would not allow him to convey to Judith...Jeniah had just bid farewell to Ranzman, whom she had never intended to survive whatever was to come.

Her act of turning away was a symbolic severing of whatever ties had bound them together.

"Come Cameron...I would have you at my right hand for what is to follow," Jeniah intoned fondly. She led an unresisting Crane to the caster's protective circle and had him kneel. Jeniah then knelt in the same circle, slightly to the front and left of Crane.

A thoroughly unsettled Judith Ranzman watched the pair for a moment, beset by a storm of conflicting emotions for the long-suffering creature she's served...and now aspired to betray. Cameron stole an overwhelmed glance back at Judith, who responded with a slight nod of encouragement.

Turning to leave, Judith spied Jeniah's ancient cloak, folded on the floor. Compelled by an imperative she neither understood nor questioned, Judith snatched up the cloak and fled the house.

4

They were about to pass through the open barrier gate, when Maria abruptly and without prior warning, slammed the brakes. Hood, who had taken the time to fasten her seatbelt, uttered a venomous curse of surprise and shifted her questioning gaze to Cordova.

Maria gripped the wheel with white-knuckled intensity, her face twisted in a tight grimace.

"What the hell are you doing?" Hood demanded shrilly. "It's nearly eleven-thirty."

Maria swiveled her head to face Hood, her large dark eyes blazing with some nebulous emotion that Tamara could not immediately identify. "I'm going to check the Saddler house. Switch to the driver's side. If I'm not back in five minutes, leave without me. It's only another ten minutes up the road."

Before Tamara could raise an objection, Maria was gone, loping through Saddler's side yard like a preying wolf. She considered pursuing Cordova, but quickly disabused herself of the notion. Something in Maria's dark gaze told Hood that such a course of action would not end well. Seething with frustration, she came around the cruiser and settled into the driver's seat and waited...her anxiety escalating with every second that Cordova did not return. Mad, Maria might be, but her company was preferable to continuing up this road alone.

Maria moved quietly up the stairs and onto the veranda, drawing her flashlight and weapon as she did. As she entered the kitchen, her nostrils flared at the coppery scent of blood that permeated the room's interior. Her beamed located the trail and she followed it to discover Bernice Quilling's body in the stairwell.

Wasting no time on a corpse, Maria hurried through the house, conducting a cursory search of each room. Finally, she came upon Raymond Saddler, lying unconscious on the floor of the bedroom he shared with Veronica. She stood over the man she had fallen in love with and an intense black hatred rose up in her stomach like burning bile.

In that terrible instant, she came perilously close to discharging the entire clip of her 9mm into his skull. She actually leveled the gun at his face and her finger twitched over the trigger, but she let out a strangled cry and slammed the weapon into its holster.

' _A blackness has seized you heart, Maria...what have you become?'_ her father's scathing voice demanded, his disapproval lashing her like a flail.

"A monster," she whispered with no prior consideration for the idea.

Her gaze swept the darkened room, settling on a vase of flowers that sat on a night stand next to what she assumed was Veronica's side of the bed. Scowling, Maria ripped the roses from the vase and scattered them over the bed. Then she returned to an unconscious Saddler and upended the vase's watery content over Saddler's slack face.

Ray jerked back to consciousness with a sputtering gasp and sat up, arms flailing wildly. The lingering effects of Jeniah's tincture defeated his efforts and he fell back with a strangled grunt with the room around him spinning like a dervish.

When he was able to open his eyes, Saddler was confronted by a swirling, disjointed image of Maria Cordova squatting next to him. He reached out as if to confirm her solidity. His hand fell upon her left thigh, which coiled and rippled at his touch like a nest of snakes. "Maria...you were right. Jeniah...is in Veronica. I'm sorry, I..."

Saddler tried to rise, but Maria splayed her fingers on his chest and gently pushed him back down. "It's all right, Ray...stay here and rest. Tamara and I will stop Jeniah and bring you're children back to you."

At the mention of his children, Saddler's eyes grew impossibly wide and his expression became frantic. "I'm coming with you. We have to save my children...and Veronica!"

The utterance of that hateful name and his blind, obstinate refusal to recognize the truth of the situation broke Maria's tenuous grip on reason. She drew her gun from its holster and smashed its butt into Saddler's face, fracturing his cheek bone and sending him tumbling back into the void.

Gripping Saddler's left wrist, she dragged him over to the bed and handcuffed him to the leg of the heavy wooden frame. She knelt next to him, frowning at the sight of the blood, which ran freely from his lacerated cheek. She tenderly brushed the matted hair from his forehead and then bent forward and kissed his slack mouth.

Sitting back on her haunches, she assured him, "Don't fret, Ray. I'll bring back your children...and Veronica's head as well."

Tamara was perspiring heavily, her heart beating out a frenetic symphony of anxiety. She was about to put the cruiser into gear, when Cordova came sprinting up the road.

She swept into the passenger seat, slammed the door and barked, "Let's move!"

Hood complied, but inquired, "What happened...what did you find?"

"I found the housekeeper with her throat slashed. Saddler's unconscious, but alive. The evil bitch has taken the children."

Hood reacted with a scalded hiss. Quietly, she intoned, "Looks like you were right...about everything."

Maria greeted this concession with a sour grunt. After a moment, she delivered an admonition that chilled Tamara's heart. "Once we arrive, I'm going to do what has to be done. If you try to stop me...I'll kill you, Tamara. For your sake, I hope you believe me."

5

As Cameron knelt behind the flame-haired beauty, he was suffused by a confusing sense of surrealism.

