"Alfred," he said into my ear. "Alfred, tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do."

They will consume us, Op Nine had said in the briefing. They will consume us.

I looked into his face, the kindest, ugliest face I think I've ever seen. "Home," I croaked. "Get me home."

46.

He helped me back to the car, but it was hard going because he was weak, I was big, and neither of us looked forward to hitting the road again. I sank into the passenger seat and he took the wheel, while I sat on my hands to keep myself from tearing open any more boils.

I glanced at the speedometer: forty-five mph.

"Faster," I murmured. The rank smell rising from my pores was making me dizzy and it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from giving in again to the nausea.

I watched the needle creep up to sixty.

"Faster," I said.

"Alfred, in these conditions . . ."

"We're running out of time!" I shouted. "And time's the only condition that matters now!" Then I shut up because the screaming hurt my throat. The needle hit eighty-five and kept inching higher. He squinted through the windshield, as if his squinting would somehow penetrate the white cloak around us.

My right arm twitched as I fought the urge to reach into my pocket, pull out the semiautomatic, and blow his hound-dog head off. It was like the feeling I had in the Taurus that night outside Mike's house, but ten times stronger and I fought it in silence for a few miles.

"There's something I need to tell you," I said finally. "Something you should know."

He nodded.

"I've been getting these urges to, um, hurt you. Kill you.

It's almost more than I can stand."

He glanced at me.

"It's not me," I went on. "At least, I'm pretty sure it's not me. I didn't have homicidal urges before they got into me-at least, not like these. I guess it crosses everybody's mind and that doesn't make it right, just normal."

He nodded. "I have had similar thoughts."

"About me?"

He nodded again. "Since I woke in the hotel room. I came close to leaving you back there by the roadside. The urge was almost overwhelming."

"I can still tell which ones are their thoughts and which ones are mine. But the line is getting thinner between them. I'm scared that I'll reach the point when I can't tell the difference."

I pulled the gun from my pocket. He looked at it, and then looked quickly away.

"It would be useless against our enemies, would it not?" he asked.

I nodded. It comforted me in a strange way, holding it. My head hurt and my vision began to cloud. Kill him. He betrayed thee and lied to thee. Kill him!

I rolled down the window and wind whipped into the confines of the little cockpit. He wasn't looking at me. His whole body tensed, waiting.

I threw the gun out the open window.

For the rest of the drive, I spoke only to tell him to go faster, because without realizing it, I think, he would slowly back off the gas, and I would say, "Faster, faster."

There was fire in Louisville and Frankfort; we could see the fuzzy orange glow of it burning through the fog. I had lost all sense of time. When we were about a hundred miles north of Knoxville, I dialed Needlemier's number on Op Nine's cell phone.

"Hello, Alfred." The line was staticky, but I could hear the tremble in his voice behind the pop and crackle. "Everything's been arranged."

"About an hour," I said. "Meet us at the airport."

On impulse, I hit the speed dial for headquarters. I didn't get a recording. I didn't get anything. The line just went dead without ringing.

The fog was so thick on Alcoa Highway that Op Nine missed the airport entrance, and we had to pull a U-ie to get back. A silver Lexus was the only car in the parking lot. I wondered what Mr. Needlemier thought when he saw us stumbling toward him, two broken-down, slumping shapes, leaning on each other as they emerged from the fog.

"Alfred . . ." He took a step forward. "Dear Lord, what has happened?"

"Practically everything," I said. "Mr. Needlemier, this is-"

And Op Nine said, "Samuel." He looked as startled as I must have looked. "Yes, I remember! My name is Samuel."

"Great," I said. "Now you'll have to kill me."

"The first order of business is getting the two of you to a doctor," Mr. Needlemier said.

"No," I said. "There's no time."

He opened the door to the backseat and we slid inside.

"There's a duffel bag in the CCR," I told him. He left to fetch it.

"How much farther?" Op Nine asked. His face had gone the milky white color of the fog.

