curb. Her body lurched into the street.
She heard the squeal of tires, and suddenly light seemed all around her, coming from every angle, blinding her. And then every part of her body felt as if it had exploded as she was hit by a force that lifted her up for a sprawling moment. Then she felt herself falling, and the ground, unforgiving, slamming her head. And then the light turned to darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
1
No one would have faulted her for staying seated at her age, but Ethel Hollander had to kneel. Tonight she knew she had to pray on her knees.
She and fifteen prayer warriors were at the church for the weekly prayer meeting. It started late, usually around nine o’clock, so Allard Jones could make it. He worked in Bakersfield, an hour north of Santa Lucia, and never wanted to be left out. Allard, like Ethel, had helped build Santa Lucia Community Church.
The building was built by a congregation of twenty back in 1964. It was simple and boxy outside. But inside there was a history as full of warmth and life as anything the Lord had created.
Ethel Hollander had over fifty years invested in this church congregation. She’d seen the good times and the bad. The old building went down in the earthquake of ’57. They built it right back up. And when they broke ground for the new building in ’64, they’d given the shovel to Ethel Hollander.
If someone had asked her what held the church together, Ethel wouldn’t have hesitated to say prayer.
She knew Pastor Holden agreed. He was such a man of prayer. He hadn’t been here long but he was already, in her mind, the best preacher they’d ever had. And he had a line on prayer, like his soul was attuned to things in a special way.
It had to be, in part, because of what he’d gone through. Ethel knew only part of the story. He’d come to the valley to be restored. He was just over fifty, but he’d had enough tragedy for two lifetimes.
That was why he prayed.
And tonight, Ethel needed those prayers. All day she had felt that something was wrong with Millie.
Ethel prayed for her daughter daily. Somehow she had ended up on the United States Supreme Court, and Ethel was certain God had intended that for some great good. Ethel held on to that belief, even though the last ten years seemed to move Millie further away from Christ. She knew that only God’s miraculous hand could change her daughter’s heart.
So each day without fail, Ethel uttered the same prayer, that her daughter would find her way back to the God she had grown up with.
Yet tonight she felt Millie was in trouble. What sort of trouble she could not name. But when she had that feeling she always prayed.
The prayer meeting lasted till almost midnight.
2
Millie heard someone whisper her name.
She was in total darkness. Her first thought was that she had gone blind. But somehow she knew it was not blindness, just lack of light. She reached out, looking for a wall or a switch. She felt nothing but air.
For some reason she felt she had to scream. She tried, but no sound came out. What was this? Paralysis seized her. Had she lost sight
And then she heard her name again.
The voice that whispered sounded neither like a man nor a woman. It was seductive, in a way that was both irresistible and deadly.
Was she dead?
No, couldn’t be, for she was walking. Not walking, really, but being moved. Upright, as if on some belt made of air. Weightless.
And powerless. Powerless to stop her thrust forward into deeper darkness. Powerless to resist the force – it was a force, she knew that now – drawing her.
Then she felt a slimy thing around her ankles.
She could not scream or recoil, only feel a slithering like a wet snake. No, a pair of wet snakes. Then another pair and another, on both her ankles and her legs.
She opened her mouth, but all was silent.
Then she realized that they were not snakes, but fingers. Fingers on horrible hands that writhed upward from some abyss, grasping at her, trying to pull her down.
This was no nightmare. This was a reality beyond dreams, beyond comprehension, yet fully existent, woven from the cords of every terror she had felt in her life.
Her name was called out again, this time louder, and then the word
Surrender…
Yes, a surrender that would end this. And yet she knew if she did surrender now, she would be forever lost.
Her will told her to resist, but she had lost all ability to resist. She could not move. She could not control her limbs. She could not scream. She felt a drawing downward, downward.
And then in some far place in her mind – if she still had a mind – in a voice that sounded distantly like her own, she willed herself to say,
3
“I messed up,” Sam Levering said. “Oh, boy, did I.”
“Just tell me,” Anne Deveraux said.
Levering popped another aspirin into his mouth. Anne was everything to him – legal counsel, advisor, and spokesperson. She was also the sharpest politico on Capitol Hill. He depended on her for his every move, from schedules to meals to troubleshooting statements drafted on the fly.
This time she’d have to come up with a strategy, and it would have to be a masterpiece. He would need to break it to her a step at a time.
“I had a date last night,” Levering said.
“Not exactly news,” Anne said. She was the only one he would allow to talk to him that way. Part of it was pure sexual power. With her flowing raven hair, her form-fitting red suit, and her impeccable makeup, Anne Deveraux could, as the saying went, make a bishop kick out a stained-glass window. The one and only time Levering had made a move on her, however, she had frozen him out with an icy glare.
