The heavy chain was secured around her waist, and her hands were cuffed to it at her sides. A hard shove in the back with a rifle barrel nearly caused her to stumble down the stairs. "Keep moving, witch," Greene snarled. She was escorted into the living room and shoved into a chair. She glared hatefully at the sergeant, and then her eyes roamed over the destruction in her home. Hurt and rage filled her, fighting each other for dominion.

"Private, go tell the Colonel we've got her."

The young private who had found Valerie went outside to carry out his order, and as he did his mind raced. Why hadn't she killed him? She'd had him dead in her sights, and then he had heard her say she can't, and then she had put the rifle down and had allowed herself to be taken. It didn't make any damn sense.

He had to see her again. Even though she had been ready to kill him, he felt that he must see her. For one reason, she was intoxicatingly beautiful. He supposed that all witches were, and that must be why it was so easy for them to snare men's souls. But his main reason for wanting to see her again was that he wanted to ask the seditious and murderous witch why she had spared his life. "Colonel? We have the witch in custody."

Warren positively beamed at the news. "Good!" he said, briskly rubbing his hands together. "Excellent work, Private. Where is she?"

"In the living room, sir."

Warren headed for the house in a brisk walk, pausing at the door to allow the private to open it for him. He breezed inside, and his eyes fell immediately on Valerie.

Sergeant Greene shot to his feet. "I caught her, sir!" he announced, almost excitedly. "She was just about to--" and Warren cut him off with a short, abrupt wave of his hand.

The Witch and the Priest studied each other in silence, fear and fascination as each instantly recognized the other. Dear Goddess, it's him! she thought. By the Gods, it really is him! And at the same time, Warren thought, Dear Jesus, protect me from Satan's whore!

"Hello, Priest," she said at last. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?"

Yes, it has, was his first thought. And then an unexpected and horrifying realization suddenly consumed him. She knows! Dear God, she knows about my Vision! How could she know? Why would the Lord--

Could they have actually lived before? he asked himself as he suddenly remembered that night in George's bookstore. And almost immediately he answered himself: No! Not in Spain or Germany, or anywhere else, because the idea of reincarnation was absolutely preposterous. It was more than preposterous--under Christian law, the very idea of reincarnation simply was not allowed. And that was why he fought it so hard, and refused to call it a past-life memory; it was because it was not of the Bible, and because it violated the very foundation of Christianity itself. People were not reborn into physical life, he reminded himself; they either went on to eternal Paradise at the foot of the Lord after living a righteous, proper and God-fearing life as mandated in the Bible, or they suffered in Hell for eternity for denying the Savior and His laws, and for turning their backs on Him.

She was a far more powerful and dangerous witch than all of the others that he had hunted down and captured, or killed, he told himself; there could be no other explanation of how she knew what was in his mind.

Then he noticed the curious looks from the other men. They were waiting for him to speak, and he had to say something to counter her charges. He tried to look calm yet puzzled by her remark. "We've never met before," he said at last, his voice soft and confident.

"Of course we have," Valerie countered. "In Bavaria, and in Spain--at my execution. Surely you remember that."

His heart froze in terror at this second psychic blow. We can't have lived and met before! Confronted again with this possibility, the concept struck him with yet another, almost physical, blow. No! He didn't want to admit it; he was loathe to admit it, he was afraid to, but . . . but how else could she know of him and his Vision? Certainly the Lord wouldn't have let her know . . .

"And I'll bet you remember what I told you then, don't you?"

Oh, God! No! She can't know! She can't! She can't! SHE CAN'T!!

Satan had planted her in his brain. That was it! The Devil had planted her in his brain, and…and he had given her the ability to read his thoughts. That's surely what his idols Cotton Mather and Matthew Hopkins would have said, and if it was good enough for them, then it was certainly good enough for Elias Warren.

The idea of the Devil giving her this kind of power over him absolutely terrified him.

In the momentary silence, the other soldiers cast their eyes from Warren to Valerie and wondered what was going on between them.

"Sergeant Greene," he said at last, "escort the prisoner down to the basement and chain her. Take her clothes--she may have some magical amulet that might help her escape. I'll be down shortly to begin the interrogation."

***

She hung in chains, naked and shivering from cold and terror. Links of stainless steel had been looped over two steel hooks that had been screwed into one of the ceiling beams that ran the length of the cold, damp cellar, and suspended her with her arms widespread above her, keeping her feet just inches from the ground. Warren had been very specific about this: she was not to touch the Earth. He had read accounts of condemned witches who, back in the old days, had wanted to touch "Mother Earth" (what a silly and stupid term they used!) just one more time before dying, but he knew the truth. He knew! He knew, as had the righteous prosecutors back then, that if they touched the ground they could suddenly change their shape and escape; they could turn into crows and fly away, or . . . or turn into ghastly, venomous serpents that were as quick as lightning and could slither away to safety through the small holes in the solid brick and stone walls. Or they could call upon Satan himself to destroy the righteous. What other reason could there really be for wanting to touch the Earth?

Her clothes lay in a pile nearby, and on top of them were the headband that Jasmine had given her, her silver-and-obsidian pentacle with its leather lace now torn, and the wolf's-tooth earring that had been ripped from her right ear. The lobe was caked with flakes of dry blood, and bloody red welts from the lashes of Warren's riding crop arose on her back, thighs and buttocks. A larger red welt from an open-handed slap rose on her face, and blood trickled from one corner of her mouth.

Warren's eyes kept wandering down to the tattoo that lay high on the inside of her thigh, and as he surreptitiously squeezed his erection through his pocket once more he told himself this was yet another sign that she was in league with the Devil. It was a Devil's Mark, the stigmata diaboli--a scar or a birthmark--or a tattoo--placed there by Satan himself. It was even in the shape of a witch's familiar--a snarling and demonic red dragon, which made it doubly significant. It would have been even more significant to find a Witch's Mark--a nipple-like protuberance from which familiars could suck and nourish themselves. But since the two terms were frequently used interchangeably, Warren could use either of them in his report, and it would be up to his superiors to interpret it any way they chose. Corporal Anton Willis, under Warren's orders, had jabbed the tattoo with Warren's personal steel bodkin, an instrument that had been called a "witch pricker" during the days of the Inquisition. It was a replica of the fifteenth century torture device that resembled a long ice pick, and had been used to test such marks. A true Devil's Mark was insensitive to pain, and back in the old days a false bodkin--one with a hollow handle and a retractable spike held in place by a weak spring--had been used by self-appointed witch-finders to press harmlessly against a mole or a scar or a birthmark of an accused witch. Since the accused felt no pain, she was judged guilty of having been the voluntary recipient of a Devil's Mark. After the arrest and execution of every suspect, all of the accused's property (and of particular interest was the land) was officially seized by the Church, and a moderate reward was paid out to the interrogators who had hired themselves out to the Church.

Warren's witch pricker was no fake.

A long line of blood ran the length of Valerie's leg, and her sharp, agonized scream had echoed from the damp, stone walls of her cellar. "Don't let her false screams fool you, Corporal, this clever witch feels nothing." He relished seeing evil being held so completely helpless. Not for the sexual thrill it gave him--the existence of which he denied, of course, as he continued to squeeze his hard-on--but because it was what the Lord wanted.

Warren didn't actually take part in the interrogation himself. He never did. Interrogation was also known as "The Question," a term that he had discovered during his studies of (or perhaps remembered from the days of) the Spanish Inquisition, and he found that he immensely preferred this term over "interrogation" because the latter carried with it a somewhat negative connotation. Questioning had been an accepted practice of the secular arm of the Church's Inquisition, and Colonel Warren saw no reason why he couldn't use the same terms and practices himself. Torture was never used, neither by reference nor by practice; but people could be "questioned" for hours and even days at a time by the use of slow crushing of different extremities, dislocation of major joints, partial drowning, blunt instruments, hot coals, branding irons, sharp blades, partial strangulation, whips, spikes, sodomy, rape, rape with barbed- or razor-tipped objects (both vaginally and anally), or by any other available means for obtaining confessions. But Christians never tortured anyone; not in medieval Europe, not in seventeenth century Massachusetts, and certainly not today in this enlightened early twenty-first century America. They merely "questioned" them.

Corporal Willis--all six-foot-seven and some three hundred and fifty pounds of him, with closely cropped blond hair--wore his sleeves rolled to his massive biceps, and his coat was hanging on the back of a chair. He lashed out again with Warren's riding crop, and raised another red welt across one breast.

Valerie screamed.

"Confess!"

Outside, Private Logan--the young man who had found her--cringed inwardly when he heard her screams. This isn't right, he thought. Dear God, put an end to her pain! Let her pass out, or die! Please, Lord, make this madness stop!

Again the crop lashed through the air with a whoosh, and again there was the smack of it connecting with bare skin. The scream came out in words. "God damn you, Priest!" She tried to lurch toward him, and she spat bloody saliva in his face.

Hatred flared in the Colonel's eyes. He wiped his face with a white handkerchief and nodded to the corporal to continue. Three more rapid blows, and there was one long scream of agony. "I'll fucking kill you, you bastard!" she roared. "I'll fucking kill you!"

He stared into her eyes with a cold, thin smile on his lips. "Who will kill whom, you foul-mouthed Devil's whore?" he asked.

And then the entire house shuddered. It was only for a moment, and Warren stepped back involuntarily. There was fear in his eyes, and his heart suddenly pounded hard in his chest.

Willis felt it, too. "An earthquake," he muttered, trying hard to conceal his own fear. "This area has lots of them."

"Yes, of course," Warren agreed quickly. "Must be."

Willis quickly glanced around the basement for a moment to make certain it was safe for him to continue, and then lashed out again. But this time there was no response from the prisoner.

"She isn't dead, is she?" Warren didn't want this to end too soon; she had not yet confessed, and the stake was still waiting for her.

"Unconscious, sir," Willis replied. "Shall I revive her?"

Warren watched her for a moment. "No," he finally sighed, "we'll continue later. Take a break."

"Yes sir." He went to the table and set the riding crop down, then picked up his jacket by its collar.

Warren approached the unconscious woman and studied her. Such a beauty, he thought, and housing such evil. His eyes roamed over her bruised and bleeding body, taking in every detail. He squeezed his erection again, and fought against the urge to climax in his shorts. He would come later, maybe, when he was alone . . . and then afterward he could beg the Lord to forgive him.

He turned on his heel and hurried out.

Corporal Willis also watched her. When the door closed, he approached her. No one else was around, except for that stupid little private out in the hall. If the corporal were quiet enough, Logan would never hear a thing out there.

It had been a long time since Willis had a woman. Not since the time he'd had the honor of being in on a major prostitution arrest. Major . . . hah! That was a laugh. One hooker. But that didn't matter. He'd managed to get a whore off the streets, that was the important thing. And she had acted so frightened, as if a whore would ever be afraid of anything. Not as long as she was doing the Devil's work of corrupting men, she wasn't afraid! "Please, corporal," she had pleaded, and for a moment she had almost convinced Willis of her sincerity. "Please, don't arrest me. My children . . . what will they do? I don't make enough money from my job to support them . . . please, don't jail me."

"Well, I think we can work something out," he had told her, knowing full well from all the Guardian briefings he had attended that prostitutes never had children. If they weren't corrupting good men, then they were out smoking dope and getting abortions, and committing murder against innocent pre-born babies.

He took her into the back seat of the police cruiser and raped her.

"Can I go now? Please?" she had begged him when he was finished.

"Hell, no. You're under arrest for prostitution and for attempting to seduce a Holy Guard. Trying to bribe me with sex isn't going to work."

He smiled fondly at the memory. Yeah, that had been a long time ago. Too long. And now the opportunity was presenting itself again. He had been hoping that the Colonel would leave him alone with the witch.

Willis moved in front of her and slowly opened his trousers, and let them slide to his ankles. He positioned himself between Valerie's legs as he slid his hands over the smooth, satiny skin of her buttocks, and down the backs of her thighs and between them. He stepped in closer, smiling with anticipation.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Willis's head snapped around to find Private Logan staring at him in shock and disbelief, and his face suddenly turned red with both embarrassment and rage. "None of your damned business! Get out of here!"

"No!"

His eyes flared against the defiance of Logan's reply. "I gave you a direct order, private! Get out of here! Now!"

"No, I will not!" He raised his rifle. "Get away from her."

Willis was shocked. "How dare you--"

Logan pulled back on the charging handle of his M-16 and let it snap back into place, bringing a round into the firing chamber. "Get out! Get out of here or I'll kill you! I won't let you do this!"

Willis looked into the eyes of the private and saw that the man was deadly serious. "I'll get you for this," he said as he pulled up his trousers.

"We'll see about that."

He fastened his trousers shut, zipped up and buckled his belt, and left with murder in his eyes.

When he was gone, Private Logan stepped forward. He wanted to loosen the chains, but they had been tied securely in place. These things must be strong enough for a gorilla, he thought. What does the Colonel think this woman can do?

Valerie groaned softly.

Logan stepped over to the small table that stood a few feet away. On it were a glass pitcher of water and a drinking glass from which Willis had been drinking. He filled the glass and took it to her, and raised it to her lips. "Here, drink this," he said softly. "Not too much . . . "

Water trickled down her chin as she took a few small sips. "Thank you, Private . . . Logan . . . " she whispered weakly.

"How did you know my name?" he quickly asked with fear in his voice. He suddenly wondered if she might really be in league with Satan, and that maybe she had read his mind. If she could get into his mind, even in this weakened state, then what could she do if . . .

She heard the tremor in his voice, and she wondered what dreadful and nonsensical stories Warren had been using to fill his head with such fear. She indicated with a slight movement of her head as she replied, "Your name tag."

Logan glanced down at it and saw his name, upside down from his point of view, in black letters against a gray, rectangular patch of cloth on his right breast pocket. He slowly and smiled self-consciously at his own foolishness.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked, weak yet genuinely puzzled. "Don't you know it could be dangerous for you?"

He relaxed a little, and he began to believe that her concern for him was genuine. He smiled a weak smile and said, "Well, if you promise not to tell anyone, I sure won't."

She managed a small smile of her own, despite the split in the corner of her lower lip.

"This isn't right," he went on. "Holy Guards are supposed to help people, not . . . not do this . . . " He helped her with another sip of water. "Why didn't you kill me?" he suddenly asked

"I couldn't. None of this is your fault, and I can't kill an innocent person just to save my own life. As soon as I saw you, I felt that you weren't like the others."

"What about the other soldiers? When you were escaping from Colorado?"

"They gave me no choice; they meant to kill me. But you're different."

Logan sighed. "You know, you could end all of this if you would just confess."

"There's nothing to confess to. And even if I did, it wouldn't change a thing. Warren means to kill me, and he won't let anything or anyone stop him."

"I don't understand. Why..?"

"The Colonel and I go back a long way. He's hounded me for hundreds of years."

She must be delirious from the pain, he thought. Lord, I can't blame her. "It doesn't make sense. How can that be?"

"It doesn't matter," Valerie replied. "Private Logan, I want to thank you for your kindness and your help, and I wish to the Goddess I could return the favor. All I can do is advise you to get out of here. You must get out of here."

Goddess? he thought, puzzled. What . . . Instead, he finally said, "I can't desert my unit."

"Jimmy," she said, looking directly into his eyes, "get out of here. Leave the Guardians; terrible things will happen if you don't. If you won't do it for yourself, then do it for those who love and care about you. Get out of here, and go as far and as fast as you can." Her eyelids closed and her head fell forward as she passed out.

Logan returned the glass to the table and took one more look at the nearly dead woman. He wished desperately that there was something more he could do . . . He picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and quietly left the room. As he went in search of Colonel Warren, he suddenly stopped and looked back at the closed door. Then he looked at his name tag again. His last name was printed there, plain as day, but . . . how did she know his first name?

He found the Colonel sitting in the living room, reclining in a comfortable chair with a glass of Valerie's wine in his hand. Resting open on his lap, on top of his Bible, was his copy of Malleus Maleficarum.

"Colonel Warren?"

He looked up to see who was addressing him. "Yes, Logan, what is it?" He returned to his book and sipped at the wine.

"I went down to check on . . . on the prisoner, to see if she had come around. I found . . . "

Warren looked up again, slightly annoyed at this interruption of his reading. "Found what, Logan?"

"This isn't easy, sir . . . I . . . well, I found Corporal Willis . . . " he sighed, trying to calm his nerves. He didn't like the idea of reporting acts of misconduct by fellow Guardians, especially when it was said that it is impossible for Holy Guards to be guilty of such a charge because of the nature of their work; they were doing the Lord's work, and anything done in the name of the Savior was right. And Logan didn't like thinking about the consequences of making such a report. The ostracism from his fellow soldiers, the lack of faith he would have in them if he needed their back-up in a life-threatening situation, and the harassment that he and his entire family would have to endure . . . But, damn it, he had to report this. It was the right thing to do. And he also knew that he wouldn't be able to live with the guilt that he would feel if he didn't make the report. "He . . . was about to take advantage of the prisoner, sir."

"Oh?" He didn't bother to look up this time. "How so?"

"He . . . he was about to rape her, sir. I stopped him."

"You stopped Corporal Willis from raping the witch?" Warren asked. He didn't seem especially disturbed at the thought of one of his men committing such an act.

"Yes sir."

"Hmm . . . " He turned a page and continued to read. "I don't imagine you've made a friend out of him."

"But sir--"

Warren looked up at him again, and Logan could tell from the look in his eyes that he was not in the least bit interested in his report. If anything, he looked suspicious, like he might be thinking that it would be a good idea to have someone keep an eye on this private for a while. "Your report has been duly noted, Private. You may return to your post."

Logan couldn't believe this! How could his commanding officer allow such an immoral act from one who was supposed to protect morals?

"Yes sir," he said. He turned and started back for his post, and decided that, regardless of the penalties he might suffer if he were caught, he had no other choice but to desert as soon as he could.

Chapter Twenty-Six

There was a little-used dirt road that continued on up from the main highway and circled around to end almost at the front step of the commune where Oscar Corey lived. Keller, in the newly-repaired Charger, remembered that the road itself existed because he had been this way a couple of times before on smuggling runs several years ago, but at the time he hadn't been aware that this area even had people living in it. It also looked as though no one else had ever found it; after so many years, the place had changed so much that he could hardly recognize it himself.

He stopped the car at an apparent dead-end and got out. "I know it's around here somewhere," he said.

"What're you looking for?" Dutch asked.

"Here, come on out and help me move some of this stuff around."

"What're you doing?"

"There's a road around here somewhere," Keller replied. "If I can just find it . . . " He and Dutch searched through some of the shallower underbrush for several minutes, and then Dutch found the old wooden gate that had been hidden by the tall weeds, ivy and bushes. They pulled it open and drove through, then went back to close it. The road had rarely been used because it was in such poor condition, so someone had put up a gate with a sign that read "Road Closed." In time, and from lack of up-keep, the sign eventually had been blown down by the changing of the seasons, and the gate itself had almost been completely reclaimed by the forest. Keller had found it one day quite by accident, and had remembered where it was just in case he someday might need it as an escape route.

He didn't dare take the road any faster than ten miles per hour because of the low hanging branches that were scattered along nearly it's entire length, and because of the numerous holes that could destroy the Charger's suspension. He finally stopped the car near a cluster of trees that wouldn't let him go any farther.

He had told Dutch all about Oscar and Karen and the others, and he looked forward to seeing them again. He especially looked forward to seeing Valerie again, but there was still that feeling that kept gnawing at a corner of his mind. Something was wrong here, he had been dead certain of it, but now that he was here he expected things would be okay. "Hey, Oscar!" he shouted as he and Dutch walked across the small clearing toward the porch.

"Keller?" asked Karen. "Is that you?"

"Guilty as charged. This is my old buddy Dutch--" He broke off when he saw the look on her face.

"Keller, thank God you're here! There's been soldiers everywhere, and they're headed for Valerie's place!"

Oscar joined his wife on the porch when he heard the familiar voice. "They've been out at Scott Preston's place to question him," he said as the other two men quickly drew near. "They threatened his little girl, man. They threatened his kid! Scott thought Valerie was staying here, so he sent them off to the Ryan ranch; he thought the place was empty. My God, Keller, if they find her they'll kill her!"

"Jesus," Keller said. "Oh, shit. Oscar, do you have any weapons?"

"Just a couple of crossbows inside. What with all the damn gun control laws, I figured they were more practical. They're not much in the way of firepower, but I guess they'll have to do."

"They're good enough for now," Keller said as he checked his Desert Eagle. "You carrying, Dutch?"