' _This is...is a dream...it has to be,'_ his beleaguered mind insisted, though the intense visceral response to what his eyes conveyed decried this desperate hope as an illusion.

The cadence of Jeniah's complex incantation rose and fell in seemingly perfect syncopation with the movements of her athame.

Crane was reminded of the perfectly timed flourishes of a symphony conductor. Indeed, the metaphor was an apt one Crane understood...Jeniah was conducting the black symphony of the apocalypse.

Over her shoulder, manifesting out of the very air above the complex pentagram, an ambiguous, yet horrifying construct was slowly taking shape. The air above the pentagram appeared to have become viscous...gradually thickening in response to the conjurer's invocation. As Crane gaped in mortified fascination, this aberration rippled, distorting his view of the opposite side of the room as if he was seeing the far wall through a badly crafted lens.

Time passed and the hovering distortion took on first a translucent and then slightly opaque quality.

As Jeniah worked this infernal magic, Cameron could hear the keen anticipation creeping around the edges of her tone and sensed that the ritual was very close to culmination...and still Cameron saw no discernable sign of his one minute opportunity to forestall its completion.

Jeniah rose gracefully and moved around the outside perimeter, careful not to break the vertical plane of the protective barrier.

Despite his extreme agitation, Cameron took mental note of this precaution, sensing it might possess an esoteric significance. Jeniah moved to Wendy's gurney, bent down and opened the flow valve. Deep red blood spurted into the runnel and immediately erupted into crimson flame.

She followed the circle around its back side...vanishing from Cameron's view as she came abreast of the aberration...and repeated the process on Danny Saddler's valve.

As she stepped back into the protective circle, she gently caressed Cameron's upturned cheek. "No need for sorrowful tears, Cameron. I will show you the world as the paradise it once was."

She then knelt, raised her ornate black athame and resumed in invocation. It required only a moment for the weeping Crane to deduce that the children's blood had augmented the potency of Jeniah's dark magic. The viscous distortion began to bulge toward Jeniah, its milky, diaphanous surface reminding Crane of a hideous placental sac.

Through its curving exterior, Cameron could see vague and sinister shadows begin to stir.

Outside, the unmistakable sounds of gunfire abruptly erupted in the night.

6

As they made the relatively short drive to the end of Ringgold Lane, dirt and debris buffeted the cruiser with seemingly premeditated malice.

A large shape flew out of the total darkness and stuck the windshield hard enough to crack the glass...a spider web or radiating cracks that further exacerbated Hood's already limited range of vision.

Rounding a long curve, they came upon a jumbled fall of trees that rendered any further vehicular progress impossible. Hood swore and slammed her fists on the wheel, but Maria had already ripped the keys out of the ignition and was out of the vehicle.

Hood stepped out into the gale and was very nearly blown off her feet. She hunched down and scrambled to the trunk. Together, the pair managed to open the lid and while a braced Hood fought to hold it open, Cordova drew out two M-16s, another Remington and the gleaming two-headed axe.

Screaming to be heard above the howl, Maria cried, "Take the Remington and the auto and head into the trees on the west side. I'll take the auto and axe and come up the east side of the road. It's only about a hundred yards ahead. If you can distract whoever she has guarding the shrine, I'll come from behind and make a try for the house."

Tamara had serious doubts about the viability of Cordova's crude misdirection strategy, but having no workable alternative, nodded grimly and retrieved the weapons.

Hood turned away, but Maria gripped her shoulder and yelled, "Veronica's mine...but if I fail, just shoot her. No matter who or what is in your way, make sure she dies!"

Then she was gone, disappearing into the trees like a wraith. Hood half crawled and half scrambled across the road. When she reached the slight shelter of the trees, she stood and slung the M-16 over her shoulder. She then disengaged the Remington's safety and switched on the flashlight. Keeping the beam focused on the uneven ground a few feet in front of her, Tamara began to creep ahead.

' _I'm going to die,'_ she thought and was surprised by how little anxiety this thought evoked.

Her progress was painstakingly slow and she felt certain that she could hear a timer ticking down in her mind. After what seemed like an eternity, Hood crested a shallow ravine and saw lights dancing in the trees, no more than a hundred feet from where she stood.

Leveling her weapon, Tamara crept closer and caught her first glimpse of the house. A hulking silhouette was standing near the tree line, its huge, iridescent golden eyes methodically sweeping the shadows. Tamara dropped to one knee, offered a fervent prayer to the fates...and fired.

There followed a blood chilling shriek, more in surprise and fury than pain...immediately answered by a chorus of similar cries.

' _The Stryges,'_ Tamara thought, recalling the hideous creatures that Cordova had described. The thing came crashing through the foliage, chattering and screeching its outrage. Hood killed her flashlight beam and race to her left, narrowly avoiding tripping over the protruding roots that seemed to reach for her feet with conscious malice.

The trees abruptly thinned and Tamara found herself confronted by several of the horrors. Their luminescent golden eyes traced an arc in the darkness as they began to converge upon her.

' _I hope it's enough, Maria!'_ she thought, praying that her impending death would be granted some modicum of meaning by providing Cordova sufficient time to stop Jeniah.

Screaming an inarticulate roar of outrage, Hood straightened and began to fire, her barrel swiveling from one advancing monstrosity to the next. The impact of the shotgun blasts seemed to slow the beasts, but still they came forward, obviously impervious to the weapon fire.

A single harsh imperative issued out of the darkness, apparently originating between the bellowing Hood and the Stryges.

Abruptly, the infernal engines of death stopped, though clearly they were agitated and anxious to dispense death. The heavy, brooding darkness made it impossible to discern their specific features for which Hood was genuinely grateful.

