He drove past the Dorgenois house and caught the flickering of candles. Those people who rented the place didn't use electricity ... they used candles. Insurance rates, so Don was told, went sky-high when the company learned about that. Didn't bother the people at all, Dave Porter told Don. Rich, rich folks, he figured.

Don had seen the woman who was head honcho of the clan that lived there. A breathtaking beauty of a lady. But that day she had looked at Don from the rear seat of her limo, Don felt a chill run up and down his spine. The lady was young, younger than Don's twenty-six years-but my G.o.d, those eyes. Cold and ... something else, too. But Don had yet to figure out the other. It was just that she didn't appear to have any emotion in her eyes. They were flat, like when she was looking at him she wasn't really seeing him at all. Kind of like when a person looked at something without really seeing it.

Made a guy feel funny.

Father Daniel Javotte stepped out of his small apartment located next to the church and gazed out into the gathering dusk of early evening. The priest could not put into words what he was feeling. Could not, because he did not know exactly what it was.

It was a heavy, oppressive yet intangible sensation. It was like a stinking shroud recently taken from a rotting corpse.

But it was more than that.

What was happening in Becancour? This had always been such a friendly, open little town. Until ... about a rear ago. That's when Javotte first began experiencing the odd sensations. And those sensations had gradually built in intensity.

He had spoken to the other ministers in town ... skirting the issue, just leaving it open-ended. Only one, the Methodist, Mike Laborne, had picked up on what Javotte was saying. Since then, Catholic and Methodist had become good friends, discussing their worries in private.

But neither could really put their finger on what was wrong.

Had there been a drop in church attendance?

No, none at all.

An increase in crime in the area?

No.

But there had been an increase in drinking around town. Booze sales were up about fifty percent from this time last year.

And the number of domestic crimes was on the increase, seldom reported to the police, but usually confided to the ministers.

A chill covered Javotte, a cold, clammy, numbing chill touched him. He knew then what it was he'd been experiencing for the past several months. It was ...

... evil!

At Lula's Love-Inn, Lula looked at the packed bar and marveled at it. In all her years of running various bars around the parish, she'd never seen anything like it. Even a bunch of those psalm-singin' Baptists were openly knocking back the juice, coming in every evening to booze it up. Playin' around with the barmaids and with other's spouses.

Lula loved it!

"Sure is hot outside," Thelma said.

Frank Lovern reared back and knocked his wife clear out of her chair.

She was squalling at the top of her lungs as her b.u.t.t hit the floor.

Grandfather Dorgenois knocked on his son's front door. Romy's wife, Julie, opened the door and waved the man inside.

"I'll be brief," the older man said to his son. "Your brother Jack has escaped from the inst.i.tution. They believe he is heading this way. We have to find him before the authorities do. You can handle him, Romy."

Romy brushed his face with a weary gesture. "I think it probably would be best if the police did find him, Dad."

"You can't mean that, Romy! He'd attack them and they'd kill him."

"Wouldn't that be best, Dad?" the son challenged.

The father's face hardened. "I will not dignify that with a reply, son. He's our flesh and blood; please keep that in mind."

Romy was not really the elder Dorgenois' son. R. M. and Colter were his grandparents. But they had raised him after his parents had been killed. Romy thought of his grandparents as parents, and that was the way it had been since he could remember.

"He's a monster, Dad. Face it, and admit it, please."

The older man stood his ground. "Are you going to help me, Romy?"

Slowly, hesitantly, Romy nodded his head. "Let me change clothes. You know I'll help."

Walt Davis squalled and cleared the fence with one leap, leaving his battered suitcase behind him. He ran right through the cats, knocking and kicking them spinning and yowling. Walt Davis, drifter, thief, rapist, and all around no-account, at that moment in his life could very well have qualified for the summer Olympics ten-thousand-meter run ... and won, hands down.

After about a hundred yards the cats gave up the chase and disappeared into the woods on either side of the road. There would be other prey. There always had been before.

Except for a few meandering parish roads that unless one was familiar with would oftentimes prove more like a maze than roads, there was only the one road leading to Becancour. And it was on that road that R. M. and Romy Dorgenois drove, heading north. They were the first to spot the man running right down the center of the highway.

Romy pulled the car over to the side and called for Walt to stop, come over, and tell them what was the matter.

Walt collapsed on the hood, thinking surely he was about to have a heart attack. "Cats attacked me!" he managed to gasp.

Then he pa.s.sed out.

"Cats!" Romy said.

But the older man's eyes were strangely hooded. He made no reply. He stood ramrod straight by the car, looking up the road, in the direction they'd been traveling.

"Dad?" Romy asked, kneeling down by the fallen, b.l.o.o.d.y man.

"No," R. M. said.

"What do you mean, no?" no?" Romy asked. "Dammit, Dad, this man's back has been clawed to shreds." Romy asked. "Dammit, Dad, this man's back has been clawed to shreds."

"Not again," R. M. said. "It must not happen again."

"Dad!" Romy shouted. Romy shouted.

The harsh voice cutting through the murky hot late spring air jarred the older man. He turned his head, looking down at Romy. "That poor man needs a.s.sistance. Put him in the backseat of the car. We'll take him into the clinic."

Headlights cut the dusk. Romy and R. M. could make out the bar lights on top of the sheriffs department car. Don Lenoir jumped out and ran up to the men.

"What happened?" Don asked.

