Then one of the villagers screamed and fell backward, landing across Bill's back and nearly knocking him flat. Bill thought the bugs might have broken through his defenses and latched onto him en masse, but he was wrong.

It was worse.

Something had the man by the ankle, something that had uncoiled out of the darkness like a long black rope, but alive, tapered, twisting, and powerful. His fall had broken the circle and now the bugs were inside, attacking from within as well as without. The men tried to reclose the circle but wavered as the snake-like thing began to drag their friend from their midst. Some bent to grab his arms to pull him back but the bugs were immediately upon them and they had to let him go to protect themselves. Bill watched in horror as the man was dragged screaming into the darkness, the bugs swarming over him, ripping at him.

Another inky snake uncoiled from out of the night and snared a second villager. And as he was pulled crying to his doom, a third creature caught Nick and pulled him off his feet. Nick made no sound as he landed on the rocks. Bill wrapped an arm around his chest but the snake began to drag them both away. Bill sensed something huge and dark looming in the blackness beyond the reach of the torchlight and realized then that these weren't snakes but the long, smooth tentacles of a single monstrous creature. Glaeken's off-handed comment floated through his mind…

The bigger ones tend to be slow; it will take them a while to get here, but they'll get here.

Bill knew from the inexorable pull it exerted on Nick that there was no way he could resist its strength.

In desperation he reached down to the tentacle encircling Nick's legs and slashed at it with the sword fragments. Another blinding, sizzling flash and suddenly the tentacle had uncoiled and was writhing and flopping furiously about on the stones like a beheaded snake.

The villagers were now in complete disarray, stumbling about, swinging their torches and shields wildly in the air.

"Back!" Bill cried. "Back to the keep."

He pulled Nick to his feet and half carried him over the rocky ground toward the base of the tower, flailing about in the air with the metal shards, clearing a path through the bugs. Finally they were there, trailing some of the villagers, just ahead of a few others, stumbling through the doorway into the blessedly empty air of the keep. Bitten, bleeding, burned, they collapsed into panting heaps on the granite floor; compared to the rough stones outside, its smooth surface felt almost soft. Only the elderly Alexandru was standing, exactly where they had left him.

"Where are the others?" he said, his eyes ranging through their ranks. "What happened to Gheorghe? And Ion? And Michael and Nicolae?"

Bill lifted his head and counted. Only eight of the dozen villagers who'd gone out with him had made it back. He went to the door and looked out. Four torches burned smokily on the stones of the gorge. The men who had carried them were nowhere in sight. Behind him, the survivors began to weep and he felt his own throat tighten. Four brave men had sacrificed themselves so a stranger could dig up some chunks of old metal.

Bill looked down at the fragments in his hand, then again at the four sputtering torches.

These had damn well better be worth it.

Outside, something huge and black dragged its enormous weight over the rubble of the gorge.

Bill was ready to go. The two metal shards were settled deep in his pocket, Nick was strapped into the passenger seat, and the villagers had nailed a board across the land-rover's broken rear window. Bill hoped it blocked the bugs half as well as it blocked his rear view.

"I don't want to go."

Bill glanced at Nick and was shocked to see tears running down his cheeks.

"Nick…?"

"I like it here. I feel…better here. Please let me stay."

"Nick, I can't leave you here. I've got to go back and we may need you back home. But once this is all over, I'll bring you back."

He sobbed. "Do you promise, Father Bill?"

Bill felt a sob building in his own throat. He gripped Nick's hand.

"Yeah, Nicky. I promise."

He felt miserable but hid it as he waved to Alexandra and the others.

"Tell them I'll be back," he told the old man in German. "After this is all over, after the holes are closed and the monsters are gone, I'll be back. And I'll tell the world of the bravery of your people."

Alexandra waved but did not smile. There were tears in his eyes. Bill shared his grief, not only for the dead but for Alexandra's little community. A village atrophying and dying as was his could not afford to lose four of its most vital men.

"I'll be back," he said again. "I won't forget you."

And he meant it. If he survived this, if he was alive to do so, he'd be back.

He threw the vehicle into first, and started out the gate onto the causeway. The bugs swarmed around him. He was halfway across when the headlights picked up the first tentacle. It lay stretched lengthwise along the planks and lifted its tapered tip at Bill's approach, as if watching him, or catching his scent.

Bill stopped and squinted into the darkness as other tentacles pushed forward to join the first. Soon the causeway was acrawl with them. He found the high-beam button on the floor to the left of the clutch and kicked it.

Bill gasped and instinctively pressed himself back in his seat when he saw what waited at the far end of the causeway. The light from his high-beams reflected off a huge, smooth, featureless, glistening black mass, thirty feet high and at least a hundred feet across. He looked for eyes or a mouth but could find none. Just slimy-looking blackness. A huge slug-like creature with tentacles.

And those tentacles were reaching for him, stretching closer.

Bill looked for a way out, a way to get around it, but its massive bulk blocked the end of the causeway. Even if he could run the land-rover over the tentacles, he'd end up against the immovable wall of the thing's flank.

The tip of one of the tentacles suddenly appeared at the end of the hood. It coiled around the hood ornament and pulled. Bill shifted into reverse and backed up a dozen feet. The tentacles inched after him.

I'm trapped, dammit! Trapped until morning!

He pounded the steering wheel in impotent rage and undiluted frustration. He had the shards that he'd come for and he couldn't get them back to Glaeken, couldn't even set off for his return trip to Ploiesti until dawn.

More time wasted. And another night without seeing Carol. He wanted to be with her. Every moment was precious. How many did they have left?

Using the rearview mirror, he carefully backed the vehicle through the gates of the keep, then sat behind the wheel and swallowed the pressure that built in his chest as he stared out at the night. He felt like crying.

"We're back?" Nick said, smiling. "Oh, I'm so glad we're back."