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  “Ahhh! Yes. I don’t think anybody ever got the full story of that . . . incident. Yeah, I was a junior at the university when that happened.”

  “So was I.”

  “No kidding! What house?”

  Carl grinned. “None. I never went in much for that fraternity stuff. What sorority were you in?”

  She returned his grin and her face was suddenly pixyish. “None. Much to the mortification of my mother. One of Virginia’s first families and all that,” she said, acquiring a pretty good English accent, “don’t you know?”

  “Oh, quite!” He managed a passable cockney accent.

  “I dropped out,” she told him.

  “So did I.”

  They shared a laugh on the porch and both of them leaned back in the chairs, enjoying the coffee and each other’s company and the quiet of the mountains.

  “I hate to bring up business,” Carl said, breaking the silence. “But I am on your father’s payroll—in a manner of speaking.”

  “He can afford it.”

  “I imagine.”

  She took a sip of coffee. “Do you have a gun with you?”

  “I have a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun in the car.”

  “Ever shot anybody?”

  “On the job or in self-defense as a civilian?”

  More to this young man than meets the eye, she thought. “Either.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  One, or more? she thought. “Did they, uh ... ?”

  “Die? Yes. One was a rapist who jumped bond and the bonding company hired us to get him. I had him cornered in an old shack down on the Virginia-North Carolina line. He came at me with a knife.”

  She silently absorbed that for a moment and decided she would not pursue that line of questioning any further. Instead she blurted out, “I’ve been receiving obscene phone calls now for about three weeks. I’ve come home, here, and found that someone has been in the house, rummaging through my things. They’ve taken . . . very personal items. Bras, panties, that sort of thing.”

  “Your father was right to hire us. You’re dealing with a nut. What did the police say?”

  “Well, living out here, it’s the sheriffs department. They were very nice and cooperative. They believed me at first.”

  “At first?”

  “They did something at the phone company’s main switcher, or whatever they call it. Whenever my number rang, they could do some sort of electronic search and find out where the call came from. And I was taping everything here. I’d get a call, but nothing would show up at the terminal headquarters. And when I’d play them the tape, I heard everything very clearly, but believe it or not, the police couldn’t hear anything. They finally wrote me off as a kook.”

  “Are you a kook?”

  “No. I’m a best-selling author of historical romances. That isn’t to say there aren’t some kooky writers. But I’m not one of them. I write under the name of Daphne LaCrosse.”

  “Daphne LaCrosse! My sister and my mother read your books! They’re big fans of yours!”

  A smile danced around her lips. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “But getting back to business, I would like to hear one of these taped calls after you’ve told me everything.”

  “All right.” She slanted her eyes over his long, lanky frame and mop of what she guessed would always be slightly unruly brown hair. An attractive young man. More rugged-looking than strictly handsome. Certainly not one of those blow-dried, buttoned-down types that she detested. And he wasn’t a jock, either. Those turned her off completely. Carl Garrett looked like he could take care of himself, and would back up from very little—if anything.

  It was her nature to make up her mind quickly about people, and she decided that she liked this long, lanky young private investigator.

  “I’ve also been followed—many times over the past month. By kids, would you believe, always kids. Well. . . seventeen, eighteen years old, I’d guess. But no, no one has tried to hurt me or make any kind of physical contact. And I also get the feeling that I’m being watched, from the woods. I’ll admit to you what I have not and will not admit to my parents: I’m scared.”

  “With good reason. Do you like animals?”

  “What?” The quick shift took her by surprise. “Oh. Yes. Very much. Why?”

  “You need a dog. A trained guard dog. They’re expensive, but well worth the money. I know a man who trains them. I can have one up here this afternoon if you’re agreeable.”

  “If you think it’s necessary. Of course. Yes. I think I’d like that.”

  “Use your phone?”

  “Certainly. Come on,” she said, rising from the deck chair, “I’ll show you where it is.”

