She was talking through her teeth now, and the look in her eyes, the strained pallor of her face had Al ready to pee his pants. He wrapped his arms around his head as she stepped closer with the bat.
"Please!" he wailed.
"What did you do with them?"
"Nothin!"
"Lie!"
She swung the bat, but not at his head. Instead she slammed it with a heavy metallic clank against the jaws of the trap. As he screamed with the renewed agony and his hands automatically reached for his injured leg, Al realized that she must have done this sort of thing before. Because now his head was completely unprotected and she was already into a second swing. And this one was aimed much higher.
CAROLE . . .
<You've done it again, Carole! AGAIN! I know they're a bad lot, but look what you've DONE!>
Sister Carole looked down at the unconscious man with the bleeding head and trapped, lacerated leg. She sobbed.
"I know," she said aloud.
She was so tired. She'd have liked nothing better now than to go upstairs and cry herself to sleep. But she couldn't spare the time. Every moment counted now.
She tucked her feelings—her mercy, her compassion—into the deepest, darkest pocket of her being, where she couldn't see or hear them, and got to work.
The first thing she did was tie the cowboy's hands good and tight behind his back. Then she got a washcloth from the downstairs bathroom, stuffed it in his mouth, and secured it with a tie of rope around his head. That done, she grabbed the crowbar and the short length of two-by-four from where she kept them on the floor of the hall closet; she used the bar to pry open the jaws of the bear trap and wedged the two-by-four between them to keep them open. Then she worked the cowboy's leg free. He groaned a couple of times during the process but he never came to.
She bound his legs tightly together, then grabbed the throw rug he lay upon and dragged him and the rug out to the front porch and down the steps to the red wagon she'd left there. She rolled him off the bottom step into the wagon bed and tied him in place. Then she slipped her arms through the straps of her heavily loaded backpack and she was ready to go. She grabbed the wagon's handle and pulled it down the walk, down the driveway apron, and onto the asphalt. From there on it was smooth rolling.
Sister Carole knew just where she was going. She had the spot all picked out.
She was going to try something a little different tonight.
COWBOYS . . .
Al screamed and sobbed against the gag. If he could just talk to her he knew he could change her mind. But he couldn't get a word past the cloth jammed against his tongue.
And he didn't have long. She had him upside down, strung up by his feet, swaying in the breeze from one of the climbing spikes on a utility pole, and he knew what was coming next. So he pleaded with his eyes, with his soul. He tried mental telepathy.
Sister, Sister, Sister, don't do this! I'm a Catholic! My mother prayed for me every day and it didn't help, hut I'll change now, I promise! I swear on a stack of fuckin bibles I'll be a good boy from now on if you'll just let me go this time!
Then he saw her face in the moonlight and realized with a final icy shock that he was truly a goner. Even if he could make her hear him, nothing he could say was going to change this lady's mind. The eyes were empty. No one was home. The bitch was on autopilot.
When he saw the glimmer of the straight razor as it glided above his throat, there was nothing left to do but wet himself.
CAROLE . . .
When Sister Carole finished vomiting, she sat on the curb and allowed herself a brief cry.
<Go ahead, Carole. Cry your crocodile tears. A fat lot of good it'll do you come Judgment Day. No good at all. What'll you say then, Carole? How will you explain THIS?>
She dragged herself to her feet. She had two more things to do. One of them involved touching the fresh corpse. The second was simpler: starting a fire to attract other cowboys and their masters.
GREGOR . . .
Gregor stood amid his get-guards and watched as cowboy Kenny ran in circles around his dead friend's swaying, upended corpse.
"It's Al! The bastards got Al! I'll kill 'em all! I'll tear 'em to pieces!"
How Gregor wished somebody would do just that. He'd heard about these deaths but this was the first he'd seen—an obscene parody of the bloodletting rituals he and his nightbrothers performed on the cattle. This was acutely embarrassing, especially with Olivia newly arrived from New York.
"Come out here!" Kenny screamed into the darkness. "Come out and fight like men!"
Stan, the head of this posse, was stamping out the brush fire at the base of the utility pole.
"We should be getting back, Gregor," one of his guards whispered. "It's too open out here. Not safe."
All four of them had their pistols drawn and were eyeing the night, their heads rotating back and forth like radar dishes.
Gregor ignored him and called out, "Someone cut him down."
Stan pointed to Kenny. "Climb up there." Hey, no—
"He was your bud," Stan said. "You do it."
Kenny reluctantly climbed the pole.
"I want to let him down easy!" he yelled when he'd reached the rope.
"Just cut the rope," Stan said.
"Dammit, Stan. Al was one of us! I'll cut it slow and you ease him down."
"Oh, fuck, all right," Stan said. "C'mere, Jackie, and help me."
The woman stood back by one of the cars that had brought them all here. Not the fancy convertible the posse had been using recently—Al had apparently taken that for a drive and never come back. She had a bandage around her head over a blackened left eye. Gregor wondered what had happened to her. Beaten by one of her own posse perhaps?
He looked at Jackie and remembered lusting after women for their bodies; now he cared only for the red wine running through them. Sexual lust was a dim memory. He hadn't had an erection since he was turned, seventy years ago.
Blood . . . always blood. Gregor was glad he had supped before accompanying these cowboys to their dead friend.
This made six dead. Two in the past three days. The pace was accelerating. Olivia would be on the warpath.
Jackie shook her head. "No way," she said, her voice faint. "I can't."
"Get your skinny ass over here!"
"He's comin down!" Kenny shouted.