Tamara discarded the empty Remington and pulled the M-16 over her head.

"Don't waste the effort, Tamara. The Stryges are the stuff of nightmares...and nightmares cannot be killed," a disembodied voice...which she recognized belonged to Judith Ranzman...suggested patiently. In the next instant, the weapon was torn from her grasp by powerful, invisible hands.

Something snaked around the gaping Hood's ankle. She cried out and peered down to find that a heavy root had torn free of the earth. It wound its way around her legs, hips and torso before she could even begin to react.

There was a tremor beneath her bound feet and the heaving root gave a tremendous jerk, sending Hood crashing to the dirt.

As she blinked helplessly, uncertain what had just transpired, Judith's face materialized above her as if out of the very darkness itself. "Hello Tamara. It appears that our positions have been reversed."

With this, she pressed the heavy sole of her right boot into Hood's face, lightly grinding it back and forth until Tamara screamed a muffled cry for surcease.

Judith squatted down and intoned mildly, "Just a little indulgent payback for humiliating me. Now, who else is with you?"

"No one...just me," Hood spat venomously.

Judith fetched an impatient sigh. "I really don't want to kill you, Tamara. I actually like your testosterone-fuelled swagger, but if Jeniah opens her doorway, the lights are going to go out on this melodrama...permanently. Again, who else is with you?"

Hood's brow furrowed in confusion and she spat skeptically, "Surely you don't expect me to believe that you want to help?"

"If only to save my delectably shapely ass, yes...that is precisely what I want you to believe."

Tamara's war of ambivalence ended when she realized that she had little to lose. "Maria Cordova...I was meant to be a distraction. She...she's gone mad, I think."

"Oh, you impetuous little mouse," Judith grumbled in consternation. "You'll be the end of us all."

Ranzman placed her right index finger on the root and it retracted sufficiently to free one of Hood's arms. Judith then freed the 9mm from Hood's holster and pressed it into Tamara's hand. "If anything approaches you...other than me...I would strongly recommend that you use this on yourself."

Then, as suddenly and unexpectedly as she'd materialized, Judith vanished.

7

Cameron watched Jeniah masterfully orchestrate the climactic swell of her ritual, sinking deeper into the bitter waters of dejection. As critical seconds ticked past, above her high, fevered exhortations, Crane could hear the raging tumult outside. It took Cameron several seconds to realize that its point of origin was actually located within the walls of this wicked shrine.

Along the west wall, the raging fire flared and guttered wildly, filling the room with alternating waves of intense light and sinister shadow. The gurneys which held Danny and Wendy Saddler rocked back and forth, but did not move as though anchored in place by dark and infernal magic. Mercifully, both children continued to slumber through the chaos.

Cameron's frantic gaze was dragged back to the aberration being manifested within Solomon's Circle. The barrier between the realities was being stretched to the limits of its tolerance. The distended, opaque fabric reminded Crane of the rubbery skin of a balloon that had been inflated to the point of bursting.

Unlike a balloon, however, when the barrier had reached the point of failure, it did not explode. Instead, a small rent appeared in the fabric...slowly expanding like a tear in cloth. Through this small opening came a rush of noxious gas that filled Cameron's lungs. The malodorous stench assailed him like the futility of death and he rolled onto his side and vomited a glut of hot bile.

"All is well, Cameron," Jeniah assured the distressed Crane. "Stay within the circle and you cannot be harmed."

Cameron forced his watery eyes open and squinted against the scouring wind that blew through the rent, which had now expanded to several feet in length. The edges of the tear had begun to separate and were already a foot apart at their widest point.

Through the black, lifeless dirt that swirled on the other side of the ghastly tear, Cameron could discern huge, lumbering forms slowly converging upon the failing barrier.

Between soaring strains of invocation, Jeniah declared euphorically, "THE SABBAT OF LAMAS IS UPON THE WORLD...JUDGEMENT COMES IN ITS WAKE!"

No sooner had this grandiose declaration of victory been uttered than the door burst open and Maria Cordova plunged through. Her violent entrance drew the gazes of both Cameron and Jeniah, whose green eyes widened with fury. Maria propped the two-headed axe next to the door, spread her legs and unleashed the M-16's fully automatic fury on the living epitome of her every woe.

Even as he hunched down and raised his arms in a futile gesture of warding, Cameron could not help but admire Maria's single-minded determination and courage...even if it was fuelled by madness.

Cordova roared her defiance as the bullets spewed forth in a deadly torrent, but as they reached the circle of the protective barrier...they stopped abruptly and fell harmlessly to the floor in an argent blaze.

"Maria...the Saddler children...stop firing!" Cameron screamed, hoping that his exigent admonition would penetrate the veil of her madness.

"Cameron?" she exclaimed, her eyes narrowing in puzzlement as they settled on the kneeling Crane.

In that brief instant of distraction, Jeniah gesticulated and the weapon was wrenched from Maria's hands, tearing the tip of her pinky finger off at the first joint.

Maria cried out in pain and shock, her hand spurting great gouts of blood. The M-16 was thrust into the pyre, where the flames flared argent and blue and the bullets exploded, randomly scattering potential death around the room. Miraculously, no one was struck.

Cameron's bewildered gaze shifted back to the breech, which, despite the violent interruption of Jeniah's ritual, continued to expand. It now stood the height of a tall man and spanned three feet in width at its middle point.

"You would dare to come here, you loathsome insect?" Jeniah demanded, her face twisted into a baleful mask. Despite the braying pain in her left hand, Maria seized the axe, her gaze swiftly surveying the room, while she tightened her grip on the long wooden handle.

