Reborn

But the driveway inside the gate was loaded with cars.

Something about that didn't sit right with Bill. He did a U-turn down the street and drove by again. Slowly.

A good half dozen cars in the drive—J. Carroll, both the Stevenses', and others he didn't recognize. Curious, he pulled in by the wall and walked around to the gate. Maybe he could knock on the front door and ask if anyone had seen his sunglasses. Nobody had to know that they were sitting on the dashboard of his car.

He was halfway up the drive when he heard Carol scream. He began to run.

12

Emma was glad to see the pain in that bitch Grace Nevins's face when Carol screamed. That would be the least of her pain if Emma got her hands on her.

She felt her back teeth grind against one another as the two men seated her in a chair next to Jonah and prepared to bind her. She had never felt rage like this before. It bordered on madness. In fact, she was sure that if she ever got free and got within reach of Grace, she would lose completely her present tenuous grip on sanity. The last vestige of civilization would slough away and she would become some sort of raving, slavering animal.

Part of her was frightened by the intensity of the murderous feelings and wanted to hide them away, and yet another part hungered to set the savage free.

She watched Grace as she fumbled with some mealy-mouthed explanations to Carol. And then there was a commotion at the front door, out of Emma's view, a man calling Carol's name. Suddenly Carol's friend, Father Ryan, burst into the parlor.

"Carol!" he said. "Are you all—" He stopped when he took in the tableau before him. And everyone, including the monk, stared back, frozen by the sight of the priest's Roman collar.

"Bill, thank God you're here!" Carol cried.

"I'm Father Ryan," he said as Emma watched his astonished eyes take in Jonah, tied up in a chair, and she about to be. "What in heaven's name is going on here?"

"How aptly put, Father Jesuit," said the one called Martin. "Because that's just what this is: in Heaven's name."

"You were here last week!" he said to Martin.

"That is true."

"You're all insane!"

"Please! Please!" said the monk, pushing back his hood as he came forward.

For some reason, the sight of the gleaming scalp of his tonsure startled Emma. She tried to identify his accent as he stepped up to Father Ryan.

"Who are you?" the Jesuit said.

"I am Brother Robert of the Monastery at Aiguebelle," the monk said. "Please, Father, you must leave. You must trust me as a fellow-ordained priest that we are here to do God's work."

"Since when does God's work involve binding people to chairs?" the young priest said scornfully. "The game's over. Time to clear out. Get out of here now before I call the police! "

"Man's laws are of no account when doing God's will," Brother Robert said. "Surely you know that, Father."

"We'll see if the police agree."

Emma saw Father Ryan turn and make to leave the parlor, but two of the Chosen blocked his way. The priest pushed them aside. He was strong and they had difficulty holding him. One of Emma's guardians left her to help with the priest, leaving only one standing over her, and he was engrossed in watching the struggle.

And Grace… that bitch Grace Nevins had stepped back from the parlor entrance, bringing her closer to Emma.

Without hesitation or even conscious thought, Emma launched herself from the chair and lunged at Grace. The pent-up rage broke free and lent her quickness and power. She felt strong, stronger than she had ever felt in her life.

A high-pitched, feral cry forced itself free as her fingers found the other woman's throat. Grace's shocked, horrified face twisted into view. Her eyes bulged, her mouth worked around a scream, but Emma squeezed harder, increasing the driving pressure of her thumbs on Grace's voice box.

But others could scream, and scream they did. Emma could hear their high-pitched wails of shock and anger faintly through the roaring deep in her ears.

She paid them no mind.

Grace's pudgy hands pawed at her, alternately trying to push her away and pry the constricting fingers free of her throat. Other hands flailed at her, grappled with her, many hands, pulling at her arms, clawing at her face, desperately trying to free Grace from the death grip.

Emma shrugged them off.

So strong. The power surging through her was like nothing she had ever experienced before. No one could stop her now. She watched Grace's red, bulging eyes and slowly purpling face and knew that the end was near. New strength poured into her to finish off the fat bitch.

13

Carol's mother-in-law was trying to strangle Carol's aunt—the sight held Bill awestruck.

In the back of his mind was a voice urging him to take Carol and run. He knew it was right, but instead of heeding it he stood there and watched the melee in the center of the museumlike Victorian parlor as the ones who called themselves the Chosen converged upon the pair of struggling female figures and tried to separate them.

Carol stood next to him, clutching at his right arm, crying out for the two women to "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" And the monk, Brother Robert, hovered off to the left, tense and frozen, a statue in a habit.

It would have been like a piece of absurdist theater if it were not apparent to all that Grace was dying in Emma's grasp.

"Get her off Grace!" shouted the monk at last. "She's killing her!"

Bill was tempted to help, but there were already too many oddly bandaged hands trying to do just that, and accomplishing little more than getting in each other's way.

As Grace's face darkened toward a dusky gray, the cries from the Chosen became more frantic, more terrified. Suddenly one of their number—the thin one named Martin— darted away from the group and hurried past the spot where Jonah Stevens struggled with the bonds that held him in his chair. He went to the corner and retrieved something that had been leaning against the wall over there.

Bill didn't realize it was an ax until the man had raised it in the air over the struggling crowd. After a horrified instant's hesitation, he cried out a warning and leapt forward, reaching for the handle. Brother Robert was beside him. He too was clutching at Martin's arm. But they were too late. Before they could get to it, the blade descended in a blurred arc, burying itself in the top of Emma Stevens's head with a sickening crunch of cracking bone.

Gasps of revulsion, cries of shock and horror mixed with his own, filling the parlor as the crowd fell away like dropped jackstraws. Grace sagged to the floor, gasping and clutching at her throat as Emma reeled and staggered in a circle, her eyes wide, confused, her arms and hands jerking and spasming, the ax blade jutting from her bloodied head, the handle waving in the air over her back like a baton.

Suddenly she stiffened, and for one awful, endless instant Emma Stevens stood on her toes with her body, arms, and legs steel-rod rigid, her eyes rolled up in their sockets. Then she collapsed. Her body seemed to deflate, sinking to the floor in a flaccid heap, facedown on the carpet.

Bill wanted to be sick. Carol moaned behind him. Many of the Chosen fell to their knees in prayer. Brother Robert rushed to Emma's side and began to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Martin helped Grace to her feet. She pointed to Emma's body and tried to speak, but no words came.

"I had to do it," Martin said nervously as he patted Grace's arm with a trembling hand. "She was killing you. It was do that or watch you die. I had to!"

As Carol clung to him, weeping, Bill glanced over at Jonah Stevens sitting quietly in his chair. His wife had just been murdered before his eyes, yet he showed no more emotion than if someone had swatted a fly.