In the center of the clearing a towering fire blazed. Kettering was steered in that direction. Waiting for him there was Zoara Sol. She was serene and achingly beautiful with the firelight flashing in her eyes and the pale hair floating about her head.
A few feet away stood Charity Moline. She was unharmed, as far as Kettering could tell. She was held by one arm in the powerful grip of Bolo, the blond muscle man.
"Welcome back, Brian," said Zoara Sol.
"What do you want?" he said.
She pointed a long finger at the Anubis, still cradled against Kettering's torn chest, stained by blood from his knife wound.
"That!"
He shook his head.
"It is of no use to you, as you have learned. Give it to me now, or I will have it taken from you."
The woman pointed, and as before the weight began to press down on him. Much weaker now, he knew he would not be able to resist. In a last desperate gamble he spun his body to drive his good elbow into Bolo's midsection. The blond youth grunted and lost his grip on Charity's arm.
Kettering sank to his knees. He thrust the Anubis figurine up at Charity Moline.
"Take it," he said. "Run!"
Charity reached down and took the statuette from him.
Zoara Sol stepped back and smiled. Abruptly Kettering was released from the awful pressure. Unsteadily he rose to his feet. Charity had not moved. She came over to stand beside him, the Anubis gripped in one hand.
Kettering scanned the clearing. The villagers stood in ragged clumps surrounding the fire. He had a wild flash of hope that they might still escape. He reached for Charity's hand and felt ... talons.
"No, Brian."
He froze.
The voice was not Charity Moline's. It was not even a woman's voice. It was not human. It was the deep menacing rumble he had heard in the room with his father so many years before.
It was the voice of Doomstalker.
He turned to look at Charity. And as he watched, she changed. Her body grew and lengthened, her shoulders hunched into peaks. Her legs grew thick and powerful, her arms stretched. The curved talons clicked together as the fingers moved.
And the face ... the face he had kissed ... shifted and swelled and broke apart into a leathery devil's mask.
The rumbling voice laughed.
"You!" he got out. "It was you all the time!"
"Yes, Brian. Charity Moline ... Doomstalker. Tell me, did you enjoy us? Did you find pleasure in your union with Evil? What would your Godfearing father think?"
Again the laugh.
"I should have guessed," he said. "You knew things you shouldn't have known. You were always around. You found me when no one knew my new address. The fire at your house that didn't burn anything and the hypnosis. You wanted me to find the statue for you." He looked with horror at the statuette gripped in the taloned hand. "That's why the Anubis - "
"Failed," the creature finished for him. "You used it on the wrong subject. And now that you have freely given it to me, you have nothing left to fight with."
Kettering opened his mouth to speak but no words came as an icy spectral hand clamped his throat. He tried to move, found it was not possible. His body was held rigid by a dark power he could no longer resist.
The silent villagers moved closer.
The Doomstalker spoke to Zoara Sol, who had stood quietly watching, waiting.
"Let him die now. A little at a time."
The woman with the magical silver eyes turned and pointed to a thin girl who stood waiting. Kettering recognized her as Hillary, his guide when he had first visited Harmony Village.
The girl sleepwalked forward carrying something. Kettering saw what it was and the veins bulged at his temples.
A cleaver.
Zora Sol extended her hand and took the cleaver from Hillary. She tested the blade edge with the ball of her thumb, bringing forth a bright bead of scarlet. She put the thumb to her mouth and sucked away the blood, smiling at Kettering. Then she turned again to the circle of silent villagers and beckoned to another.
Trevor.
Paralyzed, mute, Kettering watched his son come toward the center of the circle. Trevor's eyes were on the woman with the pale hair. He did not look at his father.
"It is time, Trevor, to earn your place with us forever at Harmony Village," said Zoara Sol. She glanced quickly at the creature that stood with Kettering. A rumbling growl gave approval.
She placed the wooden handle of the cleaver in Trevor's palm. His fingers closed around it.
"Use the blade," she said to him. "Take a little at a time. I think the fingers first."