Her dark eyes narrowed when they fell on the tube running from Danny Saddler's tiny elbow to the runnel that formed Solomon's circle. Immediately discerning its purpose, she raced across the room, raised the axe and brought it whistling down.

The force of her swing drove the blade a full two inches into the floor boards, severing the catalyst tube in the process.

The effect was instant and violently drastic. The entire house seemed to pitch and heave. A massive crack opened along the west wall. The aberration guttered as the flow of dark energy momentarily faltered.

Crane was pitched forward, his momentum carrying him into an infuriated Jeniah, propelling her out of the protective circle.

Maria stumbled, but quickly scrambled back for the axe. She tugged frantically at the embedded weapon, but when it became evident that it would not come free, Maria abandoned the effort.

She straightened to find Jeniah stumbling toward her. Cordova snarled like a rabid animal and launched herself at her hated nemesis. Ducking her shoulder, she ploughed into Jeniah's midsection and her lower center of gravity drove the taller woman back.

When it seemed that she would inevitably drive the chronicler across the perimeter, Jeniah reached down and dug her fingers into Maria's throat. A burst of puissance rolled through Maria's taut flesh and she suddenly went limp.

Maria's limbs jerked a spastic dance as Jeniah held her out to arms length and slowly raised her, until the shorter woman's feet dangled three inches above the wooden floor boards.

The grin that emblazoned Jeniah's beautiful face was that of the consummate predator...poised on the edge of the sacred kill.

"Remember how you spit in my face...for that act of flagrant disrespect, you will be the first to feed the jaws of my judgment," Jeniah promised imperiously. Still holding Cordova out before her like a rag doll, Jeniah advanced across the floor, breaking the vertical plane of the protective circle. Maria began to thrash, raining punches and kicks on the taller woman, who absorbed the blows without effect.

' _She intends to throw her into that,'_ Crane realized with dawning horror. His gaze jerked back to the gaping rift which had resumed its rapid expansion.

' _Now, Cameron!'_ a voice intoned...and though its tone was fraught with a measure of exigency...Cameron could glean a strong core of tranquility...of innocence that could only belong to one person. _'This is your one opportunity...your destiny.'_

"Amathera?" Cameron inquired in a clear and penetrating voice that filled the room like sudden thunder. Jeniah's head snapped back to Crane, green eyes raging with an immutable fury at the unexpected mention of that reviled name.

At once, his body responded to an undeniable imperative that his mind still groped to decipher. Cameron Crane exploded out of the protective circle and into the pentagram of evocation.

White flames engulfed him, but thanks to the protective talisman at his neck, their lethal bite could find no purchase on his flesh. He wrapped his arms around Jeniah's upper thighs and swept her from her feet.

The chronicler uttered an earth-shaking cry of negation as her magic lost its efficacy. The rending force reversed upon itself, imploding with an immense pressure that sucked the oxygen from the room.

The writhing trio was dragged through the collapsing rift along with shards of glass and splinters of wood and plaster.

As Cameron Crane fell, the terrified cries of Jeniah Lightcrusher and Maria Cordova echoing in his ears, he could feel something flow through him like an electric current.

It passed out of his flesh and through the shrinking opening just as the gaping wound in the barrier fabric snapped shut.

In the seconds before everything spiraled into darkness, Cameron Crane began to smile.

Chapter Eight

1

Judith was thirty yards from the house when she saw Maria Cordova sprint out of the shadows and kick the door down like a living instrument of retribution.

On instinct, Judith dropped to one knee, knowing that events had spun beyond her ability to influence. She held her breath in keen anticipation as the cataclysm within the walls of the unnatural house spun itself out.

She watched in dark fascination as the roof of Jeniah's shrine leapt a full three feet into the night sky. It came back down with a titanic crash and the walls cracked open like a shell that had been struck by an invisible hammer.

There followed a loud cry...a single word spoken in a strong and unwavering voice. "Amathera!"

On the heels of that, there reverberated a harrowing shriek of negation that held aspects of pain, shock and betrayal.

In the next instant, Judith found herself being drawn toward the doorway like an errant ship being inched slowly, but inexorably into a vortex. Panic-stricken, Judith fought and clawed at the dirt to resist the drag, but found that she was being pulled toward the door...which now seemed to resemble a gaping maw...with increasing speed.

Then, it all abruptly ceased and the world seemed to lapse into a profound silence. Even the raging gale died in the blink of an eye. Startled, Judith cautiously rose to her feet, inclining her head in an effort to detect the slightest intimation of sound or movement from within.

The only sound to reach her ears was the whimper of a small child. That sound...fraught with anguish and fear...confirmed that is was truly over and Jeniah's sentence of execution had been commuted.

2

The tumult reached an entrapped Tamara Hood in a series of disjointed echoes and eruptions of intense argent light.

The roar of the wind had grown to an all-consuming howl, forcing Hood to lay back and drape one arm protectively over her face. Still, she could feel the incisive sting as grit and sand lashed her exposed flesh.

And then it was over, unnerving silence rushing in to fill the vacuum left behind by the wind. Tamara blinked and sat up, troubled by the eerie calm that had swiftly descended. She watched, mystified by the terrible spectacle of the Stryges lifting off into the air and scattering to all points of the compass.

Her attention was drawn back to the house, which had been plunged into total darkness and brooding silence. A figure emerged, carrying two indistinct shapes in its arms. Heart hammering, Tamara raised her free arm and aimed the 9mm at the approaching shadow.

