"You come into the kitchen, let me end it for you, and I'll let her go.

I swear on our mother's name, I'll let her go. But if you don't come in fifteen minutes, I'll put this b.i.t.c.h on the table, and I'll have my dinner, Frank. You want me to feed on her after she tried to help you, Frank?" Candy thought he heard a gunshot just as he got out of the In any event, it had been too late. He rematerialized in the kitchen of the house on Pacific Hill Road, with Julie still locked in the crook of his arm.

NO LONGER concerned about the danger of touching Frank, Bobby grabbed handsful of his jacket and shoved him backward against the wide-louvered shutters on the library window.

"You heard him, Frank. Don't run. Don't run this time, or I'll hang on to you and never let go, no matter where you take me, I swear to G.o.d, you'll wish you'd put your neck on Candy's platter instead of mine." He slammed Frank against the shutters to make his point, and behind him he heard Lawrence Fogarty's soft, knowing laughter.

Registering the terror and confusion in his client's eyes, Bobby realized that his threats would not achieve the effect he desired. In fact, threats would almost certainly frighten Frank into flight, even if he wanted to help Julie. Worse, by stooping to violence as a first resort, he was treating Frank not as a person but as meat, confirming the depraved code by which the corrupt old physician had led his entire life, and that was almost as intolerable as losing Julie.

He let go of Frank.

"I'm sorry. Listen, I'm sorry, I just got a little crazy." He studied the man's eyes, searching for some indication that sufficient intelligence remained in the damaged brain for the two of them to reach an understanding. He saw fear, stark and terrible, and he saw a loneliness that made him want to cry. He saw a lost look, too, not unlike what he had sometimes seen in Thomas's eyes when they had taken him on an excursion from Cielo Vista, "out in the world," as he had said.

Aware that perhaps two minutes of Candy's fifteen-minute deadline had pa.s.sed, trying to remain calm nonetheless, Bobby took Frank's right hand, turned it palm up, and forced himself to touch the dead roach that was now integrated with the man's soft white flesh. The insect felt crisp and bristly against his fingers, but he did not permit his disgust to show.

"Does this hurt, Frank? This bug mixed up with your cells here, does it hurt you?" Frank stared at him, finally shook his head. No.

Heartened by the establishment of even this much dialo Bobby gently put his fingertips to Frank's right temple, fee the lumps of precious gems like unburst boils or cancerous soars.

"Do you hurt here, Frank? Are you in pain?"

"No," Frank said, and Bobby's heart pounded with excitement at the escalation to a spoken response.

From a pocket of his jeans, Bobby removed a folded Klein and gently blotted away the spittle that still glistened Frank's chin.

The man blinked, and his eyes seemed to focus better.

From behind Bobby, still in the leather chair at the!" perhaps with a gla.s.s of bourbon in his hand, almost cert with that infuriatingly smug smile plastered on his face, garty said, "Twelve minutes left." Bobby ignored the physician. Maintaining eye contact his client, his fingertips still on Frank's temple, he said quickly "It's been a hard life for you, hasn't it? You were the no one, the most normal one, and when you were a kid you all wanted to fit in at school, didn't you, the way your sisters brother never could. And it took you a long time to remember your dream wasn't going to happen, you weren't goingin, because no matter how normal you were compared to rest of your family, you'd still come from that G.o.ddam house, out of that cesspool, which made you forever an outsider to other people. They might not see the stain on your heart might not know the dark memories in you, but you saw, you remembered, and you felt yourself unworthy because the horror that was your family. Yet you were also an outsider at home, much too sane to fit in there, too sensitive to the nightmare of it. So all your life, you've been alone."

"All my life," Frank said.

"And always will be." He wasn't going to travel now. Bobby would have be it.

"Frank, I can't help you. No one can. That's a hardbut I won't lie to you. I'm not going to con you or threaten YOU."

Frank said nothing, but maintained eye contact.

"Ten minutes," Fogarty said.

