He rounded the last string of trees and stopped cold. In the distance he saw the tree line that marked the edge of the clearing. He saw the entrance to the trail that led back and away, into the trees and on to and past the white church.

He saw his mother's cottage engulfed in flames.

He started forward again, and his steps slowed to a steady march. His gaze never wavered from the crumbling, burning building. The clearing was filled with people. Some of them held shovels, or rakes, as if they'd come to respond to the blaze, but none of them fought the fire. The structure of the small home had mostly collapsed. The walls were caved in on two sides, and great chunks of the roof had dropped through into the interior. Another let go as Abe approached and hit the burning floor with a thud that sent sparks dancing into the darkening sky.

Others lined the clearing. He saw them in the periphery of his site, but he couldn't tear his gaze from the burning home. He thought through the things he'd left behind. He thought of his mother's teapot and the old quilt he'd slept with as a boy. He thought of his father's clothing, folded and neat and stored in boxes lined with mothb.a.l.l.s. He remembered the symbol carved into the door, thought of it etched in flame, and sank to his knees at the edge of the clearing.

He turned slowly. Nearby, a clutch of watchers stood gathered together, staring at him. Beyond them, he caught a lone man, and beyond the man a couple, their arms wrapped tightly about one another's shoulders. All of them watched him. He turned the other direction and saw similar groups lined the trees all around. He saw Henry George, leaning on a tree. Henry turned toward the burning home and slouched lower against the tree. Two other men stood near him. They watched Abe and the burning home alternately. He was almost certain they were smiling.

A little closer to him stood Ed Murphy. Ed had a woman under his arm, but Abe couldn't make out who she was, or if he knew her at all. Ed started to say something. Abe saw the man open his mouth, reach out, and then drop his hand. Ed's mouth closed at the same instant, and he reached up absently to tug his hat brim down tighter over his forehead.

Abe lowered his head. He felt very conspicuous with all of their eyes on him, but he knew what he had to do. This was the moment many of them had waited for since the day he left. It was the moment in which they'd take his measure and find him wanting, or acceptable.

He had no way to know how many of them bore the mark. It was easier to read in some than in others. A few, like Harry, lounged indolently and stared into the flames as if they wished they had sticks and marshmallows to do it up right. Others hung back, shot wary, furtive glances at the marked ones, and whispered quietly.

Abraham pulled the pendant out from beneath his shirt and held it in his hands. The metal gleamed in the dancing firelight. He let it dangle from his fingers, and bowed his head. In a steady voice, he prayed. He didn't try to pray over the roar of the flames. He didn't pray to them, but despite them.

He prayed for his mother. He thanked G.o.d for the mountain and its strength. He thanked G.o.d for his father, the wisdom he had grown up with, and for all the years of his life. He prayed for whoever had set the fire, using that moment to acknowledge that he knew his mother was dead, and that he mourned her.

He asked for the forgiveness of his past failings.

When he rose, Abraham scanned the crowd again. They stared at him openly now, turned away from the flames. No one spoke. A few of them started forward, as if they intended to speak with him, or offer condolences. They stopped when they met his gaze. A few of them hung their heads. Others, like Henry George, glared in open hostility.

Abe turned toward the forest trail that led to the white church. He stood that way for a long time, very still. He turned back slowly, gazed at the burning house a last time, and then turned back to the trail.

He didn't see the trees. He didn't see the burning home, or the wooded trail. He saw a symbol burning in the air, the equal arms of a cross surrounded by letters so old the name of the language they represented had faded from memory. He saw that image surrounding a pair of cold, staring eyes. Abe closed his eyes and balled his hands into fists.

He started back the way he'd come, but didn't take the turn toward the trail. Instead he turned toward the road to Greene's store and the telephone. He needed to call Katrina. He needed to figure out what he was going to do-why he was going to do it, and how. He needed to be as far away from the charred remnant of his past as possible. And so he ran.

