He sneered. "s.h.i.t. You're too much a G.o.dd.a.m.n Goodie Two-shoes. Better to send you off to final death than take the chance when I'm so close."

Ghosts couldn't normally harm ghosts. Ectoplasm was resilient stuff. But Gil Wilson was no ordinary spirit. He pulled the dagger from his chest. The black blade radiated darkness. His form distorted as if reflected in a fun house mirror. Limbs snaked toward her.

Her only chance was to run for it. The tentacle that had been Gil's foot looped around her ankle. She fell. He dragged her toward him, slowly and deliberately, reveling in her helplessness.

"Cooperate, girl, and I'll make this quick. Well, not too quick."

Cathy dug her fingers in the floor. It didn't help. The shapeless, oily cloud hovered over her. He sliced down her back with the dagger. It was a shallow cut, just deep enough to allow some of her soul seep away. A tiny piece of her evaporated into the ether. She screamed. It wasn't just the pain. It was the horrible realization that a part of her was gone forever.

Gil flipped her over to watch her writhe in agony. "It's been a long time since I've gotten a chance to do this, Cathy. I'd forgotten how much fun it was."

He wasn't going to just kill her. He was going to deliver her into final death one sc.r.a.p of soul at a time. He sliced open her cheek and inhaled the escaping wisps.

"Hmmm. I wonder what that was. Perhaps a cherished memory of first love. Or your disgustingly overdeveloped compa.s.sion? Maybe even those precious moments playing baseball with your father. Never did learn to hit those curveb.a.l.l.s, did you?"

A fragment of hope came to her. He had a knife, a copy of something important enough in life to warrant ghostly reproduction. She closed her eyes and remembered the bat she'd spent countless hours swinging in her backyard. It'd been years since she'd held it, but it was something she could never forget. Indulging himself in her suffering, Gil Wilson didn't notice the spectral bat materialize in her hands.

She swung with as much force as she could muster from the floor. His body deformed with the blow. He rolled off her with a growl.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned, Cathy. You seem to have picked up a few tricks from our mingling. I'm impressed."

She adopted a batting stance. "Get the f.u.c.k away from me!"

"How very frightening," he cooed. "That weapon really can't hurt me. It's not that sort of memory. And besides that, you don't have it in you." He raised the dagger and slipped forward.

She swung again. The blow connected with the quasi-solid goo of his ectoplasm. He wobbled, dropping the dagger.

"You're really starting to p.i.s.s me off!" he rumbled.

Cathy brought the bat down. His body crashed apart into a gray slime. It struggled to reshape itself. A lump with eyes rose up, only to be pounded back down. The slime bubbled as Gil tried to regain his senses. She smacked him again, but she was only keeping him down. He was right. She couldn't kill him. Not with her bat.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the dagger beside her. The blade sent cold shivers up her arm. It was more than just a knife. It was every depravity of Gil Wilson's d.a.m.ned soul given form.

"Go ahead," Gil said. "You know you want to."

Another voice came to her. "You've got no choice. It's either you or him. Do it."

She hesitated.

"He should be dead. You're just correcting a mistake."

It made sense, but she'd never killed anyone before. Even if he did deserve it, she wasn't sure she could. But she had to. She tightened her grip on the dagger. It bit into her palm, eager to kill anyone, even its own creator.

Cathy glanced at her arm. Her flesh was graying and shriveling. Using the knife, no matter how much she should, would blacken her soul and maybe send her down the path Gil Wilson had taken.

The blade screamed. "Do it!"

She threw it away. It clattered a few feet away.

A fist erupted from the puddle of Gil Wilson. Cathy was knocked away. The goo rose and hovered in the air. The dagger jumped into his hand. Cathy held up her bat, preparing to defend herself.

"Much as I'd like to continue," he sighed, "I must be off. We'll have to finish this some other time. After I've become a G.o.d."

He turned and vanished through the far bedroom wall. After ten minutes, Cathy was finally convinced he'd left and dropped her guard. She sat on the bed and wrung her baseball bat nervously. She wanted to run away, but when the old G.o.ds returned, even earthbound spirits would be at their mercy. And she couldn't leave Earl. Even if he was probably dead by now.

She prayed he wasn't. Not just because she cared for him. Without some help in the physical world, a spirit didn't stand a ghost of a chance of stopping Tammy from opening the way.

Chad had no doubts. He most definitely did not want the old G.o.ds to rise tonight. While the world he knew was not all to his liking, something told him it beat the h.e.l.l out of the remade one Tammy kept telling him about. He knew she couldn't be talked out of it, and he wanted to be on the right side of the world's new masters. And he was afraid of Tammy. More terrified of her than even the inscrutable and thoroughly inhuman powers she served. The fear made him obey her. That, along with a dash of waning teenage l.u.s.t and leftover particles of puppy love.

