The Devil's Laughter Read online

  “Who cares?” Toby Belenger summed up the mood of the group.

  Most of the others who had been at Gerard’s home when it came under attack had surfaced and made their way to Link’s. All but Ray Ingalls’s wife, Dee, had made it. She was dead. Witnesses said Chris Brooks had seized her and killed her.

  A young woman hissed and spat at Linda Chavez, then tried to kick her. “Goddamn spic,” the girl said. “You think this is over? You’re wrong. All praise the Dark One! Satan lives. His is the only way. The-”

  Linda jammed a handkerchief in the girl’s mouth and stuck a piece of tape over her lips.

  The last survivor of the attack accounted for and trussed up in the barn, the weary defenders made coffee and sandwiches and sat in the house, tired and numb from the horror of it all.

  “Let’s gear up and head for the complex,” Cliff said, standing up. “Four of us will go, the rest stay here in case of another attack. But I think it’s nearly over. Gerard, Dennis, Jeff, and me. Let’s get ready, boys.”

  “We’ll each take a vehicle,” Gerard said, “in case we run into anyone who wants to surrender.”

  The sounds of several fast-moving cars and trucks roaring past turned their heads.

  “Heading south,” Gerard said. “We’re going to be busy rounding those people up.”

  “Those cars and trucks pulling out is a good sign,” Dennis said. “Means Link is kicking butt and taking names.”

  “Let’s go,” Cliff said, picking up his rifle. “This ... crap isn’t over yet.”

  * * *

  Lynette was stunned into silence. Her son! Link Donovan was her son! The boy that had been taken from her so many years ago. Her son was here!

  That was the reason for her strong feelings of depression. Lynette had served Satan for so long she was very nearly immortal; but her own flesh and blood could kill her. She had gone through half a dozen births and, with that, many names. But she had made a mistake when she chose the Romaire family to be reborn into. For the Romaire family were all deeply religious. With them, it had been a series of one priest after another, for they knew something was very wrong with their daughter.

  “Oh, Mommy!” Link called, as the flames danced like the fires of hell outside the building. “Don’t you want to give your baby boy a nice big juicy kiss, Mommy?”

  “Kill him!” Lynette screamed. “Kill him, damn you all, kill the bastard!”

  Billy Curtis and Wesley Davidson jumped at Link from the gloom of the plant. Link put them down with a short burst. He pulled the pin on a grenade and chucked it at a charging group of screaming coven members, then jumped to one side just before the grenade blew and sent some more willing souls into the dark arms of the devil.

  Link ducked under a long metal meat processing table and scrambled toward the front of the building, while the others crashed into each other in their frantic search for him.

  “Here he is!” Link heard Waldo Brown bellow, and then Waldo emptied a pistol into some unlucky soul.

  “Damn, Waldo!” a woman hollered. “You killed Ed Willis!”

  Outside, another gas tank blew and sent bits and pieces of metal crashing through those windows on the ground floor that were not boarded up. Several sheets of she thick plywood used to board up some of the windows were now burning.

  “Find him, you fools,” Judge Jackson screamed from the landing of the second floor. “We don’t have that many hours before dawn. He’s got to die before dawn!”

  Staying under the long wide rusted steel table, Link pulled the pin on another grenade and gave it a toss. When it came down, it landed on a man’s head, knocked him goofy, and rolled to the floor and blew.

  Link scrambled forward, his movements unheard in all the yelling and screaming and wailing for help from the wounded.

  “He’s under the damn processing table!” Judge Jackson screamed.

  Link rolled from under the table and ducked behind a pile of debris, staying low. Men and women began firing from both sides of the processing table, the slugs inflicting terrible damage on the coven members standing and squatting on either side of the table.

  “Idiots,” Link said under his breath, although he could have shouted it and no one would have heard the words over all the other noise.

  He reached into the rucksack he’d been carrying in his left hand. He was just about out of grenades. He selected a Fire-Frag and heaved it into a knot of men and women across the room, changing positions the instant it left his hand.