"You should know better than to have to ask, son," Dutch replied. Tucked into the left-side waistband of his jeans he revealed a Reuger Redhawk .44 Magnum with a stainless finish and walnut grips, and distributed throughout his pockets were six fully loaded speed loaders. He flipped open the pistol's cylinder to check its status, confirmed it to be loaded, and snapped it shut again with another flip of his wrist.

"All right. Oscar, get on the radio and let the rest of the people around here know what's going down, and see if you can get us some help. We're gonna head on out there and see what we can do."

"Okay, you got it."

***

Oil lamps hung from nails that had been driven into the wooden wall studs, casting eerie flickering shadows on the stone walls. Valerie still hung from the center beam across the ceiling, barely conscious. The left side of her face was bruised and there were fresh welts and red rivulets of blood on her bare skin, and her entire body was shivering uncontrollably from the cold and the dampness that permeated the underground room.

But she was no longer afraid. We're all going to die someday, she told herself as she remembered the fusillade of shots that had broken out above her head when she had tried to defend her home. And to fear death itself--even meaningless death--is useless. It should be avoided as much as possible, of course, but not feared. There were worse things in this world than death--Warren himself had taught her that just within the last few hours--and she vowed that she would never again be afraid to die.

She no longer screamed when Corporal Willis lashed at her with the crop. Her eyes screwed shut and the muscles in her jaw would tighten, grinding her teeth when the lash landed, but she did not scream. She would not. She occasionally opened her eyes to stare coldly at Warren, and it was her silent, unflinching gaze that now frightened him. He was certain that the witch was using black magic on him in one form or another. But every so often a question would come back to him, asking him why, if she is such a powerful witch, doesn't she use her magic to free herself? It was because . . . he had to think for a long time (something he hated to do) to come up with a satisfactory answer . . . it was because she wasn't touching the ground, that's why! And then he would repeatedly push the doubts out of his mind whenever the questions arose again.

"Tough witch," he said as he watched her now unconscious form. "Most witches break within the first fifteen minutes." He turned to Willis. "How long have we been here?"

Willis glanced at his stainless steel digital wristwatch. "About three hours, sir."

"Amazing," he said as he turned to gaze at her once more. "Satan himself is here, keeping her silent." He smiled a thin, razor-like smile. "Well, we'll change that soon. Even Satan won't be able to keep his whore silent when we take her to the stake."

"Stake?" Willis asked with a smile. He had been expecting a firing squad. "It'll be just like the good old days, won't it, sir?"

The question reminded Warren of Spain and the curse. "What do you mean by that?" he asked suspiciously.

"Only that, uh . . . that was how they used to get confessions from witches before, sir. And that there wasn't any of this nonsense about the rights of the accused. I mean, we know she's a witch, so why should we even go through all the bother of a trial and waste the taxpayers' money when we can deal out justice right here and now?"

Warren watched him with that cool, suspicious look. He agreed with Willis one hundred percent, but still the corporal sounded like he was sucking up to him. He didn't trust Willis; he didn't trust any enlisted man. Unlike the officers, enlisted men--and especially draftees--were considered to be of an inferior breed. The fact that Warren had once been an enlisted man himself, though, somehow escaped his memory for now.

"Go out and see to the stake. I'll be out shortly."

"Yes sir."

Alone with Valerie again, Warren stepped closer and held the tip of his riding crop under her chin, and lifted her head. "You will confess this time, you God damned witch," he said, his subdued voice a combination of venom and silk. "I don't even care to save your worthless, miserable soul, if you even have one; but you will confess to your crimes before you burn. The Lord commands it."

Valerie slowly opened her eyes and looked into those of the Colonel. It took a few moments for her vision to focus, but once it did she stared directly into the reflecting black pools of Warren's pupils. In them she could see something; she flicked her eyes back and forth, and in each black liquid orb she saw a small scene, and as she concentrated on it she suddenly found herself falling forward--or was she being pulled inward?--into the blackness of his eyes and becoming an active part of that scene. She suddenly found herself sitting astride a big black horse as it reared away from the flames that had suddenly sprung up before them, and then turned and bolted. Gunshots rang out with a surreal reverse echo as bullets tore the air near her head with a buzz of a thousand raging hornets while she moved in rhythm with the horse, hanging onto its long black mane and squeezing her legs against its ribs as the sounds of its hooves pounding against the dirt path thundered in her ears. They dashed together, weaving perilously down the winding dirt road, and leapt unharmed over burning barriers as they raced away . . .

And then she was back in the cellar, chained helplessly before Warren. Her eyes focused once again as she stared coldly at him. "You lose, Priest," she said in a hoarse, dry whisper.

He leaned forward a little bit, threateningly. "What do you mean?" he growled suspiciously.

"I'm going to kill you, you bastard," she whispered weakly. "You hear me? You lose!"

Warren stepped back, not understanding. What was she babbling about? How could he possibly lose? It was not he who now hung naked and chained in a cellar, bruised and bleeding. It was not he who shortly would be taken away to the stake to be burned alive. But there was something unsettling in the way she looked at him, and in the quiet conviction in her voice . . . It wasn't an empty threat, and it wasn't a warning. It was a statement of fact.

A sudden chill of intense dread and fear ran through him. She's using magic on me, he thought. He clenched a gloved fist, drew it back, and sent it smashing into her face with a sharp crack, breaking her nose. He turned away from her. "We'll see who loses, you Devil's whore." He headed for the door. "Willis!"

***

"This will be the first time I've ever seen a witch-burning," the soldier said to his partner.

"Same here. Boy, now that's the way to handle witches." He raised a cigarette to his lips and suddenly his body stiffened as his eyes went wide in surprise.

"Hey, what's the matter?" asked the first soldier as his partner suddenly slumped against the wall, and began to slowly slide to the ground. Then he noticed the growing dark stain on his chest and the barbed head of a hunting arrow that protruded from it. "What the hell..?" he said as he tried to hold him up. "Shit!" He turned to shout for help, and a second arrow flew seemingly from nowhere and lodged in his throat. He fell against his partner and tried to call for help, but the blood welling in his throat choked him off. He silently joined his partner on the ground.

A large battery-powered spotlight was slowly sweeping the area in front of the house, making its silent rounds. It revealed nothing out of the ordinary, always keeping watch. Until its glass cover shattered and the light went out.

"Okay," said an irritated voice, "what the hell's going on now?"

"Hey, I don't know," said another, defensive voice. "It wasn't my fault!"

"Did I say anything was your fault?"

"Well, shit," said a third voice, "maybe it just overheated or something. They just don't make these things the way they used to."

"Boy, that's for damn sure . . . "

As the soldiers talked back and forth in the darkness, unable to see the hunting arrow that had destroyed the spotlight and trying to explain what happened, two shadowy figures ran in a crouch from the edge of the woods to the darkened side of the house. Each figure was carrying a crossbow.

"Hell of a lot quieter than the ol' .44," Dutch whispered.

"Yeah. Too bad reloading's such a bitch, though." He wished he had a pair of leather gloves; the low-tech wooden crossbow had a 150 pound pull to it, and he had to slip his foot into a stirrup at the end to hold it still and to get the proper leverage in order to cock it. The high-tension string felt as though it could cut through his fingers.

Crouching in the shadows up against the house, Keller cautiously took a quick look inside a window. "Where do you suppose they're keeping her?" he asked, now scanning the grounds as they reloaded.

"We'll have to ask." Dutch also scanned the room as well as he could through the tattered lace curtains, and listened carefully. As near as he could tell, there was no one there. Keller handed him his crossbow and put both hands to the top of the window and pushed it open while Dutch went back to watching the grounds. Keller went in and dropped into a crouch, and took another quick look around. He was relieved to find the room was indeed unoccupied. "Come on in," he whispered. The two weapons were handed in and Dutch followed them a moment later. They found themselves standing in the kitchen. Keller motioned with the crossbow. "Living room's that way." They started for the door, then froze as they heard a voice coming toward them. They stepped back to either side of the door and Dutch switched off the light. They held their weapons ready, and waited.

"Gomez get me this, Gomez get me that," it complained as it neared the door. "Man, just once I'd like to tell that pendejo shithead to just fuck off . . . " The door opened. " . . . gets some rank under his belt and he thinks he's running the whole damn outfit . . . " the voice continued to grumble. A hand reached around for the light switch. " . . . people keep turning the damn lights off around here . . . " He stopped when he found a crossbow pointed at his throat.

"One sound," Keller said softly, "and it'll really be lights out."

"Come on in, friend," Dutch invited with a friendly whisper. He took hold of his uniform and pulled him quietly into the room. "Maybe you can help us. We're looking for a friend of ours--maybe you've seen her?"

The soldier nodded, his head moving no more than a quarter of an inch--that was all the room that the arrow's tip allowed.

"Smart man," Keller said. "I told you you had to be smart to be a Guard. Didn't I tell you?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you told me," Dutch replied. To the soldier: "Where is she?"

"The cellar," Gomez replied, eager to be of assistance. A razor-sharp arrowhead, backed up by a potential of a hundred and fifty pounds of thrust gently pressing under the soft part of the jaw, is quite an incentive to be helpful. "She's in the cellar. I swear to God, she's in the cellar. Just don't kill me."

"I'll think about it," Keller said. He removed the arrow from its target, and the Guard relaxed slightly--and then he rammed a fist into the soldier's stomach, doubling him over. He brought the stock of the crossbow down on his head. Dutch caught him before he fell noisily to the floor, and eased him down. Keller shut off the light again and opened the door carefully. He peered through just a crack, at first, and gradually pushed it wider until he finally stepped into the room, which turned out to be as unoccupied as the kitchen had been. The curtains had been drawn across the windows to keep the night chill out, and they also prevented anyone outside from seeing in. He motioned to Dutch, and they made their way to the stairs. They kept close to one wall, hoping to avoid any creaky boards in the steps. They reached the stone floor at the bottom at last, and approached the closed door. They listened carefully, hearing nothing. They gently pushed the door open and went inside.

"Oh, my God," Dutch said in a shocked whisper, and Keller was stunned speechless.

Valerie was still hanging chained to the ceiling. One side of her face was swollen and bruised, and there were open red cuts and welts lashed on her tanned skin. For a moment, they thought she was dead. They rushed toward her and went to work on the chains. Instead of having been locked in place, they were merely tied, but it was like trying to untie four Gordian knots. Keller wrapped his jacket around her once she was freed, and they eased her to the floor. "Valerie?" he said, gently holding her face in both hands. "Talk to me, kid. Come on, please, talk to me."

Her eyes opened slowly, painfully. It took a moment for them to focus. When they did she smiled faintly. "Hey, Garrett," she whispered. "It's about time you showed up." Her eyes shifted over and she recognized Dutch. "What d'ya say, Dutch?"

"Don't try to talk," he told her. "We're going to get you out of here."

"I've got to get to the attic first," she said as she began to struggle to her feet. Free from the chains at last, she was already drawing energy from the Earth and gaining strength. "I need to . . . "

"Forget the attic; we're getting out of here now."

The door suddenly opened, and Keller reacted purely on instinct. He leapt at the lone soldier who had come in as adrenalin poured through his veins, and everything was bathed in a red haze. He grabbed the soldier by the jacket and threw him violently against the far wall. Judging by the look in Keller's eyes, the soldier thought this must be one of the witch's demons sent straight from Hell to aid her. Keller hauled back a fist and sent it smashing into the soldier's face again and again. The soldier started to slump to the floor, and Keller hauled him back to his feet, slamming punches into his face and abdomen, splitting his lips and quite possibly rupturing several internal organs. His knee came up into the soldier's groin, sending an explosion of agony through his every nerve, and the soldier slumped limply to the floor, either dead or unconscious. Keller didn't care which.

Valerie stared at him with a mixture of awe and horror in her eyes. She had never seen someone beaten to death before, and for the first time she realized just how dangerous a man Garrett Keller could be.

He saw her looking at him, and he looked back at her. "What?"

The cards were wrong, she thought as she suddenly remembered the Tarot reading in Tony's home from seemingly so long ago. She remembered thinking that the card of The Lovers may have represented herself and Keller, but after seeing this side of him she was convinced that, even if she had never met and fallen for Jasmine, there was no way she could spend the rest of her life with this man. She would be glad to have him as a friend, but not as a lover; she would never be able to live with such uncontrolled rage.

With a shudder, she went to where her clothes lay and dressed quickly while Keller and Dutch watched the door. She retied the leather lace on which her pentacle hung and slipped it over her head, then donned the headband and slipped the wolf's tooth earring into a pocket.

"Jesus, boy, did you have to make so much racket?" Dutch asked as Valerie dressed. "We'll be lucky if we don't have the whole damn bunch of them coming down."

They managed to get to the attic without running into any soldiers, and hidden safely in a desk drawer where she had left it was the Book of Shadows. Mixed with a pile of clothes, she found a worn brown leather jacket which she slipped into, and then she stashed the book under it. Keller was guarding the door while Dutch kept watch at the window. "Where the hell did they all go?" he wondered. "Oscar said there were more men than this."

"Don't knock a good thing, man," Keller replied. "It'll make it that much easier for us to get out of here."

"Lieutenant!" a voice shouted from outside. "Two sentries are dead! I just found them outside the kitchen!"

Valerie looked at Keller, then at Dutch, and then at Keller again. Two more dead. It made her wonder more and more just what the hell kind of a man Keller was.

He returned her look, his face expressionless, and said, "Must've been your chicken salad."

***

Enraged by the deaths of the two guards, Warren and Willis descended the cellar stairs. Not only were they anxious to continue putting Valerie to The Question; Warren wanted to find out from the witch who was responsible for the deaths. With fire in his eyes and his loins, Warren pushed the door open.

She was gone.

There was a pile of chains on the floor where she had been left hanging, and in a far corner of the room lay a soldier, badly beaten and bleeding. There were no signs of forced entry.

"God!" Warren and the corporal rushed to the fallen man. "Private!" Warren barked. "What happened? Where's the witch?" Even as he spoke he saw that the soldier was dead, his glassy eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

"Dear Lord, what happened to him?" Willis asked, terrified.

Warren turned to face him. "Satan was here!" he told him. "The Devil himself was here in person and did this! The witch couldn't touch the ground, so she called upon her dark master--and this is the result! Now do you understand how dangerous she is? Now do you understand why she must be destroyed?"

"But Colonel," Willis said, "why didn't she escape when we were tor--I mean questioning her? Why didn't Satan help her then?"

Warren stared hard at him, but inside his mind was reeling. Why hadn't she? He knew the real reason, but again he averted his eyes from the truth and embraced his comfortable lie.

He grabbed Willis by the coat. "Are you doubting the evidence of your own eyes?" he shouted. And then another idea came to him and he went on: "The Lord was protecting us, that's why!"

So how come the Lord didn't protect that poor bastard? Willis asked himself as he gazed once more at the dead soldier. Must not have been a very good Christian, maybe. And then he remembered how he had almost raped the witch, and the thought of it and the sight of this dead soldier now made his gonads shrivel in terror at what could have been.

"Get a team of men and search the house and grounds. Let me know when you find her."

"Yes sir!"

"And have someone take care of this man."

"I'll see to it personally, sir." With that, Willis hurriedly turned and left.

How could this happen? Warren asked himself. The witch had been in his grasp, right here in his very fist! Chained above the ground and unable to move! Yet she had managed to escape. He had been so close to finally putting an end to her--all he had needed were just a few more minutes.

And now this had to happen!

Damn it!

He would catch her again. He would catch her again, and this time he wouldn't let her out of his sight for a single moment.

Not until she was dead.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The young man was walking slowly by the large, well-lit church that faced Pioneer Boulevard, listening to the passing traffic and the voices and music that came from inside the large, red brick building. Sounds like they're having a fuckin' good time in there, he thought cynically. He stopped for a moment in front of the plain, short set of concrete steps that led up to the entrance, and tried to peer inside through the open double wooden doors out of a perverse sense of curiosity. Almost as if he had been waiting for him, a man in a very expensive-looking blue three-piece suit suddenly stepped from behind one of the doors and appeared in the doorway. "Hey there, brother!" he greeted with a wide, orthodontically corrected, and sparkling grin and a strong Southern accent. "How y'all doin'? I couldn't help but notice you standin' out there, lookin' inside an' all alone. I'll bet you're wonderin' just what's goin' on in here. Well, I'm really glad you asked, 'cause we're spreadin' the word o' God here tonight!"

You're sure spreading something, the young man thought. You ought to be using a shovel.

"Now, you're lookin' a little hungry and a little thirsty, so why don't y'all come on in and have somethin' to eat?" He took the young man's sleeve in a firm grasp and guided him inside. "A little food for the belly is always good, but food for the soul is even more important. Have you heard the Word o' God today? Come on in, boy, don't be shy!" He led him over to a huge buffet table that was heavily laden with food. "Come on over here and eat, boy. Check this out--we got steak, we got lobster, barbecued ribs 'n' sauce, we got these li'l shrimp cocktails--they call 'em shrimp cocktails 'cause they're so damn small--yuk! yuk!" Here he gave the young man a good-natured and not-too-gentle slap on the back. "Here--" He reached into a silver ice bucket and withdrew a tall green bottle. "--have some champagne. We got some of these here watsits . . . canapés, I think the French call 'em." The way he pronounced the word, for a moment the young man thought he had said "canned apes." "And we got some of this here caviar. I never touch the stuff m'self," he went on, suddenly dropping his voice conspiratorially. "It's Russian, y'know. Looks like li'l black fish eggs, if you ask me." He spread some of them on a small cracker and nearly shoved the entire lot into the young man's mouth. "Now, you're wonderin', I'll bet, 'What am I supposed to do in return for all this?' Son, you don't gotta do nothin' for us. But there's somethin' y'all gotta do for yourself. Man's a sinner, y'know; that's why people are hurtin' so much. That's why there's so much confusion and wonder and doubt. That's why there's so much loneliness in the world. Well, we're in the business of savin' sinners-sinners just like you. The Lord can make all that pain and hurt and confusion go away, but y'all gotta ask 'im to do it. Now, y'all just come on over here and kneel with me." He took the young man's arm and yanked him down. "Now, y'all repeat after me"--he looked skyward--"Jesus Christ, am I in trouble!"

Jesus Christ, the man thought, eyeing the grinning suit and wondering about its sanity.

"Jesus Christ, I need your help!"

The young man tried to remove his arm from the suit's grasp.

"Jesus Christ, you gotta forgive me my sins!"

Jesus Christ, the young man thought, you're a wacko!

"Jesus Christ, you gotta come into my life and take it over!"

Where's the fire exit?

"Jesus Christ, tell us what to do! We'll be waitin' for your answer. A-men!" He turned to the young man, grinning broadly. "Now, don't y'all feel a whole lot more better?"

The young man shrugged slightly, as much as the grasp of the grinning suit would allow, and smiled a nervous little smile. "I guess so . . . "

The suit helped him to his feet. "So how does it feel to be saved?"

"Okay, I guess," the young man replied, more than a little bewildered.

"Praise God, another saved soul!" the grinning suit shouted. It escorted the young man toward the door. "Now, the Lord wants you to go out there and spread the Word o' God to everyone you know. Will y'all do that for Him? And by the way, on your way out, why don't you leave a little hunnerd dollar donation at the door so we can send some canned milk an' rice to the li'l children in Ethiopia? Hallelujah, praise God!"

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The soldier made the mistake of going alone up the stairs to the attic. The old saying about curiosity being fatal to felines may or may not have been true in general, but it certainly seemed to be the case for a soldier who wanted to go wandering about on his own to get a better look at a "witch house." Keller met him just inside the door with the butt of his crossbow, brought it slamming down on the back of his head, and then dragged him inside. He tossed the soldier's M-16 and its three spare 20-round magazines to Dutch, and took the Beretta 92-F and its two spare 15-round clips for himself, then peered around the doorway to see if anyone else was coming. "All clear," he whispered, and the three of them started quietly down the stairs.

***

"Continue the search," Warren ordered.

"We're searching the area right now, sir," said Gutierrez, Warren's personal aide.

"Good." He rose from the chair and set his wine glass down on the table next to it, then picked up his Bible and Malleus Maleficarum and started for the door, followed by an entourage of four soldiers. There were the sounds of diminishing footsteps crossing the floor and porch, and then the room was silent.

Keller cautiously went down the stairs, listening carefully before each step. He was followed by Valerie, and Dutch came down behind her. They went across the room and to the windows. Peering between the torn curtains, Valerie said, "Shit, they've got the place surrounded."

"Can't really tell how many of them there are," Dutch said. "But as long as we're real quiet, we might have a chance of getting out of here."

"Let's head back for the kitchen," Keller suggested.

"Hell of a time to be thinking about food, ain't it, boy?" Dutch asked with a wry smile.

Keller gave him a dry, unamused look.

Dutch grinned at him. "Just tryin' to keep you loose, son. Let's go."

