Sam smiled. "Up to about a hundred yards. If a Thompson won't stop what's coming at you, honey, with those big old slugs, it just isn't going to be stopped. I would love to have one of them."

"Have you ever fired one?"

"No, but it wouldn't take me long to learn." He looked at the pistol again. Somehow, and he could not shake the feeling, the weapon felt natural in his hand, almost as if he had held it before.

"What are you thinking, Sam?" Although she knew his thoughts.

He told her.

"Maybe that's what your father wants you to feel?"

"Yeah," he said softly.

A sudden sensation of being pulled into a dark force field enveloped them. "Sam!" Nydia cried, taking his hand. "What's happening?"

"Hang on! I don't know."

They sank to the ground. And they were speechless, immobile as the strange force took control.

Time took them mentally winging into darkness, spinning them wildly through multicolors. They watched a naked man fighting with a naked woman. The faces were blurred, but both Sam and Nydia knew who they were: Sam Balon and Roma.

Articles of clothing and pieces of equipment flew about the struggling couple, sailing in a slow circle. The man struck the woman with his fist, and her head snapped back, blood spurting from a suddenly crimson mouth. She slapped him, the force of the open-hand pop turning him in somersaults. He kicked out with a bare foot and she grabbed his ankle, her hand working upward to grasp his erect p.e.n.i.s. She hunched and impaled herself on the phallus, howling with dark laughter.

He smashed a fist against her jaw and she slumped, the man pushing her from his p.e.n.i.s. She flew at him, fighting him. He was growing weaker. Again and again she mounted his maleness, only to have him shove her away, each shove less forceful than the preceding one.

Then, shrieking her taunting laughter, she lunged at him and wailed her delight as the phallus drove to the inner depths of her. For what seemed like hours the couple f.u.c.ked their way across trackless worlds of time, always in a slow circle, until their combined juices were leaking from her lathered c.u.n.t, leaving a trail as bright as the Milky Way.

The young couple, frozen in voyeurism, earth-locked, could see the man was nearly dead.

With one last supreme burst of courage and strength, the man threw out his arm, snagging something out of the maze of clothing and equipment that encircled the couple. The objects seemed to fire from his hand, through the years, straight toward the young man and woman sitting on the ground in Canada.

Nydia screamed.

Sam ducked.

They both jumped to their feet, looking around them. All was still and peaceful. Sam looked at the gun in his hand.

"He threw the gun at you," Nydia whispered. "And something else. But . . . how?"

"I think when we finally learn that, Nydia ... we'll be dead."

"You know now what you have to do at Falcon House, don't you?" she asked him.

"I think I've known all along."

"It's Miles," Jane Ann said. "He wants to know how come the phones are still working when everybody else's don't?"

"They don't work in Whitfield," Balon replied.

"He says then maybe you would be so kind as to explain how it is he is talking with me on the telephone this very minute?"

"Tell him to think about it. The answer will come to him."

She relayed the message, then stood listening for a few seconds. She laughed. "He says he understands. He really doesn't, he said. But to please you, he says he does."

"Hang up the phone and come over here and sit on the couch," Balon said.

When she was seated in front of the only man she had ever loved, she smiled at the misty face and said, "All right, Sam."

"I will be able to protect you through most of what will occur during the coming days. But ... in the end it will have to be your strength and courage that see you through."

"Can you tell me why?"

"Not yet. Most of it you will be able to guess. After ... all is done, then you will know."

She smiled. "I love question and answer games."

"None of this is amusing, Jane Ann!" Balon fired the thought at her with such intensity it caused her head to ache. "Sorry," he said. "But enough is enough. Miles is treating this as some sort of comedy burlesque; Wade is his usual smart-a.s.s reporter self."

"Sam! Angels aren't supposed to talk like that."

"I'm not an angel. Even if I were, it wouldn't make any difference. Michael has been known to loose some oaths that caused tidal waves."

"Do you two get along? You and Michael?"

Silence greeted her.

"Sorry," she muttered. "Conversing with the spirit world is not something I do every day, you know."

"There you go again, being flip. I can't seem to get through to you-any of you-the horror that is beginning ... for all of you."

"Don't you think we know, Sam? We lived through it once."

"But none of you will live through this. None of you. And your death, Jane Ann, is not going to be pleasant."

"I realize that, Sam. Last night I prayed for help."

"I heard you."

"Did He?"

"I am sure He did."

"You don't know!"

Silence.

"All right. Knowing Jean Zagone, I'm sure whatever is in store for me will be of a s.e.xual nature."

The mist projected no reply.

"Rape, I'm sure."

Silence.

"Am I to be served up for the Black Ma.s.s?"

The mist gave no clue. Balon's unblinking eyes could not be read.

And then she knew what was in store for her; the culmination of the awfulness preceding the final hours of hideousness. She put her hands over her face and wept.

Balon could do nothing except silently watch, and invisibly weep with her.

A gentle rain began to fall over Whitfield.

Sam jacked a round into the automatic, eased the hammer down, and shoved it behind his belt. He glanced at Nydia. "Let's go see this hole in the ground. See the Beasts."

