"Coldheart Canyon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

PART EIGHT. THE WIND AT THE DOOR

ONE

The night was almost over by the time the two cars bearing Eppstadt's little expeditionary force made their way up the winding road that led into Coldheart Canyon. The sky was just a little lighter in the east, though the clouds were thick, so it would be a sluggish dawn, without an ounce of the drama which had marked the hours of darkness. In the depths of the Canyon itself, the day never truly dawned properly at all. There was a peculiar density to the shadows between the trees today; as though the night lingered there, in scraps and rags. Day-blooming flowers would fail to show themselves, even at the height of noon; while plants that would normally offer sight and scent of themselves only after dark remained awake through the daylight hours.

None of this was noticed by Eppstadt or the others in his party; they were not the sort of people who noticed things to which so little value could be readily attached. But they knew something was amiss, even so, from the moment they stepped out of their vehicles. They proceeded towards the house exchanging anxious looks, their steps reluctant. Even Eppstadt, who had been so vocal about seeing the Canyon when they'd all been down in Malibu, plainly wished he'd not talked himself into this. Had he been on his own he would undoubtedly have retreated. But he could scarcely do so now, with so many people watching. He could either hope that something alarming (though inconsequential) happened soon, and he was obliged to call, a general retreat in the interest of the company, or that they'd get into the house, make a cursory examination of the place, then agree that this was a matter best left with the police, and get the hell out.

The feeling he had, walking into the house, was the same feeling he sometimes got going onto a darkened sound stage. A sense of anticipation hung in the air. The only question was: what was the drama that was going to be played out here? A continuation of the farce he'd been so unwillingly dragged into on the beach? He didn't think so. The stage was set here for some other order of spectacle, and he didn't particularly want to be a part of it.

In all his years running a studio he'd never green-lit a horror movie, or anything with that kind of supernatural edge. He didn't like them. On the one hand, he thought they were contemptible rubbish; and on the other, they made his flesh creep. They unnerved him with their reports from some irrational place in the psyche; a place he had fled from all his life. The Canyon knew that place, he sensed. No, he knew. There were probably subjects for a hundred horror movies here, God help him.

"Weird, huh?" Joe remarked to him.

Eppstadt was glad he'd brought the kid along. Though Eppstadt didn't have a queer bone in his body there was still something comforting about having a big-boned, Mid-Western dumb-fuck like Joe on the team.

"What are we looking for, anyhow?" Joe asked as Maxine led the way into the house.

"Anything out of the ordinary," Eppstadt replied.

"We don't have any right to be here," Maxine reminded him. "And if Todd is dead, the police aren't going to be very happy that we touched stuff."

"I get it, Maxine," he said. "We'll be careful."

"Big place," Joe said, wandering into the lounge. "Great for parties."

"Let's get some lights on in this place, shall we?" Eppstadt said. He'd no sooner spoken than Sawyer found the master panel, and flipped on every one of the thirty switches before him. Room after dazzling room was revealed, detail after glorious detail.

Jerry had seen the dream palace countless times over the years, but for some reason, even in its early days when the paint was fresh and the gilding perfect, he'd never seen the house put on a show quite like this. It was almost as if the old place knew it didn't have long to live and-knowing its span was short-was making the best of the hours remaining to it.

"The woman on the beach," Eppstadt said. "She built this place?"

"Yes. Her name was Katya Lupi and -- "

"I know who she was," Eppstadt replied. "I've seen some of her movies. Trash. Kitsch trash."

It was impossible, of course, that the woman who'd built this Spanish mausoleum was the same individual who'd escorted Todd Pickett into the surf. That woman might have been her grandchild, Eppstadt supposed, at a stretch; a great-grandchild more likely.

He was about to correct Brahms on his generational details when a chorus of yelping coyotes erupted across the Canyon. Eppstadt knew what coyotes sounded like, of course. He had plenty of friends who lived in the Hills, and considered the animals harmless scavengers, digging through their trash and occasionally dining on a pet cat. But there was something about the noise they were making now, as the sun came up, that made his stomach twitch and his skin crawl. It was like a soundtrack of one of the horror movies he'd never green-lit.

And then, just as suddenly as the chorus of coyotes had erupted, it ceased. There were three seconds of total silence.

Then everything began to shake. The walls, the chandelier, the ancient floorboards beneath their feet.

"Earthquake!" Sawyer yelled. He grabbed hold of Maxine's arm. She screeched, and ran for the kitchen door.

"Outside!" she shrieked. "We're all safer outside!"

She could move fast when she needed to. She dragged Sawyer after her, down to the back door. Jerry tried to follow, but the shaking in the ground had become a roll, and he missed his handhold.

Joe, Mid-Western boy that he was, had never experienced an earthquake before. He just stood on the pitching ground repeating the name of his savior over and over and over again, in perfect sincerity.

It's going to stop any minute, Eppstadt thought (he'd lived through many of these, big and small), but this one kept going, escalating. The floor was undulating in front of him. If he'd seen it in dailies he would have fired the physical effects guy for creating something that looked so phony. Solid matter like wood and nails simply didn't move that way. It was ludicrous.

But still it escalated, and Joe's calls to his savior became shouts:

"Christ! Christ! Christ! Christ!"

"When's it going to stop?" Jerry gasped.

He'd given up trying to rise. He just lay on the ground while the rattling and the rolling continued unabated.

There was a crash from an adjacent room, as something was thrown over. And then, from further off, a whole succession of further crashes, as shelves came unseated, and their contents were scattered. A short length of plaster molding came down from the ceiling and smashed on the ground a foot from where Eppstadt was standing, its shards spreading in all directions. He looked up, in case there was more to come. A fine rain of plaster-dust was descending, stinging his eyes. Meanwhile, the quake continued to make the house creak and crack on all sides, Eppstadt's semi-blinded condition only making the event seem all the more apocalyptic. He reached towards Joe, who was hoarse from reciting his one-word prayer, and caught hold of him.

"What's that noise?" the kid yelled over the din.

It seemed like a particularly witless question in the midst of such a cacophony, but interestingly, Eppstadt grasped exactly what the kid was talking about.

There was one sound, amongst the terrifying orchestration of groans and crashes from all over the house, that was deeper than all the others, and seemed to be coming from directly beneath them. It sounded like two titanic sets of teeth grinding together, grinding so hard they were destroying themselves in the process.

"I don't know what it is," admitted Eppstadt. Tears were pouring from his eyes, washing them dear of the plaster-dust.

"Well I want it to fucking stop," Joe said with nice Mid-Western directness.

He'd no sooner spoken than the noise in the earth started to die away, and moments later the rest of the din and motion followed.

"It's over ... "Jerry sobbed.

He'd spoken too soon. There was one last, short jolt in the ground, which brought a further series of crashes from around the house, and from below what sounded like a door being thrown open so violently it cracked its back against the wall.

Only then did the noises and the deep-earth motion finally subside and die away. What was left, from far off, was the sound of car alarms.

"Everybody okay?" Eppstadt said.

"I'll never get used to those damn things," Jerry said.

"That was a big one," Eppstadt said. "6.5 at least."

"And it went on, and on ... "

"I think we should just get the hell out of here," Joe said.

"Before we go anywhere," Eppstadt said, venturing into the kitchen, "we wait for any aftershocks. We're safer inside than out there right now."

"How do you figure that?" Joe said, following Eppstadt into the kitchen.

It was chaos. None of the shelves had come off the walls, but they'd been shaken so violently they'd deposited their contents on the tiled floor. A cabinet holding booze had been shaken down, and several of the bottles broken, filling the air with the sharp tang of mingled liquors. Eppstadt went to the refrigerator-which had been thrown open by the quake, and had half its contents danced off the shelves-and found a can of Coke. He cracked it carefully, letting its excitability fizz away by degrees, then poured it as though this sickly soda was a hundred year old brandy, and drank.

"Better," he said.

"I'll take one of those," Joe remarked.

"What colour do I look?"

Scowling, Joe kicked his way through the fractured crockery to the refrigerator, and got himself a Coke.

"What the hell happened to Maxine?" Eppstadt wondered.

"She went out back with Sawyer," Joe said, averting his face from a fan of erupting Coke.

Eppstadt went out into a passageway that led down to an open door, kicking a few pieces of fallen plaster out of the way as he went.

"Maxine!" he called. "Are you okay?"

There was no reply.

Without waiting for anyone to join him, he headed down to the back door. There was more plaster dust underfoot, and several large cracks in the walls and ceiling. Unlike other areas of the house this portion looked less solid to his eye, and very much less elegant. A hurried later addition, he guessed, and probably more vulnerable to shocks than the older parts of the house. He called out for Maxine again, but again there was no reply forthcoming. He wasn't surprised. The area just outside the door looked squalid; large masses of rotted vegetable matter covered the walkway on the other side of the threshold, giving off a sickly stench. The foliage overhanging the area was so thick that the area was practically benighted.

He went to the threshold, intending to call for Maxine again, but before he could do so he heard the sound of low, sibilant laughter. Since childhood he'd always been certain that laughter heard in his vicinity was laughter heard at his expense, and even though his therapist had worked hard for sixteen years to dissuade him of this neurosis, it lingered. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of the shadows beneath the trees; dividing form from apparition. Obviously, the laughter had a source, perhaps more than one. He just couldn't make it out.

"Stop that," he ordered.

But the laughter continued, which enraged him. They were laughing at him, he was certain of it. Who else would they be laughing at? Bastards.

He stepped over the threshold, ready to sue. The air was cold and clammy. This wasn't a very pleasant house, he'd decided very quickly, and this was a particularly unpleasant corner of it. But the laughter continued, and he couldn't turn his back on it, not until he'd silenced it.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "This is private property. You hear me? You shouldn't even -- "

He stopped now because there, in the shadow of a humongous Bird of Paradise tree, he made out a human form. No, two. No, three. He could barely see their features, but he could feel the imprint of their stares upon him.

And then more laughter, mocking his protests.

"I'm warning you," he snapped, as though he were talking to children. "Get away from here. Go on! Get away!"

But instead of stopping, the addled laughter grew louder still, and its owners decided to step out from under the shade of the Bird of Paradise. Eppstadt could see them more dearly now. They were indeed trespassers, he guessed, who'd been up here partying the night away. One of them, a very lovely young woman (she couldn't have been more than seventeen, to judge by the tautness of her skin) was bare-breasted, her brunette hair wet and pressed to her skull. He vaguely thought he knew her; that perhaps as a child actress she'd been in a movie he'd produced over at Paramount, or during his earlier time at Fox. She was certainly developing into a beautiful woman. But there was something about the way she stepped out of the shadows-her head sinking down, as though she might at any moment drop to the ground and imitate some animal or other-that distressed him. He didn't want her near him, even with her tight skin, her lovely nubs of nipples, her pouty lips. There was too much hunger in her eyes, and even if he wasn't the focus of that appetite, he didn't want to be caught between such a mindless hunger and its object of desire, whatever it might be.

And then there were the others, still lurking close to the tree behind her. Wait, there were more than two. There were a host of others, whose gaze he now felt on him. They were everywhere out here, in this uncertain dawn. He could see the foliage moving where some of them had slunk, their naked bellies flat on the ground. And they were up in the branches too; rotted blossoms came down to add to the muck that slickened the Mexican pavers underfoot.

Eppstadt took a tentative backward step, regretting that he'd ever stepped out of the house. No, not just that. At that moment he was regretting the whole process of events that had brought him to this damned house in the first place. Going to Maxine's asinine party; having that witless argument with Pickett; then the interrogation of Jerry Brahms and the choice to come up here. Stupid, all of it.

He took a second backward step. As he did so the eyes of the exhibitionist girl who'd first appeared became exceptionally bright, as though something in her head had caught fire. Then, without warning, she broke into a sudden run, racing at Eppstadt. He turned back towards the door, and in the instant that he did so he saw a dozen -- no, two dozen -- figures who'd been standing camouflaged in the murk break their cover and join her in her dash for the door.

He was a step from reaching the threshold when the young bitch caught hold of his arm.

"Please -- " she said. Her fingers dug deep into the fat where healthier men had biceps.

"Let me go."

"Don't go in," she said.

She pulled him back towards her, her strength uncanny. He reached out and grabbed the doorjamb, thinking as he did so that he'd got through the last twenty-five years of his life without anyone laying an inappropriate hand upon him, and here he was in the midst of his second such indignity in the space of twenty-four hours.

The woman still had fierce hold of him, and she wasn't about to let him go --

"Stay out here," she implored.

He flailed away from her. His Armani shirt tore, and he seized the moment to wriggle free. From the corner of his eye he saw a lot of faces, eyes incandescent, converging on the spot.

Terror made him swifter than he'd been in three decades. He leapt over the threshold, and once he got inside, he turned on a quarter, throwing all his weight against the door. It slammed closed. He fumbled with the lock, expecting to feel instant pressure exerted from the other side.

But there was none. Despite the fact that the trespassers could have pushed the door open (smashed it open, lock and all, if they'd so chosen) they didn't. The girl simply called to him through the door, her voice well-modulated, like that of someone who'd been to a high-grade finishing school:

"You should be careful," she said, in an eerie sing-song. "This house is going to come down. Do you hear me, mister? It's coming down."

