Reprisal

"Carol!" Bill said as soon as his throat unlocked. "Carol Stevens!"

The woman stared at him in shock, without the slightest hint of recognition in her eyes.

"No—no one's called me that for—"

"Carol, it's me! Bill Ryan!"

And then she knew him. He could see it in the widening of her eyes as the old memories reconciled with the changed man before her. Her lips quivered and she looked as if she was going to cry. She opened her arms and rushed toward him.

"Bill! Oh, my God! It really is you!"

And then his arms were around her, crushing her to him as he swung her off the floor. He heard her sobbing against his neck and felt his own eyes fill with tears.

Finally he let her down but still she clung to him.

"Oh, God, Bill, I thought you were dead!"

"In a way, I was," he said. Carol… so good to hold her… like being brought back to life. "But not anymore."

The last time he'd seen her had been in 1968 when she'd boarded that plane with her father-in-law, Jonah Stevens. That had been right after the other horrors—Jim's violent death, the bizarre murders in the Hanley mansion, the crazy talk about her unborn child being the Antichrist.

Her child! Carol had been pregnant the last time he'd seen her.

A slow chill began to crawl through him. Veilleur had said the woman coming this morning might be able to answer Bill's questions about what had happened to Da

Rafe's age.

He stepped back and looked at her, then at Veilleur, then back to Carol.

"Are you… is she… Rafe's mother?"

"Who's Rafe?" she said.

Mr. Veilleur said, "I believe we've found your son, Mrs. Treece."

"Jimmy?" she said, her fingers digging into Bill's arms. "You've found Jimmy?"

Jimmy. She'd named the boy after her late husband, Bill's old friend Jim Stevens.

Bill descrjbed Rafe to her and she nodded slowly.

"That SQunds like him."

She fished in her purse and came up with a wrinkled photo. She handed it to Bill. His knees weakened as he stared down at a slim, dark, handsome teenage boy who looked more like Sara than Rafe.

"That's him," he croaked.

"What's he done?" she said softly.

Bill could barely stand, let alone speak. Still clutching the photo, he stepped back and found a seat. Rafe was Carol's son?

But Veilleur had said Rafe was some sort of evil immortal whose real name was Rasalom.

"Someone had better explain this to me," Bill said.

Veilleur closed the nurse in the bedroom with his wife, then the four of them seated themselves in the living room. Carol was introduced to Re

"Last night I told you both about Rasalom," Veilleur said. "He was killed—or at least appeared to have been killed—in 1941 at a place called the Keep in a small pass through the Transylvanian Alps."

"Who killed him?" Re

"I did," Veilleur said. 'The power I had served for so long released me then and so I assumed it was over at last. Apparently I was wrong. Over the past few decades I have pieced together the following sequence of events. It seems that at the time of Rasalom's death, Dr. Roderick Hanley was successfully growing a clone of himself here in New York. For some reason, perhaps due to something unique about a clone, Rasalom was able to move into the body of the child who would eventually grow up to be James Stevens."

The name hit Bill like a punch.

"Then it's true?" Bill said, looking at Carol. "All those stories about Jim being a clone were true?"

Carol nodded. "Yes. All true."

"But Rasalom could not control the clone's body," Veilleur said. "He could use the body as a vessel for his life force and nothing else. He was trapped, an impotent passenger in Jim Stevens's body—until Jim fathered a child. When that happened, he moved into the new life the instant it was conceived within Carol."

"All that Antichrist talk," Bill said, remembering Jim's violent death and the pursuit of Carol by the Chosen.

Carol shrugged helplessly, almost apologetically.

"But I never really believed all the things my Aunt Grace and those awful people with her said about my baby. So I fled with Jonah to Arkansas where Jimmy was born. He was a perfectly normal infant during the first few months, but it wasn't long before I began to suspect there was something wrong with him, something… malignant about him. I blamed my feelings on all the horrors I'd gone through while I was carrying him, all the terrible things that had been said about him, about him being the

Antichrist and all that. But after a while I realized that there was no question about it: Jimmy was not a normal child. Physically, he grew and developed at a normal rate, but mentally he was unlike any child who has ever lived."

She paused and Bill noticed that she shuddered.

"How?" he said.

Staring at the corner of the ceiling as she spoke, she gave a brief summary of fifteen years spent with a child who was never really a child, who had never needed a parent.

"Finally, at age fifteen, he walked out on me. After he was gone, I distributed the balance of the fortune to various charities—I wanted no part of it—and came back to New York. I met a man, we got married, I'm… getting by. Mr. Veilleur contacted me a few years ago. We've been meeting and talking about Jimmy. I don't know if I believe him about Jimmy being this Rasalom he talks about, but I don't know if I disbelieve him either. It explains so many of the terrible things that have happened since he was conceived." She looked at Re

Bill told Carol about Sara and what she had done to Da

"But Mr. Veilleur doesn't think they were his real targets," he concluded. "He thinks Rafe or whoever he is has really been out to hurt me. Is that possible?"

Carol nodded. "He hates you."

Bill was struck speechless for a moment.

"Me? What did I ever do to him?"

"You almost killed him."

As Bill listened in awe, she went on to remind him of her botched attempt to seduce him that afternoon in the Hanley mansion, of how the seduction had ended when she'd started to miscarry the child she hadn't known she was carrying.

"He almost died then," she said, "and he blames you, Bill."

"Me? But'I had nothing—"

"You had everything to do with it," Veilleur said. "Mrs. Treece has told me of the incident. It's plain to me that Rasalom influenced her from within her womb, causing her uncharacteristic behavior. But it was your refusal to yield to her, to hold to your vows—it didn't matter that the God to whom you made those vows doesn't exist—it was your determination to continue on the course you had chosen for your life, toward what you believed was right that caused the near miscarriage." He shook his head in dismay. "And it was a complete miscarriage of fate that you got her to the hospital in time to save her child. For it was that child who has come back to ruin your life."

Bill's mind rebelled against what he was hearing.

"He did that to Da

"I believe he also set fire to your parents' house," Veilleur said. "It was no accident that they died on the same date as your friend Jim Stevens. He was sending you a message. You have been the target all along, Father Ryan. You hurt him and he does not forgive."

"But they were i

"But useful to Rasalom. Think: You'd already taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He could not ruin you financially or slaughter your wife and children, so he chose another route of attack."