And then those thoughts fled.
Jesus arose from the opening n the earth on a beam of light, His radiance illuminating the interior of the chapel, brightening even the dark corners of the pulpit. Corrie fell to her knees, her heart hammering crazily, the accelerated pulse thumping in her head and chest and stomach, echoing between her legs in a sensuous thing.
"I have brought them," the preacher said.
"Yes." The Savior's voice was like golden chimes in clear spring air..
I love you, Corrie wanted to say, but her lips would not move, no words would come.
Jesus smiled upon her. "I know. "He touched her head gently, tilted it.
Bit into her neck.
Corrie died screaming, thrashing in agony, the substance of her form withering, shrinking as the liquid drained out of it and into the hungry open mouth of Jesus
Christ.
Five feet away, trembling with terror, Wheeler watched.
At one time, he would have looked away, would not have been able to stomach the final minute, but now his gaze was riveted, and he licked his lips with a dry tongue, a thirst growing within him.
Bloodthirst.
Jesus turned, still holding Corrie's shrunken head, and fixed him with eyes of deep solid crimson. The Savior's gaze moved to Anna. He nodded.
With trembling fingers, Wheeler pushed the girl forward. She was whimpering, a quiet, almost inaudible sound released reluctantly from between tightly closed lips. She was not moving, obviously in shock, her eyes fLxed and glassy, and she did not react as Jesus touched her shoulder and drew her to Him.
Jesus bent her head to the side, pushed her hair out of the way, bared her neck. He bit down, but only slightly. A streaming wash of dark blood spilled over her white neck, coursing down her pink dress.
"This is her blood," Jesus said. "Drink of it."
Wheeler hurried forward, put his mouth to the wound. He did not even have to suck. The liquid was drawn into his mouth automatically, a hot, sourly bitter substance, thick and viscous and intermittently chunky.
And it was good.
Across the desert, the radio picked up only middle-of the-road stations that seemed to play exclusively hits from the sixties and early seventies. Glen Campbell. The Carpenters. The Fifth Dimension.
Melanie. Joe South.
The songs made Robert feel slightly sad. Nostalgia, he supposed. The first sign of encroaching old age. He didn't know whether his life had been less complicated then or whether the world had been less complicated, but it had been a happier time, a more innocent time, and both he and the world had since moved on.
He had been to Phoenix, had spent the morning at the federal building with Rossiter, and what he had been shown had been enough to curl his hair. After that prima donna shit the agent had been pulling for the past month, it was strange to see him open and cooperative, offering help and information. Robert was shocked to find that Rossiter had an entire vampire file, a massive list of people over the past several decades who'd had the blood sucked out of them. Neither he nor the agent knew whether this was the work of many vampires or if their vampire had simply been traveling around, but Rossiter wanted him to ask Sue and her grandmother about it.
Robert felt good that he had finally been let into the agent's confidence, that he was finally being treated as though he was an equal, but he knew that it was only occurring because Rossiter thought he could be of some tse to his career. The agent was no longer rude and disnissive toward him, but he was toward his own people. He'd been curt to one of his fellow agents, downright asty to an assistant, and Robert realized that this selfish axogance was a fundamental part of Rossiter's personalty. Perhaps it was what made him a good law enforcement fighter. Perhaps it was why he was Robert's age and so much more successful in their field. But if that's what it took to get to the top, Robert thought, he didn't want it. Rich was right. Rio Verde really wasn't such a bad place to be,
Rossiter also appeared to be acting somewhat secretive Lbout the existence of the vampire. When he'd asked obert to accompany him to Phoenix, to the FBI offices, obert had envisioned a meeting with a task force, a conrence with business-suited experts who would map out quick coherent strategy to deal with the problem. un stead they'd walked unnoticed to the little cubicle Rosrapidly called an office and had not discussed anything with anybody. Instead of world-class minds addressing themselves to the situation in Rio Verde, he was presented with eroxed copies of declassified information and was asked to consult Sue's family....... It seemed strange to him, and he said as much to Roslater, but the agent assured him that, within the next few days, the big guns would be called in. "This is a bureaucacy," he explained. "We work differently here than you in on your little police force."