He heard; he heard loud and clear. But he didn't reply. He simply bolted the door, still mystified as to why they hadn't attempted to break in, and ran up the passageway back to the kitchen. Before he reached the door Joe rounded the corner, coming in the opposite direction, gun in hand.

"Where the hell were you?" Eppstadt demanded.

"I was just about to ask you the same -- "

"We're under siege."

"From what?"

"There are crazy people out there. A lot of crazy, fucking people."

"Where?"

"Right outside that door!"

He pointed back down the passageway. There was nothing visible through the glass panel. They'd retreated in four or five seconds, taking refuge in the murk.

"Trust me," Eppstadt said, "there's twenty or thirty people waiting on the other side of that door. One of them tried to drag me out there with them." He proffered his torn shirt and bloodied arm as proof. "She was probably rabid. I should get shots."

"I don't hear anybody," Joe said.

"They're out there. Trust me."

He went back to the kitchen, with Joe on his heels.

Jerry was running water into the sink, and splashing it on his temple. Joe went straight to the window to see if he could verify Eppstadt's story, while Eppstadt snatched a handful of water to douse his own wound.

"The line's down, by the way," Jerry said.

"I've got my portable," Eppstadt said.

"They're not working either," Joe said. "The earthquake's taken out the whole system."

"Did you see Maxine or Sawyer out there?" Jerry said.

"I never got out there, Brahms. There are people -- "

"Yes I know."

"Wait. Turn off the water."

"I haven't finished washing."

"I said: turn it off."

Brahms reluctantly obeyed. As the last of the water ran off down the pipes, another cluster of noises became audible, rising from the bowels of the house.

"It sounds like somebody left a television on down there," Joe said, splendidly simple-minded.

Eppstadt went to the door that lead into the turret. "That's no television," he said.

"Well what the hell else would it be?" Joe said. "I can hear horses, and wind. There's no wind today."

It was true. There was no wind. But somewhere, it was howling like the soundtrack on Lawrence of Arabia.

"You'll find this place gets crowded after a while," Jerry said matter-of-factly. He patted dry the wound on his face. "We shouldn't be here," he reiterated.

"Who are they out there?" Eppstadt said.

"Old movie stars mainly. A few of Katya's lovers."

Eppstadt shook his head. "These weren't old. And several of them were women."

"She liked women," Jerry said, "On occasion. Especially if she could play her little games with them."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Joe said.

"Katya Lupi, who built this house -- "

"Once and for all -- " Eppstadt said, "these were not Katya Lupi's lovers. They were young. One of them, at least, looked no more than sixteen or seventeen."

"She liked them very young. And they liked her. Especially when she'd taken them down there." He pointed to the turret door through which the sound of storm-winds were still coming. "It's another world down there, you see. And they'd be addicted, after that. They'd do anything for her, just to get another taste of it."

"I don't get it," Joe said.

"Better you don't," Jerry replied. "Just leave now, while you still can. The earthquake threw the door open down there. That's why you can hear all the noise."

"You said it was coming from some other place?" Joe said.

"Yes. The Devil's Country."

"What?"

"That's what Katya used to call it. The Devil's Country."

Joe glanced at Eppstadt, looking for some confirmation that all this was nonsense. But Eppstadt was staring out of the window, still haunted by the hungry faces he'd met on the threshold. Much as he would have liked to laugh off what Jerry Brahms was saying, his instincts were telling him to be more cautious.

"Suppose there is some kind of door down there ... " he said.

"There is, believe me."

"All right. Say I believe you. And maybe the earthquake did open it up. Shouldn't somebody go down there and close it?"

"That would certainly make sense."

"Joe?"

"Aw shit. Why me?"

"Because you're the one who kept telling us how good you are with a gun. Anyway, it's obvious Jerry's in no state to go."

"What about you?"

"Joe," Eppstadt said. "You're talking to the Head of Paramount."

"So? That doesn't mean a whole heap right now, does it?"

"No, but it will when we get back to the real world." He stared at Joe, with an odd little smile on his face. "You don't want to be a waiter all your life, do you?"

"No. Of course not."

"You came to Hollywood to act, am I right?"

"I'm really good."

"I'm sure you are. Do you have any idea how much help I could be to you?"

"If I go down there -- ?"

"And close the door."

"Then you make me a movie star?"

"There are no guarantees in this town, Joe. But put it this way. You've got a better chance of being the next Brad Pitt -- "

"I see myself more as an Ed Norton."

"Okay. Ed Norton. You stand a better chance of being the next Ed Norton if you've got the Head of Paramount on your side. You understand?"

Joe looked past Eppstadt at the doorway that led to the turret. The noise of the storm had not abated a jot. If anything the wind had become louder, slamming the door against a wall. If it had just been the whine of the wind coming from below no doubt Joe's ambitions would have had him halfway down the stairs by now. But there were other sounds being carried on the back of the wind, some easy to interpret, others not so easy. He could hear the screech of agitated birds, which was not too distressing. But there were other species giving voice below: and he could put a name to none of them.

"Well, Joe?" Eppstadt said. "You want to close that door? Or do you want to serve canapes for the rest of your life."

"Fuck."

"You've got a gun, Joe. Where's your balls?"

"You promise you'll get me a part? Not some stinking little walk-on?"

"I promise ... to do my best for you."

Joe looked over at Jerry. "Do you know what's down there?"

"Just don't look," was Jerry's advice. "Close the door and come back up. Don't look into the room, even if it seems really amazing."

"Why?"

"Because it is amazing. And once you've looked you're going to want to go on looking."

"And if something comes out after me?"

"Shoot it."

"There," said Eppstadt. "Satisfied?"

Joe turned the proposition over in his head for a few more seconds, weighing the gun in his hand as he did so. "I've been in this fucking town two, almost three, years. Haven't even got an agent."

"Looks like this is your lucky day," Eppstadt said.

"Better be," Joe replied.

He drew a deep breath, and went out into the hallway. Eppstadt smiled reassuringly at him as he went by, but his features weren't made for reassurance. In fact at the sight of Eppstadt's crooked smile, Joe almost changed his mind. Then, thinking perhaps of what his life had been like so far-the casual contempt heaped on waiters by the famous-he went out to the head of the stairs and looked down. Reassuringly, the door had stopped slamming quite so hard. Joe took a deep breath, then he headed down the flight.

Eppstadt watched him go. Then he went back to the window.

"The people out there ... " he said to Jerry.

"What about them?"

"Will they have harmed Maxine?"

"I doubt it. They don't want blood. They just want to get back into the house."

"Why didn't they just push past me?"

"There's some kind of trap at the door that keeps them out."

"I got in and out without any problem."

"Well, you're alive, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You heard what I said."

"Don't start with the superstitious crap, Brahms. I'm not in the mood."

"Neither am I," Jerry said. "I wish I was anywhere but here, right now."

"I thought this was your dream palace?"

"If Katya were here, it would be a different matter."

"You don't really think that woman on the beach was Katya Lupi, do you?"

"I know it was her for a fact. I drove her down to Malibu myself."

"What?"

Jerry shrugged. "Playing Cupid."

"Katya Lupi and Todd Pickett? Crazy. It's all crazy."

"Why? Because you refuse to believe in ghosts?"

"Oh. I didn't say that," Eppstadt replied, somewhat cautiously. "I didn't say I didn't believe. I've been to Gettysburg and felt the presence of the dead. But a battlefield is one thing -- "

"And an old Hollywood dream-palace is another? Why? People suffered here, believe me. A few even took their own lives. I don't know why I'm telling you. You know how people suffer here. You caused half of it. This miserable town's awash with envy and anger. You know how cruel LA makes people? How hungry?"

The word rang a bell. Eppstadt thought of the face of the woman at the back of the house. The appetite in her eyes.

"They might not be the kind of ghosts you think you hear moaning at Gettysburg," Jerry went on. "But believe me, they are very dead and they are very desperate. So the sooner we find Maxine and Sawyer and get out of here the better for all of us."

"Oh dear God," Eppstadt said softly.

"What?"

"I'm starting to believe you."

"Then we've made some progress, I suppose."

"Why didn't you tell me all this before we came up here?"

"Would it have stopped you coming?"

"No."

"You see. You needed to see for yourself."

"Well, I've seen," Eppstadt said. "And you're right. As soon as Joe's closed the door, we'll all go out and find Maxine and Sawyer. You're sure those things -- "

"Use the word, Eppstadt."

"I don't want to."

"For God's sake, it's just a word."

"All right ... ghosts. Are you sure they won't come after us? They looked vicious."

"They want to get into the house. It's as I said: that's all they care about. They want to get back into the Devil's Country."

"Do you know why?"

"I've half a notion, but I don't fancy sharing it with you. Shall we not waste time standing around trying to guess what the dead want?" He returned his gaze to the expanse of green outside the window.

"Well all of us know sooner than we care to."

TWO

At 5:49 A.M., when the 6.9 earthquake (later discovered to have had its epicenter in Pasadena) had shaken Los Angeles out of its pre-dawn doze, Tammy had been standing on the nameless street outside Katya Lupi's house in Coldheart Canyon, drawn back to the place with an ease that suggested she had it in her blood now, for better or worse.

She had left the party at the Colony a few minutes after the departure of Eppstadt's expedition, having decided that there was little point in her waiting on the beach. If Todd and Katya were still in the water then they were dead by now, their corpses carried off by the tide towards Hawaii or Japan. And if by some miracle they had survived, then they surely wouldn't go back to Maxine's house. They would head home to the Canyon.

Her initial plan was to give up on this whole sorry adventure, return to the hotel on Wilshire, shower, change into some fresh clothes and then get the first available flight out of Los Angeles. She'd done all she could for Todd Pickett. More than he deserved, Lord knows. And what had she got for her troubles? In the end, little more than his contempt. She wasn't going to put herself in the way of that ever again. If she wanted to cause herself pain all she had to do was bang her head against the kitchen door. She didn't need to come all the way to Los Angeles to do that.

But as she drove back to the hotel, fragments of things that she'd seen in the Canyon, and later in the house, came back to her; images that inspired more awe in her soul than terror. She would never get another chance to see such sights this side of the grave, certainly; should she not take the opportunity to go back, one last time? If she didn't go now, by tomorrow it would be too late. The Canyon would have found new protections against her -- or anybody else's -- inquiry; new charms and mechanisms designed to conceal its raptures from curious eyes.

And, of course, there was always the remote possibility that Todd had survived the ocean and made his way back up there. That, more than any other, was the strongest reason to return.

Her decision made, she drove on up to Sunset-forgetting about the shower and change of clothes-and made her way back to the Canyon.

No doubt it was foolhardy, returning to a place where she had endured so much but, besides her desire to see the spectacles of the place one last time, an putting aside any hopes she might have for Todd's survival, she could not shake the niggling suspicion that her business at the house was not at an end. She had no intellectual justification for such a feeling; just a certainty, marrow-deep, that this was the case. She'd know when it was over. And it was not.

It had been an eerie drive up the winding Canyon road in the pre-dawn gloom. She had deliberately switched off her headlights so as to attract as little attention as possible, but that made her feel even more vulnerable somehow; as though she was not quite real herself, here in this Canyon of a Thousand Illusions.

Twice something had moved across the road in front of her, its grey form unfixable in the murk. She put on the brakes, and let the creature cross.

Once she got to the house she realized she was not the first visitor. There were two cars already parked outside. She was crossing the street to examine the other two when the earthquake hit.

She'd been in earthquakes before, but she'd never actually been standing so close to the bedrock while one took place. It was quite an experience. She almost lost control of her bladder, as the road idled under her feet, and the trees, especially the big ones, creaked and churned. She stood and waited for the first shock wave to pass, which seemed an eternity. Then, when her heart had recovered something approximating its natural rhythm, she headed towards Katya Lupi's dream palace.

Eppstadt was in the hallway, looking down the stairwell. It was dark at the bottom, but he thought he saw a motion in the darkness; like motes of pale dust, spiraling around.

"Joe?" he called. "Are you there? Answer me, will you?"

The sound from below had died away: the din of beasts was now barely audible. All that remained was the sound of the wind, which was remarkably consistent, lending credence to the notion that what he was hearing was a soundtrack, not reality. But where the hell had Joe got to? It was fully five minutes since he'd disappeared down the stairs to close the slamming door.

"I wouldn't go down there if I were you."

Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder to see that Brahms had forsaken his place at the window, and had come into the hallway.

"He doesn't answer me," Eppstadt said. "I thought perhaps he'd fallen, or ... I don't know. The door's still slamming. Hear it?"

"Of course."

"I don't suppose you want to go down there and close it for me?"

"You're big on delegation, aren't you? Do they teach you that in business school?"

"It's just a door."

"So close it yourself."

Eppstadt threw Brahms a sour look. "Or don't. Leave him down there if that's what your instincts are telling you."

"And if I do?"

"Put it this way: the longer you wait, the less chance there is you'll ever see him again."

"I should never have sent him down there," Eppstadt said.

"Huh. I never thought I'd hear that from you."

"Hear what?"

"Regret. This place is changing you. Even you. I'm impressed."

Eppstadt didn't reply. He simply stared down the long curve of the stairway, still hoping he'd see Joe's well-made face emerging from the shadows. But the only motion down there was the dust stirred up by the wind, circling on itself.

"Joe!" he yelled.

