already torn out her throat. Then he remembered something she had said
to him once: Sweetcakes, as long as you’re breathing, Tinkerbell will
live.
Gutters overflowed, and a sudden wind wound skeins of rain, like silver
yarn, through his headlights.
As he drove the storm-swept streets and turned east on Pacific Hill
Road, he explained how Frank, through his sacrifice of himself, could
rid the world of Candy and undo his mother’s evil the way he had wanted
to undo it-but had failed-when he had taken the ax to her. It was a
simple concept. He was able to go over it several times even in the few
minutes had before pulling to a stop at the rusted iron gate.
Frank did not respond to anything that Bobby said. T was no way to be
sure he understood what he must do if he had even heard a word of it. He
stared straight ah his mouth open an inch or so, and sometimes his head
tic back and forth, back and forth, in time with the windshield wipers,
as if he were watching Jackie Jaxx’s crystal pen swinging on its gold
chain.
By the time they got out of the car, went through the garage and
approached the decrepit house, with less than two minutes of the
deadline left, Bobby was reduced to proceeding on faith.
WHEN CANDY brought her into the filthy kitchen, pushed into one of the
chairs at the table, and let go of her, J reached at once for the
revolver in the shoulder holster her corduroy jacket. He was too fast
for her, however, and it from her hand, breaking two of her fingers in
The pain was excruciating, and that was on top of theness in her neck
and throat from the ruthless treatment he dealt out at Fogarty’s, but
she refused to cry or complain.
stead, when he turned away from her to toss the gun o drawer beyond her
reach, she leapt up from the chair sprinted for the door.
He caught her, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, body-slammed
her onto the kitchen table so hard she passed out. He brought his face
close to hers and said,
“You’re going to taste good, like Clint’s woman, all that vitality in
veins, all that energy, I want to feel you spurting in mouth.” Her
attempts at resistance and escape had not arisen from courage as much as
from terror, some of which sprang the experience of deconstruction and
reconstitution, which hoped never to have to endure again. Now her fear
doubled as his lips lowered to within an inch of hers and as his cha
house breath washed over her face. Unable to look away from his blue
eyes, she thought these were what Satan’s eyes would be like, not dark
as sin, not red as the fires of Hell, not craw with maggots, but
gloriously and beautifully blue-and utterly devoid of all mercy and
compassion.
If all the worst of human savagery from time immemorial could be
condensed into one individual, if all of the species’ hunger for blood
and violence and raw power could be embodied in one monstrous figure, it
would have looked like Candy Pollard at that moment. When he finally
pulled back from her, like a coiled serpent grudgingly reconsidering its
decision to strike, and when he dragged her off the table and shoved her
back into the chair, she was cowed, perhaps for the first time in her
life. She knew that if she exhibited any further resistance, he would
kill her on the spot and feed on her.
Then he said an astonishing thing:
“Later, when I’m done with Frank, you’ll tell me where Thomas got his
power.”
She was so intimidated by him that she had difficulty finding her voice.
“Power? What do you mean?”
“He’s the only one I’ve ever encountered, outside our family. The Bad
Thing, he called me. And he kept trying to keep tabs on me
telepathically because he knew sooner or later you and I would cross
paths. How can he have had ahy gifts when he wasn’t born of my virgin
mother? Later, you’ll explain that to me.” As she sat, actually too
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