Robert left around noon. Rossiter said he had to check n with his supervisors, make a report or something, and le would be following later. He wanted to meet again with Sue and her grandmother and plan a specific strategy for tracking down and disposing of the vampire.
The vampire.
It was amazing to Robert how quickly he, and everyone had accepted the existence of a vampire in their midst. Even Rich had come around. The supernatural was supposed to be fodder for B-movies and pulp fiction, believed in the real world only by the ignorant and uneducated, an embarrassing reminder of a more superstitious past. But apparently those roots were not buried as far as people liked to pretend. Or perhaps all of those books and movies somehow sustained a tolerance for such ideas.
Whatever the reason, the revelation that vampires were not the figment of some author's imagination but were honest-to-God beings had not thrown everyone for a loop.
There were those few Medusas, but other than that, people were willing to confront the problem with the new information at their disposal.
That gave him hope. :
He drove into town on 370. He hadn't realized how much the black church had grown until he saw it from the perspective of the highway.
It was now the dominant structure in Rio Verde, its black hulking shape visually overriding even the formerly prominent mine. The church was the most visible object when Robert rounded the curve of the first foothill, thrust into prominence by the stark contrast of its blackness with the pale tones of the earth, rock, and surrounding buildings. It looked to him like a shadow, a shadow that was growing, spreading, and would eventually encompass the whole town.
That was a strange thing to think, Robert told himself. Strange but appropriate. He found his attention focused on the church as he passed the first few shabby shacks and trailers on the outskirts of town, and he still saw its shape, imprinted on his mind, as he pulled into the parking lot of the station.
People were missing. It was now confirmed. No one had called, no reports had been made, but he had instructed Ted, Steve, Ben, and Stu to canvas the town, to look for anything suspicious, to try to determine whether anything out of the ordinary was occurring. They'd found two abandoned cars, several empty houses with open front and garage doors, and more than a few dead dogs and cats. Throughout the town, businesses were closed. Traffic was nonexistent.
Robert took the list from Ted. Whether people were missing because they did been frightened off and had left voluntarily, or whether they'd been .. . taken, this news was disturbing.
Rossiter arrived just after five, a few moments after Woods, and the three of them met Rich at the paper. They waited several minutes for Pee Wee, called his house and got no answer, then left a note for him and went to Sue's.
The meeting was short and maddeningly uninformafive. The old woman had apparently said she was tired, had gone to her room, and would not come out. Sue and her parents seemed to accept this as a matter of course, but Rich and Woods and Rossiter also seemed to accept this as SOP, and that made Robert angry. They placidly accepted the news that nothing was going to be accomplished tonight, and spent fifteen or twenty minutes re hashing information that they'd already gone over twenty times.
Didn't they realize
that lives were at stake here? Robert left alone--angry, tired, and frustrated. He'd come with Rossiter, but there was room in Woods's car for the FBI agent, and he decided to let the coroner take Rossiter to his motel He wasn't in the mood for companionship tonight.
He sped toward home. It was cold outside, all trace of Indian summer long since gone, but he felt warm, sweaty, and he drove with the windows open, Lynyrd Skynyrd cranked up on the stereo. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Maybe he was getting a fever. Maybe he had the flu.
Or maybe it was stress.
He gunned the car as the asphalt changed to dirt. ROn me was singing
"I'm on the Hunt," and Robert sang with it. at the top of his voice. It felt good to scream out some rock and roll, cleansing.
The rocks and cacti on the side of the road were black amorphous shapes, but on the hill beyond his house was a strange white object that stood in sharp contrast to the otherwise uniform darkness. He slowed the car as he neared his drive, finally pressing the brake pedal all the way down. At the top of the hill, clearly visible by the light of the half moon, was something bright and fluttering. It had no distinct shape but grew and contracted in rhythmic billows, segments reaching out and retracting, twisting and turning, dancing with the cold desert wind.