There wasn't even an echo from below. The bowels of the house seemed to consume the shouted syllable.

"I'm going upstairs," Jerry said, "to see if there's anybody up there."

"Is Maxine still out back?"

"I assume so. And if I remember from previous quakes she'll stay out there a while. She doesn't like being under anything, even a table, during a 'quake. She'll come in when she's ready."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"You don't like me, do you?" Eppstadt said out of nowhere.

Jerry shrugged. "Hollywood's always had its share of little Caligulas."

So saying, he left Eppstadt to his dilemma, and went on up the stairs. He knew the geography of the house pretty well. There were three doors that led off the top landing. One went to a short passageway, which led in turn to a large bedroom, with en suite bathroom, which had been occupied, until his death, by Marco Caputo. One was a small writing room. And one was the master bedroom, with its astonishing view, its immense closet and sumptuous, if somewhat over-wrought, bathroom.

Jerry had only been in the master bedroom two or three times; but it held fond memories for him. Memories of being a young man (what had he been, twelve, thirteen at the most?) invited in by Katya. Oh, she'd been beautiful that night; it had been like lying in the bed of a goddess. He'd been too frightened to touch her at first, but she'd gently persuaded him out of his fears.

As his life had turned out, she'd been the only woman he'd ever slept with. In his early twenties he was certain his queerness was a result of that night. No other woman, he would tell himself, could possibly be the equal of Katya Lupi. But that was just serf-justification. He'd been born queer, and Katya was his one grand exception to the rule.

As he reached the door of the master bedroom, there was an aftershock. A short jolt, no more; but enough to set the antiquated chandelier that hung in the turret gently swaying and tinkling again. Jerry waited for a few moments, holding onto the banister, waiting to see if there were going to be any more shocks coming immediately upon the heels of this one. But there were none.

He glanced down the stairwell. No one was in view. Then he tried the bedroom door. It was locked from the inside. There was only one thing to construe from this: the room had an occupant, or occupants. He glanced down at the shiny boards at his feet, and saw that there were a few droplets of water on the polished timber.

It wasn't hard to put the pieces of this puzzle together; nor to imagine the scene on the other side of the locked door. Todd and Katya had survived their brush with the Pacific. They were alive; sleeping, no doubt, in the great bed. The voyeur in him would have liked very much to have slid through the closed door and spied on the lovers as they slept; both naked, Todd lying face up on the bed, Katya pressed to his side. She was probably snoring, as he'd heard her do several times when she'd catnapped in his presence.

He didn't blame Katya for her covetousness one iota. If being hungry for life meant being hungry for an eternity of nights wrapped in the arms of a man who loved you, then that was an entirely understandable appetite.

And there was just a little part of him which thought that if he stayed loyal to her long enough-if he played his part-then she would let him have a piece of her eternity. That she would show him how the years could be made to melt away.

He retreated from the door, and headed downstairs, leaving the sleepers to their secret slumber.

When he got to the mid-level landing Eppstadt had gone. Apparently, he'd made the decision to do downstairs and look for Joe. Jerry looked over the balcony. There was no sound from below. The wind had died away to nothing. The door was no longer slamming.

He went from the stairs to the front door, which stood ajar.

Perhaps this was his moment to depart. He had nothing more to contribute here. Katya had her man; Todd had found some measure of peace after his own disappointments. What else was there for Jerry to do, but make his silent farewells and slip away?

He stood at the front door for two or three minutes, unable to make the final break. Eventually, he convinced himself to just linger here a little longer, simply to see the look on Maxine's face when she realized Todd was still alive. He went back into the kitchen, and sat down, waiting-like anyone who'd spent their time watching other lives rather than having one of their own-to see what happened next.

Eppstadt had been two steps from the bottom of the stairs when the aftershock hit. He was by no means an agile man, but he leapt the last two steps without a stumble. There were ominous growlings in the walls, as though several hungry tigers had been sealed up in them. This was, he knew, one of the most foolish places to be caught in an earthquake, especially if (as was perfectly possible) the aftershock turned out not to be an aftershock at all, but a warm-up for something bigger. It would be more sensible-much more sensible-to ascend the stairs again and wait until the tigers had quieted down. But he wasn't going to do that. He'd been sensible for most of his life; always taking the safe road, the conservative route. For once, he wanted to play life a little dangerously, and take the consequences.

That said, he didn't have to be suicidal. There was a door-lintel up ahead. He'd be safer under there than he was in the open passageway. He made a dash for the spot, and as he did so, the aftershock abruptly ceased.

He took a deep breath.

Then he glanced over his shoulder into the room behind him. Presumably this was the place Joe had disappeared into; there was nowhere else for him to go.

He went to the door. Looked inside. He could see nothing at first, just undivided gloom. He reached in, as many had done before him, to fumble for a light switch, and failing to find one, allowed a little surge of curiosity to take hold of him. Hadn't he said to himself he wanted to live a little more riskily? Well, here was his opportunity. Stepping into this strange room at the bottom of this lunatic house was probably the most foolish thing he'd ever done, and he knew it.

A cold wind came to greet him. It caught hold of his elbow, and drew him over the threshold into the world-yes, it was a world-inside. He looked up at the heavens; at that three-quarter blinded sun, at the high herringbone clouds that he remembered puzzling over as a child, wondering what it was that laid them out so carefully, so prettily. A star fell earthward, and he followed its arc with his eyes, until it burned itself out, somewhere over the trees.

Far off, many miles beyond the dark mass of the forest, he could see the sea, glittering. This was not the Pacific, he could see. The ships that moved upon it were like something from an Errol Flynn flick, The Sea Hawk or some such. He'd loved those movies as a kid; and the ships in them. Especially the ships.

It was twenty-six seconds since the man from Paramount, who'd spent his professional life keeping the dreamy, superstitious child in him silenced by pretending a fine, high-minded superiority to all things that smelt of grease-paint and midnight hokum, had entered the Devil's Country; and had lost himself in it.

"Come on, don't be afraid, the wind from the sea whispered in his ear.

And in he went, all cynicism wiped from his mind by the memory of wheeling ships beneath a painted sky, still young enough to believe he might grow up a hero.

THREE

Todd stirred from a state closer to a stupor than a sleep. He was lying on the immense bed of the master bedroom in the house in Coldheart Canyon. Katya was lying beside him, her little body gathered into a tight knot, pressed close to him. One arm was beneath him, the other on top, as though she'd never let him go of him again. She was snoring in her sleep, as she had been that day he'd found her in her bedroom at the guest-house. The human touch. It was more eloquent now than ever, given what they'd gone through together.

There had been some terrifying moments for them both in the last few hours; fragments of them played in Todd's head as he slowly extricated himself from her embrace, and slid slowly out of the bed. First, there'd been that breath-snatching moment when he'd turned his back on the Malibu house and headed out into the dark waters of the Pacific with Katya. He'd never been so frightened in his life. But then she'd squeezed his hand, and looked around at him, her hair blowing back from her face, showing off the glory of her bones, and he'd thought: even if I die now, I will have been the luckiest man in creation. I will have had this woman by my side at the end. Who could ask for more than that?

It hadn't been quite so easy to hold on to those feelings of gratitude in the chaotic minutes that followed. Once they were out of their depth, and in the grip of the great Pacific, the bitter-sweet joy of what they were doing became a shared, instinctive attempt to survive in the dark, bruising waters. Fifty yards out, and the big waves, the surfers' waves, started to pick them up and drop them down again into their lightless troughs. It was so dark he could barely see Katya's face, but he heard her choking on seawater, coughing like a frightened little girl.

And suddenly the idea of just dying out here, beaten to death by the waves, didn't seem so attractive. Why not try to live, he found himself thinking? Not the kind of life he'd had before (he wouldn't want that again, ever) but some other kind of life. Travelling around the world, perhaps, incognito; just the two of them. That wouldn't be so bad, would it? And when they were bored with travel they could find some sunny beach down in Costa Rica and spend every day there drunk amongst the parrots. There they could wait out the years until the big, glossy world he'd once given a shit for had forgotten he even existed.

All these thoughts came in flashes, none of them really coherent. The only thought that took any real shape was the means by which they could escape this dark water alive.

"We're going to dive!" he yelled to Katya. "Take a deep breath."

He heard her do so; then, before another pulverizing wave could come along and knock them out he drove them both into a teetering wall of water, diving deep into the placid heart of the wave. They must have done this half a hundred times; diving down, rising up again gasping, then watching for the next monstrous wall to be almost upon them before diving again. It was a desperate trick, but it worked.

It was dearly preventing them from getting a terrible beating, but it was steadily taking its toll on their energies. He knew they couldn't continue to defy the violence of the water for very much longer. Their muscles were aching, their senses were becoming unreliable. It would only be a matter of time before the force of the water got the better of them, and they sank together, defeated by sheer fatigue.

But they had counted without the benign collusion of the tide, which all this time had been slowly bearing them south, and -- as it did so -- had been also ushering them back towards the shore. The tumult of waters around them began to die down, and after a few minutes their toes began to brush some of the taller coral towers. A few minutes later they had solid ground beneath their feet, and a few minutes after that they were stumbling ashore at Venice.

For five minutes or so they lay on the dark sand together, spitting up water and coughing, and then eventually finding it in them to laugh, and catch each other's hands.

Against all the odds, they'd survived.

"I guess we ... we weren't ready ... to die," Todd gasped.

"I suppose so," Katya said. She dragged her head over the sand, to put her lips in reach of his. It wasn't a kiss, so much as a sharing of breath. They lay there, mouth to mouth, until Katya's teeth began to chatter.

"We have to get you back to the Canyon," he said, hauling himself to his knees. The lights of the Venice boardwalk seemed impossibly remote.

"I can't," she said.

"Yes you can. We're going home. We're going back to the Canyon. You'll feel stronger and warmer once we're walking. I promise."

He helped her get to her knees and then practically lifted her to her feet. Arms around one another they stumbled towards the boardwalk, where the usual tourist-trap entertainments were still going on, despite the lateness of the hour. They wove between the people, unrecognized, and in a back street Todd found a kid with a beaten up Pinto to whom he offered three hundred waterlogged bucks if he'd take them back home, and another three hundred, dry, if he promised not to mention what he'd done and where he'd been, to anyone.

"I know who you are," the kid said.

"No you don't," Todd said, snatching the three hundred back from the kid's hand.

"Okay, okay. I don't," the kid replied, gently reclaiming the money. "You gotta deal."

Todd knew that there wasn't much chance that the driver's promise would last very long, but they had no choice in the matter. They made their makeshift chauffeur close all the windows and turn up the heating, and they clung together in the back of the car trying to get some warmth back into their blood. Todd got him to drive as fast as the vehicle was capable of going, and twenty minutes later he was directing the kid up the winding road into Coldheart Canyon.

"I've never been up here before," the kid said when they were outside the house.

Katya leaned in and stared at him.

"No," she said. "And you never will again."

Something about the way she said it made the kid feel very nervous.

"Okay, okay," he said. "Just give me the rest of the money."

Todd went inside for another three hundred dollars in dry bills, and a few minutes later the guy drove off six hundred bucks the richer, and none the wiser, while Todd and Katya dragged themselves up the turret stairs to the master bedroom, sloughing off their cold damp clothes as they crept towards the bed they'd thought they'd never see again.

It took Todd a long time to get across the bedroom to the closet: his body ached to his marrow, and his thoughts were as sluggish as his body. Only as he was pulling on a clean pair of jeans did he realize there were voices in the house.

"Shit ... " he murmured to himself.

He decided not to wake Katya. Instead he would try to get rid of these people himself, without unleashing her righteous fury on them.

He went back into the bedroom. Despite the hullabaloo from below Katya showed no sign of waking. This was all to the good. She was obviously hearing the hurts of recent days. He lingered at the bedside, studying her peaceful features. The seawater had washed every trace of rouge or mascara from her face; she could have been a fifteen-year-old, lying there, dreaming innocent dreams.

Of course that innocence was an illusion. He knew what she was capable of; and there was a corner of his brain that never completely ceased warning him of that fact. But then hadn't she come to the beach to save him? Who else would have done that, except perhaps for Tammy? All anybody had ever done for him was use him, and as soon as they'd got what they'd needed, they'd moved on. But Katya had proved she was made of more loyal stuff. She'd been ready to go all the way with him; to death if necessary.

So what if she was cruel? What if she had committed crimes that would have had her behind bars if anybody knew about them? Her sins mattered very little to him right now. What mattered was how she'd taken his hand as they'd turned their back on the lights of the beach and faced the dark waters of the Pacific; and how hard she'd struggled to keep holding onto it, however much the tide had conspired to divorce them.

The voices below had quieted.

He pulled on a white T-shirt, and went to the door. As he did so there was a small earthquake. The door rattled in its frame. It was a short jolt, and he guessed it was probably an aftershock. If so, then perhaps what had woken him in the first place was the big shaker. Why else would he have woken? He was still very much in need of sleep, God knows. Nothing would have given him more pleasure than to strip off his jeans and T-shirt and crawl back into bed beside Katya for another three or four hours of blissful slumber.

