Billy Ray Hawkins was drunk, but not nearly drunk enough. He would be, though. Oh my yes, he surely would for a fact. He’d get so drunk he couldn’t feel himself risin’ into the air without nothing pickin’ him up, couldn’t see the shadow of the…something…the creature that lived inside the skin of Chapman Whitworth.

He sat now on the floor, curled up against the wall in a boxcar nobody believed existed buried under a meadow in Caverna County, Kentucky. Sat there among twelve million dollars’ worth of gold bars as pure as the ones the army was guarding in Fort Knox sixty miles away. It was stacked along shelves he’d built with concrete blocks and two-by-twelves. When he’d brought the first one down here—what? Thirty years ago?—he’d imagined that the shiny brick of gold had a pleasant odor. Imagined he could smell it. Not flowery or nothing like that, but fresh, like warm grass, maybe, or a woman’s skin after she’d had a bath. Now, he knew it didn’t smell. The whole boxcar was full of it and he could smell nothing at all but his own sweat. And even with his nose still swollen where the Suit-and-Tie-Man had kicked him in the face, he could smell the reek of fear in his sweat.

Looking down, he realized he was clutching the bottle of Heaven Hill whiskey to his chest, had his arms wrapped around it the way a man’d hold onto a piece of driftwood in a flood. He tried to release his grip on it, but couldn’t quite get himself to let it go. He put it to his lips with trembling hands, instead, and took a long gulp, feeling the fiery liquid burn his throat all the way down to his belly. It didn’t warm him, though. The chill he felt didn’t have nothing to do with the temperature outside or the whiskey inside. He was cold down in the core of his soul.

Continuing to shiver as the whiskey’s warmth began to spread out into his limbs, he longed for the oblivion that didn’t come. In fact, getting drunk almost made it worse because as he lost control over himself, he wasn’t able to pull his mind back away from what had happened that afternoon in the office with wood-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the skyline of Cincinnati. The Man’s fancy office. He’d taken to calling Chapman Whitworth that—The Man—so he wouldn’t even have to say his name.

Billy Ray’d got all dressed up to go there. Went into Bradford’s Ridge and bought himself a suit and tie and white shirt. The coat covered up the full sleeves of tattoos that decorated both arms, but wasn’t no way to hide the teardrop tattoo under his left eye. Still, Billy Ray hadn’t looked like no rube when he stepped up to the receptionist and asked all polite if she’d tell Chapman Whitworth he was here—that Whitworth was expecting him.

He’d had it planned out in his head what he was gonna say, how he was gonna demand an agreement that spelled out ’xactly what he was paying for. It’d all been too vague, with Whitworth calling him—calling Billy Ray Hawkins, can you beat that!—and sayin’ he wanted to meet private. Billy Ray’d known soon’s he walked into that motel room there was something “different” about the man. He’d told Billy Ray he’d “heard” Billy Ray had a considerable stash of money and wanted to know could they partner up. Billy Ray’d done what he always done, of course, denied that he had any money, poo-pooed the “myths” about him having a boxcar full of treasure.

But Whitworth’d just smiled a funny kind of smile and went on like Billy Ray’d never said nothing. He told Billy Ray matter-of-fact as “pass the salt” how he was gonna become the most powerful man in the world. But ambition was expensive, he’d said: what he intended to do would cost way more than the salary of a federal prosecutor. That was where Billy Ray’d come in. In exchange for Billy Ray’s help, Whitworth had promised to grant him “whatever your heart desires.”

When Billy Ray allowed as how he already had enough money to buy whatever he wanted, Whitworth said he’d give Billy Ray what all his money couldn’t buy him.

“I’ll set you free, Billy Ray,” he’d said, in that voice that got inside your head and done funny things in there. “A full pardon. No parole. No parole officer. No restrictions about where you can go and what you can do. You can build a dope empire with no fear of repercussions. You can do absolutely anything you want. You’ll be totally above the law.”

And Billy Ray’d liked that part a lot and the next thing you know he was saying yes and they was shaking hands on it. They was partners. It wasn’t until he left, until he wasn’t listening to Whitworth’s voice anymore, that the doubts flooded in. Shoot, he didn’t even know what it was he’d agreed to pay for!

But he had agreed. And Billy Ray Hawkins always kept his word.

So he’d called Whitworth up, said they needed to talk. He was determined to set some things straight. He intended to demand…

But he’d never got around to the demandin’ part.

Whitworth—The Man—had somehow…picked him up in the air and threw him against the wall. He’d stood looking down at Billy Ray and said he was gonna use Billy Ray’s gold “to buy an army.” Said he needed an army to start a war.

Then an outline had formed around Whitworth, a kind of blood-colored glow that became a shadow stretching all the way up to the ceiling. It was a shadow Billy Ray had seen before and it stopped his heart in his chest and froze the blood in his veins. When the shadow spread out big black bat wings, Billy Ray’s bladder had let go and he’d wet himself.