From inside the kitchen, they scanned the grounds behind the house. There were two more soldiers who stood about half-way between the house and the edge of the forest, examining the wires that led from the house and into the woods. The other floodlight had been set up to illuminate the front of the house, and its beam couldn't reach around the corners; and thanks to the thick cloud cover, the back yard was in almost total darkness.

There was no one else out there.

"Can't very well sneak out of here if we open fire on those guys," Dutch whispered as he slung the M-16.

"Our best chance--hell, our only chance--is to head into the woods and go for the river," Valerie advised.

And there was only one way to get there. Keller sighed resignedly as he and Dutch raised their crossbows. It was time to kill again. "Got 'im on the right."

"Got 'im on the left."

***

"They look like power cables of some kind," one of the four soldiers was saying as they examined the cables.

"Where do they go?" asked a second.

"I don't know--let's take a look. Frank, you and Pete stay here." He and the second soldier began following the cables with their flashlights guiding the way. After some fifteen minutes of picking their way through the darkened woods, and tripping over undergrowth and cursing, they found themselves standing near Valerie's pool, and they shined their lights up at the waterwheel that was spinning from the force of the waterfall. "How nice," said the first soldier sourly. "How very fucking nice. Free electricity."

The other soldier thought it was a pretty neat idea. What he said, however, was, "You're lucky the Colonel doesn't hear you talking like that."

"Hey, if he saw this I don't think he'd mind. I mean, look at this! Power companies are losing money because people like these damn hippie terrorists set up their own sources of electricity. That's why we have to pay more for our energy bills; to pay for the increasing cost of nuclear plants that these hippies are dodging. They're a bunch of lousy fucking goddamn terrorist thieves!"

Come to think of it, it wasn't a very loyal thing to do these days, the other guard thought. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Let's go back for Pete and Frank, and they can help us tear this thing down."

When they returned to the edge of the clearing, they saw a large man bending over the other two soldiers, who were unmistakably dead. A woman could be seen walking toward him, about half way between the house and the kneeling man. "What are you doing?" shouted one of the soldiers as Dutch looked up. The latter raised the M-16 and fired, taking both men down. Keller had just started from the house after Valerie, and almost immediately after the sound of the gunfire three more soldiers came around the corner of the house; two dropped to one knee while the other remained standing, and all three fired. A spray of bullets kicked up dirt and grass in front of Valerie's feet, and for a moment she stood frozen, not knowing which way to turn. Dutch returned fire in three short bursts as Keller fired from his position with the Beretta, and one of the kneeling soldiers fell. Another burst from the remaining soldiers broke Valerie's paralysis; she dove for the ground, and the Book of Shadows fell from her jacket. Another burst spat dirt in her face, and she pushed herself to her feet. Still not certain of where to turn for cover, she instinctively ran back to the house--a place that had always offered her safety. Dutch and Keller gave her covering fire, but she knew she had made a mistake in not continuing for the woods.

And then Dutch surprised her. From his position he ran, firing with the M-16, and grabbed Valerie's book from the ground. Keller fired at the soldiers again, giving Dutch the chance to run for the woods, until the Beretta's slide locked open with the magazine empty. The soldier who had been standing was now crouching behind the body of his fallen partner, and he, too, was hit. But more Guards were arriving to help them as Keller popped the empty clip out of the Beretta and slammed in a fresh one, and thumbed the slide release to bring a round into the chamber. He grabbed Valerie's hand and pulled her to the window and helped her in as Dutch continued to fire from the woods, scattering the soldiers and emptying the rifle. Keller dove in behind her and rolled to his feet, his breathing harsh and heavy from the adrenalin overload. "Shit, we're in it now."

"At least Dutch managed to get away," Valerie said, coming up next to him.

"He'll be back. I just hope he makes it here with the cavalry in time."

"So what do we do 'til then?"

"Beats me, darlin'. I'm open to suggestions."

***

"Colonel," a voice could be heard saying outside, "the rest of the men are back with the witnesses."

Keller glanced at Valerie. "Witnesses?"

"For my execution, I imagine," she replied.

The rest of the men are back, Keller thought. Shit, how many of them are there? And how the hell do we tell Dutch?

"We've got the witch trapped in the kitchen, Colonel," Sergeant Greene told him. "All the windows are covered, and the only other way out is through us."

"Obviously," Warren said scornfully. It was his unit's fault that they nearly got away in the first place, so now he regarded all of these incompetents with disdain. Then, to the two prisoners in the kitchen, he called out, "There is no way out for you. Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands raised."

"I don't suppose we've got much of a choice, do we?" she asked Keller.

He held the Beretta and the one spare clip. Only a total of thirty rounds left for it, plus the Desert Eagle. The odds for escape were not good. "Not unless you can think of something in the next ten seconds or so." He hesitated a moment, wondering if surrender was such a good idea after all. But as Valerie had said, they didn't have much of a choice. "Okay!" he shouted to the Colonel. "We're coming out!" He pulled the door open at the bottom with his foot and slid both handguns out across the back porch, then stepped through the open door with his fingers laced on top of his head. He was followed by Valerie a moment later, and they were met by ten soldiers with rifles and pistols aimed at them. Two men broke away from the group to clamp handcuffs tightly on their wrists, and they yanked them painfully behind their backs.

"So," Warren said, pleased. "The witch and her familiar. Very good."

"The what?" Keller asked him.

"Be silent, demon from Hell!"

Keller scowled at him in bewilderment. Then he looked at Valerie, as though she might provide an explanation. Valerie looked back at him and shrugged. And then he looked back at Warren again, and suddenly he just couldn't help it; he smiled and asked, "You're really not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?"

Warren nodded to Greene, who quickly brought up the butt of his rifle and slammed the side of it against the side of Keller's head. An explosion went off inside his skull, and the next thing he knew was he was being pulled up from the ground. The two soldiers behind him dragged him to his feet. He shook his head to clear it, and that made the pain even worse. Still, with blood running down the side of his face, he said, "You're going to pay for that, motherfucker."

Greene hit him again, this time in the stomach. Keller would have dropped again if he hadn't been held in place. "Got anything else you want to say to me?" he asked with a growl.

Valerie tried to jump between them. "Coward bastards! Leave him--"

Warren slapped her across the face, bringing a yelp of pain from her as his hand connected with a large, purple bruise. "Take them inside and throw them downstairs," he ordered, "and post guards outside of the door. Perhaps later these two will be willing to confess their crimes. I want to give them some time to consider their options."

Dragging Valerie and Keller, who was gasping painfully to catch his breath, the four soldiers took them inside and to the stairs of the cellar, and shoved them roughly down the stone steps. The door slammed shut with a loud bang, leaving them in darkness.

At the foot of the stairs, Valerie struggled to her knees. "Garrett? Are you okay?"

"I've been better," he groaned in reply. He rose slowly to his feet and took a few deep breaths. "I'm tellin' you, I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch." He walked slowly across the room and leaned against the wall which had a small window just above ground level, and slid slowly to sit on the floor. Valerie went to join him; she leaned against the wall with one shoulder and peered out the window. Something flashed through her mind as she studied the cloudy night sky, something about . . . and then it was gone.

"Why'd he have us thrown down here?" Keller asked, genuinely puzzled. "Why doesn't he just go ahead and kill us?"

"It's part of his waiting game," she replied distantly as she continued to gaze out of the window. What the hell was it that kept eluding her memory? "He likes to sit back and gloat over his little victories like this. He enjoys letting the fear build up in his victims before he kills them."

"You seem to know this little sweetheart pretty well."

"Yeah, well . . . I've been through this before. Remember?"

Keller sighed deeply, and winced in pain. "That guy really is unbalanced, you know." He gently rested the back of his throbbing head against the wall with a groan. "I'm not sure of how people get that way, but he's gone totally around the bend. I'm talking bars in the windows here." He took another deep breath, and this time the pain wasn't so bad. "Oh well, at least this gives us a little time."

Valerie finally pulled her eyes away from the window and looked down at him. "Time for what?"

He looked up and batted his eyes at her with a boyish smile. "Why, to plan an escape, of course."

***

Jasmine Tanaka was getting ready to cast a Circle, but somehow things just didn't seem to come together. Something didn't feel right. The candles were all in place on the floor, her small altar was set up with candles, chalice and censer, and her own athame lay upon the small table. She was planning to establish a psychic contact with Valerie. She was pretty sure she could do it, and with an impish grin she thought that maybe she would send her one more really good orgasm--while hoping that she wasn't out in public someplace, so maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all. She had been looking forward to this since she had awakened and found her note. But now, for some reason, things just felt all wrong and disjointed. Her fingers paused at the top button of her blouse, then fastened it closed again. She went over to her small dresser, reached toward the wall behind it, and took down her katana. She held it in both hands and slowly drew the gleaming steel blade from its scabbard. She ran her thumb across its keen edge, testing its sharpness, then swept it from side to side a couple of times, listening to it slice through the air with a sharp hiss. She nodded to herself in satisfaction, then slid the sword back into its scabbard. She lay the weapon on her bed, then began to disrobe.

There was a sudden loud pounding at the front door downstairs. Jasmine slid back into her blouse and went down to the shop to see who it was. Peering through the glass door as she held the shade aside with one finger, she saw a large man with graying blond hair and a matching beard. He was holding his left arm, and even in this dim light she could tell he was bleeding. She unlocked the door and let him in. "What happened?" she asked, her voice filled with concern.

"Gunshot wound," the man replied, his jaw tense.

"Gunshot? How'd it happen?" Probably forgot to unload before cleaning, was the first thought that went through her mind, and then she felt a little guilty about making such an assumption about a total stranger. She was trying hard to overcome her old prejudices concerning males and guns and phallic symbols, but she despised guns as being tools of nothing but violence. And neither was she real fond of their owners. (An acquaintance of hers once asked, "What's a stronger phallic symbol of violence--my gun or your sword, with which you not only impale people, but also hack them to pieces?" She had replied by fixing him with a scowl and an unvoiced, Touché, you miserable . . . Grumble grumble grumble . . . )

"A shoot-out at the Ryan place--there's a squad of Feds crawling all over it."

"The Ryan place? You mean Valerie's place? Tall girl with dark hair and amber eyes?"

Dutch looked at her in surprise. "You know her?"

"Yeah, well . . . we met," she replied. This must be one of her friends that she hadn't yet met. It wouldn't be Keller, would it? "Is she okay? Is she--"

"I don't know. We gotta get some help up there. Do you have a citizen's band or a short-wave radio somewhere?"

"Yeah, there's a C.B. in back. Come on, you can make some calls while I patch you up."

***

"Man, doesn't it figure that we'd get stuck with guard duty?" the young private bitched. "They're going to have a real, honest-to-God witch burning over there, and we get stuck out here watching the damn trucks."

"Aw, quit complaining, Andy," said another private. "All you ever do is complain. Complain, complain."

"Well, why not?" Andy countered. "I've got a right to; I'm always getting shafted like this."

"You're paranoid, you know that?" said a third soldier.

"Paranoia," said the second soldier eerily. "Oooweeeooo!" He raised his hands and slowly wriggled his fingers at him.

"Fuck you, Lenny," Andy said. "And you too, Francis."

"Andrew!" Frank said in mock horror. "Such language! Does your mother know you talk like that? Not to mention Colonel Warren?"

"Oh, please--don't mention Colonel Warren!"

"How about all three of you shutting the hell up?"

The three soldiers froze, staring wide-eyed at each other. Where had that last voice come from? Before any of them could reach for a weapon, there was the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back. And it came from very close by. "Now, why don't the three of you just turn around nice and slow, and put your little hands up on the side of that truck? 'Cause if you don't, me and my buddies here will fuckin' blow you apart."

The three soldiers did as they were told, and a moment later they were surrounded by five Rebels who were wearing bandannas over their noses and mouths, just like Jesse James's Gang, and carrying a variety of weapons. The man who had spoken was carrying a sawed-off twelve-gauge Mossberg 835 pump-action shotgun, which--at this close range--would quite effectively splatter Andy's head all over the side of the van. The Rebel next to him came forward and pressed the barrel of his Uzi carbine against Lenny's cheek. The other three Rebels carried a Heckler & Koch MP-5 automatic carbine, a Springfield G3 semiautomatic rifle, and a Colt AR-15. "Your boss has real sloppy security, y'know?" said the Rebel with the shotgun. "Only three of you to guard these trucks. Tsk, tsk."

"Y-y-y- you . . . you're under arrest," Andy stammered uselessly. "You . . . you men better put your weapons down, because you've just fallen into a trap. This area is sus . . . surrounded by Holy Guardians."

"And you must play a really shitty game of poker," said the man with the Uzi. "You couldn't bluff your way out of a pay-toilet." He motioned to two of his buddies, and they disarmed the soldiers while the shotgun and a pair of semi-autos never wavered from their targets. "Okay, now let's unload these trucks. And as for the three of you--" He turned to address the soldiers again. "--strip."

"What?"

"Are you assholes hard of hearing or just plain stupid?" the Rebel with the Mossberg asked, his tone cold. The muzzle of his shotgun pressed firmly against the side of Andy's head. "I get really mad when I have to repeat myself."

The three soldiers stripped quickly down to their skin, and then they were gagged and their hands were cuffed behind their backs to the rear bumper of the now empty weapons truck. "Okay, let's get out of here." And as quietly as they had come, the Rebels disappeared back into the darkness of the forest.

***

Oscar and Karen were among the witnesses who had been rousted out of their homes and brought to the Ryan ranch. Scott and Maggie Preston were there, too, along with their daughter. Children from all of the families in the area had been ordered there so Warren could make a strong impression; to demonstrate to them by forceful example, so that there would be no doubt in their impressionable young minds, precisely who was in charge, and to teach them to not only respect but also to fear authority. In all, some fifty people had been brought here to witness the execution of the witch Valerie St. James. And they all wondered if the gunfire coming from the other side of the house a short while ago had been an early execution or a prologue of things to come.

"My God, Oscar," Karen said in a shocked, subdued voice. "How can they do something like this? This is America, for God's sake!"

"Not any more, it isn't," Oscar replied.

"I can't believe this is happening," Scott said to a stranger who stood next to him. "I just can't believe it. They threatened my kid today; my kid! Then they threatened her again, if I didn't come out here. They were going to kill her! My God, this is insane!"

"I wish I had a gun," Maggie muttered to the stranger's wife. "God knows I've always been against them because they scare the hell out of me. But this is too much--these Nazi bastards have got to be stopped!"

"Mom, what are they gonna do?" Lori asked with a voice that trembled in terror. "I'm scared."

Maggie knelt next to her and held her. "I don't know, sweetheart," she said, knowing full well what was about to happen. She just wasn't sure if she should tell Lori. God knows the child has a right to know what's going on, and she has a right to know what type of people had usurped her right to control her own life. But how was she to explain such atrocities as this to a ten-year-old girl?

"Mommy," Kelly asked her mother, "are they gonna hurt Aunt Valerie?"

"I'm afraid they are, punkin."

"Why?"

Karen sighed in fear and bitterness. "Because she's different."

"Is that all? But I like her!"

"Well, the government people don't want you to like her."

"How come?"

"Like I said, honey, because she's different." She could suddenly feel her rage toward the Foundation growing even stronger, and it came out in her voice. "Because she has the guts to be different."

Kelly considered the information available to her, and drew her own conclusions by saying, "I think the government sucks."

***

Valerie and Keller were sitting quietly, side by side, in the darkness when the door above opened. A long rectangle of flickering lamplight fell down the damp stone steps, and several soldiers could be heard coming down. Valerie's stomach twisted into a nervous knot. Keller felt it, too, but he wasn't about to let the soldiers know he was scared. He was determined to be defiant to the end.

Colonel Warren, with a thin smile on his lips, was the first one down the stairs. Corporal Willis was with him, carrying a portable cassette tape recorder. Keller's eyes locked onto his and he thought, You're next, asshole. Try to rape a friend of mine, will you? And then he wondered where that thought had come from.

"Have you thought over your situation?" Warren asked. He motioned to Willis, who switched on the recorder.

"What the hell do you think we've been doing down here, you dumb fuck?" Keller muttered.

Willis was about to stop and rewind the tape, in order to delete the obscenities, but Warren motioned for him not to. "Let it run," he said. He wanted everything on tape, all of his polite inquiries and all of her foul responses; he wanted plenty of evidence to prove that he had offered her every chance to repent. Turning to Valerie once more he said, "You know, things would go a lot more easily for you if you would confess." He looked almost pleadingly at her, putting on a show for his troops. "I'm trying to save your soul, Miss St. James. Won't you let me do that for you?"

She knew what kind of an official record he was trying to make with the tape recorder, and she was determined to monkey wrench the hell out of it. "Gimme a break, Warren," she said dryly. "You're going to kill us anyway."

Warren turned slightly toward his corporal. "We can strike that later," he said.

"As you said just a little while ago, at this point you don't even care to save my 'worthless, miserable soul.' You should take some memory courses or something."

He glared at her, despising her for her defiant attitude.

"You want an official record?" she asked. "Okay, I'll give you one. For the record, the name is Ryan. Valerie Ryan." She watched him for a moment, then added, "Come on down here for a second."

Warren got down on one knee, holding the tape recorder close to her, ready to hear her confession. It was always so much better when the witches confessed, he told himself. When they confessed he took it as a confirmation of his absolute knowledge that he was doing the right thing. That was how it had been with many of the others. With the proper persuasion, almost all of them confessed. But when they didn't, such as had been the last case, then he had to console himself with the fact that the prisoner was probably guilty anyway, and he still had done the right thing. After all, if a person is innocent of a crime, he remembered hearing long ago, then he is not a suspect. And if she had not been guilty, then she would never have been under arrest in the first place.

It was always better to have that confession.

Valerie stared into the blackness of his eyes. "You make me want to puke, Priest," she told him. "You and your self-righteous, intolerant attitude. There's no way you're going to get away with this."

Warren wanted to savagely rape her, slit her open with a bayonet, and then wipe the soles of his boots on her corpse. God, how he hated her!

Valerie smiled a thin smile of her own. "You lose, Priest."

Warren slowly straightened, and looked down on her with cold hatred. He wanted to spit on her. He wanted to beat her and rape her. He wanted to kill her.

And, by God, he was going to.

"Take her outside."

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sergeant Greene was directing his men and the witnesses, waving them around as though he were a traffic cop and they were a mass of grid locked cars in the middle of a congested intersection. "Come on, let's move it!" he shouted. "I want two lines here, right now! Come on, let's go!" The witnesses, forced at gunpoint, moved slowly to form the two lines he demanded. Torches were planted in the ground to illuminate the path which led from the house to where the stake was erected some fifteen yards away. It was surrounded by straw from the barn and the small number of books that had survived the gunfire earlier, and a small platform stood slightly above the kindling for Valerie to stand on. Warren thought it was a nice touch of irony that she should burn in the flames of her uncle's heretical books.

The crowd stood uneasily, and people muttered to each other in subdued voices until their attention was suddenly diverted to the house as its front door opened. The first person out was Warren himself, ornately and intimidatingly adorned in his black uniform, black leather coat, and polished silver eagles upon his cap, collar, epaulets and lapels. He took pride in the fact that people recognized his uniform and the power it represented, and he knew that pride was supposed to be a sin; but he also knew in his heart that the Lord would forgive him for this minor infraction. He descended the steps with an air of casual arrogance--a despot among his subjects--flanked on both sides by his entourage, which was led by his personal aide, all a pace or so behind him and carrying their weapons ready for use.

And then Valerie and Keller came out, followed closely by Corporal Willis, who was pointing his rifle toward their backs. The shock on the faces of the crowd turned to anger and contempt for the soldiers, but the sounds of weapons being readied for fire kept the people back.

"Are we going to let this happen in America?" an unidentifiable voice shouted from the rear.

Half a dozen rifles swung toward that part of the crowd, and one of the soldiers challenged, "Anyone want to try and stop it?"

A few people moved threateningly toward the soldiers, but Valerie shouted, "No! Don't do it!" They froze and looked toward her, and in the sudden silence nothing could be heard except for the crackling of the burning torches as their flickering orange light highlighted the sheen of her dark hair and shined in her bright, horror-filled amber eyes. "You'll only wind up like the students at Kent State and Tiananmen Square! Please, people . . . friends . . . don't do it. Battles can be fought another day, when you're ready for them."

A child broke loose from the crowd and ran at Sergeant Greene, who was standing behind Valerie. "You leave her alone, you bastard!" Kelly screamed, flailing her small fists at him. "Leave her alone!"

Valerie cried out, "Kelly, no!"

Greene turned with a snarl and backhanded Kelly across the face. The blow struck her with a loud smack! and sent her sprawling to the ground with a scream.

