Chapter Nine

I

The night turned sedate, the moon hanging large and low. A comfortable breeze flowed off the bay to knock down some of the mugginess. Crickets could be heard, their chorus making the evening seem to throb. Jane felt tranquilized.

But still at odds with so many things, so much she didn't understand.

She sat out on the back porch, protected from mosquitoes. She let herself be lost in her thoughts, however confusing they may have been. The night breeze sifted through the screens, lifted her hair. She was trying to feel as good as she could under the circumstances.

She'd already checked on the kids; both Kevin and Jennifer were sound asleep, relieved that her fainting spell hadn't been serious. She'd checked all the outside doors, made sure they were locked. When her thoughts turned to the calamities of the past few days, she blocked them out.

All but one. What Steve had been saying earlier, just before he'd left. Who else out there is in the cult too?

Could it really be a cult? It made too much sense when Steve had been discussing it, but now? The day done, the kids asleep, the doors locked? I just don't think I can believe it, she thought. Not in an area like this. Not in Danelleton. There were no satanic cults, no ritual murderers in league with one another, like some integrated but very discreet cell of terrorists.

I should just go to bed, she told herself, but when she began to do that, a laziness kept her in the porch chair. It was too tranquil right now, too peaceful and serene. She loved the night breeze against her face, and the feel of the weatherproof carpet against her toes. I could just fall asleep right out here, she realized, and then a stiffer breeze

blew in, rustling the backyard trees. It billowed her nightgown, slipped coolly down her warm skin. It felt-again-serene. It made her feel like the night.

What she didn't know was that the night was coming for her.

II

The night was his blood. He took it and lived on it. Technically, this would be called simple sub-corporeal channeling. Not so technically: walking-around time for a disembodied spirit. The Messenger liked to slip about at night. He liked to see people, to see what they were doing. He liked, too, to get right behind them and puppet them, ooze into their minds until they were essentially one.

He glided on shadows. He stomped through brushes and brambles but made no sound. Now he was moving around the house, like a shadow himself, like a shadow moving in car lights.

What is in here? he wondered.

He stopped and looked into a window, saw a sleeping child, a young boy. The Messenger wanted to slip into the boy's head and spoil his dreams, make him wake screaming.

But not tonight.

I must control myself.

In the next window, a girl lay asleep, older than the boy. This roused the Messenger. She would be sweet to terrify, to corrupt, to destroy. Innocence was the problem, though, one of the Messenger's few barriers. He could not machinate her. He knew that if he genuinely exerted himself, he could send her dreaming visions into a tumult, he could drop them right off the precipice into the most foul canyon of the netherworld. He could pollute her dreams to the extent that she would never forget them, never recover. She'd be tainted for life.

Yes, it would be sweet.

But...not...tonight.

The Messenger smelled something better, just around the corner.

His blood surged from the smell. He was smelling sweet dreams that lay ripe for ruin. He smelled a woman, a robust woman.

In the back. Trees shivered in wind. Moonlight lay flat on new-mown grass. The Messenger's steps left blackened footprints from which tendrils of noxious smoke rose.

He was looking through a screen.

At her. At Jane. Oh, yes. Much fodder there. So much meat for my gullet.

Bare tan legs sprawled off the slatted chair. The Messenger wanted to lick them all the way up to her fresh sex, his black tongue leaving a sheen of putrid slime. Her breasts gently rose and fell beneath the semitransparent nightgown. The Messenger wanted to knead them and suck them out. Then he would mount her in the hot muck of his domain and just have her, spend himself in her, and then give her to his mascots.

Maybe that will happen sometime, he hoped. Who could tell? He hoped that life in this place would bring her down-to eternal life in his place. Then he would have her for his whimsy. Until then, he'd have to be patient, for she wasn't soiled enough.

He could machinate her, though. The temptation was overwhelming. His hideous hand reached through the screen, like smoke, and swept through her head. He was killing her dreams at once, showing her the delicious horrors of his own abode-an anticipation, perhaps. An invitation. Would she accept?

Probably not. Her heart was still strong, her resolve still too pure.

I can do this, though, he thought, chuckling.

She quivered in the chair, the nightmares he'd bidden infecting her like a virus. When he ran his bodiless hand down her breasts, he felt nothing, but when he placed it over her own hand, they fused together. Now he moved her hand to her breasts and felt the warm, moist skin himself, plucked a nipple hard enough to make her flinch in her sleep. He moved her hand down to her hips next, pulled up the hem of the nightgown, then plied her sex, fingers smoothing over the downy private hair.

