"Golemancy," the Maharal said. "Ancient evil-the blight of our original faith."

One of the other responding rabbis whispered, "Kischuph."

The Maharal sighed. His name was Benjamin Moreinu, the prelate rabbi of the entire Jewish community in Baltimore. Rumors that were more like pleas had sifted to his Yeshiva shortly after the earthquake here last month-the most ghastly stories of more murderous persecution of his people. The Maharal had immediately brought his delegation, along with a dozen strong male members of his Kahal, to investigate, and to bring aid.

They stood on the main streets of Lowensport, stifled by its desertion. The east end had burned down, but the rest remained intact and graveyard-silent. The other men he"d brought for labor stolidly loaded the carriages with, first, the decayed corpses of the slain Jews, and then the dismembered bodies of this horrendous Conner clan they"d heard about.

It"s all true, the Maharal thought now.

It would take days to bury the dead in their respective places of interment. Evidently, here, most of the Jews were as evil as these Conner people, not real Jews at all but heretics. The Maharal walked slowly with his rabbis to survey the horrific aftermath. Only two Lowensport adults had survived the purge, one Amos Croter and his wife Derorah. They"d hidden themselves in the woods and had sent word to Baltimore. When the bloodshed had ended on the last night of July, Croter and his wife-never willing members of the Kischuph sect here-had seen to the care of the Lowensport infants who"d been spared. There were twenty-two such infants, one being the ten-month-old son of Gavriel Lowen himself. Babies are innocent of evil, the Maharal felt secure. G.o.d has decreed it. Here they would be raised in the remainder of the town that hadn"t burned, and nursed back to the proper faith.

No one spoke much as they continued to walk through the dead town.

"Maharal!" one of the workers called out. "I believe we"ve found it!"

They moved quickly to the razed mill, now just ash and charred larch. Some of his men had been digging here for hours, to discern what other truths could be found of Amos Croter"s claims. They dynamited the mill, Maharal, and the only living man within before the blast was Gavriel Lowen.

The Maharal knew well of this name, which sent a chill up his spine even now. Sorcerer... The digger showed him the skull that could be none other than Lowen"s. Several other diggers had already found the parts of the goilem destroyed here as well.

"Take it all to this heretic"s house," the Maharal instructed. "The rabbis there know what to do. Tell them I shall arrive later, before sundown, for the final intercessions and prayers of banishment...and give them this."

The Maharal handed over a wooden mezuzah vessel.

The slaughter of Lowensport had been ghastly enough, but now he and his delegation had proceeded to the camp of collapsed tents and demolished shacks that gave cover to Conner and his rogues. The slaughter here?

Much, much worse.

"Amos Croter said that two goilems were created," one rabbi remarked.

"Only one was destroyed in the mill, clearly..."

"And the other one...did this."

The bodies lay everywhere, men, women, and children alike-all torn limb from limb. "S"mol is said to grant golemancy to those who turn from G.o.d," the Maharal said, his voice like smoke. "Riches and infernal power with which to serve darkness. S"mol mocks creation by mimicking G.o.d"s breathing of life into Adam, who was made of mud."

"Amen," several men said.

A corruption of G.o.d"s creation, thought the Maharal with the sickest heart.

"We must thank our Creator that the earthquake last month had sucked the steamboat down."

The Maharal nodded. "Surely, the arm of G.o.d sunk that boat. He was with us, indeed." With that much Vltava clay, Gavriel would"ve perpetrated evil all throughout this secluded land.

Another rabbi bid the question, "But where did he get the clay for the first two goilems?"

Still more of the notorious legend was obviously true. "Every member of the town brought it here themselves, from Prague, when they emigrated in 1840. There were barely more than a hundred of them, chased from their homeland and condemned as Kischuph. Each of them was able to secret several ounces apiece, brought over in jars and tobacco tins. Perhaps Gavriel Lowen foresaw the persecution that awaited. Evil, my friends, has many faces."

When he could bear no more witness to this noxious place of bodies and rot, he led his people past the outskirts, for the stench was stifling. Wild dogs had obviously fed well.

Then, men in the distance called out.

"Maharal! We"ve found some more!"

"It"s Conner," he was told. "And those two there, his lieutenants."

"They were still wearing their ID tags leftover from the War."

Two other woodsmen lay pulled apart in the thicket. Flies buzzed en ma.s.se, and maggots rilled. Their faces-what hadn"t been eaten off-hung in peeling rot, yet ghosts of their expressions remained: unutterable terror. The severed limbs had been gnawed-more wild dogs, no doubt-and their bellies emptied.

"This one here, Maharal," one of the men identified. "The one called Conner."