"You son of a bitch!" Oscar shouted in outrage as his daughter cried out. He broke from the crowd and rushed at Greene. "Don't you touch my kid, you miserable fuck!"

Greene swung his M-16 up and across, and fired a short burst. Bullets ripped through Oscar's chest, and blood spurted and spread from his wounds.

"Oscar!" Karen screamed. She, too, broke from the crowd and ran to where he lay, only a few feet from Greene, screaming hysterically. "God! Oh, God! Oscar!"

Greene didn't really believe he was about to be attacked barehanded by a woman, not with the protective firepower that was surrounding him, but he figured that self-defense would be a good enough excuse anyway--however unnecessary, as far as he was concerned--to swing his rifle toward her. He pulled the trigger twice. Two short bursts of white-hot lead tore through her and dropped her to the dry dust and grass and pine needles. Her fingers twitched for a moment, trying to reach her husband's, as her blood drained from her. A moment later, she was still as her eyes stared sightlessly at her husband.

It all happened so quickly and efficiently.

Kelly was the only civilian not stunned with shock. She ran to her parents as her shrill screams of terror pierced the night. "Mommy!!" She fell to her knees next to her mother's bullet-riddled body, screaming hysterically. Not knowing what to do, she began pulling at her mother's hand in an attempt to help her to her feet as she looked over to where her father's corpse lay. "Daddy, help me!" she cried, her screams turning to sobs as tears of anguish spilled down her cheeks. "Mommy, get up! Oh, Mommy, please don't be dead . . . Mommy . . . Daddy . . . " Tears continued to pour down her anguish-twisted face as she tried to raise her dead mother from the ground, and she sobbed uncontrollably. "Please," she begged again, pleading to whatever invisible powers that might be. "Please, don't be dead . . . "

"Somebody grab that little bitch before I kill her, too!" Greene ordered. Maggie went to get her, and Kelly buried her face against Maggie's shoulder. She screamed and sobbed horribly, with far too much pain for a child to endure, and all Maggie could do was hold her tightly and try in vain to comfort her.

"Oscar," Valerie said in a shocked whisper. "Dear Goddess, no, not Oscar . . . " Grief wrenched viciously at her emotions as her own eyes filled with tears. And then she was seized in a fist of guilt and anguish as a small voice in the back of her mind said, You brought this on them, Valerie. If you hadn't come here . . . She cast her eyes toward Colonel Warren, and saw him watching the scene before them with a total lack of concern. And suddenly another voice in her mind said, No, it was him! That son of a bitch did it! And her grief was suddenly converted into a cold, seething rage.

Keller strained against his manacles. He had never felt so completely helpless in all his life, and he hated the feeling with all his spirit. "Damn it, Dutch," he muttered under his breath, "where the hell are you?" He almost expected his friend to immediately appear with five hundred men, all armed to the teeth, but there was no sign of him. He finally gave in to the cold, hard reality of the situation. Shit, we're goners.

Greene and Willis each grabbed one of Valerie's arms and hustled her to the stake. They uncuffed her wrists for a moment, shoved her back against the thick wooden pole, then re-fastened them around the stake and behind her back. They stepped away as another soldier began pouring gasoline from one of several five-gallon cans to soak into the straw and paper. She tried to back away from the gasoline that splashed in front of her and near her feet, but the handcuffs kept her securely in place.

Please, dear Lady, she implored silently as tears of anguish fell down her cheeks. Please . . . don't let them . . .

And then that fleeting something flashed through her mind again. It was like some small speck of knowledge that had come and gone before she had a chance to grab it. It was something about . . . Damn, what was it?

Keller silently watched Valerie with tears forming in his own eyes. First they killed his sister, then they killed Jeff, and now they were going to kill Valerie. He grieved for the loss of his friends and for his own failure to prevent these losses, and it made his hatred of the FLM that much stronger. For all the good it would do him, he thought as Valerie looked back at him with terror in her amber eyes. "I'm sorry, darlin'," he said. "At least we gave it our best shot."

"Any last words, witch?" The words seemed to echo in her mind from more than five hundred years before. "This is your last chance to save your immortal soul, if not your earthly life." He grinned at her with ice-cold hatred as he folded his arms smugly against his chest. "So much for your curse, Señorita Carrera," he said under his breath. "I've beaten you again." He laughed a cold, Inquisitor's laugh.

Valerie turned her eyes to the night sky. Neither stars nor moon could be seen through the thick, cottony cloud cover, but she thought she saw a soft silver glow somewhere behind the gently rippling gray quilt. Her breathing began to grow rapid and her heart pounded more quickly in her chest. But it wasn't fear that caused it; it felt as though a mild electrical current was coursing through her, a current of Power. And what she had been struggling to remember a few moments ago suddenly hit her like a bucket of ice water.

According to ancient, pre-Christian belief, there is one night out of the year when the barriers between the worlds of the living and of the dead are at their thinnest; when it is possible, some believed, to communicate with the dead. It is at the time some called the Witches' New Year, when the Earth itself was entering its darkest interval--the half-way point between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. Tonight was the final night of October, known to some Witches as Samhain . . . and Valerie could remember thinking a few nights ago that it looked as though there would be a full moon on Halloween . . .

She closed her eyes and shut off all extraneous thoughts, and forced her mind to focus. Mother Goddess, she invoked as she reached out with her mind and spirit. Mother Goddess, and Mom and Uncle Vince, and the spirits of all fallen allies, I beg you to help us in our hour of need . . . The prayer went through her mind again and again, faster and faster, until it became an unending, arrhythmic chant.

And then she felt their presence all around her in a swirling vortex of energy. She opened her eyes and fixed them on Warren's as her terror suddenly drained out of her and disappeared, just as it had that day when the soldier stood over her in her house with his M-16. "You fucking lose, Priest," she growled.

Warren smiled again in malignant triumph, and in a casual, underhanded toss, he personally threw in the fist torch.

Keller squeezed his eyes shut, unable to watch.

The torch flew and landed in the gasoline-soaked straw near her feet. It lay there for a few moments, flickering and crackling and sizzling . . . and then its flames disappeared in a small puff of white smoke.

Damn, Warren thought in annoyance. Then he grinned embarrassedly at his soldiers and shrugged. "Well, if at first you don't succeed," he said, and his men chuckled in amusement at their commander's uncharacteristic display of attempted humor. They didn't care, by demonstration of their insolent and arrogant attitudes, that the villagers were shocked and disgusted beyond description. He took another torch and threw it in, and this one landed directly under the platform on which Valerie was standing. This second torch also lay in the straw for several long moments, and then its flames dwindled and died.

Something was going wrong, Warren thought, and suddenly he felt very uneasy. "What's going on here? Did some idiot fill those cans with water by mistake?"

"No sir, it was gasoline, all right. There's no mistaking the smell of it."

Keller's eyes opened at this exchange. He looked up at Valerie and saw, even in this uncertain, flickering torch light, that there was a cold, knowing smile growing across her lips. An uncertain yet hopeful one began to spread to his own, although he wasn't quite sure of why.

A gentle breeze began to pluck at the straw, dust and leaves that were scattered on the ground.

Warren picked up one of the gasoline cans and sniffed at the spout. It was gasoline, sure enough, but why the hell wasn't it burning? He carried the can to the would-be burning pyre and poured its contents all over a large section of straw and paper. Then he took another torch from a soldier who stood nearby, and he plunged its flaming head into the gas.

It went out.

The breeze picked up, and became a steady, moderate wind.

Warren stared at the straw that refused to burn, and terror began to claw its way up his spine to his scalp. Dear Lord, he thought, what's going on here? Then he slowly looked up at Valerie again, and saw that she was watching him. Her voice echoed through his mind from more than five hundred years ago: "We will meet again, you and I. In another life and time, we will meet again . . . only next time it will not be me who burns!"

The wind grew even stronger. It blew dust and debris everywhere, and snapped at fatigues and civilian clothing alike. It reminded Valerie of that day in the living room, when the two soldiers had invaded her home. A sudden strong gust blew Warren's cap from his head, and a moment later he felt as though he were about to be blown away with it; the last time he had felt a wind this strong was when he had been standing near the spinning blades of a helicopter as it lifted away. Soldiers and civilians fell to their hands and knees, crouching close to the ground, to avoid being blown off their feet.

And the wind shredded the gray clouds and blew them away, revealing a sharply starry night and the brilliant, full and silver moon. It bathed the clearing, the house, and the surrounding woods in an eerie glow, and sparkled and danced from Valerie's pentacle and the silver ornaments on her headband. There was another gale-force gust of wind that pushed away the final tattered remains of the blanket of clouds, and then suddenly all was still and quiet. People slowly rose from their protective semi-crouches and looked around in bewilderment. One soldier could be heard asking in the background, "What the hell was that?"

Colonel Warren took two steps toward the mound of straw, and looked up at Valerie. "What's happening here?" he shouted at her in rage and growing terror. "God damn you, witch, I demand to know!"

"No more, Priest!"

He stopped in the short silence, and stared at her with hate-filled eyes.

"Even before the first days of the Inquisition, your kind has hunted down and executed those who would not follow your ways. In the name of your Jesus, you killed Witches and non-Witches alike; you killed Jews and Muslims, and gays and even some of your own Christians because there were those who wouldn't be your sheep; because they dared to question authority and think for themselves! Your solution to freedom and diversity has always been the stake and the rack; in Salem it was the noose and the pressing stones, and in Washington it was the House Un-American Activities Committee that ruined people's lives because of what they dared to think and write. And then along came the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and your own Foundation for Law and Morality--and their attendant religious intolerance! Your kind has gone from hunting 'witches' to 'Communists' to 'drug users'; and now that you've run out of enemies to create, you're back to witches again. Your kind will do anything to keep people under your domination.

"But tonight your time is through, and the cycle ends here and now." She took a deep breath. "No more, God damn you!" she roared, and her eyes blazed to new life with bright yellow fire. "You hear me, you bastard? NO FUCKING MORE!!!"

A blinding, massive fork of brilliant lightning shattered the clear night sky into a thousand shards, and exploded overhead with the fulminating thunder of a nuclear warhead. For a moment, it seemed as though the entire forest was suddenly illuminated to full daylight before it was plunged once more into almost total darkness.

"No!" Warren roared, with his heart pounding in terror. "The Lord will win!" He clenched a fist and struck at the air with it. "I will win!" He turned to a pair of soldiers and pointed at her. "Shoot her!" he ordered them. "Kill her!"

Another blast of thunder exploded in the sky as the two Holy Guardians raised their automatic rifles. Lightning flashed as they took aim at Valerie's chest, and the bolt of energy split into two jagged arcs that struck the rifles. Electricity shot through the weapons and into the soldiers, and they danced a macabre, jumping and jiggling dance as their systems were overloaded with energy. The rifles' ammunition exploded inside their magazines, and by the time the soldiers fell to the ground they were a pair of charred, smoldering corpses.

Keller's eyes widened with horrified awe. Jesus Goda'mighty!

Warren stared at the remains in mute terror. He backed away on rubbery legs, and his jaw worked silently as he tried to scream. He stumbled backward as the smell of burning flesh reached his nostrils. No! Not even she can do this! he thought as another bolt of lightning flashed. It struck another soldier in the chest and blew him to bloody pieces, leaving only the lower half of his body intact. As rifle fell to the ground, the crowd of witnesses began to scream as they scattered with most of the soldiers to run for cover. Most of them headed for the house, not caring if it was haunted or not; they figured their chances were better in there than they were if they remained outside. They hadn't grasped the significant fact that the lightning had struck only soldiers, and had come nowhere near them. But it was the soldiers who had the guns, and they forced the civilians at gunpoint to stay outside as they commandeered the safety of the house for themselves.

One person did not run for the house. She ran to where the last soldier had fallen, and picked up his rifle. She didn't know how to use it, but she had seen her father use a different one once, and all she had seen Oscar do was squeeze the trigger. Kelly Corey carried the rifle to where Keller was crouching on one knee. "Want me to try and shoot the cuffs off?" she asked him.

"Jesus no, girl," he replied. "You'll blow my hands off!"

Kelly looked offended. "No I won't."

"Let's not chance it, okay, honey?"

Thunder crackled and boomed again, and lightning flashed. Another bolt struck the ground in front of a fleeing soldier who had dropped his rifle and was now running for the woods. The ground before him suddenly erupted in a flash of light and an explosion of dirt clods and dust, and he stopped short. Turning around to change direction, Sergeant Greene's eyes suddenly fell on Keller, who was standing with a small girl who held an M-16. He recognized the daughter of the man and woman he had killed just a short time ago, and at the same moment Keller and Kelly recognized him as he turned to face them. Controlling his surprise, Keller said, "There's no way you're going to win, man. So why don't you just give it up and throw us the keys to these cuffs?"

Greene sneered at them. "You gotta be shitting me," he said contemptuously. "You think that little bitch'll blow me away?" He could see her right hand on the pistol grip, and the left had its fingers underneath the carrying handle. His sneer turned into a look of cold hatred. He started forward, approaching them quickly, and to Kelly he said, "You give me that rifle, you little shit, right now!" He made a quick grab for it.

( . . . mommy . . . daddy . . . please, don't be dead . . . )

( . . . get that little bitch before I kill her too . . . )

As lightning and thunder exploded again, and with terror in her young eyes, Kelly brought the M-16's muzzle up and jerked the trigger. A short but deadly spray of bullets stitched a line of bloody holes from Greene's chest to his face as the recoil caused the barrel to rise. To an adult, the recoil of an M-16 isn't that great, but to a child Kelly's size it was unmanageable. She fell backward and dropped the rifle. Over the continuing thunder, no one had heard the gunfire.

"My God," Keller said in a shocked whisper. He had seen a lot of things in his life, but this was the first time he had ever seen a seven-year-old girl deliberately shoot someone to death.

Kelly got up and took the keys from Greene's belt, and then she looked into the surprised, dead eyes of the man who had killed her parents. She stared at him for several seconds, with her young face completely empty of emotion. She felt cold inside. There were no more curses in her heart for him; there was just a cold, grim feeling of satisfaction. He was dead, and that was enough.

She went to Keller and helped him to free his wrists, and then she gave him the rifle. "You're really something, you know that?" he told the girl. He took her hand and together they ran for the house. The living room looked as though it was full of soldiers, all peering out at the front yard, so they headed around to the back door and into the empty kitchen. He looked around for a hiding place for her, then guided her toward the dining table. He went to one knee. "Stay under here, okay?" he said as he guided her gently under the table. "I'll be back as soon as I can." He quickly kissed her forehead, then pulled the white tablecloth back down to hide her, and went back outside.

The lightning and thunder had ceased, and the civilians and the few remaining soldiers outside slowly rose to their feet with terrified thoughts and questions running through their minds. It was so quiet now that it almost seemed as though nothing had happened . . . except for the fact that there were three charred soldiers lying on the ground, and there were disorganized people everywhere.

Keller headed into a small group of people and kept himself concealed as he gradually made his way over to Valerie. A couple of people noticed him, and they unobtrusively side-stepped to hide him from the view of the few soldiers still outside. Keeping the M-16 low, he edged his way toward the stake.

Then there was the sound of an approaching helicopter. Oh, shit, Keller thought as a Vietnam War-era Huey 204 came into the clearing and settled to hover a few feet above the ground. Now what? One of its .50 caliber machine guns opened fire, and two soldiers fell. Keller looked more closely at the helicopter, and then at its pilot. He grinned. "I knew you'd make it, Dutch!" The side door slid the rest of the way open and seven people jumped out of the cargo bay; six men and an Asian woman, who was dressed in a black ninja outfit minus the mask, and had her long black hair tied into a single thick braid. And in one hand was her only weapon: a sword. He stopped for a moment and watched her, not even realizing that another ten Rebels were coming from the woods.

A sword?

Gunfire and shouts broke out as the woman ran off at an angle, separating from the rest of her group, and leapt high to kick a soldier twice in the face and once in the chest before her sneakered feet touched the ground again. Keller stood immobile for a moment as he watched her while listening to the rapid fire of an AK-47 and an M-16, and the slower but more powerful fire of a .50 caliber M-60. The Rebels thought they had it made as three more soldiers fell before they realized what was happening and began to return fire. While Keller used the cover fire to run to Valerie, a corner of his mind wondered if the Rebels' gunfire was going to be any more effective against the soldiers' bullet-proof Kevlar vests than was the woman's sword. He kept in a crouch until he reached her with a set of keys. "Hi there!" he said brightly as he went to work on the cuffs. "Happy to see me?"

"You bet your ass I am!"

He noted with some apprehension that several soldiers, which had fallen under Rebel bullets, were getting to their feet again. "I'm sorry Harrison Ford and his whip couldn't make it," he said as he began unlocking the handcuffs. "I hope you're not too disappointed."

She turned as far as she could, and gave him a puzzled look over her shoulder just before her wrists came free. "Who?"

"Harris--" A shot rang out, and a bullet smacked into the stake to splinter its head. He flinched violently and glared at it in shock. "Never mind," he said nervously, and they jumped together from the platform and ran for the Huey.

And that was when she saw Jasmine. In front of her was a soldier with his side-handled baton raised high. Her sword was lying on the ground, having been struck from her hand. He swung repeatedly at her, and each time she effortlessly ducked and sidestepped. "Come on, weasel dick!" she taunted. "You can do better than that!"

Enraged, the soldier shouted, "Hold still, you little heathen bitch!" He swung furiously with the baton, letting his anger control him.

Jasmine ducked and sidestepped again with a fluid grace as she held her hands tucked behind her back. "Weasel dick!" she called him again.

He swung again, and missed again.

"Weasel dick! Nyah, nyah!" She ducked and spun, and failed to notice the approach of a second soldier as he swiftly came up from behind her. "Weasel dick! Weasel dick!"

The first soldier held off for a moment as he waited for his back-up to come up behind Jasmine and grab her, and then he could beat her to death. She was caught completely by surprise as a pair of powerful arms wrapped themselves around her.

"Now I've got you, bitch!"

She struggled against the second soldier, twisting and turning and trying to break free, and his arms around her tightened like the coils of a python.

The soldier in front raised the baton and waited for a moment, giving the other Guard a chance to steady her. Then Jasmine rammed her right heel against her captor's instep and brought from him an instinctive howl of pain and a violent flinch that loosened his grip slightly. Her head snapped backward and slammed into his nose, smashing skin and bone and cartilage into a flat, bloody rose. Again, he roared with pain. His grip around her loosened even more, just enough so she could slide out of his grasp and drop into a crouch. The first soldier, wanting to hit her before she got loose, swung the baton--and it slammed into the left temple of the second soldier's head, crushing the side of his skull with a sickening crunch.

The first soldier froze. Oh, fuck! he thought, momentarily stunned by what he had just done. And that wasted moment was all Jasmine needed: she sprang up, grabbed his arm before he could backhand her, and bent his club-hand inward against his forearm, breaking his wrist. Bones popped and ligaments tore with a satisfactory crunch, and she quickly relieved the baton from his useless hand. She slammed her elbow twice into his face with all her might, and then with a vicious snarl she backhanded him across the face with his own baton. Then she turned her back to him and threw him over her shoulder. He landed on the ground with a thud and a grunt, and her heel smashed into his face.

A third soldier came at her. She let him approach until he was almost on top of her. He raised his baton high with one hand, and Jasmine raised hers, one end in each hand. She blocked the blow, then lashed out with her foot and kicked him twice in the groin. She spun around as he fell, lashed out with her leg, and slammed her heel into his temple in a reverse roundhouse kick--and unlike with the customer from the bar so long ago, this time she was dead-on target. Then she slammed her baton into the groin and across the face of another Guard who was coming up behind her.

Valerie had no idea that Jasmine could fight like this! She heard her once mention that her father had taught her to fight, but she didn't tell her about this. She was about to shout a greeting to her when she suddenly saw another soldier leveling his M-16 at her. Her surprise turned to terror and desperation. "Jasmine! Look out!"

She turned in the direction of Valerie's voice, and grinned and waved. And then she noticed what had happened to her, and she thought, Dear Goddess, what did those bastards do to you?

She never saw the soldier who shot her. She spun and fell with a cry of pain as her hand flew to clutch at her wound. She tried to get to her feet, but she fell again.

Valerie ran to her as Keller went for the soldier, whose rifle was now jammed with a faulty cartridge stuck in the chamber. He was working madly at the charging handle, and then at the forward assist in an effort to clear the chamber, when Keller hit him with a full body block.

