The Servants of Twilight

They were too far above the stranger to get a good look at his face.

They could tell very little about him from this distance.

He might have been old or young or middle-aged.

"Maybe he's the old woman's husband. Or her son," Charlie said.

"But if he's following me, he'd have to be as crazy as she is."

"Probably."

"The whole family can't be nuts."

"No law against it," he said.

He went to his desk and placed an in-house telephone call to Henry Rankin, one of his best men. He told Rankin about the van across the street." I want you to walk past it, get the license number, and take a look at that guy over there, so you'll recognize him later. Glom anything else you can without being conspicuous about it. Be sure to come and go by the back entrance, and circle all the way around the block, so he won't have any idea where you came from."

"No sweat," Rankin said.

"Once you've got the number, get on the line to the DMV and find out who holds the registration."

"Yes, sir." "Then you report to me."

"I'm leaving now."

Charlie hung up. He went to the window again.

Christine said, "Let's hope it's just a coincidence."

"On the contrary-let's hope it's the same van. It's the best lead we could've asked for."

"But if it is the same van, and if that guy's with it-"

"He's with it, all right."

"— then it's not just the old woman who's a threat to Joey.

There're two of them."

"Or more."

"Huh?"

"Might be another one or two we don't know about."

A bird swooped past the window.

The palm fronds stirred in the unseasonably warm breeze.

Sunshine silvered the windows of the cars parked alon, the street.

At the van, the stranger waited.

Christine said, "What the hell is going on?"

10

In the windowless basement, eleven candles held the insistent shadows at bay.

The only noise was Mother Grace Spivey's increasingly labored breathing as she settled deeper into a trance. The eleven disciples made no sound whatsoever.

Kyle Barlowe was silent, too, and perfectly still even though he was uncomfortable. The oak chair on which he sat was too small for him.

That wasn't the fault of the chair, which would have provided adequate seating for anyone else in the room. But Barlowe was so big that, to him, most furniture seemed to have been designed and constructed for use by dwarves. He liked deep-seated, over-stuffed easy chairs and old-fashioned wingbacked armchairs but only if the wings were angled wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. He liked king-sized beds, Lay-Z-Boy recliners, and ancient claw-foot bathtubs that were so large they didn't force him to sit with his legs drawn up as if he were a baby taking a bath in a basin. His apartment in Santa Ana was furnished to his dimensions, but when he wasn't at home he was usually uncomfortable to one degree or another.

However, as Mother Grace slipped deeper into her trance, Barlowe became increasingly eager to hear what message she would bring from the spirit world, and gradually he ceased to notice that he seemed to be perched on a child's playroom chair.

He adored Mother Grace. She had told him about the coming of Twilight, and he had believed every word. Twilight. Yes, it made sense. The world was long overdue for T. By warning him that it was coming, by soliciting his help to prepare mankind for it, Mother Grace had given him an opportunity to redeem himself before it was too late.

She had saved him, body and soul.

Until he met her, he had spent most of his twenty-nine years in the single-minded pursuit of self-destruction. He'd been a drunkard, a barroom brawler, a dope addict, a rapist, even a murderer. He'd been promiscuous, bedding at least one new woman every week, most of them junkies or prostitutes or both.

He'd contracted gonorrhea seven or eight times, syphilis twice, and it was amazing he hadn't gotten both diseases more often than that.

On rare occasions, he had been sober and clear-headed enough to be disgusted or even frightened by his lifestyle. But he had rationalized his behavior by telling himself that self-loathing and anti-social violence were simply the natural responses to the thoughtless-and sometimes intentional-cruelty with which most people treated him.

To the world at large, he was a freak, a lumbering giant with a Neanderthaloid face that would scare off a grizzly bear. Little children were usually frightened of him. People of all ages stared, some openly and some surreptitiously. A. few even laughed at him when they thought he wasn't looking, joked about him behind his back. He usually pretended not to be aware of it-unless he was in a mood to break arms and kick ass. But he was always aware, and it hurt. Certain teenagers were the worst, especially certain girls, who giggled and laughed openly at him; now and then, when they were at a safe distance, they even taunted him. He had never been anything but an outsider, shunned and alone.