The Servants of Twilight

"Think fast," Charlie said, getting to his feet, "I've got a few hundred homicidal religious fanatics breathing down my neck."

At the door, as they were leaving his office, Boo said, "Charlie, I know you put quite a lot of faith in me sometimes-"

" Yeah, I've got a Messiah complex about you."

Ignoring the joke, still unusually somber, Boo said, "I just don't want you to pin a lot of hope on what I might be able to come up with. In fact, I might not be able to come up with anything. Right now, I'd say there's only one answer, one way to deal with Grace if you want to save your clients."

"What's that?"

" Kill her," Boo said without a smile.

"You certainly aren't one of those bleeding-heart psychiatrists who always want to give mass murderers a second chance at life. Where'd you get your degree-Attila the Hun School of Head-Shrinking?"

He very much wanted Boo to joke with him. The psychiatrist's grim reaction to the story of his meeting with Grace this morning was so out of character that it unsettled Charlie. He needed a laugh. He needed to be told there was a silver lining somewhere. Boo's gray-faced sobriety was almost scarier than Grace Spivey's flamboyant ranting.

But Boo said, "Charlie, you know me. You know I can find something humorous in anything. I chuckle at dementia praecox in certain situations. I am amused by certain aspects of death, taxes, leprosy, American politics, and cancer. I've even been known to smile at reruns of 'Lavem & Shirley' when my grandchildren have insisted I watch with them. But I see nothing to laugh at here. You are a dear friend, Charlie. I'm frightened for you."

" You don't really mean I should kill her."

"I know you couldn't commit cold-blooded murder," Boothe said." But I'm afraid Grace's death is the only thing that might redirect these cultists' attention away from your clients."

"So itd be helpful if I was capable of cold-blooded murder."

"Yes.

"Helpful if I had just a little killer in me."

"Yes." "Jesus.

"A difficult state of affairs," Boo agreed.

35

The house had no garage, just a carport, which meant they had to expose themselves while getting in the green Chevy. Sandy didn't like it, but there was no other choice except to stay in the house until reinforcements arrived, and his gut instinct told him that would be a mistake.

He left the house first, by the side door, stepping directly into the open carport. The roof kept the rain from falling straight down on him, and latticework covered with climbing honeysuckle kept it from slanting in through the long side of the stall, but the chilly wind drove sheets of rain through the open end of the structure and threw it in his face.

Before giving the all-clear signal for Christine and Joey to come outside, he went to the end of the carport, into the driveway, because he wanted to make sure no one was lurking in front of the house. He wore a coat but went without an umbrella in order to keep his hands free, and the rain beat on his bare head, stung his face, trickled under his collar. No one was at the front door or along the walk or crouching by the shrubbery, so he called back to the woman to get into the car with the boy.

He took a few more steps along the driveway in order to have a look up and down the street, and he saw the blue Dodge van.

It was parked a block and a half up the hill, on the other side of the street, facing down toward the house. Even as he spotted it, the van swung away from the curb and headed toward him.

Sandy glanced back and saw that Christine, lugging two suitcases and accompanied by the dog, had just reached the car, where the boy had opened the rear door for her." Wait!" he shouted to them.

He looked back at the street. The van was coming fast now.

Too damned fast.

" Into the house!" Sandy shouted.

The woman must have been wound up tight because she didn't even hesitate, didn't ask what was wrong, just dropped the suitcases, grabbed her son, and headed back the way she'd come, toward the open door in which Max now stood.

The rest of it happened in a few seconds, but terror distorted Sandy Breckenstein's time sense, so that it seemed as though minutes passed in an unbearably extended panic.

First, the van surprised him by angling all the way across the street and entering the driveway of the house that was two doors uphill from this one. But it wasn't stopping there. It swung out of that driveway almost as soon as it entered, not back into the street but onto the grass. It roared across the lawn in front of that house, coming this way, tearing up grass, casting mud and chunks of sod in its wake, squashing flowers, knocking over a birdbath, engine screaming, tires spinning for a moment but then biting in again, surging forward with maniacal intent.

What the hell The passenger door of the van flew open, and the man on that side threw himself out, struck the lawn, and rolled.

Sandy thought of rats deserting a doomed ship.

The van plowed through the picket fence between the lawn and the next property.