But he could scarcely do that with a search party in the house. He heard Eppstadt's voice amongst the exchanges. Fuck him! It was typical that the little prick would get his nose in their business sooner or later. Todd had hoped that he and Katya would get some quiet time together to plan their next move: to search the house (and of course the Pool House) for incriminating evidence of scandal, and destroy it; then to hide in the depths of the Canyon until the investigators were satisfied that there was nothing here worth investigating, and left, taking Eppstadt and whoever the hell else was here (Maxine, no doubt) back with him. But Eppstadt had ruined that hope. Before these interlopers left they were going to search every damn room, no doubt of that: the master bedroom included. He was going to need to find a way to spirit Katya and himself out of the house and away before they came looking.

He listened at the door and then very gingerly unlocked it and opened it an inch. He could hear an exchange from below, which seemed to be led by Eppstadt. Jesus -- of all people to be up here amongst Katya's mysteries: Mister Bottom-line himself, Gary Eppstadt. There was no sign of an opinion from Maxine, which was unusual. She was normally vocal in any debate, however little she knew about the subject. Then Todd remembered her phobia about quakes. She always fled for the open air at the first sign of a trembler, and no doubt she'd done exactly that. He was tempted to go onto the balcony and see if he could spot her in the back yard -- just to see the bitch in a state of agitation -- but there wasn't time. There was too much going on downstairs. He ventured out of the bedroom a step, and peered over the rail, in time to see somebody -- it was a young man, either a waiter brought from the party, or one of Maxine's new boys (or both), heading down the spiral into the darkness down there, where a door was banging.

Next he heard footsteps, and felt certain that Eppstadt was about to appear from the kitchen door. Before he was spotted, Todd slid back into the bedroom, and gently closed the door. It made a barely perceptible click; certainly nothing audible with so much else going on in the vicinity.

He knew what that banging door was all about. The earthquake had thrown open the door to the Devil's Country, and it looked as though Eppstadt had convinced some dope to go down and close it. Idiots! Didn't they have any instincts? Didn't something whisper at the back of their heads that when a door slammed in this house, you let it slam, you let it slam till it chose to stop. What you didn't do was head on down the stairs to close it. That was suicide, or the next best thing.

He put his head around the corner and peered into the bedroom. Katya was still fast asleep. He briefly contemplated waking her, then thought better of it. All her life she'd had men following her around asking what they should do next. He wasn't going to be numbered amongst them.

No, he would deal with this on his own. After all, the house was going to be his home as much as it was hers. His word should be law here. He just had to work out how best to proceed, and without a shot of espresso to quicken his sluggish thoughts, it might take a while. No matter, the answer would come to him, in time.

He sat with his back against the wall, and tried to put out of his head the image of the innocent stranger heading down the spiral staircase to close the door to the Devil's Country.

FOUR

Todd stayed put behind the door for several minutes, his thoughts describing vague circles. In truth he was still hoping that it would not take any action on his part to fix the problem. The preferable solution would be this: somebody (perhaps Maxine, out there in the back yard) would encounter something that would raise the panic-level in the house, and there would be a mass exodus. Perhaps it was too much to hope for, but every other option (diversions, locating keys to side exits) required a higher degree of wit than he possessed in his present exhausted state.

He finally got up from behind the door and returned through the bedroom, past his sleeping beauty, to the balcony. He stepped out. The dull dawn had ushered in a dull day. Later, perhaps, the marine layer would burn off and they'd have some sun, but for now, the sky was a wall of dead cloud. He looked down into the greenery, hoping to spot Maxine, but the thickness of the jungle all around the house-especially the gigantic bird-of-paradise trees-made it virtually impossible to see very much.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a motion. Somebody was running through the thicket, throwing panicked backward glances as he went. It wasn't Maxine, it was her assistant Sawyer, who'd been with her for the last three years. He wasn't any more than thirty, but he'd let his body get out of shape. Too many hurried lunches, snatched because Maxine had more work for him than he could ever possibly finish; too much after-work socializing, knocking back his single malts and beluga at fancy premieres; not to mention the Bavarian creme-filled donuts he would bring into the office in boxes of six, to help him through his day with a well-timed sugar rush.

Thanks to the donuts and hamburgers, and his neat scotches, he couldn't run very fast. And he certainly couldn't yell for help while he was running: he didn't have enough breath for both. All he could do was sob between gasps, throwing panicking glances over his shoulder. His pursuers were closing on him. Todd could see the bushes thrashing around immediately behind him; and something else-something smaller and more nimble-was throwing itself from branch to branch overhead, to keep up with its quarry.

"M ... Max ... Maxine!" He managed to get out, in between gasps.

"I'm over here!" Maxine yelled. "Sawyer! I'm at the cages!"

Todd followed the sound of Maxine's voice, and located her. She was a considerable distance from the house, and had clambered up on top of one of a series of cages. There she was kneeling, with a gun in her hand. She'd always kept guns around the house, Todd knew, but this was the first occasion he'd seen her using one.

"Keep following my voice," she yelled to Sawyer. "Look for a tree with bright yellow flowers, like big bells -- "

"I'm looking!" Sawyer sobbed.

From his vantage point on the balcony, Todd felt like a Caesar at the Coliseum, watching the lions and the Christians. He could see the Christians perfectly clearly, and now-as the gap between the pursuer and the pursued closed-he began to glimpse the lions too.

In the bushes no more than a yard or two behind Sawyer was one of dead's children: a foul hybrid of ghost woman and-of all things-jaguar. The latter must have been a prisoner in Katya's menagerie, but the marriage of anatomies had turned its sleek perfection into something rougher, uglier and entirely more bizarre. The human element had been female; no doubt of that. The face-when Todd glimpsed it-was two-thirds humanoid. The high cheekbones, the icy stare: it was surely the face of Lana Turner. Then the creature opened its mouth, and the bestial third showed itself: vast teeth, top and bottom, a mottled throat, a black tongue. It let out a very unladylike roar, and pounced on Sawyer, who threw himself out of its path with inches to spare.

"Are you okay?" Maxine yelled.

All that Sawyer could manage was: "No!"

"Are you close to me?" Maxine said.

"I can't see you," he cried. The branches over his head were shaking violently.

"Look for the yellow flowers."

" ... yellow ... flowers ... "

It would have been easy for Todd to direct Sawyer through this maze, but that would have taken all the fun out of it. Better to keep his silence and let the man find his own way. It was the kind of game he knew Katya would love. He was tempted to wake her, but it would be over in the next few seconds, he guessed. Sawyer was a few yards from the cages, and safety. Having failed to catch its victim on its first pounce, the Lana, as Todd had mentally dubbed the creature, had returned to her stalking. Todd caught glimpses of her mottled back as she slid through the thicket. Her intentions were clear, at least from Todd's point of view. She was moving to cut Sawyer off from the gallery of cages. Sawyer and Maxine kept a banal exchange going meanwhile, so that Sawyer could find his way to her.

"You're getting louder."

"Am I?"

"Sure. You see the yellow flowers, yet?"

"Yeah. I see them."

"You're really close."

"I'm under them -- "

He stopped talking because he heard the low growl of the Lana. Todd could hear the creature too, though he couldn't see it. He silently willed Sawyer not to make any sudden moves; just stand still, shut up, and maybe the animal would lose interest. Sawyer could stand still without any problem, but could he shut up? No, he could not. Sawyer was a gabber. "Oh God, Maxine. Oh God. It's close to me."

"Shush," Maxine advised.

He stopped talking, but it was too late. The Lana knew exactly where Sawyer was positioned. She launched herself out of the thicket, striking Sawyer so that he fell sideways, through the very patch of yellow flowers which had been his beacon.

He was now in view of Maxine, who yelled to him to get up, get up quickly --

He started to do so, but the breath had been knocked out of him by the blow, and before he could get to his knees the creature was on him a second time, her claws digging deep into the mass of his shoulder-muscle.

From her perch on the cage Maxine was attempting to get a clear shot, but it would have been difficult for anyone, however sophisticated their skill with guns, to put a bullet in the animal and not wound Sawyer in the process. But Maxine was ready to give it a try. She'd been taking lessons from an ex-cop from the LAPD for several months; she knew to keep a steady hand and her eye fixed on the target.

Sawyer couldn't have moved if his life had depended upon it. The creature had him held in a death-grip.

Maxine fired. The sound was sharp in the still air of the Canyon, like a whip-crack. It echoed off the other wall of the Canyon, the blow of the bullet throwing Sawyer's attacker off her victim. She lay, this not-so-distant relation to the exquisite Miss Turner, on the ground beside Sawyer, whom she'd loosed as soon as she was hit. Blood ran copiously from them both, mingling on the ground between them.

"Get up," Maxine said to Sawyer.

It was good advice. The Lana was still alive, her breathing quick and shallow.

Sawyer wasn't so badly injured that he failed to realize the danger he was still in. He rolled away from his attacker and started to get to his feet. As he did so the creature suddenly sat up beside him and opening her sizeable jaws, lunged. She took a chunk from Sawyer's leg, twisting her head to take away the bulk of his calf. He screamed, and fell forward onto his hands.

Maxine had a clear shot at the beast, and took it. But her second shot was not as efficient as her first; it struck the creature's shoulder, passing through the muscle without appearing to significantly slow the animal, which threw itself on top of Sawyer as though she were attempting to mount him.

Seconds later, the Lana opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the bones of Sawyer's skull. The man's sobs ceased instantly, and what little strength his limbs had possessed fled. He hung beneath the Lana's body like a zebra's corpse from the jaws of a lion, glassy-eyed and lifeless.

Todd heard Maxine say, "Oh Christ ... oh Christ ... "

But the horror wasn't over with yet. The creature apparently wanted to get her teeth into her wounder, because having dispatched Sawyer she let the body drop from her jaws and began to move towards the cage on which Maxine was crouched. Even in her hurt state there was no doubt that she had the physical power to get up onto the cage and attack Maxine. In fact, the wounds she had sustained didn't seem to be hurting her that much; her hybrid face carried a look that was somewhere between an animal snarl and a human smile. Maxine didn't hesitate. Taking a bead on the animal, she fired. The bullet struck the creature in the middle of her face, taking out the flat nose and the top half of the mouth.

For one long moment she seemed not to comprehend the fatal damage she had sustained. She lifted her front leg, which ended in a hand which erupted into claws, towards her face, almost as though she intended to explore the damage she had sustained. But before her corrupted limb could reach her face the creature's system closed down, and she fell forward, dead.

There had been a good deal of motion in the foliage throughout this episode; Todd had the sense that there were several other creatures watching to see how this proceeded before they showed their own faces. Now, with the death of Lana, the thicket was still. Nothing moved; nothing breathed.

The only sound Todd could hear was the very soft sound of Maxine saying Oh God to herself, over and over. She quickly got control of her horror and her fear and started to clamber down off the cage where she'd been perched.

Todd was half-tempted to call down to her, to offer some word of encouragement, but he refrained from doing so. For one thing, he didn't want to admit that he'd stood as a spectator to this whole drama; second, he was afraid of distracting Maxine while she was down there. Certainly her killing of the creature had silenced its brethren in the thicket, but their silence didn't mean they'd given up their stalking. They were simply sitting in the shadows waiting for Maxine to make a mistake, when no doubt they would fall upon her in a vengeful mob.

Thus, keeping his silence, Todd watched Maxine make her way between the cages, glancing back at the house constantly, as though she was trying to find a path that would lead her back to safety but was at present only able to find one that ran parallel to the house. She was now thirty or forty yards from the cages, which was a good thing, because that meant she couldn't see what was happening on the walkway beneath them.

A minute or two after her exit, a few of Lana's family members appeared from the thicket where-as Todd had known-they'd been waiting. Now about six of them came out of hiding. They had no interest in the corpse of their sibling. It was Sawyer they wanted. Surrounding his body they began to play with the corpse like children with some gruesome toy. They tore off his clothes, and bit off his penis and balls. They followed that by biting off fingers, knuckle by knuckle, and spitting the pieces out. They seemed to take infantile pleasure in the mess they were making. Todd was horribly disgusted by the spectacle, but he kept watching, until they were finished with the fingers and began to disembowel the man. Only then did he retreat from the balcony railing and go back inside.

It would not necessarily be easy for Maxine to find her way back up to the house, he realized. Many of the pathways were overgrown, and in her present, no doubt panicked, state of mind, she could easily lose her way and keep on losing it. He would have to go outside and find her.

Katya was still sleeping. The shots hadn't even stirred her. Indeed, she seemed to have scarcely moved, so profound was her slumber. Her hand was still up at her mouth, limply curled round on itself.

He kissed her, saw that this did not wake her either, and left her to her slumbers.

FIVE

Eppstadt was in the Devil's Country. A fine drizzle, almost a mist, was drooping from the bloated clouds; it came in soft waves against his face, cooling his flushed skin. If he doubted the reality of this place, its chill seemed designed to undo his doubt.

He hated the idea that what he was witnessing was real; doing so violated all his logical faculties. But what was the alternative? That he'd slipped and fallen, and was now lying at the bottom of the stairs in a semi-comatose state, imagining all this? It was a pretty solution, but as he had no way of knowing whether it was true or not: his only option was to find Joe, and get the hell out of here before the place began to get even crazier than it already was. The less he knew about this country-the less its grotesqueries lodged in his psyche-the happier the rest of his life would surely be.