"Put the gun down, Tamara. I have Saddler's children. They're alive and it's over," Judith instructed in a voice that was uncharacteristically subdued and weary. Hood complied and as Judith reached her, she cradled Danny against her neck and gesticulated. The grasping root withdrew into the earth with a sibilant hiss.

Wincing from the bruises where Judith's magic had restrained her, Tamara climbed to her feet, frowning when Judith gently placed Danny's recumbent form in her arms. "Where are the others?"

"Gone...all of them...through Judith's doorway, I would suspect," Ranzman offered.

"What now, Judith? You must know that I just can't let you walk away?" Tamara remarked, knowing that her implicit threat was hollow bravado.

"But that's exactly what you're going to do," Judith advised her, though her tone held neither threat nor rancor. "Firstly, you couldn't stop me anyway and we're both fully cognizant of that fact. Secondly, you have a new calling Tamara...a new and sacred purpose to which to devoted what is left of your life."

"What nonsense are you spewing, Judith?" Hood barked irritably, but made no move to draw her weapon.

"It's a good walk back to Saddler's house and you will have to carry both of his children. Before you leave, I'm going to tell you a story and explain how you can extricate yourself from the demand for answers that is bound to fall upon you, in the days to come. Then you and I are going to part ways...you to fulfill your new obligation and me to honor a promise I made."

Tamara glowered at Judith, but finally signaled her agreement with a tacit nod. Judith favored the black woman with a vulpine grin and began, "There is a reason that Jeniah Lightcrusher selected Quinsett to serve as the site for her grand ritual of immolation."

Judith spoke for another twenty minutes, but long before she had concluded her tale, Tamara Hood decided that she would accept the terrible obligation that its hearing would impose upon her.

3

Cameron's return to wakefulness was accompanied by two tactile sensations...the feel of grass against his cheek and the intoxicating scent of greenery in his nostrils...two pleasing intimations of unsullied verdant splendor.

He slowly opened his eyes and raised his head...still not fully trusting the flood of spectacular sensory input that inundated his frazzled brain. He recalled something...ineffably terrible and then the sensation of plummeting a tremendous distance. Beyond this, he could recall nothing of where he had come from or how he had come to this incredible place.

His gaze fell upon a woman standing with her back to Cameron and wearing a short white toga and sandals. She was staring fixedly down a gently descending grassy slope that fell away to a small lake. On the opposite shore, a towering forest stretched, unbroken, for leagues in every direction. On the distant horizon, majestic, snow-peaked mountains rose to challenge the dominion of the pristine blue sky.

Finally, the woman became cognizant of Cameron's scrutiny and turned to face him. Crane inhaled sharply. Standing before him was the very quintessence of physical perfection...a raven-haired, dark eyed beauty, who was at once irresistible and mesmerizing and yet painful to behold...such was the magnitude of her beauty.

From this exquisite creature there radiated a pristine innocence...a flawless purity of spirit that Cameron would have skeptically refuted, had he not knelt in its presence.

"Amathera?" he ventured uncertainly.

She merely nodded, her generous mouth breaking into a smile that emanated tranquility and warmth like the summer sun.

Glancing about in open wonder, Crane heard himself ask, "What is this place?"

"I'm not certain," Amathera replied softly. She then extended a long, slender right arm, its olive flesh glowing with vitality, and suggested, "Perhaps you and I can find out together."

Cameron rose without the slightest ambivalence. He then crossed the distance between them and took her hand.

Holding hands, they began to descend the slope, heading toward the lake and the unknowable future beyond.

4

Maria Cordova landed in a crouched position, the impact raising a cloud of sterile dust that billowed around her. Taking stock of herself, she was surprised to find that she had survived the fall without injury. Holding her left hand aloft, Maria saw that her severed finger had been restored. Running the tips of her fingers over her face, she discovered that all traces of Judith's disfigurement had vanished.

She uttered a spate of triumphant laughter that echoed harsh and glacial to her own ears.

Rising, Maria was shocked to find that she was wearing the same gown as that hateful bitch had wore in the moments before...before something had happened. Midnight black and blood red, it clung to her taut curves in a manner that was obscene...and yet powerfully erotic.

A low, guttural sound broke her reverie and she glance up to find that she was surrounded by huge, hideous creatures, the specific appearances of which defied her mind's ability to grasp. She found herself standing at the center of a virtual sea of abominations that stretched out in every direction...across endless plains of featureless black dirt.

A million voices...a hundred million...reverberated in her skull...speaking in what she assumed was a staggering variation of cumbersome, tonally unpleasant languages. There was a rhythmic chanting cadence to the din that made her shudder.

Cordova clutched her hands into fists, bent slightly at the waist and roared, "I'm not afraid...do you hear me? I am not afraid!"

A wave of coruscating puissance exploded from Maria, radiating outward like the epicenter of a powerful earthquake. To a one, the encircling figures staggered and then fell, their fall raising a cloud of dust that occluded the starless, indigo sky.

Maria stood, her full breasts heaving, as the curtain settled, to find that every figure now knelt with head bowed in fealty.

Through the cacophonous rumble, two words resolved themselves in her mind...Our Queen.

Maria Cordova flung her arms to the heavens, tilted her head skyward and began to howl.

5

Tamara stumbled wearily through the total darkness, struggling with the weight of the two slumbering children. Whatever cantrip Jeniah had placed them under was incredibly potent because no amount of noise or prodding could rouse them.

Hood lacked the requisite energy to even turn around when the huge explosion shattered the night's deep silence and illuminated the sky. As Judith had promised, she had demolished Judith's edifice to the apocalypse, some twenty minutes after Tamara had commenced her trek.

