Maybe the bullet would have exited through the back of the demon’s throat, leaving him injured but enraged, were it not for the skin that refused to break. As it was, the bullet must have ricocheted around in the skull and turned the demon’s brain to grey-matter stew, because he collapsed immediately, one eye dripping from its socket.

Goulder straightened up, got his bearings, and chuckled. He turned and Kelly drove her elbow into his jaw. He staggered and Kelly dived for the gun, but he shoved her away. She fell back and heard him shriek and there was a crash and now she could hear Two, growling ferociously. She looked to see the dog’s jaws clamped around the killer’s wrist.

Ronnie grabbed the fallen gun and Warrick called off Two. Immediately, Goulder reared up and immediately Ronnie put him down again.

“You should really have tied our hands behind our backs,” Ronnie told him.

Goulder looked up, his wrist mangled and blood pumping from his nose, and managed a helpless shrug. “You just … you just didn’t look that dangerous.”

“Yeah, well,” Ronnie said, “appearances can be deceiving,” and he clubbed Goulder into unconsciousness.

When he was done, and as he was paying the others the money he’d lost from a month-old bet, Two came over, sniffed Goulder’s head, and then humped it to satisfaction.

Chapter 53

SOMEWHERE IN DESOLATION HILL there was an explosion. It was followed by hollers and cheers and howls, lauding the destruction, revelling in it. Somewhere else a car crashed. Alarms went off. Gunshots rang out as cops fought to keep the murders to a minimum. Madness seeped through the night like a fog, wrapping its tendrils around everything and everyone. On one end of Main Street, beyond the square, there was a riot. On the other end, Amber stood facing her parents.

“This the part where you try to kill me again?” she asked.

Betty shared a sharp-toothed smile with her husband. “Are you liking this new attitude? I have to confess, I am.”

“This kind of assertiveness would certainly have made for more dynamic family dinners,” Bill said. “Instead, we had to sit there with a bored, uninterested lump who barely looked up from her phone.”

“Always on those messageboards.”

“Those forums.”

“With her online friends.”

“Well,” said Amber, “at least I wasn’t killing my own kids. What were their names, by the way? My brother and sister?”

“We called her Carolyn,” said Betty. “We called him James.”

“What were they like?”

“He was … unhappy,” said Betty. “We didn’t treat him particularly well. By the time Carolyn arrived, though, we had all agreed that the best way to approach what we were doing was to treat all of you children like real, actual people. We reasoned that you would be easier to handle if you were raised under the illusion of happiness.”