  The interior of the A-frame was impressive. Expensive chrome lighting and lamps and leather furniture. Tasteful paintings lined the walls. And the A-frame was much larger than Carl would have guessed from the outside. One very large bedroom upstairs created the ceiling for the modern kitchen in the rear. The den was massive, the fireplace huge.

  “My office,” she said, pointing to a closed door.

  Carl spotted the phone and made his call. The dog would be there by early afternoon. Carl gave the man directions and hung up.

  “Where do I bunk?” Carl asked.

  Dee hesitated, then said, “The guest cottage is ready. But I think I’d feel better if you were closer. Use that bedroom there.” She pointed to the second closed door on the lower level and smiled impishly. “Providing I can trust you, that is.”

  “I was a Boy Scout,” Carl said with a straight face.

  She rolled her eyes, and smiled.

  * * *

  Carl knew instantly that he didn’t like the deputy. He had spent his entire life around law enforcement and could pick a hotdog out of a crowd—an officer who lived and breathed law enforcement, who was only too ready to bust anybody for anything at anytime, who made the kind of comments designed to provoke resistance in the hope that force would become necessary.

  “Never did have much use for private detectives,” Deputy Harrison said.

  “I never had much use for hotdogs,” Carl replied calmly.

  Both young men were about the same age. Harrison was heavier and several inches shorter, and his mouth was stuffed full of chewing tobacco.

  The deputy flushed and looked hard at Carl. “If you carryin’ a weapon, you gonna be in a lot of trouble, boy.”

  Carl handed him his Federal gun permit. Most cops, both urban and rural, never saw a Federal gun permit, for the simple reason that they were very difficult to obtain.

  Harrison shifted his cud and returned the permit. “First time I seen one of them,” he admitted.

  Carl handed him his VHP gun permit. Harrison glanced at it and a little more of the bluster went out of him. “I get the picture,” he said. He looked at Carl. “You Sheriff Garrett’s son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sheriff Rodale and him didn’t get along.”

  “So my father said, several times.” Rodale, Carl knew, had to be dragged screaming and kicking into the twentieth century. His style of law enforcement went out about the same time as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Virginia Highway Patrol rated Reeves County as having the worst record of law enforcement in the entire state. And, off the record, Sheriff Rodale was rated as being the worst sheriff in the entire United States.

  “Phew!” Harrison said, as that foul odor drifted under his nose. “Y’all better get that septic tank looked at.”

  “It isn’t the tank. I checked it just before you drove up. I don’t know what it is or where it’s coming from.”

  Harrison had appeared while Carl was just about to get a pistol from his car. News of a stranger in the county had spread very fast. Carl knew, from reading intelligence reports about Reeves County and Sheriff Rodale, that the sheriff was on the take from a dozen different places and had a spy network of assorted good ol’ boys and rednecks that would rival the CIA. The state of Virginia had tri
ed for years to put the man in prison, but Rodale had sidestepped each move with the grace of a ballet dancer slipping on owl shit.

  “That woman in yonder is a nut!” Harrison said, looking at the house.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you ain’t as smart as you think you are.”

  A dozen rejoinders sprang into Carl’s mind. He checked them and smiled at Harrison. “I’m smart enough to know that being hassled is against the law. And that Edgar Conners is plenty irritated with the sheriffs department in this county.”

  Those were evidently the magic words. Harrison forced a very thin smile and said, “See you around, boy.”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  Carl watched the patrol car leave and knew he had made an enemy. But he detested Harrison and all his breed. Harrison was the kind of man who threw away everything in the newspaper except the sports page. He could tell you the third-string quarterback of his favorite team, but didn’t have the foggiest idea what continent Peru was on. On the back bumper of his pickup truck, with chromed roll-bar and fourteen lights and at least three antennas, there would be several bumper stickers: I WILL GIVE UP MY GUN WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS. COON HUNTERS ARE GREAT LOVERS. ANYONE WHO DON’T LIKE FOOTBALL SUCKS.

