Hideaway

toward one end of the cavern, far back in the tunnel that led to the spillway. The rapid rate at which the light grew brighter convinced him that he would not have time to add the girl to his collection before the intruders were upon him.
    He knew who they were. He had seen them in visions as they, evidently, had seen him. Lindsey and her husband had followed him all the way from Laguna Niguel. He was just beginning to recognize that more forces were at work in this affair than had appeared to be the case at first.
    He considered letting them descend the spillway into Hell, slipping behind them, killing the man, disabling the woman, and then proceeding with a dual crucifixion. But there was something about the husband that unsettled him. He couldn't put his finger on it.
    But he realized now that, in spite of his bravado, he had been avoiding a confrontation with the husband. In their house earlier in the night, when the element of surprise had still been his, he should have circled behind the husband and disposed of him first, before going after either Regina or Lindsey. Had he done so, he might have been able to acquire both woman and child at that time. By now he might have been happily engrossed in their mutilation.
    Far above, the pearly glow of light had resolved into a pair of flashlight beams at the brink of the spillway. After a brief hesitation, they started down. Because he had put his sunglasses in his shirt pocket, Vassago was forced to squint at the slashing swords of light.
    As before, he decided not to move against the man, choosing instead to retreat with the child. This time, however, he wondered at his prudence.
    A Master of the Game, he thought, must exhibit iron control and choose the right moments to prove his power and superiority.
    True. But this time the thought struck him as spineless justification for avoiding confrontation.
    Nonsense. He was afraid of nothing in this world.
    The flashlights were still a considerable distance away, focused on the floor of the spillway, not yet to the midpoint of the long incline. He could hear their footsteps, which grew louder and developed an echo as the pair advanced into the huge chamber.
    He seized the catatonic girl, lifted her as if she weighed no more than a pillow, slung her over his shoulder, and moved soundlessly across the floor of Hell toward those rock formations where he knew a door to a service room was hidden.
     
    ----
     
    “Oh, my God.”
    “Don't look,” he told Lindsey as he swept the beam of his flashlight across the macabre collection. “Don't look, Jesus, cover my back, make sure he's not coming around on us.”
    Gratefully, she did as he said, turning away from the array of posed cadavers in various stages of decomposition. She was certain that her sleep, even if she lived to be a hundred, would be haunted every night by those forms and faces. But who was she kidding—she would never make a hundred. She was beginning to think she wouldn't even make it through the night.
    The very idea of breathing that air, reeking and impure, through her mouth was almost enough to make her violently ill. She did it anyway because it minimized the stink.
    The darkness was so deep. The flashlight seemed barely able to penetrate. It was like syrup, flowing back into the brief channel that the beam stirred through it.
    She could hear Hatch moving along the collection of bodies, and she knew what he had to be doing—taking a quick look at each of them, just to be sure that Jeremy Nyebern was not posed among them, one living monstrosity among those consumed by rot, waiting to spring at them the moment they passed him.
    Where was Regina?
    Ceaselessly, Lindsey swept her flashlight back and forth, back and forth, in a wide arc, never giving the murderous bastard a chance to sneak up on her before she brought the beam around again. But, oh, he was fast. She had seen how fast. Flying down the hallway into Regina's room, slamming the door behind him, fast as if he'd flown, had wings, bat wings. And agile. Down the trumpet-vine trellis with the girl over his shoulder, unfazed by the fall, up and off into the night with her.
    Where was Regina?
    She heard Hatch moving away, and she knew where he was going, not just following the line of bodies but circling the towering figure of Satan, to be sure Jeremy Nyebern wasn't on the other side of it. He was just doing what he had to do. She knew that, but she didn't like it anyway, not one little bit, because now