With the stars high in the sky and the acrid tang of smoke wafting across the mountain, caught in the night's breeze, Abraham ran down the mountain as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn't think about the church, or the fire. He thought about Katrina, her voice and her smile. It didn't matter if Greene were the Devil himself. Abe needed a phone.

After the girl knocked him into the wall and ran out of the store, Angel's mind blanked. It happened more and more since he'd received the mark on his head-his anger boiled up and out of him like steam from a teakettle. He had no control over it, and wouldn't have exerted it if he had.

He had been ready to smash his fists into the driver's side window again and again, to drag the woman out through the broken window and truss her up like a pig for the roast. His fist swung back and he willed it forward, but the blow never fell. He heard Silas' voice in his mind. He remembered the keys in his pocket. He smiled. All of this happened in the span of a moment, and his face, contorted in mindless rage a moment before, softened with the smile.

He opened the door quickly and slid inside, even as the girl scrambled across to the pa.s.senger side and tried to open the lock.

Angel grabbed her arm tightly and yanked her back.

The girl screamed. It was a garbled, broken sound that grated on his ears like shattering gla.s.s. She pressed back into the pa.s.senger side door and smacked her head painfully on the gla.s.s of the window. Angel released her arm, drew his hand back, and smacked her hard in the mouth. Her head jerked, and her eyes widened in shock. She started to scream again, and Angel spoke.

"Shut up," he said. His voice was soft, but it carried. "Shut up or I will hit you so hard you don't remember how to scream."

She stopped screaming, but was still crying and breathing heavily, having trouble sucking in air through the gag. Angel grunted in satisfaction. He had instructions, but it was difficult to think of them with his ears ringing.

"Turn," he grunted. She did as he asked and he unknotted the gag. "Take this," he said, thrusting a small flask toward her. "Take this and drink. Don't stop until it's empty or I will hold you by the hair and pour it down your throat. Spill it, and it will be worse."

She stared at the flask, but made no move to take it. He shook it at her and turned, reaching for her hair. With a soft cry she took the flask. She fumbled with it and he reached across the seat. She flinched, but Angel was quick. He wrapped one large hand around hers and with the other he gripped the lid of the flask. He unscrewed it quickly and drew his hand back.

The scent of the liquor filled the small car and his eyes watered. He thought of the trail behind the store. He thought of Silas. The thought of what had been promised to him pulsed in his brain and steadied his nerves. The girl's hand shook, and he reached out again to steady her. This time she didn't flinch. Her eyes were glazed, and she stared out through the window to some point far away and above the store.

Angel directed the mouth of the flask to her lips and tilted it. She resisted, just for an instant, and then she was drinking. The liquor flowed down her throat smoothly. Angel watched her lips wrap tightly around the flask and the way her skin flushed. He placed his free hand behind her head to hold her steady, and when the flask was empty, he re-capped it and laid it on the floor of the car.

All the fight was gone from the girl. She slumped back in her seat, and Angel leaned across her and unlocked her door. He stepped out the driver's side, walked around and lifted her carefully out onto the dirt. He pressed the seat forward, pulled her cooler out and tossed it aside. With a soft grunt he lifted her slight form in his arms and slid her into the back seat. She didn't struggle, and she didn't speak. He let the seat fall back, closed the door, and returned to the driver's side.

A moment later they pulled out of Silas' lot and turned off up the mountain. About a mile later, Angel took the turn up toward his father's home. The sky was bright and filled with stars, but he turned on the windshield wipers. As they b.u.mped along the uneven, rutted road, he sang Bobby McGee softly under his breath.

Abe heard an engine in the distance, and frowned. It was late for anyone on the mountain to be driving, though he expected they might be coming down to see what had burned, or to help fight the fire. He saw no lights, and when he turned onto the old road, still running smoothly, he was alone. Ahead he saw the silhouette of Greene's store. He picked up his pace; Katrina's smile filling his mind. He could almost hear her voice, calling to him through the memory of smoke.