  Harrison would kill a deer out of season in a heartbeat and tell you that was his right, but would give an out-of-towner a ticket for going three miles over the speed limit.

  “I can’t stand that man,” Dee called from the front porch.

  Carl turned. “I can understand why.”

  A slight rustling sound came from the nearby woods. Carl frowned.

  “How much of this land do you or your father own, Dee?”

  “About ten thousand acres. The reason so many people around here don’t like my father is because he won’t permit hunting on any of his property. It’s all fenced and posted, but some still slip in and hunt. The house has been shot at more than once, and before I put the fence up, the tires on my car were cut several times.”

  “You think it was connected to what’s been happening to you recently?”

  “No.”

  Carl had changed into jeans and hiking boots and he now slipped into a shoulder holster rig and checked his 9-mm Beretta. Every other round was killer ammo, bullets that exploded upon striking soft tissue.

  “Why are you putting that on?” Dee asked.

  “Because I’ve got a very strong feeling someone’s out there. I’m going to check out the woods. You get back into the house. Please,” he added.

  Carl left the fenced-in area, carefully closing and securing the gate, and walked into the deep timber. Immediately a strange sensation hit him. He could not quite identify it.

  Then it came to him, bringing with it old memories of those terrible days just before his father died fighting the evil that had sprung up in Ruger County several years back.

  Carl remembered the terror that had spread like wind-whipped wildfire through the town and the surrounding area. He vividly recalled the hideous metamorphosis that had changed humans into drooling subhumans who stalked the countryside, seeking human flesh. And the ordinary house cats that had attacked their owners in a frenzy of blood lust.

  Carl leaned against a tree and struggled to put all that out of his mind. Right now he needed to concentrate only on the job at hand.

  A twig snapping within the forest alerted him to danger.

  The foul odor that he had smelled several times that day now enveloped him. It was so putrid he had to fight back nausea.

  What in the hell was out there, lurking—rotting was probably more like it—in the shadows of the forest? It was his job to find out. He was being paid to protect Miss Daphne (“For God’s sake call me Dee”) Conners, a.k.a. Daphne LaCrosse, famous writer. So get on with it, he told himself.

  The young man moved deeper into the timber, avoiding the areas where the sun managed to weakly penetrate the timber.

  Something dark flitted through the timber. Carl caught only a glimpse of it.

  It did not seem human, but then neither was it like any animal he had ever seen.

  What the hell was it?

  Carl headed in the direction the fast-moving and elusive shape had taken. The foul odor became stronger. Another shape pranced through the timber. Again Carl could only catch a glimpse of it.

  Pranced?

  Yes. That’s what it did. An arrogant strut, almost as if he—it, whatever—was deliberately mocking Carl. But this figure had a more human shape to it.

  He heard faint singing.

  Singing? In the middle of a forest?

  Carl paused, listening. Not singing. It was . . . chanting, male and female voices together.

  Carl walked on, deeper into the forest. He guessed he had walked about a quarter of a mile from the A-frame, and still he did not seem to be getting any closer to the chanting.

  Hell, now it was behind him!

  He turned around. The chanting now seemed to be coming from near the house. He hesitated, then decided to return to the house; Dee Conners’s welfare was his first concern.

  But, as if in a dream, he could find no landmarks. The woods seemed to have changed, becoming more swamplike than forest. Nothing looked familiar. Carl stopped and took several deep breaths, calming himself. He looked up, trying to locate the sun. He could not see it. And he was tired, as if he’d been walking for miles.

  Now the chanting seemed to be coming from his left. He struggled to ignore it as he walked straight ahead. The hypnotic chanting must be muddling his brain.

  Now a single, very sweet female voice was singing to him—a siren’s song that was like what he imagined Ulysses had heard.