"The only thing I can do for you, Frank, is show you a way to give your life meaning at last, a way to end it with purpose and dignity, and maybe find peace in death. I have an idea, a way that you might be able to kill Candy and save Julie, and if you can do that, you'll have gone out a hero. Will you come with me, Frank, listen to me, and not let Julie die?" Frank didn't say yes, but he didn't say no, either. Bobby decided to take heart from the lack of a negative response.

"We've got to get moving, Frank. But don't try teleporting to the house, because then you'll just lose control again, pop off to h.e.l.l and back a hundred times. We'll go in my car. We can be there in five minutes." Bobby took his client's hand. He made a point of taking the one with the roach embedded in it, hoping Frank would remember that he had a fear of bugs and perceive that his willingness to overrule the phobia was a testament to his sincerity.

They crossed the room to the door.

Rising from his chair, Fogarty said, "You're going to your death, you know." Without glancing back at the physician, Bobby said, "Well, seems to me, you went to yours decades ago." He and Frank walked out into the rain and were drenched by the time they got into the car.

Behind the wheel, Bobby glanced at his watch. Less than eight minutes to go.

He wondered why he accepted Candy's word that the fifteen-minute deadline would be observed, why he was so sure that the madman had not already torn out her throat. Then he remembered something she had said to him once: Sweetcakes, as long as you're breathing, Tinkerbell will live.

Gutters overflowed, and a sudden wind wound skeins of rain, like silver yarn, through his headlights.

As he drove the storm-swept streets and turned east on Pacific Hill Road, he explained how Frank, through his sacrifice of himself, could rid the world of Candy and undo his mother's evil the way he had wanted to undo it-but had failed-when he had taken the ax to her. It was a simple concept. He was able to go over it several times even in the few minutes had before pulling to a stop at the rusted iron gate.

Frank did not respond to anything that Bobby said. T was no way to be sure he understood what he must do if he had even heard a word of it. He stared straight ah his mouth open an inch or so, and sometimes his head tic back and forth, back and forth, in time with the windshield wipers, as if he were watching Jackie Jaxx's crystal pen swinging on its gold chain.

By the time they got out of the car, went through the garage and approached the decrepit house, with less than two minutes of the deadline left, Bobby was reduced to proceeding on faith.

WHEN CANDY brought her into the filthy kitchen, pushed into one of the chairs at the table, and let go of her, J reached at once for the revolver in the shoulder holster her corduroy jacket. He was too fast for her, however, and it from her hand, breaking two of her fingers in The pain was excruciating, and that was on top of theness in her neck and throat from the ruthless treatment he dealt out at Fogarty's, but she refused to cry or complain.

stead, when he turned away from her to toss the gun o drawer beyond her reach, she leapt up from the chair sprinted for the door.

He caught her, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, body-slammed her onto the kitchen table so hard she pa.s.sed out. He brought his face close to hers and said, "You're going to taste good, like Clint's woman, all that vitality in veins, all that energy, I want to feel you spurting in mouth." Her attempts at resistance and escape had not arisen from courage as much as from terror, some of which sprang the experience of deconstruction and reconst.i.tution, which hoped never to have to endure again. Now her fear doubled as his lips lowered to within an inch of hers and as his cha house breath washed over her face. Unable to look away from his blue eyes, she thought these were what Satan's eyes would be like, not dark as sin, not red as the fires of h.e.l.l, not craw with maggots, but gloriously and beautifully blue-and utterly devoid of all mercy and compa.s.sion.

If all the worst of human savagery from time immemorial could be condensed into one individual, if all of the species' hunger for blood and violence and raw power could be embodied in one monstrous figure, it would have looked like Candy Pollard at that moment. When he finally pulled back from her, like a coiled serpent grudgingly reconsidering its decision to strike, and when he dragged her off the table and shoved her back into the chair, she was cowed, perhaps for the first time in her life. She knew that if she exhibited any further resistance, he would kill her on the spot and feed on her.

