She hadn't cried, but like the rest of the Dark Man's children, she had never cried in her life.

Soon she had realized that it didn't really matter that she could no longer speak, for there was no one to speak to anyway. Most of the time she stayed in the house, looking after the babies, and the Dark Man, too.

And the house was wonderful.

In all her life she'd never seen anything like it.

Upstairs, there were six rooms on the main floor-beautiful rooms, with walls covered with polished wood and fuzzy paper. One of the rooms was lined with shelf after shelf of books, and though Lavinia couldn't read, she still loved to go into that room and touch the books, smell the aroma of their leather bindings and wonder what the words on the pages might say.

But most of her time was spent in the rooms under the house, taking care of the babies.

As the water came to the right temperature, Lavinia put a bottle filled with formula into the pan, then went into the nursery. It was a windowless room, painted white, containing a dozen cribs.

Four of them were occupied; the rest were empty.

She leaned over Tammy-Jo and Quint Millard's little son, and tickled him under the chin. His eyes opened sleepily and his arms began to wave around, his fingers finally grasping the tube that led from the needle in his chest to the bottle hanging from an IV rack next to the crib. Gently, Lavinia pried his fingers loose from the tube, slipping a rattle into his hands instead. Distracted, he fingered the rattle clumsily, finally inserting its handle into his mouth. Lavinia smiled-as long as he wasn't playing with the tube, trying to pull it loose, she wouldn't have to strap him down.

Two of the other babies-children who had been here almost a year now, and who would soon be going back to the swamp-were sound asleep, and as Lavinia hovered over them, she wished she could still speak, for she would have liked to be able to sing one of the lullabies she knew to them. Instead, she contented herself with tucking a blanket gently around one of them, and replacing the teddy bear that had slipped from the arms of the other. The sleeping baby stirred only slightly, then wrapped its arms around the stuffed animal before dropping back into a deep sleep.

Finally Lavinia went to the crib containing the newest baby, the one the Dark Man had brought to her only last night. She carefully detached the tube from the needle in its chest, then picked the baby up, carrying him with her back to the kitchen.

Testing the bottle against the skin of her wrist, she sat at the kitchen table, the baby in her lap, and held the nipple to its mouth. The baby tried to push the nipple away at first, but Lavinia gently insisted, and finally the child accepted it. As the infant began sucking the formula from the bottle, Lavinia cradled him against her breast, wondering if the time would ever come when she would have a baby of her own.

She suspected not.

Though there was no one to talk to about it, she was almost certain that she would spend the rest of her life here, tending to other people's babies, while having none of her own. But if that was the Dark Man's will, she had no choice but to obey.

Indeed, it had never really occurred to Lavinia even to think about disobeying him.

Suddenly, as she heard footsteps on the stairs, she stiffened, and her eyes automatically went to the clock on the wall.

Early.

It wasn't nearly time for him to come.

Yet she knew whose footsteps she heard, for not only did no one but she and the Dark Man ever come down here, but his tread was so familiar she would have recognized it even in her sleep.

A moment later the door opened and the Dark Man stepped inside. He stopped short, his eyes boring into her. In the bright light of the kitchen, they gleamed like polished stones.

"Put the baby back in the nursery," Dr. Warren Phillips ordered.

Lavinia, her face ashen, hurried to obey her master, and Phillips smiled as he left, pleased-as always-at her instant compliance with his wishes. Of all his children, only Lavinia had ever seen his face, had ever seen the man who lived behind the Dark Man's black mask. And she would never tell what she had seen, for he had removed her vocal cords during the ceremony in which he had called her to care for the babies in the nursery.

Except that there weren't enough babies.

As he started toward the nursery, the Dark Man's eyes automatically scanned the floor for leaks. The rooms beneath his house were carved out of the limestone bedrock itself, and though they had been sealed years earlier against the constant seepage from the nearby swamp, the pumps still seemed always to be running. Nevertheless, the chambers beneath his house served their purpose.