"He's in the mountains south of here," I said. "About a thirty-minute drive."

"You are certain of this?"

"I'm not certain of anything anymore."

Mr. Needlemier dropped the duffel into the trunk. He came to my side carrying a long thin box.

"You got it," I said.

"I got it. But faced many uncomfortable questions while getting it. Horace Tuttle is not a trusting fellow."

"Horace Tuttle is a jerk," I said.

"What is it?" Op Nine asked.

I opened the box and drew it out. "The blade of the Last Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword of Kings."

47.

Of course, we had to rely upon my memory to reach Mike's hideout, and my memory wasn't great, plus the fog had thickened and Mr. Needlemier crawled along, even when I yelled at him to speed up.

"Where is Hell's Gate?" I asked him.

"Ah, I've done some research on that," he answered, and passed a folder back to me. Inside were several pages printed from the Internet.

"The first Hell's Gate we found is in Kenya," Mr. Needlemier said. "There is another Hell's Gate located in British Columbia and a third in New York City. However, the only mention we could find of a 'hell's gate' that is also called 'devil's door' is in Florida."

"Florida?" I asked. I turned to the last page in the file.

"Called 'Devil's Millhopper,' " Mr. Needlemier continued.

"What's a millhopper?"

"A place where corn is held before it is ground into meal."

"A grinder?" I studied the picture. Shot from the top of a winding wooden stair leading to the rim, the picture showed a black hole about five hundred feet across, rimmed by tangled undergrowth and the tops of trees growing in the bottom of the pit. "You grind things up in it?"

"Yes. The oldest legend surrounding the millhopper concerns an Indian princess who was sucked into the hole by the devil. It is well known in the literature for, and I quote, 'devouring sinners.' Of course, geologists believe it is actually a sinkhole."

"That's it," I said, slapping the file closed. "That's the one they mean."

"How can you be sure?" Op Nine asked.

"It's the only one that goes by both names. Plus the grinder reference. It's their style."

"Whose style?" Mr. Needlemier asked.

"The demons," Op Nine answered.

"The demons! Alfred, what have you gotten yourself into?"

"Well," I said. "At least it's not something really bad, like drugs or alcohol."

A sign materialized in the swirling mist. It was the sign for the park entrance.

"There!" I said. "Right before the sign, that gravel road."

"That road?" Mr. Needlemier asked. "Alfred, that road appears to go straight up."

But he turned onto the road, and the gravel crunched beneath the tires of the Lexus. I sat holding the sword between my legs and it comforted me somehow. We crawled up the side of the mountain, the needle on the speedometer barely registering. I could see sweat shining on the back of Mr. Needlemier's bald head.

"What is our plan?" Op Nine asked.

"I don't have one," I said.

"Perhaps this is the time to develop one."

"It was hard for me to plan even when I wasn't slowly going mad."

Mr. Needlemier looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"Is this Mike person armed?" Op Nine asked.

"Oh, you can bet on it."

"But we are not."

"Just the demon blasters. They'd blow a hole in him the size of Nebraska."

"Do we wish to do that, though? Blow a hole in him the size of Nebraska?" Op Nine asked.

"Timing's everything," I said. "First we get the Vessel; then we blow a hole in him the size of Nebraska."

"To what purpose, if we have the Vessel?"

"He's the cause of it all," I said, my face growing hot.

"He's responsible."

"I still do not understand. Why do you need to kill him, Alfred?"

"One word," I said. "Maggots."

We reached the final crest before the road leveled off at the top of the mountain. I ordered Mr. Needlemier to stop the car. We got out. It was very cold. The fog of our breath mixed with the fog that had wrapped itself around the world.

We gathered around the open trunk. I loaded fresh clips into the 3XDs and handed one to Op Nine. I stuck the sword into my belt and said to Needlemier, "Stay here with the car."

He nodded rapidly, looking relieved. Op Nine was staring at the 3XD.