Darkfall

I

At headquarters, the underground garage was lighted but not very brightly lighted. Shadows crouched in corners; they spread like a dark fungus on the walls; they lay in wait between the rows of cars and other vehicles; they clung to the concrete ceilings and watched all that went on beneath them.

Tonight, Jack was scared of the garage. Tonight, the omnipresent shadows themselves seemed to be alive and, worse, seemed to be creeping closer with great cleverness and stealth.

Rebecca and the kids evidently felt the same way about the place. They stayed close together, and they looked around worriedly, their faces and bodies tense.

It's all right, Jack told himself. The goblins can't have known where we were going. For the time being, they've lost track of us. For the moment, at least, we're safe.

But he didn't feel safe.

The night man in charge of the garage was Ernie Tewkes. His thick black hair was combed straight back from his forehead, and he wore a pencil-thin mustache that looked odd on his wide upper lip.

“But each of you already signed out a car,” Ernie said, tapping the requisition sheet on his clipboard.

“Well, we need two more,” Jack said.

“That's against regulations, and I—”

“To hell with the regulations,” Rebecca said. “Just give us the cars. Now.”

“Where're the two you already got?” Ernie asked. “You didn't wrack them up, did you?”

“Of course not,” Jack said. “They're bogged down.”

“Mechanical trouble?”

“No. Stuck in snow drifts,” Jack lied.

They had ruled out going back for the car at Rebecca's apartment, and they had also decided they didn't dare return to Faye and Keith's place. They were sure the devil-things would be waiting at both locations.

“Drifts?” Ernie said. “Is that all? We'll just send a tow truck out, get you loose, and put you on the road again.”

“We don't have time for that,” Jack said impatiently, letting his gaze roam over the darker portions of the cavernous garage. “We need two cars right now.”

“Regulations say—”

“Listen,” Rebecca said, “weren't a number of cars assigned to the Carramazza task force?”

“Sure,” Ernie said. “But—”

“And aren't some of those cars still here in the garage, right now, unused?”

“Well, at the moment, nobody's using them,” Ernie admitted. “But maybe—”

“And who's in charge of the task force?” Rebecca demanded.

“Well… you are. The two of you.”

“This is an emergency related to the Carramazza case, and we need those cars.”

“But you've already got cars checked out, and regulations say you've got to fill out breakdown or loss reports on them before you can get—”

“Forget the bullshit bureaucracy,” Rebecca said angrily. “Get us new wheels now, this minute, or so help me (loaf I'll rip that funny little mustache out of your face, take the keys off your pegboard there, and get the cars myself.”

Ernie stared wide-eyed at her, evidently stunned by both the threat and the vehemence with which it was delivered.

In this particular instance, Jack was delighted to see Rebecca revert to a nail-eating, hard-nosed Amazon.

“Move!” she said, taking one step toward Ernie.

Ernie moved. Fast.

While they waited by the dispatcher's booth for the first car to be brought around, Penny kept looking from one shadowy area to another. Again and again, she thought she saw things moving in the gloom: darkness slithering through darkness; a ripple in the shadows between two patrol cars; a throbbing in the pool of blackness that lay behind a police riot wagon; a shifting, malevolent shape in the pocket of darkness in that corner over there; a watchful, hungry shadow hiding among the ordinary shadows in that other corner; movement just beyond the stairway and more movement on the other side of the elevators and something scuttling stealthily across the dark ceiling and-

Stop it!

Imagination, she told herself. If the place was crawling with goblins, they'd have attacked us already.

The garage man returned with a slightly battered blue Chevrolet that had no police department insignia on the doors, though it did have a big antenna because of its police radio. Then he hurried away to get the second car.

Daddy and Rebecca checked under the seats of the first one, to be sure no goblins were hiding there.

Penny didn't want to be separated from her father, even though she knew separation was part of the plan, even though she had heard all the good reasons why it was essential for them to split up, and even though the time to leave had now come. She and Davey would go with Rebecca and spend the next few hours driving slowly up and down the main avenues, where the snowplows were working the hardest and where there was the least danger of getting stuck; they didn't dare get stuck because they were vulnerable when they stayed in one place too long, safe only while they were on wheels and moving, where the goblins couldn't get a fix on them. In the meantime her father would go up to Harlem to see a man named Carver Hampton, who would probably be able to help him find Lavelle. Then he was going after that witchdoctor. He was sure he wouldn't be in terrible danger. He said that, for some reason he really didn't understand, Lavelle's magic had no effect on him. He said putting the cuffs on Lavelle wouldn't be any more difficult or dangerous than putting them on any other criminal. He meant it, too. And Penny wanted to believe that he was absolutely right. But deep in her heart, she was certain she would never see him again.

Nevertheless, she didn't cry too much, and she didn't hang on him too much, and she got into the car with Davey and Rebecca. As they drove out of the garage, up the exit ramp, she looked back. Daddy was waving at them. Then they reached the street and turned right, and he was out of sight. From that moment, it seemed to Penny that he was already as good as dead.

II

A few minutes after midnight, in Harlem, Jack parked in front of Rada. He knew Hampton lived above the store, and he figured there must be a private entrance to the apartment, so he went around to the side of the building, where he found a door with a street number.

There were a lot of lights on the second floor. Every window glowed brightly.

Standing with his back to the pummeling wind, Jack pushed the buzzer beside the door but wasn't satisfied with just a short ring; he held his thumb there, pressing down so hard that it hurt a little. Even through the closed door, the sound of the buzzer swiftly became irritating. Inside, it must be five or six times louder. If Hampton looked out through the fisheye security lens in the door and saw who was waiting and decided not to open up, then he'd better have a damned good pair of earplugs. In five minutes the buzzer would give him a headache. In ten minutes it would be like an icepick probing in his ears. If that didn't work, however, Jack intended to escalate the battle; he'd look around for a pile of loose bricks or several empty bottles or other hefty pieces of rubbish to throw through Hampton's windows. He didn't care about being charged with reckless use of authority; he didn't care about getting in trouble and maybe losing his badge. He was past the point of polite requests and civilized debate.

To his surprise, in less than half a minute the door opened, and there was Carver Hampton, looking bigger and more formidable than Jack remembered him, not frowning as expected but smiling, not angry but delighted.

Before Jack could speak, Hampton said, “You're all right! Thank God for that. Thank God. Come in. You don't know how glad I am to see you. Come in, come in.” There was a small foyer beyond the door, then a set of stairs, and Jack went in, and Hampton closed the door but didn't stop talking. “My God, man, I've been worried half to death. Are you all right? You look all right. Will you please, for God's sake, tell me you're all right?”

“I'm okay,” Jack said. “Almost wasn't. But there's so much I have to ask you, so much I—”

“Come upstairs,” Hampton said, leading the way. “You've got to tell me what's happened, all of it, every detail. It's been an eventful and momentous night; I know it; I sense it.”

Pulling off his snow-encrusted boots, following Hampton up the narrow stairs, Jack said, “I should warn you — I've come here to demand your help, and by God you're going to give it to me, one way or the other.”

“Gladly,” Hampton said, further surprising him.

“I'll do whatever I possibly can; anything.”

At the top of the stairs, they came into a comfortable-looking, well-furnished living room with a great many books on shelves along one wall, an Oriental tapestry on the wall opposite the books, and a beautiful Oriental carpet, predominantly beige and blue, occupying most of the floor space. Four blown-glass table lamps in striking blues and greens and yellows were placed with such skill that you were drawn by their beauty no matter which way you were facing. There were also two reading lamps, more functional in design, one by each of the big armchairs. Both of those and all four of the blown-glass lamps were on. However, their light didn't fully illuminate every last corner of the room, and in those areas where there otherwise might have been a few thin shadows, there were clusters of burning candles, at least fifty of them in all.

Hampton evidently saw that he was puzzled by the candles, for the big man said, “Tonight there are two kinds of darkness in this city, Lieutenant. First, there's that darkness which is merely the absence of light. And then there's that darkness which is the physical presence — the very manifestation — of the ultimate, Satanic evil. That second and malignant form of darkness feeds upon and cloaks itself in the first and more ordinary kind of darkness, cleverly disguises itself. But it's out there! Therefore, I don't wish to have shadows close to me this night, if I can avoid it, for one never knows when an innocent patch of shade might be something more than it appears.”

Before this investigation, even as excessively open-minded as Jack had always been, he wouldn't have taken Carver Hampton's warning seriously. At best, he would have thought the man eccentric; at worst, a bit mad. Now, he didn't for a moment doubt the sincerity or the accuracy of the Houngon's statements. Unlike Hampton, Jack wasn't afraid that the shadows themselves would suddenly leap at him and clutch him with insubstantial yet somehow deadly hands of darkness; however, after the things he had seen tonight, he couldn't rule out even that bizarre possibility. Anyway, because of what might be hiding within the shadows, he, too, preferred bright light.

“You look frozen,” Hampton said. “Give me your coat. I'll hang it over the radiator to dry. Your gloves, too. Then sit down, and I'll bring you some brandy.”

“I don't have time for brandy,” Jack said, leaving his coat buttoned and his gloves on. “I've got to find Lavelle. I—”

“To find and stop Lavelle,” Hampton said, “you've got to be properly prepared. That's going to take time. Only a fool would go rushing back out into that storm with only a half-baked idea of what to do and where to go. And you're no fool, Lieutenant. So give me your coat. I can hop you, but it's going to take longer than two minutes.”

Jack sighed, struggled out of his heavy coat, and gave it to the Houngon.

Minutes later, Jack was ensconced in one of the armchairs, holding a glass of Remy Martin in his cupped hands. He had taken off his shoes and socks and had put them by the radiator, too, for they had gotten thoroughly soaked by the snow that had gotten in over the tops of his boots as he'd waded through the drifts. For the first time all night, his feet began to feel warm.

Hampton opened the gas jets in the fireplace, poked a long-stemmed match in among the ceramic logs, and flames whooshed up. He turned the gas high. “Not for the heat so much as to chase the darkness from the flue,” he said. He shook out the match, dropped it into a copper scuttle that stood on the hearth. He sat down in the other armchair, facing Jack across a coffee table on which were displayed two pieces of Lalique crystal — a clear bowl with green lizards for handles, and a tall frosted vase with a graceful neck. “If I'm to know how to proceed, you'll have to tell me everything that—”

“First, I've got some questions,” Jack said.

“All right.”

“Why wouldn't you help me earlier today?”