A few miles beyond Villejeune, the house was hidden in a dense wilderness that protected it well from casual visitors. And those few visitors he had saw nothing of the soundproofed complex that lay below the house, the chambers where he prepared for the ceremonies that took place in the swamp, the laboratories where Phillips worked alone, or the nursery where the babies were kept.

He stepped into the nursery just as Lavinia Carter was reattaching the plastic tube to the needle in the chest of Amelie Coulton's baby. Lavinia glanced fearfully at him as he came in, but he ignored her, moving quickly among the cribs, detaching the filled bottles that hung from the IV racks, replacing them with empty ones.

At last he came back to the crib where Amelie Coulton's baby lay on his back once more, his tiny arms held immobile by nylon straps, the needle still fixed to his chest.

The tube attached to the needle steadily dripped liquid-faintly brown, and viscous-into the collecting bottle on the rack.

Phillips gazed at the level in the bottle.

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

He glanced around the rest of the nursery, at the eight empty cribs.

They should have been full.

Always, until recently, he'd been able to keep the cribs full.

But for the last few years it hadn't been possible.

Too many babies had been born dead in the swamp, and too many fathers had insisted on being in the delivery room in town.

It had been easy before, working with only a nurse who paid most of her attention to the mother.

But the fathers paid attention only to their babies, never letting them out of their sight even for a moment, taking them from him almost at the moment he delivered them.

Still, last night Amelie had delivered her child, and already the baby had produced nearly ten cc's of the precious fluid. For the next several months, there would be nearly as much each day.

After that, as the baby grew, there would be less of the fluid, and he would be able to milk it only occasionally.

Eventually, as it approached adulthood, there would be only a few drops each year.

And finally nothing.

By that time, though, the child would be old enough to breed, and he would find it a mate from among the Circle, and the child would begin to procreate.

And there would be new babies to fill the cribs in the nursery, babies bred by him for a single purpose.

But for now, when only a few of the children were old enough to begin producing babies for him, the problem was becoming acute, for even as he was having trouble obtaining babies, he was finding that he needed more and more of the precious fluid with which they provided him.

Phillips disconnected the collecting bottle from the tube, replacing it with another. Nodding to Lavinia, he left the room.

In the lab, he began the refining process, filtering and concentrating the fluid he'd extracted from the babies, sealing it into the gla.s.s vials he would eventually move to the safe in his office. But there was so little of it now that he was going to have to make some decisions soon.

Decisions about who would live and who would not.

He knew the criteria upon which his decisions would be based, and to him they seemed eminently fair.

To extend old life, he needed new life. And as time moved inexorably on, he was finding he needed more and more new life to battle the ravages of age.

Therefore, those who died would be those who could not bring him children.

Babies, to fill the cribs in the nursery once again.

George Coulton had tried to renege on his promise of the child in the nursery, and the Dark Man had punished him. George's death had served another purpose as well: it would serve as a warning to the others.

When his work was completed, Phillips left the lab. Half an hour later, at the helm of his own boat, he pulled up in front of Clarey Lambert's shanty. There, he listened silently as Clarey told him what had happened to Jonas c.o.x.

Though he said nothing to Clarey, by the time he left her, he'd already made up his mind.

Judd Duval had allowed one of the children to be interviewed by an outsider.

Judd would have to be punished.

And Warren Phillips knew how to punish Judd in the worst possible way.

13.

Kelly was waiting for Michael when he finished work. At first he barely recognized her, but as he approached the motorcycle-on which she was seated-he gazed at her quizzically. "What'd you do to your hair?"

She grinned uncertainly. "I dyed it. Well, actually your mom dyed it."

Michael's mouth dropped open. "My mom?" he repeated.

Kelly explained what had happened, and listening, Michael rolled his eyes. "Weird," he p.r.o.nounced when she had finished. "I mean, that doesn't sound like my mom at all."

Kelly giggled. "I like her. She's nice, and-" Abruptly, she fell silent.

"And what?" Michael pressed.

Kelly's eyes shifted to the ground. "She...well, she doesn't make me feel like a freak," she finished.

"Who said you're a freak?" Michael asked.

