impression he had left on the book. He had pumped a lot of iron in his
time. His hair thick, black, and combed straight back from his
forehead.
He had a face like carved granite, and a hard look in his eyes Excited
by the recent kill, by the taste of blood still in his mouth, Candy
watched the man with interest, wondering what would happen next. There
were all sorts of ways it could and not one of them would be dull.
Clint did not react as Candy expected. He did not show surprise when he
saw the woman sprawled dead upon the table he did not seem horrified,
shattered by the loss of her, or raged. Something major changed in his
stony face, though below the surface, like tectonic plates shifting
under the earth’s crust.
Finally he met Candy’s gaze, and said,
“You.” The note of recognition in that single word was unsettling For a
moment. Candy could think of no way this man could know him-then he
remembered Thomas.
The possibility that Thomas had told this man-and perhaps others-about
Candy was most frightening to Candy since his mother’s death. His
service in God’s army of avengers was a deeply private matter, a secret
should not have been spread beyond the Pollard family.
mother had warned him that it was all right to be proud doing God’s
work, but that his pride would lead him to a if he boasted of his divine
favor to others.
“Satan,” she told him, “constantly seeks the names of lieutenants in
Garrny-which is what you are-and when he finds them, destroys them with
worms that eat them alive from wit worms fat as snakes, and he rains
fire on them too. If you can’t keep the secret, you’ll die and go to
Hell for your big mouth.”
“Candy,” Clint said.
The use of his name erased whatever doubt remained that the secret had
been passed outside the family and that Candy was in deep trouble,
though he had not broken the code of silence himself.
He imagined that even now Satan, in some dark and steaming place, had
tilted his head and said,
“Who? Who did you say? What was his name? Candy? Candy who?” As
furious as he was frightened, Candy started around the kitchen table,
wondering if Clint had learned about him from Thomas. He was determined
to break the man, make him talk before killing him.
In a move as unexpected as his rock-calm acceptance of the woman’s
murder, Clint reached inside his jacket, withdrew a revolver, and fired
two shots.
He might have fired more than two, but those were the only ones Candy
heard. The first round hit him in the stomach, the second in the chest,
pitching him backward. Fortunately he sustained no damage to his head
or heart. If his brain tissue had been scrambled, disturbing the
mysterious and fragile connection between brain and mind, leaving his
mind trapped within his ruined brain before he had a chance to separate
the two, he would not have possessed the mental ability to teleport,
leaving him vulnerable to a coup de grace. And if his heart had been
stopped instantaneously by a well-placed bullet, before he could
dematerialize, he would have fallen down dead where he’d stood. Those
were the only wounds that might finish him. He was many things, but he
was not immortal; so he was grateful to God for letting him get out of
that kitchen and back to his mother’s house alive.
THE VENTURA FREEWAY. Julie drove fast, though not as fast as she had
earlier. On the tapedeck: Artie Shaw’s “Night mare.” Bobby brooded,
staring through the side window at the nightscape. He could not stop
thinking about the blare of words that had seared through him, loud as a
bomb blast and bright as a blast-furnace fire. He had come to terms
with the dream that had frightened him last week; everyone had bad
dreams. Though exceptionally vivid, almost more real than real life,
there had been nothing uncanny about it-or so he had convinced himself.
But this was different. He could believe that these urgent, lava-hot
words had erupted from some subconscious. A dream, with complex