Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

At five o'clock, Charlie Harrison showed up with Joey and two guys who looked as if they were on their way to a casting call for a new Hercules movie. They were the bodyguards who would be on duty until another team replaced them at midnight.

The first was Pete Lockburn, who was six-three, with curly blond hair, a solemn face, and watchful eyes. The shoulders of his suit jacket looked as if they were padded out with a couple of railroad ties, but it was only Pete himself under there. The other was Frank Reuther, a black man, every bit as formidable as Lockburn, handsome, with the biggest hands Christine had ever seen. Both Lockburn and Reuther were neatly dressed in suits and ties, and both were soft-spoken and polite, yet you would somehow never mistake them for Baptist ministers or advertising account executives. They looked as if they wrestled grizzly bears and broke full-grown oak trees in half just to keep in shape.

Val stared at them, amazed, and a new look of concern took possession of her face when she turned to Christine." Oh, Chris, baby, listen, I guess maybe it didn't really hit me until your army here showed up. I mean, this is really serious, isn't it?"

"Really serious," Christine agreed.

The two men Grace chose for the mission were Pat O'Hara and Kevin Baumberg. O'Hara was a twenty-four-year-old Irishman, husky, slightly overweight, a convert from Catholicism. Baumberg was a short, stocky man with a thick black beard. He had walked away from a lifetime of Judaism-as well as from a family and a prosperous jewelry store-to help Mother Grace prepare the world for Twilight, the coming of the Antichrist. She selected them for the assassination attempt because they symbolized two important things: the universal appeal of her message, and the brotherhood of all good men, which was the only power that had a chance of delaying or preventing the end of the world.

A few minutes after five o'clock, O'Hara and Baumberg carried a couple of laundry bags out of the church basement in Anaheim. They climbed a set of concrete steps into a macadam parking lot.

The early winter night, sailing across the sky like a vast black armada, had already driven most of the light toward the western horizon. A few threatening clouds had come in from the sea, and the air was cool and damp.

O'Hara and Baumberg put the laundry bags into the trunk of a white Chrysler sedan that belonged to the church. The bags contained two shotguns, two revolvers, and ammunition that had been blessed by Mother Grace.

Tense, frightened, preoccupied with thoughts of mortality, neither man felt like talking. In silence, they drove out of the parking lot and into the street, where a newborn wind suddenly stirred the curbside trees and blew dry leaves along the gutters.

As Tammy dealt with the last customers of the day, Charlie said to Christine, "Any problems? Anybody cause any trouble?"

"No. It was peaceful."

Henry Rankin said, "What did you dig up on The True Word? "

"It'll take too long to tell you," Charlie said." I want to take Christine and Joey home, make sure their house is secure, get them settled in for the night. But I brought your car. It's outside, and on the front seat there's a copy of the file to date. You can read it later and get caught up."

"You need me any more tonight?" Henry asked.

"Nope," Charlie said.

And Joey said, "Mom, come on. Come out to the car. I want to show you something really neat."

"In a second, honey."

Although both Lockburn and Reuther were, at least physically, the kind of men about whom most women fantasized, Val Gardner hardly gave either of them a second glance. She zeroed in on Charlie as soon as he was finished talking to Henry Rankin, and she turned up her charm until it was as hot as a gas flame.

"I've always wanted to meet a detective," Val said breathlessly." It must be such an exciting life."

"Actually, it's usually boring," Charlie said." Most of our work is research or stakeout, hour after gutters.hour of boredom."

"But once in a while. " Val said teasingly.

"Well, sure, now and then there's some fireworks."

"I'll bet those are the moments you live for," Val said.

"No one looks forward to being shot at or punched in the face by the husband in a nasty divorce case."

"You're just being modest," Val said, shaking a finger at him, winking as cute as she knew how.

And she sure knows how, Christine thought. Val was an extremely attractive woman, with auburn hair, luminous green eyes, and a striking figure. Christine envied her lush good looks.

Although a few men had told Christine that she was beautiful, she never really believed those who paid the compliment. She had never been attractive in her mother's eyes; in fact, her mother had referred to her as a "plain" child, and although she knew her mother's standards were absurdly high and that her mother's opinions were not always rational or fair, Christine still had an image of herself as a somewhat pretty woman, in the most modest sense, more suited to being a nun than a siren. Sometimes, when Val was dressed in her finest and being coquettish, Christine felt like a boy beside her.

To Charlie, Val said, "I'll bet you're the kind of man who needs a little danger in his life to spice it up, the kind of man who knows how to deal with danger."

" You're romanticizing me, I'm afraid," Charlie said.

But Christine could see that he enjoyed Val's attentions.

Joey said, "Mom, please, come on. Come out to the car. We got a dog. A real beauty. Come see him."

"From the pound?" Christine asked Charlie, cutting in on Val's game.

"Yeah," he said." I tried to get Joey to go for a hundredand-forty-pound mastiff named Killer, but he wouldn't listen to me."

Christine grinned.

"Come on and see him, Mom," Joey said." Please." He took her hand and pulled on it, urging her toward the door.

"Do you mind closing up by yourself, Val?" Christine asked.

"I'm not by myself. I've got Tammy," Val said." You go on home." She looked wistfully at Charlie, obviously wishing she had more time to work on him. Then, to Christine: "And if you don't want to come in tomorrow, don't worry about it."

"Oh," Christine said, "I'll be here. It'll help the day pass.

I'd have gone crazy if I hadn't been able to work this afternoon."

"Nice meeting you," Charlie said to Val.

"Hope to see you again," she said, giving him a hundredkilowatt smile.

Pete Lockburn and Frank Reuther left the shop first, surveying the promenade in front of the rows of stores, suspiciously studying the parking lot. Christine was self-conscious in their company. She didn't think of herself as important enough to need bodyguards. The presence of these two hired guns made her feel awkward and strangely pretentious, as if she were putting on airs.

Outside, the sky to the east was black. Overhead, it was deep blue. To the west, over the ocean, there was a gaudy orangeyellow-red-maroon sunset back-lighting an ominous bank of advancing storm clouds. Although the day had been warm for February, the air was already chilly. Later, it would be downright cold. In California, a warm winter day was not an infrequent gift of nature, but nature's generosity seldom extended to the winter nights.

A dark green Chevrolet, a Klemet-Harrison company car, was parked next to Christine's Firebird. There was a dog in the back seat, peering out the window at them, and when Christine saw it her breath caught in her throat.

It was Brandy. For a second or two, she stood in shock, unable to believe her eyes. Then she realized it wasn't Brandy, of course, but another golden retriever virtually the same size and age and coloration as Brandy.

Joey ran ahead and pulled open the door, and the dog leaped out, emitting one short, deep, happy-sounding bark. He sniffed at the boy's legs and then jumped up, putting paws on his shoulders, almost knocking him to the ground.