“I told you. I was scared.”

“Aren't you scared now?”

“More than ever.”

“Then why're you willing to help me now?”

“Guilt. I was ashamed of myself.”

“It's more than that.”

“Well, yes. As a Houngon,you see, I routinely call upon the gods of Rada to perform feats for me, to fulfill blessings I bestow on my clients and on others I wish to help. And, of course, it's the gods who make my magic potions work as intended. In return, it is incumbent upon me to resist evil, to strike against the agents of Congo and Petro wherever I encounter them. Instead, for a while, I tried to hide from my responsibilities.”

“If you had refused again to help me… would these benevolent gods of Rada continue to perform their feats for you and fulfill the blessings you bestow? Or would they abandon you and leave you without power?”

“It's highly unlikely they would abandon me.”

“But possible?”

“Remotely, yes.”

“So, at least in some small degree, you're also motivated by self-interest. Good. I like that. I'm comfortable with that.”

Hampton lowered his eyes, stared into his brandy for a moment, then looked at Jack again and said, “There's another reason I must help. The stakes are higher than I first thought when I threw you out of the shop this afternoon. You see, in order to crush the Carramazzas, Lavelle has opened the Gates of Hell and has let out a host of demonic entities to do his killing for him. It was an insane, foolish, terribly prideful, stupid thing for him to have done, even if he is perhaps the most masterful Bocor in the world. He could have conjured up the spiritual essence of a demon and could have sent that after the Carramazzas; then there would have been no need to open the Gates at all, no need to bring those hateful creatures to this plane of existence in physical form. Insanity! Now, the Gates are open only a crack, and at the moment Lavelle is in control. I can sense that much through the cautious application of my own power. But Lavelle is a madman and, in some lunatic fit, might decide to fling the Gates wide, just for the fun of it. Or perhaps he'll grow weary and weaken; and if he weakens enough, the forces on the other side will surely burst the Gates against Lavelle's will. In either case, vast multitudes of monstrous creatures will come forth to slaughter the innocent, the meek, the good, and the just. Only the wicked will survive, but they'll find themselves living in Hell on Earth.”

III

Rebecca drove up the Avenue of the Americas, almost to Central Park, then made an illegal U-turn in the middle of the deserted intersection and headed downtown once more, with no cause to worry about other drivers. There actually was some traffic — snow removal vehicles, an ambulance, even two or three radio cabs — but for the most part the streets were bare of everything but snow. Twelve or fourteen inches had fallen, and it was still coming down fast. No one could see the lane markings through the snow; even where the plows scraped, they didn't make it all the way down to bare pavement. And no one was paying any attention to oneway signs or to traffic signals, most of which were on the blink because of the storm.

Davey's exhaustion had eventually proved greater than his fear. He was sound asleep on the back seat.

Penny was still awake, although her eyes were bloodshot and watery looking. She was clinging resolutely to consciousness because she seemed to have a compulsive need to talk, as if continual conversation would somehow keep the goblins away. She was also staying awake because, in a round-about fashion, she seemed to be leading up to some important question.

Rebecca wasn't sure what was on the girl's mind, and when, at last, Penny got to it, Rebecca was surprised by the kid's perspicacity.

“Do you like my father?”

“Of course,” Rebecca said. “We're partners.”

“I mean, do you like him more than just as a partner?”

“We're friends. I like him very much.”

“More than just friends?”

Rebecca glanced away from the snowy street' and the girl met her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered,” Penny said.

Not quite sure what to say, Rebecca returned her attention to the street ahead.

Penny said, “Well? Are you? More than just friends?”

“Would it upset you if we were?”

“Gosh, no!”

“Really?”

“You mean, maybe I might be upset because I'd think you were trying to take my mother's place?”

“Well, that's sometimes a problem.”

“Not with me, it isn't. I loved my Mom, and I'll never forget her, but I know she'd want me and Davey to be happy, and one thing that'll make us real happy is if we could have another mom before we're too old to enjoy her.”

Rebecca almost laughed in delight at the sweet, innocent, and yet curiously sophisticated manner in which the girl expressed herself. But she bit her tongue and remained straight-faced because she was afraid that Penny might misinterpret her laughter. The girl was so serious.

Penny said, “I think it would be terrific — you and Daddy. He needs someone. You know… someone… to love.”

“He loves you and Davey very much. I've never known a father who loved his children — who cherished them — as much as Jack loves and cherishes the two of you.”

“Oh, I know that. But he needs more than us.” The girl was silent for a moment, obviously deep in thought. Then: “See, there're basically three types of people. First, you've got your givers, people who just give and give and give and never expect to take anything in return. There aren't many of those. I guess that's the kind of person who sometimes ends up being made a saint a hundred years after he dies. Then there're your givers-and-takers, which is what most people are; that's what I am, I guess. And way down at the bottom, you've got your takers, the scuzzy types who just take and take and never-ever give anything to anyone. Now, I'm not saying Daddy's a complete giver. I know he isn't a saint. But he's not exactly a giver-and-taker, either. He's somewhere in between. He gives a whole lot more than he takes. You know? He enjoys giving more than he enjoys getting. He needs more than just Davey and me to love… because he's got a lot more love in him than just that.” She sighed and shook her head in evident frustration. “Am I making any sense at all?”

“A lot of sense,” Rebecca said. “I know exactly what you mean, but I'm amazed to be hearing it from an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Almost twelve.”

“Very grown up for your age.”

“Thank you,” Penny said gravely.

Ahead, at a cross street, a roaring river of wind moved from east to west and swept up so much snow that it almost looked as if the Avenue of the Americas terminated there, in a solid white wall. Rebecca slowed down, switched the headlights to high beam, drove through the wall and out the other side.

“I love your father,” she told Penny, and she realized she hadn't yet told Jack. In fact, this was the first time in twenty years, the first time since the death of her grandfather, that she had admitted loving anyone. Saying those words was easier than she had thought it would be. “I love him, and he loves me.”

“That's fabulous,” Penny said, grinning.

Rebecca smiled. “It is rather fabulous, isn't it?”

“Will you get married?”

“I suspect we will.”

“Double fabulous.”

“Triple.”

“After the wedding, I'll call you Mom instead of Rebecca — if that's all right.”

Rebecca was surprised by the tears that suddenly rose in her eyes, and she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “I'd like that.”

Penny sighed and slumped down in her seat. “I was worried about Daddy. I was afraid that witchdoctor would kill him. But now that I know about you and him… well, that's one more thing he has to live for. I think it'll help. I think it's real important that he's got not just me and Davey but you to come home to. I'm still afraid for him, but I'm not so afraid as I was.”

“He'll be all right,” Rebecca said. “You'll see. He'll be just fine. We'll all come through this just fine.”

A moment later, when she glanced at Penny, she saw that the girl was asleep.

She drove on through the whirling snow.

Softly, she said, “Come home to me, Jack. By God, you'd better come home to me.”

IV

Jack told Carver Hampton everything beginning with the call from Lavelle on the pay phone in front of Rada, and concluding with the rescue by Burt and Leo in their Jeep, the trip to the garage for new cars, and the decision to split up and keep the kids safely on the move.

Hampton was visibly shocked and distressed. He sat very still and rigid throughout the story, not even once moving to sip his brandy. Then, when Jack finished, Hampton blinked and shuddered and downed his entire glassful of Remy Martin in one long swallow.

“And so you see'” Jack said, “when you said these things came from Hell, maybe some people might've laughed at you, but not me. I don't have any trouble believing you, even though I'm not too sure how they made the trip.”

After sitting rigidly for long minutes, Hampton suddenly couldn't keep still. He got up and paced. “I know something of the ritual he must have used. It would only work for a master, a Bocor of the first rank. The ancient gods wouldn't have answered a less powerful sorcerer. To do this thing, the Bocor must first dig a pit in the earth. It's shaped somewhat like a meteor crater, sloping to a depth of two or three feet. The Bocor recites certain chants… uses certain herbs…. And he pours three types of blood into the hole — cat, rat, and human. As he sings a final and very long incantation, the bottom of the pit is miraculously transformed. In a sense… in a way that is impossible to explain or understand, the pit becomes far deeper than two or three feet; it interfaces with the Gates of Hell and becomes a sort of highway between this world and the Underworld. Heat rises from the pit, as does the stench of Hell, and the bottom of it appears to become molten. When the Bocor finally summons the entities he wants, they pass out through the Gates and then up through the bottom of the pit. On their way, these spiritual beings acquire physical bodies, golem bodies composed of the earth through which they pass; clay bodies that are nevertheless flexible and fully animated and alive. From your vivid descriptions of the creatures you've seen tonight, I'd say they were the incarnations of minor demons and of evil men, once mortal, who were condemned to Hell and are its lowest residents. Major demons and the ancient evil gods themselves would be considerably larger, more vicious, more powerful, and infinitely more hideous in appearance.”

“Oh, these damned things were plenty hideous enough,” Jack assured him.

“But, supposedly, there are many Ancient Ones whose physical forms are so repulsive that the mere act of looking at them results in instant death for he who sees, “ Hampton said, pacing.

Jack sipped his brandy. He needed it.

“Furthermore,” Hampton said, “the small size of these beasts would seem to support my belief that the Gates are currently open only a crack. The gap is too narrow to allow the major demons and the dark gods to slip out.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Yes,” Carver Hampton agreed. “Thank all the benevolent gods for that.”

V

Penny and Davey were still asleep. The night was lonely without their company.

The windshield wipers flogged the snow off the glass.

The wind was so fierce that it rocked the sedan and forced Rebecca to grip the steering wheel more firmly than she had done before.

Then something made a noise beneath the car.

Thump, thump. It knocked against the undercarriage hard enough to startle her, though not loud enough to wake the kids.

And again. Thump, thump.

She glanced in the rearview mirror, trying to see if she'd run over anything. But the car's back window was partially frosted, limiting her view, and the tires churned up plumes of snow so thick that they cast everything behind the car into obscurity.

She nervously scanned the lighted instrument panel in the dashboard, but she couldn't see any indication of trouble. Oil, fuel, alternator, battery — all seemed in good shape; no warning lights, no plunging needles on the gauges. The car continued to purr along through the blizzard. Apparently, the disconcerting noise hadn't been related to a mechanical problem.

She drove half a block without a recurrence of the sound, then an entire block, then another one. She began to relax.

Okay, okay, she told herself. Don't be so damned jumpy. Stay calm and be cool. That's what the situation calls for. Nothing's wrong now, and nothing's going to go wrong, either. I'm fine. The kids are fine. The car's fine.