With that thought he began a three hundred and sixty degree scanning of the landscape, calling Joe's name as he did so. His din (even his simple presence) was enough to stir life in the bushes and trees. He felt himself watched by several species of unlikely animal, their eyes huge and luminous, their postures, and in some cases the details of the physiognomies, vaguely human, as though this twilight world had witnessed all kinds of criminal couplings.

Finally, he heard a response from Joe.

"Who's there?"

"Eppstadt."

"Come over here. Quickly. You gotta help me."

He followed the sound of the man's shouting. There was a small copse ahead, and Joe had clambered a few feet into a tree by means of a crude wooden ladder which had been propped against one of the trunks.

"What the hell are you doing?" Eppstadt wanted to know.

Joe simply repeated his plea: "You gotta help me."

"There's no time, Joe," Eppstadt said, "You've got to come back with me. Right now. Christ, I sent you down to close the door. Why'd you come in?"

"For the same reason you did," Joe said. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Are you going to help me or not?"

Eppstadt had pressed his way into the midst of the thicket as he and Joe spoke, snagging his suit on the briars that grew in profusion here several times as he did so. The tableau that now came into view appalled him.

There was a man crucified amongst the higher branches of the tree Joe had climbed, the deed done with both rope and nails. Joe had already managed to remove a couple of the nails (spattering his arms and face with blood in the process) and was now pulling at the knotted rope with his teeth. He was desperate to get the man down from the tree, and he had reason. The branches around the man's head were bustling with birds, the Devil's Country's version of carrion-crows: bigger, crueler versions. They'd clearly made several assaults on the man's face already. There were deep gouges around the victim's sockets where the birds had gone after his eyes. Blood from the wounds poured down his face. He might have resembled Christ but for the brightness of his blond hair, which fell in dirty curls to his shoulders.

"I need a stone!" Joe yelled down at Eppstadt.

"What for?"

"Just find me a fucking stone, will you?"

Eppstadt didn't like to take orders -- especially from a waiter -- but he saw the urgency of the situation, and did as he was asked, looking around until he laid his hands on a long, sharp stone, which he passed on up to Joe. From his perch on the ladder, Joe took aim at the closest of the carrion crows. It was a good throw. The stone struck the most ambitious of the flock-who had apparently decided to come in for the kill-and messily smashed open the bird's head, but its companions did not fly off, as Joe had hoped. They simply retreated up the tree a branch or two, squawking in fury and frustration, while the dead bird dropped from the perch.

As if awoken from a grateful sleep by the din of the birds, the crucified man raised his head, and opened his mouth. A black snake, no thicker than a baby's thumb, slid out from between his lips in a thin gruel of blood, spittle and bile. The snake dangled from the man's lower lip for a few moments, hooked by its tail. Then it fell to the ground, a foot from Eppstadt.

He stepped away in disgust, throwing a backward glance at the door, just to reassure himself that his means of escape from this insanity was still in view. It was. But the snake had changed his perspective on this mercy mission.

"The guy's on the way out," Eppstadt said to Joe. "You can't do anything for him."

"We can still get him down."

"And I'm telling you he's beyond help, Joe. Look at him."

There did indeed seem little purpose in laboring to depose the man; he was obviously close to death. His eyes had rolled back beneath fluttering eyelids, showing nothing but white. He was attempting to say something, but his mind and his tongue were beyond the complex business of speech.

"You know what?" Eppstadt said, glancing around the landscape. "This is a set-up." There were indeed dozens of hiding places for potential attackers-human or animal-within fifty yards of them: rocks, holes, thicket. "We should just get the hell out of here before whoever did this to him tries the same on us."

"Leave him, you mean?"

"Yes. Leave him."

Joe just shook his head. He had succeeded in getting this far, and wasn't going to give up now. He pulled on the rope that held the man's right hand. The arm fell free. Blood pattered on the leaves over Eppstadt's head, like a light rain.

"I'm almost done," Joe said.

"Joe, I -- "

"Get ready," Joe said again, leaning across the victim's body to untie the other hand. You're going to have to catch him," he warned Eppstadt.

"I can't do that."

"Well who else is going to do it?" Joe snapped.

Eppstadt wasn't paying attention, however.

He'd heard a noise behind him, and now he turned to find that a freakish child, naked and runty, had appeared from somewhere, and was looking up at him.

"We've got company," he said to Joe, who was still struggling to free the crucified man's other hand.

When Eppstadt looked back at the freak, it had approached a few steps, and Eppstadt had a clearer view of it. There was something goatish in the gene-pool, Eppstadt decided. The child's bandy legs were sheathed with dirty-yellow fur, and his eyes were yellow-green. From beneath the pale dome of his belly there jutted a sizeable erection, which was out of all proportion to the rest of his body. He fingered it idly while he watched.

"Why are you taking the man down?" he said to Joe. Then, getting no answer from Joe, directed the same question at Eppstadt.

"He's in pain," was all Eppstadt could find to say, though the phrase scarcely seemed to match the horror of the victim's persecution.

"That's the way my mother wants him," the goat-boy said.

"Your mother?"

"Lil-ith," he said, pronouncing the word as two distinct syllables. "She is the Queen of Hell. And I am her son."

"If you're her son," Eppstadt said, playing along for time until a better way to deal with this absurdity occurred, "then it follows, yes ... she would be your mother."

"And she had him put up there so I could see him!" the goat-boy replied, the head of his pecker echoing his own head in its infuriated nodding.

The angrier he became, the more the evidence of his extreme in-breeding surfaced. He had a hair-lip, which made his outrage harder to understand, and his nose -- which was scarcely more than two gaping wet holes in his face, ran with cataharral fluids. His teeth, when he bared them, were overlapped in half a dozen places, and his eyes were slightly crossed. In short, he was an abomination, the only perfect piece of anatomy he'd inherited that monstrous member between his legs, which had lost some of its hardness now, and hung like a rubber club between his rough-haired legs.

"I'm going to tell my mother about you!" he said, stabbing a stunted forefinger in Eppstadt's direction. "That man is a crinimal."

"A crinimal?" Eppstadt said, with a supercilious smirk. The idiot-child couldn't even pronounce the word correctly.

"Yes," the goat-boy said, "and he's supposed to hang there till the birds fluck out his eyes and the dogs eat out his end tails."

"Entrails."

"End tails!"

"All right, have it your way. End tails."

"I want you to leave him up there."

During this brief exchange, Eppstadt's gaze had been drawn to the goat-boy's left foot. The nail of his middle toe had not been clipped (he guessed) since birth. Now it looked more like a claw than a nail. It was six, perhaps seven, inches long, and stained dark brown.

"Who the hell are you talking to?" Joe yelled down from the top of the ladder. The density of the foliage made it impossible for him to see the goat-boy.

"Apparently he's up there as a punishment, Joe. Better leave him there."

"Who told you that?"

Joe came down the ladder far enough to have sight of the goat-boy. "That?"

The boy bared his teeth at Joe. A dribble of dark saliva came from the corner of his mouth and ran down onto his chest.

"I really think we should just get going ... " Eppstadt said.

"Not until this poor sonofabitch is down from here," Joe said, returning up the ladder. "Fucking freak."

"This isn't our business, Joe," Eppstadt said. There was something about the way the air was rolling around them; something about the way the clouds churned overhead, covering the already depleted light of the sun, that made Eppstadt fearful that something of real consequence was in the offing. He didn't know what this place was, or how it was created; nor, at that moment, did he care. He just wanted to be out through the door and upstairs again.

"Help me!" Joe yelled to him.

Eppstadt went to the bottom of the ladder and peered up. The crucified man had dropped forward over Joe's broad shoulder. Even in his semi-comatose state he could still beg for some show of compassion. "Please ... " he murmured. I meant no offense ... "

"He wouldn't fuck my mother," said the goat-boy, by way of explanation for this atrocity. He was just a foot or two behind Eppstadt, staring up at Joe and the man he was attempting to save. He turned briefly; surveyed the sky. The wind was getting gusty again, slamming the door and then throwing it open.

"She's coming," the goat-boy said. "Smell that bitterness in the air?"

Eppstadt could indeed smell something; strong enough to make his eyes water.

"That's her," the goat-boy said. "That's Lil-ith. She's bitter like that. Even her milk." He made an ugly face. "It used to make me puke. And me? I love to suckle. I love it." He was getting hard again, talking himself into a fine little fever. He put his thumb in his mouth, and pulled hard on it, making a loud noise as he did so. He was every inch an irritating little child, excepting those inches where he was indisputably a man.

"I'd put him back if I were you," he said, pushing past Eppstadt to stand at the bottom of the ladder.

Eppstadt's gaze returned to the heavens. The sky was the colour of cold iron, and the bitterness the child had said was his mother's stench was getting stronger with every gust of the cold wind. Eppstadt looked off into the distance, to see if there was any sign of an arrivee on the winding road. But they were almost deserted. The only person on any of the roads right now was a man some two or three miles away, who was lying sprawled, his head against a stone. Eppstadt had no logical reason to believe this, but he was somehow certain the man was dead, his brains spattered on the stone where he lay his head.

Otherwise, the landscape was empty of human occupants.

There were plenty of birds in the air, struggling against the increasingly violent gusts to reach the safety of their roosts; and small animals, rabbits and the like, scampering through the roiling grass to find some place of safety. Eppstadt was no nature-boy, but he knew enough to be certain that when rabbits were making for their bolt-holes, it was time for human beings to get out of harm's way.

"We've got to go," he said to Joe. "You've done all you can."

"Not yet!" Joe yelled. The wind was strong enough to make even the heavy branches of the tree sway. Dead leaves were shaken down all around.

"For God's sake, Joe. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He took a step up the ladder and caught hold of Joe's belt. Then he tugged. "You're coming, or I'm going without you."

"Then go -- " Joe began to say. He didn't finish because at that instant the ladder, which was presently bearing the weight of Eppstadt, Joe the Samaritan, and the crucified man, broke.

Eppstadt was closest to the ground, so he sustained the least damage. He simply fell back in the sharp stones in which the copse and its briar thicket were rooted. He scrambled to his feet to find out what had happened to the other two men. Both had fallen amongst the thorns, the crucified man spread-eagled on top of Joe. Only now were the man's wounds fully displayed. Besides the peckings around his eyes, there were far deeper wounds-certainly not made by birds-in his chest. Somebody had had some fun with him before he was nailed up there, cutting star-patterns around his nipples.

Joe struggled to get himself out from under the man, but his flailing only served to catch him in the thorns.

"Help me," he said, throwing his hand back over his head towards Eppstadt. "Quickly. I'm being pricked to death here!"

Eppstadt approached the thicket and was about to take hold of Joe's hand when two of the largest wounds on the crucified man's chest gaped, and the flat black heads of two snakes, each ten times the size of the serpent that had slipped out of his throat, pressed their blood-soaked snouts out of the layers of flesh and yellow fat, and came slithering out of his torso. One of them trailed a multitude of what Eppstadt took to be eggs, suspended in a jellied mass of semi-translucent phlegm.

Eppstadt stepped away from the thicket, and from Joe. The serpents crisscrossed as they emerged, their beady white eyes seeking out some new warm place to nest.

"Are you going to help me or not?" Joe said.

Eppstadt simply shook his head.

"Eppstadt!" Joe wept. "For God's sake get me out."

Eppstadt had no intention of getting any closer to the snakes than he already was: but the goat-boy had no such scruples. He pushed past Eppstadt and grabbed hold of Joe's outstretched hand. His strength, like his member, was out of all proportion to his size. One good haul, and he had Joe halfway freed from the thorn bushes. Joe screamed as his back was scored by the thorns, which had been pressed deep into his flesh by the weight of the man on top of him.

"Ah now, shut up!" the goat-boy yelled over Joe's complaints. Hanging out of the thicket, poor Joe looked half-dead. The pain had made him vomit, and it was running from the side of his mouth. His demands had become pitiful sobs in the space of a few seconds. Horrified though he was-and guilty too (he'd come down here to help Joe; and now look at him)-Eppstadt still couldn't bring himself to intervene. Not with the snakes raising their heads from the body in which they'd nested, still eager for another victim.

Ignoring Joe's weak protests, the goat-boy pulled on him a second time, and then a third, which was the charm. Joe fell free of the thicket, landing heavily on his pierced back. Sheer agony lent him the strength to throw himself over onto his stomach. His back was nearly naked; the violence of the goat-boy's haulings had torn open his shirt. He lay face down in the dirt, retching again.

"That'll teach you," the goat-boy said. "Playing with criminals! You should get some of your own!"

While he was addressing Joe in this witless fashion, Eppstadt chanced to look up at the man still sprawled on the bed of thorns. The two snakes had slithered over his chest and were now entwined around his neck. He was too close to death to even register this last assault. He simply lay there, eyelids fluttering over sightless eyes, while the life was throttled out of him.

"See that?" the goat-boy said. "So much for you and your tricks. Now I lost my toy and your little friend is dead. Why couldn't you stay out of it, huh? He was mine!" The boy's fury had him jumping up and down now. "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

And suddenly he was up on Joe's back, dancing a tarantella on the mess of thorns and wounds and blood. "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

It was a show of petulance; no more nor less. Joe rolled over and threw the boy off. Then he started to get to his feet. But before he could do so, the goat-boy came at him, his step still reminiscent of some peculiar little dance.