  He walked on, forcing everything except the house out of his mind. He caught a glimpse of the A-frame, but it was wavy and unclear, fading in and out of his vision.

  He struggled on, a dozen explanations for what might be causing this leaping into his mind. Maybe some sort of gas seeping from the earth that was toxic, perhaps mind-altering.

  The siren’s song ended abruptly as he approached the clearing. His head cleared. As he stepped out of the timber he was having difficulty remembering just what had gone on back in the timber.

  “Shapes.” He forced the word from his mouth. “Shapes and singing and chanting. And the forest seemed to change before my eyes.”

  He knelt down, pulling a small notepad from his back pocket, and quickly jotted down all he could remember.

  Dee ran out of the house. “My God, where have you been, Carl? I was about to call the police. For all the good that would have done me.”

  He looked up, stood up. “What do you mean where have I been? I went into the woods for a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes? What went on in there?”

  “A lot of strange, weird stuff, I can tell you that. Dee, I don’t think it’s safe for you to remain out here.” He looked up at the sky. The sun was dipping low on the horizon. Carl lifted his arm and glanced at his watch. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered.

  Dee walked to the gate, pushed it open, and came to his side, looking at him with worried eyes. “You’ve been gone for five hours, Carl!”

  Chapter 3

  He realized that he was hungry, and very, very thirsty. He drank two big glasses of water before his thirst was eased. Suddenly he yelled and dropped the glass to the floor.

  Dee ran through the house in time to see him tear off his boot and jerk the maggotlike worm from the flesh of his ankle. Goddamn thing had bitten like he imagined a piranha would bite!

  Gritting his teeth against the burning pain in his ankle, and fighting revulsion over the slimy, squirming worm trapped between his thumb and forefinger, he told Dee, “Get me a jar with a lid on it. Hurry.”

  Carl dropped the worm into the jar and screwed the lid on tight. He found a knife and punched a very small hole in the top of the lid. He assumed the thing needed air to survive. He wasn’t sure about that. But he damn sure recognized the maggotlike worm. F
rom several years back.

  Dee poured rubbing alcohol over his wound, a sensation which brightened Carl’s afternoon considerably. Sure.

  Through the momentary haze the burning alcohol caused, Carl fought to retain some hold on sanity. The worms he had seen, and thought destroyed, in Ruger County years past were still here, living in those woods. That explained the terrible stink. The Old Ones were once more surfacing, bubbling and struggling to reach the top of the earth. And with them would come terror and death and domination from forces on the dark side of light.

  Satan.

  But to whom could he tell his story? Who would believe him? Father Denier had died with Carl’s dad as they both gave up their lives to destroy Anya, the child of the Devil, and her damnable cat, Pet. But she had left a legacy of evil behind her. No one knew how many of her converts still walked the Virginia countryside, patiently waiting for the call to come forward.

  Dee’s voice jarred him back to reality. “I should have known when I saw that weird lightning this morning that this was going to be a really strange day.”

  Carl spun around. “What!”

  “There was this sort of silent storm. Lots of lightning but no thunder, if you can imagine. Then again, I was the only one to see it. I called a couple of my friends this morning to see what they thought about it. They said they hadn’t noticed any storm.”

  “I saw it,” Carl told her, then held up his hand. “We’ll talk about it later. Did Mister Jackson bring the dog?”

  “He’s out back. Half husky and half German shepherd. He sure is big enough. Mister Jackson said his name is Dingo.”

  “Let’s walk out together so he’ll know that I’m with you and we’re friends.”

  “He doesn’t look all that dangerous. Just big.”

  “He’s dangerous. Believe me. That’s the only kind of dogs Mister Jackson breeds and trains.”

  Dingo looked to be about a hundred pounds. There were no husky markings on him except for the way he held his tail as Carl approached. His color was a light tan. His head was massive and his jaws about like a grizzly bear. He had one blue eye and one brown eye. Always a lover of animals, Carl won him over easily.