In spite of the atrocity, the Maharal saw a wretched justice laying before him. The goilem, charged by the wrath of S"mol, clearly had had some wits: the thing had chained Conner to a tree only yards from his ravaged comrades.

"So we see. When the dogs had had their fill of dead meat, they came for the living meat." It was all too clear that Conner had been fed upon while still alive.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, thought the Maharal.

Later, as the sun began to sink, a horse and carriage took him and his rabbis down the sleepy road toward the house built by Gavriel Lowen. Soon, G.o.d"s will will be done, and then we can leave this accursed place.

One of the rabbis beseeched him. "Maharal, if I may. We understand that the Kischuphite"s first creature was killed in the mill-"

"Yes," the Maharal confirmed. "But remember, Lowen brought two to unlife, not just one. No doubt the second goilem slaughtered Conner and his wicked clan."

"The second goilem," the rabbi muttered.

"And I know what you ponder, good servant. Where is that second monster now?" The Maharal"s gaze reached out to the darkening horizon. "I can only suppose that time will tell..."

II.

The Present "Come on, Captain," Stein complained from the coffee machine. "What gives? You haven"t been yourself for days."

Rosh looked up from behind his desk, blanched. What gives? s.h.i.t. Since he"d looked into the back of that step van, his whole world had changed. Up was now down, white was now black. Everything he knew to be right was now undeniably and irretrievably wrong.

Stein smirked, fudging the night-shift operating report. "It"s like you don"t even want to sell crack anymore."

"Keep your voice down," Rosh grated, rubbing his eyes.

"We"re the only ones on to night, remember? Let"s go bust up some wh.o.r.es or something, kill a few rummies. Like you always say, they"re bad for the economy." Stein laughed, hoping his superior would do the same.

"The only thing I honestly want to do," Rosh said, "is leave town, never come back."

"And give up your Scarface gig? Man, take a vacation."

Rosh flinched when the door swung open.

"The Mystery Man," Stein said. "We haven"t seen you face-to-face in a long time."

Asher Lowen, looking harried and a little bit shocked, came in and closed the door. He locked it behind him.

"It"s not a good idea for you to be seen here, Mr. Lowen," Rosh spoke up. "Rabbis don"t hang out at police stations."

Asher sat down; he seemed exerted. "I need your help, Captain, and being that I"ve helped you quite a bit in the past, I"m sure you"ll oblige."

"Where"s D-Man and Nutjob? Usually they"re the ones who deliver your messages."

Asher set down a small bag. "I have reason to believe they"re both dead, and I came very close to being dead myself just a little while ago."

Rosh and Stein looked at each other. "You look pretty banged up, Mr. Lowen," Stein pointed out. "What happened? Some out-of-towners moving on your turf?"

"There was a mishap," Asher confessed very lightly. "Several of my men were killed. We were preparing something that"s very important."

"What?" Rosh asked with a twinge in his gut.

Asher pulled a browned skull out of the bag. "You wouldn"t understand even if I told you. And you wouldn"t believe it."

Rosh cleared his throat to keep his voice from cracking. "After what I saw in the back of the van the other night, I"ll believe anything."

Asher, even in his distress, managed to smile. "Such is the difference between faith and witness. Very rarely are we shown such signs and wonders."

Silence for a moment. Then Stein broke it with a chuckle. "The Captain"s all shook up "cos he says your hitter"s a monster." He waited for an amused reply but Asher"s face remained stolid.

"I need protection," the rabbi said.

"From what?" Rosh suddenly blurted out. "That thing?"

All three men jumped to their feet at the loud crash from the front lobby. The sound of breaking gla.s.s, hurled furniture, and thudding footsteps rose to a mad din.

"It"s that thing, isn"t it?" Rosh wailed.

"No," Asher whispered. "It"s another one, but it"s worse..."

Rosh"s face reddened. "Stein! Get out there!"

Stein c.o.c.ked his pistol, unlocked the door, and dashed out. Rosh closed the lock right behind him. Gunshots rang out in a quick staccato, then more thrashing. Stein"s screams rose high, then plummeted to m.u.f.fled mewls. Then...

More silence.

"Get me out of here, Rosh," Asher calmly ordered. Rosh fumbled at the window, then yelped at the loud bang! Then another, then another. Something huge was impacting the locked door-a metal door in a steel frame-until the frame began to grind loose.

Rosh trembled in place, in tears now. He shakily raised his pistol and waited for the inevitability- BANG!.

The door and frame together were knocked out of the wall.

Rosh shrieked into his portable radio, "All channels, all units! Signal thirteen, signal thirteen, Somner"s Cove HQ! Send help now-"

Dust and smoke hung in the imploded doorway.

Two human legs were thrown into the room. Then two arms.