Jasmine's hand was clutching at a small hole above her breast. Valerie knelt next to her and saw the blood that was spreading and oozing between her fingers. "I've been shot," she said, more surprised than anything else. "Holy shit, I've been shot!" She looked up at Valerie, and her face began to pale as the surprise in her eyes turned to fear and shock. She coughed once, and flecks of blood appeared on her lips. "Oh, dear Goddess, no . . . "

"Easy, babe," Valerie said with a voice that trembled in fear. "You'll be okay. We'll get you out of here."

A wave of dizziness washed over her as darkness drew around the edge of her vision. "I don't think so," she whispered.

Tears spilled down Valerie's face. "No, Jasmine!" she said, her voice quavering. "Please, babe, don't die . . . "

Keller was suddenly there, after having dispatched the soldier. Jasmine's eyes closed slowly, and her body went limp. He pressed two fingers against her carotid artery, and he could barely feel the faint pulse that beat in her neck. He gently lifted her and saw that there was no exit wound in her back--the damned bullet was till in there. A .223 caliber round was a vicious little bastard that tumbled once it hit its target, and would chew up tissue like a tiny buzz saw. "Jesus," he whispered, noticing how much blood she had already lost. "Come on," he told Valerie as he lifted Jasmine's limp form. "We're getting the fuck out of here."

Four other Rebels had fallen so far, struck by more rifle fire from the soldiers who were still outside. But now more soldiers were emerging from the house, and they used the civilians as human shields as they fired at the Rebels. Not being able to fire back, and being too far from the woods to take shelter, more Rebels fell to Guardian gunfire. Both sides were running low on ammunition now, and much of the fighting was converting to hand-to-hand--and the remaining soldiers were winning.

Jostling her as little as possible as they ran, Valerie and Keller managed to get Jasmine to the helicopter. "She's hurt bad, man!" he shouted to Dutch over the roaring whine of the chopper's engine and the steady, rapid beating of its blades as he eased her into the cargo bay. Then he noticed the white sling in which his arm was supported. "What happened to you?"

"Some of those fuckers can shoot straight after all!" he shouted in reply. The chopper was sitting on the ground now, ready to take off again at a moment's notice. "That lady right there"--he indicated Jasmine--"is the one who patched me up!"

"Get her to Doc Bennet, quick!" Then he turned to Valerie. "Get in!"

Valerie didn't hear him. She was looking back over her shoulder, staring at Jasmine's katana lying on the ground. She suddenly bolted and ran to get it.

Keller couldn't decide whether to go after her and bring her back or not, at first, and then he motioned for Dutch to take off. The engine roared even louder and the wind from the blades grew to nearly gale force, and the huge machine lifted gracefully away from the ground, turned, and headed off to the southwest.

Gunfire was tapering off even more as both sides ran lower on ammunition. Some of the unarmed civilians crouched near the house, under the armed threat of perhaps half a dozen soldiers, and others lay flat on the ground, hoping to avoid getting shot as two more Rebels fell dead. Only three remained, and as they exhausted the last rounds from their weapons and began to use them as clubs they wondered what the hell had gone wrong. Faulty intelligence; only a small squad had been seen by the recon chopper when it had flown over not long ago, but obviously reinforcements--the party in search of witnesses for Valerie's execution--had been on the way, somehow unobserved by the over flight.

A few soldiers, after having dispatched the last of those who threatened them, moved in with their comrades to join in on the beatings. The remaining Rebels tried to surrender, but the Holy Guardians were in a blood frenzy, like a group of sharks tearing at a helpless, bleeding victim, and with savage delight they beat the men to death.

Valerie reached Jasmine's katana. She picked it up and swung it awkwardly, lashing at the soldier who was coming at her. She threw herself off balance with the strength that she put into the wide arcs she swung, and missed twice as the soldier stepped back again and again, waiting for his chance to move in and strike with the baton. Valerie kept rushing forward and clumsily swinging at him, blinded by tears of rage and pain. Damn you! her mind screamed at him. Damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU! And she missed again and again as the soldier stepped clear of her. She stopped, turned, and faced him again--

--and a pulse of psychic energy came from the sword, and ran up her arm to engulf her.

It reminded her of the day of the concert, and the guitar and all of its owners. She had never played a note in all her life; but all she had to do was just let the combined energy of all those previous owners and other guitarists flow into her. Go with the flow, a voice had been whispering inside her mind that day, just relax and go with the flow.

And now that voice was back. Go with the flow, it whispered again--only this time the voice was Jasmine's.

She could feel not only the Asian woman's presence inside of her, but also the presence of all of her ancestors; the skill and knowledge of generations of Samurai warriors and martial arts experts suddenly washed over and through her in a roaring tide that entered through her hands and spread throughout her entire body. It surged through her like a drug; only instead of slowing and numbing her, it had the reverse effect--her fear and fatigue were suddenly gone, and the pain from her wounds washed out of her as new strength flowed through her. Voices echoed in her mind, voices that spoke in Japanese, and even though she had never heard this language spoken before, she understood exactly what those voices were telling her.

Her other hand came up by itself, and its fingers curled around the hilt of the sword. The sword itself came up, vertically with the point slightly forward, and she stepped back with one foot and bent her knees slightly to distribute her weight more evenly. Her muscles rippled under the soft, tanned skin of her forearms as she tightened her grip on the katana's hilt.

The soldier circled around her warily, waiting for the right moment to strike. Valerie turned slowly, facing him, sliding her feet slowly across the ground rather than lifting them and stepping, always maintaining her balance. The baton suddenly came up and forward, and so did the sword; it sliced through the air with a sharp hiss, and the soldier screamed. The baton--with his hand still gripping it--went flying, and the soldier stared in wide-eyed shock at the blood that was now spurting from the stump at the end of his arm. Then the sword flashed around in a circle and swept downward with another hiss, and slashed through the side of the soldier's lower leg. It struck the bone with a jarring thunk!, and the soldier screamed again as he fell, clutching with his remaining hand at his calf as blood pulsed from the wound. The sword came around again; bloodstained steel sliced through his throat, almost taking off his head, and his jugular veins spurted warm, red blood in twin jets across her face and chest. She spun with the sword and it sliced through the top of another soldier's vest as he came up behind her; the vest fell away from his chest and flopped against his lap, and she thrust the blade into his abdomen. She planted her foot against his chest and pushed him away, and pulled the sword free. She turned again, and the katana spun slowly in her hands, like a single, slow moving blade of a propeller. She saw another soldier thirty feet away who was leveling his M-16 at her; there was the sound of a gunshot, and he spun and fell. She turned in the direction from where the shot had come, and saw Keller standing fifty feet away with a soldier's Beretta in both hands. A wisp of smoke was swirling from its barrel as he watched her, clearly impressed by the fighting skills she was displaying.

"Not bad!" he said under his breath. "For a woman . . . "

Valerie wryly smiled back at him and softly said, "Oink!"

More soldiers were coming from the house to surround her by the time Keller reached her. He stood with his back to hers as he pressed the clip release on the empty handgun and let the clip fall to the ground. He reached into a pocket for another, then checked another pocket. Oh, shit, he thought as he patted one empty pocket after another. Valerie handed him the baton she had picked up as he let the useless gun fall. It wasn't much, but it was all there was.

They watched silently as the circle of some twenty or so soldiers moved around them. They could hear rifle actions being drawn back, and slides on handguns clicked and snapped in the deathly silence that had fallen. The circle of soldiers moved in slowly as Valerie watched them with the blood-stained sword ready to strike. She glanced quickly at the people near the house, her eyes pleading for their help, but there was nothing they could do; armed soldiers held them at bay, ready to fire at the slightest movement. As more rifle and pistol barrels were aimed at the last two combatants--well out of reach of sword and baton and ready to spray death--Valerie thought resignedly, Oh hell.

The low, eerie howl of a single wolf, somewhere to the north, broke the silence.

One of the soldiers turned to see where the sound had come from, but nothing could be seen beyond the night-shrouded woods. He turned his attention back to Valerie and Keller, and the wolf howled again.

But this howl seemed to come from the south.

And from much closer.

The soldiers paused for another moment, and suddenly they didn't feel quite so confident. The only time any of them had ever heard a wolf howl was in those Foundation-produced anti-nature specials on TV with lurid titles like "Predators From Hell." But now they were out here in the middle of the woods, at night and low on ammunition, and the two howls sounded as though they had come from a source that was uncomfortably close.

A third howl came from the west.

The soldiers were growing more nervous by the moment. They looked into the impenetrable darkness, and then at each other as they hoped to find some signs of desperately needed encouragement. Instead, all they saw was the edge of the clearing as it was bathed in the surreal blue-white lunar glow, the stars that sparkled in the cold night sky, and they saw the ominous black woods that now seemed to be closing in around them. And what frightened them the most was what they suddenly discovered in the even blacker shadows of those woods: pairs of glowing chips of bright, clear amber that didn't quite sparkle like the stationary stars overhead.

They blinked, and moved.

And the soldiers saw their own growing terror reflected in each other's eyes.

At first it sounded like an earthquake. It was low and deep, and the ground itself seemed to vibrate with it, but rather than moving outward from one central point it circled around the clearing in a wave that grew louder and louder, layer upon layer, moving ever inward. A moment later it was recognized not as a temblor, but as the deep-chested growling of something vicious and hungry. It moved in closer and grew stronger--the very air vibrated with the sound--and as it permeated through the bodies of the soldiers a single wolf could be seen as it silently emerged from the pitch-darkness. It came from the northern edge, a hundred feet away, and even in this dim light Valerie could tell that it had the tattered remains of a bandage on one front leg. It came forward, moving stealthily, and then stopped. It lowered its head and flattened its ears against its skull, and its black lips peeled back in a blood-chilling snarl that revealed bright pink gums and three sharp, white fangs.

One of the soldiers turned to face it. He raised his M-16, aimed carefully, and fired a long burst. He expected to tear the animal to bloody shreds, but the bullets thudded into the ground and kicked up a spray of dry dirt and pine needles that pelted the wolf's front legs and chest. The animal never even flinched.

Another ominous snarl came from the south.

A soldier spun to face it, and found himself staring at three more huge, gray wolves. They were standing several feet apart with their heads lowered, ears back, and lips peeled back to reveal yellow pointed fangs that dripped glistening, silvery strands of saliva. They were standing much closer to the ring of soldiers than the first wolf; no more than ten feet away and ready to spring. No one had seen them approach, nor had anyone heard them; they had simply appeared there, as if by magic.

The blazing chips of amber moved out of the darkness of the shadowed woods and into the lunar glow of the clearing, and around them materialized lupine forms; some were gray and tan, some were white, some were as black as the shadows from which they emerged. They appeared and slowly closed in with growing boldness as the confidence of the soldiers suddenly drained away, trickling like warm urine down the leg of someone who has just now discovered the true meaning of pure, absolute terror.

"Dear Lord Jesus Christ," said the soft, quavering voice of a horror-stricken soldier. "Dear Lord Jesus Christ, how many of them are there?"

The surrounding ring of soldiers, which had been so bold only a few moments ago, now found themselves surrounded by over a hundred wolves.

They attacked en masse, rushing from the forest's edge in a gray tidal wave of fanged death. They swarmed across the open ground, ignoring the civilians that crouched near the house and leaping over the bodies of dead Rebels, to go after the men in the black fatigues and bullet-proof vests. Gunfire began again, but the wolves moved much too quickly for the terrified soldiers to take proper aim. Some of them began to believe that the animals truly were demons, impervious to the flying lead--but the soldiers had the Lord on their side, and He wouldn't let them down. The Lord would make their aim true.

The wolves came and they came, snarling and growling, and slashing with wet, gleaming fangs. The Kevlar vests, which had saved most of the soldiers from Rebel gunfire, were absolutely worthless as the wolves went for exposed legs, arms, groins and throats. Gutierrez, Warren's aide, was the first to go down as he was hit by three wolves; one came from behind and knocked his legs from under him, the second came from the front and slammed into his chest, and the third came from one side and sank its teeth into his throat, tearing muscle and skin and cartilage. Blood flowed warm and red and delicious through its teeth to stain the gray fur on its chest.

The rest of the soldiers tried to run for the house, leaving Valerie and Keller to the mercy of the wolves. The two slowly straightened from their crouch, but they never lowered their weapons. Keller started and instinctively raised his baton again, ready to defend himself as well as he could, as another wolf lunged past him to attack one of the retreating soldiers.

Valerie was nearly as amazed as Keller was. She laid a hand on his arm, and in a voice that was filled with both relief and fascination she said, "Easy, Garrett, they're allies; they're on our side."

***

Colonel Warren had been ahead of most of the civilians in an attempt to find cover when the shooting had first broken out, and now he was standing inside the large double doors of the barn, holding one open just a crack, and peering outside in horror as he watched the rest of the soldiers fall under the onslaught of the wolves. Dear God, what had gone wrong? How could this be happening? He was here to do the Lord's work; the Lord had personally sent him. He was the Lord's right arm, and the Lord had sent him here to capture the witch and execute her. He had even had her in his grasp, right there in his fist! So why was it that he was now watching his men die out there--being wiped out by the witch and her unholy allies, all aided by Satan himself? True, the Devil was powerful in this land of drug-deranged hippies and other Communist terrorists, but Satan was not stronger than Jesus. Was it possible that the Lord was putting him to another test?

Of course! That had to be it! It was another test of faith, as He had done with Job. The Lord wanted to make certain that Elias Warren was worthy of Him. "I am worthy of you, Jesus," he whispered nervously. "I have faith in you. Only in you!" But his voice now seemed to be tinged around the edges with the first traces of doubt. He strenuously suppressed it, and he wiped nervous sweat from his face and brow with a trembling hand. "Anything for you, Lord," he said softly. "Anything!"

Five of his men were standing nearby, nervously awaiting their orders. There were only two horses in the barn, so escape for all of them was out of the question. Four could leave, but that would leave two men behind. Who would be the unlucky ones?

He turned from the doors to address his soldiers. "You men," he said with a commanding voice, "get out there and help your brothers."

That wasn't the order they'd been waiting for.

"You heard me!" he shouted as he took note of their less than immediate response to his order. "The Lord commands it! Get out there and help your brothers! That's an order!"

"Fuck you!" one of the soldiers shot back.

The others turned to stare at him in shock and disbelief.

"We'll all get killed! I say we draw straws to see who gets out on horseback!"

"Don't you dare be against me!" Warren roared with spittle flying from his lips. He stood hunched over slightly, clenching his fists tightly against his thighs; his entire body was quivering from fear, and his face was red and contorted with rage. One arm shot forward with his finger pointing at the rebellious soldier. "When I give you an order, the Lord is giving you an order!" he shouted like a petulant child. "You do as we say!"

"No!" the soldier shot back. "If you want to stay here and get killed, you go right ahead--but I'm getting the fuck out of here!" He turned toward one of the horses.

His mind reeled with disbelief as he stared at him. He didn't know how to cope with it; no one had ever dared to commit such an act of insubordination before. One of his own men was turning his back on the Lord!

He fumbled with his holster and drew his sidearm. Holding the weapon in both hands, he shouted, "Stop! The Lord commands it!"

The soldier ignored him. He didn't realize there was a pistol pointed at his back as he tossed the reins around the horse's neck. "Fuck you--and your Lord! I'm outta here!" And then he heard the gunshots as five hollow-point slugs slammed into his back. Their impact threw him violently against the horse, and he turned slowly as he smeared his blood on the horse's hide. He slowly slid to the ground with a very surprised look on his face.

Shrieking wildly in sudden panic, the horse reared on its hind legs, turned, and struck at the rest of the men with its front hooves. "Shit!" a soldier screamed. "Fuck!" "Outta my way, asshole!" They rushed for the double doors, shoving each other aside and not even thinking about the wolves that were still out there. Staying inside with the panic-stricken horse, they believed, was almost a sure death. When they abandoned Warren and bolted through the doors, they glanced quickly around and realized that with all of the noise they had been making they had just attracted the attention of a dozen wolves. The soldiers turned together and ran in a group for the woods, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they could make it to the river and across it, where they would be safe.

They didn't make it.

***

Keller looked up as he heard the sound of another chopper. Anxiously, he watched it as it came down with a roaring whine and beating of blades, and then was relieved to see Dutch at the stick. A man in the cargo bay slid open the hatch, and Keller and Valerie ran for it. He scooped her into his arms and tossed her inside.

"How's Jasmine?"

"I don't know," Dutch replied. "But she's in good hands, and they're doing the best they can!"

"You stay here!" Keller told her, shouting once again over the roar of the engine. "I'm going to get Kelly, and then we're out of here!" He ran quickly for the house.

"Hey!" she began irately. "Who the hell--" She stopped when she realized he was paying her no attention. Who the hell did he think he was, tossing her in here like a sack of potatoes? For a moment, she was nearly incoherent with indignation. "Goddamn male sexist macho pig sonofab--!" The thought abruptly broke off as she spotted another running figure. It was making its way from the barn to the house.

Warren.

Her eyes narrowed like a hawk's. "Not again, you bastard," she growled. She called over her shoulder to Dutch. "I'll be right back!" She jumped to the ground and ran after him.

"Damn kids," Dutch muttered to himself, wanting very much to just get the hell out of here. "Always runnin' around and getting into trouble . . . "

***

Keller ran across the front porch and crashed the door open with his shoulder, knocking one of the three soldiers there aside and sending his rifle flying from his hands in the process. The other two spun away from their prisoners to see what had happened, and they were suddenly overpowered and beaten to the floor by their captives. Their weapons were quickly taken from them, and their hands were cuffed behind their backs. Keller glanced around the living room, ignoring the commotion his entrance had caused, and spied a fallen M-16. He snatched it up and started for the kitchen. I hope Kelly's still safe in there, he thought.

***

Warren saw that there was no way he could get into the house through the front door, so he headed for the kitchen. A couple of women had tried to follow him in, but he had slammed the door shut in their faces and locked it as a trio of wolves ran toward them. They pounded at the door, screaming and pleading to be let in, and Warren refused. Let the wolves have them, the heathen bitches, he thought as he listened to their piteous screams. The two women turned, and from the porch they saw the wolves with bloody muzzles heading straight for them, and they screamed even more. The wolves rushed up close and slammed themselves against the door, and tore at it with their nails as they snarled viciously. They paced back and forth, sniffing around its edges and smearing fresh streaks of blood on the bare wood, as the two women cowered and watched in terror. Finding no way in here, they ran off again to search for another, and the two women crouched motionlessly and clutched at each other with their eyes wide with terror and bewilderment.

Warren stepped back from the door and bumped against the heavy kitchen table. A child's whimper came from under it, and he lifted the cotton tablecloth and looked underneath to find Kelly Corey hiding there. "Come out from under there, you little shit!" he snarled, grabbing her painfully by the hair and eliciting a scream from her. "You're going to be my ticket onto that chopper!"

***

Valerie came around the corner of the house and saw the two women crouching at the door, blocking it. Locked, she thought. Otherwise, they'd be inside by now. She cast a quick look toward the windows and saw Warren moving about inside the kitchen . . . and then she saw that he had Kelly. She backed up a few feet, then ran and leapt head first through the window, crashing through wood and glass and the torn lace curtain. She went into a shoulder roll across the floor and came up on her feet. Blood was trickling from a diagonal gash across one eyebrow, a cut from the broken glass. "Let her go, Warren!"

"No! She's coming with me!"

"The hell she is!" She started to lunge for him.

Warren pointed his Beretta at the child's head, and Valerie froze. "I said she's coming with me!"

Valerie stood immobile, uncertain of what to do.

The connecting door from the kitchen to the living room burst open, and Keller dropped into a crouch with an M-16 in his hands. "Freeze, motherfucker!"

Warren spun around to face him. "Stay back! Stay back or I'll kill her! I swear, I'll kill her!"

Keller immediately eased the rifle to the floor. "You would, wouldn't you?" he growled with unbridled hatred. "You murdering piece of shit."

"Is this one of your fine examples of Christian ethics, Priest?" Valerie asked contemptuously. "To threaten a child to save your own worthless ass?"

Warren smiled that cold Inquisitor's smile again. "We Christians aren't perfect," he said, "just forgiven. Now tell your demon to get away from that door."

Keller watched him coldly, words failing him. He could not articulate just how much he despised this . . . Christ, this guy really is fucking nuts, he finally thought. He had never been in the presence of someone who was this severely unbalanced, and it chilled him.

"Do it! Now!"

Keller moved away slowly, and Warren--still clutching the child before him like a shield--edged his way toward the door. When they got there, Kelly did something that surprised them all: she grabbed his gun-hand while his attention was on the adults, and sank her teeth into his hand, just below the base of his thumb, biting him hard enough to draw blood. Warren roared in pain, yanked his hand away, and dropped the gun. He slapped her hard with his other hand and sent her spinning against Keller, and ran out the door.

Valerie ran to them, and knelt before Kelly. "Are you okay, honey?" she asked.

