Very late at night the following week, a phone call came to the Thorn residence from New York. The call was from a priest; he asked Richard to come right away, that Dr Charles Warren was in very bad shape, and that he had been asking repeatedly for Richard Thorn.

In a matter of minutes, Richard threw some things into a suitcase. Ann tried to convince him to stay at least until the morning, but he wouldn't hear of it. He had to go at once.

'I don't want to go,' he shouted at Ann, 'I have to!'

Ann sat up in bed and reached for a cigarette. Her hands were shaking. 'Why can't you call back and talk to Charles over the phone?' she asked. 'Why do you have to go all the way to New York? It isn't as though Charles Warren has been such a good friend to this family recently.’

‘They said he's in grave trouble and he needs me,' interrupted Thorn, looking around the room to see if he had forgotten anything.

'We need you, too,' said Ann quietly.

Richard turned and looked at her. 'I'll be back as soon as possible.' He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then moved toward the door.

'What will I tell Damien in the morning?' she asked.

Richard hesitated in the doorway. He hadn't thought of that. ‘Tell him,' he said, thinking fast, 'tell him I had to go help Charles with urgent customs problems in New York. Tell him anything. Just don't tell him the truth!' And he hurried from the room, closing the door softly behind him.

And as he tiptoed down the stairs to join the waiting Murray who stood bleary-eyed by the idling limousine, Thorn failed to notice the door to Damien's bedroom opening slightly and the narrowing, yellow cat-like eyes that penetrated the darkness behind him.

***

As soon as Richard had settled in his seat on the plane, and the jet had taken off from Meigs airport, he switched on the overhead light and pulled Bugenhagen's letter out of his carry-on suitcase. There was so much he had to think about, so much to absorb, and he was beginning to feel that there wasn't much time. He checked his watch. Four thirty A.M. He would be in New York by seven thirty or eight at the latest, their time. Just as the city was waking up.

Thorn looked back at the pages in front of him and began to read for the fourth or fifth time:

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

Thorn shuddered. There had been so many deaths in the past few months—too many to be purely coincidential. The pieces were at last beginning to fall into place.