To distract herself from the nagging pain in her lower back and the extreme burning sensation in her over-taxed thigh muscles, Tamara recalled her parting moments with the enigmatic Judith Ranzman.

As they stood on the western edge of Ringgold Lane, each holding one of the Saddler children, Judith had extended her right hand. Tamara had merely regarded the offered hand and shook her head. "Sorry Judith...if you're looking for absolution, it won't come from me."

Judith dropped her hand and nodded acceptingly, though her smile was one of regret and sadness. "I suppose even saving the world is not enough to atone for the sins I've committed. Then I'll say farewell, Tamara Hood. I genuinely hope that you find a measure of solace in your future...along with the burden I've imposed upon you."

She inhaled deeply and her radiant smile became ebullient. "It's a wonderful night to be alive."

With this, she drew up the hood of her strange cloak...and vanished.

Reflecting back on that poignant moment of parting, Tamara now fervently wished that she had shook Judith's hand.

6

Someone was shaking him vigorously and calling his name in a low, urgent voice. Saddler opened his eyes to be greeted by a nauseating wave of incisive pain. Tamara Hood's handsome face hovered over him in the near darkness. He tried to move his left arm only to discover that it had gone numb.

Seeing his predicament, Hood raised the wooden limb and laid it across his chest, gently massaging the circulation back into his shoulder.

"It's over, Ray. Your children are safe. I just wanted to make sure you were okay before bringing them in." She rose on stiff, unresponsive legs and escaped the room before he could pose the inevitable question.

Seconds later, she returned carrying Danny and leading a grim-faced Wendy by the hand. Saddler had managed to pull himself into a sitting position against the bed. Upon seeing her battered and bloody father, Wendy broke away from Tamara and ran to Saddler, where she threw her arms around his neck and began to sob. Tamara placed Danny on Saddler's lap and retreated, nearly collapsing as she stepped back.

From over Wendy's shoulder, Saddler mouthed "Veronica?"

Seeing the huge, inconsolable grief in his eyes lanced Tamara's heart, but she still shook her head. Raymond Saddler buried his face in the crook of his daughter's neck and began to weep.

Feeling like an intruder in a shattered family's private moment of grief, Tamara stumbled out into the hall. As she slid down the wall and bowed her head, her own belated tears began to fall...though for precisely what, she could not say.

In the distance, the wail of fast approaching sirens shattered the silence.

Epilogue

1

Raymond Saddler sat on the Veranda of the house he had briefly shared with Veronica, staring absently at the shed that still housed her prized Alfa Romeo.

The gentle soughing of the breeze through the surrounding trees was the only sound to be heard on this sunny afternoon...other than the soft creak of wood on wood as Saddler rocked himself.

Despite the gray hair and the deep nest of lines that had etched themselves into the flesh around Saddler's eyes, the man in the rocking chair still exuded a certain youthfulness. He was unaware of the wistful half-smile that played at his lips while he slowly rocked, totally immersed as he was in the promise of a beautiful fall that had accompanied this year's changing of the seasons.

One need only glance at Saddler to hear the faint echoes of the enduring sadness that had bled through his life following the loss of his wife.

There was a subtle, asymmetric cast to his face where his left cheek bone had been shattered...an indelible memento of Maria Cordova's final savage gesture of disdain.

Veronica's bequeathed fortune had bestowed a level of monetary comfort on her husband and children, allowing Saddler to indulge his need for solitude. Raymond cherished these perfect moments of isolation...when it seemed, if only fleetingly, that he was the only living soul on the planet.

He deliberately willed himself not to avert his gaze to the right, where the barrier gate on Ringgold Lane stood as a permanent and painful reminder of the price at which these moments of solitude had come.

In the extremity of his immutable grief, Arthur Ashcott had become an inexorable tornado...obsessively determined to level the town of Quinsett and anyone who might have played a role, however minute, in his beloved daughter's demise.

Time and an undying love for his grandchildren had eventually defused Arthur's fury. Saddler had agreed to allow the children to spend summers with the Ashcott family in Los Angeles. This concession had mollified Ashcott sufficiently to have him abandon his campaign to nullify Veronica's will. Still, whenever he was forced to suffer Saddler's presence, Ashcott's eyes blazed with loathing and accusation.

For his part, Raymond Saddler could rouse no antipathy for Ashcott, who had loved his daughter completely and unremittingly. Saddler held himself responsible for her death, every bit as much as Arthur Ashcott did.

Only his love and devotion to his two children prevented Saddler from plummeting down the rabbit hole into cancerous despair.

That, and...

The stark sound of tires crunching over gravel broke Saddler's reverie. His brow furrowed and he squinted in affectionate exasperation as Quinsett Sheriff Department's Cruiser number one pulled into his yard and came to a halt at the foot of his steps.

Sheriff Tamara Hood gracefully exited the vehicle and lithely sprang up the steps.

"How are you doing, Saddler...still luxuriating in the life of the idle rich?" she quipped, offering Saddler that toothsome, beautiful smile she seemed to reserve exclusively for him.

The aftermath of that deadly night had been a particularly trying time for the stalwart Hood. Though she'd been publicly lauded as a hero, Hood had endured endless days and weeks of often belligerent interrogation. In their desperate desire to unravel the mysteries of that deadly night, authorities had been unrelenting in their quest to find the inconsistencies in Hood's fabricated account of events.

