Distracted, she did so, and Phil went back into the cell rows. Gut"s cell door was unlocked. Who unlocked it? And when he looked closer, he noticed a sc.r.a.p of paper pinned to Gut"s chest.

Phil squinted through the bars.

WE"RE WAITING FOR YOU, someone had written on the note.

In blood.

Christ, they planned this whole thing. But why?

He didn"t waste time. Several more lockers lined the block. Phil rummaged through them all but found nothing in the way of weapons. What kind of a f.u.c.king police station is this? he outraged to himself. There wasn"t a gun to be found. Like a f.u.c.king gas station with no gas! All he had was a puny .25, but he"d need a lot more than that for the undertaking he foresaw. A shotgun at least, and a couple of 9mm"s would be nice. But in the last locker, in a box at the bottom, something caught his eye. He picked it up...

My G.o.d, he slowly thought.

It was a framed black and white picture, like something taken at a graduation, yellowed with age. Two men, in police cadet uniforms, stood smiling for the camera, their arms draped about each other"s shoulders.

Phil couldn"t believe what he was seeing.

One of the men was Mullins.

The other was Dign.a.z.io, the guy who"d set Phil up on the Metro scam.

"I just pulled up out front," came a voice from behind him. "Didn"t want you to hear my car. Pretty nifty job they did on Gut, huh? It was me who gave "em the keys."

Phil turned to face Mullins, whose bulk filled the block entry. The chief"s fat hand was filled with a Colt .357.

"You set me up," Phil said stonily. "You had Dign.a.z.io kill that kid and plant the illegal rounds in my piece."

"You got it."

"Why?"

"To get ya back. Me and Dign.a.z.io, we been friends since we got out of the academy. I asked the guy a favor, and he did it. And me and Natter-well, we ain"t exactly what I"d call friends, but we"ve always had an agreement. He runs his wh.o.r.es out of Sallee"s and gives me a cut for lookin" the other way."

"And I guess he gives you a cut for looking the other way on his PCP network, too, huh?" Phil suddenly felt certain.

Mullins" big, bulbous face grinned at the remark. "Jeez, Phil, you must"a left your brains back at Metro along with your career."

"What"s that mean?" Phil asked.

"Natter ain"t got no PCP network."

Phil peered through his own confusion; he stood in an instant fog. No...network? Suddenly the revelation made sense: in all of his investigative work, he actually had found not one iota of evidence to suggest that Natter was dealing PCP. Just heresay, just lies. Just...Mullins, he realized.

"You"ve been lying to me the whole time. You"ve had me looking for a PCP lab that doesn"t exist. You made the whole thing up."

"That"s right, partner," Mullins admitted. "And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I know you"ve had a hard-on for PCP since Metro, so after I had Dign.a.z.io s.h.i.t on you, I figured the quickest way to get you to take a job here was to make up some bulls.h.i.t about Natter running dust. s.h.i.t, Natter ain"t never run dust. It"s all just been a bunch of cowboys like Peters and Sullivan and those guys, workin" for a couple of labs out of town."

"But...the murders-"

"Oh, sure, there"ve been murders for a long time, that part wasn"t BS. Natter and his Creekers have been offing people for as long as I can remember. It was part of the deal. I looked the other way on that, too. And when time started to get short, I told him to start hitting local dust runners "cos that way you"d be more likely to believe the whole story in the first place."

Hook line, and sinker, Phil thought. He"s right.Yeah, it all made sense now, all except one thing.

"Why? Why?" he asked in total perplexion. "Why go to all that trouble? It almost sounds like you were trying to lure me back to Crick City."

"Something like that. It"ll give ya something to think about on our way to Natter"s."

"Oh, so you"re going to deliver me, is that it?"

"Might as well, I"m here." Mullins waved the gun toward the exit. "Drop your piece on the floor, and don"t try anything."

Frowning, Phil took out his pocket .25-his only weapon-and tossed it aside.

"Good boy. Now come on. You"ve got some driving to do."

Mullins kept his distance as Phil approached the exit. s.h.i.t, I"m had, Phil thought. He could try a disarm, but the chief wasn"t close enough; making a move would get him shot. His only chance was a distraction...

And at the same moment, Vicki walked in. "Phil, I couldn"t find anything in the storager-"

Mullins, taken by surprise, turned at Vicki"s voice. Then Vicki shrieked. It was all the distraction Phil was going to get, so he took his chance, spun back, and hit Mullins across the bridge of his nose-crack!-with his right hand. With his left, he grabbed Mullins" gun.

A round went off; Phil flinched at the ma.s.sive concussion. Next the two men were on the floor, wrestling. But Phil had the gun, and he shoved its blue-steel barrel under the chief"s jaw. "Give it up!" Phil growled, but Mullins only struggled further, his own hands pawing at Phil"s.

"Don"t!" Phil yelled.

BAM!.

The magnum discharged, bucking fiercely once in Phil"s grasp. Cordite stinging his eyes, he lay still a moment. Mullins, however, lay significantly more still, his face agape. When the smoke cleared, Phil got up and saw that the chief"s bald pate had been replaced by a ragged, pulpous crater. A fantail of brains plumed from the man"s head across the shiny tile floor.

