know how he sensed those things; each time, a feeling came over him, a feeling he couldn't put into words, and he gave himself to it, followed the guidance that was being given to him. It was certainly unorthodox procedure for a cop accustomed to employing less exotic techniques in the search for a suspect. It was also creepy, and he didn't like it. But he wasn't about to complain, for he desperately wanted to find Lavelle.
Thirty-five minutes after they had collected the two small jars of holy water, Jack made a left turn into a street of pseudo-Victorian houses. He stopped in front of the fifth one. It was a three-story brick house with lots of gingerbread trim. It was in need of repairs and painting, as were all the houses in the block, a fact that even the snow and darkness couldn't hide. There were no lights in the house; not one. The windows were perfectly black.
“We're here,” Jack told Carver.
He cut the engine, switched off the headlights.
VII
Four goblins crept out of the vestibule, into the center aisle, into the light that, while not bright, revealed their grotesque forms in more stomach-churning detail than Rebecca would have liked.
At the head of the pack was a foot-tall, man-form creature with four fire-filled eyes, two in its forehead.
Its head was the size of an apple, and in spite of the four eyes, most of the misshapen skull was given over to a mouth crammed full and bristling with teeth. It also had four arms and was carrying a crude spear in one spikefingered hand.
It raised the spear above its head in a gesture of challenge and defiance.
Perhaps because of the spear, Rebecca was suddenly possessed of a strange but unshakable conviction that the man-form beast had once been — in very ancient times — a proud and blood-thirsty African warrior who had been condemned to Hell for his crimes and who was now forced to endure the agony and humiliation of having his soul embedded within a small, deformed body.
The man-form goblin, the three even more hideous creatures behind it, and the other beasts moving through the dark vestibule (and now seen only as pairs of shining eyes) all moved slowly, as if the very air inside this house of worship was, for them, an immensely heavy burden that made every step a painful labor. None of them hissed or snarled or shrieked, either. They just approached silently, sluggishly, but implacably.
Beyond the goblins, the doors to the street still appeared to be closed. They had entered the cathedral by some other route, through a vent or a drain that was unscreened and offered them an easy entrance, a virtual invitation, the equivalent of the “open door” that they, like vampires, probably needed in order to come where evil wasn't welcome.
Father Walotsky, briefly mesmerized by his first glimpse of the goblins, was the first to break the silence.
He fumbled in a pocket of his black cassock, withdrew a rosary, and began to pray.
The man-form devil and the three things immediately behind it moved steadily closer, along the main aisle, and other monstrous beings crept and slithered out of the dark vestibule, while new pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness there. They still moved too slowly to be dangerous.
But how long will that last? Rebecca wondered. Perhaps they'll somehow become conditioned to the atmosphere in the cathedral. Perhaps they'll gradually become bolder and begin to move faster. What then?
Pulling the kids with her, Rebecca began to back up the aisle, toward the altar. Father Walotsky came with them, the rosary beads clicking to his hands.
VIII
They slogged through the snow to the foot of the steps that led up to Lavelle's front door.
Jack's revolver was already in his hand. To Carver Hampton, he said, “I wish you'd wait in the car.”
“No.”
“This is police business.”
“It's more than that. You know it's more than that.”
Jack sighed and nodded.
They climbed the steps.
Obtaining an arrest warrant, pounding on the door, announcing his status as an officer of the law — none of that usual procedure seemed necessary or sensible to Jack. Not in this bizarre situation. Still, he wasn't comfortable or happy about just barging into a private residence.
Carver tried the doorknob, twisted it back and forth several times. “Locked.”
Jack could see that it was locked, but something told him to try it for himself. The knob turned under his hand, and the latch clicked softly, and the door opened a crack.
“Locked for me,” Carver said “but not for you.”
They stepped aside, out of the fine of fire.
Jack reached out, pushed the door open hard, and snatched his hand back.
But Lavelle didn't shoot.
They waited ten or fifteen seconds, and snow blew in through the open door. Finally, crouching, Jack moved into the doorway and crossed the threshold, his gun thrust out in front of him.
The house was exceptionally dark. Darkness would work to Lavelle's advantage, for he was familiar with the place, while it was all strange territory to Jack.
He fumbled for the light switch and found it.
He was in a broad entrance hall. To the left were inlaid oak stairs with an ornate railing. Directly ahead, beyond the stairs, the hall narrowed and led all the way to the rear of the house. A couple of feet ahead and to the right, there was an archway, beyond which lay more darkness.
Jack edged to the brink of the arch. A little light spilled in from the hall, but it showed him only a section of bare floor. He supposed it was a living room.
He reached awkwardly around the corner, trying to present a slim profile, feeling for another light switch, found and flipped it. The switch operated a ceiling fixture; light filled the room. But that was just about the only thing in it — light. No furniture. No drapes. A film of gray dust, a few balls of dust in the corners, a lot of light, and four bare walls.
Carver moved up beside Jack and whispered, “Are you sure this is the right place?”
As Jack opened his mouth to answer, he felt something whiz past his face and, a fraction of a second later, he heard two loud shots, fired from behind him. He dropped to the floor, rolled out of the hall, into the living room.
Carver dropped and rolled, too. But he had been hit.
His face was contorted by pain. He was clutching his left thigh, and there was blood on his trousers.
“He's on the stairs,” Carver said raggedly. “I got a glimpse.”
“Must've been upstairs, then came down behind us.”
“Yeah.”
Jack scuttled to the wall beside the archway, crouched there. “You hit bad?”
“Bad enough,” Carver said. “Won't kill me, though. You just worry about getting him.”
Jack leaned around the archway and squeezed off a shot right away, at the staircase, without bothering to look or aim first.
Lavelle was there. He was halfway down the final flight of stairs, hunkered behind the railing.
Jack's shot tore a chunk out of the bannister two feet from the
Lavelle returned the fire, and Jack ducked back, and shattered plaster exploded from the edge of the archway.
