reptile touch, but he just let his eye loom as close to the lens of the spectacles as her own was behind it.
She didn't want to look into his huge eye. She knew she'd be dead if she did that.
But she looked …
…and she saw such horrors.
Outside everything, the Summoner held the girl by the shoulders and watched her face as the truth crowded into her mind…
After nearly a century and a half, he was back. The name didn't matter: Spanish Fork, New Canaan. The place had other names It was a site of predestined power. Once, he had put his mark here Now, he would rekindle the flame.
Across the featureless, white plain rushed a crimson wave, driving before it hordes of ghosts.
The girl shivered and screamed, pestered by her own phantom. She was crying for her father, or crying against her father. It didn't matter. Nichevo, as she would say.
Horsemen passed by, their eyes shot away. Farmers trudged from the fields, hair askew on encrusted scalps. Pilgrims were borne down under the rush of blood, and embedded into the white sands. An eternal battle continued, as the living and the dead clashed, vast ignorant armies in a war only the Summoner truly understood.
Here, the Dark Ones walked, preparing themselves for the earthly plain. The desolation was magnificent.
This was, for the Summoner, a peaceful juncture, a moment of calm. He was poised on the lip of the next phase of the ritual, the mass spilling of blood. At this second, he was alone with this tiny girl, almost intrigued by the rudimentary workings of her mind.
'Jessa-myn,' he said to her, in her father's voice, 'now it's just us two, all alone and the evening ahead of us.'
She was still horror-struck.
In the girl, the Summoner sensed the seed of something fine, something strong, something strange. When the moment was over, he should snuff her like a candle before her flame grew to a brushfire. It was even conceivable she could hinder him. She had the makings of a spirit warrior inside, as a marble block conceals the statue that must be dug out by the sculptor.
But he would miss her. There were so few in his league. It would be a shame to finish her before she could truly test him.
That was sentimental nonsense. There were others, and they would come forth when it was time. They would give him enough trouble. There was a woman in Switzerland, a man in Rome. And there were men and women in the United States, already bloodied in the Dark Ones' killing grounds. The Op in Memphis, the woman from Denver, the Navajo, the horseman…
He took Jessamyn's head and turned it away from his face, admiring her clean profile as she saw the plain extending away to infinity. Her white face was pinked by the reflection of the crimson wave that towered across the plain, rushing closer…
Jessamyn breathed something that might have been a profanity or a prayer.
In the torrent, creatures danced. They might be called demons and imps. Lost souls were turned inside out and left behind on the sands, exhausted forever. The wave ate everything…The Summoner was unique. He could ride the wave…
12 June 1995 Tyree didn't believe it but she saw it anyway.
The Psychopomps – one creature of indeterminate sex with an orange cockatoo haircut, and two shocked girls – stood back and watched Elder Seth go to work on their leaderine. And he just glided across the floor and picked her up like the hero of a romance comicstrip cruising for truelove in the disco hall.
The jukebox was stuttering into life again, some zonked version of 'The Tennessee Waltz'.
With a deep revulsion at herself, Tyree realised she was actually jealous of the one- eyed 'Pomp. There was something badly wrong, and Leona Tyree was part of it. Quincannon had his side arm out now but wasn't doing anything with it.
Elder Seth, dancin' with his darlin', whispered something Tyree couldn't hear in the girl's ear and put her sunglasses on. Her mouth opened in a silent oval scream.
It was as if an invisible but blinding light filled the room. Tyree found herself blinking, rubbing her eyes as tears flowed. Everyone in the bar was doing the same. But there hadn't been any real light.
The Psychopomp was slumped over the bar, one arm hanging limp, throat exposed. Elder Seth supported the girl and heaved her up onto the stool. She was either dead or in a dead faint. He lifted her head and took her dark glasses off. They were the old-fashioned, metal-rimmed, non-wraparound kind.
He slipped the mirrorshades on and his face was complete.
The Elder picked up the fillette's handbag and emptied it on the bar. The cockatoo laid a hand on him, but backed off instantly, face clown-white under make-up. Elder Seth sorted rapidly through the 'Pomp's belongings.
…Tyree could see the burning village in her mind again. Sod huts, log cabins, cattle and goat pens, all ablaze. Horsemen riding through, whooping, swinging weapons. Men and women ridden down and killed. And the Elder, on his knees, rubbing a small dead thing into the dirt, squeezing out the blood.
Elder Seth found what he was looking for.
'My little demon, I believe,' he said to the cockatoo, holding up a cashplastic. He made it disappear in his hand like a conjuring trick. He reached out and picked up the unconscious girl by the throat, hauling her upright as if she were a straw doll. Her arms dangled, her head lolled and her feet scraped the floor. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone held the batwing doors open. Holding the 'Pomp like a plucked turkey, Elder Seth left the saloon.
Quincannon followed him and Tyree snapped to it, followed by everyone else in the saloon.
The sun wasn't yet down, but evening bugs were in the air. The street was crowded. Something had brought the people of Spanish Fork out of their houses. The resettlers were crowded around like a congregation, and a cadre of Psychopomps gathered like a gang spoiling for trouble.
The skies were darkening. There was a tang of blood in the air.
Elder Seth carried his prize through the ranks of parked vehicles and dropped her in the middle of the road. Her head cracked on the blacktop, and she moaned, stirring a little. Blood was smeared where she had fallen.
