A moment later she broke away from him, carefully adjusting the curtains across the window. "Don't want the whole ville to see us, do we, John?"

"Guess not," he replied hoarsely.

Her hand still rested on his shoulder, fingers teasing at the short hairs curling onto his neck. She was smiling into his eyes. "I really wouldn't want you thinking I did this all the time, John," she whispered.

"Me neither."

"Truth is, I haven't actually done this, anything like this, for a very long time."

"Me neither, Carla."

"Would you like to... you know, John?"

J.B. kissed her on the mouth. "Yeah, Carla. I would."

Doc had been dozing, fully clothed, his battered knee boots standing crookedly by the side of the bed. He'd been dreaming, but he couldn't remember what about. There had been a horse and a river, flowing fast and clean over white stones. He thought that his long-dead wife, Emily, had been in the dream, but he couldn't be certain. All he knew was that he'd been crying in his sleep.

He couldn't be certain, either, what it was that had woken him. A door closing or a shutter banging loose?

"What was it, Lori?" he whispered into the darkness of the room. Ruby Rainer had given them two single beds, pushed side by side.

There was no answer. He sat up, grunting at stiffness in the small of his back. Peering across, he saw that the other bed was empty.

"Lori?" Where in thunderation had the girl gone off to?

With a weary groan Doc swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tugged on his boots. He glanced at the small silver chron on his left wrist and saw that it was just past ten o'clock. Through the window he could see that the main street of the ville was quiet and deserted.

Not quite deserted.

A tall figure was striding along on the far side of the road, in a general direction of the Motes' temple. The ghostly illumination of the streetlights danced off the long blond hair. In his imagination Doc could almost hear the tinkling sound of Lori's spurs.

Doc was about to leave the room when an afterthought struck him. He went back and buckled on the heavy Le Mat pistol and picked up his swordstick. He made his way quietly down the stairs, through the sleeping building and out onto the porch that ran the length of the frontage. An elderly swing-seat creaked as the night wind moved it gently to and fro. Doc stood a moment, wrinkling his nostrils at the pungent odor of gasoline that permeated the ville.

Lori had vanished and the old man set off after her, keeping to the shadows. Doc found it difficult to maintain a grip on his memory and his sanity. Walking through the slumbering ville brought back a tumbling flood of images from his long-gone past. Most of the buildings on that end of Main Street dated from the late 1890s, the period during which he had last seen his wife and his two young children. Before the white-coated, faceless men and women of Project Cerberus had trawled him into the future.

With a great effort of will he succeeded in suppressing the memories, concentrating instead on trying to work out where Lori would have gone. Since she knew nobody in Snakefish, it seemed logical that she had walked out into the night.

But why?

Doc very nearly went on by the temple, heading into the wilderness of desert beyond. But a flicker of pale light caught his eye, somewhere around the back of the building — a narrow vertical strip of gold, as though a door had been left open.

Looking around him cautiously, praying that his knee joints wouldn't creak, Doc made his way around the path at the side. Very slowly and carefully he eased his way inside, catching the odd smell of stale sweat and makeup, which dredged up memories of the vaudeville theaters of New York, back when... Once again a black curtain descended, cutting off the trickling memories.

He could hear voices talking quietly and a sudden giggle.

"Lori," he said.

On an impulse he drew the Le Mat from its ornate Mexican holster, thumbing back the hammer on the antique piece as he walked past a table and some shelves. The voices came louder. Another muffled, sniggering laugh made him grip the butt of the pistol more tightly.

Doc could see them now, together near the front row of pews. There was a sailing moon outside, and it cast enough light in through the windows of the reptilian temple for the old man to be able to see them quite clearly.

"I am most dreadfully sorry to interrupt," he called, marveling inwardly at how calm he'd kept his voice. "But I don't think Lori should be out this late on her own."

"What the skin-shedding fuck is that?" The male voice was high and reedy. His blond curls glinted in the moonlight. Doc could see a black Stetson near the altar.

"It's Doc Tanner. And you are Joshua Mote. Do your parents know that you profane the tabernacle with your lusts?"

Lori broke away, nervously smoothing down the front of her coveralls. "Hi, Doc," she greeted. "Josh said to come see this place at night and I thought it be no harms."

"I should kill you! You interfering old fuck-pig!" Joshua Mote shouted, facing Doc across the aisle.

"If you attempt to draw out whatever blaster you have concealed about your person, I shall pull this trigger and blow a hole in you big enough to drive a horse and buggy through."

Mote let his hands drop to his side. "Sure. This time you get your way, Doc. But there's things happening in this ville soon and you'll be on the wrong scaling side of 'em."

"Very possibly. Come on, Lori, my dear. Time to go home."

The girl didn't argue at all. She took Doc's arm and walked quietly with him back to their hotel. Neither said a word.

Just after sunup everyone was awakened by the throbbing roar of the powerful engines of the two-wheel wags. All eight of the Last Heroes rode past in formation, heading down Main Street toward the Motes' temple. Zombie, at the head, shouted something to Ruby Rainer, who was busily sweeping dust off the front porch, but Ryan couldn't hear what was said.

"Going down to find out," he said tersely to Krysty, pulling on his pants and knotting the laces of his combat boots.

The landlady was in the lobby, adjusting a scarf around her throat. She turned as she heard Ryan's feet on the stairs.

"Oh, Mr. Cawdor!" she exclaimed. "Such dreadful, dreadful news!"

Ryan felt the short hairs at the nape prickle in anticipation. Keeping his voice calm, he asked, "What? What's the news?"

Chapter Twenty-Four

"Slaughtered, my friends. That very deity that has watched over the fortunes of this ville for so many, many years! Butchered out there among the sagebrush and the prickly cactus. Food only for the rending beaks of the hawk and the buzzard. Oh, now shall we share our lamentations for poor, poor Azrael Twelve."

Norman Mote was well into his harangue. As he lifted his arms to exhort the packed church to greater heights of emotion, he revealed great patches of dark perspiration. His silver-gray hair was matted and disheveled. Marianne sat next to him, hands folded in her lap. There was a silver ring on the little finger of her right hand, designed like a cobra, coiled and hooded and ready to strike. While her husband was ranting at the good folk of Snakefish, Marianne nodded her agreement and rolled the ring around with the fingers of her other hand.

"Our brothers, the Angels, were out before dawn, at my orders, to search for Azrael. I knew that something was grievously wrong. And I was right, brothers and sisters! Oh, was I ever right!"

There was a muffled chorus of "Amens" from the benches.

Ryan sat cramped in next to Krysty. Then came Jak, J.B., Lori and Doc. Rick had found himself squeezed out, into the row behind. The news of the discovery of the giant mutie rattler hadn't been much of a shock. It had been bound to happen quite soon. The best of it was that Zombie had told everyone that the eternal wind had wiped away any tracks from near the carcass.