8.

For the first time in several days, Xaviere's mood was upbeat. The Princess of Darkness had even attempted several small jabs at humor. Her followers at the old Dorgenois house had laughed loudly and long.

Yes, Xaviere felt good. Those silly, vain Christians had taken in the children-as she had known they would-and Janet's child, Bess, was among them. Bess, with most of the others, were being housed at the clinic. The rest were with that small band of resistors at the newer Dorgenois house, with Colter. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

But she wondered about old R. M. He had been so strong at first; Xaviere had almost given up in her quest to change the old fart into that which she knew he was. Then, suddenly, the old man had shifted.

She shook her head. She didn't understand that part of it. She scratched her head and picked a flea from her scalp, crushing the little insect between two long, sharp fingernails.

The once beautiful home positively reeked of body odors. Cobwebs hung in silver-gray ropes in the corners. And cats were everywhere.

Xaviere was just a bit nervous about the coming night. She knew the Master would be terribly angry if she called him out too soon. And when the Dark One became angry...matters could turn very grim-in a hurry.

She lifted her beautiful head and stuck out her chin in a defiant gesture. She had obeyed the Master, following all instructions and procedures to the letter. She did not feel that she, or any of her immediate followers, could have possibly done any better.

But that was not for her to say. She lowered her chin.

Tonight would test that thought of hers.

"You know the kids, Sonny?" Sam asked.

"Most of them. Some of them told me they were here visiting relatives; the ones under school age."

Sam hid a sigh. Neither he nor Nydia had the ability to know for sure which child was the demon-child.

But...

...there was someone who might.

"He is just a child, Sam," Nydia's thoughts pushed into his brain. "Just a little boy."

"Blessed by G.o.d," Sam returned the mental push. "To do G.o.d's work."

Nydia was silent.

Sam thought: "Get everything you'll need from the house. Bring my .41 mag and the ammo belt with you. It's time to go to work."

"Dog will never leave Little Sam's side," she reminded her husband.

"I don't plan on him leaving."

At their rent house by the bayou, Nydia began hurriedly packing. She put Sam's big .41 magnum, with asix-inch barrel, into a bag, along with a full ammo belt and half a dozen boxes of ammunition. She finished her packing and looked around the house.

Dog was looking at her.

"Stay with him." She spoke softly.

Dog blinked.

Little Sam walked into the room and looked at his mother. "I'm not afraid, Mother," he said. "I know what I have to do."

"You're very brave."

"No." The little boy shook his head. "I'm just a soldier in a war, that's all."

Nydia took her son's hand and the three of them walked out of the house. Nydia closed and locked the front door.

"I liked it here," Little Sam said.

"So did I, Son."

"Will we ever come back?"

"I don't think so, Sam."

"I don't think we will, either."

Ben Ballatin knew nothing of the troubles in Becancour. Ben Ballatin knew very little of the goings-on in the outside world. He lived deep in the swamps and came to town only when he ran out of essentials: sugar, salt, flour, things of that nature. The swamp was his home, as it had been his father's home and his father before him. Ben did not like the outside world and kept contact with it to a minimum. Only his brother, Maurice, had ever attempted to make his way in that English-speaking world...and look what that had gotten him.

Drowned, when he took them northerners out into thebayous to fish. How many years had it been? Ben pondered, drifting along in his pirogue . . . must have been...d.a.m.n! almost forty years ago. Maurice and their cousin Charles was never seen again no more.

Ben always felt there was something odd about that whole thing. Maurice and Charles knew these bayous like they knew the back of their hands. Ben remembered that day well. There had been no wind, no storms, no bad weather of any type.

Maurice and Charles and them Yankees had just plain ol' vanished. And that didn't make no sense a-tall.

Ben reached for his paddle, then paused as a slight noise reached his ears.

Ben sat very still, for the noise was not something normally heard in the swamps. That was no 'gator or bear; no bird takin' off or divin' for food.

Ben listened. d.a.m.n! he thought. That sounds like somebody swimmin'.

But not out here. Not in these waters. Take a d.a.m.n fool to swim in these dark waters.

But there it was. Sure enough was somebody swimmin'.

Then a low moan came to Ben's ears.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" he called. he called.

Ben almost swallowed his dentures when he heard his name spoken, the word floating across the dark waters on the hot, still bayou air.

" 'Ay!" Ben called. "Qui est-ce?" "Qui est-ce?"

His name was once more repeated.

" 'Ay, boy! You better talk to me. d.a.m.n fool swimmin' out here. You los', boy?"

Then Ben heard splashing coming from the other side if his pirogue. Two people swimmin' out here? hethought. h.e.l.l, no! No way. Somebody was playin' tricks on Ben. That somebody pro'bly that d.a.m.n crazy Billy Carmouche. Fool never did have no sense.

"Billy! Billy Carmouche! You crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h! Get outta them waters 'fore a 'gator done took your leg."

The pirogue rocked side to side. Ben grabbed hold of both sides to maintain balance.