Then Stein"s head.

The a.s.sailant stepped through the threshold.

Rosh emptied half his magazine into its glistening, gray-brown chest. In his delirium, he noted the word wetly inscribed there-TZEDEK-which was a different word from what he"d seen written on the one in the van. But something else...

This one was broad, filled out, hulking whereas the other one had been nearly as thin as a skeleton. Dark hair sprouted from the top of its head and the open eyes, though clearly dead, looked right back at Rosh.

The cl.u.s.ter of bullet holes grouped in the center of the chest looked like hole-punches. Rosh desperately fired several more shots, lower, but to no effect. He fired the last shot- bam!

-in the center of the thing"s clay-smeared forehead. Then the thing smiled.

Rosh screamed like a baby as he was thrown from wall to wall; then he barked, doglike, as his right arm was slowly torqued out of his shoulder. The thing"s face pulled close, then its earthy fingers pried Rosh"s jaw down until mandibular tendons tore.

First Rosh"s right hand, then his entire arm was rammed down his throat.

He lived just long enough to feel his own fingers twitch in the pit of his belly.

Seven minutes later, three county cruisers and a state pursuit car squealed to a halt out front. Officers with automatic weapons covered one another as they infiltrated, first, the thrashed lobby, then a.s.saulted the captain"s office in the back.

How the inner office door and frame had been torn from its seat no one could guess, yet even more inexplicable was the man-sized hole seemingly blasted out of the cinder-block rear wall.

"You gotta be s.h.i.tting me," someone said.

The mangled remains of two men in law enforcement uniforms were what seized the attentions of the respondents foremost. Blood sh.e.l.lacked the floor to show them scarlet mirror images of themselves. Eventually, the se nior county evidence technician arrived-a man named Cristo-and his first verbal reaction was something akin to, "The hits just keep on comin"." In a short while he was able to ID the two decedents as Captain Rosh and Sergeant Stein, yet he could not account for the mode of extreme violence that certainly and obviously had led to their deaths. Somehow, though, he was not surprised by the equally unaccountable traces of clay that he found on the body parts.

Then a final mystery presented itself. Parked askew in the front lot was a dark late-model sedan registered to county resident Asher Lowen, yet Mr. Lowen could not be located on the premise, nor would he ever be seen again.

III.

Judy supposed it was something premonitory which caused her to wait back at the Lowen House in the dead of night. The black clouds ma.s.sed low, yet thus far no storm had broken. She waited and watched, not quite sure what she was waiting for...

After Seth had died, she"d elected not to take him to the hospital, instead, driving straight to Lowensport, and the specious House of Hope. The town looked abandoned, not a single light burned in any house. Following her hunch, she"d dragged Seth"s body through a back door and found, initially, plastic buckets of crack cocaine, surely tens of thousands of dollars" worth, along with rows of conventional kitchen ovens that were evidently being used to "cook" cocaine base down to crack. In the same room, though, she found all four of the barrels stolen from their bas.e.m.e.nt, the barrels marked HILNA. One had been opened; a quarter of its content was missing. Judy didn"t have to wonder exactly what this clay had been used for.

It took her half an hour to sufficiently soften more of the clay with hot water and a trowel that had obviously been used for that purpose in the past. Once done, she covered Seth"s body with the clay, packing it on extra thick, thinking, The more clay, the more strength...

Then she wrote on her dead love"s chest the word TZEDEK, which was phonetic Hebrew for VENGEANCE.

Seth"s muck-caked body rose, then walked out of the room.

Next, Judy drove back to the clearing, remembering the textbook. Severe impact, dismemberment, and fire. The hatchet in the Circle of Ten Circles was still there, and with it she emotionlessly dismembered the disenchanted golem that had been the corpse of Seth"s wife.

By four thirty A.M., she was still waiting at the house, and that"s when the hulking figure appeared from the switchgra.s.s, bearing the unconscious body of Asher Lowen and a small bag. The thing did not acknowledge her as it descended into the bas.e.m.e.nt. She winced at several ugly cracking sounds, and then howls of torment. Other less distinct noises reached her ears. A splashing sound? Wood abruptly splitting? Judy wasn"t afraid when she slowly took the steps down and switched on the flashlight.

Asher Lowen lay cringing, his thighs and upper arms snapped like broomsticks. The two barrels of coal dust had been cracked open, their contents heaped liberally over Asher"s form and around the inner walls. Gavriel"s skull had been pulverized.

The splashing still resounded. The golem enlivened by the word for vengeance was upending the gasoline can on the pile of coal dust and splashing the larch wood walls. When the can was emptied, it clattered to the floor.

Then the thing that used to be Seth turned and looked at her.