He slowed as he approached the store. There were no lights inside, and there were no vehicles parked beside the place. He approached quietly and stood just off the porch, trying to make out the interior of the place through the dusty windows.

Nothing moved. There was no way to know if Greene was inside, or if he'd been back to the place in a week. Abe climbed up onto the porch and tried the door. The k.n.o.b turned easily. His heart quickened. For all his bravado, he wasn't sure he was ready to face Greene, alone and on the man's own property.

He knocked lightly on the door. No one answered. He waited a few moments, then knocked harder. The rapping sound rang out through the night and echoed down the hill, but no one came to the door. Abe hesitated for a second, and then he turned the k.n.o.b again, opened the door and stepped inside. He closed it gently behind himself. He remembered that the phone was in the back office.

Nothing had changed since he'd last been in the store. The jumbled shelves and unkempt piles of goods in the corners might not have changed since the first time his father had brought him to the store so many years in the past that they seemed like lifetimes.

The light was on in the back office. Abe stepped through the doorway. The phone sat on the edge of the old desk, and he hurried to it. He lifted the receiver and dialed the operator. After a long hesitation and several clicks, he heard a soft female voice asking him for his card number. He waited. There was no way to punch in the tones, so he'd have to talk to a real operator. This took a few moments longer, and every second raised the hairs on his neck further. He had the sensation of being watched, or stalked, but he ignored it. Finally the operator answered.

Abe spoke quickly, giving his card number and answering a few short questions to prove his ident.i.ty. There were more clicks, a buzz that made him think the line had disconnected, and then the phone was ringing. He didn't start to worry until the fifth ring. At the tenth he placed the receiver gently back into its cradle and turned away. No answer. It was late, and there was nowhere Kat would be at such an hour-unless she was just gone.

Abe stumbled back through the door of the office and out through the store. The moon had risen, and there was enough light to see, but it still took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new light. He turned away from the mountain and stared off down the road leading up from below. Something white caught his eye, something in the small parking lot that didn't belong, and he stepped closer.

As he approached, he saw that it was a cooler. A white Styrofoam cooler with the emblem of the San Valencez Dragons on the side. He stood very still. Surrounding the cooler on the ground was water, ice, and a number of bottles of water. It was Cold Springs water. Katrina drank cold springs water.

Abe leaned down and picked the cooler up. He turned it slowly and stared hard at the bottom. His skin was clammy, and his heart had slowed. The world took on a warped, surreal edge. Across the bottom of the cooler in dark, bold letters was a single word: Kat.

The cooler dropped from Abraham's numb fingers. He turned slowly and stared both ways down the road. There were tracks in the dirt, but the light wasn't bright enough to tell what kind they were, or which direction they'd taken last. He threw back his head, stared into the face of the moon, and whispered no. The whisper rose in volume, expanding from deep inside. He raised his hands over his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he screamed.

The echo followed him back down the road toward the base of the trail. Far up the mountain he thought he saw the wink of headlights, and then they were gone. The trail up the mountain was very difficult with tears clouding his vision. The climb took an eternity.

NINETEEN.

They filed into the church slowly. Silas stood just to the right of the door and gazed into each set of eyes, occasionally reaching out to lay a hand on someone's shoulder. Not all of them bore the mark. Their families had drawn some of them into the slowly marching throng. Others had heard that services would be held and had wandered in because they remembered older times and other services. Silas met and held the gaze of any that lifted their eyes from the dirt of the path, or the stone of the steps. Most looked away, others he marked in his mind. There were old men, young women, couples and children. Silas saw one boy hunkered down behind his mother, keeping as far from Silas' gaze as possible, and he smiled. He knew what was going through that boy's mind. It wasn't exactly the same, because none of them knew what to expect from him yet. Some of the older ones suspected. Others had heard stories that had been built up and shifted through too many minds and rolled over too many tongues to be reliable.

