Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

She smiled." Did you really think you could run away from me?"

His gaze strayed past her, and she knew he was looking at the battered dog.

"Your heilhound won't help you now," she said.

He began to shake, and he worked his mouth in an effort to speak, and she could see him form the word "Mommy," but he was unable to make even the slightest sound.

From a sheath attached to her belt, she withdrew a long-bladed hunting knife. It was sharply pointed and had been stropped until it was as keen as a razor.

Christine saw the knife and tried to bolt up from the floor, but the savage pain in her leg thwarted her, and she collapsed back onto the stone even as the giant was bringing the muzzle of the rifle around to cover her.

Speaking to Joey, Spivey said, "I was chosen for this task because of the way I dedicated myself to Albert all those years, because I knew how to give myself completely, unstintingly.

That's how I've dedicated myself to this holy mission-without reservation or hesitation, with every ounce of my strength and will power. There was never any chance you would escape from me.,$

Desperately trying to reach Spivey, trying to touch her on an emotional level, Christine said, "Please, listen, please, you're wrong, all wrong.

He's just a little boy, my little boy, and I love him, and he loves me."

She was babbling, suddenly inarticulate, and she was furious with herself for being unable to find words that would convince." Oh God, if you could only see how sweet and loving he is, you'd know you're all confused about him. You can't take him away from me. It would be so. wrong. "

Ignoring Christine, talking to Joey, Spivey held the knife out and said,

"I've spent many hours praying over this blade. And one night I saw the spirit of one of Almighty God's angels come down from the heavens and through the window of my bedroom, and that spirit still resides here, within this consecrated instrumepit, and when it cuts into you, it will be not just the blade rending your flesh but the angelic spirit, as well."

The woman was stark raving mad, and Christine knew that an appeal to logic and reason would be as hopeless as an appeal to the emotions had been, but she had to try it, anyway. With growing desperation, she said, "Wait! Listen. You're wrong.

Don't you see? Even if Joey was what you say-which he isn't, that's just crazy-but even if he was, even if God wanted him dead, then why wouldn't God destroy him? If He wanted my little boy dead, why wouldn't He strike him with lightning or cancer or let him be hit by a car? God wouldn't need you to deal with the Antichrist."

Spivey answered Christine this time but didn't turn to face her; the old woman's gaze remained on Joey. She spoke with a fervency that was scary, her voice rising and falling like that of a tent revivalist, but with more energy than any Elmer Gantry, with a rabid excitement that turned some words into animalistic growls, and with a soaring exaltation that gave other phrases a lilting songlike quality. The effect was terrifying and hypnotic, and Christine imagined that this was the same mysterious, powerful effect that Hitler and Stalin had had on crowds:

"When evil appears to us, when we see it at work in this troubled, troubled world, we can't merely fall to our knees and beg God to deliver us from it. Evil and vile temptation are a test of our faith and virtue, a challenge that we must face every day of our lives, in order to prove ourselves worthy of salvation and ascendance into Heaven. We cannot expect God to remove the yoke from us, for it is a yoke that we put upon ourselves in the first place. It is our sacred responsibility to confront evil and triumph over it, on our own, with those resources that Almighty God has given us. That is how we earna place at His right hand, in the company of angels."

At last the old woman turned away from Joey and faced Christine, and her eyes were more disturbing than ever. She continued her harangue:

"And you reveal your own ignorance and your damning lack of faith when you attribute cancer and death and other afflictions to our Lord, God of Heaven and earth. It was not He who brought evil to the earth and afflicted mankind with ten thousand scourges. It was Satan, the abominable serpent, and it was Eve, in the blessed garden of peace, who brought the knowledge of sin and death and despair to the thousand generations that followed. We brought evil upon ourselves, and now that the ultimate evil walks the earth in this child's body, it is our responsibility to deal with it ourselves. It is the test of tests, and the hope of all mankind rests with our ability to meet it!"

The old woman's fury had left Christine speechless, devoid of hope.

Spivey turned to Joey again and said, "I smell your putrescent heart. I feel your radiant evil. It's a coldness that cuts right into my bones and vibrates there. Oh, I know you, all right. I know you. " Fighting off panic that threatened to leave her as emotionally and mentally incapacitated as she was physically helpless, Christine wracked her mind for a plan, an idea. She was willing to try anything, no matter how pointless it seemed, anything, but she could think of nothing.

She saw that, in spite of his condition, Charlie had pulled himself into a sitting position. Weak as he was, overwhelmed by pain, any movement must have been an ordeal for him. He wouldn't have pulled himself up without reason-would he?

Maybe he had thought of the course of action which continued to elude Christine. That's what she wanted to believe. That's what she hoped with all her heart.

Spivey reversed her grip on the knife, held the handle toward the ugly giant." It's time, Kyle. The boy's appearance is deceptive. He looks small and weak, but he'll be strong, he'll resist, and although I am Chosen, I'm not physically strong, not any more. It's up to you."

An odd expression took possession of Kyle's face. Christine expected a look of triumph, eagerness, maniacal hatred, but instead he appeared. not worried, not confused, but a little of both. and hesitant.

Spivey said, "Kyle, it's time for you to be the hammer of God."

Christine shuddered. She scrambled across the floor toward the giant, so frightened that she could ignore the pain in her leg.

She grabbed for the hem of his parka, hoping to unbalance him, topple him, and get the gun away from him, a hopeless plan considering his size and strength, but she didn't even have a chance to try it because he swung the butt of his rifle at her, just as he'd swung it at the dog. It slammed into her shoulder, knocking her back, onto her side, and all the air was driven from her lungs. She gasped for breath and put one hand to her damaged shoulder and began to cry.

With tremendous effort, nearly blacking out from the pain, Charlie sat up because he thought he might see the situation differently from a new position and might, finally, spot a solution they had overlooked.

However, he still could not think of anything that would save them.

Kyle took the knife from Grace and gave her the rifle.

The old woman stepped out of the giant's way.

Kyle turned the knife over and over in his hand, staring at it with a slightly baffled expression. The blade glinted in the goblin light of the fire.

Charlie tried to pull himself up the five-foot-high face of the ledge that formed the hearth, with the notion of grabbing a buming log and throwing it. From the corner of her eye, Spivey saw him struggling with the dead weight of his own shattered body, and she pointed the rifle at him. She might as well have saved herself the trouble; he didn't have sufficient strength to reach the fire, anyway.

Kyle Barlowe looked at the knife in his hand, then at the boy, and he wasn't sure which scared him more.

He had used knives before. He'd cut people before, even killed them. It had been easy, and he had vented some of the rage that periodically built in him like a head of steam in a boiler. But he was not the same man that he had been then. He could control his emotions now. He understood himself at last. The old Kyle had hated everyone he met, whether he knew them or not, because inevitably they rejected him. But the new Kyle realized that his hatred did more harm to him than to anyone else. In fact, he now knew that he had not always been rejected because of his ugliness, but often because of his surliness and anger.