Velocity

would come, and the freak would run.
    At once he realized that only the priest in the rectory would hear, and if the priest came, the killer wouldn’t flee. No, he would shoot the priest in the face just as he had shot Lanny.
    Maybe ten seconds had elapsed since the window had shattered, and the back of Billy’s head was being drawn inexorably across the window sill.
    The pain had quickly grown so intense that the roots of his hair seemed to extend through the flesh of his face—for his face hurt as well, stung as if flame had seared it—and seemed to extend also into his shoulders and arms, for as the tenacious roots came free, so did the strength in those muscles.
    The nape of his neck chilled on contact with the window sill. Crumbles of gummy safety glass jagged his skin.
    His head was being bent backward now. How quickly his exposed throat could be slit, how easily his spine might be snapped.
    He let go of the steering wheel. He reached behind his back, fumbling for the door handle.
    If he could open the door and thrust with sufficient force, he might unbalance his assailant, knock him down, and either break his grip or lose the hair at last.
    To reach the handle—slippery in his sweaty fingers—he had to twist his arm behind himself so torturously and bend his hand at such a severe angle that he didn’t have the range of movement to work the lever action.
    As if sensing Billy’s intent, the freak leaned all his weight against the door.
    Billy’s head was largely out of the car now, and a face suddenly appeared above him, upside-down to his face. A countenance without features. A hooded phantom.
    He blinked to clear his vision.
    Not a hood. A dark ski mask.
    Even in this poor light, Billy could see the fevered gaze that glistered from the eyeholes.
    Something sprayed the lower half of his face, from the nose down. Wet, cold, pungent yet sweet, a medicinal reek.
    He gasped in shock, then tried to hold his breath, but the single gasp had undone him. Astringent fumes burned in his nostrils. His mouth flooded with saliva.
    The masked face seemed to lower toward his, like a dark moon coming down, the cratered eyes.
     
     
     

Chapter 16
     
    The sedative wore off. Like a winch line turning on a drum, pain gradually hoisted Billy from unconsciousness.
    His mouth tasted as if he’d drunk waffle syrup and chased it with bleach. Sweet and bitter. Life itself.
    For a while he didn’t know where he was. Initially he did not care. Raised from a sea of torpor, he felt saturated with unnatural sleep and yearned to return to it.
    Eventually the unrelenting pain forced him to care, to keep his eyes open, to analyze sensation and to orient himself. He was lying on his back on a hard surface—the church parking lot.
    He could smell the faint scents of tar, oil, gasoline. The vague nutty, musty fragrance of the oak tree spreading overhead in the darkness. His own sour perspiration.
    Licking his lips, he tasted blood.
    When he wiped his face, Billy found it slick with a viscous substance that was most likely a mixture of sweat and blood. In the dark, he could not see what had been transferred to his hand.
    The pain was mostly in his scalp. He first assumed that it was a lingering effect of having had his hair nearly pulled out.
    A slow pulsing ache, punctuated by a series of sharper pangs, radiated across his head, not from the crown, however, where his hair had been severely tested, but from his brow.
    When he raised one hand and hesitantly explored the source, he found something stiff and wiry bristling from his forehead, an inch below the hairline. Although his touch was gentle, it triggered a spasm of sharper pain that made him cry out. Are you prepared for your first wound?
    He left the exploration of the injury for later, until he could see the damage.
    The wound would not be mortal. The freak had not intended to kill him, only to hurt him, perhaps to scar him.
    Billy’s grudging respect for his adversary had grown to the point that he did not expect the man to make mistakes, at least not major ones.
    Billy sat up. Pain swelled across his brow, and again when he got to his feet.
    He stood swaying, surveying the parking lot. His assailant was gone.
    High in the night, a cluster of moving stars, the running lights of a jet, growled westward. On this route, it was probably a military transport headed for a war zone. Another war zone different from the one down here.
    He opened the driver’s door of the