"Yeah," they both answered.

In spite of herself, she regarded Keller for a moment with a wry grin before returning her attention to Kelly. "You're really one brave girl, y'know that?"

Kelly smiled bashfully.

"Take her to the chopper, Garrett. I'm going after Warren."

***

There were too many people in here, Warren thought as he burst through the door and into the living room. Too many people and nowhere to hide. And they were almost all civilians, too; the only exceptions were the three Guards who were sitting with their hands cuffed behind their backs, and were being carefully watched by a man and two women, all holding the soldiers' confiscated weapons on them. The rest of the people were looking out through the windows as the wolves continued to lope back and forth, tugging with their teeth at dead soldiers. No one had noticed Warren's entrance; after all the gunfire, the thunder and lightning, and the wind and all that screaming out there, the slamming of a door hardly warranted even the slightest bit of attention.

He frantically scanned the room. Where to go? He wondered, and then he saw the stairs. Maybe there was another way out up there. He charged up the stairs at full speed, taking three at a time.

Valerie burst into the living room. She could hear footsteps rushing up the stairs, and a door up there banged shut. Son of a bitch, she thought, he's gone up to Mom's temple room.

She took off after him.

***

Keller took Kelly into the living room. Holding aside a tattered lace curtain with one finger and peering through the shattered window, he could see the helicopter as it sat with its blades still spinning, ready to take off. "Come on, honey," he said, "we're going for a helicopter ride." He picked her up and held her in one arm while the other continued to hold the M-16. He started for the door.

"Hey!" said Scott Preston. "You're not really going out there, are you?"

"Sure I am. Why not?"

"The wolves are still out there!"

Keller opened the door a crack and looked outside. "Yeah, I know," he said. "But they're on our side." I hope, he added silently. As he headed off toward the chopper he thought, Valerie, if you're wrong and I get eaten, I'm never speaking to you again. He was pretty sure she was right; but coming out here with a seven-year-old child in tow was not the best way to find out. But what other choice did he have? It was the only way to get her out of here and away from all of this insanity.

Besides, he still had the M-16.

Just in case.

He hoisted her into the open hatch next to the pilot's seat. "That big guy there at the controls is a good friend of mine!" he told her. "You stay with ol' Dutch here, and you'll be just fine! Dutch, I'm going back to get Valerie, and then we're out of here!"

He gave him a nod. "You got it!"

Keller shut the hatch and latched it, then started back for the house as he cast an occasional glance from one dead soldier to another. Some of the wolves were slowly dispersing, evidently feeling that their job here was done. "Wait a second," he said to himself as he scowled first at one black-clad body and then at another. None of the faces were the one that he hoped to see, and those that had only bloody red flesh for faces were the wrong size and body shape. "Where is he?" he wondered out loud. Where the hell is he? He looked quickly around, searching the grounds before him.

There was a movement next to the house. Coming from under the house, through one of the cellar windows. A lone figure, dressed in black, crawled slowly like a shadow from the window and stood on his feet, looking carefully around. Seeing no wolves, he started for the woods. Keller raised the M-16 and sighted down the barrel, and shouted, "Willis!"

Corporal Willis, hearing the familiar tone, thought for a brief moment that it was Colonel Warren calling for him. He stopped and turned, and saw Keller aiming at him.

"Die, motherfucker!" He squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

Keller looked at the rifle as though it had just insulted his entire family. He pulled back on the charging handle and looked into the chamber, and then it dawned on him that all this time he had been running around and carrying this weapon with him, and the fucker was empty! He tossed it away and began to run. He saw that the big soldier was also running, escaping into the forest. He would have made it, too, and Keller would never have seen him again if it had not been for the sudden appearance of that limping wolf. It bared its fangs and crouched, ready to spring at the soldier.

Willis skidded to an abrupt stop, his heart pounding and his eyes wide in terror, as he stood frozen to the spot, gazing into the face of Death.

And then, with a surprised grunt, he suddenly went down under a full body slam. The two men went down, rolling in the dust and leaves, thrashing and punching at each other. Keller scrambled to his feet, took a step back, and, when Willis struggled to his knees, kicked the soldier hard in the face. Willis flew backward, twisted to one side, and got to his feet. From this much closer range, Keller realized just how big Willis really was. "Come on, asshole, let's see what you've got!"

"This is what I've got," Willis replied as he took out his side-handled baton, "you fucking Commie rat-bastard son of a bitch!" He took a lumbering step toward Keller and swung, missing his target by a foot. Keller ducked under the swing and sent a hard right into the corporal's side. Willis staggered slightly from the blow and turned to face him again as he raised the baton. He swung a second time, missed, and Keller stepped in and slammed his elbow into the soldier's kidney. Willis grunted in pain, and his hand opened reflexively, losing the baton. He turned and lashed out with his fist to catch Keller across the side of his head. Keller saw stars and thought a bomb went off somewhere nearby, and the corporal lashed out again and punched him in the face. The blow sent him spinning to the ground, and he lay there momentarily stunned. His vision cleared barely in time to see Willis coming toward him, carrying the baton he had dropped. The soldier stood directly over him and stared down at him. Oh, shit, the smuggler thought, trying to move. His arms felt sluggish and unresponsive. Willis raised the baton with a contemptuous sneer on his lips, and suddenly Keller's foot came up and his heel slammed into the soldier's groin. Willis's bellow of pain echoed through the woods as he fell to his knees. Keller rolled quickly out of the way as the soldier thudded to the ground with both hands clasping his testicles, and the baton fell to the ground again. One of his hands slowly began to grope for it, and Keller quickly snatched the club away and held it tightly. He rolled to his feet and kicked Willis hard in the ribs. Willis rolled with it and staggered to his feet, breathing in ragged gasps. "I'm going to kill you," he half-growled and half-groaned.

"Before you do," Keller responded, also panting heavily, "maybe you can explain to me how you get all that semen out of your moustache every night."

A new raging fire leapt into the corporal's eyes. This Godless commie piece of shit dared to call him a . . . a . . .

With a maniacal roar, he charged at Keller with the lumbering speed and grace of an enraged rhinoceros. Keller stood his ground, crouching and twitching the baton in his right hand. "Come on, fucker!" he yelled at him, and then dodged to one side and slammed the baton across his stomach. A strangled grunt came from the soldier as he doubled over, and Keller hit him again, across the base of his neck. Willis fell to the ground again, and Keller kicked him across the face. The impact of the blow flipped him over, and he fell on his back. Keller stepped in again, and a foot came up and caught him across the ribs, sending him flying. He landed on his side and scrambled to his feet. Willis was up again, and his breath was coming in harsh gasps. God, Keller thought exhaustedly, what's it going to take to finish this monster?

"You're dead shit, fucker," Willis said as a horrible smile crept across his bloodied lips. "And after I wipe you out of my ass and flush you down the toilet, I'm going to get that witch-whore of yours and I'm gonna fuck her ass and her mouth, and that tight little cunt of hers, and then I'm gonna strangle her with her own guts!" He rushed at him again.

With a cold and determined smile, Keller let him get just close enough. He summoned every last gram of strength, channeled it into his right arm, and let his fist fly. It smashed Willis dead-center in the face, crunching the bone, and Willis froze. He stood there for an agonizingly long moment, very still, with unfocused eyes that stared somewhere around Keller. And then he collapsed like a sack of week-old laundry. Keller dropped to one knee, grabbed the corporal by the collar, and began smashing at his face. Willis raised one weak arm in a feeble attempt to fend off the blows, but he just didn't have the strength. Keller grabbed him by the throat and squeezed, and slammed his head repeatedly against the hard forest floor. "Come on, fucker!" he shouted. "Come on, goddamn it, fight me! Fight me! Come on!" His teeth were clenched to the point of cracking as he continued to bash away at Willis with one hand, grunting with exertion with each punch, and with the steel-like fingers of his other hand he crushed his windpipe.

But Willis didn't care anymore.

Keller stopped for a moment as he looked into the soldier's glazed eyes. "No!" he shouted. "No! You bastard! You chickenshit bastard, I'm not through with you yet!" He continued bashing away at Willis, wanting to bash at him for what he was going to do to Valerie and what his cohorts had done to his sister and too many friends, but the corporal had taken the easy way out.

And then sanity returned to him as he suddenly realized that this could not go on forever . . . He most certainly was through with him.

He relaxed his grip on Willis's throat and slowly got to his feet as he stared down at the big corpse. And then he fell and lay on his back, breathing heavily in harsh, strained gasps. "Gotcha," he panted. "Gotcha, you sumbitch." He lay still for a few moments, gasping for breath.

The bandaged wolf slowly approached him. He could see the animal coming toward him, but he was too exhausted to move. "If you're going to kill me, at least make it quick--I ain't got all night."

The wolf stood over him and stared at him for a long moment. Its jaws parted slightly, and its head came down toward him with its hot, rank breath wafting in his face . . . and then it licked his face a couple of times.

Keller rose slowly and painfully to a sitting position as he placed a throbbing hand gently against his painful ribs, and stared in surprise at the wolf. And then he decided to take a chance as he slowly reached forward with his other hand, and gently scratched the wolf behind one ear. "I guess . . . Valerie wasn't kidding," he groaned with an exhausted voice between dry, harsh gasps. "We really are allies."

***

Valerie turned the knob, put her shoulder to the door, and crashed it in.

Warren spun away from the window where he had been looking for an escape route. Realizing there was none, he turned to face Valerie. The two stared at each other for a long moment; Valerie's eyes were cold and hard, and Warren's were filled with hatred and fear.

"All right, Priest," she said as she locked the door behind her. "It's just you and me now."

Colonel Warren regarded her silently, trapped with the woman he had burned to death over five hundred years before. After all this time, and with everything falling apart around him, all of the old doubts that he had been suppressing for all these years suddenly came roiling to the surface. Was it possible that he had been wrong? Had he always been lying to himself? Oh, dear God--they had lived before! He had always known, in the back of his mind, that this was true; but he had always fought against this by claiming that the Devil had been planting those doubts in his brain.

"I was doing the Lord's work back in Spain, as I had done in Bavaria," he blurted out. "And, by God, I shall do it again! 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!'"

"Whatever happened to 'Thou shalt not kill,' Priest? Isn't that in your Bible, too?"

He bristled with new outrage. "Don't you fucking dare quote Scriptures to me, you fucking Devil's whore!!"

Valerie took a menacing step forward. "I am getting sick and goddamn tired of you calling me that," she growled.

"Even the Devil can quote Scriptures!" he shouted as he took a step back. "You cannot trick me!"

"You people always say that whenever you're trapped with your own words."

"The Sixth Commandment says, 'Thou shalt not commit murder.'"

She folded her arms. "How very convenient it is for you to interpret it that way. And I suppose what you and your kind did to me and hundreds of thousands of other innocent people wasn't murder? As long as you re-label 'murder' with 'execution,' you get to sleep at night with a clean conscience, don't you? You can get away with murder just so long as you don't call it murder."

"No!" The shout sounded uncertain even to him. "It wasn't! God commands that a witch must die!"

"Shit," she said derisively. "'God commands.'" Then her voice lowered. "You son of a bitch, why the hell won't you drop your pretense? There's no one else around here; it's just you and me. You don't even believe in a God, do you? All you believe in is your fucking Bible."

Warren watched her suspiciously. "What do you mean by that?" he asked, puzzled and wary. What is she talking about? The Bible is the word of God, he told himself, so therefore it had to have come from God. Right? "What's the difference?"

"Precisely my point," she said. "You believe in the Bible, which is a mere book written by men." She took another step toward him and leaned forward on the desk that separated them, and her eyes impaled him with twin daggers of ice. "Your Bible is your God."

Warren was silent as his mind raced. "Nonsense," he said at last. "The Bible says-" He stopped, and thought furiously. "I mean, God tells us . . . in . . . in the Bi . . . ble . . . " His voice trailed off, and then his eyes re-focused on her. There was a growing uncertainty in them that quickly turned to fear. And then realization hit him like a baseball bat right between the eyes--he couldn't say anything about his idea of God without referring to the Bible . . .

She was right. God damn her, she was right. He knew this now . . . yet still he tried to turn away from it. No, he thought, don't think about what she's saying. Push it away. Push it away, and don't think. It's not important anyway; don't think about it, don't think . . . Once again, he averted his eyes from the truth and lost himself in the soft, warm, sweet embrace of the comfortable lie.

"So what was it that put you onto me this time, Priest? I mean, I know it was inevitable that we'd meet again--hell, I saw to that--but just to satisfy my curiosity, I would still like to know just how you found me."

Eager to think of something else, he blurted out, "The Tarot cards." And then he immediately wished he had kept his mouth shut.

"Tarot cards?" She'd had a feeling that they had something to do with it, but . . .

The wanted posters. She had seen them almost everywhere she had stopped, and she had wondered how her picture had been obtained. She could see one of them in her mind now, and this time she studied it carefully. The background had been fuzzy and out of focus, but the expression on her face had been crystal clear. Her expression . . . the look she had given George at the bookstore when he charged her fifteen dollars for something he was going to burn . . .

"That sneaky little bastard," she said. "That little geek at the bookstore . . . he took my picture, didn't he? I should've known--your people showed up at my house that same night!" Then she looked puzzled. "But why the hell did he take my picture? He didn't know me."

"George always lets me know when--" and again he wished he could keep his big mouth shut. My God, he thought, why don't I just give her a . . . signed confession?

And in that short moment of silence, Valerie understood. "When someone buys something that the government doesn't like," she finished for him. "Is that it? No wonder there's never a cop around when you need one--they're all hanging out at bookstores! Waiting to bust someone for . . . what do you call it, buying subversive literature?" She shook her head in disgust. "Are you people really that afraid of different ideas?"

"Too many different ideas cause disunity," Warren replied, parroting what his instructors had taught him back in his training days; even now he could hear their voices echoing through his mind. "The country must be kept safe and strong, and uniformity is strength. We must always be on our guard against the Satanic forces of Communist atheism! The nation must be united, and it must be united through law and order. Without law and order our nation cannot survive!"

George always lets him know when people buy something that the Foundation condemns. Did he take pictures of all of his customers? Did he keep his own little secret files on everyone who came into his store and bought what he considered to be "questionable" materials? And why did he keep such materials around in the first place? Unless it was to . . . to deliberately entrap people? Oh, dear Goddess, she groaned inside, with a sudden and dreadful realization. How many lives have these people ruined? What had been the fate of all of those people who questioned authority and dared to think for themselves? Of those who dared to dissent?

Who dared to be free?

Was this the ultimate price for "national unity," and "law and order?"

She felt cold and disgusted inside. "You . . . " she said, the rage in her voice barely controlled. "You goose-stepping, Bible-thumping, fascist son of a bitch!" A thousand curses and questions were swirling through her mind in a tempest of rage, and it took another long moment before she finally controlled herself well enough to force the words out. "But why me, damn you?" she asked. "Why did you choose to hunt me through all these lives and centuries? Why me?"

"Because you're a rebellious Witch, God damn your soul!" Warren shouted back. "Because you've always been a dissenter and a Witch, ever since the first time we met! And because you and your kind defies our Holy Word and our Cause, and because the common people have always preferred to follow people like you instead of our Church!" He paused for a moment to get his breath back. "You and your talk of Nature and Freedom . . . " He spoke the last two words as though they left a vile, fecal taste in his mouth. "Living under a properly structured society was never good enough for people like you; you always had to live your own ways . . . You and your talk of defying authority . . . You and people like you have always had a way of making others listen to you, and of making them think for themselves . . . and it was always people like you who led them down the path of resistance against their ordained masters." He paused for another long moment. "Why did I choose to hunt you? Because you represent the very spirit of resistance and rebellion, Valerie Ryan! And because you represent the spirit of independence and freedom, you are the enemy of the ruling class--and we will destroy you for it! Otherwise people will always resist to being kept in their proper place by their masters in government." His voice suddenly cracked, and tears began to stream down his reddening face as it suddenly twisted in anguish. "The Lord wants us to be victorious!" he declared with a sudden, sobbing wail, and Valerie watched him with a new kind of horror in her eyes. Elias Warren was melting down.

And then, with new-found determination--and with glistening mucus running from his nose to his lip, and spittle flying from his mouth--he shouted angrily: "And, by God, we will be! This is our world, not yours! God gave it to us, not to you! It is our manifest destiny to win in the name of the Lord!"

She started to move around the desk, and Warren retreated a step. She really didn't know what to say to him at this point. "You want to know something?" she finally asked him. "I'll bet you're not going to believe this, but just now I've decided to remove my curse from you, Priest. Do you know why?"

He watched her with dread and suspicion.

"Because you are one sick son of a bitch. If you were responsible for yourself, I think I might waste you, right here and now; but I don't want to take the chance of having to come back in another life and dealing with you again--I just want to be rid of you, once and for all." She straightened as she prepared to leave. "So fuck off, Warren. Just fuck off, and leave me alone." She turned her back on him and started for the door.

No one turns their back on me and the Lord! Warren thought. We cannot let her escape! We must not!

He scrambled around the desk and grabbed her by the shoulder to spin her around with a raised fist. Valerie blocked the punch and threw one of her own, hitting him squarely in the face and staggering him back several steps. Her knee came up high and her foot snapped out and caught him in the chest, and sent him flying backward into some bookshelves across the room with a loud crashing of glass and splintering of wood. A burning oil lamp that rested on the top of the shelves fell to the floor and shattered, and sent a pool of burning oil to spread across the floor. He scrambled to his feet and leapt again, and this time he landed on her and dragged her to the floor. Pinning her down, he raised a fist to smash into her face. She dodged her head to one side and Warren's fist missed her by a centimeter to slam into the hardwood floor. As he roared with pain, Valerie used the opportunity to grab at his throat to choke him. Warren used his good hand to try to break her hold, shifting his weight slightly, and Valerie brought her knee up into his ribs. The blow was not hard enough to cause him any damage, but it did dislodge him from her. She pushed him off and rolled to her feet.

The burning oil spread to the heavy drapes that hung on a nearby window. Bright flames quickly began to climb them to the ceiling. Holy shit, she thought, I've got to get out of here! But Warren wasn't going to let her leave. He tried to grab her again, and she rammed a fist into his solar plexus. She hit him again, doubling him over, and then brought both hands down, clenched together, on the back of his head. Warren went down and stayed there.

The flames were spreading rapidly. Valerie checked the door, saw that she still had time to get out, and ran for it. She grabbed the knob and twisted, but it refused to turn. What the FUCK? she thought, fighting with the knob with both hands now as panic rose in her. And then she remembered she had locked it to prevent Warren from leaving; now it was costing her precious time in getting out. She twisted the lock open with one hand as the flames roared closer to her, turned the knob with the other, and yanked the door open with both. As she went through the door she ran into another dark figure; she lashed out with a clenched fist and her blow was blocked, and the man raised a hand to ward off another one. "Cut it out, goddamn it!" he shouted. "It's me!"

She grabbed Keller by his jacket as she rushed past him. "Let's get the fuck out of here!" she shouted. "The whole place is going up!"

"Where's Warren?"

"In there!" she replied over the roaring flames, indicating the attic with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder.

"Good! Let 'im stay there!"

That made a part of her feel cold-hearted, leaving a man behind like that. But on the other hand, Karma or not, she sure as hell wasn't about to go back in there and get him. After all, wasn't it the fate to which he had once condemned her?

***

No one noticed just when the gunfire had finally stopped. The only soldiers left alive were now prisoners being held at gunpoint by civilians, and they were being escorted quickly out of the burning house. A group of wolves circled menacingly around them, perhaps hoping that the soldiers would try to break free and escape; they were still hungry. Even the civilians thought that they, too, might be in some danger from them; but still they kept most of the guns trained on the soldiers. Had any of them stopped to think about it, they would have noticed that no one had yet seen a wolf attack a civilian. But old beliefs ran deep, and they remained wary.

Dutch was still sitting in the pilot's seat. He was resting his Reuger in his lap and watching the front of the house.

"They are going to come back, aren't they?" Kelly shouted anxiously.

Dutch was worried himself, but he didn't want Kelly to know it. "If I know Keller--and I've known him for a lot of years--they should be coming out pretty soon . . . there!" He pointed, and Kelly looked out through the windshield. "There they are!" She smiled hopefully as Valerie and Keller came running out, and her smile changed to an expression of horror as a pair of wolves ran toward them. One of them circled around behind her and came up on her left, and the other took the right, and together they escorted her to the waiting helicopter. Keller was looking a little nervous himself, but Valerie just grinned at them. The wolves trotted alongside, glancing from side to side as these lupine bodyguards made certain that no unauthorized personnel came near her.