Thump-thump-thump.

VI

The gas flames licked the ceramic logs.

The blown-glass lamps glowed softly, and the candles flickered, and the special darkness of the night pressed against the windows.

“Why wouldn't those creatures bite me? Why can't Lavelle's sorcery harm me?”

“There can be only one answer,” Hampton said. “A Bocor has no power whatsoever to harm a righteous man. The righteous are well-armored.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. You're righteous, virtuous. You're a man whose soul bears the stains of only the most minor sins.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“No. By the manner in which you've led your life, you've earned immunity to the dark powers, immunity to the curses and charms and spells of sorcerers like Lavelle. You cannot be touched.”

“That's just plain ridiculous,” Jack said, feeling uncomfortable in the role of a righteous man.

“Otherwise, Lavelle would have had you murdered by now.”

“I'm no angel.

“I didn't say you were. Not a saint, either. Just a righteous man. That's good enough.”

“Nonsense. I'm not righteous or—”

“If you thought of yourself as righteous, that would be a sin — a sin of self-righteousness. Smugness, an unshakable conviction of your own moral superiority, a self-satisfied blindness to your own faults — none of those qualities is descriptive of you.”

“You're beginning to embarrass me,” Jack said.

“You see? You aren't even guilty of the sin of excessive pride.”

Jack held up his brandy. “What about this? I drink.”

“To excess?”

“No. But I swear and curse. I sure do my own share of that. I take the Lord's name in vain.”

“A very minor sin.”

“I don't attend church.”

“Church-going has nothing to do with righteousness. The only thing that really counts is how you treat your fellow human beings. Listen, let's pin this down; let's be absolutely sure this is why Lavelle can't touch you. Have you ever stolen from anyone?”

“No.”

“Have you ever cheated someone in a financial transaction?”

“I've always looked out for my own interests, been aggressive in that regard, but I don't believe I've ever cheated anyone.”

“In your official capacity, have you ever accepted a bribe?”

“No. You can't be a good cop if you've got your hand out.”

“Are you a gossiper, a slanderer?”

“No. But forget about that small stuff.” He leaned forward in his armchair and locked eyes with Hampton and said, “What about murder? I've killed two men. Can I kill two men and still be righteous? I don't think so. That strains your thesis more than a little bit.”

Hampton looked stunned but only for a moment. He blinked and said, “Oh. I see. You mean that you killed them in the line of duty.”

“Duty is a cheap excuse, isn't it? Murder is murder. Right? ”

“What crimes were these men guilty of?”

“The first was a murderer himself. He robbed a series of liquor stores and always shot the clerks. The second was a rapist. Twenty-two rapes in six months.”

“When you killed these men, was it necessary? Could you have apprehended them without resorting to a gun? ”

“In both cases they started shooting first.”

Hampton smiled, and the hard lines of his battered face softened. “Self-defense isn't a sin, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah? Then why'd I feel so dirty after I pulled the trigger? Both times. I felt soiled. Sick. Once in a while, I still have a nightmare about those men, bodies torn apart by bullets from my own revolver…”

“Only a righteous man, a very virtuous man, would feel remorse over the killing of two vicious animals like the men you shot down.”

Jack shook his head. He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable with this new vision of himself. “I've always seen myself as a fairly average, ordinary guy. No worse and no better than most people. I figure I'm just about as open to temptation, just about as corrupt as the next joe. And in spite of everything you've said, I still see myself that way.”

“And you always will,” Hampton said. “Humility is part of being a righteous man. But the point is, to deal with Lavelle, you don't have to believe you're really a righteous man; you just have to be one.”

“Fornication,” Jack said in desperation. “That's a sin.”

“Fornication is a sin only if it is obsessive, adulterous, or an act of rape. An obsession is sinful because it violates the moral precept “All things in moderation.” Are you obsessed with sex?”

“I like it a lot.”

“Obsessed?”

“No.”

“Adultery is a sin because it is a violation of the marriage vows, a betrayal of trust, and a conscious cruelty,” Hampton said. “When your wife was alive, did you ever cheat on her? ”

“Of course not. I was in love with Linda.”

“Before your marriage or after your wife's death, did you ever go to bed with somebody else's wife? No? Then you aren't guilty of either form of adultery, and I know you're incapable of rape.”

“I just can't buy this righteousness stuff, this idea that I'm one of the chosen or something. It makes me queasy. Look, I didn't cheat on Linda, but while we were married I saw other women who turned me on, and I fantasized, and I wanted them, even if I didn't do anything about it. My thoughts weren't pure.”

“Sin isn't in the thought but in the deed.”

“I am not a saintly character,” Jack said adamantly.

“As I told you, in order to find and stop Lavelle, you don't need to believe — you only need to be.”

VII

Rebecca listened to the car with growing dread. Now, there were other sounds coming from the undercarriage, not just the odd thumping, but rattling and clanking and grating noises, as well. Nothing loud. But worrisome.

We're only safe as long as we keep moving.

She held her breath, expecting the engine to go dead at any moment.

Instead, the noises stopped again. She drove four blocks with only the normal sounds of the car and the overlaid moan and hiss of the storm wind.

But she didn't relax. She knew something was wrong, and she was sure it would start acting up again. Indeed, the silence, the anticipation, was almost worse than the strange noises.

VIII

Still psychically linked with the murderous creatures he had summoned from the pit, Lavelle drummed his heels on the mattress and clawed at the dark air. He was pouring sweat; the sheets were soaked, but he was not aware of that.

He could smell the Dawson children. They were very close.

The time had almost come. Just minutes now. A short wait. And then the slaughter.

IX

Jack finished his brandy, put the glass on the coffee table, and said, “There's a big hole in your explanation.”

“And what's that?” Hampton asked.

“If Lavelle can't harm me because I'm a righteous man, then why can he hurt my kids? They're not wicked, for God's sake. They're not sinful little wretches. They're damned good kids.”

“In the view of the gods, children can't be considered righteous; they're simply innocent. Righteousness isn't something we're born with; it's a state of grace we achieve only through years of virtuous living. We become righteous people by consciously choosing good over evil in thousands of situations in our day-to-day lives.”

“Are you telling me that God — or all the benevolent gods, if you'd rather put it that way — protects the righteous but not the innocent?”

“Yes.”

“Innocent little children are vulnerable to this monster Lavelle, but I'm not? That's outrageous, unfair, just plain wrong.”

“You have an overly keen sense of injustice, both real and imagined. That's because you're a righteous man.”

Now it was Jack who could no longer sit still. While Hampton slumped contentedly in an armchair, Jack paced in his bare feet. “Arguing with you is goddamned frustrating!”

“This is my field, not yours. I'm a theologist, not legitimized by a degree from any university, but not merely an amateur, either. My mother and father were devout Roman Catholics. In finding my own beliefs, I studied every religion, major and minor, before becoming convinced of the truth and efficacy of voodoo. It's the only creed that has always accommodated itself to other faiths; in fact, voodoo absorbs and uses elements from every religion with which it comes into contact. It is a synthesis of many doctrines that usually war against one another — everything from Christianity and Judaism to sun-worship and pantheism. I am a man of religion, Lieutenant, so it's to be expected that I'll tie you in knots on this subject.”

“But what about Rebecca, my partner? She was bitten by one of these creatures, but she's not, by God, a wicked or corrupt person.”

“There are degrees of goodness, of purity. One can be a good person and not yet truly righteous, just as one can be righteous and not yet be a saint. I've met Miss Chandler only once, yesterday. But from what I saw of her, I suspect she keeps her distance from people, that she has, to some degree, withdrawn from life.”

“She had a traumatic childhood. For a long time, she's been afraid to let herself love anyone or form any strong attachments.”

“There you have it,” Hampton said. “One can't earn the favor of the Rada and be granted immunity to the powers of darkness if one withdraws from life and avoids a lot of those situations that call for a choice between good and evil, right and wrong. It is the making of those choices that enables you to achieve a state of grace.”

Jack was standing at the hearth, warming himself in the heat of the gas fire — until the leaping flames suddenly reminded him of the goblins' eye sockets. He turned away from the blaze. “Just supposing I am a righteous man, how does that help me find Lavelle?”

“We must recite certain prayers,” Hampton said. “And there's a purification ritual you must undergo. When you've done those things, the gods of Rada will show you the way to Lavelle.”

“Then let's not waste any more time. Come on. Let's get started.”

Hampton rose from his chair, a mountain of a man. “Don't be too eager or too fearless. It's best to proceed with caution.”

Jack thought of Rebecca and the kids in the car, staying on the move to avoid being trapped by the goblins, and he said, “Does it matter whether I'm cautious or reckless? I mean, Lavelle can't harm me.”

“It's true that the gods have provided you with protection from sorcery, from all the powers of darkness. Lavelle's skill as a Bocor won't be of any use to him. But that doesn't mean you're immortal. It doesn't mean you're immune to the dangers of this world. If Lavelle is willing to risk being caught for the crime, willing to risk standing trial, then he could still pick up a gun and blow your head off.”

X

Rebecca was on Fifth Avenue when the thumping and rattling in the car's undercarriage began again. It was louder this time, loud enough to wake the kids. And it wasn't just beneath them, any more; now, it was also coming from the front of the car, under the hood.

Davey stood up in back, holding onto the front seat, and Penny sat up straight and blinked the sleep out of her eyes and said, “Hey, what's that noise?”

“I guess we're having some sort of mechanical trouble,” Rebecca said, although the car was running well enough.

“It's the goblins,” Davey said in a voice that was half filled with terror and half with despair.

“It can't be them,” Rebecca said.

Penny said, “They're under the hood.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “We've been moving around steadily since we left the garage. There's no way they could have gotten into the car. No way.”

“Then they were there even in the garage,” Penny said.

“No. They'd have attacked us right there.”

“Unless,” Penny said, “maybe they were afraid of Daddy.”

“Afraid he could stop them,” Davey said.

“Like he stopped the one that jumped on you,” Penny said to her brother, “the one outside Aunt Faye's place.”

“Yeah. So maybe the goblins figured to hang under the car and just wait till we were alone.”

“Till Daddy wasn't here to protect us.”

Rebecca knew they were right. She didn't want to admit it, but she knew.

The clattering in the undercarriage and the thumping-rattling under the hood increased, became almost frantic.

“They're tearing things apart,” Penny said.

