Page 16 (1/2)

John took the tape, inserted it into the VCR player sitting atop the old television set, and started it

Several seconds of static, and then a picture snapped into place The film quality was poor, and there was no sound, but it was still possible to see as happening on the other side of the lens Three ed a wounded, naked eon

"This is an interrogation roohtower refilled his cup "The vaether, you see, like the vermin they are When we apprehend one alone, we question it to find our way to the others"

The naked s had compound fractures, and whose feet had been reduced to blobs of raw ground ht stone pylon His bloodied face twisted into an animal’s snarl, but his lips didn’tfences, tooto bind the prisoner "Why use barbed wire to restrain him?"

"It’s made of copper, the only substance besides fire that can hurt them" The bishop’s hand flashed up to smother a s, once it’s removed from contact with their unholy flesh Observe the wounds"

John went very still as he watched the gashes left on the prisoner’s aran to shrink and close, impossible as that was John’s stoistered not only the horror of it, but the fahtht, in the alley

Huddled in a collapsing cardboard box, his ar still so the frayed piece of cord around their waists wouldn’t rub into her skin They’d run away froo, and John tied the rope around theht now, so he’d wake up if someone tried to take her from him Like the old bastard at the corner candy store, who had offered John a hundred dollars for an hour alone with three-year-old Alexandra in the back storeroo teeth from the facer John had planted on him

So footsteps drew closer Oh-gee-oh…

A junkie, or a maniac There were too many of them on the street John held his breath and willed the footsteps to ht sky and a snatch of alley wall appeared for a second in the hole as so tore back the top flap of the box, and John reached for his pipe Two big, ugly hands snaked inside, groping He sed as he yanked it back for a second blow Blood spurted fro forearm

John’s lips peeled back froot you

Then the air was gone, and one of the ed, and his neck bones creaked As he fought, Alexandra began to writhe and shriek, and he looked up to see where to kick His eyes widened as he watched the edges of the bleeding wound puckering, shrinking----

It was a stupid night, still in the alley, still in the box, still tied to his sister Still hory, but alive He’d looked for evidence No bruises on his throat, no blood on the box or anywhere His pipe had disappeared, that was all What he had dreamed had never happened

"John"

He looked up, his eyes blind Cabreri and the bishop were staring at hiently

John ruain The three lass vials froan to slowly dribble their contents on their writhing prisoner Fro over the victim’s chest, it was sos were black? Had they burned the them?

When John was a boy, he had run with street thieves, had preyed on winos and panhandlers He knew a con when he saw one, but this looked real "They’re torturing hihtower corrected him "That is all the vials contain"

He looked at the screen, then at his mentor He didn’t knohat to say One did not use the word bullshit in front of an archbishop

Cabreri gave him an odd smile and spoke for the first time "I have witnessed with my own eyes how they burn Like God’s fiery hand, it is"

It ht be some sort of special effect, like the infa it, they would have made the filative reporting, ould anyone fake the torture of a prisoner?

None of the monks showed their faces to the ca their prisoner They paused now and then and bent over the restrained man, ould only bare his teeth at them

His teeth, John noted, were perfectly norhtower said softly "We believe these creatures began rising from the dead in the fourteenth century, just after the Black Death ’Dark kin,’ their fa at first that they had been buried alive--that happened, in those days, with alaran to feed on people"

John wondered hohen they had no fangs "They rose froht and drink blood, I assuer at night Garlic doesn’t affect them, but holy water does Holy water that has been kept in copper, that is We’ve been using underground copper cisterns to store our order’s waters since the fifteenth century"