William Johnstone - Devil's Kiss

"Rules?"

"God is using Balon as His warrior here on earth. He always picks one like Balon. I should know," his voice was bitter. "No, Walter, you couldn't kill Balon even if you tried. Neither can I—not yet." The nasty laugh rang through the phone. "But I'll test his courage tonight. I'll see if Balon is to be a worthy foe."

"What do you mean?"

"He's coming to see me tonight."

"How do you know that?"

The laughter. "I know everything, Addison. I know what is in the hearts of all men and women. I know their weaknesses and their strong points. Don't, under any circumstances, try to stop Balon tonight. He'll kill you, or anyone who tries to stop him. I'll play his game this evening, then put him to the test at a later date."

"I don't understand."

"You're not supposed to." The line went silent.

Addison slowly replaced the receiver, then stood by his desk for a few moments, mulling over what Wilder had said. There had been no fear in Wilder's voice as he spoke of Balon, but there had been respect. Addison decided he would leave Balon alone.

The office was filthy, stinking of urine and defecation. The musky odor of sex hung heavy in the room.

In the rear of the building, in the cell area, a prisoner—a transient—lay dead and rotting on a cell floor. The prisoner had been tortured, beaten, starved, and sexually assaulted. The man had been dead for days. Rats, their eyes beady and evil, roamed close to the bite-pocked body.

The sheriff's secretary entered the office. She glanced at Addison, hiked up her skirt, and bent over a desk. Walter sodomized her as a deputy looked on, his eyes dead. When Addison finished, the deputy took his turn.

In another part of town, a mother caressed her teenage son while the father made violent incestuous love with his teenage daughter.

A middle-aged man beat his bed-ridden mother to death with a club while his wife looked on, urging him to strike the woman harder, laughing as the blood splattered the walls of the bedroom.

Brothers and sisters fornicated to the amusement of their parents, and then changed partners.

A teenage boy pushed his younger brother off the roof of the garage where they had been playing, smiling as the boy screamed on his way down. A short scream. The screaming ceased abruptly as the boy hit the concrete parking area. The teenager climbed down, dragged the broken body into a tool shed, and stuffed the battered carcass into a burlap bag.

"Willie!" his mother squalled from the house. "Come on in, now, you've chores to do. What was that noise a minute ago?"

The boy picked up a claw hammer from his father's workbench and walked to the house. His smile was evil, eyes shining banefully. His smile turned to laughter when he saw his mother bending over the sink. She looked around just in time to see, very briefly, the hammer swinging. Her skull popped like an overripe melon and she slid in a sprawl to the kitchen floor, legs jerking as she died.

Willie walked into the living room, where his father sat listening to a ball game on the radio. The teenager buried the hammer head in his father's skull.

"It's a home run!" the announcer shouted.

"Screw you!" Willie said, turning off the radio. "I hate baseball."

Willie walked back into the kitchen, stepping nonchalantly over his mother's cooling body. He fixed a sandwich and sat down at the table, chewing slowly. The kitchen smelled of fried liver. His mother should not have fixed liver. Willie had told her time after time he did not like liver.

His mother's dead eyes stared at her son as he ate his sandwich. The eyes seemed fixed on the medallion hanging about his neck.

Willie wondered if the earth Master, Dr. Wilder, would be angry with him for doing this. He decided he would not.

He stood up, gazing out the window at the little girl playing in the meadow behind the house. He felt an erection build, his breathing quickening. He slipped quietly out of the house, walking toward the young girl in the meadow, playing gently among the summer flowers.

After a time, the prairie winds blew her dress across the meadow, a splash of color amid the flowers.

Otto's wild laughter rang through the house as he swung the leather belt. His wife's screaming as the belt struck bare flesh drove him on. The medallion caught the late afternoon sun streaming through the window, casting golden flashes around the bedroom.

Stockman dropped to his knees beside the woman. "Now you'll accept him?" he questioned.

"No!" the woman sobbed. "NO!"

"Oh, yes," Otto smiled, caressing her bruised flesh. "Yes, you will." He brutally mounted her, enjoying her screaming.

At dusk, Herman Alario, horse trainer at Little River ranch, watched the foreman through curious and suspicious eyes. Where was Slim? he mused. Why hadn't the sheriff been notified of his disappearance? Something was sure as hell funny around this place, and Herman knew damn well Slim didn't just take off. Something bad had happened to him.

The actions of the men puzzled Herman as well. And the boss, Ray Zagone—he was acting strange. Herman retreated further into the darkness of the north side of the barn, squatting down, thinking, his back to the barn.

For all his supposed drinking and fighting— and that was exaggerated—Herman was, at heart, a believer in God, although he seldom went to church more than twice a year. He had been raised in the church by strict parents, in Arizona, and Herman didn't like all the talk he'd been hearing in the bunkhouse. Talk he was not supposed to hear. Talk of black masses and devil worship and orgies of the most disgusting kind. Men with men, women with women, and something about kissing the red ass of the devil.

Sickening!

"Where's Alario?" he heard the foreman, Lou Parker ask.

"Don't know," a cowboy said. "He was around here a half hour ago."

"Is he still wearing that damned cross around his neck?"

"Yeah."

"Then we can't waste any more time on him. If he doesn't come around to us tonight, we'll have to dispose of him. He should have come around by now."

DISPOSE OF HIM! Herman almost panicked. Him is me! Jesus God—they're talking about me!

He remained rock-still by the side of the barn, only his eyes moving in the darkness, shifting from side to side, searching the night for any person who might be coming to harm him. And he knew, now, that every man and woman on this ranch was against him. What he couldn't figure out was: Why?

The high, shrill laughter of a woman reached him in the night. Pat Zagone. "More, more!" she screamed. "Right there!" she grunted.

A guttural moaning drifted to Herman. The gruntings of men and women together.

Dear God, the cowboy thought. What is happening around here?

He remembered what Slim had told him. That something was out of kilter on the L-R, and they both had talked of pulling out. Slim had said, "There's a . . . force . . . or something that ain't right around here. You been seein' all them medallions on folks? And everybody cuts out on Friday nights. All the whisperin,' too. I don't like it, Herman. It's—I don't know—evil, I think. I don't know."

And then Slim disappeared.

Herman watched two cowboys, Pip and Mack, meet on the lighted front porch of the ranch house, talk for a moment, then split up.

Here they come, Herman thought. He waited. There was no place to run.

Five minutes passed in silence. Hermen longed for a chew of tobacco, but was afraid to move, afraid to reach for the pouch in his back pocket. He heard movement to his right. "Pip?"

"Yeah?"

"He's gotta be around here—close to the barn. Maybe in it."

"Right. Don't let him git to his truck."

"Won't do him no good. I jerked all the wires."

Damn!

"You be careful. He's cat-quick in a fight."