"Okay, okay," he said quickly. "Have it your way."
Neither Grace nor Mr. Veilleur said anything as they watched Martin hurry over to the cottage. The Chosen were lined up on the walk before the house. She watched Martin pass through them and stride to the front door. He knocked a few times but there was no answer. She saw him try the knob. The door swung open. Grace almost cried out as she saw Martin go inside with a group of the others trailing behind. They shouldn't be in there! Not in Henry's old house!
It took maybe fifteen minutes but seemed like hours before Martin reappeared, hurrying toward the car. His face was flushed, his eyes feverish as he slipped back in behind the wheel.
"No one's home, but I think we found the proof we need!"
"Proof?" Mr. Veilleur said.
"Yes! Books on Satanism, the occult! He's obviously been studying them!"
Mr. Veilleur's smile was wry. "If he's this Antichrist you talk about—the Devil himself or his offspring—one would think he'd already be intimately familiar with all there is to know about Satanism."
Martin only paused for a beat. "Yes, well, whatever… it establishes a link between this James Stevens and the Devil."
"Where are the books?" Mr. Veilleur asked.
"I told them to destroy them." He turned to Grace. "Now, do you know how to get to this mansion he inherited?"
"Of course," she said. "It's on the waterfront. Everybody in town knows the Hanley mansion. Why?"
"Because if he's not here, he's probably holed up there."
"Maybe he left town," Grace said hopefully.
"No," Martin said slowly. "He's here. I can feel the evil in the air. Can't you?"
Grace had to admit that there was a sense of wrongness about Monroe, a vague feeling that some sort of cancer was growing in its heart. But she hated to admit it.
Finally she said, "Yes, I think so."
Martin started the car. "Which way?"
"Down here and to the left until you get to Shore Drive," Grace said, pointing the way.
As the car shifted into gear, Grace glanced out the rear window. The other cars, filled with the Chosen, were falling into line behind them. She looked past them and gasped. Smoke was pouring from one of the cottage windows.
"The house!" she cried. "It's burning!"
Martin glanced in his rearview mirror. "The idiots! I told them to burn the books outside!"
"Stop! We've got to put it out!"
"No time for that now! We're going to beard the Devil in his den!"
9
Carol heard the wail of the siren on the downtown volunteer firehouse. Since she had been a little girl, the sound never failed to disturb her. It meant that somewhere, at that very moment, flames were eating someone'? home, maybe devouring someone's life. She glanced out the parlor window, southeastward, toward their own little house. She was startled to see a pillar of smoke rising from that direction. It looked as if it were coming from their neighborhood. She wondered with a pang of fear if it was someone they knew, someone who needed their help.
And then she lowered her gaze and saw the cars pulling up outside the mansion's front gate. Her first thought was, Reporters! But then she saw the placards and picket signs and knew something else was going on.
"Oh, no!" she said. "Who on earth are they?" Bill joined her at the window.
"They look like protesters. But what are they protesting?" Carol strained to read the words on the signs but could make out only the larger ones.
"Something about God and Satan."
"Oh, great!" Bill said. "Just what Jim needs!" Carol glanced back toward the library where Jim sat with Emma. The presence of people he loved and trusted seemed to have had a bolstering effect. The tension had been oozing out of him since their arrival.
"What can they want?"
"Who knows? Probably a mob of religious nuts who think he's some sort of Frankenstein monster. I'm going out there. Don't say anything to Jim until I get back."
"What can you do?"
"Chase them off, I hope." Bill shrugged and pointed to his cassock and clerical collar. "Maybe this will have some influence on them."
"Be careful," she said.
As she watched him step out the front door she felt a sudden rush of dread and knew that something awful was going to happen today.
10
As Bill strode the fifty yards or so to the front gate, he began to make out the messages on the signs. There were quotations from scripture about the Antichrist and Armageddon and the end of the world. Others were original, and he found these the most disturbing:
A MAN WITH NO SOUL IS A HOME FOR THE DEVIL! and GET THEE OUT, DEMON! and the worst, JAMES STEVENS—ANTICHRIST!
Bill would have found them laughable were it not for the fact that they were talking about his friend. He had caught the hunted look in Jim's eyes a while ago, the look of a man who felt like a freak, who wasn't completely sure to whom he could turn or trust. Harassment by a bunch of religious nut cases might push him over the edge.
They were just getting their picket line organized when they spotted him. He heard cries of "Look! There's a priest!" and "A priest! A priest!"
When he reached the open gate, a slim, pale young man stepped forward to meet him.
"What's the meaning of this?" Bill asked, straining to appear calm and concerned.
"Have you been sent here to exorcise him, Father?" the man said.
"What in God's name are you talking about?"
"In God's name, yes, very apt, very apt. I'm Martin Spano. The Spirit has sent us here to expose this abomination for who he is."
"And just who do you think he is?"
"Why, the Antichrist, of course."
He seemed shocked that Bill did not know. Bill felt his control begin to slip.
"That's ridiculous! Where did you get such an idea?"
"He's a clone, Father! A group of cells taken from one man and grown into the shape of another in a blasphemous attempt to play God! But he is not a man! He is a mere cutting! He is born not of man and woman, and as such he has no soul. He is a tool of Satan, an avenue for the Antichrist to enter into this world!"
Bill was impressed with the force of the man's conviction and momentarily taken aback by the outré logic of his words. If you bought all that Revelations mumbo jumbo, you could probably be convinced that this fellow was on to something here.
"I assure you," Bill said in his loudest voice, addressing the crowd as well as their young leader, "that you have nothing to fear from Mr. Stevens. I've known him most of my life, and he is not—I repeat, not—the Antichrist!"
This seemed to slow the crowd, but not as much as Bill would have liked. A couple of them lowered their signs, but the rest stood and waited.
Their leader was taking no chances, however. He turned to them and held up his arms.
"Wait a minute!" he cried. "lust wait!" Then he turned back to Bill. "What is your name, Father?"
"Father William Ryan."
"Of what order, may I ask?"
"The Society of Jesus."
"Ah!" he said, his face lighting as if he had just had a revelation. "A Jesuit! One of the intellectuals of the Church! One of those modern priestly rationalists who would put the human mind above faith! A follower of the Black Pope!"
"That's not true at all!" Bill said. "You're making—"
"Obviously the Spirit has bypassed your unreceptive heart and settled in ours! We have been called, and it is our mission to spread the word of Truth about this man so that no matter where he goes he will be shunned and cast out by the faithful, and his words of sedition against Jesus Christ and his Church will fall on deaf ears! But the Evil One obviously has your ear already, so we will not listen to you!"