Billy Ray shook his head violently from side to side to fling the image of that shadow out of his mind. But it bloomed up huge as one of them 3-D movie monsters you see with them colored glasses on. He turned the bottle of Heaven Hill up and took two more big gulps of whiskey, hands shaking so bad he spilled down the front of his shirt more than he drank. That shadow hadn’t been no movie monster. It’d been real. It looked like…go on, say it…some kind of demon.

Another memory flashed, a bright comet on the black sky of his mind, and lit his whole being with red light.

He shook his head again, but slowly this time, in pleading denial. Please, no. Don’t. Please.


ANDI BURKE STOOD at the top of the stairs and called down.

“Daddy, I can’t find Ossy.”

Ossy, short for Curiosity, was the little girl’s big calico. He didn’t get the name because curiosity killed the cat. He was dubbed Curiosity because he was a he, a male calico. Only one in every three thousand calicos was male. That unique quality was one reason Daniel and Emily had picked the scrawny kitten at the animal shelter and brought it home to Andi.

Daniel came to the foot of the stairs and looked up at his ten-year-old daughter. Her resemblance to her mother took his breath away.

“Ossie’s MIA?”

The quizzical look on her freckled face—Emily always said Andi’d been dusted with cinnamon—melted his heart.

“MIA—missing in action.”

Though Ossy was strictly forbidden to set so much as a single paw on the furniture, Daniel and Emily had always known that Andi slipped him into her bed every night to sleep cuddled up next to her. Daniel was grateful for the comfort Ossy provided the child after her mother’s death. He knew the little girl had cried herself to sleep in the cat’s fur night after night for weeks, so he still silently kept the cat’s secret.

“Remember what I told you—the difference between cats and dogs?”

Andi’s grin planted dimples in both cheeks. “Dogs have owners,” she quoted. “Cats have staff.”

“Which means he’ll honor us with his presence again when it suits him.” There was a flap on the bottom of the back door that allowed the cat to go out and, well, cat around whenever it pleased him.

“But as soon as the sun goes down, he curls up on the window seat in my room. When I go to bed, he—” She caught herself before she let it slip. “He doesn’t like to go out at night.”

“I’m sure he’ll be waiting for you when we get home from Theresa’s. Grab a jacket; it’s chilly outside.”

Daniel refused to allow himself to worry about the cat. He had bigger fish to fry. Way bigger fish to fry.


CONVERSATIONS WERE MUTED, or seemed so to Theresa Washington. Like somebody’d turned down the volume on a radio and you could hear voices but couldn’t make out the words they was saying.

It was ’cause she was tired, that was all. Bone weary in a way that didn’t have nothin’ to do with her new status as a card-carryin’ member of the AARP. They was all tired.

Theresa looked at the two men seated side by side on the sofa, not talking much, mostly staring sightlessly into the cold coffee in their cups. She seen on their faces the same gray shadow of weariness she knew Daniel and Jack seen on hers. All of them was beat up. Well, except for Jeff Kendrick. He hadn’t been taking hits right and left like the rest of them had. But if he hung around, he’d get hammered, too.

Crock was talkin’ to Andi, a child who watched the goings-on of monstrous beings the same way other children watched Barney the purple dinosaur. You could tell he liked Andi. Maybe she put him in mind of his own daughters. Both were grown now and lived on the other side of the country. They were the only family he had after his divorce years ago. Crock wasn’t his real name, of course. He was Charles Crocker, a police officer like Jack—a major, Jack’s boss in the Harrelton, Ohio, Metro Police Department, in fact. He’d come out of the past couple of weeks pretty much unscathed—at least from what you could see on the outside. But you couldn’t find out about demons and angels and all the rest of it ’thout sufferin’ that nobody could see, permanent injuries that wouldn’t never heal.

It was gonna get worse, too. Way worse. And them already so beat up and tired they looked like they’d walked in here off a battlefield. Which, of course, they had. They’d come here to talk about it. Theresa had to prepare ’em, best as she could, for what was a-comin’. Right now, she couldn’t find the strength to get at it.

Why’d you give this to us to do, Lord? We just a ragtag handful of ordinary folks and you ’xpect us to stand up to the prince of evil?

A brown mutt padded up to her and pressed its cold nose into her leg. Little rascal, not no good for nothin’. She’d never expected as she stood in the rain untying his leash from a clothesline pole the day of Miss Minnie’s and Mr. Gerald’s memorial service that she would become so attached to the furry critter—or that Becca would. Surprisin’ how much company a thing on four legs could be when you woke up alone and lonesome in the midnight dark.

She scratched Biscuit under the chin and he plopped down at her feet.