They took Mullins" souped squad car; it was more reliable than the Malibu, plus it had a pump shotgun in the dash-lock, and several revolvers which Vicki awkwardly loaded as Phil drove.

"Listen," Phil said. "Earlier, when I told you about what happened to me as a kid, you said it wasn"t a hallucination."

"It wasn"t," Vicki grimly replied. "It"s all true. And that word you said when you came to-"Ona"-"

"What is it? It"s a demon or something, right?"

"It"s something they worship. It"s their G.o.d."

Their G.o.d, Phil reflected as the Route wound through another bend. A demon...

"I don"t know all the details," Vicki went on, "but the story goes like this. The Creekers have always worshipped a devil, a male devil named Onn. For hundreds of years they made sacrifices to it-incarnation sacrifices..."

"Yeah?"

Vicki"s words darkened. "Well, supposedly, a long time ago, one of their rituals succeeded."

Phil"s gaze saw little past the windshield. Am I supposed to believe this? She"s telling me that the Creekers incarnated a demon...

"Their goal, for all that time, was to add the demon to their bloodline. They considered this to be the ultimate blessing. According to the story, Onn mated with the least defected Creeker girl in their clan."

"And then gave birth?" Phil guessed.

"Yes."

"But to what?"

"To Ona, the female inbred of the demon and the Creekers." Vicki paused. "That thing you saw when you were ten."

Phil fell silent again, driving without direction. So many queer ideas were wafting through his head, he didn"t know what to think. "But they also call it "skeet-inner"-"

"That"s its nickname," Vicki said. "Most of the Creekers can"t talk right-it"s called dyslalia-like dyslexia, only with words. When they say skeet-inner, they"re really saying-"

"Skin-eater," Phil deduced, and with the deduction came a crushing weight of contemplation. Rhodes, those other cowboys on the death reports, and Dawnie, he remembered. They were all skinned. "So the murders weren"t really murders. They were sacrifices."

"To Ona," Vicki affirmed. "It"s symbolic. Consuming the appearance-the skin-of the unflawed. The Creekers consider themselves cursed by their inbreeding, so they pay homage with sacrifice victims. It"s the Creekers" gift to Onn, by providing uncursed flesh to Onn"s inbred daughter. And the Creekers have been reproducing with it for generations."

Phil thought about it, gripping the wheel. It was just too crazy. "I don"t believe it, Vicki."

"How can you not believe it? You"ve seen the Creekers, you"ve seen how deformed they are. You ever seen any other hillfolk as defected as the Creekers?"

"Well, no," Phil admitted.

"Most of them don"t even look human, and that"s because part of their bloodline isn"t human."

Then Phil thought back to the books he"d read. She was right, at least in part. The worst-case examples in the photographs of typical inbreds weren"t nearly as genetically defected as most of the Creekers he"d seen. The consideration chopped through his head. Creekers. Inbred. With a demon...

By now he didn"t know what to believe. The only thing he was sure of was this: Natter and his Creekers have Susan, and they"re going to torture her to death unless I can find them.

"Okay, so you"re telling me that Ona is real, fine. Then the House must be real, too."

Vicki nodded.

"Tell me how to get there," Phil said.

Thirty.

"So many years,so many ages," he whispered.

Eternity, he thought.

Years were grains of sand sifting through his fingers.

Mult.i.tudes had gladly given their blood, their lives.

Onn, he thought. And blessed Ona.

"Unto you we bow forever..."

Redeemer. Sanctifier. Holy father, holy daughter.

The visions sang to him; they always did. Entrails routed briskly from the bellies of the unfaithful. Blood squeezed from the heads of the unsaved. Screaming faces clawed at till they were screaming plops of pulp. Soon, yes, the cursed would become the blessed, the d.a.m.ned would rise to the dark heights of the absolved.

Soon they would go on, shed of their curse, enlightened instead of deprived, one with their master.

Forward into the new nights of a new age, perfect instead of corrupted, no longer in turmoil but in bliss...

Natter, the Reverend, opened his eyes upon the hot, starry night. His old, blotched skin felt new and young now. His ancient mind felt aglow. His savior whispered blessings to him.

The moon shined on the crags and furrows of his disfigured face. His triple-jointed hands opened to the sky.

"So many years, so many ages."

Time was no longer short.

Instead, the time was upon them.

Thirty-One.

"They"re also telepathic," she said.

"What?"

Vicki shifted in the pa.s.senger seat, her red hair flowing about in the warm breeze from the window. "Ona," she said. "And Cody too, and some of the stronger Creekers. You can hear them in your head."

Phil scowled. "That"s a load of-" But then he stopped. Wasn"t that what Gut had told him? That Natter talked to him at night, in his head? And showed him visions? Even Phil himself had to acknowledge it. Twenty-five years ago, at the House, and just the other night when he and Eagle had been ambushed. He"d heard words, hadn"t he?

In my head.

"Just tell me how to get to the House," he insisted.

"You don"t believe it, do you?"

I don"t know what I believe, he told himself. "Look, I don"t want to hear anymore about demons, all right? I got enough to worry about." That much was true. Like, how was he going to get Susan out? If she"s not dead already, he added. And since Natter was expecting him, and antic.i.p.ating his motives, the House would surely be a fortress of armed Creekers. And all I"ve got to fight back with is a shotgun, three pistols, and a drug-addicted prost.i.tute...