Chapter 34

Kettering lay deep in the blackthorn thicket, curled into as small a package as he could manage. He held the Anubis clutched tightly to his chest and listened to the sounds in the woods.

They were out here hunting him. He heard shouted questions and orders, and several times someone came close enough for him to make out individual footsteps. They seemed to know he was still in the immediate area. So far no one had ventured into the forbidding blackthorn.

He concentrated fiercely to plan his next move. The failure of the Anubis to destroy Zoara Sol had shaken him. He would have chucked the damn thing, lightening his burden, except for the vision of his father. The fault was yours. His fault? How? What had he done wrong? The alien words he spoke had flowed as though of their own volition. He could not change them if he wanted to. Had he not done everything exactly as his father had in confronting the monstrous pizza man?

Kettering had not forgotten that his father's victory thirty-seven years before had cost the Reverend Kettering his life. When you're a cop, you have to live with a certain fatalism. When your number's up ... That kind of thing. It helped, however, to know the cards were not stacked against you. With his physical strength neutralized and the Centennial useless, he was left with a three-thousand-year-old statuette that seemed to be malfunctioning. Not real good odds.

And there was more to worry about than his own predicament. What might be happening to Charity Moline? Should he have stayed? Cowboyed it on the spot? No, that would have been foolish.

And he could not forget his son was there too. The thought was painful. Kettering had seen Trevor's face as he stood in the silent circle with the others, his eyes as empty as theirs. The boy was already lost. But Charity was still out there somewhere, in dire danger because of him. Even if it were possible, there was no way he was leaving here without her.

He shivered with the cold. The light was changing. Kettering peered up through the tangle of brush and saw that the sun was lowering toward the western mountains. Somehow, hours had passed since he dived into the blackthorn.

The words of Dr. Valerian Landrud. Darkness is the friend of evil.

Slowly, painfully, he began to crawl out of the thicket. He could smell a wood fire now, and far off through the deepening gloom he saw its glow. Just to his right the splash and gurgle of the creek covered the sounds as he extricated himself from the thicket.

His plan was vague, but he knew he must act. The longer he delayed, me more likely he was to be caught. And the greater the danger to Charity. He had failed to put Zoara Sol down with the Anubis, but she was still the key. Somehow he had to take her to break her power over the others. He would figure out how to do it when he got there. The first task was to slip back into the village without being caught by the hunters whose flashlights bobbed now among the darkening trees.

"Here he is!"

The shout froze Kettering for an instant. Then he whirled to see Enzo DuLac, grinning in a half crouch, stabbing at him with a forefinger.

"I found him!"

Kettering's muscles were stiff from lying cramped for so long in the blackthorn, and DuLac almost got away before he could grab the little man.

"Don't you hurt me!" DuLac cried, the triumph in his eyes giving way to fear.

Without letting go of the Anubis, Kettering lifted the little man off the ground with no great effort and raised him above his head. DuLac's scream died barely out of his mouth as Kettering hurled him like a sack of garbage against the trunk of a Douglas fir. He bounced to the ground and lay without moving.

DuLac's shouts had attracted the others, and Kettering could hear them converging on him. As he turned, a biting pain lanced his shoulder and shot down his left arm. Instinctively he ducked, spun, and backed away in a single motion.

Gabrielle Wister faced him. She wore a black turtleneck sweater and black jeans that clung to her narrow ass and slim legs. Her eyes glittered with hatred. In her upraised hand was a hunting knife. The six-inch blade was stained dark with his blood.

Part of his mind noted that he was lucky Gabrielle was no knife fighter. If she had come at him low, she could have sliced through vital organs and put him down for good. As it was, the shoulder wound was painful but probably not fatal. But he had only one good arm now, and she still had the knife.

Kettering hugged the Anubis with his weakened left arm and snatched the S&W Centennial from his hip with the right.

"Hold it right there!" he ordered.

He might as well have spoken to the setting sun. Gabrielle's lips peeled back from her teeth in an animal snarl and she lunged.

Kettering fired. The bullet caught Gabrielle in the throat. Reflex muscle action kept her driving on past him as blood sprayed from her mouth. Five yards beyond him she dropped to her knees, twisted her upper body, and glared at him with unspeakable loathing. Then she died.