  He had already reduced the odds against him tremendously. The Fire-Frag thinned it down another notch. The fires outside were quickly waning as the flames consumed everything flammable in the interior of the vehicles.

  Link stood up in the smoke-filled building and burned a full clip, working the Uzi left to right. He dropped down to all fours and crawled to another pile of trash, slipping in a fresh clip along the way.

  “Help us!” Lynette wailed to the master she served. But if the Dark One heard, he offered no comfort to this servant.

  Link burned a clip on the second-floor landing. He saw the slugs strike the woman and knock her back. He watched as she regained her balance and walked to the railing, to stand looking down at him from the landing, a smile on her face, the bullet holes smoking in her gown.

  Link changed clips and leveled the Uzi just as Waldo and several more charged him. Those folks had worshiped the devil for the last time. Badly wounded and dying, Waldo crawled to Link and cursed him.

  “Go to hell, Waldo,” Link told him.

  Waldo closed his eyes and obliged.

  Dick Marley pointed a pistol at Link and pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped on an empty cylinder. Link stepped forward and swung the Uzi, the SMG slamming against the man’s head. Dick hit the littered floor and was still.

  Link dropped to the floor and crawled to the far wall, as far away from the fiery outside light as he could get. He could see only a few shadowy forms staggering around in the smoky plant. The smell of blood was very strong and Link was suddenly sickened by it. He was weary of the whole stinking mess.

  “Hunt him down and kill him!” Judge Britton screamed from the railing. “You must kill the man. Do it now!”

  Link lifted the Uzi and gave the judge a lesson in justice. Britton fell back against a wall, took two steps forward, and went headfirst over the railing. He landed with a crash on the processing table.

  “I’m done,” Ed Westcott called. “I’m gone out the door, Donovan. I’m tossin’ my gun on the floor.” The shotgun clattered on the concrete. “Me and my bunch is done and through.”

  “Traitor!” Judge Jackson screamed from the railing.

  Link gave another judge some 9mm justice. Jackson joined Britton on the table. Link shifted position, staying in the pockets of darkness.

  “By all that’s unholy, Donovan,” Nelson Marshall called from across the huge room. “I’ll not give up the good fight.”

  “Wrong,” Father Palombo said, standing in the rear door, a rifle in his hands. He shot the man through the chest.

  “Father, forgive me!” a woman called. “I have sinned.”

  “You damn sure have,” the young priest said. “Get out, you worshipers of Satan. Go to your homes, fall down on your knees, and pray to God until you are exhausted. Get out!” he roared.

  Twenty or more men and women ran from the building and went crying down the road. They were met by Cliff Sweeney, the chief deputy, and two troopers.

  The now-former coven members fell to their knees in the road and put their hands in the air. Cliff Sweeney took their wallets and purses and tossed them in the back seat of his car. “Go home and stay put,” he told them. “We know who you are. There is no point in running away. Someone will be around for you in a few hours.”

  The sorry-looking band of Satan lovers began the long trudge back to town.

  Father Lattier stepped into the building using the back door. He looked up at the woman standing by the railing. “We meet again,
Lynette.”

  “Bastard!” she spat the word at him.

  Link started walking toward the steps that would take him to meet his true mother.

  “You’re a fool, Link Donovan,” she called, her voice deepening and becoming more ominous-sounding. “You can’t destroy me.”

  “Anne!” Link shouted.

  “In here!” Anne yelled. “We’re all right, Link.”

  “Stay put,” he told her. “I have one more thing to do and then it’s over.”

  “Join me, son,” Lynette said. “Take my hand and step over into my world. We could be the most powerful team in all the land. Nothing could defeat us.”

  “I think I’ll pass, Mommy dear.”

  Father Lattier picked up a rusting old wrench and conked a coven member on the noggin just as he was lifting a rifle to shoot Link.

  Cliff Sweeney and the others stepped out of their cars and stood looking at the still-burning mess in front of the complex. Bodies littered the parking area.

  “Help me,” a man pleaded to Cliff. Both his legs were broken.