The sight sent shivers down Robert's back, and he thought he heard whispers on the breeze. The fluttering thing on the hill was unknown, yet somehow familiar, like something half-remembered from a long-ago nightmare, and the agitated mutability of its shape struck a chord within him.
He put the car into gear, turned onto the driveway, and sped through the darkness, maneuvering the tricky bumps and ruts by instinct. He slowed as the drive opened onto the front of his house and slammed on the brakes.
Pee Wee's pickup was parked in his carport.
Robert got out of the car and hurried across the dirt, heart thumping. Pee Wee's passenger door was open, the overhead light on, but the big man was nowhere to be seen. Robert called out his friend's name, yelled it more loudly, then walked backward out of the carport. He would have sped inside the house, checked to see if Pee Wee was there, but the front door was locked and his friend could not have gotten in.
The burning overhead light worried him.
Pee Wee never wasted energy.
He continued to call the big man's name. Could Pee
Wee have tried the back door? Was the back door open? Robert hurried around the side of the house.
And stopped dead in his tracks.
The tall saguaro next to the kitchen window, the one his father had specifically told the home builders to save when constructing the house, was now thin and anemic instead of thick and healthy. He could see that much even in this weak light. The huge cactus was a skeleton of its former self, and as Robert moved closer he saw exaggerated ridges beneath the dry wrinkled skin and drooping needles. " '
He'd been here.
The vampire.
Robert reached into his pockets for his crucifix, his jade. Had Pee Wee been killed by the vampire or simply taken? He looked quickly around. He saw no corpse, but every boulder, every cactus, every shrub, was suddenly the location of a potential ambush. The desert was silent. Completely silent. There was not even the whisking sound of nocturnal animal scuttlings.
He glanced to the right, toward the thing on the hill. There was something threatening in its unnatural fluttering, and Robert's grip on the jade tightened. He let go of the crucifix, allowing it to fall limply back to the bottom of his pocket. He knew he should go into the house, call the station, at the very least pick up a flashlight, but instead he began walking across the rocky ground toward the hill.
The wind increased in intensity as he reached the bottom of the slope, coldness whipping his hair, stinging his face, but he did not stop, did not even slow down. All of the saguaros here had been drained. In the pale moonlight, the once formidable army of cacti that stretched up the incline looked now like a regiment of stick figures. The destruction was crude and obvious, like a trail left deliberately by the monster, a swath of drained life that cut through the living desert.
He reached the summit, panting and out of breath. He stared at the figure before him. It was Pee Walthoug] he'd already known thatmand somehow the inevitabili! of this outcome scared him more than its actuality. That big man was wrapped in whitish clear plastic, a tarp some sort, no doubt taken from the back of his picku[ Beneath the wind-tossed, still-fluttering plastic, Robe1 could see the dead, dried body of his old friend and mentor, shoved flat against a spiny saguaro, wrinkled fac caved in on itself, the shape of the body conforming to the skeleton.
The vampire was not here. He knew that, too, but he kept his fingers pressed tightly against the jade anyway. From this vantage point, he could see below him an it termittent trail of house lights leading into the larger pot of lights that was Rio Verde. Moonlight glittered on that moving water of the partially visible river. The town was small, he saw from up here. Small and helpless. A tin oasis of light in a desert of blackness.
The smell of blood reached his nostrils, and he turne to face the impaled corpse of his friend, but there was no blood. Even the plastic was spotless.
"Pee Wee," he said softly. "Pee Wee."
And the first tear spilled from his eye onto his cold cheek.
They were gathered in the chapel, over forty of them, and Shelly felt thrilled and honored to have been chosen as part of such an elite group.
"He is a glutton and a sloth," Pastor Wheeler said. "And according to the mandate of the Holy Scriptures, the written word of God, he must be stoned to death for his sins."