R. M. looked at Romy, warning in his eyes. But Romy failed to see the warning. "Guy was running down the center of the road when we spotted him. He managed to say he was attacked by cats. Then he pa.s.sed out."

"Attacked by cats?" cats?" Don questioned. "Like ... well, cats?" Don questioned. "Like ... well, cats?"

"That's what he said." Romy rolled Walt over, allowing Don to see the man's torn back.

"Deputy," R. M. Dorgenois said. "If this man's wild story gets out, people will be shooting at shadows ... and a lot of them will be injured. If you get my point."

"Yes, sir," Don said. "I sure do."

"Would you take him to Dr. Livaudais' clinic, Deputy?" R. M. asked. "We'll be along presently to make our report."

Walt groaned and lifted his head. "Monster!" he gasped. "Some kind of wild man back there." He pointed. "You can probably see my suitcase on the east side of the highway. I never saw nothin' like that in my own life." He put his head on the road and began crying.

"Monsters?" Don questioned. "Attacking house cats and now monsters? What the h.e.l.l is going on here?"

"I'm certain we shall get to the bottom of it all in due time, Deputy," R. M. said. "As a matter of fact, while you're taking the poor fellow to the clinic, Romy and I will cruise this road and see if we can find this man's suitcase. Do you want us to leave it, or bring it in? If we find it, that is," he added.

Don knelt by Walt. "Mister, were you attacked by some guys?"

"No!" Walt sobbed. "It was cats. Plain ol' cats, man."

"Yeah," Don said, standing up. "If you find the suitcase, bring it in. But watch yourselves. I just got word that a nut escaped from that private inst.i.tution over west of Alex. Some guy named Jack Dorg. You can't get much information out of those private places. Dorg probably isn't even the guy's real name. People pay big bucks to put family members in those places."

"Really?" R. M. said blandly. "I suppose that insures anonymity."

"Yeah, it sure does," the deputy said. "But makes it a lot harder on us if some nut escapes, though."

Don loaded Walt into his car and pulled out, heading back to Becancour.

"You think that monster is Jack, don't you, Dad?"

"It's a reasonable a.s.sumption. Poor Jack can twist his face into some awful masks. That disease he is suffering from is a hideous one, you know?"

Romy did not answer until they were back in the car. "Jack isn't suffering from any mortal disease, Dad," Romy said softly. "And you know it. And I've known it for some time."

R. M.'s face turned into a mask of conflicting emotions. He stared straight ahead through the windshield. "I don't know what you're talking about, Romy."

"It's truth time, Dad. It's way past truth time, don't you think?"

"Drive very slowly, son. Just creep along." He got a flashlight from out of the glove box and tested it.

"Dad, Jack has to be destroyed."

R. M. did not take his eyes from the darkness by the side of the road, that area the bright headlights could not penetrate. "He's your brother, Romy."

"He craves human flesh, Dad."

"He is suffering from a disease, Romy. It is medically doc.u.mented. Lycanthrophy."

"You know better, Dad."

"I don't wish to discuss this, son. Let's just find Jack and have the people from the inst.i.tution come get him. I have enough medication at home to sedate him until that time."

Romy stopped the car, put it in park, and twisted in the seat to face the older man. "Dad, I know that Jack killed our father and mother. I know that he then ate their flesh. I know that Jack dabbled in black magic ever since he was just a little boy. I know that he was born marked by Satan. You see, Dad, I know everything."

"How did you find out?" R. M.'s voice was no more than a whisper in the car.

"I finally got the truth out of old Doc Livaudais a few months before he died."

R. M. cleared his throat. "Rumors, son. Vicious unfounded rumors. There is no truth to any of them."

"When we get back home, Dad. I'll call Father Javotte. We ll go to the church. We'll kneel in front of the blessed Virgin and Jesus Christ, then you'll swear to that, right?"

"Preposterous!" R. M. said.

"Then you'll do it?"

R. M. turned his head to look at the man he had raised as his own son. He blinked away sudden tears. "You know I won't do that, Romy."

"Why in G.o.d's name didn't you or my real father and mother stop him?"

"We tried, Son. But we found out too late what he'd become."

"And what was that, Dad?"

In the darkness by the road, from within the swampy timber, someone started laughing, evil-sounding laughter that came bell-clear through the open windows of the car.

6.

Sam watched Dog's head come up and the big animal tense. His gaze was riveted on the front door.

Little Sam was in his room, watching TV on the portable Sam had bought that afternoon. Neither Sam nor Nydia cared much for commercial TV, preferring, when they did watch the tube, the PBS network.

Sam rose from his chair and walked to the book shelves. He slipped his hand behind a small row of books and took out a .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol. He jacked a round into the chamber and walked to the front door. He was conscious of Dog's eyes on him as he put a hand on the doork.n.o.b.

He could hear Nydia singing softly as she soaked in the bathtub.

He flipped on the porch light at the same time he jerked open the door.

He smiled as he saw an armadillo lumbering across the front yard, awkwardly making its way to the bayou's edge.

Sam turned off the porch light and stepped out onto the porch, and into the hot night. Peripheral vision caught fast movement to his left, near the yard's end, where it rapidly deteriorated into brush and timber.

Cats, several dozen of them. He watched as they streaked into the brush and heavy growth. Sam squatted down on the porch and waited, the .22 in his hand. Dog came out onto the porch and sat down, his eyes looking in the same direction as Sam's. Sam was sure the big animal could smell the cats, but he made no move to chase them.

A pack of them, Sam thought. One sees dog packs, but one seldom sees large cat packs.