“They're gonna stop the car!” Davey said.

“They'll get in,” Penny said. “They'll get in at us, and there's no way to stop them.”

“Stop it!” Rebecca said. “We'll come out all right. They won't get us.”

On the dashboard, a red warning light came on. In the middle of it was the word OIL.

The car had ceased to be a sanctuary.

Now it was a trap.

“They won't get us. I swear they won't,” Rebecca said again, but she said it as much to convince herself as to reassure the children.

Their prospects for survival suddenly looked as bleak as the winter night around them.

Ahead, through the sheeting snow, less than a block away, St. Patrick's Cathedral rose out of the raging storm, like some great ship on a cold night sea. It was a massive structure, covering one entire city block.

Rebecca wondered if voodoo devils would dare enter a church. Or were they like vampires in all the novels and movies? Did they shy away in terror and pain from the mere sight of a crucifix?

Another red warning light came on. The engine was overheating.

In spite of the two gleaming indicators on the instrument panel, she tramped on the accelerator, and the car surged forward. She angled across the lanes, toward the front of St. Patrick's.

The engine sputtered.

The cathedral offered small hope. Perhaps false hope. But it was the only hope they had.

XI

The ritual of purification required total immersion in water prepared by the Houngon.

In Hampton's bathroom, Jack undressed. He was more than a little surprised by his own new-found faith in these bizarre voodoo practices. He expected to feel ridiculous as the ceremony began, but he didn't feel anything of the sort because he had seen those Hellborn creatures.

The bathtub was unusually long and deep. It occupied more than half the bathroom. Hampton said he'd had it installed expressly for ceremonial baths.

Chanting in an eerily breathless voice that sounded too delicate to be coming from a man of his size, reciting prayers and petitions in a patois of French and English and various African tribal languages, Hampton used a bar of green soap — Jack thought it was Irish Spring — to draw veves all over the inside of the tub. Then he filled it with hot water. To the water, he added a number of substances and items that he had brought upstairs from his shop: dried rose petals; three bunches of parsley; seven vine leaves; one ounce of orgeat, which is a syrup made from almonds, sugar, and orange blossoms; powdered orchid petals; seven drops of perfume; seven polished stones in seven colors, each from the shore of a different body of water in Africa; three coins; seven ounces of seawater taken from within the territorial limits of Haiti; a pinch of gunpowder; a spoonful of salt; lemon oil; and several other materials.

When Hampton told him that the time had come, Jack stepped into the pleasantly scented bath. The water was almost too hot to bear, but he bore it. With steam rising around him, he sat down, pushed the coins and stones and other hard objects out of his way, then slid onto his tailbone, until only his head remained above the waterline.

Hampton chanted for a few seconds, then said, “Totally immerse yourself and count to thirty before coming up for air.”

Jack closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slid flat on his back, so that his entire body was submerged. He had counted only to ten when he began to feel a strange tingling from head to foot. Second by second, he felt somehow… cleaner… not just in body but in mind and spirit, as well. Bad thoughts, fear, tension, anger, despair — all were leeched out of him by the specially treated water.

He was getting ready to confront Lavelle.

XII

The engine died. A snowbank loomed.

Rebecca pumped the brakes. They were extremely soft, but they still worked. The car slid nose-first into the mounded snow, hitting with a thank and a crunch, harder than she would have liked, but not hard enough to hurt anyone.

Silence.

They were in front of the main entrance to St. Patrick's.

Davey said, “Something's inside the seat! It's coming through! “

“What?” Rebecca asked, baffled by his statement, turning to look at him.

He was standing behind Penny's seat, pressed up against it, but facing the other way, looking at the backrest of the rear seat where he had been sitting just a short while ago. Rebecca squinted past him and saw movement under the upholstery. She heard an angry, muffled snarling, too.

One of the goblins must have gotten into the trunk. It was chewing and clawing through the seat, burrowing toward the interior of the car.

“Quick,” Rebecca said. “Come up here with us, Davey. We'll all go out through Penny's door, one after the other, real quick, and then straight into the church.”

Making desperate wordless sounds, Davey climbed into the front seat, between Rebecca and Penny.

At the same moment, Rebecca felt something pushing at the floorboards under her feet. A second goblin was tearing its way into the car from that direction.

If there were only two of the beasts, and if both of them were busily engaged in boring holes into the car, they might not immediately realize that their prey was making a run for the cathedral. It was at least something to hope for; not much, but something.

At a signal from Rebecca, Penny flung open the door and went out, into the storm.

Heart hammering, gasping in shock when the bitterly cold wind hit her, Penny scrambled out of the car, slipped on the snowy pavement, almost fell, windmilled her arms, and somehow kept her balance. She expected a goblin to rush out from beneath the car, expected to feel teeth sinking through one of her boots and into her ankle, but nothing like that happened. The streetlamps, shrouded and dimmed by the storm, cast an eerie light like that in a nightmare. Penny's distorted shadow preceded her as she clambered up the ridge of snow that had been formed by passing plows. She struggled all the way to the top, panting, using her hands and knees and feet, getting snow in her face and under her gloves and inside her boots, and then she jumped down to the sidewalk, which was buried under a smooth blanket of virgin snow, and she headed toward the cathedral, never looking back, never, afraid of what she might see behind her, pursued (at least in her imagination) by all the monsters she had seen in the foyer of that brownstone apartment house earlier tonight. The cathedral steps were hidden under deep snow, but Penny grabbed the brass handrail and used it as a guide, stomped all the way up the steps, suddenly wondering if the doors would be unlocked at this late hour. Wasn't a cathedral always open? If it was locked now, they were dead. She went to the center-most portal, gripped the handle, pulled, thought for a moment that it was locked, then realized it was just a very heavy door, seized the handle with both hands, pulled harder than before, opened the door, held it wide, turned, and finally looked back the way she'd come.

Davey was two-thirds of the way up the steps, his breath puffing out of him in jets of frost-white steam. He looked so small and fragile. But he was going to make it.

Rebecca came down off the ridge of snow at the curb, onto the sidewalk, stumbled, fell to her knees.

Behind her, two goblins reached the top of the piledup snow.

Penny screamed. “They're coming! Hurry!”

When Rebecca fell to her knees, she heard Penny scream, and she got up at once, but she took only one step before the two goblins dashed past her, Jesus, as fast as the wind, a lizard-thing and a cat-thing, both of them screeching. They didn't attack her, didn't nip at her or hiss, didn't even pause. They weren't interested in her at all; they just wanted the kids.

Davey was at the cathedral door now, standing with Penny, and both of them were shouting at Rebecca.

The goblins reached the steps and climbed half of them in what seemed like a fraction of a second, but then they abruptly slowed down, as if they had realized they were rushing toward a holy place, although that realization didn't stop them altogether. They crept slowly and cautiously from step to step, sinking half out of sight m the snow.

Rebecca yelled at Penny—”Get in the church and close the door!" — but Penny hesitated, apparently hoping that Rebecca would somehow make it past the goblins and get to safety herself (if the cathedral actually was safe), but even at their slower pace the goblins were almost to the top of the steps. Rebecca yelled again. And again Penny hesitated. Now, moving slower by the second, the goblins were within one step of the top, only a few feet away from Penny and Davey… and now they were at the top, and Rebecca was shouting frantically, and at last Penny pushed Davey into the cathedral. She followed her brother and stood just inside the door for a moment, holding it open, peering out. Moving slower still, but still moving, the goblins headed for the door. Rebecca wondered if maybe these creatures could enter a church when the door was held open for them, just as (according to legend) a vampire could enter a house only if invited or if someone held the door for him. It was probably crazy to think the same rules that supposedly governed mythical vampires would apply to these very real voodoo devils. Nevertheless, with new panic in her voice, Rebecca shouted at Penny again, and she ran halfway up the steps because she thought maybe the girl couldn't hear her above the wind, and she screamed at the top of her voice, “Don't worry about me! Close the door! Close the door!” And finally Penny closed it, although reluctantly, just as the goblins arrived at the threshold.

The lizard-thing threw itself at the door, rebounded from it, and rolled onto its feet again.

The cat-thing wailed angrily.

Both creatures scratched at the portal, but neither of them showed any determination, as if they knew that, for them, this was too great a task. Opening a cathedral door — opening the door to any holy place — required far greater power than they possessed.

Frustrated, they turned away from the door. Looked at Rebecca. Their fiery eyes seemed brighter than the eyes of the other creatures she had seen at the Jamisons' and in the foyer of that brownstone apartment house.

She backed down one step.

The goblins started toward her.

She descended all the other steps, stopping only when she reached the sidewalk.

The lizard-thing and the cat-thing stood at the top of the steps, glaring at her.

Torrents of wind and snow raced along Fifth Avenue, and the snow was falling so heavily that it almost seemed she would drown in it as surely as she would have drowned in an onrushing flood.

The goblins descended one step.

Rebecca backed up until she encountered the ridge of snow at the curb.

The goblins descended a second step, a third.

I

The bath of purification lasted only two minutes. Jack dried himself on three small, soft, highly absorbent towels which had strange runes embroidered in the corners; they were of a material not quite like anything he had ever seen before.

When he had dressed, he followed Carver Hampton into the living room and, at the Houngon's direction, stood in the center of the room, where the light was brightest.

Hampton began a long chant, holding an asson over Jack's head, then slowly moving it down the front of him, then around behind him and up along his spine to the top of his head once more.

Hampton had explained that the asson—a gourd rattle made from a calabash plucked from a liana of a calebassier courant tree — was the symbol of office of the Houngon. The gourd's natural shape provided a convenient handle. Once hollowed out, the bulbous end was filled with eight stones in eight colors because that number represented the concept of eternity and life everlasting. The vertebrae of snakes were included with the stones, for they were symbolic of the bones of ancient ancestors who, now in the spirit world, might be called upon for help. The asson was also ringed with brightly colored porcelain beads. The beads, stones, and snake vertebrae produced an unusual but not unpleasant sound.

Hampton shook the rattle over Jack's head, then in front of his face. For almost a minute, singing hypnotically in some long-dead African language, he shook the asson over Jack's heart. He used it to draw figures in the air over each of Jack's hands and over each of his feet.

Gradually, Jack became aware of numerous appealing odors. First, he detected the scent of lemons. Then chrysanthemums. Magnolia blossoms. Each fragrance commanded his attention for a few seconds, until the air currents brought him a new odor. Oranges. Roses. Cinnamon. The scents grew more intense by the second. They blended together in a wonderfully harmonious fashion. Strawberries. Chocolate. Hampton hadn't lit any sticks of incense; he hadn't opened any bottles of perfume or essences. The fragrances seemed to occur spontaneously, without source, without reason. Black walnuts. Lilacs.

