Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

She chewed on her lip so hard he was afraid she would draw blood. She raised her spastic hands again and worked them in the empty air as if she could wring the answer from the either.

Then: "Plun,e the heart into

"Into what?" Barlowe asked.

"A bowl of holy water."

"From a church?"

"Yes. The water will remain cool… but the heart… will boil, turn to dark steam… and evaporate."

"And then we can be certain the boy is dead?"

"Yes. Dead. Forever dead. Unable to return through another incarnation."

"Then there's hope?" Barlowe asked, hardly daring to believe that it was so.

"Yes," she said thickly." Hope."

"Praise God," Barlowe said.

"Praise God," the disciples said.

Mother Grace opened her eyes. She yawned, sighed, blinked, and looked around in confusion." Where's this? What's wrong?

I feel all clammy. Did I miss the six o'clock news? I mustn't miss the six o'clock news. I've got to know what Lucifer's people have been up to."

"It's only a few minutes till noon," Barlowe said." The six o'clock news is hours away."

She stared at him with that familiar, blurry-eyed, muddleheaded look that always marked her return from a deep trance.

"Whore you? Do I know you? I don't think I do."

"I'm Kyle, Mother Grace."

"Kyle?" she said as if she'd never heard of him. A suspicious glint entered her eyes.

"Just relax," he said." Relax and think about it. You've had a vision. You'll remember it in a moment. It'll come back to you. "

He held out both of his large, calloused hands. Sometimes, when she came out of a trance, she was so frightened and lost that she needed friendly contact. Usually, when she gripped his hands, she drew from his great reservoir of physical strength and soon regained her senses, as if he were a battery that she was tapping.

But today she pulled away from him. She frowned. She wiped at her spittle-damp chin. She looked around at the candles, at the disciples, clearly baffled by them." God, I'm so thirsty," she said.

One of the disciples hurried to get her a drink.

She looked at Kyle." What do you want from me? Why'd you bring me here?"

"It'll all come back to you," he said patiently, smiling reassuringly.

"I don't like this place," she said, her voice thin and querulous.

"It's your church."

"Church?"

"The basement of your church."

"It's dark," she whined.

"You're safe here."

She pouted as if she were a child, then scowled, then said, "I don't like the dark. I'm afraid of the dark." She hugged herself.

"What've you got me here in the dark for?"

One of the disciples got up and turned on the lights.

The others blew out the candles.

"Church?" Mother Grace said again, looking at the paneled basement walls and at the exposed ceiling beams. She was trying hard to get a handle on her situation, but she was still disoriented.

There was nothing Barlowe could do to help her. Sometimes, she needed as long as ten minutes to shake off the confusion that always followed a journey into the spirit world.

She stood up.

Barlowe stood, too, towering over her.

She said, "I gotta pee real bad. Real bad." She grimaced and put one hand on her abdomen." Isn't there anywhere to pee in this place? Huh?

I got to pee."

Barlowe motioned to Edna Vanoff, a short stout woman who was a member of the inner council, and Edna led Mother Grace to the lavatory at the far end of the basement. The old woman was unsteady; she leaned against Edna as she walked, and she continued to look around in bewilderment.

In a loud voice that carried the length of the room, Mother Grace said,

"Oh, boy, I gotta pee so bad I think I'm gonna bust."

Barlowe sighed wearily and sat down on the too-small, toohard wooden chair.

The most difficult thing for him-and for the other disciplesto understand and accept was Mother Grace's bizarre behavior after a vision. At times like this she didn't seem at all like a great spiritual leader. Instead, she seemed as if she were nothing more than a befuddled, crazy old woman. In ten minutes, at most, she would have regained her wits, as she always did; soon she would be the same intense, sharp-minded, clear-eyed woman who had converted him from a life of sin. Then no one would doubt her insight, power, and holiness; no one would question the truth of her exalted mission. However, just for these few disconcerting minutes, even though he had seen her in this dismaying condition many times before and knew it wouldn't last, Barlowe nevertheless felt uneasy, sick with uncertainty.

He doubted her.

And hated himself for doubting.

He supposed that God put Mother Grace through these sorry, undignified spells of disorientation for the very purpose of testing the faith of her followers. It was God's way of making certain that only Mother Grace's most devoted disciples remained with her, thereby insuring a strong church during the difficult days ahead. Yet, every time she was like this, Barlowe was badly shaken by the way she looked and acted.

He glanced at the members of the inner council, who were still sitting on the floor. All of them looked troubled, and all of them were praying. He figured they were praying for the strength not to doubt Mother Grace the way he was doubting her. He closed his eyes and began to pray, too.

They were going to need all the strength, faith, and confidence they could find within themselves, for killing the boy wasn't going to be easy. He wasn't an ordinary child. Mother Grace had adamantly made that clear. He would possess awesome powers of his own, and perhaps he would even be able to destroy them the moment they dared lift a hand against him. But for the sake of all mankind, they had to try to kill him.

Barlowe hoped Mother Grace would permit him to strike the mortal blow.

Even if it meant his own death, he wanted to be the one who actually drew the boy's blood because whoever killed the boy (or died in the attempt) was assured of a place in Heaven, close to the throne of God. Barlowe was convinced that this was true. If he used his tremendous physical strength and his pent-up rage to strike out at this evil child, he would be making amends for all the times he had harmed the innocent in the days before Mother Grace had converted him.

Sitting on the hard oak chair, eyes closed, praying, he slowly curled his big hands into fists. He began to breathe faster. Eagerness was apparent in the hunch of his shoulders and in the bunching of muscles in his neck and jaws. Tremors passed through him. He was impatient to do God's work.

Less than twenty minutes after he had left, Henry Rankin returned to Charlie Harrison's office with the Department of Motor Vehicles' report on the white van's license number.

Rankin was a small man, five-three, slender, with an athletic grace and bearing. Christine wondered if he had ever been a jockey. He was well dressed in a pair of black Bally loafers, a light gray suit, white shirt, and a blue knit tie, with a blue display handkerchief carefully folded in the breast pocket of his jacket. He didn't look anything like Christine's conception of a private investigator.

After Rankin was introduced to Christine, he handed Charlie a sheet of paper and said, "According to the DMV, the van belongs to a printing company called The True Word."

Come to think of it, Charlie Harrison didn't look much like a private investigator, either. She expected a PI to be tall. Charlie wasn't short like Henry Rankin, but he was only about five-ten or five-eleven.

She expected a PI to be built like a truck, to look as if he could ram through a brick wall. Charlie was lean, and although he looked as if he could take care of himself well enough, he would never ram through a wall, brick or otherwise.