to talk like that."
"I'm not an angel. Even if I were, it wouldn't make any difference. Michael has been known to loose some oaths that caused tidal waves."
"Do you two get along? You and Michael?"
Silence greeted her.
"Sorry," she muttered. "Conversing with the spirit world is not something I do every day, you know."
"There you go again, being flip. I can't seem to get through to you—any of you—the horror that is beginning … for all of you."
"Don't you think we know, Sam? We lived through it once."
"But none of you will live through this. None of you. And your death, Jane Ann, is not going to be pleasant."
"I realize that, Sam. Last night I prayed for help."
"I heard you."
"Did He?"
"I am sure He did."
"You don't know!"
Silence.
"All right. Knowing Jean Zagone, I'm sure whatever is in store for me will be of a sexual nature."
The mist projected no reply.
"Rape, I'm sure."
Silence.
"Am I to be served up for the Black Mass?"
The mist gave no clue. Balon's unblinking eyes could not be read.
And then she knew what was in store for her; the culmination of the awfulness preceding the final hours of hideousness. She put her hands over her face and wept.
Balon could do nothing except silently watch, and invisibly weep with her.
A gentle rain began to fall over Whitfield.
Sam jacked a round into the automatic, eased the hammer down, and shoved it behind his belt. He glanced at Nydia. "Let's go see this hole in the ground. See the Beasts."
She grabbed his arm. "Why did you say Beasts?"
"Because I know, now, that's what they are. I don't know how I know. But they are the Devil's Beasts. My dad fought them—or some like them—in Fork. And now I know for certain I have been tapped—chosen, if you will—to pick up where Dad left off. Just another part of the country, that's all."
"And Roma, Falcon, Black … all those at the house?" she asked, almost running to keep pace with his long stride.
"I have to kill them," Sam said.
"Or try," she was forced to add.
"Yes."
"You won't run?"
"No."
Then they were at the hole in the earth, the ungodly fumes pouring from the blackness hundreds of feet deep almost making them physically ill.
"Bastards," Sam said, his voice low and powerful. "I know you're in there."
A growl ripped from the darkness and the stench to touch them.
Sam tossed his jacket to the ground, opening his shirt, exposing the angry red cross burned into his skin. The growling intensified, becoming louder as others joined in, swelling the howling and snarling to a fever pitch.
Sam pulled the .45 from his belt. "Why don't you come out?" he challenged them. "Let the light touch you?"
But nothing appeared at the mouth of the stinking lair of the Beasts. Only more howling and snarling sprang from the filthy cave.
Sam ignored the tugging at his sleeve. Nydia was so frightened she was trembling.
"Come up," Sam said. "Let me see you. Show me your evil red eyes." How did I know their eyes were red?
And one Beast did just that. A young Beast who lacked the caution of age leaped forward, just a few feet from the cave opening. It roared at the tall young man, its breath stinking. Sam shot it between the eyes, then stood smiling as the dead creature tumbled backward, falling with a boneless thud onto the first level of the many-tiered burrow. It would not be wasted: its relatives would feast on the cooling flesh and still-warm blood, sucking the marrow from the bones.
"One less," Sam said, then spat contemptuously on the ground, unaware his father had done and said the same thing years before, 1,500 miles to the west.
This time Sam allowed Nydia to pull him away from the rancid hole, leading him toward the house.
After the young couple had gone, a huge old Beast stuck his head out of the den. He had been on this earth for many years, hundreds of years, and had lived through purge after purge from both humans and the elements. He was old and he was wise, as Beasts go. He shook his great scarred head and snarled deep in his chest. He had never known a human without fear of his kind.
Until now.
And that primal sense of warning struck a resonant cord within his tiny brain. The Beast did not know he was evil; his brain could not distinguish between good and evil. He served his god because … well, it was the thing to do. He did not