Regina or Lindsey. Had he done so, he might have been able to acquire
both woman and child at that time. By now he might have been happily
engrossed in their mutilation.
Far above, the pearly glow of light had resolved into a pair of
flashlight beams at the brink of the spillway. After a brief
hesitation, they started down. Because he had put his sunglasses in his
shirt pocket, Vassago was forced to squint at the slashing swords of
light.
As before, he decided not to move against the man, choosing instead to
retreat with the child. This time, however, he wondered at his
prudence.
A Master of the Game, he thought, must exhibit iron control and choose
the right moments to prove Ins power and superiority.
True. But this time the thought struck him as spineless justification
for avoiding confrontation.
Nonsense. He was afraid of nothing in this world.
The flashlights were still a considerable distance away, focused on the
floor of the spillway, not yet to the midpoint of the long incline. He
could hear their footsteps, which grew louder and developed an echo as
the pair advanced into the huge chamber.
He seized the catatonic girl, lifted her as if she weighed no more than
a pillow, slung her over his shoulder, and moved soundlessly across the
floor of Hell toward those rock formations where he knew a door to a
service room was hidden.
“Oh, my God.”
“Don’t look,” he told Lindsey as he swept the beam of his flashlight
across the macabre collection. “Don’t look, Jesus, cover my back, make
sure he’s not coming around on us.”
Gratefully, she did as he said, turning away from the array of posed
cadavers in various stages of decomposition. She was certain that her
sleep, even if she lived to be a hundred, would be haunted every night
by those forms and faces. But who was she kidding-she would never make
a hundred. She was beginning to think she wouldn’t even make it through
the night.
The very idea of breathing that air, reeking and impure, through her
mouth was almost enough to make her violently ill. She did it anyway
because it .. . . the stink.
The darkness was so deep. The flashlight seemed barely able to
penetrate. It was like syrup, flowing back into the brief channel that
the beam stirred through it.
She could hear Hatch moving along the collection of bodies, and she knew
what he had to be doing-taking a quick look at each of them, just to be
sure that Jeremy Nyebern was not posed among them, one living
monstrosity among those consumed by rot, waiting to spring at them the
moment they passed him.
Where was Regina?
Ceaselessly, Lindsey swept her flashlight back and forth, back and
forth, in a wide arc, never giving the murderous bastard a chance to
sneak up on her before she brought the beam around again. But, oh, he
was fast.
She had seen how fast. Flying down the hallway into Regina’s room,
slamming the door behind him, fast as if he’d flown, had wings, bat
wings.
And agile. Down the trumpet-vine trellis with the girl over his
shoulder, unfazed by the fall, up and off into the night with her.
e was Regina?
She heard Hatch moving away, and she knew where he was going, not just
following the line of bodies but circling the towering figure of Satan,
to be sure Jeremy Nyebern wasn’t on the other side of it. He was just
doing what he had to do. She knew that, but she didn’t like it anyway,
not one little bit, because now she was alone with all of those dead
people behind her. Some of them were withered and would make papery
sounds if somehow they became animated and edged toward her, while
others were in more horrendous stages of decomposition and sure to
reveal their approach with thick, wet … And what crazy’ thoughts were
these?
They were all d’ad. Nothing to fear from them. The dead stayed dead.
Except they didn’t always, did they? No, not in her own personal
experience, they’ didn’t. But she kept sweeping her light back and