When Hampton finished chanting, when he put down the asson, Jack said, “Those terrific smells — where are they coming from?”

“They're the olfactory equivalents of visual apparitions,” Hampton said.

Jack blinked at him, not sure he understood. “Apparitions? You mean… ghosts?”

“Yes. Spirits. Benign spirits.”

“But I don't see them.”

“You're not meant to see them. As I told you, they haven't materialized visually. They've manifested themselves as fragrances, which isn't an unheard of phenomenon.”

Mint.

Nutmeg.

“Benign spirits,” Hampton repeated, smiling. “The room is filled with them, and that's a very good sign. They're messengers of the Rada. Their arrival here, at this time, indicates that the benevolent gods support you in your battle against Lavelle.”

“Then I'll find Lavelle and stop him?” Jack asked. “Is that what this means — that I'll win out in the end? Is it all predetermined?”

“No, no,” Hampton said. “Not at all. This means only that you've got the support of the Rada. But Lavelle has the support of the dark gods. The two of you are instruments of higher forces. One will win, and one will lose; that's all that's predetermined.”

In the corners of the room, the candle flames shrank until they were only tiny sparks at the tips of the wicks. Shadows sprang up and writhed as if they were alive. The windows vibrated, and the building shook in the grip of a sudden, tremendous wind. A score of books flew off the shelves and crashed to the floor.

“We have evil spirits with us, as well,” Hampton said.

In addition to the pleasant fragrances that filled the room, a new odor assaulted Jack. It was the stench of corruption, rot, decay, death.

II

The goblins had descended all but the last two of the cathedral steps. They were within only a dozen feet of Rebecca.

She turned and bolted away from them.

They shrieked with what might have been anger or glee or both — or neither. A cold, alien cry.

Without looking back, she knew they were coming after her.

She ran along the sidewalk, the cathedral at her right side, heading toward the corner, as if she intended to flee to the next block, but that was only a ruse. After she'd gone ten yards, she made a sharp right turn, toward the cathedral, and mounted the steps in a snowkicking frenzy.

The goblins squealed.

She was halfway up the steps when the lizard-thing snared her left leg and sank claws through her jeans, into her right calf. The pain was excruciating.

She screamed, stumbled, fell on the steps. But she continued upward, crawling on her belly, with the lizard hanging on her leg.

The cat-thing leaped onto her back. Clawed at her heavy coat. Moved quickly to her neck. Tried to nip her throat. It soothly a mouthful of coat collar and knitted scarf.

She was at the top of the steps.

Whimpering, she grabbed the cat-thing and tore it loose.

It bit her hand.

She pitched it away.

The lizard was still on her leg. It bit her thigh a couple of inches above her knee.

She reached down, clutched it, was bitten on the other hand. But she ripped the lizard loose and pitched it down the steps.

Eyes shining silver-white, the cat-form goblin was already coming back at her, squalling, a windmill of teeth and claws.

Energized by desperation, Rebecca gripped the brass handrail and lurched to her feet in time to kick out at the cat. Fortunately, the kick connected solidly, and the goblin tumbled end over end through the snow.

The lizard rushed toward her again.

There was no end to it. She couldn't possibly keep both of them at bay. She was tired, weak, dizzy, and wracked with pain from her wounds.

She turned and, trying hard to ignore the pain that flashed like an electric current through her leg, she flung herself toward the door through which Penny and Davey had entered the cathedral.

The lizard-thing caught the bottom of her coat, climbed up, around her side, onto the front of the coat, clearly intending to go for her face this time.

The catlike goblin was back, too, grabbing at her foot, squirming up her leg.

She reached the door, put her back to it.

She was at the end of her resources, heaving each breath in and out as if it were an iron ingot.

This close to the cathedral, right up against the wall of it, the goblins became sluggish, as she had hoped they would, just as they had done when pursuing Penny and Davey. The-lizard, its claws hooked in the front of her coat, let go with one deformed hand and swiped at her face. But the creature was no longer too fast for her.

She jerked her head back in time and felt the claws trace only light scratches on the underside of her chin. She was able to pull the lizard off without being bitten; she threw it as hard as she could, out toward the street. She pried the cat-thing off her leg, too, and pitched it away from her.

Turning quickly, she yanked open the door, slipped inside St. Patrick's Cathedral, and pushed the door shut after her.

The goblins thumped against the other side of it, once, and then were silent.

She was safe. Amazingly, thankfully safe.

She limped away from the door, out of the dimly lighted vestibule in which she found herself, past the marble holy water fonts, into the vast, vaulted, massively-columned nave with its rows and rows of polished pews. The towering stained-glass windows were dark and somber with only night beyond them, except in a few places where an errant beam from a streetlamp outside managed to find and pierce a cobalt blue or brilliant red piece of glass. Everything here was big and solid-looking — the huge pipe organ with its thousands of brass pipes soaring up like the spires of a smaller cathedral, the great choir loft above the front portals, the stone steps leading up to the high pulpit and the brass canopy above it — and that massiveness contributed to the feeling of safety and peace that settled over Rebecca.

Penny and Davey were in the nave, a third of the way down the center aisle, talking excitedly to a young and baffled priest. Penny saw Rebecca first, shouted, and ran toward her. Davey followed, crying with relief and happiness at the sight of her, and the cassocked priest came, too.

They were the only four in the immense chamber, but that was all right. They didn't need an army. The cathedral was an inviolable fortress. Nothing could harm them there. Nothing. The cathedral was safe. It had to be safe, for it was their last refuge.

III

In the car in front of Carver Hampton's shop, Jack pumped the accelerator and raced the engine, warming it.

He looked sideways at Hampton and said, “You sure you really want to come along?”

“It's the last thing I want to do,” the big man said. “I don't share your immunity to Lavelle's powers. I'd much rather stay up there in the apartment, with all the lights on and the candles burning.”

“Then stay. I don't believe you're hiding anything from me. I really believe you've done everything you can. You don't owe me anything more.”

“I owe me. Going with you, helping you if I canthat's the right thing to do. I owe it to myself not to make another wrong choice.”

“All right then.” Jack put the car in gear but kept his foot on the brake pedal. “I'm still not sure I understand how I'm going to find Lavelle.”

“You'll simply know what streets to follow, what turns to make,” Hampton said. “Because of the purification bath and the other rituals we performed, you're now being guided by a higher power.”

“Sounds better than a Three-A map, I guess. Only… I sure don't feel anything guiding me.”

“You will, Lieutenant. But first, we've got to stop at a Catholic church and fill these jars"-he held up two small, empty jars that would hold about eight ounces each—“with holy water. There's a church straight ahead, about five blocks from here.”

“Fine,” Jack said. “But one thing.”

“What's that?”

“Will you drop the formality, stop calling me Lieutenant? My name's Jack.”

“You can call me Carver, if you like.”

“I'd like.”

They smiled at each other, and Jack took his foot off the brake, switched on the windshield wipers, and pulled out into the street.

They entered the church together.

The vestibule was dark. In the deserted nave there were a few dim lights burning, plus three or four votive candles flickering in a wrought iron rack that stood on this side of the communion railing and to the left of the chancel. The place smelled of incense and furniture polish that had evidently been used recently on the well-worn pews. Above the altar, a large crucifix rose high into the shadows.

Carver genuflected and crossed himself. Although Jack wasn't a practicing Catholic, he felt a sudden strong compulsion to follow the black man's example, arid he realized that, as a representative of the Rada on this special night, it was incumbent upon him to pay obeisance to all the gods of good and light, whether it was the Jewish god of the old testament, Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, or any other deity. Perhaps this was the first indication of the “guidance” of which Carver had spoken.

The marble font, just this side of the narthex, contained only a small puddle of holy water, insufficient for their needs.

“We won't even be able to fill one jar,” Jack said.

“Don't be so sure,” Carver said, unscrewing the lid from one of the containers. He handed the open jar to Jack. “Try it.”

Jack dipped the jar into the font, scraped it along the marble, scooped up some water, didn't think he'd gotten more than two ounces, and blinked in surprise when he held the jar up and saw that it was full. He was even more surprised to see just as much water left in the font as had been there before he'd filled the jar.

He looked at Carver.

The black man smiled and winked. He screwed the lid on the jar and put it in his coat pocket. He opened the second jar and handed it to Jack.

Again, Jack was able to fill the container, and again the small puddle of water in the font appeared untouched.

IV

Lavelle stood by the window, looking out at the storm.

He was no longer in psychic contact with the small assassins. Given more time, time to marshal their forces, they might yet be able to kill the Dawson children, and if they did he would be sorry he'd missed it. But time was running out.

Jack Dawson was coming, and no sorcery, regardless of how powerful it might be, would stop him.

Lavelle wasn't sure how everything had gone wrong so quickly, so completely. Perhaps it had been a mistake to target the children. The Rada was always incensed at a Bocor who used his power against children, and they always tried to destroy him if they could. Once committed to such a course, you had to be extremely careful. But, damnit, he had been careful. He couldn't think of a single mistake he might have made. He was well-armored; he was protected by all the power of the dark gods.

Yet Dawson was coming.

Lavelle turned away from the window.

He crossed the dark room to the dresser.

He took a.32 automatic out of the top drawer.

Dawson was coming. Fine. Let him come.

V

Rebecca sat down in the aisle of the cathedral and pulled up the right leg of her jeans, above her knee. The claw and fang wounds were bleeding freely, but she was in no danger of bleeding to death. The jeans had provided some protection. The bites were deep but not too deep. No major veins or arteries had been severed.

The young priest, Father Walotsky, crouched beside her, appalled by her injuries. “How did this happen? What did this to you?”

Both Penny and Davey said, “Goblins,” as if they were getting tired of trying to make him understand.

Rebecca pulled off her gloves. On her right hand was a fresh, bleeding bite mark, but no flesh was torn away; it was just four small puncture wounds. The gloves, like her jeans, had provided at least some protection. Her left hand bore two bite marks; one was bleeding and seemed no more serious than the wound on her right hand, painful but not mortal, while the other was the old bite she'd received in front of Faye's apartment building.

Father Walotsky said, “What's all that blood on your neck?” He put a hand to her face, gently pressed her hand back, so he could see the scratches under her chin.