The last man climbed slowly up the steps and disappeared into the church. Silas stared out toward the path and the trees for a moment, then turned and followed them inside, closing the large doors behind him with a hollow thud. The interior of the church was silent. No one shuffled their feet, and if any of them, even the children, fidgeted in their seat, Silas didn't see it. He strode down the center aisle slowly. He turned now and then and fixed his gaze on one or another of them, but he didn't single anyone out. Not yet. He had plans already in place, and though their fear was palpable and intoxicating, he ignored the call of it for now. Silas stepped up behind the pulpit and turned to them. He avoided the fixed gaze glaring out from above the rear door and swept his own across the gathered a.s.semblage.

"It has been too long," he said at last. His voice carried easily, though there was no magnification. When the church was designed, there had been no such aids, and the acoustics were perfected to take advantage of natural resonance. They raised their eyes, but most were averted. So many trembled that the room hummed with the vibration of it.

"It has been too long since we have gathered," Silas continued. "The sins of the mountain have piled so high they threaten to drown us in darkness. Our fathers knew how to combat that darkness...how to sate its hunger. They knew where their allegiance belonged, and they knew the price of redemption. We have not paid that price in a very long time, and the mountain screams for redemption."

There was a soft murmur. No one spoke, but they breathed sounds that blended and shifted about their feet, as if groping for coherence and falling short. Silas felt the energy in the room slip up a notch, but he held his elation in check. They sat in cold, lifeless pews, but Silas felt the hum of their energy escaping through the soles of their feet and sparking across the wood planks to rise through him. He felt the darkness shimmer overhead as impossibly large shadow antlers flickered just beyond sight. He sensed their presence, and he knew that those gathered sensed it as well. Some might even see it, though what they saw would be colored by their own beliefs and memories.

Some saw a large, serpentine form writhing behind Silas and rising to the raftered ceiling. Others saw a larger version of Silas, arms spread wide and shadows dripping off him like a long cloak. The rest saw the hint of the antlers, the horned symbol of rebirth. They felt the energy of it flowing in their veins, like the sap in a young tree. It brought hunger that could not be sated, and heat that refused to cool.

Silas raised his hands over his head and turned slowly. He took them all in, the corners of the room, those squirming in the front row and others cowering in the rear. He hadn't prepared anything to say, but the words came to him easily.

Those who would a.s.sist him knew the parts they would play, as well. He hadn't sat them down and explained it; there were more certain methods of communication. They moved about him, some outside the church, one in the rear near the pool, and still others walking the perimeter of the churchyard. He did not want to be disturbed. Things were moving very quickly. There would be no gradual buildup of power this time. Reverend Kotz had continued what others had begun. There had been other churches built on this spot. She was all that remained. When the white church was erected, the first thing in place when the walls were framed was the alcove. She had watched, even then, every board and every nail connected to her through an intricate skeleton of wood, paint, gla.s.s and shadow.

As he spoke, Silas felt the past leak up through the floorboards and the soles of his shoes. He felt the dirt beneath the foundation, and the stone beneath the dirt. He stared out over the congregation and saw the ghosts of walls long fallen, stone walls that lay much closer to the center. He saw clapboard walls shimmering just beyond the long-fallen stone, and beyond that the walls he knew, the door he had entered through since he was a boy, and her eyes. It all hung in the air before him, connected by lines of green light like a web, sticky and clinging. He expected her to step out onto this web, her carved root hair snaking out like the legs of a huge spider as she approached to devour him.

The words didn't matter. It wasn't Silas Greene speaking, and the words were not words that he knew, though he knew their power. He knew their source, as well. As powerful as the other was, tucked away in her small cave above the door, there was more. Much more. The darkness that hovered just out of his reach most of the time, teasing him with glimpses of strength and melting him in the heat of its l.u.s.t. He was a conduit; power flowed in a steady stream from the earth, poured through his slight frame, and sprouted in the huge horned shadows. As he spoke, they solidified. The weight became real even as the strength to bear it rose to the challenge.