Then he said an astonishing thing: "Later, when I'm done with Frank, you'll tell me where Thomas got his power."

She was so intimidated by him that she had difficulty finding her voice.

"Power? What do you mean?"

"He's the only one I've ever encountered, outside our family. The Bad Thing, he called me. And he kept trying to keep tabs on me telepathically because he knew sooner or later you and I would cross paths. How can he have had ahy gifts when he wasn't born of my virgin mother? Later, you'll explain that to me." As she sat, actually too terrified either to cry or shake, in a storm's-eye calm, cradling her injured hand in the other, she had to find room in her for a sense of wonder too. Thomas?

Psychically gifted? Could it be true that all the time she worried about taking care of him, he was to some extent taking care of her?

She heard a strange sound approaching from the front of the house. A moment later, at least twenty cats poured into the kitchen through the hall doorway, tails sweeping over one another.

Among the pack came the Pollard twins, long-legged and barefoot, one in panties and a red T-shirt, the other in panties and a white T-shirt, as sinuous as their cats. They were as pale as spirits, but there was nothing soft or ineffectual about them. They were lean and vital, filled with that tightly coiled energy that you always knew was in a cat even when it appeared to be lazing in the sun. They were ethereal in some ways, yet at the same time earthy and strong, powerfully sensual.

Their I presence in the house must have cranked up the unnatural tensions in their brother, who was dolibly male in the matter testes but lacking the crucial valve that would have allow release.

They approached the table. One of them stared down Julie, while the other hung on her sister and averted her ey The bold one said, "Are you Candy's girlfriend?" Thereunmistakable mockery of her brother in the question.

--you shut up," Candy said.

"If you're not his girlfriend," the bold one said, in a voice as soft as rustling silk, "you could come upstairs with us, have a bed, the cats wouldn't mind, and I think I'd like you "Don't you talk like that in your mother's house," Candy said fiercely.

His anger was real, but Julie could see that he was also more than a little unnerved by his sister.

Both women, even the shy one, virtually radiated wildn as if they might do anything that occurred to them, regard! of how outrageous, without compunctions or inhibitions.

Julie was nearly as scared of them as she was of Candy From the front of the moldering house, echoing ahoveroar of the rain on the roof, came a knocking.

As one, the cats dashed from the kitchen, down the hall the front door, and less than a minute later they returned escort to Bobby and Frank.

ENTERING THE KITCHEN, Bobby was overcome with gra tude-to G.o.d, even to Candy-at the sight of Julie alive. She was haggard, gaunt with fear and pain, but she had never looked more beautiful to him.

She had never been so subdued, either, or so unsure of herself, and in spite of the banshee chorus of emotions that roar and shrieked in him, he found capacity to contain a separ sadness and anger about that.

Though he was still hoping that Frank would come through for him, Bobby had been prepared to use his revolver if worst came to worst or if an unexpected advantage presented itself, But as soon as he walked in the room, the madman said, " move your gun from your holster and empty the cartridges of it." As Bobby had entered, Candy had moved behind the chair in which Julie sat, and had put one hand on her throat, his fingers hooked like talons.

Inhumanly strong as he was, he could no doubt tear her throat out in a second or two, even though he lacked real talons.

Bobby withdrew the Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster, handling it in such a way as to demonstrate that he had no intention of using it. He broke out the cylinder, shook the five cartridges onto the floor, and put the revolver down on a nearby counter.

Candy Pollard's excitement grew visibly second by second, from the moment Bobby and Frank appeared. Now he removed his hand from Julie's throat, stepped away from her, and glared triumphantly at Frank.

As far as Bobby could tell, it was a wasted glare. Frank was there in the kitchen with them-but not there. If he was aware of everything that was happening and understanding the meaning of it, he was doing a good job of pretending;otherwise.

Pointing to the floor at his feet, Candy said, "Come here and kneel, you mother-killer." The cats fled from the section of the cracked linoleum which the madman had indicated.