Theresa made an effort to square her shoulders. Then draped a look of confidence across her face like a surgeon’s mask—not that she was foolin’ anybody.

“We got to decide how we gone stop Chapman Whitworth.” She tossed the words out into the room and the murmur of quiet voices ceased.

“Just like that, you’re going to keep a man from running for president.” It wasn’t a question. Jeff Kendrick already knew the answer or he wouldn’t be here.

Theresa liked Jeff. Wasn’t no particular reason to—well, except the fact that he’d kept Billy Ray Hawkins from killing her and Becca. There was that. But she’d liked him even before he’d kicked Billy Ray in the face. Jeff was a drop-dead handsome rascal. Bishop woulda said he was “full of piss and vinegar.” He was irreverent and cocky, but somehow managed to pull it off without being obnoxious—though she saw Daniel shoot Jeff a look of bitter hostility as soon as he spoke. She had to find out what it was them two had against each other.

“You know Whitworth’s going to come after us now,” Daniel said. “He used us to get him the publicity he needed, but he doesn’t need us anymore.”

Daniel started to say more, then looked at Andi intent on her game of rock, paper, scissors with Crock.

“Andi, honey,” he said, “how about we go in the den and I’ll put on Cartoon Network.”

“I’m too old for cartoons,” she replied. “That’s for little kids.”

Theresa stifled a smile. “You can watch Princess Bride on Netflix,” she said and saw the little girl light up.

“I know all the dialogue—every word,” Andi said. “I like to say it along with them.”

The child started toward the den, then stopped in the middle of the room, staring out the wide picture window into the darkness beyond.

“Oh,” she said. It was an awed whisper. “It’s so…beautiful!”

Everyone in the room turned to look out the window into the night, but there was nothing to see. Beyond the puddle of light from a streetlight at the curb, the view from the living room window was as black as a raven’s feather. The full moon was shrouded by thin gray clouds that scuttled past overhead, sharp as butcher knives slicing open the sky.

“What do you see out there, child, that we can’t see?” Theresa heard the scared in her own voice. Andi had the knowing strong, like Bishop and Becca. All three of ’em could see demons.

“Lights,” Andi said. “Like fireflies. No, not like fireflies, like…” She looked at her father. “You know that picture on the wall in the dentist’s office—a highway at night, only all the cars’ headlights are blurred streams of light.” He nodded. “Out there in the yard, it looks like that. Only the light’s not smeared together. It’s more like a streak of glitter hanging in the air, lit up and glowing.”

Theresa and the others strained to see it beyond the window in the dark yard. They looked hard as they could but only saw their own worried faces mirrored in the glass.

“One…two…three…four—there are too many to count, and they’re all different colors.” Andi dashed into the hallway and looked out the window by the door. “They’re here, too,” she called out, then ran into the den at the back of the house. When she returned, she said, “There are circles of light going around and around the house.”

“That’s the light from angels,” said a soft voice, and everyone turned to see Becca standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen. She’d been serving coffee and soft drinks, so quiet it was easy to forget she was there.

“What are they doing out there?” Jeff asked, and Theresa could hear the unease in his voice.

“I ’spect the angels is out there to keep the demons away,” Theresa said. Jeff looked like he’d bit into a worm in an apple.

“The only people who can see demons is folks with the knowing—like Becca and Andi and Bishop,” she told him, knowing he wasn’t likely gone believe a word of her explanation. “And the only time they can see ’em is when the demons is possessin’ somebody. But the spirit world is full of demons that ain’t possessin’ nobody and them demons is as invisible as angels. They could be right here in this room same as we are and we wouldn’t see ’em, so if we was to come up with some plan to beat Chapman Whitworth, it wouldn’t be no secret. The efreet would know what the plan was soon’s we made it.”

Crock visibly relaxed. “So the angels will keep the demons away from us, protect—”

“Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t. You got to understand, this here’s a war. We know who’s gone win it in the end, but ’tween now and then they’s battles going on in the spirit world all the time that we can’t see. Sometimes the angels win and sometimes they don’t. The angel in the Old Testament who come to your namesake, Daniel, fought demons for three weeks trying to get there. The Archangel Michael had to rescue him.”

She paused. “Angels fight demons in the spirit world…” She looked pointedly from one person to the other all the way around the room. “But when the demons is here in our world—in human bodies they hijacked—God uses people to fight ’em.”

“How about you go watch Princess Bride,” Daniel said and started to shoo Andi out of the room.

“You just want me to leave because you don’t want me to hear what you’re saying.”

“A very wise person”—Daniel looked at Theresa—“once told me that there are some things in life you’re better off not knowing.”

When Daniel returned, he got right to the point. “There’s no reason now for Whitworth not to—”

“Kill us,” Jack finished for him, his voice flat.