"Get up!" Eppstadt yelled to Joe, not certain what the goat-boy was up to, but certain it was mischief. "Quickly!"

Despite his agonized state, Joe started to push himself off his knees. As he did so the goat-boy made a high slashing kick. Joe's hand went up to his neck, and he fell back in the dirt.

The foot which had struck Joe was the one with the long middle nail, and what had looked to Eppstadt like a glancing blow had in fact slashed open Joe's windpipe.

Both Joe's hands were at his neck now, as blood and air escaped his throat. He turned his gaze towards Eppstadt for a moment, as though the Head of Paramount might know why Joe was lying in the dirt of a place he couldn't even name while his last breath whined out between his fingers.

Then the look of incomprehension went out of his eyes, to be replaced with a blank stare. His hands dropped away from his neck. The whining sound died away, and he rolled forward. All the while the goat-boy went on dancing, out of pure pleasure.

Eppstadt didn't move. He was afraid to draw the murderer's attention. But then the boy seemed to take it into his half-witted head to go find some other plaything, and without looking back at Eppstadt again, he ran off, leaving Joe dead in the dirt and the man who'd come to save him alone in the darkening air.

SIX

Tammy had come into the house cautiously, not at all certain what she was going to find. In fact what she found was Jerry Brahms. He was standing in the hallway, looking down the stairwell, his face ashen-except where it was bloody from his fall-his hands trembling. Before he could get a word out of his mouth there came a din of shrieks from below.

"Who's down there?" Tammy asked Jerry.

"Some boy we came up here with from Maxine's party. A waiter. And Eppstadt. And God knows what else."

"Where's Maxine?

"She's outside. She fled into the backyard when the earthquake hit."

There were more noises from below, and then a rush of wind, coming up the stairwell. Tammy peered down into the darkness. There was somebody down at the very bottom, lying on the floor. She studied the figure. It moved.

"Wait a minute," she said, half to herself, "That's Zeffer!"

It was. It was Zeffer. And he was alive. There was blood all over him, but he was definitely alive. She went to the top of the stairs. He'd heard her calling his name, and his shining eyes had found her; were fixed on her. She started down the stairs."

"I wouldn't go down there ... " Brahms warned her.

"I know," she replied. "But that's a friend of mine."

She glanced up at Brahms as she took her second step. There was a look of mild astonishment on his face, she wasn't sure why. Was it because people didn't have friends in this God-forsaken house; or because she was going down the stairs despite the cold, dead smell on the wind?

Zeffer was doing his best to push himself up off his stomach, but he didn't have the strength to do it.

"Wait," she called to him, "I'm coming."

She picked up her speed to get to him. Once she reached the bottom she tried not to look towards the door through which he'd crawled, but she could feel the wind gusting through it. There was a spatter of rain in that wind. It pricked her face.

"Listen to me ... " Zeffer murmured.

She knelt beside him. "Wait. Let me turn you over."

She did her best to roll him over, so he wouldn't be face to the ground and managed to lift him so that his head was on her lap, though his lower body was still half-twisted around. He didn't seem to notice. He seemed, in fact, to be beyond comfort or discomfort; in a dreamy state which was surely the prelude to death. It was astonishing that he'd survived this long, given the wounding he'd sustained. But then perhaps he had the power of the Devil's Country to thank for that.

"Now," she said. "What do you want to tell me?"

"The horsemen," he said. "They're coming for the Devil's child ... "

"Horsemen?"

"Yes. The Duke's men. Goga's men."

Tammy listened. Zeffer was right. She could hear hooves on the wind, or in the ground; or both. They sounded uncomfortably close.

"Can they get out?" she asked Zeffer.

"I don't know. Probably." His eyes closed lazily, and for a terrible moment she feared she'd lost him. But they opened again, after a time, and his gaze fixed on her. His hands reached up and took hold of Tammy's arm, though his grip was feeble. "I think it's time the dead came in, don't you?" he said to her. His voice was so softened by weakness she was not sure she'd heard it right at first.

"The dead?" she said.

He nodded. "Yes. All the ghosts, outside in the Canyon. They want to come into the house, and we've kept them out all these years."

"Yes, but -- "

He shook his head, as if to say: don't interrupt me, I don't have time.

"You have to let them in." he told her.

"But they're afraid of something," Tammy said.

"I know. The threshold. Remember how I told you I went back to Romania?"

"Of course."

"I found one of the Brotherhood there. A friend of Father Sandru's. He taught me a method of keeping the dead from coming into your house. What you have to do is undo what I did. And in they'll come. Believe me. In they'll come.

"How?" she said. If time was so short, and he was so certain, why waste a breath on argument?

"Go into the kitchen and get a knife." He told her. "A strong knife, one that's not going to break on you. Then go to the back door and dig in the threshold."

"The threshold?"

"The wood frame you step over to go outside. There are five icons, in the wood. Ancient Romanian symbols."

"And all I have to do is remove them?"

"You just remove them. The dead will be ready, as soon as the threshold is clear. They've waited a very long time for this. Been very patient." He allowed himself the smallest of smiles as he spoke; dearly the prospect of the dead invading the house pleased him. "Will you do this for me, Tammy?"

"Of course. If that's what you want."

"It's what's right."

"Then I'll do it. Of course I'll do it."

"You only need open one door, they'll all find their way in. I suggest the back door, because it's rotting. The threshold will be easier to ... " He stopped, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grimace. The wound was taking its terrible toll. Fresh blood came between his fingers.

"You don't need to tell me any more." She told him. "You just lie quietly. I'll go get some help."

"No," he said.

"You need help."

"No," he said again, shaking his head. "Just get to work."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. This is more important."

"All right, I'll -- "

She was about to repeat her reassurance when she realized he'd stopped breathing. His eyes were still open, and there was still a lively gloss in them, but no life there; nothing. William Zeffer's long and agonizing life was at an end.

On the floor above, Jerry looked up as the door to the master bedroom opened and Todd emerged.

"Hello, Jerry," he said as he started down the stairs.

"You got hurt?"

"I fell during the quake."

"We need to get outside and find Maxine."

"Really?"

"She's lost out there. And Sawyer's dead. I'm afraid if somebody doesn't get to her -- "

"I heard the shouts," Jerry said vaguely, looking and sounding like a man who'd lost all interest in the drama that was being played out around him.

"Who else is here?" Todd asked him.

"Eppstadt's downstairs with some kid he brought from the party -- "

"Yes, I saw him. Is he one of Maxine's new superstars?"

"No. He's just a waiter," Jerry said.

Todd looked down the rest of the flight. There was a body at the bottom of the stairs, and somebody else, a woman, bent over, touching the face of the dead man. With great gentility, she closed the dead man's eyes.

Then she looked up the stairwell.

"Hello, Todd," she said.

"Hello, Tammy."

"I thought you were drowned."

"Sorry to disappointment you." He started down the stairs towards her. She turned her face from him, returning her gaze to the body.

"Did you see Eppstadt?" he asked her as he came down the flight.

"You mean that sonofabitch from the studio?"

"Yes. That sonofabitch."

"Yes, I saw him." She glanced up at Todd. There were tears in her eyes, but she didn't want to shed them in front of him. Not after what had happened on the beach. He'd been so horribly careless of her feelings. She wasn't going to show any vulnerability now, if she could help it.

"Where did he go?" Todd asked her, as if there was much choice in the matter.

She nodded down the passageway towards the door to the Devil's Country.

"He went in there, I think. I didn't see it. Jerry told me."

"How long ago?"

"I don't know," she said. IAnd frankly, I don't really care right now." Todd put his hand on Tammy's shoulder "I'm sorry. This is a bad time. I never was very good expressing my feelings."

"Is that supposed to mean you're sorry?" she said.

"Yeah," he replied, the word hardly shaped; more like a grunt than an apology. She made the tiniest shrug of her shoulder, to get him to take his hand off her, which he did. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but this was neither the time nor the place to say it.

He got the message. She didn't have to look back to see that he'd gone; she heard his footsteps as he headed off down the passageway. Only after ten or fifteen seconds did she look up, and by that time he was stepping through the door.

Suddenly, the tears she'd held back broke: a chaotic cluster of feelings battling to surface all at once: gratitude that Todd was alive, sorrow that Zeffer was dead, anger that Todd had no better way to show his feelings than to grunt at her that way. Didn't he know how much he'd hurt her?

"Here."

The voice at her shoulder was that of Jerry Brahms. He was offering her a cleanly pressed handkerchief: a rather old-fashioned gesture but very much appreciated at that particular moment. "Which one are you crying over?"

She wiped her tears from her eyes.

"Because if it's Todd," he went on, "I wouldn't bother. He'll survive this and go on and forget all of us. That's the kind of man he is."

"You think so?"

"I'm sure of it."

She wiped her nose. Sniffed.

"What was he talking to you about?" Jerry asked.

"He wanted to know about Eppstadt."

"Not Todd. Zeffer."

"Oh. He ... he had something he wanted me to do for him."

She wasn't sure she wanted to share Zeffer's proposal with Jerry. This was a world filled with people who had extremely complicated allegiances. Suppose Jerry, out of some misplaced loyalty to Katya, tried to stop her? It was perfectly possible that he might try. But then how the hell did she get rid of him, so that she could go upstairs and do what she had to do?

One obvious way presented itself, although it was playing with fire. If she went to the door of the Devil's Country, Jerry would probably follow her. The place had a way of holding your attention, she knew. And if it held his for long enough, then she could slip away upstairs into the kitchen. Find a knife. Go to the threshold, and get to work.

It wasn't her favourite plan (the further she stayed away from that door the happier she was) but she had no alternative to hand at that moment. And she needed to act quickly.

Without saying anything she got up and walked off down the passageway towards the door. The wind came out to meet her, like an eager host, ready to slip its arms through hers and invite her in. She didn't need to look over her shoulder to know that Jerry was coming after her. He was talking to her, just a step behind.

"I don't think you should go any further," he said.

"Why not? I just want to see what's in here. Everybody talks about it. I think I'm the only one who hasn't actually seen it properly for myself."

As she spoke she realized that there was more truth to this than she was strictly admitting. Of course she wanted to see. Her little plot to lure Jerry's attention away was also a neat opportunity to excuse her own curiosity. Talk about muddied allegiances. She had some of her own. One more glimpse into that other world was on her own subconscious agenda, for some reason.

"It's not good to look in there for too long." Jerry said.

"I know that," she replied, a little testily. "I've been in there. But another peek can't hurt, can it? I mean, can it?"

She'd reached the door, and without further debate with Brahms, pushed it open and stared at the landscape before her with eyes that had recently been washed with tears. Everything was in perfect focus; and it was beautiful. She didn't hesitate to debate the matter with her conscience, Brahms or God in Heaven. She just stepped out of the passageway and followed where Todd had gone just a couple of minutes before.

SEVEN

It wasn't difficult for Todd to find Eppstadt. Unlike his first visit to this little corner of hell, when his eyes had taken some time to become used to the elaborate fiction that the tiles were creating for him, this time everything was warmed up and ready to go. He looked through the door and there it was, in all its glory, from the spectacle of the eclipse overhead to a single serrated blade of grass bent beneath the toe of his shoe, along which a little black beetle was making its way.

And standing in the midst of all this, looking as appropriate as a hard-on in the Vatican, was Eppstadt. He'd obviously had some problems while he was here. The man who'd been several times cited as the 'best-dressed man in Los Angeles' was looking in need of a tailor. His shirt was torn and severely stained with what looked like blood, his face was covered in sweat, and his hair which he obsessively combed over the bald patch (where the hair plugs hadn't taken)-had fallen forward, exposing an area of shiny pink scalp, and giving him a ridiculous fringe.

"You!" he said, pointing directly at Todd, "You fucking lunatic! You did this deliberately! And, now people are dead, Pickett. Real people. Dead because of your stupid games."

"Hey, hey, slow down. Who's dead?"

"Oh, as if you give a damn! You trick us all into following you into this ... this ... obscenity ... "

Todd looked around as Eppstadt ranted. Obscenity? He saw no obscenity. Given the shortness of his acquaintance with this place he had certainly felt a lot of different things about it. He'd been enchanted here, he'd been so terrified that he'd thought his heart would burst, he'd been absurdly aroused and close to death as he ever wanted to get. But obscene? No. The Devil's Country was simply the ultimate E-Ticket Ride.

"If you don't like it," he said to Eppstadt, "why the hell did you come in here?"

"To help Joe. And now he's dead."

"What happened to him?"

Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder, dropping his voice to a whisper. "There's a child around here. Only it's not a child. He's a goat."

"So he's the Devil's kid?"

"Don't start with that Devil shit. I never made one of those movies -- "

"This isn't a movie, Eppstadt."

"No, you're quite right. It isn't a movie. It's a fucking -- "

"Obscenity. Yeah, so you said."

"How can you be so casual?" Eppstadt said, taking a stride towards Todd. "I just saw somebody sliced to death."

"What?"

"The goat-boy did it. Just opened up Joe's throat. And it's your fault."

Eppstadt's stride had picked up speed. He was getting ready to do something stupid, Todd sensed; his terror had become a capacity for violence. And even though there'd been times (that lunch, that long-ago lunch, over rare tuna) when Todd had wanted to beat the crap out of Eppdtadt, this was neither the time nor the place.

"You want to see what you caused?" Eppstadt said.