Kelly scrambled into the cargo bay and slid the hatch open, and as soon as Valerie was inside she threw her arms around her neck. She hugged her tightly, fiercely, thankful that she was safe. She didn't know what she would have done if Valerie had died along with her parents.

"Hi, sweetheart . . . Are you okay?"

"Yeah!" Kelly replied. "How about you guys?"

"We're okay!" Valerie replied.

"Yeah, just a walk in the park," Keller said, mostly to himself, as he somewhat nervously continued to watch the wolves that were now sitting near the helicopter, with their eyes narrowed and their coats and ears flattened against the downbeat of the chopper's blades. He wasn't about to invite them in.

Valerie looked down at them, and she wondered if she should invite them on board. They watched her for a moment, almost as if they were considering her silent half-offer, and then they turned and headed off for the woods at an easy lope.

"Valerie!" Dutch said. "I've got something for you!" He reached under the seat and withdrew something. "I think you'll be wanting to hold onto this!"

Valerie reached forward to accept it, and found that it was the Book of Shadows he had risked his life to retrieve. "Since you stuck your neck out for this in the first place, I figured it must be pretty important!"

"Oh, Dutch! You're a sweetheart!" She hugged his neck with one arm and kissed his bristly cheek. "I can't thank you enough for this! You have no idea what this means to me!"

Dutch's face turned a bright crimson as he smiled sheepishly, and said nothing.

Keller had never seen him blush before. He turned to look at Valerie and said, "Hey, what about me? I kind of helped a little, too, y'know!"

She thought of the soldier he had beaten to death in the cellar. It had chilled her at first, but now--after what she had been through--she understood his rage. She didn't condone or condemn it; instead, she understood and accepted it as a part of who he was. And then she thought that maybe the cards weren't totally wrong after all; they had shown that there would be a man, a woman, and a child embarking on a journey. Across a river in a boat or across the sky in a helicopter, the same meaning was still there.

"Oh, of course you get a kiss!" She pressed herself against him and kissed him, long and deep. She felt a twinge of guilt about it, though, because a part of her was still thinking about Jasmine.

When they broke off, he grinned at her, slightly shaken. "Zowie!"

Dead soldiers lay scattered across the land like bloody rag dolls, and occasionally a wolf would take a bite at one of them to make certain he was dead. Slowly, one and two at a time, the wolves began to leave. Valerie spotted the wolf with the bandaged leg, and it stopped for a moment to look back at her over its shoulder. She watched him, waved to him and smiled, and his lips parted as he panted slightly. Even his eyes softened as he appeared to smile back at her. For a moment he had that same Golden Retriever-like expression in his eyes that he had worn while lying near the hearth the other day, and it made her stop and think for a moment. Had the wolf been repaying her for her kindness in releasing him from the trap, and for treating his leg? Or could it be . . .

"Gus?" Tears suddenly welled in her eyes, and her voice choked with emotion. "Is that really you?"

And what about the other wolves? Had they been guided by her magic? Or had they been temporarily possessed by the spirits of her family's fallen allies from ten years before? Regretfully, she concluded that she would never really know as this wolf, too, turned once more and disappeared into the forest.

The civilians outside had split into two groups. One kept watch over the prisoners--and wondered what the hell they were going to do with them, since they had nowhere to incarcerate them--while the other went to the bodies and began collecting weapons and ammunition. After all, these new resistance fighters were going to need them, no matter how distasteful it might be to pick over dead bodies.

"I don't know about you," Keller said, "but I could use a beer! You think it's about time we finally got out of here?"

And go where? Valerie thought as she stared at her home, which was now ablaze all along the top floor. She could hear Colonel Warren screaming at the window. "Help me! Jesus, God! Help me!"

" . . . only next time it will not be me who burns!" The words echoed in her mind from over five hundred years ago.

She forced herself to be hard and cold. It's your own goddamn fault, Priest, she thought. Now you know what you put me through, you son of a bitch. What goes around comes around, and you're getting exactly what you earned. How do you like it?

"Let's go, Dutch!" Keller shouted.

The chopper started to lift away from the ground, and then she suddenly started for the open hatch. Keller grabbed her by the arm. "Where the hell are you going?" he asked, and he had a sudden and bad feeling that he already knew the answer.

"I'm going back to help Warren!"

Dutch heard the commotion in back, and he stopped the chopper's ascent.

Keller stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Are you fuckin' crazy?!" he demanded. "That son of a bitch was going to burn you alive!"

"I know it!" she countered as she twisted out of his grasp. She lunged for the hatch and jumped to the ground.

Dutch brought the chopper back down, and Valerie turned and faced Keller. "But I can't leave him there! Don't you get it? Maybe, just maybe if I help him, I can break this damned Karmic cycle that keeps bringing us back for this ongoing nightmare! And maybe I'll finally be rid of him, once and for all! I have to at least try!"

"Fuck it! We're getting the hell out of here!" He lunged for her.

"The hell I will!" She dodged his lunge and ran for the house.

"Valerie! Goddamn it, come back here!" Even as he shouted he knew she wasn't paying any attention to him. He slammed his fist against the chopper's sliding hatch. "Shit!"

***

Smoke had already filled the living room and tried to choke her, and the heat and flames were still sucking the oxygen upstairs and consuming it. She ran for the staircase and bounded up the steps. She reached the top landing and tried to see through the haze.

"Help!" the Colonel screamed again, his voice weaker and harsher this time.

Valerie stopped at the door as the flames leapt at her to lick at her face. It all seemed so familiar to her; the heat of the flames, the harsh, asphyxiating smoke . . . all that was missing was the rope around her wrists and the stake at her back. She backed up hastily, and looked around for a moment . . . She ran down to the second floor and into her bedroom, where she whipped a heavy blanket from the foot of her bed, then ran back to the attic. "Warren!"

"Over here!" A strangled cry.

She threw the blanket around herself and covered her head, then took a deep breath and plunged inside.

Flames were roaring everywhere. She squinted, trying to see through the fire and smoke. "Warren!" she shouted again, and choked on smoke. "Where are you?"

"Here!" came a weak reply.

She saw him, lying on the floor some fifteen feet away. A wall of flame seemed to shift to one side for a moment, and she ran forward. She got to him, then hooked her hands under his armpits and hauled him to his feet with a loud groan of exertion as the flames continued to rob her of oxygen. She slung one of his arms across her shoulders and tossed the blanket over him and herself, and then slung her other arm around his waist and grabbed onto his gun belt. "We're going to run for the door, on three. Ready?"

He gasped and nodded.

"Right. One . . . two . . . three!" And then they were making their way toward the door. Warren, weakened from smoke inhalation, stumbled several times, and it was up to Valerie to drag him. She had second thoughts about being here; was it really worth it? Should she have risked her own life in a possibly vain effort to save his?

Another sheet of flame leapt up in front of her, momentarily barring her way. Well, it didn't really matter anymore, since she was already here. Now she had to do her best, not only for his survival but also for her own.

The flames before her retreated, and she seized the opportunity to drag him through the doorway. A huge wooden beam, covered in flames, fell with a horrendous thud just inches from them, and then an instant later the entire roof of the attic collapsed with a thundering crash that created a massive, almost oceanic spray of burning embers as another wave of flames rushed at them.

And then there was someone else there; Keller met them at the top of the stairs. He grabbed Warren's coat and slung him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and then grabbed at Valerie's arm as she began to fall to the floor. He pulled her to her feet, dragged her stumbling along, and they headed down the stairs and out of the house.

They came through the front door in a billow of black smoke, coughing and choking and gasping, and stained with soot. But they were out in the fresh air, and Keller thought he had never smelled anything so good in all his life. He inhaled deeply and coughed forcefully, and Valerie fell to her hands and knees in an uncontrollable fit of coughing and gasping. Keller carried Warren a few more steps, and then dropped him like a duffel bag to the ground. He went over to kneel next to Valerie, placed a hand on her shoulder, and forced her to look up at him. "Are you okay?" he gasped.

She gasped, coughed, and nodded as she circled her thumb and forefinger in an okay sign, and then her hands fell to the ground once more to support her.

"Yeah, right," he said with another gasp.

Valerie finally rolled and sat as her throat cleared, and she gasped for more air. "What about him?" she asked, her voice raw.

Keller glanced at him. "Who fuckin' cares?" he groaned. He looked at Valerie again and said, "Now can we get out of here?"

Valerie gasped more air into her lungs and went to kneel over Warren. There were blisters on his face, and his hair and uniform were singed. She felt for the carotid artery in the side of his neck and found a strong pulse. A moment later, Warren's eyes fluttered open to see a bright, full moon.

"Alive," he croaked. "Alive, alive!" He took a deep, harsh breath and sobbed in gratitude. "Thank you, Jesus!" he shouted, his faith reaffirmed. "Thank you for delivering me from--" He stopped suddenly, and his eyes widened in shock when they fell on Valerie's bruised and blood-caked, sweating and soot-stained face as it hovered above him. "You!" he cried. "But--"

"Yeah, Keller and I pulled you out."

"But . . . but I thought Jesus . . . " A wave of confusion swept across his face as he struggled to rise. "This cannot be! You saved me? But why?"

She sighed exhaustedly, and shook her head. "Beats the hell out of me," she lied, preferring to avoid a lengthy discussion on the merits of reincarnation versus right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. Right now, she just didn't have the strength for it.

"But Jesus . . . didn't He..?"

"Nope."

He looked at Keller.

"Don't even ask, you fucking maggot," he growled threateningly. He moved to lunge at the colonel, but Valerie moved between them.

He looked back at the Witch, his eyes uncomprehending and filled with fear. "But Jesus wouldn't send you to save . . . me . . . " His mind was racing frantically, trying to make sense of it. "You saved me . . . after I . . . Then it was Satan who must have . . . " He sat up slowly, rapidly blinking baffled eyes, and suddenly he realized he didn't know what to believe anymore. All of his previously held convictions were suddenly shattered like a store-front window beneath the impact of a looter's brick, and he could feel his mind caving in. "Somebody," his voice cracked. "Please, someone . . . Tell me what to believe . . . " He slowly drew his knees up and hugged them tightly to his chest. Tears began to stream down his face, and he began to moan.

"What the hell's goin' on?" Valerie wondered. She began to slowly and cautiously step away from him, as though he were a bomb that might go off at any sudden movement.

Warren's eyes widened, and as he clenched and ground his teeth together he didn't even realize that he was chewing at the insides of his cheeks and turning them into a bloody pulp. Red foam bubbled from his lips. His moan grew louder and louder, until it became a sobbing scream. He inhaled a deep breath and screamed again as he finally tipped over the edge, and fell into the deep, dark abyss of insanity. He drew another deep breath and screamed again.

And screamed . . .

. . . and screamed.

Chapter Thirty

Dr. Patrick Bennet's clinic was an old converted vacation lodge that had been built to resemble the ski chalets that one would expect to find in mountain resorts like Lake Tahoe or Big Bear, or the finest and most expensive chalets in Europe. The ground floor consisted of a waiting room that resembled a common area where vacationers might have sat, near a large stone fireplace, while sipping coffee, chocolate, tea, or mixed drinks, and trading stories back and forth of sights seen and experiences on the ski slopes. There was also a small kitchen located off to the left side of the waiting room, and to the right was an emergency receiving room. Upstairs there were two examination rooms, an operating room stocked with as much of the latest technology that Bennet could obtain, a room that contained a recently acquired x-ray machine, and several recovery rooms.

It was in one of these redwood-paneled rooms where Jasmine lay unconscious with an IV of Ringer's solution dripping slowly into a catheter in her left forearm. Beneath her dark tan there was a deathly pallor that nearly rivaled the whiteness of the sheets on which she quietly lay, as still as death.

Valerie was sitting on a metal chair next to the bed, holding Jasmine's right hand. Bennet had spent over an hour searching for and removing the bullet, suturing the bleeding vessels that led to it, cleaning the wound and freshening its edges, and then suturing and bandaging the wound while two units of whole blood had replaced those which she had lost. The bullet had pierced a major artery and had punctured one lung; between the blood loss, the shock, and the fluid in her lung, Bennet didn't think she was going to survive. But he did all he could do, and he continued to check on her condition every ten minutes.

Valerie had not been able to get any of the supplies she needed for casting a Circle--no candles, no incense, no athame. Everything she owned had been destroyed in the fire, and Jasmine's place had been too far out of the way to make a stop there. She had wanted to get to Jasmine's side as quickly as possible, so without going through the formality of casting a Circle, she gave her as much of her own energy as she could by holding her open hands a centimeter above her and directing the bluish-white light to the injured area.

Keller sat in another chair nearby. Bennet had come and gone just a few minutes before, and he and Keller had tried to convince Valerie to submit to the treatment of her own wounds. "Not yet," she had replied. "Not until I know Jasmine's okay." So Bennet went on to check on some of his other patients, and Keller sat with Valerie and quietly waited.

As he scratched gently at the white bandage on his forehead, he said, "Listen, I'm going to get some coffee. You want anything?"

"No, thanks. Not right now."

He rose slowly, wincing at the pain in his bruised rib cage and plastered right hand (he had fractured it in three places against Willis's face) and headed downstairs.

Once alone, Valerie began to speak softly. "Don't leave me," she said in a gentle but heartfelt plea. "Please, don't leave me. You've got to get well. There are so many things that I want to show you . . . There are so many things that I want us to do together. Remember the river? And that big stone that hangs over it? Remember how much you said it reminded you of home? We can go back there. We can go back and sun ourselves, and swim and make love all day . . . It won't be the same without you. I know how you must want to see your family again, but I need you here. There are so many things we can do together . . . " Tears began to spill from her eyes. "Please, Jasmine, come back to me. Now that we've finally found each other, I can't let you go. Don't die . . . Please--" Her voice broke, and she couldn't go on. She kissed her palm and bowed her head, and silent sobs shook her.

Jasmine's hand twitched slightly, but Valerie didn't notice it. It twitched again, and this time it was accompanied by a slightly deeper breath and a soft moan. Valerie's head snapped up, and Jasmine's eyes opened slightly. "Earthquake," she whispered softly.

"What?"

"I thought I felt an earthquake . . . "

Valerie had been leaning against the bed, and her silent sobs had shaken it. "Jasmine?"

Her eyes slowly settled slightly out of focus on Valerie, and she smiled a little through the anesthesia's fog. "Hey there, wildcat," she said with a slightly stronger voice. Her brow furrowed with concern when she finally focused on her bruised, blood-caked and sooty--and now tear-streaked--face. "Jesus, babe, you look like shit."

They both chuckled uncontrollably; Valerie then sobbed with relief, and Jasmine winced at a sharp pain underneath her bandage. Valerie wiped away fresh tears and sniffled. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore." She shifted slightly under the covers. "And tired . . . real tired . . . " She started to slip back under, and then her emerald eyes opened again. "I saw my folks . . . They miss me, but they said they'll wait . . . "

She held Jasmine's hand against the side of her face and sobbed quietly again. When she regained control of her voice she said, "You rest up, okay? When you're better, you're coming home with me and Keller."

She grinned a sloppy, anesthetized grin. "Good deal." Then she sighed and slipped back into the warm, comfortable fog of sleep.

Valerie leaned forward and softly kissed her lips, then lay her hand down on the bed. She dried her eyes and headed quietly for the door, and finally let Pat Bennet take care of her.

***

Severe psychological depression prevented Kelly from staying in her parents' house after their deaths. Instead, she stayed with Scott and Maggie Preston, and their daughter Lori. Everything at the old house reminded her of her parents and the good times she'd had there, good times never to be repeated. Valerie knew what the child was going through, so she asked her if she would like to live with Lori and her family, and Kelly had said yes. She might go back home some day, but she didn't know. Rob and Julie agreed to stay there and take care of the place until Kelly decided what she wanted to do in the long run.

After Jasmine was released from the hospital, they stayed in Oscar's house. And while Jasmine recovered from her wound, Valerie discovered that she was late. Not only late, but pregnant. ("Was it something I did?" Jasmine had asked in mock wonder, and Valerie had replied with, "Must have been after the peace rally Tony and I got tear-gassed at.") They quickly decided that they needed to build their own home, and as soon as Jasmine was able she rose to the occasion with unbridled enthusiasm. They worked as long and as hard as they could until Valerie's pregnancy prevented her from doing the heavier work, and it was at this time when Keller, who had come by for a short visit, volunteered his help in the completion of their home. It was just in time, too, because shortly after the end of construction--and shortly after Keller had taken off on a two-day supply run--Jasmine acted as midwife ("I've never done this before!" she declared in near panic) as she successfully assisted in the delivery of Sierra Ryan, Daughter of Valerie and Granddaughter of Alexandra. "And daughter of Jasmine, too," she told her breathlessly as she leaned back on her pillow. Sweat matted her dark hair around her face and forehead, and drenched her bare skin. "Tony and I may have supplied, but you delivered." She grinned at Jasmine's surprised look. "Want to hold her?"

"Sure!" She moved to sit next to Valerie and accepted the infant. She wiped tears of joy from her face against one shoulder and then the other, and grinned as she gazed at Sierra. She sniffled once and said, "God, she's so beautiful . . . "

"She's more than that," Valerie said as she gazed fondly at the two of them. "She's the future."

She held her for a few minutes, cooing and cuddling, until Sierra began to whimper. "Here, I think she's hungry," she said as she gently handed her back.

Valerie took Sierra and began to nurse her, and Jasmine shifted on the bed and lay an arm around Valerie's bare shoulders. She kissed her forehead and then her lips as Valerie reached to hold her with her free hand, and the three of them bonded together as a small, new family.

***

The cottage was a creative combination of fairy-tale simplicity and NASA technology. The northern half of the ceiling of the new house consisted of a huge skylight made of insulated glass, which let in bright sunlight that warmed the house and provided light for a score of houseplants that were scattered everywhere, and at night it revealed a clear black sky that was sprinkled with sharp stars and a bright moon. A queen-sized futon bed, with Sierra's cradle nearby, was placed on a raised section of flooring under it and in front of a large, insulated bay window so they could stargaze and moon bathe from the comfort of their bed until sleep overtook them. The southern half was covered with panels of photovoltaic cells which absorbed sunlight and converted it directly into electricity, and supplemented the power provided by the waterwheel that hung over the river. The excess power from these two sources not used by the entertainment center, the refrigerator/freezer and a pair of small electrical fluorescent lights, was stored in twin rows that consisted of ten 12-volt car batteries. A large, vine-covered propane tank outside fed their stove, and a fireplace constructed of large gray stones--with Jasmine's katana hanging above the mantle--provided them with heat during the winter.

Scattered around the house were numerous Craft and other pagan artifacts. Their altar consisted of a round, polished, 2-foot tabletop sheet of redwood, into which was carved a pentacle, and on it, with their blades crossed, were two black-handled athames and a variety of colored candles. To the left there sat a fire-glazed clay chalice, and to the right there rested a matching bowl half-filled with sand that was used as a censer. In the center there lay a hand-sized pentacle made of red, blue and yellow stained glass, and standing on top of it was a white ceramic statue, about eighteen inches tall, of Artemis, the ancient Greek Goddess of the Moon. Standing defiantly against all enemies and surrounded by a trio of wolves, she held a drawn bow in her hands and wore a quiver of arrows on her back. And even though she wasn't a Hawaiian deity, Jasmine thought this statue worked just as well because Artemis was the patron goddess of another powerful group with whom the Asian witch strongly identified: the Amazons.

They had also managed to acquire a small entertainment center, on which there rested a stereo receiver, a TV monitor, and a DVD/CD player, along with a collection of cds (an eclectic blend of classic rock, alternative rock, jazz and New Age) and a small collection of DVDs that consisted of pre-FLM movies and foreign television programming, and documentaries on history and science--the latter of which had to be smuggled in from other countries, since they were seen by the Foundation as contraband.. A pair of high-quality bookshelf speakers were positioned so that optimum sound imaging could be heard from anywhere in the house. The entertainment center was a get-well present for Jasmine and Valerie from Dutch and Nancy, who had moved out to the West Coast to join up with the Allies, as the Resistance now called themselves.

Books were far more difficult to come by; they were scrutinized by the authorities even more carefully than movies and music, even though there weren't nearly as many readers as there were television viewers, because books were known to contain far more food for thought--and the FLM didn't want people to think too much. People might start to get ideas, and ideas could lead to actions, so the books that Valerie managed to collect were special treasures to her--which she swore to protect with her life, if necessary, for the sake of the future. The more she thought about it, the more she planned to start a public library for those people who lived within the borders of Allied Territory.