Kelly looked at him impatiently. "I didn't say anyone said said I was a freak. It-It's just the way I feel sometimes. I mean, don't you ever feel like that? Like maybe you're going nuts or something?" I was a freak. It-It's just the way I feel sometimes. I mean, don't you ever feel like that? Like maybe you're going nuts or something?"

Michael slowly nodded. In fact, it had happened just this morning, when he'd awakened with a vivid memory of a dream.

So vivid that he was afraid it hadn't been a dream.

Then, when he'd looked at himself in the mirror this morning and seen the angry red mark on his chest, he'd become frightened.

Had everything he'd remembered really happened? Or was he going crazy?

All day, as he'd gone about his job at the swamp tour, he'd kept thinking about Kelly and wanting to talk to her. He'd put his thoughts aside, sure that she'd think he was crazy. But after what she'd just said...

Now it was he who found himself unable to meet her eyes. "I-I had a dream last night," he said. "It was really weird. It was about what we did in the swamp last night."

Kelly's pulse quickened. If he remembered the same thing she did-She stopped herself, not even wanting to think about what it might mean.

Michael's eyes met hers. Even before he spoke, she knew what he was going to say.

"There's a spot on your chest, isn't there?" she asked. "Like a mosquito bite, only bigger."

Michael nodded slowly. "It's...well, it's like someone stuck a needle into me. And it's sore."

Kelly glanced nervously around. There were still a few tourists coming out the gate, and she suddenly felt self-conscious. "Can we go somewhere?" she asked. Sliding back onto the buddy seat of the bike, she made room for Michael.

"Where do you want to go?" Michael called back over his shoulder as they took off.

"I don't know. Just someplace where we can talk, I guess." Her arms tightened around his chest. "Michael, I'm scared."

Michael made no reply, unwilling to admit that he, too, was frightened. If she also had a mark on her chest, then the dream hadn't been a dream at all.

An hour later, as they sat side by side on the edge of one of the ubiquitous drainage ca.n.a.ls, staring across at the swamp, Kelly slid her hand into Michael's.

Today, unlike last night or the night before, the swamp had taken on an eerie look, with its moss-laden cypresses and clumps of palmetto lining the shallow bayous that seemed to lead off into nowhere. Kelly gazed into it, wondering how they could have felt so comfortable in its depths the night before, drifting through the darkness in Michael's boat. Even now she could glimpse snakes coiled in the trees, and see alligators basking in the mud, lying still, as if waiting for something-anything-to cross their path. Right now, with the sun still high in the sky, she couldn't imagine wanting to go into the suddenly terrifying wilderness.

They'd talked about what had happened last night, slowly and tentatively at first, but soon established that both of them remembered the same thing.

The ceremony, and the Dark Man, clad all in black, and the needles that had been inserted into their chests.

And the other kids.

The children who were nothing like either of them, who neither of them even remembered having seen before. Children with whom both Kelly and Michael somehow felt a strange kinship.

"But they're swamp rats," Michael had finally said. "They're not like us at all."

But what if they were? Kelly wondered, a thought suddenly coming to her. What if that was where she'd actually come from? She found herself cringing at the thought. In her fantasies, her natural mother was beautiful, not like the women in the swamp, with their pinched faces and stringy, lank hair.

"Did you ever think about being adopted?" she asked Michael now.

Michael frowned, looking at her in surprise. "'Course I did," he said. "I am am adopted." adopted."

Kelly stared at him. "S-So am I," she said. "And I was just thinking. D-Do you suppose that's where we came from?"

Michael's frown deepened as he watched Kelly staring across at the wilderness a few yards away. "The swamp?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

Kelly bit nervously at her lower lip, and when she spoke, she selected her words carefully. "I-I'm not sure. But those kids last night. I mean, what if we felt like we belonged with them because we really do? What if that's where we came from? What if that's where our parents got us?"

"But that's crazy," Michael protested. "Those people out there are all weird. Half of them don't even know who their fathers are-"

"But maybe that's it," Kelly said. "Maybe our real moms live out there somewhere. Maybe they didn't want us to grow up like those kids, so they gave us away."