Sbelly's gaze turned toward the young boy standing at the edge of the hole next to the pew bridge. He was eight or nine, with short brown hair and a face that would have been cute were it not so distorted by fear. The boy tried again to bolt, but instead of a mad dash, there was only a frustrated twitch. His mother and father held him fast while Wheeler tied his hands behind his back. The boy stood trembling before them.
"You disobeyed your parents," Wheeler said.
"I didn't want carrots!" the boy's voice was filled with panicked terror. :' .: "You disobeyed the word of God."
"I don't like vegetables!"
The preacher unfastened and removed the boy's belt, ripped open and yanked down his pants. His jeans and underwear gathered around his ankles. "Walk," the preacher commanded.
"No!"
"Walk!" The boy's father pushed his son onto the pew bridge above the hole.
The boy began hobbling across the bridge toward the other side, looking fearfully over his shoulder.
Wheeler picked up a stone from the pile at the edge of the hole and threw it as hard as he could. It hit the boy's shoulder, and he screamed, whirled around, nearly losing his balance on the bridge. The fear on his face gave way to pain for a second, then fear resumed its dominance.
Other people picked up rocks, began throwing. bloodying The boy's his mother ear. hit him on the side of the head, His father hit him in the stomach.
One woman hit the boy in the eye, and there was a quick mini explosion of blood, a jet like stream that erupted from his socket.
This felt good, Shelly thought. It felt right. The boy was screaming at the top of his lungs, trying vainly to dodge the increasing number of rocks thrown at him while maintaining his balance on the bridge.
Shelly bent down and picked up from the pile a small flat hand-sized chunk of sandstone. She heaved it at the boy and was gratified to see it fly into his small dangling testicles. The boy fell, writhing, drawing up his legs, causing the bridge to tilt.
From inside of the hole came a pulsing glow, a divine whiteness.
The boy tried to stand again, but his hands were tied, his pants were around his ankles and he could get no purchase. The bridge tilted again, in the opposite direction, and with a primal yell, the boy fell.
Shelly moved to the edge of the hole with everyone else. She looked down into the opening and smiled.
&nbs
p; Jesus fed.
Corrie's car was not parked in the driveway, and the house was dark when Rich came home. He looked at his watch. It was after eight.
Corrie had promised him before he left this morning that she would pick up Anna at lunch and take her home. This was supposed to be a day off for her. Pastor Wheeler in his infinite magnanimity had been so pleased with Corrie's work that he had graciously condescended to give her a day off with pay.
So why wasn't she home?
And where was Anna?
The thought occurred to him that they were at the church, and he cursed himself for being so selfish and stupid. He'd been so wrapped up in getting the word out to the general public, trying to play hero and save the damn town, that he had taken Corrie at her word and had not bothered to check up on her.
He should have known better than that. He should have called at noon.
And at one. And at two. Corrie had not been herself lately, and it was more than possible that she had taken their daughter to church in an effort to indoctrinate her.
Why was he thinking of Corrie as the enemy? Had their relationship really deteriorated to that extent?
He went inside, looked on the refrigerator to see if Corrie had left him a note. She hadn't, but he saw some thing in the kitchen that made his blood run cold.
The milk and bread and butter from breakfast were still out on the counter, the butter melted.
Corrie never left perishables out for more than ten minutes at a time.
On those rare occasions when she awoke earlier than he did and made herself breakfast, she put the refrigerated food away, making him take it out again when he made his own meal.
The bread and butter and milk had been left out all day. Something had happened to her and Anna. He knew it as surely as he knew that tomorrow was Saturday. He ran into the bedroom. As he'd known, as he'd feared, Corrie's jade necklace was lying on top of the dresser.
Anna was wearing her jade, though. He knew that. Would it be enough to protect both of them?
He felt himself slipping, his thought processes not reasoning as clearly as they should be, worry and panic di tracting him, injecting emotional responses where there should be none.. :
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