One Door From Heaven

there.
        BOTTLES, BOTTLES everywhere, and not one genie in them, nor any message meant to be tossed overboard at sea. They contained only the dried residue of soft drinks and beer, which in spite of its age lent a nose-wrinkling scent to the enclosed back porch.
        Stabbed but not disabled, Noah had hurried around the house with Cass and found the porch door unlocked. Guns drawn, they entered.
        The three-mile drive from Nun's Lake had not provided sufficient time for Noah to get a grip on the complete background of the twins. Although he knew that they were ex-showgirls fascinated with UFOs, he remained more mystified than not by their game attitude and by their armaments.
        He hadn't seen either of them fire a weapon, but from the wholly professional way they handled guns, Noah felt as comfortable having Cass for a partner as he'd ever felt about any cop with whom he had partnered during his years in uniform.
        The floor of the porch groaned under the weight of a bottle collection that would, redeemed at a nickel apiece, purchase a fine automobile for the owners to put up on blocks in the front yard. When Noah led the way through a narrow walk space, the bottles made fairy music.
        The door between the porch and the kitchen was double-locked. One lock could easily be loided with a credit card, but the other was a deadbolt that would not succumb to a slip of plastic.
        They had to assume that Maddoc had either heard them drive up, in spite of the wind and rain and thunder, or that he had seen them arrive. Stealth might matter inside, but it didn't matter when they were getting in.
        The bottles encroaching on both sides didn't allow him a full range of motion, but he kicked the door hard. The shock of the impact expressed itself all the way into the wound in his shoulder, but he kicked again, and then a third time. Half eaten away by dry rot, the jamb crumbled around the lock, and the door flew inward.
        THREE BLOWS shook the house, and Preston knew at once that his hope of having more than the briefest pleasure with the Hand had in this instant evaporated.
        The Slut Queen wouldn't have made that noise. She was in the farmhouse, seeking an exit, but striving not to draw attention to herself. In the unlikely event that she'd already found a route through the maze, she wouldn't have needed to hammer her way out of the house.
        Preston hadn't heard sirens, and no one had yelled police. Yet he didn't delude himself that a burglar would, by chance, have chosen precisely this point in time to force entry. Someone had come to stop him.
        He abandoned his search for the Slut Queen hardly before it had begun, and turned back on his trail, eager to get to the armchair in which he'd left the Hand. He might still have time to choke the ugly little bitch to death, although such intimate contact would make his stomach churn, and then use the maze to slip away. He couldn't allow her to fall under the protection of others, after all, because if at last she was able to convince anyone to listen to her, she would be the only witness against him.
        POLLY WANTS CURTIS to remain in Noah's rental car, but galactic royalty will always have its way.
        Curtis wants Old Yeller to remain in the car, and he easily wins the issue that Polly lost, because sister-become is a good, good dog.
        The grassless yard has turned to mud that sucks at their shoes. They splash through deep puddles as lightning strikes a pine tree in a nearby field, about a hundred feet away, causing a banner of flame to flutter briefly through the boughs before the downpour quenches the fire, and thunder loud enough to announce the Apocalypse shakes the day. It's all so wonderful.
        On the front porch, when she tries the door and finds it locked, Polly draws the pistol from her purse and tells Curtis to stand back.
        "It'd be cool to blow down the door," the boy says, "but my way is easier, and Mother always says the simplest strategy is usually the best."
        He places both hands lightly on the door, wills it to open, and down on the micro level, where it matters, the brass molecules of the deadbolt suddenly prefer to be there rather than here, to be in the lock's disengaged position.
        "Can I learn that?" Polly asks.
        "Nope," he says, pushing the door inward.
        "Got to be a spaceboy like you, huh?"
        "Every species has