They were coming fast now. The cries and the gunshot had pinpointed his location. With blood soaking the left sleeve of his jacket and his arm going numb, Kettering scrambled down the bank toward the creek.

He splashed through the shallow icy water several yards downstream to a spot where the bank on the opposite side was gradual enough for easy climbing. As he started up, something slammed into his wounded shoulder. Kettering gasped in pain. The Anubis slipped from his grasp and splashed into the creek. He turned to see Enzo DuLac drawing back a heavy branch for another swing at him.

Kettering dropped to his hands and knees in the water. The tree branch swung over his head with a heavy whoosh. His injured left arm collapsed under him and he went face first into the creek.

With his left hand numb, Kettering scrabbled around on the creek bottom with his right, searching for the statuette. Only when he found it and his fingers closed around the figurine did he realize he had lost his gun.

No time to worry about it. He sprang upright as DuLac coiled for another swing. With a short, vicious backhand slash he cracked the granite figurine against the side of the little man's skull. Something broke, and it was not the statuette. Enzo DuLac dropped like a broken doll, his face submerged in the creek. Bubbles streamed from the little man's nose. Kettering tucked the Anubis under his throbbing left arm and turned away.

The delay was too much. As Kettering started up the far bank of the creek, he looked up and saw four young villagers standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking his path. He whirled to see more of them on the other side. Silently, unhurriedly, they moved in on him, forming a box.

Too many of them, and not enough left of him. Kettering sagged. No one spoke. A tall girl pointed back toward the village. Kettering nodded silently and began to walk.

In the center of the clearing a towering fire blazed. Kettering was steered in that direction. Waiting for him there was Zoara Sol. She was serene and achingly beautiful with the firelight flashing in her eyes and the pale hair floating about her head.

A few feet away stood Charity Moline. She was unharmed, as far as Kettering could tell. She was held by one arm in the powerful grip of Bolo, the blond muscle man.

"Welcome back, Brian," said Zoara Sol.

"What do you want?" he said.

She pointed a long finger at the Anubis, still cradled against Kettering's torn chest, stained by blood from his knife wound.

"That!"

He shook his head.

"It is of no use to you, as you have learned. Give it to me now, or I will have it taken from you."

The woman pointed, and as before the weight began to press down on him. Much weaker now, he knew he would not be able to resist. In a last desperate gamble he spun his body to drive his good elbow into Bolo's midsection. The blond youth grunted and lost his grip on Charity's arm.

Kettering sank to his knees. He thrust the Anubis figurine up at Charity Moline.

"Take it," he said. "Run!"

Charity reached down and took the statuette from him.

Zoara Sol stepped back and smiled. Abruptly Kettering was released from the awful pressure. Unsteadily he rose to his feet. Charity had not moved. She came over to stand beside him, the Anubis gripped in one hand.

Kettering scanned the clearing. The villagers stood in ragged clumps surrounding the fire. He had a wild flash of hope that they might still escape. He reached for Charity's hand and felt ... talons.

"No, Brian."

He froze.

The voice was not Charity Moline's. It was not even a woman's voice. It was not human. It was the deep menacing rumble he had heard in the room with his father so many years before.

It was the voice of Doomstalker.

He turned to look at Charity. And as he watched, she changed. Her body grew and lengthened, her shoulders hunched into peaks. Her legs grew thick and powerful, her arms stretched. The curved talons clicked together as the fingers moved.

And the face ... the face he had kissed ... shifted and swelled and broke apart into a leathery devil's mask.

The rumbling voice laughed.

"You!" he got out. "It was you all the time!"

"Yes, Brian. Charity Moline ... Doomstalker. Tell me, did you enjoy us? Did you find pleasure in your union with Evil? What would your Godfearing father think?"

Again the laugh.

"I should have guessed," he said. "You knew things you shouldn't have known. You were always around. You found me when no one knew my new address. The fire at your house that didn't burn anything and the hypnosis. You wanted me to find the statue for you." He looked with horror at the statuette gripped in the taloned hand. "That's why the Anubis - "

"Failed," the creature finished for him. "You used it on the wrong subject. And now that you have freely given it to me, you have nothing left to fight with."