He howled in fright and shock as something wet and slimy and rotten-feeling grabbed his right hand. Ben cut his eyes to see what kind of thing had grabbed him.

He looked into the white, dead eyes of his cousin Charles.

Ben's screaming ripped through the swamp, startling the birds. The birds flapped upward, breaking free of the trees, filled with Spanish moss.

"Git away from me!" Ben screamed. He tried to pull his hand free from the slimy grasp of the thing in the water.

Then the pirogue tilted dangerously toward the other side. Something equally cold and slimy and rotten-feeling grabbed Ben's thigh. Ben's squalling intensified.

"Turn me a-loose!" he screamed.

He dared to look at what had him by the leg. He began shaking as total fear numbed his very being.

It was his brother, Maurice.

Maurice looked at him through dead white eyes. His flesh was fish-belly white and wrinkled. When Maurice opened his mouth, death odors from the rotting cavity surrounded Ben.

A splash came from the front of the pirogue, left and right. Ben lifted his horror-filled eyes. Two kids, a boy and a girl, naked, now clung to either side of thehomemade canoe.

They motioned for Ben to join them. A splash right behind him jerked Ben's head around. He was nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball with a naked man. And he knew who it was, even though he felt what he was seeing was impossible.

It was that Yankee woman who had drowned. And them was her kids hangin' onto the front of the pirogue.

Ben started praying.

The woman threw her arms around his neck and jerked his head back. She kissed him, plunging her slimy tongue deep into his mouth.

Ben's screaming prayers were abruptly silenced by the man's cold, wet, stinking mouth.

The front of the pirogue dipped and Ben's left leg erupted in a hot spasm of pain. He felt his blood gush from his leg. He managed to look down.

The girl was eating his leg.

Pain ripped through him as the woman began gnawing his face. His blood gushed and flowed and dripped as swamp-stained teeth ripped and tore his flesh. Ben felt sharp teeth hook onto the flesh just below his eye and the woman's head twist and jerk. The flesh peeled away from his skull as easily as someone peeling an orange.

Ben Ballatin screamed just once more. When his mouth opened and the shrieking rolled over his tongue, the woman's teeth clamped down on his tongue and bit deeply. His mouth filled with hot blood and his head exploded in pain.

Ben flailed his arms and tried to kick out with his pain-filled and gnawed-on legs. The other kid was now in the pirogue, chewing at Ben's legs. Water slopped into the pirogue, mixing with Ben's blood. His brother Mauricereached up with fishy-smelling, ghostly white arms and pulled Ben into the dark waters.

The last thing Ben remembered was his brother tearing at his throat.

"Do they know the entire story?" Romy asked Colter.

"Yes," the old woman replied. "Do you you now believe?" now believe?"

Romy nodded his head. Julie stood off to one side, their children close beside her. Her face was white from fear and shock and disbelief.

"It would not be wise for you to return to your home," Colter told the grandson she had helped raise as her own son. "Strength in numbers is not something to be merely spoken of-in our case, it's very true. This bit with the children was a smart move on the part of the other side. They've managed to split our forces and weaken us."

When Romy spoke, there was a bitterness to his tone that cut the old woman. "R. M. could have prevented this. If he'd just had the courage to come forward and admit what he was born to be."

"Yes," Colter agreed. "But the mortal side of him prevailed."

"How do you mean?"

"He wanted to live, Son. Like everyone else. And, Son, who would have believed him?"

"The Church would have believed him." Romy stood his verbal ground.

"And you believe a priest would have killed him?"

"If the exorcism had failed, yes, I do."

Colter knew there was no point in continuing the discussion. Romy was right, to a degree. But there wa.s.still much he did not understand, and probably never would.

She wound it up by saying, "Well, Son, you'll probably have your chance to destroy him, and your brother, too. I only hope you are up to the task when the moment arrives."

"I will be," Romy said, a hard grimness in his voice. He met her eyes. "But I don't have to like what I do."

The old woman inwardly relaxed at that. Now she was ninety-nine percent sure that Romy was free of the curse.

But that one percent would nag at her until it was over.

If they lived through it, that is.

"There ain't no school no more, Brother Lester," one of Cliff's flock breathlessly informed him. "And Sonny Pa.s.son and Don Lenoir done stole some of the buses and tooken all the missing kids over to the clinic and to Missus Dorgenois's mansion."

The messenger picked up a piece of fried chicken and gnawed at it.

A guitar's thumping and voices raised in song drifted to the two men.

"T like the old time preachin', prayin', singin', shoutin','" rose the voices.

"The law is in it with all the rest," Brother Lester said, his mouth full of potato salad. "It figures, though. The law didn't do nothin' when the drinkin' and whorin' and other sinnin' jumped up around here. They probably been doin' sinful things in them cells at the jail. No tellin' what-all's been goin' on over there."

The messenger stopped chewing the chicken leg. Heleaned forward, closer to Brother Lester, his eyes shining. "What do you reckon it was?"

"Haw?"