He raised his hand to her throat and watched her hand do the same. He squeezed and her fingers constricted. She began to pant and shiver.

I could make you walk into your son's room and eviscerate yourself while he watched. I could make you walk into your daughter's room and snap her neck.

But not tonight.

Patience was a virtue, and so was prudence.

The Messenger was tired. He knew he must conserve his strength. Besides, there was easier fodder out there. The easy ones were always the most fun.

When he slipped away, the woman named Jane took her hand from her own throat and went lax, gasping. The Messenger was going away now, into some other fissure of the night. But as he passed another window, something caught his orblike eye. A glass box, with some sort of tiny creature in it. A toad.

The Messenger smiled.

The boy's pet, of course.

The Messenger looked at the toad and killed it with one phantasmal sigh, and then he was off, away with the breeze and the cricket trills and the night.

Yes. He was off for easier fodder.

Annabelle felt afire, her silken cinnamon hair dancing in the moonlight, which poured in from the bedroom window. A shining, naked whirlwind of flesh and sensation and pure, raw desire. Her hands opened flat against her husband's heaving chest; her hips squirmed over his, coltish legs clenching. She was riding him as though he were one of the horses of the apocalypse.

Her husband's name was Mark, a good decent man who focused on his wife as his chief priority. He worked for a defense contractor, the presentation director, and he'd be flying to California in the morning, would be away for a week. Annabelle saw it as her own priority, then, to see that he had a memorable send-off.

The Messenger did too.

And as for Annabelle, she was beginning to understand now, that weird flux that she'd felt in her head for a while: her own conscience melting into someone else's. She wasn't herself anymore-she was more than herself. She was two, her desires mingling, her nerves being borrowed, for an ultimate coalescence.

You are part of me, and I am part of you, she heard the words bubble in her ears.

Not her words.

Annabelle smiled.

Her nails were all but digging into Mark's chest, his own hands sliding in sweat over the curves of her rump and back. His face looked contorted as he staved off his release, grinding his teeth so as not to climax too fast. All the while, Annabelle bucked and bucked as the Messenger's shadow form manipulated her from behind. It was too easy.

"Baby, oh God," Mark panted. "You're...just...the best."

Oh, we know, came the shared thought in response.

Her legs tightened further. Annabelle's desire was cresting in what felt like a wave about to break. Her breasts bobbled, her moans flew around the room. Just another minute and she'd be there.

His thrusts trembled; his face looked absolutely pained, eyes crushed shut.

"Oh, baby, I can't hold off any."

Mark's climax released, and his arms snaked around her back, pulled her chest to his during the last spasms. Then he relaxed in an instant, letting out the longest sigh.

"Honey, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. It's just that you turn me on so much I can't control myself."

Annabelle leaned up, her smile full of warmth and love. Her hand stroked his face. "That's okay, dear. It was wonderful for me, too," she consoled him, and then-

CHUNK!

She rammed the point of the hunting knife straight down into his heart.

"Yeah, wonderful. In a pig's ass," she finished.

She'd placed the oversized Bowie knife under the pillow before they'd started, and had caught him at the perfect moment of distraction. She remained there, straddling him. Now before the blooming eyes of her companion. She'd plunged the knife deep; she kept her hands on its handle and could feel it thumping with the final beats of his heart. He'd never even had time to cry out.

Beautiful, the Messenger thought.

A few loops of blood had pumped up, spattering her. Blood dripped off the tingling pinpoints of her nipples. It felt delicious, but what excited her even more was that this was just the beginning.

Eventually she got up, padded absently about the room, bare feet sinking into plush carpet. Had she ever felt this happy?

You did very well. I'm proud of you. Let's go over here now.

The seductive force that flowed through her limbs walked her over to the large, framed mirror over the dresser. She could see her dappled skin in the darkness tinged by moonlight. She stared, stared harder, until.

I can see you, she thought.

I know, and I can see you.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust but soon she could see the figure standing right behind her. No details at all, and scarcely any features save for basic shape.

Tall, wide shouldered, but gaunt somehow. A head larger than the proportion and oddly angled. It reminded Annabelle of a vise.

And something...What were they? Two protrusions seemed to curve outward from the forehead, like horns.

Yes, Annabelle. You're all mine. Let me luxuriate in you.

When Annabelle's hands rose, she could see that it was actually the Messenger's hands raising them. He brought them around, then began to caress her, to adore the feel of her flesh and the curves of her breasts with her own hands.

Then he brought the hands lower where they tended to her in the special ways that only she could know.

But the Messenger knew too.

Later, when her bliss was done, she yanked the Bowie knife out of her husband's chest and began to finish the message.