"Not particularly."

"Well you're going to."

He caught hold of the front of Todd's T-shirt.

"Let go of me, Eppstadt."

Eppstadt ignored him. He just turned and hauled Todd after him, the volatile mixture of his fear and rage making him impossible to resist. Todd didn't even try. Katya had given him a lesson in how to behave here. You kept quiet, or you drew attention to yourself. And somehow-it was something about the way the wind seemed to be blowing from all quarters at once, something about the way the grass seethed at his feet and the trees churned like thunderheads-he thought it wasn't just Eppstadt who was in a state of agitation. This whole painted world was stirred up.

By now the hunters' dogs probably had their scent, and the Duke was on his way.

"Just chill," Todd said to Eppstadt. "I'm not going to fight you. If you want me to see something then I'll come look. Just stop pulling on me, will you?"

Eppstadt let him go. His lower lip was quivering, as though he was about to burst into tears, which for Todd's money was worth the price of admission.

"You follow me," Eppstadt said, "I'll show you something."

"Keep your voice down. There are people around here you don't want to have coming after you."

"I met one of them already," Eppstadt said, walking on towards a small group of trees. "And I never want to see anything like it again."

"So let's get out of here."

"No. I want you to see. I want you to take full responsibility for what happened here."

"I didn't make this place," Todd said.

"But you knew it was here. You and your little lover. I'm putting the picture together now. Don't worry. I've got it all."

"Somehow I doubt that."

Eppstadt was searching the ground now, his step more cautious, as though he was afraid of treading on something.

"What are you looking for?"

He glanced back at Todd. "Joe," he said. And then, returning his gaze to the ground, he pointed. "There," he said.

"What?"

"There. Go look. Go on."

"Who was he?" Todd said, staring down at the maimed body in the dirt, its throat gaping.

"His name was Joe Something-or-Other, and he was a waiter at Maxine's party. That's all I know."

"And goat-kid did this to him?"

"Yeah."

"Why, for Christ's sake?"

"Amusement would be my closest guess."

Todd passed a clammy hand over his face. "Okay. I've see him now. Can we get the hell out of here and find Maxine?"

"Maxine?"

"Yeah. She went outside with Sawyer -- "

"I know."

"And now Sawyer's dead."

"Christ. We're being picked off like flies. Who killed him?"

"Some ... animal. Only it wasn't any kind of animal I ever saw before."

"All right, I'm coming," Eppstadt said. "But you listen to me, Pickett. If we survive this, you've got a fuck of a lot to answer for."

"Oh, like you don't."

"Me? What the hell do I have to do with this?"

"I'll tell you."

"I'm listening."

"I wouldn't be here and nor would you or Maxine or any other poor fuck -- " He glanced at Joe's corpse. "If you hadn't sounded off at the beach. Or-if you really want to go back to the start of things-how about a certain conversation we had, during which you suggested I get my face fixed?"

"Oh, that."

"Yes that."

"I was wrong. You should never have done it. It was a bad call."

"That was life. My flesh and -- " He froze, for something had emerged from the undergrowth: a beast that was a vague relative of a lizard, but shorter, squatter, its back end having, instead of a long and serpentine tail, an outgrowth of two or three hundred pale, bulbous tumors. It went directly to the remains of Joe.

"No, no, no," Eppstadt said quietly. Then suddenly, running at the creature the way he might at a dog who'd come sniffing at his gate. "Get away!" he yelled. "For God's sake, get away!"

The lizard threw the yellow-blue gaze of one of its eyes up in Eppstadt's direction, was unimpressed, and returned to sniffing around the sliced-open neck. It flicked the wound with its tongue.

"Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus," Eppstadt gasped.

He picked up a rock and threw it at the animal, striking its leathery hide. Again, the cold, reptilian assessment, and this time the creature opened its throat and let out a threatening hiss.

Todd caught hold of Eppstadt, wrapping his arms around him from behind, to keep him from getting any more belligerent with the animal. They were lucky the beast was so interested in the remains of Joe, he knew; otherwise it would have turned on them.

The lizard averted its gaze from Eppstadt again, and started to tear at the raw meat around Joe's neck so that Joe's head was thrown back and forth as it secured itself a mouthful.

Eppstadt was no longer attempting to free himself from Todd's bear-hug, so Todd let his hold slip a little, at which point he turned on Todd, slamming the heel of his hand against Todd's shoulder.

"That should have been you!" Eppstadt said, following the first blow with a second, twice as strong.

Todd let him rant. Over Eppstadt's shoulder he saw the lizard retreating into the undergrowth from which it had emerged, dragging the remains of Waiter Joe after him.

"You hear me, Pickett?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Todd said wearily.

"That's all you're good for: lizard food. Lizard! Food!" The blows were coming faster and harder now. It was only a matter of time before Todd hit him back, and they both knew it. Knew it and wanted it. No more innuendo; no more lawyers; just fisticuffs in the mud.

"All right," Todd said, bitch-slapping Eppstadt for the fun of it. "I get it." He struck him again, harder. "You want to fight?" A third blow, harder still, which split Eppstadt's lip. Blood ran from his mouth.

And then suddenly the two of them were at it, not exchanging clean neat blows the way they did in the movies but knotted up together in a jumble of gouges and kicks; years of anger and competition emptying in few chaotic seconds. They could not have chosen a less perfect place or time to settle a personal score if they'd looked a lifetime, but this wasn't about making sensible decisions. This was about bringing the other sonofabitch down. As it was they both went down, having wrestled their way into muddy terrain. Their feet slid from under them and down they went, locked together, like two boys.

Tammy saw them fall.

"Oh no," she said, half to herself. "Not here. Don't do it here."

"I wouldn't go any closer if I were you," Brahms advised her.

"Well you're not me," Tammy said, and without waiting for any further response she pressed on over the uneven ground towards the two men in the mud. There were sounds of birds overhead, and she glanced up at the sky as she walked towards the men. It was spectacularly beautiful, and for a moment her thoughts were entirely claimed by the piled cumulus and the partially-blinded sun. The darkness of the heavens between the clouds was profound enough that the brightest of the stars could be seen, set in velvet grey.

When she looked back at Todd and Eppstadt, they were virtually indistinguishable from one another physically -- both liberally coated in mud. But it was still dear which one was Eppstadt. He was letting out a virtually seamless monologue about Todd. The general sense of which was that Todd was a vapid, over-paid, talentless sonofabitch. Furthermore, when all this insanity was over he, Eppstadt, was going to make certain that everybody knew that Todd had caused the death of a number of innocent people with his arrogance.

As Tammy got closer to the fight it became evident to Tammy that this wasn't going to end quickly or easily. Neither man was going to be talked down from their fury; it had escalated too far. She could only hope they exhausted each other quickly, before they attracted unwanted attention.

There seemed little hope of that. Though they'd fought to their feet again, it was becoming harder and harder for either man to land a solid blow in this slippery environment. Finally Eppstadt swung wide and went down in the mud, falling heavily He struggled to get up, the heels of his hands sliding in the mud, but before he could succeed, Todd clambered on top of him, and straddled him, his hands at the man's throat. There was no fight left in Eppstadt. All he could do was gasp and shake his head.

"You fuckhead," Todd said. "None of this would have happened ... if you ... had made my fucking movie."

Eppstadt had by now recovered enough energy to speak. "I wouldn't put you in a movie if my fucking life depended on it."

At which point, Tammy made her presence known. "Todd?"

It was Eppstadt who looked up first. "Oh Jesus," he said. "I wondered when you were going to show your fat ass."

Tammy wasn't in the mood for long speeches. "Leave the shithead in the mud, Todd," she said, "and let's just get out of here."

Todd grinned through his mask of mud; the megawatt smile. "It would be my pleasure."

He got to his feet and stepped away. Eppstadt pulled his rather ungainly bulk to his knees. He had lost one of his choice Italian shoes in the melee, and now began to search for it. In fact, it had been flung wide of mud, close to where Tammy was standing.

"Looking for this?" she said.

"Yes," he glared, beckoning with his fingers.

She tossed it in the thorn bushes.

"Cunt."

"Faggot."

"No. I am many things but a bugger I am not. Right, Brahms?"

"Don't bring me into this." Jerry said. "I just want us all out of here."

"We're coming, Jerry!" Todd said, not looking at him. "You go on and take Tammy."

"Not without you."

"Oh, how touching," Eppstadt said. "The fat girl is loyal to the end, even though she doesn't have a hope in hell of getting a fuck out of it."

Tammy had kept her fury limited to that one casual toss of the Italian shoe, but now it erupted; all her fury towards Eppstadts and his kind. The Mr.-High-and-Mighty's who thought that fat fan-girls were less than shit.

"You are such scum!" she said. "You nasty-minded tiny-peckered little piece of excrement!"

She approached him as she yelled, but after the fight with Todd the last thing Eppstadt wanted was this woman laying her hands on him.

"Keep her away from me, Jerry," he demanded, raising his hands, palms out. As he did so he retreated towards the copse of trees. "Jerry? You hear me?"

"Leave him, Tammy."

"Well, he's scum."

"And tell her to cover herself up," Eppstadt fired back. "The sight of her cellulite makes me gag."

Jerry had caught hold of Tammy's arm.

Luckily for him, Tammy had suddenly lost interest in all this score-settling. She was studying a group of horsemen who were following a winding road that would eventually bring them, she quickly realized, to this very spot. "Todd ... " she said.

"Yes, I saw."

"We have visitors."

The Duke of Goga, of course, along with his entourage.

They still had plenty of time to get to the door, Tammy reckoned. The hunters were still some distance away, and it didn't seem that they'd yet spotted the interlopers. Jerry was already on his way to the exit. Todd had found some clean water to wash his wounds but he could be up and gone in a couple of seconds.

Eppstadt was the exception. He'd gone into the thorn-thicket to fetch his Italian shoe, and as he did so, something moved in amongst the mass of thorny branches off to the left of him.

He stopped reaching for his shoe, and studied the shadows. Whatever it was seemed to have become snagged in there, because it shook itself. Then it let out a kind of mewling sound and shook itself again, this time more violently. The maneuver worked however. Freed of the thicket it stumbled out into view. It was the goat-boy. He started to pull thorns out of his flesh, the pain of it making him weep, softly, to himself.

Eppstadt knew what this creature was capable of from his previous encounter and he had no desire to draw the attention of the beast. He gave up on his shoe and set his eyes on the door. Jerry Brahms was right: it was time they got the hell out of here.

The goat-boy had stopped weeping now, and for some reason had fixed his gaze upon Tammy. Or more particularly, upon her breasts. There was no equivocation in his stare; no attempt to pretend he was looking elsewhere. He simply stared lovingly at the upper part of Tammy's torso, and licked his lips.

Tammy had heard the boy's sobbing complaints, and was staring at him. So was Todd.

"Come on, Tammy." Todd said.

Tammy let her gaze go from the boy to the approaching hunters. Plainly they'd also heard the sound of the child's wails because they'd picked up their speed and were approaching at a hard gallop.

Tammy looked back at Lucifer's child, in all his goaty glory. His tears had dried now, and was less interested in picking thorns out of his flesh. They'd done some damage, she saw; little rivulets of dark red blood ran down his limbs from the places where he'd been pierced. There was one spot that looked particularly tender, deep in the groove of his groin. He worked the thorn out a little, but not once did he take his eyes off the objects of his present devotion. He didn't even glance over at the horsemen, though he must have heard their approach. He obviously knew how to out-maneuver them. He'd been doing it for centuries. He had a warren of hidey-holes to tuck himself away.

Tammy glanced up at the sky: at the moon locked in its unnatural position in front of the sun. Then she looked around at the landscape which that half-clouded light illuminated: the road and the approaching horsemen, the cluster of boulders where Todd was standing, stripped of his torn T-shirt, doing his best to lift handfuls of clean water up to his wounded face.

The goat-boy would be gone in a moment, Tammy knew. And when it was gone the Hunt would, as Zeffer had told her, continue in the same weary way it had been going for centuries.

Perhaps it was time to bring the whole sorry thing to an end, once and for all: to see if she, little Tammy Lauper from Sacramento, couldn't deliver the Devil's child back into the hands of the Duke, who could then return him to its mother, and bring an end to this long, weary chase.

She knew of only one, desperate method by which she might do this. She didn't waste time enacting it. She unbuttoned her torn blouse, starting at the top. She had every jot of the goat-boy's attention from the moment her fingers touched the first button. He forgot about removing thorns from his flesh. He simply watched.

"Like them?" she said to him so softly she was certain nobody would hear.

The goat-boy heard her, as she knew he would. He had an animal's ears.

By way of reply he nodded; very slowly, indeed almost reverentially.

There were two buttons remaining. Two buttons, and her blouse would fall open, and he'd have a feast of her, hanging in front of his eyes. She stopped unbuttoning. He made a little growl in his throat. The smile suddenly went from his face. Perhaps she was imagining it, but there seemed to be a flicker of fire in his eyes.

She stopped her teasing and put her hands back up to the first of the remaining buttons. He rewarded her with a little smile, which showed her a detail she'd missed until now. His teeth, though small, were all sharpened to a fine point. He had the smile of a piranha. She literally felt the flesh around her nipple tighten up at the prospect of those needles coming anywhere near her.