  Cliff resisted mightily an urge to shoot the man.

  “We got a right to worship the god of our choice,” a woman said to Gerard. “It’s in the Constitution.”

  “Actually, it’s an amendment to the Constitution,” Gerard told her. “Now shut up.”

  Link approached the woman, who stood smiling at him. When he was about fifteen feet from her, he lifted the Uzi and gave her a full clip. The slugs knocked her back and to the floor, her gown smoking and bloody from the bullet holes.

  She laughed and crawled to her knees. Link kicked her in the face and sent her rolling along the landing. She sprang to her feet and leaped at him, her mouth blood-red and screaming curses at her son.

  Link ducked and she went over his head, landing lightly on her feet. She whirled around and faced him.

  He dropped the Uzi. It was useless against her. She laughed at him.

  Then she changed into a young woman. A very beautiful young woman. Somehow familiar to Link. Then Link knew who she was. Betty Avery, his first girlfriend. She was long dead, killed in a car wreck along with her parents shortly after her fourteenth birthday.

  “You don’t want to kill me, Link,” Betty’s voice said to him. The creature that was in Betty’s form stepped closer. “I love you, Link. I’ve always loved you.”

  Link pulled a knife from its scabbard, the blade a full twelve inches long. Long enough to reach the dark heart he knew he must pierce.

  “Come kiss me, Link,” Betty’s young voice said. “Please kiss me. Kiss me like you used to kiss me.”

  Link jumped forward and swung the knife. The blade tore into the face and blood gushed. He jumped back.

  Betty disappeared and his best buddy from ’Nam appeared. Tony had stepped on a mine and been blown to pieces in front of Link’s eyes.

  “Hey, man,” Tony said in Tony’s voice. “Long time no see. How’s it hangin’, buddy?”

  “Fight her, Tony!” Link yelled. “Fight her! Fight her hard!”

  Tony hesitated, confusion on his face. “Link, help me. I don’t know where I am.”

  “Go back, Tony,” Link told him. “Go back. Try. You can do it. Go back. Pray to God, Tony. Pray aloud.”

  A wild scream of anguish sprang from Tony’s mouth. He vanished. Lynette stood before Link, a long scar on her face where the blade had sliced through.

  “Formidable,” she told him. “You’re a real chip off the old block, son. Even though it’s the wrong block.”

  Link advanced and she backed up, fear of the knife evident on her face. She looked much older now, the flames from outside highlighting her face. She was haglike.

  “You’re an ugly bitch,” Link told her.

  She hissed at him.

  Link advanced on her and she backed up.

  “Help me!” she wailed. “Give me power!” she screamed at her master.

  Below them, the priests began praying.

  Cliff Sweeney, Gerard Lucas, Jeff Miller, and Dennis Holt stood just inside a door and watched the scene being played out on the landing above them.

  Lynette held out her hands and they were suddenly filled with loops of barbed wire. She smiled and began twirling the wire above her head, like a cowboy with a lasso.

  She flung the wire at Link and it looped around his ankles. She tugged, the wire tightened, and Link was twisted out of his boots. She howled and began pulling him toward her.

  “Shoot her!” Link yelled. “Shoot her.”

  Four rifles barked and Lynette jerked under the impacting slugs. But she refused to release her end of the wire. Father Lattier ran laboriously up the steps, one hand pressed against the growing pain in his chest, the other with a vial of blessed water. He threw the water onto Lynette’s back, and she screamed as her flesh began bubbling and burning.

  The old priest lunged against the child of Satan and his forward momentum sent them both stumbling past Link. Lynette dropped the wire and threw the priest from her. Father Lattier went over the railing and crashed onto the concrete floor below. Link tore the wire from his ankles, ripping and bloodying his hands in doing so.

  Lynette was still stumbling around, screaming as the holy water ate into her flesh.

  Link grabbed up the barbed wire in bloody fingers and ran to his mother’s side, winding the wire around and around her. He seized her by the neck and hurled her off the landing. She fell screaming, landing on the floor. She howled and struggled against the wire that bound her.

