And then there were two explosions that threatened to fracture St. Vincent’s head. He leapt backward, stumbling. When he had righted himself he saw his mother holding the largest handgun he had ever seen, and in his time he’d seen plenty. Preach Desmortiers and the young boy were both sprawled on the floor.

“Now d’you understand why I brought my son?” Ruth said.

Outside the shack, striding along behind his mother, St. Vincent saw a bicycle, probably the kid’s. As he took it, he glanced at what looked like a license plate, except it read: CTHULHU IS COMING.

Ruth did not look back, but her son did. A scream stifled in his throat as he saw an enormous crow fly out of the open door, and behind it, the shadow of the creature his mother was certain she had killed.

Preach Desmortiers’s lips curved into a smile, and then he winked at Ruth’s son.

St. Vincent, having absently sucked on his cigarette until it was finished, was jolted from the past by the sound of his mobile. This had better be Dickerson, he thought. It was a text, not a call. Opening the text, he discovered a still frame from a CCTV camera. Underneath the photo was the time and date stamp, along with the log line: “JIB.”

St. Vincent knew what that stood for: Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. He squinted at the photo, used a hand gesture to zoom in, just to make sure. Dickerson had come through. Once again, he glanced up at the lights from Sydny’s apartment. The uneasy truce is over, he thought. This is war.

Chapter 30

30

“I can’t see,” Julie said.

“That’s the point.” Sydny’s voice seemed to float in the air in front of her. “You’re here to feel.”

Julie, sitting on the chair in Sydny’s blacked-out bedroom, felt her thighs tremble. The dampness seeping out onto the leather was warm as blood. Squirming a little made the leather slick as her latex hood.

“Now come,” Sydny said, “slide off the chair … No, don’t try to stand. Kneel. Kneel with your legs spread.”

“I don’t like this,” Julie said. Her body was stiff and unyielding with incipient terror.

“Of course you don’t like it. You’re still clinging to your past, to the things you think shaped you, without any idea that you can free yourself, shed your past like a snake sheds its old skin.”

She could sense Sydny standing over her, heat radiated from her like a sun.

“I seem to have heard that argument before,” Julie said.

“Don’t be confused. This isn’t some kind of break-you-down-to-build-you-back-up bullshit. That’s the province of cult leaders. That’s brainwashing, pure and simple.”