The Burning

calling Frank and asking him to drive over and pick up his son. But that was only a passing thought, a momentary lapse, because she knew that not only would such a move be emotionally devastating to Skylar, particularly in his current state; it would make it much more difficult for her to take her son back afterward. She knew what Frank was capable of doing.

No, all four of them were staying at Leslie's until further notice, and that was where she and her friend brought the journals. They told neither her mother nor Skylar what they had-it was safer for them not to know-and though they were both dying to know what was in these earlier diaries, they waited until night, until her mother and her son were asleep, before opening the leather covers.

They took turns reading.

Highway 6, Utah

Driving through the darkness, the Indian men told Henry that they had found out about him from a Pa-pago shaman in Phoenix. He didn't know any Papago shaman in Phoenix, Henry informed them, but his protestations were halfhearted. There was nothing ordinary connected with any of this, and it would be hypocritical for him to pretend that he recognized only normal channels of communication.

'I'm not sure if I'm even one one-millionth Papago,' he admitted. 'That was just a rumor my old man told me when I was a kid. Probably a lie.'

A short heavyset man with a flattop turned to look at him. 'They've come after you,' he stated matter-of- factly. 'Just like me. The shadows. They drained you.'

Henry thought of the twins, remembered spurting semen all over the tile of his kitchenette while the shadows lapped it up, recalled the way he had felt spent and used afterward. 'What's going on?' he asked suspiciously.

And they told him what they knew, what had been passed down to them from their fathers, what they had discovered in visions and dreams.

Why they were going to the Point.

Twenty-seven

November 1866

Chester Williams sat in Harrison's office glaring at the railroad president. 'They cannot be allowed to work side by side with real people!'

Harrison took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed its lit end at Williams. 'I'm telling you, they get the job done. They do it in half the time for half the money, and they're , willing to do work that the micks won't do for any amount. If we expect to finish our tracks on time, we need Chinks, and a lot of them. Who gives a shit if they're heathens?'

Williams leaned forward, his face red. 'I do!'

'Well, I'm afraid that's not good enough. I appreciate everything you've done to help this project along, but I will not allow you to dictate the terms of employment for my company. We need those Chinamen and I'm hiring even more. Another shipment came in on the Dora Lee two days ago and they're on their way over from San Francisco even as we speak.'

'You can't do that!'

Harrison slammed his fist down on the desk, causing a stack of papers to topple over. 'No man tells me what I can and cannot do with my own company!' he bellowed. 'No man!'

Williams knew at that moment that he had lost the argument. Facts would have no sway with the railroad owner now. Even appeals to morality and common decency would fall on deaf ears. The man felt he had been insulted, and in truth, he had. Williams harbored no respect toward someone who would hire a Chink, and if he had known it would come to this, he never would have used his pull with the Senate or invested any of his own money in this venture-no matter how noble its goal or how necessary its completion to the future of the nation.

Williams stood, put on his hat and gave a formal half bow that he knew Harrison would find insufferable. 'Good day to you, sir!' He strode out of the office without looking back, angry beyond words at the way the meeting had gone. He had accomplished nothing, had in fact set his own cause back and hardened Harrison against his Objective.

Was there anything he could do at this point to stop the calamity to come? There had to be. He could not in good conscience allow the railroads to employ hundreds of the yellow devils, a step that, once taken, would further erode the moral boundaries of society and lead the country ever closer to the gradual acceptance of these heathens. That was an evil he could not countenance, and it was incumbent upon him to do all that he could to forestall such an event.

An idea was forming in the back of his mind, one that he was not quite ready to recognize but that he thought might prove advantageous in the future.

On the sidewalk, outside of the United Pacific building, he paused for a moment, looking up at the cloudy sky, already feeling a little bit better. He took a deep breath, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled on his gloves.

It was starting to get cold.

* * *

Williams stood over his wife's grave.

And spit on it.

It had been five years since he had killed the harlot, since he had taken advantage of his husbandly prerogative and strangled her until her filthy tongue had been hanging swollen from between her dead lips, and not a day had gone by since that he did not rejoice in her demise. She'd died hard. The way she should have.

But first she'd watched him kill her lover, Chin Lee.

Even now his blood pressure rose as he recalled how he had discovered them-in his own house!- mocking him, humiliating him, cuckolding him. She had to have known he'd come home, had to have heard him enter the house and walk through the parlor, then the kitchen, then the hallway, calling her name. But either she'd been so in thrall to her passion, or more likely in his view, she had wanted him to t discover her, and she had continued with Her unnatural coupling even as he burst into the room.

She'd been on her bed, completely naked in a way he'd never seen her before, legs spread wide, while ?' the Chinese servant lapped at her sex like a dog. He had never spied anything so disgusting, had never even heard of something so utterly perverse and depraved, and the animalistic cries that issued from her lips as well as the expression of passionate gratification on her sweaty face made him sick to his stomach. The Chinaman was naked, too, and when Alice saw Williams standing apoplectic in the doorway, and knew that she had been discovered in her sin, she had grabbed her lover by the shoulders, pulled him up and taken him inside her, gasping as his engorged organ | pierced her ready opening.

It was a direct taunt, a deliberate slap at his manhood, and if he had not been wearing his sword, things might have turned out differently. But the sword was drawn instantly and with anger, pulling easily from its oiled sheath, and Williams had sliced it across the Chink's brown back, satisfaction welling within him even as blood flowed from the cut and the coward tried to scramble off the bed to safety, screaming wildly.

This time, Williams had thrust rather than sliced, and the long blade slid easily and deeply into the servant's side. The screams were cut off, replaced with a gasping gurgle. He pulled the blade free, casually wiping it on the mattress, feeling like a man who had just crushed a particularly loathsome insect. Alice was screaming by now, her exposed stomach and breasts covered in Chinese blood, and he looked at her, watching her face as he delivered the fatal blow to the twitching, dying thing on the floor, shoving the sword through the center of the Chink's chest and leaving it there.

Then he'd turned to his wife.

Her cries had turned to whimpers, and she was hunched up against the headboard as if to protect herself, her wanton legs now seemingly glued together. But he was in the mood for justice, not mercy, and he'd strangled her with his bare hands, pressing his thumbs against her windpipe while she thrashed beneath him in an obscene echo of her earlier passion. By the time she started to claw at his arms, she had no strength left and was too weak to do any real damage. Her face turned red, then blue; her eyes bulged; her tongue protruded as she tried in vain to breathe.

And then she'd died.

He had allowed others to clean up the mess, not deigning to dirty his hands any further, although he had directed them in their efforts and made sure that his orders were followed to the letter.