Tamara had been just as unwavering in her adherence to the script Judith had devised. Judith had surprised Saddler upon her escape...the execution of which could not be explained. She had then kidnapped Veronica and the children, after killing Bernice Quilling. Tamara and Maria had attempted to rescue the trio and while Tamara had succeeded in saving the children, Judith, Deputy Cordova and Veronica Ashcott-Saddler had all perished in a catastrophic explosion. Again, the cause of the explosion remained shrouded in mystery.

The unflappable Hood had made no attempt to produce any manner of explanation for the seemingly incredible events that had transpired at Quinsett County Hospital.

Like all storms, this one had eventually run its course, leaving a stronger, resolute Tamara Hood in its wake.

A week after the Sabbat of Lamas, Tamara strode into Ira Silver's office. Closing the door, she had spent the afternoon recounting a very different version of events. Initially, Silver had been indignant and derisively cynical, but as Hood's tale unfolded, Silver grew thoughtful and pensive. She emerged from Silver's office with the position of life long Sheriff and Silver's solemn oath that she could run the department as she so chose.

While the concession had been staggering, it had been won at an exorbitant price. Tamara had agreed to live in Quinsett for the rest of her life...never again setting foot beyond its town limits. Her life would be devoted to the guardianship of that point of confluence at the end of Ringgold Lane.

Like everything else in her life, Tamara Hood had accepted this virtual sentence of lifelong imprisonment with stoic grace.

"So what brings you out this way?" Saddler asked, though both knew perfectly well why Hood made these twice daily solitary sojourns up Ringgold Lane.

"Two things really, Saddler," Hood began, drawing a wary sigh from the former Sheriff. "I wanted to remind you that my offer still stands. If you ever get tired of driving that rocking chair, I have a deputy's badge with your name on it. I'm a tough bitch to work for...but I think you'd survive," she declared with a sly grin.

Saddler shook his head. "Sorry sheriff, but I've taken a fancy to civilian life." His grin faded and he added solemnly, "I enjoy the quiet, Tamara."

Hood's smile faltered slightly, reading his clear subtext. "Okay, Saddler, but just keep in mind that my offer has no expiry date."

"I will, Tamara," he promised and then added, "You said there were two things?"

She gazed at him unblinkingly and Ray discerned that they had come to the salient heart of the matter. When Tamara spoke, the levity in her voice had given way to a quiet determination. "I want you to come over, Friday night...and bring Wendy and Danny. We can watch movies and order all the pizza we can eat. If it gets late...I have a spare bedroom and two beds for the kids."

The now familiar reluctance clouded Saddler's placid blue eyes and Tamara could feel her heart wrench in her chest. Fiercely, she intoned, "I'm not going to let you wallow here...in regret. I refuse...even if it means I have to drag you off in handcuffs."

After a momentary pause, she added with a wry smile, "We've danced that particular dance once before, Saddler...and I doubt you want to go that route again."

He glanced at the scar that bisected her right eyebrow...an indelible reminder of that ignoble episode...and frowned.

"Please Ray...just this once. It will be good...for all of us." In Tamara Hood's pleading tone, Saddler heard echoes of desperation...hints of a terrible loneliness that could well rival his own.

"I...I'll think about it, Tamara and call you later tonight," he conceded if only to banish that pained expression on her handsome face.

Understanding that this was the closest to acceding to her occasional overtures that he had ever come, Tamara relented. "Well, that will have to do then, I guess. I'll be expecting your call."

Capitulating to a sudden and extremely uncharacteristic impulse, Tamara bent down and gently kissed a surprised Saddler's upturned cheek. After a moment, she broke the kiss and her lips brushed his ear. "You'd love my soft side, Saddler...believe me."

She straightened and seeing the thoroughly flustered expression on his face, clapped him playfully on the shoulder.

He watched as she descended his steps and jogged around the car. Pausing before climbing in, she reiterated, "Remember, Ray...I'll be expecting your call."

The she drove off, leaving a completely bemused Saddler staring after her, trying to subjugate the complex storm of emotions that her overtures always evoked.

"She's a very attractive woman, Ray...who cares deeply for you...but she won't wait forever," a voice admonished and Saddler breath caught in his chest. He turned slowly to find Veronica Ashcott-Saddler sitting in the rocking chair next to his, with her long legs folded beneath her. A shadow of deep concern clouded her diaphanous face as she scrutinized him intently.

She had first come to him the night of his return from her funeral in Los Angeles. Watching the empty casket being lowered into the earth struck Saddler as a grim metaphor for the infinite void her passing had left in his life.

It had been just past midnight and he had been sitting in this very chair, wondering how he would muster the wherewithal to ever rise again. The August night had been calm and sultry, but the empty rocking chair suddenly began to move. The sound had torn him from his maudlin lethargy and he'd twisted to find her sitting there. The spectral quality lent an aspect of divinity to her intense beauty.

"Veronica?" he'd whispered tentatively, certain that this was yet another disturbing juncture on his declining path to absolute despair.

She had begun to speak and he had listened, held raptly by her tale...her beauty...and the miraculous reality of her proximity. He had learned that Jeniah's soul fracture had forever relegated Veronica's spirit to this place. He had been horrified to discover that if this structure ceased to stand, so too would her spirit vanish into nothingness.

That single revelation had shackled Raymond Saddler to this wood and plaster edifice of bitter memories just as tightly as it had bound Veronica's spirit.

Just as was the case with Tamara Hood, the pair...one living and one dead...had become hopelessly entangled in Quinsett's weave.

Veronica had gone on to recount the horrifying details of the night that humanity had tottered precariously on the brink of obliteration...pulled back by the heroic sacrifice of Cameron Crane and Maria Cordova.