But it was mostly fear.

His apprehension only grew when he saw the police cruiser in the diner lot. He parked beside it and went inside with slow, reluctant steps.

Tammy and Sheriff Kopp stood in the middle of the dining area. She smiled and bound to his side.

"There you are. I was beginning to think you weren't going to make it." She took his hands and kissed him on the cheek. She led him back toward Sheriff Kopp with a skipping gait.

The sheriff tipped his hat at Chad. Chad flashed a nervous grin and swallowed a lump in his throat.

"The sheriff was just explaining to me how he might finally have a handle on all the trouble Loretta's been having," Tammy chirped.

"Really?" Chad mumbled. He felt uncomfortably warm.

"Oh, yes. Go ahead and tell him, Sheriff."

"That's alright," Kopp said. "I really just wanted to speak with Loretta. Is she in back?"

"I think so."

Chad's legs trembled. He fell into a chair.

Kopp headed toward the kitchen. Tammy ruffled around in her backpack. "Oh, it's very interesting how he did it. See, he figured that there was some sort of magical spell interfering with his perception, and that if he stopped and forced himself to really think about it, he just might able to break the influence. So he spent all this afternoon just thinking and thinking about it. And finally it came to him. Make Out Barn."

She sprinkled some powder from a pouch into her palm.

"It all makes perfect sense really. Remember how everyone used to hang out there, Chad. Then there was that fire, and everybody just sort of stayed away." She giggled. "Almost like magic."

Kopp pa.s.sed into the kitchen. The swinging doors swished back and forth four times, and he emerged, pistol in hand.

"Tammy, Chad, you're under arrest."

She grinned. He'd finally broken the spell of muddling. It was only a matter of time. Once he'd found her temple, he'd soon remember the graveyard incident she'd tucked into his unconscious. The mess in the kitchen was merely the final straw.

Chad jumped, hands in air.

"Oh come now," Tammy said. "You won't shoot us. We're just kids."

Kopp eased back the hammer on his revolver. "I'm not going to tell you again. I don't want to shoot you."

Her silky black hair squirmed about her shoulders as if it were alive. "Go ahead. You can't stop me now. Not with bullets anyway. Not here. Not now."

The sheriff fired. The shot thundered in Chad's ears. He shut his eyes tight and held them shut with bated breath. He wasn't sure if he wanted Tammy dead or not. He dared open one eye and saw the bullet hovering mere inches from Tammy's face. The projectile spun, suspended in the air.

"Too little, too late."

She threw out her handful of dust. It shot across the room and hit Sheriff Kopp in the face. He sputtered and coughed before slumping into a relaxed posture. The gun slipped from his fingers and fell to the tile.

Tammy plucked the dangling bullet from the air. Chuckling, she tossed it away. Invisible forces lowered the window blinds. The front door locked all by itself.

"Come along, Chad. We've got work to do."

Chad followed her into the back where Duke lay in a puddle of blood. Duke's head was dented. Hair had been stripped away in some spots, showing skull and maybe even brains. Chad didn't look too close for fear of losing his lunch.

"You killed him."

"Your point?" she asked.

He glanced up at the ceiling to avoid seeing corpse brain or her creepy, empty eyes. Up to now, Tammy hadn't killed anyone. She'd talked about it a lot, but this was the first fresh dead guy he'd seen. His stomach churned.

"He's only temporarily dead, anyway," she sighed. "We need him for the final sacrifice."

Chad risked another glance at Duke's body. It was hard believe he wasn't well and truly deceased. Even if he were a werewolf, it seemed leaking brains should kill just about anybody.

He noticed Loretta for the first time. She was easy to ignore, just standing in the corner. That same chalky powder Tammy had thrown on the sheriff covered her face. At least she wasn't dead. Not yet, anyway.

Tammy grabbed Duke by a leg. "Help me move this guy, dumba.s.s."

The urge to bolt rose within him, but her stare compelled him to obey. Gripping the corpse's other leg, he allowed his mind to shut off. His body switched to autopilot. She told him what to do, and he did it without really thinking about it. It was either that, or huddle in the corner and wet himself.

Dragging Duke to the front was no easy feat. He weighed a ton. Chad stared at the trail of red left behind. They were really going to do it. They were going to raise the old G.o.ds and end the world. The part of his mind still working found it strange that it could all end so easily. There wasn't all that much to it. According to Tammy, the diner did most the work. She just had to charge it up with some basic chanting and black-magic-type stuff and sacrifice someone at the right moment. The Gate would be thrown wide, and mankind would be swallowed whole by a gushing tide of horrors.