“Those're minor,” she said. “They sting, but they're not serious.

“I think we'd better get you some medical attention,” he said. “Come on.”

She pulled down the leg of her jeans.

He helped her to her feet. “I think it would be all right if I took you to the rectory.”

“No,” she said.

“It's not far.”

“We're staying here,” she said.

“But those look like animal bites. You've got to have them attended to. Infection, rabies…. Look, it's not far to the rectory. We don't have to go out in the storm, either. There's an underground passage between the cathedral and—”

“No,” Rebecca said firmly. “We're staying here, in the cathedral, where we're protected.”

She motioned for Penny and Davey to come close to her, and they did, eagerly, one on each side of her.

The priest looked at each of them, studied their faces, met their eyes, and his face darkened. “What are you afraid of?”

“Didn't the kids tell you some of it?” Rebecca asked.

“They were babbling about goblins, but—”

“It wasn't just babble,” Rebecca said, finding it odd to be the one professing and defending a belief in the supernatural, she who had always been anything but excessively open-minded on the subject. She hesitated. Then, as succinctly as possible, she told him about Lavelle, the slaughter of the Carramazzas, and the voodoo devils that were now after Jack Dawson's children.

When she finished, the priest said nothing and couldn't meet her eyes. He stared at the floor for long seconds.

She said, “Of course, you don't believe me.”

He looked up and appeared to be embarrassed. “Oh, I don't think you're lying to me… exactly. I'm sure you believe everything you've told me. But, to me, voodoo is a sham, a set of primitive superstitions. I'm a priest of the Holy Roman Church, and I believe in only one Truth, the Truth that Our Savior—”

“You believe in Heaven, don't you? And Hell?”

“Of course. That's part of Catholic—”

“These things have come straight up from Hell, Father. If I'd told you that it was a Satanist who had summoned these demons, if I'd never mentioned the word voodoo, then maybe you still wouldn't have believed me, but you wouldn't have dismissed the possibility so fast, either, because your religion encompasses Satan and Satanists.”

“I think you should—”

Davey screamed.

Penny said, “They're here!”

Rebecca turned, breath caught in her throat, heart hanging in mid-beat.

Beyond the archway through which the center aisle of the nave entered the vestibule, there were shadows, and in those shadows were silver-white eyes glowing brightly. Eyes of fire. Lots of them.

VI

Jack drove the snow-packed streets, and as he approached each intersection, he somehow sensed when a right turn was required, when he should go left instead, and when he should just speed straight through. He didn't know how he sensed those things; each time, a feeling came over him, a feeling he couldn't put into words, and he gave himself to it, followed the guidance that was being given to him. It was certainly unorthodox procedure for a cop accustomed to employing less exotic techniques in the search for a suspect. It was also creepy, and he didn't like it. But he wasn't about to complain, for he desperately wanted to find Lavelle.

Thirty-five minutes after they had collected the two small jars of holy water, Jack made a left turn into a street of pseudo-Victorian houses. He stopped in front of the fifth one. It was a three-story brick house with lots of gingerbread trim. It was in need of repairs and painting, as were all the houses in the block, a fact that even the snow and darkness couldn't hide. There were no lights in the house; not one. The windows were perfectly black.

“We're here,” Jack told Carver.

He cut the engine, switched off the headlights.

VII

Four goblins crept out of the vestibule, into the center aisle, into the light that, while not bright, revealed their grotesque forms in more stomach-churning detail than Rebecca would have liked.

At the head of the pack was a foot-tall, man-form creature with four fire-filled eyes, two in its forehead.

Its head was the size of an apple, and in spite of the four eyes, most of the misshapen skull was given over to a mouth crammed full and bristling with teeth. It also had four arms and was carrying a crude spear in one spikefingered hand.

It raised the spear above its head in a gesture of challenge and defiance.

Perhaps because of the spear, Rebecca was suddenly possessed of a strange but unshakable conviction that the man-form beast had once been — in very ancient times — a proud and blood-thirsty African warrior who had been condemned to Hell for his crimes and who was now forced to endure the agony and humiliation of having his soul embedded within a small, deformed body.

The man-form goblin, the three even more hideous creatures behind it, and the other beasts moving through the dark vestibule (and now seen only as pairs of shining eyes) all moved slowly, as if the very air inside this house of worship was, for them, an immensely heavy burden that made every step a painful labor. None of them hissed or snarled or shrieked, either. They just approached silently, sluggishly, but implacably.

Beyond the goblins, the doors to the street still appeared to be closed. They had entered the cathedral by some other route, through a vent or a drain that was unscreened and offered them an easy entrance, a virtual invitation, the equivalent of the “open door” that they, like vampires, probably needed in order to come where evil wasn't welcome.

Father Walotsky, briefly mesmerized by his first glimpse of the goblins, was the first to break the silence.

He fumbled in a pocket of his black cassock, withdrew a rosary, and began to pray.

The man-form devil and the three things immediately behind it moved steadily closer, along the main aisle, and other monstrous beings crept and slithered out of the dark vestibule, while new pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness there. They still moved too slowly to be dangerous.

But how long will that last? Rebecca wondered. Perhaps they'll somehow become conditioned to the atmosphere in the cathedral. Perhaps they'll gradually become bolder and begin to move faster. What then?

Pulling the kids with her, Rebecca began to back up the aisle, toward the altar. Father Walotsky came with them, the rosary beads clicking to his hands.

VIII

They slogged through the snow to the foot of the steps that led up to Lavelle's front door.

Jack's revolver was already in his hand. To Carver Hampton, he said, “I wish you'd wait in the car.”

“No.”

“This is police business.”

“It's more than that. You know it's more than that.”

Jack sighed and nodded.

They climbed the steps.

Obtaining an arrest warrant, pounding on the door, announcing his status as an officer of the law — none of that usual procedure seemed necessary or sensible to Jack. Not in this bizarre situation. Still, he wasn't comfortable or happy about just barging into a private residence.

Carver tried the doorknob, twisted it back and forth several times. “Locked.”

Jack could see that it was locked, but something told him to try it for himself. The knob turned under his hand, and the latch clicked softly, and the door opened a crack.

“Locked for me,” Carver said “but not for you.”

They stepped aside, out of the fine of fire.

Jack reached out, pushed the door open hard, and snatched his hand back.

But Lavelle didn't shoot.

They waited ten or fifteen seconds, and snow blew in through the open door. Finally, crouching, Jack moved into the doorway and crossed the threshold, his gun thrust out in front of him.

The house was exceptionally dark. Darkness would work to Lavelle's advantage, for he was familiar with the place, while it was all strange territory to Jack.

He fumbled for the light switch and found it.

He was in a broad entrance hall. To the left were inlaid oak stairs with an ornate railing. Directly ahead, beyond the stairs, the hall narrowed and led all the way to the rear of the house. A couple of feet ahead and to the right, there was an archway, beyond which lay more darkness.

Jack edged to the brink of the arch. A little light spilled in from the hall, but it showed him only a section of bare floor. He supposed it was a living room.

He reached awkwardly around the corner, trying to present a slim profile, feeling for another light switch, found and flipped it. The switch operated a ceiling fixture; light filled the room. But that was just about the only thing in it — light. No furniture. No drapes. A film of gray dust, a few balls of dust in the corners, a lot of light, and four bare walls.

Carver moved up beside Jack and whispered, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

As Jack opened his mouth to answer, he felt something whiz past his face and, a fraction of a second later, he heard two loud shots, fired from behind him. He dropped to the floor, rolled out of the hall, into the living room.

Carver dropped and rolled, too. But he had been hit.

His face was contorted by pain. He was clutching his left thigh, and there was blood on his trousers.

“He's on the stairs,” Carver said raggedly. “I got a glimpse.”

“Must've been upstairs, then came down behind us.”

“Yeah.”

Jack scuttled to the wall beside the archway, crouched there. “You hit bad?”

“Bad enough,” Carver said. “Won't kill me, though. You just worry about getting him.”

Jack leaned around the archway and squeezed off a shot right away, at the staircase, without bothering to look or aim first.

Lavelle was there. He was halfway down the final flight of stairs, hunkered behind the railing.

Jack's shot tore a chunk out of the bannister two feet from the Bocor's head.

Lavelle returned the fire, and Jack ducked back, and shattered plaster exploded from the edge of the archway.

Another shot.

Then silence.

Jack leaned out into the archway again and pulled off three shots in rapid succession, aiming at where Lavelle had been, but Lavelle was already on his way upstairs, and all three shots missed him, and then he was out of sight.

Pausing to reload his revolver with the loose bullets he carried in one coat pocket, Jack glanced at Carver and said, “Can you make it out to the car on your own?”

“No. Can't walk with this leg. But I'll be all right here. He only winged me. You just go get him.”

“We should call an ambulance for you.”

“Just get him!” Carver said.

Jack nodded, stepped through the archway, and went cautiously to the foot of the stairs.

IX

Penny, Davey, Rebecca, and Father Walotsky took refuge in the chancel, behind the altar railing. In fact, they climbed up onto the altar platform, directly beneath the crucifix.

The goblins stopped on the other side of the railing. Some of them peered between the ornate supporting posts. Others climbed onto the communion rail itself, perched there, eyes flickering hungrily, black tongues licking slowly back and forth across their sharp teeth.

There were fifty or sixty of them now, and more were still coming out of the vestibule, far back at the end of the main aisle.

“They w-won't come up here, wow-will they?” Penny asked. “Not this c-close to the crucifix. Will they?”

Rebecca hugged the girl and Davey, held them tight and dose. She said, “You can see they've stopped. It's all right. It's all right now. They're afraid of the altar.

They've stopped.”

But for how long? she wondered.

X

Jack climbed the stairs with his back flat against the wall, moving sideways, trying to be utterly silent, nearly succeeding. He held his revolver in his left hand, with his arm rigidly extended, aiming at the top of the steps, his aim never wavering as he ascended, so he'd be ready to pull the trigger the instant Lavelle appeared. He reached the landing without being shot at, climbed three steps of the second flight, and then Lavelle leaned out around the corner above, and both of them fired — Lavelle twice, Jack once.

Lavelle pulled the trigger without pausing to take aim, without even knowing exactly where Jack was. He just took a chance that two rounds, placed down the center of the stairwell, would do the job. Both missed.