She chanced a quick look in the direction of the horsemen, but they had disappeared from sight for a time. The road that was bringing them here had wound into an expanse of pine forest. She looked back at the goat-boy. He was tapping his left foot, which appendage boasted a nail that would not have shamed a raptor. Plainly he was just a little anxious about the proximity of the Duke and his men: he did not wish to be caught. But just as plainly he was not going to leave. Not yet; not until he'd seen what Tammy had to offer.

He pointed at her. Made a little waggling motion with his forefinger. "Show me," he said.

She smiled at him, but she didn't move to oblige.

"Show," he said again.

She continued to smile at him, all the while assessing how many strides of his flat little feet it would take for him to reach her, should he take it into his head to run. He could be on her in five strides, she guessed. Four if he pushed it.

She slipped one of the two buttons out of its hole. The blouse fell open a little, giving him a peek at her left nipple. She flashed, suddenly, on some hot summer's day in her fourteenth year, when she'd crept into her parents' room in the middle of the afternoon, and played striptease in the mirror. She had more to boast about than any of the other girls in her class. Bigger breasts, and hair down between her legs. Her life would have been a lot happier if her breasts had stopped growing that day. But they'd had a long way to go. By the time she was fifteen she was like a young Shelley Winters; and it just got worse from there.

Strange how things came round. How something that had become a source of shame for her was now, out of nowhere, redeemed. She let her fingers slip down to the last button, knowing that the goat-boy's gaze would go with them, and she would have a chance, however slim, to look up past him and see whether the horsemen had emerged from the forest.

The news was bad. There was no sign of the Duke and his men. Had they perhaps taken a wrong turning in the forest? Surely not. Surely they knew this entire territory, after so many years of riding it.

"Show me your tits," the goat-boy demanded.

As he spoke he lifted his left leg and struck a stone with his raptor claw. A bright spark leapt from the place and landed on a tuft of grey grass, where it erupted into a little fire. It had too little fuel to keep it sustained for long, but in the five or six seconds that it took for the cycle of spark, fire and extinction to play out Tammy heard the sound of the Duke's horses, and from the corner of her eye saw them emerging from between the trees.

The goat-boy narrowed his eyes to golden slits. The corners of his mouth turned down, showing the lower row of monstrous teeth.

"Show me," he said again.

Plainly he wasn't going to be toyed with any longer. He wanted to see what she had, and he wanted to see them now.

She didn't pretend that the horsemen's proximity was not of interest to her. What was the use? Everybody was in on this ridiculous game, the goat-boy included. He dropped his head a little, which should have been a sign for Tammy as to what he would do next, but she was too busy thinking about how long the Duke would take to get off his horse to realize that the goat-boy was making make a run at her. And by the time she did realize, he was already halfway there, and there was nothing between her bare breasts and his hands, his mouth, his teeth, but a prayer.

EIGHT

Fearing the worst, Todd let out a yell, and started racing across the muddy, bloody ground to do whatever he could to stop the goat-boy attacking Tammy. But before he could get there she had taken matters into her own hands. She let the last of the six buttons slip, and her blouse fell open, unveiling her breasts. The sight of them literally stopped the Devil's child in his tracks. He opened his mouth and drool ran from it.

Tammy was smart enough not to reject this sign of adoration, however crude. Instead, she opened her arms, inviting him into her embrace. Todd would have betted against the wisdom of this. The goat-boy was no sentimentalist. He wanted to play rough. But had he made that bet, he would have lost it.

The Devil's child fell to his knees, laughing. Then he crawled -- yes, crawled -- into Tammy's arms. His hands went greedily up to one of her breasts, and he held the unwieldy bubble of flesh before his eyes for a moment of devotion. His mouth was slick and wet; the saliva glinted off his terrible teeth.

"Please God ... " Todd murmured.

It was very possibly the strangest sensation of Tammy's thirty-four years, the feeling of the Devil's child's mouth around her left nipple. There had been a moment -- as he closed his mouth around her -- when it had crossed her mind that she should be afraid; that with one chomp he could give her an instant mastectomy if he so chose. But somehow she knew he would not. He was in love with her breasts. Instead he worshipped them, in his way. Though his mouth was tight around her flesh, she felt not so much as the lightest of scratches from those shark-like teeth. In fact she suspected he'd somehow sheathed them, the way a snake sheathed its fangs, because as he sucked and sucked all she felt was a slightly guilty rush of pleasure as his suction drew the blood to the nipple, and the flesh surrounding the nipple, sensitizing the entire area.

Then, as though all this weren't peaceful and domestic enough, the Devil's child closed his eyes, his fat little hands holding the source of his bliss, and Tammy gently rocked him in her arms.

Goga had been searching for Lilith's child for many centuries now, under a sky that -- though it was sometimes cloudy, sometimes clear -- always showed the sun eclipsed. He had no real idea of how long his imprisonment in the Devil's Country had lasted; his mind had long ago lost any grasp on the passage of time. He and his men had passed the centuries in a kind of fugue state. Sometimes, when they rested and ate what they'd hunted-rabbit on occasion, or venison, or wild pig-they would talk about what had happened to them that day on the hunt, and where they now were. It was the Duke's opinion that this was not a real place at all, but a kind of dream that the Devil was dreaming, and they were trapped in it. How else to explain the curious limitations of their condition? The same ships forever heading towards the horizon, the same roads haunted by the same beasts; the same sun in the same heaven, half-blinded by the same black moon?

But in the last few days -- if days and nights could truthfully be said to pass here -- there had been signs that things were changing in what had been hitherto a virtually changeless place. There had always been strangers coming and going (trapped, the philosophizing Duke surmised, in the same infernal dream they found themselves in). But whereas in the past visitors had little or no effect upon the world they were wandering through, the trespassers of recent times had not been quite so guileless or so lucky. Several had perished in the region around the forest.

And now -- as if all this were not strange enough -- a new spectacle, stranger by some measure than all that had preceded it:

Sitting beside the road -- nursing the object of their long search as though he were a commonplace baby -- was a bare-breasted woman.

The Duke dismounted a few yards from where Tammy sat in the dirt, rocking the goat-boy in her arms. His lieutenants had dismounted several horse-lengths away, and were now creeping around the nursing woman, swords drawn.

Tammy saw all of this, but she registered nothing -- not a word, not the raising of a finger -- for fear of alerting the contented child to the fact that his time in this idyllic state was about to end.

Very cautiously, the Duke approached the woman and child, beckoning to his men to take their final positions. One of the men had brought a wooden box; clearly his own crude handiwork which he now opened and positioned behind the pair.

The goat-boy didn't open his eyes, but he pulled his mouth away from Tammy's breast long enough to say: "You don't all have to creep around like that. I know what you're up to." He'd no sooner spoken than his interest in the Duke's men was forgotten again and he was back to stroking the ample flesh in front of him. "Beautiful," he said to Tammy. "Do you have names for your tits?"

"Names?" Tammy said. "Actually, no."

"Oh you should. They're amazing." He kissed them, first left, then right, then left again, tender, affectionate kisses: "May I name them myself?" He asked this question with the greatest delicacy, stumbling over the words. Plainly the last thing he would have wished to do is cause offense.

"Of course." she said.

"I may? Oh thank you. Then this must be Helena, who I sucked on, and this one I'll call Beatrice." He looked at Tammy, framed by her breasts. "And you? Who are you?"

"Tammy."

"Just Tammy?"

"Tammy Jayne Lauper."

"I'm Qwaftzefoni," the goat-boy said. "Are you on the run from somebody, Tammy?"

"I was, I suppose, in a way."

"Who?"

"My husband Arnie."

"He doesn't appreciate you?"

"No."

The goat-boy began to lick Helena and Beatrice, again big sloppy tounguings that made Tammy shudder with pleasure.

"No children?" he said in the middle of a stroke.

"No. Arnie can't ... "

"But you could, Tammy." He lay his head against her pillows. "Believe me, I know about these things. You're fertile as the Nile. As soon as you get pregnant these beautiful mammaries will become milk-machines. And your children will be strong and healthy, with strong, healthy hearts, like you." Finally, he opened his eyes just a slit, his gaze first settling on her face then slipping sideways, to get a glimpse of the cage. "So what's your opinion?" he said to her.

"About what?"

"Should I give myself up, or let the chase go on?"

"What happens if you give yourself up?"

"I go home. With my mother, Lilith. Back to Hell."

"Isn't that where you should be?"

"Yes, I suppose so. But how would you feel if I said you should be back with Arnie?"

"Oh no ... "

"So, you understand," he said, running an appreciative palm over the smooth globes, then putting his head down between them, his chin in the groove. "Sometimes you just have to get away, at least for a while. But you know, now that I lie here, I think, maybe it's time to give up. I've been running for years. Never let anybody lay a finger on me. Until you." His voice, already low, went to a barely audible whisper, almost a hiss. "Are they very close now?" he said.

"Yes," she told him. "They're very close."

He toyed with her hardened nipple. "If I give myself up, what will happen?"

"I think we'll all leave this country, one way or another."

"And ... in your opinion ... would that be such a bad idea?"

"No," she told him. "In my opinion it would be a very good idea."

"And they won't hurt me?"

"They won't hurt you."

"You promise?"

She looked into his eyes, brown into gold. "I promise they won't hurt you."

"All right," he said, lifting his arms up and putting them round her neck. "It's time we put an end to this. But first you have to kiss me."

"According to who?"

"According to me."

She kissed his grizzled lips. And as she did so, he leapt out of her arms, as though he'd been slick with butter; a jump that carried him three or four feet above her head.

"Prindeti-l!" the Duke yelled.

His men weren't about to come so close to their quarry and lose him again. They each caught hold of an arm and leg of the child, and carried him, squealing more like a pig than a goat, to the wooden crate.

Before they could get him safely locked away, however, there came a shout from Eppstadt. "Where are you going with that thing?" he demanded.

"They're taking it away," Todd explained.

"Oh, no they're not. Absolutely not. I saw it commit murder. I want to see it tried in a court of law."

He started towards the two men who had taken hold of the creature. The Duke, sword drawn, instantly came to stand between them.

Tammy, meanwhile, even before she'd buttoned herself up, was ready to add her own voice to the argument. "Don't you interfere," she told

Eppstadt. "You'll fuck up everything."

"Are you crazy? Well, yes, why am I asking? Of course you're crazy. Letting that thing suck on you that way. You obscene woman."

"Just do it!" Todd urged the men, hoping his miming of the boy's imprisonment would help the men understand his meaning.

It did. While the Duke held Eppstadt at swordpoint, his men put the goat-boy into the crate, the wooden bars of which were decorated with small iron icons, hammered into the timber. Whatever their meaning, they did the trick. Though Qwaftzefoni was easily strong enough to shake the crate apart he did not so much as lay his hands on the bars, but sat passively in his little prison, awaiting the next stage of the proceeding.

The Duke issued a new round of orders, and the men lifted the crate onto the back of one of the horses, and started to secure it there.

While they did so the Duke made a short, but apparently deeply sincere, speech to Tammy, thanking her, she assumed, for her part in this dangerous enterprise. All the while he kept an eye on Eppstadt, and his sword raised should the man attempt to interfere. Eppstadt was obviously equally aware that the Duke meant business, even if he didn't understand the exchange, because he kept his hands raised throughout, and his mouth shut.

Todd, meanwhile, stood watching the sky. There was, it seemed, a subtle change in the configuration of the heavens. The moon was very slowly moving off the face of the sun.

Suddenly, there was a shriek from one of the Duke's men. The goat-boy had found a place where his hand and arm could fit through the bars without touching the icons, and using a moment of the man's distraction, had reached out and was digging his short-fingered hand into the meat around the man's eye. He had firm hold of it; firm enough to shake the man back and forth like a puppet. Blood gushed from the place, splashing against the goat-boy's palm and running down his victim's face.

The horse on which the crate was set reared up in panic, and the crate-which had not yet been firmly fixed to the saddle, slid off. The creature did not let go of his victim. He hung onto the man's face as the crate crashed to the ground. It did not break open, as no doubt the goat-boy had hoped; and in a fit of frustration he started to tear the man's flesh open still further.

The Duke was swift. He came to the place in two strides and with a single swing of his sword separated the goat-boy's hand from his wrist. The creature let out a sickening, shrill wail.

Tammy -- who'd watched all this in a state of horrified disbelief (how could this cruel monster be the same childish thing she'd had sucking on her moments ago?) -- now covered her ears against the noise of both victims, man and boy. Though she'd muted the scene she couldn't take her eyes off it: the hunter, dropping to his knees with the child's hand still fixed in his face like some foul parasite; the goat-boy in his crate, stanching his stump with his other hand; the Duke, wiping the blood off his blade-

There was a short moment of calm as the goat-boy's sobs became subdued and the wounded man, having pulled the hooked finger out of his flesh, covered his wound with a cloth, to slow the flow of blood.

The calm lasted no more than twenty seconds. It was broken by a grinding sound in the earth, as though a machine made of stone and iron was on the move down there.

"What fresh hell is this?" Jerry murmured.

Tammy's eyes were on the crate, and its contents. The goat-boy had given up all his complaints, and was peering between the bars with his mouth open and slack. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

"Earthquake?" Eppstadt said.

"No," Tammy replied, reading the look on the goat-boy's face. "Lilith."