The twins stood hipshot but alert. Bobby had seen cats feign indifference in the same way but reveal their actual involvement by the p.r.i.c.k of their ears. With Violet and Verbina, their true interest was betrayed by the throbbing of their pulses in their temples and, almost obscenely, by the erection of their nipples against the fabric of their T-shirts.

"I said come here and kneel," Candy repeated.

"Or will you really betray the only people who ever lifted a hand to help you in these last seven years? Kneel, or I'll kill the Dakotas, both of them, I'll kill them now.

Candy projected the awesome presence not of a psychotic but of a genuinely SUPERNATURAL being, as if his name were Legion and forces beyond human ken worked through him.

Frank moved forward one step, away from Bobby's side.

Another step.

Then he stopped and looked around at the cats, as if something about them puzzled him.

Bobby could never know if Frank had intended to evoke the b.l.o.o.d.y consequences that ensued from his next act, whether his words were calculated, or whether he was speaking out befuddlement and was as surprised as anyone by the tune that followed. Whatever the case, he frowned at the!" looked up at the bolder of the twins, and said, "Ah, is Mother still here, then? Is she still here in the house with us?" The shy twin stiffened, but the bold one actually appeared to relax, as if Frank's question had spared her the trouble deciding on the right time and place to make the revelat herself. She turned to Candy and favored him with thesubtly textured smile Bobby had ever seen: it was mocking, it was a would-be lover's invitation, as well; it was tentat with fear, but simultaneously challenging; hot with l.u.s.t, with dread; and above all, it was wild, as uncivilized and fe cious as any expression on the face of any creature that roa any field or forest in the world.

Her smile was met by Candy with an expression of stark horror and disbelief that made him appear, briefly and for the first time, almost human.

"You didn't," he said.

The bold twin's smile broadened.

"After you buried her, dug her up. She's part of us now, and always will be, part us, part of the pack." The cats swished their tails and stared at Candy.

The cry that erupted from him was less than human, a the speed with which he reached the bold twin was uncan He drove her against the refrigerator with his body, crushed her against it, grabbed her by the face with his right hand and slammed her head against the yellowed enamel surface, again. Lifting her bodily, his hands around her narrow was he tried to throw her as a furious child might cast away a!" but cat-quick she wrapped her limber legs around his waist and locked her ankles behind him, so she was riding him with b.r.e.a.s.t.s before his face.

He pounded at her with his fists, she would not let go. She held on until the blows stopped raing on her, then loosened her lock on him so she slid do far enough to bring her pale throat near his mouth. He seing the opportunity that she thrust upon him and tore the life of her with his teeth.

The cats squealed hideously, though not as one creaturetime, and fled the kitchen by several routes.

To the sound of his anguished screams and her eerily ero cries, Candy extinguished his sister's life in less than a minute Neither Bobby nor Julie attempted to intervene, for it was clear that to do so would be like stepping into the funnel of a tornado, ensuring their death but leaving the storm undiminished. Frank only stood in that curious detachment that was now his only att.i.tude.

Candy turned immediately to the shy twin and destroyed her even more quickly, as she offered no resistance.

As the psychotic giant dropped the brutalized corpse, Frank at last obeyed the order he had been given, closed the distance between them, and surprised his brother by taking his hand. Then, as Bobby had hoped, Frank traveled and Candy went with him, not under his own power but as a sidecar rider, the way Bobby had gone.

After the tumult, the silence was shocking.

Sweating, clearly ill from what she had witnessed, Julie pushed back her chair. The wooden legs stuttered on the linoleum.

"No," Bobby said, and quickly came to her, stooped beside her, encouraging her to sit down. He took her uninjured hand.

"Wait, not yet, stay out of the way.

The hollow piping.

A bl.u.s.tery whirl of wind.

"Bobby," she said, panicking, "they're coming back, let's go, i I let's get out of here while we have the chance." He held her in the chair.