Therein lay the true reason for Raymond Saddler's obsessive need for isolation...it was in these moments of solitude that she would return to him.

"Ray, I want you to call her...to spend time with her," Veronica's apparition insisted firmly.

He turned his gaze to that beautiful face...now a pale facsimile of its living self...and on his face was an expression of raw torment and anguish. "Please Veronica...don't ask me to...to do that. I...I just can't"

"Why Ray?" she persisted. "You can't languish here...content to simply exist in the company of a ghost. It's not fair to you...and it's definitely not fair to our children. To see you like this...isolated from the world...from life...it's excruciating for me."

He averted his eyes to his trembling hands. "I can't Veronica...I can't lose you."

Her green eyes widened in surprise. "Why ever do you think you would lose me?"

He shifted his misery-fraught gaze to hers and tears glistened in his blues eyes. "If I give in to...to Tamara's need, I'm afraid of that moment...that singularly awful instant when you realize that an entire day had passed and you've not once thought of the woman who had been the sum total of your entire world for so long. It's then that a person truly dies...when they begin to recede from your memory...like sand through an hourglass. I can't bear the thought of confronting that moment. It haunts me because I know I won't survive it. Worse yet, I dread that, by trying to take up the threads of a normal life...I might severe this link to you...lose these precious moments we spend together. Nothing...nothing could ever be worth the risk!"

He stopped, the notion of such insufferable loss evoking a low moan of misery that escaped his lips like a scalded hiss. He was astounded to see tears glistening on her cheeks. She abruptly reached across and laid her hand atop his. The sensation was a distant echo of physical contact...a pale intimation of touch that accentuated...in painfully concise terms...the distance that now stretched between them. When she spoke, her voice was fierce and implacable. "I can tell you...unequivocally...that will never happen. You and I are inextricably bound and there is no force in nature that can severe that bond. When your life has run its course, you and I will be re-united...granted infinity together to compensate for these years we've lost. In the meantime, I will live in your heart and your thoughts...and nothing could banish me from either. The only thing that remains to be resolved...is how you will live the remainder of your life. Will you dwell in shadow and brooding reminiscence...or will you embrace life and the love that is being offered to you? For your sake...the sake of our children, who should not have to grow up in the shadow of their father's lingering sorrow...and for my sake, I'm begging you to accept the choice of rekindled happiness that Tamara Hood represents."

"What about you...your happiness?" he cried wretchedly.

"I will be here...always...watching over my family...taking joy in their happiness," she said softly. "And in the quiet moments...when you need me...come to me here...I'll always be here, waiting."

He stared at her in silence for a long while, lost in the mesmerizing topography of her beloved face. Finally, he managed hoarsely, "I will...tomorrow...I promise...but for now, can we just spend this afternoon together?"

Veronica nodded happily and still holding his hand, gazed up into the early afternoon sky. Smiling contentedly, Raymond Saddler shifted his eyes to the sun-dappled side yard where light and shadow frolicked and chased each other through the early autumn air.

2

Perm, Central USSR:

The heavy snow lay a foot deep across the unpaved road, but the girl moved effortlessly through the drifts, her long, honey-blond hair blowing freely in the biting wind.

Sixteen years old Svetlana Kurylenko was oblivious to both the snow and the bitter cold. Indeed, she'd been dubbed the ice queen or Tsarina by her comrades in the dismal, remote town of Perm. Her ice blue eyes were as pale and beautiful as the glaciers that capped the mighty Ural Mountains.

To her teachers and fellow students...and her own parents...the statuesque Russian beauty seemed every bit as cold and inaccessible as the mountains that loomed above the town.

Her teachers were vigilant in their task of unearthing any hidden talent that might serve the glory of the state and scrutinized Svetlana closely. Reticent and aloof she might be, but there was a quality about the girl that suggested she might possess a dormant, but extraordinary gift.

She had returned home one evening to overhear the school's head master inform her parents that Svetlana might benefit from a year of tutoring in Leningrad or Moscow. The very idea had filled the girl with primordial dread. A deeply inculcated instinct for self-preservation had warned Svetlana that she could never allow them even an inkling of her true gift...a gift that would guarantee her a life of caged servitude. Svetlana Kurylenko could hear the voice of nature and communicate with the essence of the world, itself.

When she strode out into the vast and forbidding wilderness, the girl's glacial reticence vanished like ice beneath the summer sun.

Drawn by her inner purity...the unassailable integrity of her rare and precious spirit...the creatures of the forest came to her in multitudes. Often, as she embarked on her solitary excursions, Svetlana would find herself followed by packs of wolves, snow hares and circling birds that would trail after her as though enthralled.

Even bears would lay at her feet and growl contentedly while she ran her long fingers through their coarse fur.

On this day, Svetlana Kurylenko wandered deeper into the forest than ever before. The vast expanse of snow-draped trees seemed uncharacteristically silent and empty. She traipsed through the heavy drifts without her usual escort, drawn by an irresistible compulsion, which she had tried to ignore, but ultimately could not.

Eventually, she found herself staring fixedly down into a natural stone throat that resembled a vast well. Large flakes of snow began to waft down from the brooding slate gray clouds that lumbered overhead.

As she watched, mesmerized but unafraid, a thick column of ice spiraled up out of the shadowy depths of this stone gullet. It swayed and undulated as it towered above the girl, its multi-faceted surface reflecting light in a vast array of breathtaking colors too numerous to count.

When it spoke, its deep voice rumbled like winter thunder, its guttural timber resonating in Svetlana's entranced mind like the very voice of the world. "I've been expecting you, child."

The end.

April 1990 – January 2013