Jack was a big black man, a police sergeant—though right now he was on suspension because he was being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms about a nursing home fire he might or might not have set in 1985. He had a stern face, more rugged than handsome. Smiles usually looked kinda uncomfortable there.

“You mean use a hit man like Bosko, the guy who killed Minnie and Gerald Cohen?” Jeff said. She could see he believed that part. What he could see with his own eyes, he believed. She was reasonably certain he didn’t believe any of the rest of it.

“Or a black widow spider,” Jack said and cast a sympathetic glance at Daniel, who stiffened but said nothing. “We need to keep in mind that demons can control animals.”

Theresa nodded.

“Or he could get creative,” Daniel said, “and drop a piano on our heads.”

“Could he…it…do that?” Crock asked. “With a piano, I mean, could he—?”

“I ain’t sure ’xactly what all an efreet can and can’t do,” Theresa said.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.” Becca’s voice was soft but strong. Only the hint of a tremble in it. She looked at the door to the hallway that led to Bishop’s study crammed with demonology texts and tomes he’d been gathering up for half a century from all over the world. “I’ve been studying, searching, trying to figure out what Bishop knew.”

Theresa wanted to jump up and run over there and throw her arms ’round Becca, tell her how proud she was! Becca’d been the most beat-up by the first encounter with the efreet when she, Jack and Daniel were twelve years old. It had shattered her, and she had spent the twenty-six years since then on the run—from demons both real and imagined. But she was getting better, maybe healing up—finally.

“So you think this…thing’s going to try to kill you?” Jeff said. There was no derision in his voice, but no belief either.

“What’s stopping it?” Jack said.

Theresa smiled a little. “It’s like I said before, ‘…the devil you know…’”

“I’m not tracking,” Jeff said.

“That ole demon knows who we are and where we at. He can keep an eye on us, try to stay a step ahead of us. But if he kills us off, he knows God’ll just send somebody else after him—somebody maybe he don’t know and ain’t expectin’. God coulda already done that. We might not be the only ones tryin’ to keep this demon from becoming president.”

“You think there are others?” Crock asked. Theresa could hear hope in his voice.

“There ain’t no way to know, but if you’re askin’ my opinion, I’d say not.” She watched the light of hope in his eyes gutter out. “We been give this to do. Us, right here in this room.”

“Why you?” Jeff asked, gesturing around the room. She knew part of the reason he didn’t believe in the reality of what was going on was ’cause they was all such ordinary people. Sort of a random grab from a Walmart parking lot. “Is there something you can do…some special, oh, I don’t know, some ability you have that qualifies you—?”

“To be demon-slayers, you mean? You askin’ if we got superpowers, X-ray vision, maybe, or somethin’ like that?” Theresa chuckled mirthlessly. “This ain’t no comic book, Jeff. This is real life. Real life’s always been a war ’tween good and evil. In times past, people seen it better’n we do, though. Smartest thing the devil ever done was to trick folks into believing he don’t even exist.”

“Are you saying there was a time once when everybody could see demons?” Jeff asked.

“Now, why would the Apostle Paul a’had to warn them folks in Ephesus ’bout demons if they could see the creatures walkin’ up and down the produce aisle in the grocery store? What I’m sayin’ is folks usta believe in demons. They seen what demons did, even if they couldn’t see what done it. You can’t see the wind, neither, but you know it’s there when it blows the roof off your house.”

Jeff didn’t say nothing, but Theresa could tell he wanted to. He was keepin’ his mouth shut to be polite, didn’t want to make fun of an old woman’s fairy tales and superstitions.

She shook her head. “We think we got all the answers now, so when somethin’ happens we don’t understand, we say it’s just ’cause we ain’t figured out the natural explanation yet. But some things ain’t got no natural explanation ’cause they ain’t natural. They’s forces at work we can’t see that live to destroy, that hate ’cause hate’s what they’s made of.” She sighed. “But we’re waaaaay too educated to believe they is such a thing as pure evil.”

Jack’s voice was soft and he looked at Jeff when he spoke. “I hear you, pal. I’m on your side. Everybody in this room except you and me has bought into a gigantic group delusion. I absolutely, one hundred percent do not believe any of this.” He looked away from Jeff and murmured the rest with his head bowed. “But whether I believe it or not, it’s still true. Ever since the day I watched a flatline on a heart monitor start making little mountains and valleys again, I’ve been trying to wedge truth into the shape of my personal belief system. It doesn’t fit.” He lifted his head then; his gaze bored into Jeff’s eyes. “I’ve seen it. I didn’t ask to, didn’t want to, but…” He drew a breath. “When you’ve seen it, you understand that the people who’re delusional are the ones who don’t believe.”

Jeff didn’t have nothing to say to that, looked to be so shaken he couldn’t a’talked if he’d wanted to. The room grew quiet and still.