The Servants of Twilight

Is Chewbacca dead? Did. that bad man. did he kill Chewbacca? "

Charlie looked at Christine. Her face was wet with tears, and her eyes brimmed with a new flood. She seemed temporarily speechless.

Contrasting emotions fought for possession of her lovely face: horror over the bloodiness of Spivey's death, surprise at their own survival, and joy at the sight of her unharmed child.

Seeing her joy, Charlie was ashamed that he had regarded the boy with suspicion. Yet. he was a detective, and it was a detective's job to be suspicious.

He watched Joey closely, but he didn't detect the radiant evil of which Spivey spoke, didn't feel that he was in the presence of something monstrous. Joey was still a six-year-old boy. Still a good-looking kid with a sweet smile. Still able to laugh and cry and worry and hope.

Charlie had seen what had happened to Grace Spivey, yet he was not in the least afraid of Joey because, dammit, he could not just suddenly start believing in devils, demons, and the Antichrist. He'd always had a layman's interest in science, and he'd been an advocate of the space program from the time he was a kid himself; he always had believed that logic, reason, and science-the secular equivalent of Christianity's Holy Trinity-would one day solve all of mankind's

problems and all the mysteries of existence, including the source and meaning of life. And science could probably explain what had happened here, too; a biologist or zoologist, with special knowledge of bats, would most likely find their behavior well within the range of normality.

As Joey continued to crouch over Chewbacca, petting him, weeping, the dog's tail stirred, then swished across the floor.

Joey cried, "Mom, look! He's alive!"

Christine saw Chewbacca roll off his side, get to his feet, shake himself. He had appeared to be dead. Now he was not even dizzy. He pranced up onto his hind feet, put his forepaws up on his young master's shoulders, and began licking Joey's face.

The boy giggled, ruffled the dog's fur." How ya doin', Chewbacca? Good dog. Good old Chewbacca."

Chewbacca? Christine wondered. Or Brandy?

Brandy had been decapitated by Spivey's people, had been buried with honors in a nice pet cemetery in Anaheim. But if they went back to that cemetery now and opened the grave, what would they find? Nothing? An empty wooden box? Had Brandy been resurrected and had he found his way to the pound just in time for Charlie and Joey to adopt him again?

Garbage, Christine told herself angrily. Junk thought. Stupid.

But she could not get those sick thoughts out of her head, and they led to other irrational considerations.

Seven years ago. the man on the cruise ship. Lucius Under. Luke.

Who had he really been?

What had he been?

No, no, no. Impossible.

She squeezed her eyes shut and put one hand to her head. She was so tired. Exhausted. She did not have the strength to resist those fevered speculations. She felt contaminated by Spivey's craziness, dizzy, disconnected, sort of the way victims of malaria must feel.

Luke. For years she had tried to forget him; now she tried to remember.

He'd been about thirty, lean, well muscled. Blond hair streak-bleached by the sun. Clear blue eyes. A bronze tan.

White, perfectly even teeth. An ingratiating smile, an easy manner. He had been a charming but not particularly original mix of sophistication and simplicity, worldiness and innocence, a smooth-talker who knew how to get what he wanted from women. She'd thought of him as a surfer, for God's sake; that's what he had seemed like, the epitome of the young California surfer.

Even with her strength draining away through her wound and leaving her increasingly light-headed, even though her exhaustion and loss of blood had put her in a feeble state of mind that left her highly susceptible to Spivey's insane accusations, she could not believe that Luke had been Satan. The devil in the guise of a surfer boy? It was too banal to be believable. If Satan were real, if he wanted a son, if he wanted her to bear that son, why wouldn't he simply have come to her in the night in his real form? She could not have resisted him. Why wouldn't he have taken her forthrightly, with much flapping of his wings and lashing of his tail?

Luke had drunk beer, and he'd had a passion for potato chips.

He had urinated and showered and brushed his teeth like any other human being. Sometimes his conversation had been downright tedious, dumb.

Wouldn't the devil at least have been unfailingly witty?

Surely, Luke had been Luke, nothing more, nothing less.

She opened her eyes.

Joey was giggling and hugging Chewbacca, so happy. So ordinary.

Of course, she thought, the devil might take a perverse pleasure in using me, particularly me, to carry his child.