Divine Evil

thirsted for more blood, more sex, more depravity.
    Such things had happened before and were expected.
    It was up to him to see that his children walked the line he'd created. It was up to him to be certain that those who didn't paid the price.
    Biff screamed again, and the priest's pleasure soared.
    They would not kill him quickly. It was not the way. With each nauseating crack of wood against bone, the priest's blood swam faster, hotter. The screaming continued, a high, keening, scarcely human sound.
    A fool, the priest thought as his loins throbbed. The death of a fool was often a waste-if one discounted the sweetness of the kill. But this death would serve to warn the others of the full wrath.
His
wrath. For he had long ago come to understand that it was not Satan who ruled here, but himself.
    He was the power.
    The glory of the death was his.
    The pleasure of the kill was his.
    As the screaming faded to a wet, gurgling whimper, he stepped forward. Taking up the fourth bat, he stood over Biff. He saw that beyond the milky glaze of pain in his victim's anguished eyes, there was still fear. Even better, there was still hope.
    “Please.” Blood ran from Biff's mouth, choking him. He tried to lift a hand, but his fingers were as useless as broken twigs. He was beyond pain now, impaled on a jagged threshold no man was meant to endure. “Please don't kill me. I took the oath. I took the oath.”
    The priest merely watched him, knowing this moment, this triumph, was almost at an end. “He is the Judge. He is the Ruler. What we have done, we have done in His name.” His eyes glittered down at Biff's face, still unmarked. “He who dies tonight will be thrown into torture, into misery. Into the void.”
    Biff's vision hazed and cleared, hazed and cleared. Blood dribbled from his mouth with each shallow breath. There would be no more screaming. He knew he was dead, and the prayers that raced through his numbed mind were mixed with incantations. To Christ. To Lucifer.
    He coughed once, violently, and nearly passed out.
    “I'll see you in hell,” he managed.
    The priest leaned over close, so that only Biff could hear. “This is hell.” With shuddering delight, he delivered the coup de grace. His seed spilled hot on the ground.
    While they burned the bats in the sacred pits, blood soaked into the muddy earth.

Chapter 8
    C AM STOOD BY the fence bordering the east end of Matthew Dopper's cornfield. Dopper, his cap pulled down to shade his face and a chaw swelling his cheek, stayed on the tractor and kept it idling. Its motor putted smoothly, thanks to his oldest son, who preferred diddling with engines to plowing fields.
    His plaid shirt was already streaked with sweat, though it was barely ten. Two fingers of his left hand were shaved off at the first knuckle, the result of a tangle with a combine. The impairment didn't affect his farming or his bowling average in his Wednesday night league. It had instilled a cautious respect for machinery.
    The whites of his eyes were permanently red-streaked from fifty-odd years of wind and hay dust. He had a stubborn, closed-in look on his lined hangdog face.
    He'd been born on the farm and had taken it over when his old man finally kicked off. Since his brother, the unlucky Junior, had blasted himself to hell in the adjoining woods, Matthew Dopper had inherited every sonofabitching stone on the eighty-five-acre farm. He'd lived there,worked there, and would die there. He didn't need Cameron Rafferty to come flashing his badge and telling him how to handle his business.
    “Matt, it's the third complaint this month.”
    In answer, Dopper spat over the side of the tractor. “Them goddamn flatlanders move in, planting their goddamn houses on Hawbaker land, then they try to push me out. I ain't budging. This here's my land.”
    Cam set a boot on the bottom rung of the fence and prayed for patience. The ripe scent of fertilizer was making his nostrils quiver. “Nobody's trying to run you out, Matt. You've just got to chain up those dogs.”
    “Been dogs on this farm for a hundred years.” He spat again. “Never been chained.”
    “Things change.” Cam looked out over the field to where he could see the boxy modular homes in the distance. Once there had been only fields, meadows, pastures. If you'd driven by at dawn or at dusk, like as not you'd have seen deer grazing. Now people were putting up satellite dishes and planting ceramic deer in their front yards.
    Was it any wonder