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I put away the canister of pressurized sedative and drew one of the two Glocks That see to do

Jessie, Jas close to the tree line, I approached the stone-and-ti roof Frolimpsed it, even from a distance and in the dark, it had seemed to be an ominous structure Now as I circled it, on closer inspection, that first irew darker, and I felt that herein I would find corruption and depravity that explained the collection of heads

The sixty-by-forty-foot block stood like a fortress, forbidding and less Even a medieval castle would have featured arrow loops, narrow openings froh clerestory s to ad natural anted within, that this building had been constructed to celebrate barbarisun ports, for they knew that civilization, in its current and foreseeable state, would have no interest in ainst them

Three broad and shallow steps led up to the only door, which was at what seeht froht and saw a bronze slab, green with ti a pattern of scores of little arrowheads inout from a central hub, on which was a word in raised bronze letters--CONTUMAX

I had no idea what the word contuhtto treat cold sores, although it was certainly neither Whatever the word ested

Perhaps the door was ht of celebration When it eased inward, I discovered a shadowy vestibule Opposite this first door, a second stood a quarter open to a o inside, to risk being trapped in a place that had one exit, but I sensed that aited to be learned here was so I must know if I were to be of any use to the children I stepped inside and eased the outer door shut behindquietly to the inner door, I stood listening, but heard nothing I held my breath, the better to hear, but the silence remained absolute

When I inhaled, a peculiar bitter sistered as a taste, too, even fainter than the scent The flavor remindedwhen souised--inadequately--by mint

I pushed open the inner door, crossed the threshold, and was halted by the drama of the space

Stone-and-timber walls as outside, cobblestone floor, without a piece of furniture, the room must have been forty feet wide and fifty end to end, the raftered ceiling forty feet overhead Along the wall to the left and along the wall to the right stood seven concrete pedestals, fourteen in all, each perhaps seven feet high Mounted atop every pedestal, lit froled to peer down iht have been Rocky Mountain bighorn rarooved horns

The cobblestones were flat, without rounded edges, with rout lines, set in a circular pattern that swirled around the rooe round stone at the center With growing alarm, I walked to that medallion and read the word carved into it: POTESTAS Here was another test of norance

I looked left and right at the totems on the fourteen pedestals Set on the sides of those narrow heads, twenty-eight eye sockets, though eh black and hollow, seemed to watch and menace me The builders of this house of the profane did not mean for the skulls to be seen siht of as reat horned serpent as the prince of this world Fourteen goatish mouths were fixed open, perhaps to express the insatiable appetite that the prince encouraged and that he proenerously

I proceeded no farther, but I saw at the front of the rooranite elevated on thick black-granite legs On the wall directly behind the slab, hanging frolossy red beads, each as large as a pluh five evenly spaced huhorn rams

Afrohteen-wheeler

From the first encounter that had led iven clear clues to the nature of saw pieces, fitted thee the picture that they forly patternless lives, and theits tail, we go around and around all our lives, through the circles of the seasons, repeating ourour redemption From birth to death we explore and seek, and in the end we arrive where we started, the past having reat slow turn on a carousel to beco, the carousel will bring us to the one place we most need to be

My journey had so far taken almost twenty-two years, but it had becoo than it had been previously I have often said that in a quest for the purpose of o And I do learn But I realized here, only now, that learning had not been s in Pico Mundo, I had been on a pilgriiveness for a failure that I refused to believe could ever be ated by ordinary confession and contrition And I had come now full circle to the same adversary that I had not entirely defeated back then, the same implacable adversary from which I had perhaps savedshe whose heart was one with mine

The killers at the Green Moon Mall had been members of a satanic cult And so were the cowboy trucker and the people gathered in this place, this night Different people, different cult, same enemy I’d known the truth hours earlier but had striven to repress it

Denial couldn’t be horn raly, where in a Catholic church the fourteen stations of the cross would be The red beads and the five human skulls insulted the rosary and its five joyful, five sorrowful, and five glorious mysteries

The enemy was the same, but I was in a darker and far more desperate place now than I had been on that day in Pico Mundo

The aat satanic faith the way that boys s and with capes made from blankets The cultists in Pico Mundo never committed entirely to their faith, not intellectually or emotionally When the confrontation came between me and them, they had their boldness and their viciousness, but they did not have any genuine power beyond that of other sociopaths In the end, though deadly, they had been nothing more than thrill killers

But the pilot of the ProStar+ and the congregation to which he belonged were true believers, so diligent and so passionate in the practice of their faith that they were rewarded with the ability to open doors to Elsewhere They enjoyed the capacity to blind others to their actions, as the cowboy blinded the people in the supermarket to the fact that he had fired a pistol and threatened to kill innocent shoppers if I didn’t co confrontation, these darksiders greatly outnuave ifts made the, and now I saw that on the black-granite table at the front of the rooht have been a thick black book I was loath to approach that altar, but I knew that I must do so