She grabbed his arm. "Why did you say Beasts?"

"Because I know, now, that's what they are. I don't know how I know. But they are the Devil's Beasts. My dad fought them-or some like them-in Fork. And now I know for certain I have been tapped-chosen, if you will-to pick up where Dad left off. Just another part of the country, that's all."

"And Roma, Falcon, Black ... all those at the house?" she asked, almost running to keep pace with his long stride.

"I have to kill them," Sam said.

"Or try," she was forced to add.

"Yes."

"You won't run?"

"No."

Then they were at the hole in the earth, the unG.o.dly fumes pouring from the blackness hundreds of feet deep almost making them physically ill.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Sam said, his voice low and powerful. "I know you're in there."

A growl ripped from the darkness and the stench to touch them.

Sam tossed his jacket to the ground, opening his shirt, exposing the angry red cross burned into his skin. The growling intensified, becoming louder as others joined in, swelling the howling and snarling to a fever pitch.

Sam pulled the .45 from his belt. "Why don't you come out?" he challenged them. "Let the light touch you?"

But nothing appeared at the mouth of the stinking lair of the Beasts. Only more howling and snarling sprang from the filthy cave.

Sam ignored the tugging at his sleeve. Nydia was so frightened she was trembling.

"Come up," Sam said. "Let me see you. Show me your evil red eyes." How did I know their eyes were red?

And one Beast did just that. A young Beast who lacked the caution of age leaped forward, just a few feet from the cave opening. It roared at the tall young man, its breath stinking. Sam shot it between the eyes, then stood smiling as the dead creature tumbled backward, falling with a boneless thud onto the first level of the many-tiered burrow. It would not be wasted: its relatives would feast on the cooling flesh and still-warm blood, sucking the marrow from the bones.

"One less," Sam said, then spat contemptuously on the ground, unaware his father had done and said the same thing years before, 1,500 miles to the west.

This time Sam allowed Nydia to pull him away from the rancid hole, leading him toward the house.

After the young couple had gone, a huge old Beast stuck his head out of the den. He had been on this earth for many years, hundreds of years, and had lived through purge after purge from both humans and the elements. He was old and he was wise, as Beasts go. He shook his great scarred head and snarled deep in his chest. He had never known a human without fear of his kind.

Until now.

And that primal sense of warning struck a resonant cord within his tiny brain. The Beast did not know he was evil; his brain could not distinguish between good and evil. He served his G.o.d because ... well, it was the thing to do. He did not have the intelligence to question right or wrong. But he did understand courage ... and something else: fear. And what he now felt was fear, and he did not understand why.

Growling, the Beast slipped back into the earth. He must warn the others of this human; tell them to stay away. For this human was not like the other humans. This human had been touched by the Other Side. And the Beast feared the Other Side.

Black and Susan spun around as the echo of the shot drifted through the timber.

"That was close," Susan said.

But Black would only smile.

In Falcon House, Roma studied Falcon as the man stood speaking with Lana. He could be so charming. She wondered how long it would take him to get the panties off the little blond? Not long, if she knew Falcon, and she did. She would like to be there when he spread her legs and filled her with that enormous erection. Roma liked to hear screaming.

A thin line of perspiration broke from the skin on her upper lip at just the thought of s.e.x. d.a.m.n that young man! She couldn't get him out of her mind. Roma knew, with a mother's sixth sense, that Nydia had slept with Balon's b.a.s.t.a.r.d ... which was fine ... no harm in that. But what Roma did not want was some puky little holy child to spring from the mating. That would be the height of humiliation.

A door slammed, and Roma looked around as Black and Susan strolled in. The girl looked rumpled. So her son had made it with the c.u.n.t. That was good. Better than his usual tastes: boys. Although the Master did not object to his subjects engaging in s.e.x with the same gender. Roma noticed Susan now wore the medallion of the Master outside her shirt. Very good, Black. Falcon will want to sample her wares as well. How nice of you to break in a new p.u.s.s.y for him. She watched Susan touch her son's arm, smile up at him, then walk toward the steps to her quarters. Black came to his mother's side.

"All went well, I see."

"Very well. Mother. But we did hear a shot a few moments ago."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Seemed to come from around the circle."

"Of course, Sam would be armed. He is his father's son. Any ideas as to what prompted the gunfire?"

"He probably fired at a Beast."

'They would not have attacked with Nydia present." A frown creased her brow. "Unless ..." she let the unimaginable trail off.

"Unless ... what, Mother?"

"She became a Christian," Roma said sourly.

"If she did that, then that changes things considerably."

"Yes. But Sam Balon used to do the same thing back in Whitfield. Taunt the Beasts. No fear in either father or son." But still ... could her daughter have been converted so quickly. It was possible. If so, Roma smiled, that opened up yet another can of wriggling worms, with more alternatives than ever.

Black looked at his mother. But unlike his mother, the young man was very familiar with fear. But he dared not tell her of that forbidden emotion, as forbidden as true love. She would be furious. Black had learned as a child how to keep his thoughts blocked from her.