  Link had lost his knife and did not have time to search for it. He raced down the metal steps and grabbed up a rusting old meat hook. He ran to the woman and swung the hook with all his might.

  She sat up just at that moment and the hook penetrated through her skull, the curved metal coming down like a shield over her nose and the wooden handle level with her mouth.

  Lynette smiled up at him and the wire parted. She flung it aside and stood up. “Ready to give up, sonny boy?” she asked him.

  “Not damn likely,” Link told her, his chest heaving from his exertions.

  She laughed at him and jumped.

  Chapter 16

  Link grabbed the wooden handle of the meat hook and began turning like a man about to compete in an Olympic hammer throw. He whirled around and around, and when Lynette was about four feet off the ground, screaming curses at him and trying to tear at him with talonlike fingers, he released her.

  She sailed through the air and smashed against a wall. Witch that she was, spawn and servant of the devil, very nearly immortal, it hurt her. The impact had smashed flat the back of her head.

  Link was only vaguely conscious of more shots being fired near him. He did not turn around. All his concentration was on his mother.

  Link grabbed a length of rusting construction steel, about three feet long and about as big around as a man’s thumb. He slowly advanced toward the woman who had seduced a priest and birthed Link solely to serve her own dark master.

  “Die!” Charlie Ford screamed, rushing out of the shadows toward Link. He held an axe high over his head and his eyes were wild with madness.

  Link sidestepped, the axe coming down on the steel processing table with a clang. Charlie’s arms were numbed from wrists to shoulder. Link popped him on the back of the head with the steel rod and Charlie sank to the dirty floor.

  Link moved toward Lynette. She still had not gotten up from the floor. Link suspected her back or neck was broken, and for whatever reason, Ol’ Nick was not going to heal her this time around.

  “I’m your mother, boy,” she said in a deep voice that seemed, and probably was, unnatural. “That’s got to mean something to you.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mommy? Give you a big kiss?”

  She chuckled darkly, her suddenly stinking breath fouling the already rancid air inside the building. Her breath held the odor of the grave. “I will tell you this, boy: It isn’t over for you. It will never be over for you. And th
is night and following day still hold some surprises.”

  “You ready to meet the devil, Mother?” Link asked her.

  “It’ll sure beat the shit out of the present company,” she replied.

  Link took one step forward. “Good-bye, Mother.”

  He drove the steel rod into and through her chest with all his strength. She cried out once, her fingers gripping the rod. Her skin began to peel back from her exposed flesh, dripping from her face and arms in long, dry strips.

  Her hair turned completely gray, and then it all fell out as the rolling ages caught up with her. Her teeth fell from her mouth to clatter and bounce on the concrete floor. Lynette Jackson’s head lolled to one side as the skin continued to fall from her, until finally all that was left was a shiny skull, grinning in toothless death. The hands that gripped the steel rod were void of flesh. Old bony fingers.

  Link slumped back against the processing table, so tired he didn’t know whether his legs would support him. He put a hand to his face and was surprised to find blood from his barbed-wire-torn fingers.

  Father Palombo stepped forward, Anne and the kids beside him. Anne put her arms around Link and silently cried against his chest, her tears hot.

  “Find the urn,” Link said. “We’ve got to burn Lynette and seal her ashes and the urn in a safe place.”

  “Later, Link,” the priest said softly.

  “Now!” Link told him. “Do it now.”

  “Your hands, honey,” Anne said, pulling away from Link and holding his bloody hands in hers.

  “They’ll have to wait, Anne,” he said. “I got a hunch my dear departed mother wasn’t joking when she said there were surprises still waiting for us.”

  “What do you mean, Link?” Gerard asked. “And why do you suppose she just seemed to give up there at the last?”

  “I think she was using what strength was left her to do some unseen devil’s work.”

  “What kind of devil’s work, Mr. Link?” Billy asked.

  “I don’t know, boy. But I do know this: It will probably be very unpleasant.”

  “Look!” Anne cried, pointing to the outside. “Dawn!”