Trevor turned to face his father. The boy's eyes were wide and did not blink. His young face was empty of expression. He walked toward Kettering.
"The sins of the father ..." rumbled the voice of the Doomstalker. "Blood will tell." Then the terrible booming laugh.
Trevor stood before his helpless father. Kettering's eyes followed the heavy blade of the cleaver as it rose up and up and up above the boy's head.
And came down.
Sweeping down in an arc that veered away from Kettering at the last instant to slice through scaly skin and bone. The clawed hand of the Doomstalker spun away from the stump, spattering dark blood. It thumped to the dirt at their feet. The clawed fingers writhed and twitched. The Anubis bounced free.
Released suddenly from his paralysis, Kettering dived for the figurine. He snatched it up a fraction of a second before Doomstalker raked the ground where it lay.
He straightened, brandished the Anubis as the monster rose to its full height, black viscous fluid leaking from the stump where the hand had been.
Doomstalker roared its rage and pain.
With his arm straight out and rock steady, Kettering spoke again the alien words that bubbled up from the dark recesses of his memory. As he watched, the figure of the Doomstalker twisted and sizzled and shrank in an agony beyond human conception. For one brief flash the thing was again Charity Moline, and Kettering had to blink back the spark of memory. Then, in a burst of searing flame and acrid smoke, the Doomstalker was gone. A scattering of dark ashes sifted to the ground.
As though freed from invisible bonds, the young people standing in the circle moved, stumbling into each other, blinking as though suddenly aroused from sleep. Ignoring the small group by the fire, they wandered raggedly off in different directions. As they found their voices, the babble of youthful talk filled the forest.
Standing alone now with Brian and Trevor Kettering was Zoara Sol. She looked down at the smudge of ashes and wailed her grief. As the man and the boy watched, the flesh of her face and body wrinkled and shriveled. The pale smoky hair fell away from her head, leaving a mottled parchment skin stretched across her skull. She raised her face to them. The skin split, revealing yellowed bone beneath. The teeth rotted and dribbled from blackening lips. The nose crumpled and receded into the skull. The silver eyes clouded and closed.
The moldering body of the old, old woman whispered to the ground and lay still.
Kettering looked away from the remains. The eyes of the boy and the man met and held.
"How could I not know what she was?" the boy said.
"Hey, I got fooled pretty bad myself. It happens to men all the time."
Trevor looked away. He could not conceal a flush of pride at "men."
"I really thought they had you," Kettering said. "How did you break loose?"
Trevor faced his father. "I was never as spaced out as the rest of them. When I saw you were in trouble, I figured my best shot was to go along with the act until I had a chance to help. After all the times when I was little that you saved my ... saved me, I owed you one." He looked down a last time at what lay at their feet. "Can we get out of here, Dad?"
Kettering put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Damn right, son. Let's go home."
About the Author
Gary Brandner was born in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. He went to nine schools in eight states from New Ham
pshire to Oregon before receiving his BA in journalism at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of the successful Fawcett novels THE HOWLING, HOWLING II, HOWLING III, WALKERS, HELLBORN, CAT PEOPLE, QUINTANA ROO, THE BRAIN EATERS, CARRION, CAMERON'S CLOSET and FLOATER. Gary Brandner lives in Northridge, California.
From the back cover:
DEVIL IN THE FLESH...
Brian Kettering was six years old the day the horror began. That was the day he ran home alone from the church picnic in the park. The day the streets were strangely, utterly silent. The day he watched his father confront a hideous, voracious demon ... and die.
DOOMSTALKER
Now Brian Kettering is a grown-up, and a cop ... and his life is crumbling. His wife has left him. His son has become a stranger and joined a cult. And his darkest nightmare is coming true - the demon that killed his father has come back from the depths of hell. One by one, it's stalking his friends and family. And Brian knows it's coming to get him. It is unstoppable. its bloodlust is insatiable. And for the first time since he was six, Brian is terrified ... because even a cop can't fight something that isn't human ...
Gary Brandner Page 26
