Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

At eleven o'clock, just as Joey was tiring of Pac-Man, Charlie came in, pulled up a chair to the kitchen table, sat down, and said, "Those suitcases you packed this morning-"

"Still in my car."

"I'll have them put in mine. Go pack whatever else you might need for.

say. a week. We'll be leaving here as soon as you're ready."

"Where are we going?"

"I'd rather not tell you just now. We could be overheard."

Had he, too, considered the possibility that one of Grace Splyey's people might be working as a cop? Christine wasn't sure whether his paranoia made her feel better or worse.

Joey said, "We gonna hole up in a hideout somewhere?"

"Yep," Charlie said." That's exactly what we're going to do."

Joey frowned." The witch has magic radar. She'll find us."

"Not where I'm taking you," Charlie said." We've had a soreerer cast a spell on the place so she can't detect it."

"Yeah?" Joey said, leaning forward, fascinated." You know a soreerer? "

"Oh, don't worry, he's a good guy," Charlie said." He doesn't do black magic or anything like that."

"Well, sure," the boy said." I wouldn't figure a private eye would work with an evil soreerer."

Christine had a hundred questions for Charlie, but she didn't think it was a good idea to ask any of them in front of Joey and perhaps disturb his fragile equilibrium. She went upstairs, where the coroner was overseeing the removal of the red-haired killer's body, and she packed another suitcase. Downstairs, in Joey's room, she packed a second case for him, then, after a brief hesitation, stuffed some of his favorite toys in another bag.

She was gripped and shaken by the unsettling feeling that she would never see this house again.

Joey's bed, the Star Wars posters on his wall, his collection of plastic action figures and spaceships seemed slightly faded, as if they were not really here, as if they were objects in a photograph. She touched the bedpost, touched an E.T. doll, put a hand to the cool surface of the blackboard that stood in one corner, and she could feel those things beneath her fingers, but still, somehow, they didn't seem real any more.

It was a strange, cold, augural feeling that left a hollowness within her.

No, she thought. I'll be back. Of course I will.

But the feeling of loss remained with her as she walked out of her son's room.

Chewbacca was taken out first and put into the green Chevy.

Then, in raincoats, shepherded by Charlie and his men, they left the house, and Christine shuddered when the cold, stinging rain struck her face.

Newspapermen, television camera teams, and a van from an all-news radio station awaited them. Powerful camera lights snapped on as soon as Christine and Joey appeared. Reporters jostled one another for the best position, and all of them spoke at once:

"Mrs. Scavello-"

— a moment, please-',

"— just one question-"

She squinted as the lights lanced painfully at her eyes.

"who would want to kill you and-"

"— is this a drug case-"

She held Joey tightly. Kept moving.

,'-do you-"

"— can you-"

Microphones bristled at her.

"— have you-"

— will You-"

A kaleidoscope of strange faces formed and reformed in front of her, some in shadow, some unnaturally pale and bright in the backsplash of the camera lights.

"— tell us what it feels like to live through-"

She got a glimpse of the familiar face of a man from KTLA's "Ten O'clock News."

"— tell us-" ',-what-"

,'-how-', 6 I — why-', "-terrorists or whatever they were?"

Cold rain trickled under the collar of her coat.

Joey was squeezing her hand very hard. The newsmen were scaring him.

She wanted to scream at them to get away, stay away, shut up.

They crowded closer.

Jabbered at her.

She felt as if she were making her way through a pack of hungry animals.

Then, in the crush and babble, an unfamiliar and unfriendly face loomed: a man in his fifties, with gray hair and bushy gray eyebrows. He had a gun.

No!

Christine couldn't get her breath. She felt a terrible weight on her chest.

It couldn't be happening again. Not so soon. Surely, they wouldn't attempt murder in front of all these witnesses. This was madness.

Charlie saw the weapon and pushed Christine and Joey out of the way.

At that same instant, a newswoman also saw the threat and tried to chop the gun out of the assailant's hand, but took a bullet in the thigh for her trouble.

Madness.

People screamed, and cops yelled, and everyone dropped to the rain-soaked ground, everyone but Christine and Joey, who ran toward the green Chevy, flanked by Vince Fields and George Swarthout. She was twenty feet from the car when something tugged at her, and pain flashed along her right side, just above the hip, and she knew she had been shot, but she didn't go down, didn't even stumble on the rain-slick sidewalk, just plunged ahead, gasping for breath, heart pounding so hard that each beat hurt her, and she held on to Joey, didn't look back, didn't know if the gunman was pursuing them, but heard a tremendous volley of shots, and then someone shouting, "Get me an ambulance!"

She wondered if Charlie had shot the assailant.

Or had Charlie been shot instead?

That thought almost brought her to a stop, but they were already at the Chevy.

George Swarthout yanked open the rear door of the car and shoved them inside, where Chewbacca was barking excitedly.

Vince Fields ran around to the driver's door.

"On the floor!" Swarthout shouted." Stay down!"

And then Charlie was there, piling in after them, half on top of them, shielding them.

The Chevy's engine roared, and they pulled away from the curb with a shrill screeching of tires, rocketed down the street, away from the house, into the night and the rain, into a world that couldn't have been more completely hostile if it had been an alien planet in another galaxy.

Kyle Barlowe dreaded taking the news to Mother Grace, although he supposed she had already learned about it through a vision.

He entered the back of the church and stood there for a while, filling the doorway between the narthex and the nave, his broad shoulders almost touching both jambs. He was gathering strength from the giant brass cross above the altar, from the Biblical scenes depicted in the stained-glass windows, from the reverent quietude, from the sweet smell of incense.

Grace sat alone, on the left side of the church, in the second pew from the front. If she heard Barlowe enter, she gave no indication that she knew he was with her. She stared straight ahead at the cross.

At last Barlowe walked down the aisle and sat beside her. She was praying. He waited for her to finish. Then he said, "The second attempt failed, too."

"I know," she said.

"What now?"

"We follow them."

"Where?"

"Everywhere." She spoke softly at first, in a whisper he could barely hear, but gradually her voice rose and gained power and conviction, until it echoed eerily off the shadow-hung walls of the nave." We give them no peace, no rest, no haven, no quarter. We must be pitiless, relentless, unsleeping, unshakable. We will be hounds. The hounds of Heaven. We will bay at their heels, lunge for their throats, and bring them to ground, sooner or later, here or there, when God wills it. We shall win. I am sure of it."

She had been staring intently at the cross as she spoke, but now she turned her colorless gray eyes on him, and as always he felt her gaze penetrating to the core of him, to his very soul.

He said, "What do you want me to do?"

"For now, go home. Sleep. Prepare yourself for the morning. "

"Aren't we going after them again tonight?"

"First, we must find them."