“It’s true that the gods have provided you with protection from sorcery,
from all the powers of darkness.
Lavelle’s skill as a Bocor won’t be of any use to him.
But that doesn’t mean you’re immortal. It doesn’t mean you’re immune to
the dangers of this world. If Lavelle is willing to risk being caught
for the crime, willing to risk standing trial, then he could still pick
up a gun and blow your head off.”
Rebecca was on Fifth Avenue when the thumping and rattling in the car’s
undercarriage began again. It was louder this time, loud enough to wake
the kids. And it wasn’t just beneath them, any more; now, it was also
coming from the front of the car, under the hood.
Davey stood up in back, holding onto the front seat, and Penny sat up
straight and blinked the sleep out of her eyes and said, “Hey, what’s
that noise?”
“I guess we’re having some sort of mechanical trouble,” Rebecca said,
although the car was running well enough.
“It’s the goblins,” Davey said in a voice that was half filled with
terror and half with despair.
“It can’t be them,” Rebecca said.
Penny said, “They’re under the hood.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “We’ve been moving around steadily since we left
the garage. There’s no way they could have gotten into the car. No
way.”
“Then they were there even in the garage,” Penny said.
“No. They’d have attacked us right there.”
“Unless,” Penny said, “maybe they were afraid of Daddy.”
“Afraid he could stop them,” Davey said.
“Like he stopped the one that jumped on you,” Penny said to her brother,
“the one outside Aunt Faye’s place.”
“Yeah. So maybe the goblins figured to hang under the car and just wait
till we were alone.”
“Till Daddy wasn’t here to protect us.”
Rebecca knew they were right. She didn’t want to admit it, but she
knew.
The clattering in the undercarriage and the thumpingr?ttling under the
hood increased, became almost frantc.
“They’re tearing things apart,” Penny said.
“They’re gonna stop the car!” Davey said.
“They’ll get in,” Penny said. “They’ll get in at us, and there’s no way
to stop them.”
“Stop it!” Rebecca said. “We’ll come out all right.
They won’t get us.”
On the dashboard, a red warning light came on. In the middle of it was
the word OIL.
The car had ceased to be a sanctuary.
Now it was a trap.
“They won’t get us. I swear they won’t,” Rebecca said again, but she
said it as much to convince herself as to reassure the children.
Their prospects for survival suddenly looked as bleak as the winter
night around them.
Ahead, through the sheeting snow, less than a block away, St. Patrick’s
Cathedral rose out of the raging storm, like some great ship on a cold
night sea. It was a massive structure, covering one entire city block.
Rebecca wondered if voodoo devils would dare enter a church. Or were
they like vampires in all the novels and movies? Did they shy away in
terror and pain from the mere sight of a crucifix?
Another red warning light came on. The engine was overheating.
In spite of the two gleaming indicators on the instrument panel, she
tramped on the accelerator, and the car surged forward. She angled
across the lanes, toward the front of St. Patrick’s.
The engine sputtered.
The cathedral offered small hope. Perhaps false hope. But it was the
only hope they had.
The ritual of purification required total immersion in water prepared by
the Houngon.
In Hampton’s bathroom, Jack undressed. He was more than a little
surprised by his own new-found faith in these bizarre voodoo practices.
He expected to feel ridiculous as the ceremony began, but he didn’t feel
anything of the sort because he had seen those Hellborn creatures.
The bathtub was unusually long and deep. It occupied more than half the
bathroom. Hampton said he’d had it installed expressly for ceremonial
baths.
Chanting in an eerily breathless voice that sounded too delicate to be
coming from a man of his size, reciting prayers and petitions in a
patois of French and English and various African tribal languages,
Hampton used a bar of green soap-Jack thought it was Irish Spring-to