Kettering opened his mouth to speak but no words came as an icy spectral hand clamped his throat. He tried to move, found it was not possible. His body was held rigid by a dark power he could no longer resist.

The silent villagers moved closer.

The Doomstalker spoke to Zoara Sol, who had stood quietly watching, waiting.

"Let him die now. A little at a time."

The woman with the magical silver eyes turned and pointed to a thin girl who stood waiting. Kettering recognized her as Hillary, his guide when he had first visited Harmony Village.

The girl sleepwalked forward carrying something. Kettering saw what it was and the veins bulged at his temples.

A cleaver.

Zora Sol extended her hand and took the cleaver from Hillary. She tested the blade edge with the ball of her thumb, bringing forth a bright bead of scarlet. She put the thumb to her mouth and sucked away the blood, smiling at Kettering. Then she turned again to the circle of silent villagers and beckoned to another.

Trevor.

Paralyzed, mute, Kettering watched his son come toward the center of the circle. Trevor's eyes were on the woman with the pale hair. He did not look at his father.

"It is time, Trevor, to earn your place with us forever at Harmony Village," said Zoara Sol. She glanced quickly at the creature that stood with Kettering. A rumbling growl gave approval.

She placed the wooden handle of the cleaver in Trevor's palm. His fingers closed around it.

"Use the blade," she said to him. "Take a little at a time. I think the fingers first."

Trevor turned to face his father. The boy's eyes were wide and did not blink. His young face was empty of expression. He walked toward Kettering.

"The sins of the father ..." rumbled the voice of the Doomstalker. "Blood will tell." Then the terrible booming laugh.

Trevor stood before his helpless father. Kettering's eyes followed the heavy blade of the cleaver as it rose up and up and up above the boy's head.

And came down.

Sweeping down in an arc that veered away from Kettering at the last instant to slice through scaly skin and bone. The clawed hand of the Doomstalker spun away from the stump, spattering dark blood. It thumped to the dirt at their feet. The clawed fingers writhed and twitched. The Anubis bounced free.

Released suddenly from his paralysis, Kettering dived for the figurine. He snatched it up a fraction of a second before Doomstalker raked the ground where it lay.

He straightened, brandished the Anubis as the monster rose to its full height, black viscous fluid leaking from the stump where the hand had been.

Doomstalker roared its rage and pain.

With his arm straight out and rock steady, Kettering spoke again the alien words that bubbled up from the dark recesses of his memory. As he watched, the figure of the Doomstalker twisted and sizzled and shrank in an agony beyond human conception. For one brief flash the thing was again Charity Moline, and Kettering had to blink back the spark of memory. Then, in a burst of searing flame and acrid smoke, the Doomstalker was gone. A scattering of dark ashes sifted to the ground.

As though freed from invisible bonds, the young people standing in the circle moved, stumbling into each other, blinking as though suddenly aroused from sleep. Ignoring the small group by the fire, they wandered raggedly off in different directions. As they found their voices, the babble of youthful talk filled the forest.

Standing alone now with Brian and Trevor Kettering was Zoara Sol. She looked down at the smudge of ashes and wailed her grief. As the man and the boy watched, the flesh of her face and body wrinkled and shriveled. The pale smoky hair fell away from her head, leaving a mottled parchment skin stretched across her skull. She raised her face to them. The skin split, revealing yellowed bone beneath. The teeth rotted and dribbled from blackening lips. The nose crumpled and receded into the skull. The silver eyes clouded and closed.

The moldering body of the old, old woman whispered to the ground and lay still.

Kettering looked away from the remains. The eyes of the boy and the man met and held.

"How could I not know what she was?" the boy said.

"Hey, I got fooled pretty bad myself. It happens to men all the time."

Trevor looked away. He could not conceal a flush of pride at "men."

"I really thought they had you," Kettering said. "How did you break loose?"

Trevor faced his father. "I was never as spaced out as the rest of them. When I saw you were in trouble, I figured my best shot was to go along with the act until I had a chance to help. After all the times when I was little that you saved my ... saved me, I owed you one." He looked down a last time at what lay at their feet. "Can we get out of here, Dad?"

Kettering put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Damn right, son. Let's go home."