Sometime after he started to speak, three of those in the front row staggered to their feet. They cried out, but the sound was lost.

They staggered past Silas to the curtained alcove and disappeared from sight as others rose behind them. The third row had come to their feet by the time the first three returned. Their arms were wound about with serpents and their eyes were wild. They didn't walk from the baptismal, they danced; sultry, sinuous steps that rolled their hips and shoulders and drove the heels and toes of their feet into the planks of the floor.

They slipped past one another, in and out of the room. They didn't return to their seats, but they entered the rows, one after another. Those who were marked bore the serpents and those who were not screamed and tore at their hair. They joined the dance, too terrified to run, but they leaned away from the chosen and slipped into aisles where there were no serpents.

One man, white-haired and thin as a rail, threw his hands over his head and screeched. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open so wide Silas believed he could see down the man's throat to his soul. He careened out of his aisle, collided with one of the dancers, and turned toward the door. Before he took a step one of the serpents struck. It dangled from the arm of the woman the man had b.u.mped.

The old man shook his arm where he'd been bit, but before he could free himself, a second snake clamped onto his flailing wrist, and a third curled up around his left leg. It sank its fangs deep into the flesh of his thigh and clung like a limp phallus between his legs.

The man continued toward the door. He walked in a daze, stumbling and barely able to stay erect. The doorway beckoned, and the sunlight beyond, but with each step he was bitten, and each time he was bitten his steps slowed. Just short of the doorway, beneath the alcove where she watched in dark delight, the man collapsed. He was dragged quickly aside and left beneath one of the pews. The rhythm of the dance did not falter. If anything, the striking snakes and the slow, ponderous steps of their victim lent themselves as counterpoint to the rhythm.

They formed a corridor. Men and women, children and their parents, and a wall of twining, sliding bodies lined either side of the main aisle. The red carpet that ran down the center of the building looked like a river of blood, and light streaming in through the windows played the shadows of those gathered across that blood in a winding snarl of darkness.

The door opened slowly, and Tommy Murphy stood there, transfixed by the scene before him. He held a small, struggling form by her hair. When she saw what awaited her inside the church, she screamed; a loud, high-pitched keening that broke through the dark silk of Silas' voice, just for a second. The sound shivered through the room and ricocheted off the walls. It wound in and over Silas's sonorous chant.

Silas held out a hand to Tommy. It stretched impossibly, a shadow among shadows. He felt ten feet tall, and he sensed each touch as the antlers looming over his head brushed through the rafters of the ceiling. The arm that reached out was his, but there was more, just as there was more to every aspect of him since the ritual and the fire. Some barrier between Silas and another world had been weakened in that fire. Something reached through and manipulated him. It gave him strength and confidence and stole his doubt.

Tommy hesitated in the door, holding the girl easily, and Silas smiled. "Bring her forth, Brother Murphy," he whispered. "Let the cleansing begin."

Tommy stood very still and stared into the church. He thought he knew what to expect. He thought Silas had filled his mind with the entirety of the truth. Nothing could have prepared him. He would not have believed the truth, even if Silas had pounded the images one by one into his mind like mental stakes.

He watched the swaying forms to either side of the main aisle weave back and forth. Snakes hung from every limb, twined about their necks and rose from their hair. Face down on the carpet before him, an old man lay very still. Serpents writhed and squirmed over that inert form as if it were part of the floor, and no one paid the old man the slightest attention.

Tommy remembered a story he'd been forced to read in school that had given him nightmares. There had been a woman with snakes for hair that turned a man to stone if he stared too long. Tommy had been eleven when he read the story. He'd dreamed that night of Irma Creed, one of his neighbors. Irma bothered Tommy in ways he couldn't explain. She made him nervous, and he'd been caught more than once staring at the front of her shirt. In his dreams, Irma followed Tommy into the woods. She wore nothing but her jeans. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swung slowly from side to side, and she licked her lips. The further into the woods and shadows she followed him, the less she looked like herself. Her hair grew taller and began to move, slowly at first, and then as a writhing ma.s.s of scaled bodies.