"Don't look. I have to look, be sure, make certain Frank understood, but you don't need to see." The atonal music trilled again, and the wind stirred up the scent of the dead women's blood.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"Close your eyes." She did not close her eyes, of course, because she had never been one to look away or run away from anything.

The Pollards reappeared, back from the brief visit they had made in tandem to someplace as far away as Mount Fuji or as close as Doc Fogarty's house, more likely to several places.

Recklessly rapid and repeated travel was key to the success of the trick, just as Bobby had outlined it to Frank in the car.

The brothers were no longer two distinct human beings, for Frank's had been the guiding consciousness on their Journeys, and his ability to shepherd them through error-free reconst.i.tution was declining rapidly, worse with each jaunt. They were re biologically tangled than any Siamese twin fused, most of Frank's left arm disappeared into Candy's right side, as if had reached in there to fish among his brother's internal o gans- Candy's right leg melted into Frank's left, giving the only three to stand on.

There were more strangenesses, but that was all Bobby could comprehend before they vanished again. Frank needed to keep moving, stay in control, give Candy no chance to exert hispower, until the scramble was so complete that proper reco st.i.tution of either of them would be impossible.

Realizing what was happening, Julie sat perfectly still, her broken hand curled in her lap, holding fast to Bobby with her good hand. He knew she understood, without being told, that Frank was sacrificing himself for them, and that the least they could do for him was bear witness to his courage, just as they would keep Thomas and Hal and Clint and Felina alive memory.

That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duti good friends and family performed for one another: they tended the flame of memory, so no one's death meant an imm diate vanishment from the world; in some sense the deceas would live on after their pa.s.sing, at least as long as those w loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weap against the chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some con nuity from generation to generation, an endors.e.m.e.nt of ord and of meaning.

Piping, wind: the brothers returned from another series rapid deconstructions and reconst.i.tutions, and now they were essentially one creature of cataclysmic biology. The body large, well over seven feet tall, broad and hulking, for it inco porated the ma.s.s of both of them.

The single head had a nigh mare face: Frank's brown eyes were badly misaligned; slanted mouth gaped between them where a nose should had been; and a second mouth pocked the left cheek. Two torture screaming voices filled the kitchen. Another face was set inchest, mouthiess but with two eye sockets, in one of which I an unblinking eye as blue as Candy's; the other socketfilled with bristling teeth.

The slouching beast vanished, then returned once moor after less than a minute. This time it was an undifferentiated ma.s.s of tissue, dark in some places and hideously pink in others, p.r.i.c.kled with bone fragments, tufted with spa.r.s.e clumps of hair, marbled with veins that pulsed to different beats. Along the way, Frank had no doubt visited that alleyway in Calcutta or someplace like it, for he had conveyed with him dozens of roaches, not just one, and rats as well; they were incorporated into the tissue everywhere that Bobby looked, further ensuring that Candy's flesh was too diffused and polluted ever to be properly reconst.i.tuted. The monstrous and obviously dysfunctional a.s.semblage fell to the floor, flopped and shuddered, and finally lay still. Some of the rodents and insects continued to quiver and writhe, trying to get free; inextricably bonded to the dead ma.s.s, they also would soon perish.

THE HOUSE was simple, on a section of the coast that was not yet fashionable. The back porch faced the sea and wooden steps led down to a scrubby yard that ended the beach. There were twelve palm trees.

The living room was furnished with a couple of chairs, a low seat, a coffee table, and a Wurlitzer 950 stocked with records from the big-band era. The floor was bleached oak, tight made, and sometimes they pushed the furniture to the wall rolled up the area rug, punched up some numbers on the juke and danced together, just the two of them.

That was mostly in the evenings.

In the mornings, if they didn't make love, they poured through recipe books in the kitchen and whipped up bak goods together, or just sat with coffee by the window, watched the sea, and talked.

They had books, two decks of cards, an interest in the bir and animals that lived along the sh.o.r.e, memories both good and bad, and each other.

Always, each other.