Reprisal

Sara's sweet face turned rotten, hideous with anger as it glared at Bill.

"Her? You brought her here? How did you find out?"

Bill's mind was working again, racing. He had to get poor overdosed Lisl to a hospital—now! But he had to be very careful here. He could feel the naked evil in the room like a cold sickness in his marrow, growing, strengthening, as if layers of insulation were peeling away, setting it free. With each passing minute, Mr. Veilleur's story was becoming less and less improbable.

"I figured it out," Bill said quickly, spi

"Don't flatter yourself. You haven't put a thing together. I'm not your pathetic Antichrist."

"I never thought you were," Bill said as he reached the far side of the bed.

Rafe made no move to block him. He no longer seemed interested in keeping him away from Lisl. Bill knelt beside her and gripped her arm.

Cold! Good God, she was cold! He dug his fingers into her throat, probing for a pulse, but her arteries were still, her waxen tissues inert, doughy… lifeless.

"Lisl?" He shook her. "Lisl!"

Bill pressed his ear to her chest—silence. He pushed back an eyelid—a widely dilated, sightless pupil stared back at him.

"Oh, good God, she's dead!"

No! He sagged over her, his forehead resting against her cold skin. Oh, please, no! Not again! He straightened and began pounding on the mattress in a wild rage, incoherent curses hissing between his clenched teeth. When he noticed that Lisl's body had begun to pitch and roll with his pounding, he stopped and let his head slump down onto the bed.

He felt so leaden, so useless. His parents, then Da

He glared up at Rafe.

"But you said she hadn't taken enough to kill her! That she—"

As he looked down at Bill, Rafe shook his head and smiled—an infuriating mixture of pity and derision.

"Did you really expect the truth from me, Father Ryan? Won't you ever learn?"

Bill launched himself from the floor, straight at Rafe, ready to kill. And Rafe bounced him back. He seemed to do little more than flick his wrist but Bill was sent sprawling again.

"Jimmy!" Carol shouted.

"Yeah, Jimmy," said Re

Rafe's hand shot out and grabbed Re

"What did you call me?"

Bill saw the shock and fear in Re

"Only one living being knows that name!" Rafe said. "Where is he? He's here, isn't he? Tell me where he is!"

Re

Bill heard Rasalom—he began thinking of Rafe as Rasalom then—make a noise like a growl, a sound somewhere along the echoing hall between fury and panic. He seemed to expand, grow larger, taller.

"Tell me!" He took his free hand and rammed it through Re

Bill saw the agony in Re

Instead, he spit in Rasalom's face.

Rasalom staggered back a step as if he'd been sprayed with acid instead of spittle, but an instant later he'd shaken it off. With a howl of insensate rage, he hurled Re

Carol was screaming as Bill regained his feet and ran to the detective's side. Blood bubbled from the hole in his chest; his eyes were glazing. Bill pressed his hand over the wound to stop the flow of blood, knowing it was useless but trying anyway.

The detective was going fast. Bill wanted to give him something to take with him.

"Re

A smile wavered on Re

"Fuck him," he said, then he was gone.

Another one—another good one gone.

Bill straightened up and turned. Rasalom looked huge now, but Bill was too angry to be afraid.

"You bastard!"

As he started toward him, Rasalom grabbed Carol by the throat and held her in the same death grip.

"Where is he?"

Carol! Would he really kill Carol?

"She's your mother!"

"My mother has been dead for mille

"Who are you?" Bill cried.

Rafe turned on him, his voice rising, his face changing again. And his eyes—the pupils widened into unsounded darkness, like windows into hell.

"Who am I? Why, I'm you. Or parts of you. The best parts. I'm the touch of Richard Speck, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy in all of you. I am the thousand tiny angers and fleeting rages of your day—at the car that euts you off on the freeway, at the kid who sneaks ahead of you in line at the movies, at the old fart with the full basket in the eight-items-only express checkout at the supermarket. I'm the locker-room residue of the names, the scorn, the pain heaped on all the pizza-faced, flat-chested, pencil-dicked, lard-assed geeks, nerds, and dumbshit bastards who had to change clothes in front of their peers. I'm the nasty glee in the name-callers and the long-suffering pain, the self-loathing, the smoldering resentment, the suppressed rage, and the never-to-be-fulfilled promises of revenge in their targets. I'm the daily business betrayals and the corporate men's room character assassinations. I'm the slow castrations and endless humiliations that comprise the institution called marriage. I'm the husband who beats his wife, the mother who scalds her child, I'm the playground beatings of your little boys, the back seat rapes of your daughters. I'm your rage toward a child molester and I'm the pederast's lust for your child, for his own child. I'm the guards' contempt for their prisoners and the prisoners' hatred for their guards, I'm the shank, I'm the truncheon, I'm the shiv. I'm the bayonet in the throat of the political dissident, the meat hook on which he is hung, the cattle prod that caresses his genitals. You've kept me alive, you've made me strong. I am you."

"Not even close," Bill said, approaching warily. He wondered if he could instill a little fear into Rasalom himself. "The one you're looking for is up north, getting ready to crush you!"

Bill crouched to leap as Rasalom poised his free hand over Carol's chest. Suddenly Rasalom stiffened.

"No! He's here! He's—!"

He dropped Carol and brushed by Bill on his way into Lisl's living room. Bill hurried after but stopped at the doorway. A few feet ahead of him, Rasalom had stopped too, half crouched in a wide-legged stance. In the center of the living room stood Mr. Veilleur, leaning on his cane.

Their eyes were locked.

"Can this be you?" Rasalom said in a hushed voice. He began to circle Veilleur as a snake hunter might approach a cobra. "Can this really be you, Glaeken?"

Veilleur said nothing. He stared straight ahead as Rasalom moved behind him. Finally, they stood face-to-face again. Rasalom's smile was ugly as he towered over Veilleur's gnarled, shrunken figure.

"This explains everything!" he said in a half whisper. "Since my rebirth I've sensed that I've had this world to myself. I had no awareness of you. But I didn't trust my perceptions. You've tricked me before, so I was wary. I stayed out of sight, avoided anything that might draw attention to me." The smile faded. "All for nothing! Decades of soaking up power for this final confrontation—wasted! Look at you! You've been aging since you thought you killed me at the Keep. Glaeken, the great warrior, the champion of mankind, the wielder of Light against Darkness, of Reason against Chaos, is nothing now but a pathetic old man. This is wonderful.1"