Even in the dream Tommy remembered the story. He fought to keep from looking into her eyes, but she came closer and closer. Tommy woke with a shout, sitting upright in his bed and bathed in sweat. His erection was so solid it was painful, and for a panicked moment he thought he'd turned to stone-just that one part of him, the part that made him think about Irma and snakes.

This was different. The snakes were everywhere, and though there were a hundred eyes in the old church, none of them focused on Tommy. Still, with the squirming, screaming girl held tightly in his hand, his fingers laced into her hair so deeply his nails brushed her scalp, and his knuckles white from the strain, he was hard as stone.

Silas stood behind the pulpit at the far end of the church. It seemed a mile or more down that carpeted walk, and Silas loomed like a giant oak. He filled the end of the room with his presence. He whispered Tommy's name and beckoned him forward, and Tommy moved. He started down that carpeted walk, drawing the girl along with him despite her struggles.

The snakes fascinated Tommy. He hated snakes, feared them more than almost anything he'd encountered on the mountain, but he did not hesitate when Silas called to him. They writhed and lunged, but didn't strike. Their eyes glittered brightly in the sunlight flashing in through the windows, and their tongues flickered like tiny fires, but Tommy remained unharmed. He pulled the girl closer against his side in case she proved more tempting.

His mind wandered. He didn't want to think about the snakes. He didn't want to think about the strange chant that filled the church because it was so much like that other chant in the woods. The mark on his forehead throbbed, but it wasn't exactly pain. The pulse matched the rhythm of the combined voices and the twining of the snakes. It matched his heartbeat, and he fell into step with it, moving very slowly through the others. Or maybe he wasn't moving slowly. His mind was foggy, and it was hard to keep track. He drifted back an hour and his smile returned.

Tommy moved silently through the trees. He kept his eyes on the trail ahead and to his left. The girl hadn't heard him yet, but he wasn't fooling himself. She'd grown up on the mountain just as he had, and if he made the slightest misstep, she'd hear it. The scene played out as it had in his dream, except in the dream she'd sped away, gaining a little bit of ground every few seconds until she disappeared from sight. Today he kept pace with her and closed the distance easily.

When Tommy had awakened that morning, a single message had burned itself into his mind and his groin. Today was the day. Today was the day that promises would be kept, both ways. Today was the day he would go and fetch the girl, and when the service was complete, she would be his. That was how things worked now. Silas called, promised, and sent you off to earn your reward, and you went. No sense arguing with it-if he'd had any objection the agonized flesh of his forehead would have straightened him out.

Angel was nowhere to be seen, and his father hadn't been home in days. There was a car parked in the driveway that Tommy had never seen before. None of it made any sense, but it didn't matter. He'd dressed, eaten, and left before sunrise, slipping off through the trees toward Jacob Carlson's vineyard on the far side of the mountain. He didn't know exactly where he'd find Elspeth Carlson, but he knew where to start looking, and somehow he knew he wasn't alone in this. She was there, waiting for him. It had been promised.

The hike across the trails was uneventful and silent. He didn't notice at first, but after a while Tommy noted that even the birds and the animals had grown quiet. He didn't see any squirrels or birds moving overhead, and nothing crashed into the brush as he pa.s.sed. He might have walked onto a movie set where the grounds had been carefully cleared ahead of time to prevent distraction.

He found Elspeth walking along the upper edge of the grapevines. She had a small basket in her hand, and she was barefoot, just as he'd seen her. The girl was sixteen, and would be seventeen soon. Her hair was so long in back that it covered her shoulders and dipped to a rounded edge just at her waist. She had it tied back with a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes and to prevent it from snagging in the trees and vines.