On the other hand, Jack's gun was aimed along the wall, and Lavelle leaned right into its line of fire. The slug smashed into his arm at the same moment he finished pulling the trigger of his own gun. He screamed, and the pistol flew out of his hand, and he stumbled back into the upstairs hall where he'd been hiding.

Jack took the stairs two at a time, jumping over Lavelle's pistol as it came tumbling down. He reached the second-floor hallway in time to see Lavelle enter a room and slam the door behind him.

Downstairs, Carver lay on the dust-filmed floor, eyes closed. He was too weary to keep his eyes open. He was growing wearier by the second.

He didn't feel like he was lying on a hard floor. He felt as if he were floating in a warm pool of water, somewhere in the tropics. He remembered being shot, remembered falling; he knew the floor really was there, under him, but he just couldn't feel it.

He figured he was bleeding to death. The wound didn't seem that bad, but maybe it was worse than he thought. Or maybe it was just shock that made him feel this way. Yeah, that must be it, shock, just shock, not bleeding to death after all, just suffering from shock, but of course shock could kill, too.

Whatever the reasons, he floated, oblivious of his own pain, just bobbing up and down, drifting there on the hard floor that wasn't hard at all, drifting on some far-away tropical tide… until, from upstairs, there was the sound of gunfire and a shrill scream that snapped his eyes open. He had an out-of-focus, floor-level view of the empty room. He blinked his eyes rapidly and squinted until his clouded visions cleared, and then — he wished it hadn't cleared because he saw that he was no longer alone.

One of the denizens of the pit was with him, its eyes aglow.

Upstairs, Jack tried the door that Lavelle had slammed. It was locked, but the lock probably didn't amount to much, just a privacy set, flimsy as they could be made, because people didn't want to put heavy and expensive locks inside a house.

“Lavelle?” he shouted.

No answer.

“Open up. No use trying to hide in there.”

From inside the room came the sound of a shattering wmdow.

“Shit,” Jack said.

He stepped back and kicked at the door, but there was more to the lock than he'd expected, and he had to kick it four times, as hard as he could, before he finally smashed it open.

He switched on the light. An ordinary bedroom. No sign of Lavelle.

The window in the opposite wall was broken out. Drapes billowed on the in-rushing wind.

Jack checked the closet first, just to be sure this wasn't a bit of misdirection to enable Lavelle to get behind his back. But no one waited in the closet.

He went to the window. In the light that spilled past him, he saw footprints in the snow that covered the porch roof. They led out to the edge. Lavelle had jumped down to the yard below.

Jack squeezed through the window, briefly snagging his coat on a shard of glass, and went onto the roof.

In the cathedral, approximately seventy or eighty goblins had come out of the vestibule. They were lined up on the communion rail and between the supporting posts under the rail. Behind them, other beasts slouched up the long aisle.

Father Walotsky was on his knees, praying, but he didn't seem to be doing any good, so far as Rebecca could see.

In fact, there were some bad signs. The goblins weren't as sluggish as they had been. Tails lashed. Mutant heads whipped back and forth. Tongues flickered faster than before.

Rebecca wondered if they could, through sheer numbers, overcome the benign power that held sway within the cathedral and that had, so far, prevented them from attacking. As each of the demonic creatures entered, it brought its own measure of malignant energy. If the balance of power tipped in the other direction…

One of the goblins hissed. They had been perfectly silent since entering the cathedral, but now one of them hissed, and then another, and then three more, and in seconds all of them were hissing angrily.

Another bad sign.

Carver Hampton.

When he saw the demonic entity in the hallway, the floor suddenly seemed a bit more solid to him. His heart began to pound, and the real world came swimming back to him out of the tropical hallucination — although this part of the real world contained, at this time, something from a nightmare.

The thing in the hall skittered toward the open arch and the living room. From Carver's perspective, it looked enormous, at least his own size, but he realized it wasn't really as large as it seemed from his peculiar floor-level point of view. But big enough. Oh, yes. Its head was the size of his fist. Its sinuous, segmented, wormlike body was half again as long as his arm. Its crablike legs ticked against the wooden floor. The only features on its misshapen head were an ugly suckerlike mouth full of teeth and those haunting eyes of which Jack Dawson had spoken, those eyes of silver-white fire.

Carver found the strength to move. He hitched himself backwards across the floor, grasping in exhaustion and wincing with rediscovered pain, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. He came up against the wall almost at once, startling himself; he'd thought the room was bigger than that.

With a thin, high-pitched keening, the worm-thing came through the archway and scurried toward him.

When Lavelle jumped off the porch roof, he didn't land on his feet. He slipped in the snow and crashed onto his wounded arm. The explosion of pain almost blew him into unconsciousness.

He couldn't understand why everything had gone so wrong. He was confused and angry. He felt naked, powerless; that was a new feeling for him. He didn't like it.

He crawled a few feet through the snow before he could find the strength to stand, and when he stood he heard Dawson shouting at him from the edge of the porch roof. He didn't stop, didn't wait passively to be captured, not Baba Lavelle the great Bocor. He headed across the rear lawn toward the storage shed.

His source of power lay beyond the pit, with the dark gods on the other side. He would demand to know why they were failing him. He would demand their aid.

Dawson fired one shot, but it must have been just a warning because it didn't come anywhere close to Lavelle.

The wind battered him and threw snow in his face, and with blood pouring out of his shattered arm he wasn't easily able to resist the storm, but he stayed on his feet and reached the shed and pulled open the door — and cried out in shock when he saw that the pit had grown. It now occupied the entire small building, from one corrugated wall to the other, and the light coming from it wasn't orange any longer but blood-red and so bright it hurt his eyes.

Now he knew why his malevolent benefactors were letting him go down to defeat. They had allowed him to use them only as long as they could use him, in turn. He had been their conduit to this world, a means by which they could reach out and claw at the living. But now they had something better than a conduit; now they had a doorway to this plane of existence, a real doorway that would permit them to leave the Underworld. And it was thanks to him that they'd been given it. He had opened the Gates just a crack, confident that he could hold them to that narrow and insignificant breach, but he had lost control without knowing it, and now the Gates were surging wide. The Ancient Ones were coming. They were on their way. They were almost here. When they arrived, Hell would have relocated to the surface of the earth.

In front of his feet, the rim of the pit was continuing to crumble inward, faster and faster.

Lavelle stared in horror at the beating heart of hate-light within the pit. He saw something dark at the bottom of that intense red glow. It rippled. It was huge.

And it was rising toward him.

Jack jumped from the roof, landed on both feet in the snow, and started after Lavelle. He was halfway across the lawn when Lavelle opened the door to the corrugated metal shed. The brilliant and eerie crimson light that poured forth was sufficient to stop Jack in his tracks.

It was the pit, of course, just as Carver had described it. But it surely wasn't as small as it was supposed to be, and the light wasn't soft and orange. Carver's worst fear was coming true: the Gates of Hell were swinging open all the way.

As that mad thought struck Jack, the pit suddenly grew larger than the shed that had once contained it. The corrugated metal walls fell away into the void. Now there was only a hole in the ground. Like a giant searchlight, the red beams from the pit speared up into the dark and storm-churned sky.

Lavelle staggered back a few steps, but he was evidently too terrified to be able to turn and run.

The earth trembled.

Within the pit, something roared. It had a voice that shook the night.

The air stank of sulphur.

Something snaked up from the depths. It was like a tentacle but not exactly a tentacle, like a chitinous insect leg but not exactly an insect leg, sharply jointed in several places and yet as sinuous as a serpent. It soared up to a height of fifteen feet. The tip of the thing was equipped with long whiplike appendages that writhed around a loose, drooling, toothless mouth large enough to swallow a man whole. Worse, it was in some ways exceedingly clear that this was only a minor feature of the huge beast rising from the Gates; it was as small, proportionately, as a human finger compared to an entire human body. Perhaps this was the only thing that the escaping Lovecraftian entity had thus far been able to extrude between the opening Gates — this one finger.

The giant, insectile, tentacular limb bent toward Lavelle. The whiplike appendages at the tip lashed out, snared him, and lifted him off the ground, into the blood-red light. He screamed and flailed, but he could do nothing to prevent himself from being drawn into that obscene, drooling mouth. And then he was gone.

In the cathedral, the last of the goblins had reached the communion railing. At least a hundred of them turned blazing eyes on Rebecca, Penny, Davey, and Father Walotsky.

Their hissing was now augmented with an occasional snarl.

Suddenly the four-eyed, four-armed manlike demon leaped off the rail, into the chancel. It took a few tentative steps forward and looked from side to side; there was an air of wariness about it. Then it raised its tiny spear, shook it, and shrieked.

Immediately, all of the other goblins shrieked, too.

Another one dared to enter the chancel.

Then a third. Then four more.

Rebecca glanced sideways, toward the sacristy door. But it was no use running in there. The goblins would only follow. The end had come at last.

The worm-thing reached Carver Hampton where he sat on the floor, his back pressed to the wall. It reared up, until half its disgusting body was off the floor.

He looked into those bottomless, fiery eyes and knew that he was too weak a Houngon to protect himself.

Then, out behind the house, something roared; it sounded enormous and very much alive.

The earth quaked, and the house rocked, and the worm-demon seemed to lose interest in Carver. It turned half away from him and moved its head from side to side, began to sway to some music that Carver could not hear.

With a sinking heart, he realized what had temporarily enthralled the thing: the sound of other Hell — trapped souls screeching toward a long-desired freedom, the triumphant ululation of the Ancient Ones at last breaking their bonds.

The end had come.

Jack advanced to the edge of the pit. The rim was dissolving, and the hole was growing larger by the second. He was careful not to stand at the very brink.

The fierce red glow made the snowflakes look like whirling embers. But now there were shafts of bright white light mixed in with the red, the same silvery-white as the goblins' eyes, and Jack was sure this meant the Gates were opening dangerously far.

The monstrous appendage, half insectile and half like a tentacle, swayed above him threateningly, but he knew it couldn't touch him. Not yet, anyway. Not until the Gates were all the way open. For now, the benevolent gods of Rada still possessed some power over the earth, and he was protected by them.

He took the jar of holy water from his coat pocket. He wished he had Carver's jar, as well, but this would have to do. He unscrewed the lid and threw it aside.

Another menacing shape was rising from the depths. He could see it, a vague dark presence rushing up through the nearly blinding light, howling like a thousand dogs.