Scattered around the room were several huge throw pillows that could be molded to one's comfort on the thickly padded and carpeted floor, and attached to the back of the house was a spacious bathroom, in which there were a composting toilet, a heavy wooden table on which rested a water-filled pitcher of heavy silver and a matching bowl, and a large redwood hot-tub which rested slightly sunken into the floor and against another wall of clear insulated glass. The first choice for bathing and soaking was always the river, but that could be a little impractical on cold and/or rainy days; when the heavy rains and the lashing winds came, it was very enjoyable indeed to relax in a nice, hot bath and enjoy the scenery.

Thunder rolled gently across the night sky, and muted lightning flashed behind the clouds. Rain was falling softly, pattering on the window and streaking across the cold glass. Sam, the black-and-white cat that had adopted Valerie, lay by the fireplace, casually licking a paw. She looked up for a moment as the thunder rumbled, then went back to cleaning her whiskers.

Keller rolled onto his back inside of his sleeping bag to look through the huge skylight. Rain streaked across its panes toward the aluminum gutter that fed into a spout, and drained into a large wooden barrel where rainwater was collected. It was nice to lie here on the sofa and watch it rain, and to listen to it patter on the roof and not get wet. He sighed and tucked his arm underneath his head, and thought about the war against Warren.

Those had been some scary times back then. There hadn't been too many soldiers seen in the Territory since then, except for that one time when some two hundred of them had tried to get through the blockades in an effort to find the Wolf Witch, as the Foundation soldiers now called Valerie. They had been spotted by one of the mounted lookout teams near Ukiah, and radio messages had flown back and forth through the airwaves to send coded messages throughout the entire southern defense perimeter, warning of a sizeable invasion force; they had been ignorant of the fact that this force was merely looking for Valerie, and was not prepared for major combat. By the time the soldiers had partially cleared the first of the obstacles, they were fired upon by over a hundred Allied guerrillas. Caught completely by surprise, some thirty soldiers fell in less than a minute, and the rest retreated, abandoning much of their equipment. It was later collected by the Allies and distributed throughout the Territory. Most of the people here believed that the FLM was not going to tolerate such a loss; they expected another, more massive invasion. So, much like the people of Israel in attitude, Allies continued on with their lives while living in a constant state of emergency preparedness.

I'm so damned sick of fighting, he thought with a deep sigh.

"What are you thinking about?" Valerie softly asked.

He flinched slightly. He hadn't seen or heard her approach; she just seemed to suddenly be there, once again wearing the wolf's tooth earring at her right ear, and dressed in a long blue nightshirt and kneeling next to him. Her movements had become much more quiet and graceful from spending so much time in the forest, stalking animals with friendly intent, and as a result of her highly physical lifestyle she had not only gained a considerable amount of muscle, but she had also greatly increased her strength and endurance. She hadn't gone overboard on it, not to the point where she would have wound up resembling those muscle-bound professional body-builders with bulging veins of years before; instead, she now possessed an even more athletic physique than before that was a striking combination of classic feminine beauty and an unquestionable physical strength which was quite clearly demonstrated when she went through her daily exercise work-outs which consisted of five-mile jogs through the woods and partly of some moderate weight-lifting, but mostly of training with Jasmine in karate, aikido, kick-boxing, and kendo. As a result, she had acquired the statuesque physique of Artemis Herself, and the self-assuredness of the most aggressive of her wolves. She had at last become a forest animal, and she was not one to be trifled with.

"Just thinking back," he said as he slowly sat up. He looked at her, and in an instant he determined once again that the wounds had healed well; there was a fine white scar that diagonally bisected her left eyebrow, which served as a reminder of the night she dove through the kitchen window to save Kelly, and the swelling of the bridge of her previously broken nose was barely noticeable. Most people never noticed it at all, actually, until it was mentioned by either herself or by Jasmine. And rather than detracting from her alluring appearance, these faded battle scars seemed to add an extra touch of character. The rest of the physical wounds which had been inflicted by Willis had healed without a trace.

"Just thinking about the War, that last invasion, and about Warren being locked away in one of his own dungeons."

"In a way, I almost feel sorry for him," she said as she rested an arm on the armrest, and sat back with her legs folded beneath her. She and Keller had heard the news, via a police-band radio at one of the many Allied outposts, concerning Elias Warren, former Colonel of the Denver Holy Guards. He had been found nearly a week after the War, emaciated and wandering aimlessly along a lonely road outside of the Territory. The roots of his mousey brown hair had turned pure white from shock, and he had been muttering through blood-caked lips about a witch that had saved his life through the power of Jesus. He was diagnosed by the Foundation's Men of Knowledge, as they called themselves (because the term "doctor" had a scientific and therefore negative connotation to it), as having been possessed by a demon. He was now kept confined in a padded cell and wrapped in a straight-jacket, and chained to a wall. Every so often he would awaken from a "demonic vision," screaming hysterically and thrashing like a wild animal at his restraints. All attempts at exorcism had failed, and by this it had been demonstrated just how powerful a witch Valerie Ryan really was. As a last, desperate resort, they used the medical approach and pumped Warren full of tranquilizers--but this was never formally acknowledged in any of their medical files.

And as for the witch herself? Her house had been completely destroyed that day; an aerial photograph, taken by helicopter two days after Warren had been found, had confirmed this. Based on Warren's admittedly questionable testimony, and based on the subsequent and abortive search efforts, the Foundation concluded that she was in hiding, still alive and well. There was too much armed resistance to get in for another massive search, and where there was no resistance there was also no information. Either that, or the people questioned in the surrounding areas outside of Allied Territory simply were not cooperating. Either way, any further efforts to find her were deemed unavailing, and would therefore not be continued. The authorities quietly decided that it was best to withhold this information from the public, and they stated in an official press release that through the power of black magic the Wolf Witch and her demonic pack of lupine allies had simply disappeared.

She looked him up and down once, and suddenly thought that maybe she ought to give him a second chance. With a sly grin she asked, "Why do you insist on sleeping over here? Wouldn't you rather sleep with a couple of hot bi- chicks?"

"Huh?" He was caught completely off guard. "Um . . . well . . . aren't you and her . . . you know . . . wouldn't it seem sort of . . . "

She moved in a little closer, and grinned like a wolf. "Kinky?" she asked with a husky voice.

"Well, yeah . . . "

"Jasmine's into kinky." Her grin faded a little, and her voice took on a more serious tone as she went on, "We've discussed our relationship--hers and mine--at great length, and your name has come up several times." Now her grin widened again. "She agrees that there are a lot of possibilities."

"I don't know . . . " he said dubiously. "Somehow it wouldn't seem . . . " He tried to think of a reason why he shouldn't accept her offer, weighing honor and propriety against lust and personal desire; and he couldn't think of a single one. Now that he had the opportunity to fulfill an adolescent fantasy, he was astounded to find himself actually balking at the idea. "Really?"

Jasmine groaned softly in her sleep as she turned on her side. Valerie glanced at her, then whispered, "Well, I'm going back to a nice, warm, comfortable bed and getting some sleep." Then she turned more serious again. "We've got a long trip ahead of us."

"Are you sure you want to go back to Denver? You could be asking for trouble."

She shrugged, and sighed heavily. "It's something that I have to do. Besides, we'll be safe enough. I think."

Keller looked at her uncertainly.

She grinned mischievously. "I'm just kidding." She spent a lot of time crystal gazing these days, whenever she cast a Circle, and she found that the combination of meditation and concentration greatly helped her to control her psychic flashes; they rarely came unbidden. Yet when she wished to "see," the impressions came almost immediately inside the small crystal ball that she had recently purchased, along with another athame, from a small antique shop in a neighboring village. But her ability to "read" objects--her psychometry--was still to be controlled. She doubted that she ever would. Sometimes, when touching an object, she would burst out in gleeful laughter as she suddenly learned something embarrassing about its owner, and on one occasion the feel of an apparently innocuous-looking pocket watch had sent a shiver of sheer terror up her spine.

"Look, you really don't have to come along, and Jasmine's staying to look after Sierra--like I said, this is something that I have to do."

"What--let you go by yourself with no one to look out for you? No way." Then, with a grin of his own, he added, "You don't even know which way to point an M-16."

She tried to give him a cold and stern look. She really did. But the grin came anyway, and she finally said, "Shut up and come to bed, you male sexist oinker."

***

The "Whitman's Used Books" store was about to close for the night. George had already gone through the motions of balancing out his daily receipts (he was over by five dollars, so he pocketed the difference), drew down the Venetian blinds, and turned down the furnace. All he had to do now was just rearrange a few books here and there; his customers seemed to insist on never returning a book to its proper place after glancing through it. If he couldn't get that done in the next few minutes, he would let it go until the next morning.

The little brass bell tinkled above the front door. Damn it, he thought, it never fails. Ten more minutes, and I would have been out of here. He slid a book into place on an upper shelf and started for his desk by the door. When he got there, though, he found that there was no one there. Someone had opened the door and closed it. George thought immediately of thieves. It had happened before. When he was in the back of the store and there were no customers, there had been several occasions on which someone had come into the store, went around the desk and quickly popped open the cash box, grabbed a handful of loot, and then ran like a sonofagun. George kept telling himself that one of these days he was going to buy a cash box with a lock on it, but so far he hadn't gotten around to it.

He stepped around the counter to his desk, vaguely aware of the puff of cold air that had come in with the opening of the door, and quickly opened the cash register. It didn't seem as though anyone had stolen any money; there was still a substantial supply of ones, fives, tens and twenties, all neatly divided into their own separate niches. The small change wouldn't even have been bothered with, but he checked it anyway. He sighed with relief. But who had been at the door a moment ago? There was no one here.

A chill went through him. Heavens, he thought as he rubbed his arms, why is it suddenly so cold in here? The door hadn't been open that long! He got up to check the thermostat behind his desk. The needle was slowly dropping past seventy, past sixty . . .

What the hell? he thought.

Past fifty, past forty . . .

Frost was growing on the storefront's wide picture window, turning the glass to a foggy and then crystalline white. At first he merely scowled in puzzlement at the window . . . and then he was seized with anxiety as he saw his breath turning, before his very eyes, to floating white puffs of vapor.

Approaching thirty . . .

And then he was suddenly aware that he was no longer alone. He spun around quickly, and she was there, standing before him. Concentrating as he had been on his money and on the heater controls, George hadn't seen her as she silently stepped from behind a bookcase; to him, it seemed as though she had simply materialized from nowhere. Terror leapt into his eyes and seized his heart in a cold fist as he recognized the woman. She was dressed in black leather and denim, and a silver pentacle with a round, shining piece of obsidian and the silver horns of a crescent moon ("Devil's horns!" George thought instantly) on a leather lace hung just below her throat with fluorescent light gleaming from it. A sparkling white wolf's tooth, partially encased in more lunar silver, dangled from her right ear lobe. "Hello, George," she said with a low, soft voice that could almost have been comforting. But beneath that softness there was an undercurrent of something cold and dark, and deadly. "How's business?"

It was the witch whom Colonel Warren had gone after, standing right here in his bookstore! Oh, dear God, he thought, she's come back! And she knows who I am! A thousand burning questions ran through his mind in an instant. What's she doing here? How could she be here? Colonel Warren had gone after her over a year ago to kill her, and-- How did she escape from him? Where is . . . he..? The questions suddenly disappeared, and were replaced with scores of dark possibilities. Dear God, George finally asked himself, what has she done with him?

"I see you remember me," she said as she impaled him with a cold, burning look. Looks like he's still eating those bread and mayonnaise sandwiches, she thought. "So, George. Have you informed on anyone else lately? I hear you make pretty good money at it."

George slowly backed away, trembling uncontrollably. He stumbled over a stack of books that stood behind him, and he fell over them with a startled grunt and a scattering of paperbacks and hard covers. "No!" he cried as he was consumed by a new wave of terror. "Y-y-you stay-yay away from-m-me!"

Valerie stepped around the corner of the low counter with an almost supernatural swiftness, and pushed through the short swinging door. "You've caused me a lot of pain, George," she went on quietly, her voice a menacing growl. Anger was welling up from the bottom of her soul, and her eyes were as sharp and as cold as the gleam from an assassin's dagger. She leaned over, grabbed a hold of his shirt front in one vice-like fist, and hauled him to his feet.

Good Lord, this woman is strong! he thought.

She yanked him forward so that her face was only an inch from his, and it was then that George realized that the cold, the chill that seemed to come from an open walk-in freezer, was coming from her.

"A lot of friends of mine have been hurt and killed because of what you did," she growled. The more she thought about this, the more she detested this oily, pudgy worm. She remained quiet for a long moment, and eventually she fought down the urge to put a real curse on him. "And I'm going to see to it, you little bastard-" She gave him a hard shove that slammed him back against the pile of books on the floor, and finished through clenched teeth, "--that you never cause this kind of trouble again."

Instead of a full blown curse, which would have brought agony and destruction not only on him but on every generation after him until the end of the family line--and to anyone who dared to give him help or comfort--she opted for a mild hex. She reached for the athame that hung on at her right hip and under the coat. She pointed its tip at him. "Never again shall you cause misery for the innocent," she said, and the athame began to glow. It's blue-white light pulsated to life, and suddenly a soft beam of light shot from its tip and struck George in the chest. It didn't hit him hard enough to cause any injury, but it did give him something to think about. "Heed my words, George; what you do unto others shall be done unto you, three fold . . . and you alone shall be responsible for whatever happens to you. By the will of Hecate, so mote it be." She slipped the dagger back into its sheath, then turned toward the door and left.

George lay unmoving on the pile of books in spite of the corner of one large hardcover that was digging into the small of his back. Oh my God, he thought, convinced that he was cursed for life and beyond. Oh God, oh God, oh dear God . . . It took him a good ten minutes to work up the courage to get to his feet and check the window to see if she was really gone. First thing after closing, he thought, he was headed straight for church.

***

Valerie was thinking about black horses as Keller guided the black Charger along the rain-slickened street. The black horse that she had seen in Warren's eyes . . . she didn't know if it represented the car itself, the driver, or the man who built it, but in the long run it didn't really matter--her vision had come true.

"Make a right over here, will you?" she asked, indicating through the rain-spattered windshield with a slight movement of her head.

Keller steered the car around the corner and immediately recognized the neighborhood. "You sure you want to go there?"

"Just for a couple of minutes."

They passed by the first five houses, then Keller eased the Charger over to the curb and set the brake. He looked across Valerie and saw the old house. There were no lights on outside. The front door had never been replaced; instead, a slab of plywood had been nailed over the doorway, and tacked to it was a battered "For Rent" sign.

She stepped out of the car and slowly approached the house which had once been so familiar to her. Keller followed closely behind, checking to be certain they were not being watched. He kept one hand resting on the Desert Eagle, just in case. Valerie touched the plywood and, in the dim light cast by the street lights, she saw that someone with a can of black spray-paint had scrawled the words "Witch House" across it. With this kind of a reputation, it was doubtful that the owner would ever be able to rent or sell the place.

She pulled at a loose corner of the plywood, got a better hold, and then tugged hard a couple of times. Nails squealed as they were pulled from the door frame, and the plywood came free. She and Keller quietly stepped inside.

The living room was empty. Most likely, the furniture had been impounded under the asset forfeiture laws and then sold, and the money went either into the police department itself or, more likely, it had been paid out to an informer. Like George.

She stood silently in the center of the room with her eyes closed. Keller's eyes went from her to the front door, and then to the windows. He was hoping that no one had been attracted by the sound of the nails being pulled from the door frame. "You okay?" he asked.

"They're gone."

"Say again?"

"Tony and Jeff. I wondered if their spirits might still be here; I'm glad they could move on." She stood quietly still for a moment longer, and her eyes roamed over the familiar walls. Even in this dim light she could see the five nail holes in the eastern wall where, nearly two years ago, she and Tony has spent some considerable amount of time trying to straighten his framed 1965 Chevrolet Corvette poster.

"Speaking of moving on . . . "

"In a minute." She wanted to go through the small house one more time before never returning to it. A soft voice--that same voice that had guided her to the Tarot cards--was urging her into the bedroom. She went down the short hall, past the bathroom where there was still blood everywhere, now old and dried (No wonder the place is still empty, she thought), and into the bedroom. She stood in its center for a moment. Then she turned and went to the closet. She looked around in the darkness, and she thought she saw something on the floor in one corner. She stooped and reached for it. Without looking at it, she slipped it into an inside pocket. "Okay, let's go."

Back in the car, Valerie took out the small color snapshot that she had found. She strained her eyes in the darkness for a couple of seconds, and then turned on the Charger's dome light. It was an outdoor picture; bright sunlight shone on the three figures. Tony, bare-chested and dressed in a pair of cut-off jeans, was leaning against the right front fender of his old red convertible Mustang, that sat in the driveway with its hood up. Jeff Hastings, also bare-chested and dressed in cut-offs, was leaning with one hip against the left rear fender, and Valerie, dressed in sunglasses, a brown halter top and cut-offs, was sitting atop the backrest of the driver's bucket seat with one bare foot on the steering wheel and the other on the passenger seat. All three were laughing and toasting the photographer with cans of Foster's lager.

Who took this picture? she wondered silently. One of Tony's friends, of course, but which one? She wished she could remember. And why hadn't the soldiers, or whoever had confiscated all the furniture, found this picture and taken it?

"What's that?" Keller asked.

Valerie showed him the picture as she looked at the house.

Looking at the photo, Keller grinned. He slid the key into the ignition, and the engine purred to life as he handed the picture back to her. She looked at it one more time. She wanted to keep it for Sierra, so she would know who her father was and what had happened to him. She slipped the picture back into an inside pocket and said, "Let's go home."

Keller watched her for a moment. "You're sure you're okay?"

Her eyes misted, but the tears didn't fall. "Yeah," she said with a heavy sigh. "Yeah, I'm okay."

He put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

She turned in the seat as they moved off, and as she continued to stare at the house as it shrank in the distance she could see the entire series of events flashing through her mind, from the time she came home with the Tarot cards to the break-in by the soldiers; she could even hear the faint echoes of gunshots. She remembered the chase from Denver and across the desert, and for a fleeting moment she wished she had put a real curse on George, the catalyst of all this madness. And then on further reflection she decided that it was good that she hadn't. After all, he'd really had no choice in the matter; he was merely fulfilling a role, a small yet also very important one. A small but necessary part of the Karmic cycle that had finally brought everything to an end. She hoped.

And then she remembered what Warren had said to her in the attic. And now that she had the time to think about it, she couldn't help wondering about something; what he had said about her being the very spirit of Freedom, and being the spirit of Resistance and Rebellion. That couldn't possibly be true, could it? She hoped it wasn't. God, she didn't need to have that kind of responsibility dumped into her lap by the Goddess, or the Great Spirit, or whoever the hell was in charge; she had a baby girl now, a baby girl who needed her and a long sought-after life-partner with whom she was crazy in love, and all she wanted was to just live her life in peace with her new family.

Had Warren really been revealing some great cosmic Truth? And how the hell would someone as spiritually stunted as Elias Warren have known such a truth?

Or had his words merely been the ramblings of a madman?

That was it. That had to be it. Please, dear Lady, she thought, let that be it.

She wasn't certain of what to believe. And the more she thought about the whole thing, the more it made her head ache.

Karma--the spiritual law of cause and effect that was so closely akin to the physical one. Perhaps now she finally would be free of Colonel Elias Warren, the Priest of Viella, and whoever else he might have been or might someday be. Her mind balked at the idea that in reality she might actually owe George her thanks.

But if it is true, she thought with a nervous sigh, and he and I--as the respective spirits of Repression and Freedom--are to be eternal enemies . . . well, damn it, then so be it.

Keller thought he heard her mumbling something as she turned in her seat to face front again. He glanced at her and said, "You say something?"

"I was just thinking out loud," she replied. "I was wondering what's gong to happen next time."

"Next time?" Something heavy sank into the pit of his stomach. Oh God, not again, he thought . . . He was already envisioning more gunfights, more chases, more danger . . . more adventure . . . He'd already had quite enough adventure, thank you very much.

Well, for a while, anyway . . .

"In my next life, I mean. Will any of this affect it? Have I done something for which I'm going to have to pay?"

"There's not a whole lot you can do about it, is there?" he asked. "So what good does it do to worry about it? I wouldn't lose any sleep over it."

Valerie Ryan--the Daughter of Alexandra and Granddaughter of Victoria--sighed once more with reluctant acceptance. "I suppose you're right," she finally said as she rested her forearm on his shoulder. Then she patted his shoulder and motioned forward. "Home, James."

Garrett Keller smiled a wry and amused smile. "Yes ma'am."

The battle-scarred black Charger came to a stop at the flashing red light on the corner as thunder rumbled in the distance. It waited for a moment as an old blue Toyota passed by from the left, then its engine rumbled as the Charger slowly turned toward the West, went around the corner, and vanished like a spirit into the rain swept night.

THE END