Lester agreed that, yes, it sh.o.r.e did.

"Your own television show, carried coast to coast, border to border."

"Oh, my, yes!" Brother Lester whispered to the voice.

"People flinging themselves at your feet, begging for forgiveness-from you. you. Like that, old friend?" Like that, old friend?"

Sh.o.r.e did, for a fact. Hallelujah.

"What you have done today was good, a start, but only a small start. There are many more in this town who must be punished. Do you agree?"

"Sh.o.r.e do."

"You must do exactly as I say. For I speak only the truth."

"Right, right! Lay it on me." As Brother Lester moaned and jerked and spake in tongues, his flock were working themselves up into a murderous frenzy. Their joyful noisemaking was muted in Lester's feverish brain as the voice spoke.

The voice gave Brother Lester instructions, and Brother Lester loved it.

His moaning and jerking ceased. He opened his eyes and sat up. "Lo," he shouted. "I have spoken with an angel."

Not exactly an angel.

"I know now what we must do!"

His flock waited.

Lester told them.

They gasped.

"What angel told you this?" a daring flock member asked.

"Do you dare question me!" me!" Brother Lester shouted. Brother Lester shouted.

The questioner lowered his head.

"That's better," Lester said. "Cleanse yourselves, mentally and physically. For we must hurry."

And Mary pried open the lid to Will's casket. She grabbed his rotting head and kissed his cold lips.

Will opened his eyes.

"Hi, Brother!" Mary cried. "Welcome back!"

21.

Sam visited the clinic and spoke softly with his wife and son, in private.

"You've seen a small taste of h.e.l.l, Son," he told Little Sam. "But in a few hours, Satan is going to unleash everything at his power. You've been a brave boy, now I must ask you to be braver."

"I will, Father. I promise."

"You've spotted the devil's child?"

"When she walked in with Guy, Father."

"She won't be as easy as poor little Guy."

"I know. But Dog will help me."

Sam patted the big head of the animal. He lifted his eyes to Nydia. "You're going to be very busy tonight, love."

"I know."

Sam kissed his son and his wife. He stood up. "I'll see you all tomorrow."

Sam spoke briefly with the remainder of the adults at the clinic. "Hang in there," he said.

They all watched the husky young man leave the building. Sam stood outside for a moment, in the almostunbearable heat of mid-afternoon. The odor of evil was almost as intolerable as the intense heat.

He walked to the borrowed pickup truck and got behind the wheel, wincing as his hands touched the hot steering wheel.

With a long expelling of breath, Sam started the pickup and rolled out, heading for the main drag of town. He saw nothing and n.o.body. He didn't even see a cat.

But he felt the evil all around him, slithering about like some dangerous snake, the forked tongue sliding rapidly in and out past the eternal smile of the serpent.

He drove the main street, stopping at the sight of the nearly destroyed convenience store. Parking, Sam got out and inspected the milk truck and the bread truck. And that odd smell he'd been smelling for several hours was stronger.

He knew what it was.

He drove toward the stronger odor, stopping about a block from Cliff Lester's church on a side street. There, out in the field, he saw the three charred poles.

With a sigh, Sam backed up and turned around. He didn't have to go inspect the poles; he could smell what remained of cooked human flesh.

"The d.a.m.ned fool," Sam muttered. "Why can't people be Christians without being fanatics?"

He wasn't expecting any reply and none came. This was to be his fight; he had sensed that from the outset. But to even the score some, G.o.d had lined up some strong and stable people to fight with Sam.

Sam had to smile-what a bunch he had with him. A pretty good cross section of America. Some homemakers, doctors, cops, teachers, businesspeople, a whole gang ofkids, some teenagers, a priest and a preacher, one very old lady, and Jobert.

Sam liked the ex-Legionnaire; no back-up in that old boy. None at all.

Sam glanced up at the sky. Couple more hours until dusk. Couple more hours until...

...He wondered how many of those Christians gathered at the mansion and the clinic would live to see the dawn?

Sam wondered if he he would live to see the dawn? He quickly put that thought out of his mind. would live to see the dawn? He quickly put that thought out of his mind.

He once more drove the main street of Becancour looking for?...

...He wasn't sure. Something that might give an indication of what might be coming at them when night wrapped its dark arms around the land, and the forces of evil were unleashed, to come screaming and howling at the small army of Christians.

But the silent streets and empty-appearing businesses and homes gave no ready answer to Sam's questions.

Alone, Sam thought. We are visibly alone in this fight.

But not really alone. G.o.d is with us, watching, silently giving us strength. And Michael, the Mercenary, is sitting beside Him, furious that He will not allow the archangel to leave Heaven to join in the fight.

With a sharp cracking sound, Sam was jerked from his musings. The side window of the pickup was spider webbed from a large rock thrown at the truck. Sam braked and pulled over to the curb. He got out, a sawed off shotgun with extended magazine in his hand. He'd borrowed the shotgun from Deputy Lenoir. Sam's .41 mag was in leather, belted around his waist. He lookedtoward the mouth of an alley. A dozen or so people, ranging in age from late teens upward stood there, grinning and hooting and cursing him.

"Get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" a man shouted. The crowd of unwashed rushed Sam.