He had accepted the reality of Lavelle's black magic and of Carver's white magic, but now he suddenly was able to do more than accept it; he was able to understand it in concrete terms, and he knew he now understood it better than Lavelle or Carver ever had or ever would. He looked into the pit and he knew. Hell was not a mythical place, and there was nothing supernatural about demons and gods, nothing holy or unholy about them. Hell — and consequently Heaven — were as real as the earth; they were merely other dimensions, other planes of physical existence. Normally, it was impossible for a living man or woman to cross over from one plane to the other. But religion was the crude and clumsy science that had theorized ways in which to bring the planes together, if only temporarily, and magic was the tool of that science.

After absorbing that realization, it seemed as easy to believe in voodoo or Christianity or any other religion as it was to believe in the existence of the atom.

He threw the holy water, jar and all, into the pit.

The goblins surged through the communion rail and up the steps toward the altar platform.

The kids screamed, and Father Walotsky held his rosary out in front of him as if certain it would render him impervious to the assault. Rebecca drew her gun, though she knew it was useless, took careful aim on the first of the pack-

And all one hundred of the goblins turned to clumps of earth which cascaded harmlessly down the altar steps.

The worm-thing swung its hateful head back toward Carver and hissed and struck at him.

He screamed.

Then gasped in surprise as nothing more than dirt showered over him.

The holy water disappeared into the pit.

The jubilant squeals, the roars of hatred, the triumphant screams all ceased as abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug on a stereo. The silence lasted only a second, and then the nigh' was filled with cries of anger, rage, frustration, and anguish.

The earth shook more violently than before.

Jack was knocked off his feet, but he fell backwards, away from the pit.

He saw that the rim had stopped dissolving. The hole wasn't getting any larger.

The mammoth appendage that towered over him, like some massive fairytale serpent, did not take a swipe at him as he had been afraid it might. Instead, its disgusting mouth sucking ceaselessly at the night, it collapsed back into the pit.

Jack got to his feet again. His overcoat was caked with snow.

The earth continued to shake. He felt as if he were standing on an egg from which something deadly was about to hatch. Cracks radiated out from the pit, half a dozen of them — four, six, even eight inches wide and as much as ten feet long. Jack found himself between the two largest gaps, on an unstable island of rocking, heaving earth. The snow melted into the cracks, and light shone up from the strange depths, and heat rose in waves as if from an open furnace door, and for one ghastly moment it seemed as if the entire world would shatter underfoot. Then quickly, mercifully, the cracks closed up again, sealed tight, as if they had never been.

The light began to fade within the pit, changing from red to orange around the edges.

The hellish voices were fading, too.

The gates were easing shut.

With a flush of triumph, Jack inched closer to the rim, squinting into the hole, trying to see more of the monstrous and fantastic shapes that writhed and raged beyond the glare.

The light suddenly pulsed, grew brighter, startling him. The screaming and bellowing became louder.

He stepped back.

The light dimmed once more, then grew brighter again, dimmed, grew brighter. The immortal entities beyond the Gates were struggling to keep them open, to force them wide.

The rim of the pit began to dissolve again. Earth crumbled away in small clods. Then stopped. Then started. In spurts, the pit was still growing.

Jack's heart seemed to beat in concert with the crumbling of the pit's perimeter. Each time the dirt began to fall away, his heart seemed to stop; each time the perimeter stabilized, his heart began to beat again.

Maybe Carver Hampton had been wrong. Maybe holy water and the good intentions of a righteous man had not been sufficient to put an end to it. Perhaps it had gone too far. Perhaps nothing could prevent Armageddon now.

Two glossy black, segmented, whiplike appendages, each an inch in diameter, lashed up from the pit, snapped in front of Jack, snaked around him. One wound around his left leg from ankle to crotch. The other looped around his chest, spiraled down his left arm, curled around his wrist, snatched at his fingers. His leg was jerked out from under him. He fell, thrashing, flailing desperately at the attacker but to no avail; it had a steel grip; he couldn't free himself, couldn't pry it loose. The beast from which the tentacles sprouted was hidden far down in the pit, and now it tugged at him, dragged him toward the brink, a demonic fisherman reeling in its catch. A serrated spine ran the length of each tentacle, and the serrations were sharp; they didn't immediately cut through his clothes, but where they crossed the bare skin of his wrist and hand, they sliced open his flesh, cut deep.

He had never known such pain.

He was suddenly scared that he would never see Davey, Penny, or Rebecca again.

He began to scream.

In St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rebecca took two steps toward the piles of now-ordinary earth that had, only a moment ago, been living creatures, but she stopped short when the scattered dirt trembled with a current of impossible, perverse life. The stuff wasn't dead after all. The grains and clots and clumps of soil seemed to draw moisture from the air; the stuff became damp; the separate pieces in each loose pile began to quiver and strain and draw laboriously toward the others. This evilly enchanted earth was apparently trying to regain its previous forms, struggling to reconstitute the goblins. One small lump, lying apart from all the others, began to shape itself into a tiny, wickedly clawed foot.

“Die, damnit,” Rebecca said. “Die!”

Sprawled on the rim of the pit, certain that he was going to be pulled into it, his attention split between the void in front of him and the pain blazing in his savaged hand, Jack screamed-

— and at that same instant the tentacle around his arm and torso abruptly whipped free of him. The second demonic appendage slithered away from his left leg a moment later.

The hell-light dimmed.

Now, the beast below was wailing in pain and torment of its own. Its tentacles lashed erratically at the night above the pit.

In that moment of chaos and crisis, the gods of Rada must have visited a revelation upon Jack, for he knew — without understanding how he knew — that it was his blood that had made the beast recoil from him. In a confrontation with evil, perhaps the blood of a righteous man was (much like holy water) a substance with powerful magical qualities. And perhaps his blood could accomplish what holy water alone could not.

The rim of the pit began to crumble again. The hole grew wider. The Gates were again rolling open. The light rising out of the earth turned from orange to crimson once more.

Jack pushed up from his prone position and knelt at the brink. He could feel the earth slowly — and then not so slowly — coming apart beneath his knees. Blood was streaming off his torn hand, dripping from all five fingertips. He leaned out precariously, over the pit, and shook his hand, flinging scarlet droplets into the center of the seething light.

Below, the shrieking and keening swelled to an even more ear-splitting pitch than it had when he'd tossed the holy water into the breach. The light from the devil's furnace dimmed and flickered, and the perimeter of the pit stabilized.

He cast more of his blood into the chasm, and the tortured cries of the damned faded but only slightly. He blinked and squinted at the pulsing, shifting, mysteriously indefinable bottom of the hole, leaned out even farther to get a better look-

— and with a whoosh of blisteringly hot air, a huge face rose up toward him, ballooning out of the shimmering light, a face as big as a truck, filling most of the pit. It was the leering face of all evil. It was composed of slime and mold and rotting carcasses, a pebbled and cracked and lumpy and pock-marked face, dark and mottled, riddled with pustules, maggot-rich, with vile brown foam dripping from its ragged and decaying nostrils. Worms wriggled in its night-black eyes, and yet it could see, for Jack could feel the terrible weight of its hateful gaze. Its mouth broke open — a vicious, jagged slash large enough to swallow a man whole — and bile-green fluid drooled out. Its tongue was long and black and prickled with needle-sharp thorns that punctured and tore its own lips as it licked them.

Dizzied, dispirited, and weakened by the unbearable stench of death that rose from the gaping mouth, Jack shook his wounded hand above the apparition, and a rain of blood fell away from his weeping stigmata. “Go away,” he told the thing, choking on the tomb-foul air. “Leave. Go. Now.”

The face receded into the furnace glow as his blood fell upon it. In a moment it vanished into the bottom of the pit.

He heard a pathetic whimpering. He realized he was listening to himself.

And it wasn't over yet. Below, the multitude of voices became louder again, and the light grew brighter, and dirt began to fall away from the perimeter of the hole once more.

Sweating, gasping, squeezing his sphincter muscles to keep his bowels from loosening in terror, Jack wanted to run away from the pit. He wanted to flee into the night, into the storm and the sheltering city. But he knew that was no solution. If he didn't stop it now, the pit would widen until it grew large enough to swallow him no matter where he hid.

With his uninjured right hand, he pulled and squeezed and clawed at the wounds in his left hand until they had opened farther, until his blood was flowing much faster. Fear had anesthetized him; he no longer felt any pain. Like a Catholic priest swinging a sacred vessel to cast holy water or incense in a ritual of sanctification, he sprayed his blood into the yawning mouth of Hell.

The light dimmed somewhat but pulsed and struggled to maintain itself. Jack prayed for it to be extinguished, for if this did not do the trick, there was only one other course of action: He would have to sacrifice himself entirely; he would have to go down into the pit. And if he went down there… he knew he would never come back.

The last evil energy seemed to have drained out of the clumps of soil on the altar steps. The dirt had been still for a minute or more. With each passing second, it was increasingly difficult to believe that the stuff had ever really been alive.

At last Father Walotsky picked up a clod of earth and broke it between his fingers.

Penny and Davey stared in fascination. Then the girl turned to Rebecca and said, “What happened?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “But I think your daddy accomplished what he set out to do. I think Lavelle is dead. “ She looked out across the immense cathedral, as if Jack might come strolling in from the vestibule, and she said softly, “I love you, Jack.”

The light faded from orange to yellow to blue.

Jack watched tensely, not quite daring to believe that it was finally finished.

A grating-creaking sound came out of the earth, as if enormous gates were swinging shut on rusted hinges.

The faint cries rising from the pit had changed from expressions of rage and hatred and triumph to pitiful moans of despair.

Then the light was extinguished altogether.

The grating and creaking ceased.

The air no longer had a sulphurous stench.

No sounds at all came from the pit.

It wasn't a doorway any longer. Now, it was just a hole in the ground.

The night was still bitterly cold, but the storm seemed to be passing.

Jack cupped his wounded hand and packed it full of snow to slow the bleeding now that he no longer needed blood. He was still too high on adrenalin to feel any pain.

The wind was barely blowing now, but to his surprise it brought a voice to him. Rebecca's voice. Unmistakable. And four words that he much wanted to hear: “I love you, Jack.”

He turned, bewildered.

She was nowhere in sight, yet her voice seemed to have been at his ear.

He said, “I love you, too,” and he knew that, wherever she was, she heard him as clearly as he had heard her.

The snow had slackened off. The flakes were no longer small and hard but big and fluffy, as they had been at the beginning of the storm. They fell lazily now in wide, swooping spirals.

Jack turned away from the pit and went back into the house to call an ambulance for Carver Hampton.