She was a slender girl, willowy, like a sapling. To Tommy she looked like a delicate doll. Her jeans were faded, just tight enough to prove from the rear that she wasn't a boy. Her bare feet were tan, her arms a dark chestnut brown. Tommy had watched her move a thousand times and never tired of it. He followed quietly, willed his breath to silence and scanned the ground ahead for branches and leaves. He didn't know how fast she might be, and he wanted to get as close as possible before she knew he was there.

When he finally stepped out onto the trail, he was only about five yards behind her. He called out to her and she jumped, turning quickly, but she didn't run. He walked slowly down the path as if he belonged there, a wide smile on his face, and she stared at him. He saw from her stance that she was ready to sprint. He called out to her again, keeping his voice low and friendly.

"Hey," he said. "You're out early."

She stared at him without speaking. They had met before, and Tommy was pretty sure that she knew who he was, but they'd never spoken.

By the time she noticed the intensity of his stare he was too close. Elspeth turned and sprang for the trees, but Tommy was ready for her. He cut her off, snagged her by the ponytail and yanked her back. She drew in a breath to scream, but he slapped his hand hard across her mouth and killed the sound. She tried to bite him and he pulled his hand back just long enough to draw back and smack her hard enough on the side of the head to make her eyes water. He clamped his hand back over her mouth and dragged her off the trail and into the trees.

Tommy leaned in very close to her ear and spoke, keeping his voice low and controlled. His heart pounded, and he knew she felt him hard and swollen against her thigh where he pressed her tight between himself and the trunk of a pine tree.

"If you scream, I'm going to knock you cold and carry you off like a sack of potatoes," he said. He waited a moment for this to sink in. "Do you understand?"

Elspeth nodded. He kept his grip on her hair tight, and he pressed the weight of his body against her, pinning her in place. He released her mouth and she gasped in air. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she hissed. "My pa will kill you."

"Shut up," he growled. He yanked back on her hair and she cried out in pain and surprise. Tears dampened her cheeks, but she didn't break down. She glared at him, and Tommy reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a hip flask and gripped the lid with his teeth. He spun it deftly open and leaned in close again.

"I'm going to tell you one time to drink this," he said. "If you spill it, try to spit it out, or scream, I'll do like I said and knock you cold."

"What is it?" she asked.

Tommy shook his head and brought the flask to her lips. Before she could protest further he pulled back on her hair. Her head tilted and he poured. When she started to choke, he pulled the flask away and pressed the back of his knuckles under her chin. At first she fought him, but he applied more pressure, and seconds later he saw the muscles of her throat work in a swallow. He tilted the flask again, and she drank without struggle. Tommy caught the scent of the liquor and if possible his erection hardened further. When the flask was emptied, he twisted the bottle onto the cap he still held between his teeth, and dropped it quickly back into his pocket.

Elspeth had gone all but limp in his grip. She leaned into him, eyes dazed. He held her like that for a moment, stared into her eyes, and trembled. His mind filled with visions of her body, of the taste of that drink, shared between them, of driving his hips into hers and planting her in the soft soil. Of joining.

He drew back with a gasp and turned. Without a word he started back, staying off the trail but moving parallel to it, heading for the church. His hair dripped perspiration, and though he was as careful as he could be not to yank the girl's hair out by its roots, the tendons in his arm were taut as strung piano wire.

Tommy blinked. The church came back into focus, and he saw that they had progressed only a few feet. He shook his head and kept his gaze straight ahead. Behind Silas the curtains hung across the door to the baptistery, and Tommy shivered. Elspeth's struggles had grown weaker. She held him with both hands, trying to keep herself upright and the pressure off her hair. He ignored her and continued forward. As he pa.s.sed the pulpit, Silas smiled.

Then Tommy stepped through the curtains, and the ranks behind him closed, shoulders brushing, and serpents sliding from one body to the next and back.

Silas turned and followed Tommy out of sight. As he went, he whispered, and the sound sifted through the congregation and echoed from the rafters.

"Let her be cleansed."

TWENTY.