Sam leveled the shotgun and began pulling and pumping. The buckshot knocked the charging mob backward and to the hot street. Blood splattered the storefront and the big windows were shattered from the buckshot that did not enter and tear nonhuman flesh. For that is how Sam viewed anyone who practiced devil worship...Nonhuman.

One screaming, wild-eyed young man almost reached Sam. The man's hands were reaching for him as Sam lifted the muzzle of the 12 gauge and pulled the trigger. The buckshot struck Satan's dupe in the hollow of his throat, almost completely tearing off the head.

A young woman leaped onto Sam's back. Sam fell back on his hard-earned Ranger training and flipped the woman from him, sending her sailing through the air to crash through a store window, the broken gla.s.s ripping her unwashed flesh, staining the show area with crimson.

The shotgun empty, Sam tossed it onto the hood of the pickup and jerked his big .41 from leather. He shot a middle-aged man between the eyes, popping his head back as if struck with a hard-thrown brick. The crowd vanished as suddenly as it came. The sidewalk and street were filled only with the dead and dying; the moaning of those badly wounded verbally clawed the hot, still air.

Sam quickly reloaded the shotgun and laid it on the pickup's bench seat. He punched out the empty bra.s.s inthe cylinder of the .41 mag and reloaded, all the while keeping a watch for any more attackers. None came at him.

He did not concern himself with the dead or wounded. He knew the Beasts and cats were close by, watching.

They would eat them.

THE THIRD NIGHT OF THREE.

Sam had inspected the mansion at least a dozen times in a three-hour span. He had corrected a half dozen mistakes before he was satisfied the mansion was as secure as it could possibly be.

It also came as no surprise to him that the phones in Becancour still worked. The Prince of Filth was making sure as much remained normal as was inhumanly possible.

Sam called the clinic and spoke with Nydia.

"We're as ready as can be, Sam," she a.s.sured him.

"I know the demon child has not yet made any move." It was not a question; a statement of fact.

"She's making plans. She is not aware I can read her thoughts."

"She's stronger than Little Sam, you know."

"I know. Dog is with him constantly. It will be all right, Sam."

And with that, Sam knew it would be. He felt that Little Sam would not come out of the battle unhurt, either mentally or physically, but then, no one would.

"I love you, Nydia."

"And I love you, Sam."

They both hung up and turned to face the night.

Brother Lester and his hardcore band of Brothers and Sisters, all resplendent in their freshly washed robes, had finished trashing a local store that sold paperbacks. Nothing had been spared. Since many of them had difficulty reading anything, any cover with anything that could be remotely construed as suggestive was either ripped apart or burned. Any cover that dared show the bare curve of a woman's breast or the skin of a thigh was met with whoops of disgust from the Brothers and Sisters; after all, they, they, and they alone, knew what was best for everyone else. and they alone, knew what was best for everyone else.

The Brothers and Sisters moved on, h.e.l.l-bent on their appointed mission to rid Becancour of anything they considered filthy.

Sister Pauline was a bit tardy in joining the others on their Heaven-sent quest toward Truth, Light, and gross-Intolerance. She was totally absorbed in reading what was left of a paperback in a store they had just trashed.

She did not notice the dozens of cats that had crept into the trashed store, all of them moving silently toward the woman.

Suddenly something furry brushed against her ankles.

"Rat!" she hollered. The book went one way and Sister Pauline went the other.

The book survived; Sister Pauline did not.

The cats swarmed Sister Pauline and brought her belly-down on the trashed floor. The cats howled and hissed and spat and clawed. Her snow-white robe was quickly turned red with her blood. The cats clawed out her eyes. Sister Pauline would never again have to worry about reading another offensive word.

While the cats were busy tearing out hunks of Sister Pauline, they did not notice the huge shapes that cast giant shadows enter the rear of the store. The cats gorged themselves, their fur becoming matted and slick with blood.

A low growl stopped the cats from their feasting.

As one, they spun and spat their anger at the Beasts that were lumbering toward them.

Cats met Beasts in the center of the trashed store. But it was no real contest.

The cats could not claw through the thick skin of the Beasts; at best they were able only to inflict very minor wounds on the huge creatures of h.e.l.l. The cats were ripped apart and slung about the littered store. Then they were eaten. Only a few escaped the raging jealousy of the Beasts.

The Beasts lumbered toward the torn body of Sister Pauline.

They feasted well that early evening of the last night.

Janet's demon child, Bess, did not wait until the full dead of night to launch her attack on the Blessed child, Sam. While the adults were setting up guards around the clinic, Bess slipped away from the crowded room she occupied with half a dozen other kids and made her way to where she knew Little Sam was waiting, with that strange dog. She also knew that the turncoat witch, Nydia, had left her son alone, with that dog, and had done so deliberately.

Bess, with her young and evil mind, matured by a hundred thousand years of depravity, did not understand that move. But that didn't matter; she knew the task before her, and meant to see it through.

She felt that Guy's changing into his real self had been a mistake. Bess planned to stay a little girl, since her mother had told her that little boys were taught from an early age not to hit little girls. Only at the last moment, when she struck the fatal blow, would she change. And by then, she would be too powerful for any of the others to stop-including Nydia.

Bess didn't know Little Sam as well as she thought she did.