"b.u.mmer," the little piece of his soul still functioning remarked.

"Uh, Mistress Lilith, what about him?" He pointed to the sheriff.

"What about him?"

"Is he alright?"

"For the moment."

"He's just gonna stand there and watch us?"

"Yeah? So? If he bothers you so much why don't you take him to the kitchen. I'm busy. And why don't you stay in there until I need you, too."

Chad was only too eager to comply. Kopp and Loretta and all the blood bothered him, but not nearly so much as Tammy.

He briefly wondered where Earl was and decided he'd rather not know. Then he sat quietly and thought about all the action he'd gotten out of this deal. Somewhere along the way, he decided it had been worth it. It was only too bad he couldn't get one more jump in before the end.

The diner didn't need much help in its sacred task. It had been leeching the supernatural energies of the Gate for years now. All that unnatural potential had to go somewhere. Weird s.h.i.t attracts more weird s.h.i.t, and this mother lode of strangeness had no small effect on Rockwood. Under the influence of the Gate, the small town had suffered a veritable invisible plague of otherworldly afflictions. Not that the plague was all that invisible. Just mostly unnoticed through supernatural influence.

Even now, the upswing of power was having its way with this rural patch of desert. The sun hadn't even set, and already darkness was descending. There would be no stars tonight. The population of Rockwood would cower in their homes, stricken with an unexplainable apprehension. The werewolf, who would normally stay dead a good twenty-four hours given the time and method of his demise, was already recovering nicely. His broken skull was knitting itself together so that within a few hours, he'd be back on his feet. Just in time to provide the old G.o.ds with their sacrifice.

In the meantime, Tammy performed what little preparations needed to be made. The eternal stain on the floor, the ill-fated final offering of Gil Wilson, boiled and steamed. She dipped her fingers in the crimson pool and used the dark powers within to paint her runes. She set up a few candles in key points of power. She read through chants she had already memorized long ago. And she waited for the hour of the opening.

At some point, the ghost of Gil Wilson showed up.

"How did you get out?" she asked.

"You didn't think to hold me forever, did you?"

She had hoped, but she was not at all surprised. Gil Wilson was no ordinary specter. She didn't have time to bother with him at the moment.

"You need to add a little line here." He indicated a half-finished rune.

"I know," she snapped.

"And that candle over there should be a few more inches to the left."

"I don't think so."

"This is my design, girl. You're merely a pair of hands to finish what I started. Fix the candle."

Her hands tightened into fists. Distant thunder rumbled. "It doesn't need fixing."

Gil Wilson despised his situation. She'd learned the forbidden arts well, but she was still merely an amateur. Her level of magical powers paled to those he'd possessed while alive, but being dead put him at a disadvantage. Though he knew of ways to kill even from the ectoplasmic sphere, he couldn't do it. Not when his plans were so close to fruition.

"Fine. Leave the candle. It won't make much difference anyway."

And it wouldn't. Just a little hiccup in the cross-dimensional matrix. Yet, the very idea annoyed him. Any Armageddon worth doing was worth doing right. When she wasn't looking, he edged over and gave the errant candle a spectral nudge in the right direction. Tammy blasted him with a spirit bolt. His body collapsed into a puddle of blackened ectoplasm.

She calmly readjusted the candle. "I know what I'm doing. Now go and sit in the corner before I splatter you all over your precious diner."

He conceded, slithering into a booth.

The sun set, and a smothering black rolled up like ebony fog. It was almost as if the whole of Creation had vanished. That if one stepped out the door of Gil's All Night Diner, they'd tumble into oblivion. The only light at all came from the moon. The glowing crescent cast down a hard glare that shone upon the diner like a spotlight. As it rose, it grew brighter and fuller. And larger, as if drawing closer and closer to the earth, pulled downward by the unnatural collapse of s.p.a.ce. The light filtered through the windows, bending and arcing in ways that defied physics, shining on hideous faces shimmering in the air through the thinning dimensional veil.

Time dragged. Tammy grew impatient. The old G.o.ds grew impatient. They filled her mind with hideous growls and shrieks, but when the time of the casting finally drew near, half past seven-thirty, they quieted down to allow her to concentrate.

She called Chad in, performed some last minute checks, and began.

She handed her follower a large knife. "When the moon is full and the sky is red, you have to plunge this in Duke's heart."

"Me?" He held the knife away from him in two awkward hands. "But I haven't ever, uhmm, well, why can't you do it?"

"Because you have to."

"But-"