The dark was all around them now. The supermarket was gone, and most of the car park. Only a circle of moonlight remained, stabbing down like a spotlight, picking them out. No stars shone in that dark night, no distinction left between earth and sky. Just the three of them left, the only living things in the night, huddling together for comfort and warmth, adrift in an endless dark sea. And it was cold, so cold . . .

“Dark and cold,” said JC, shuddering despite himself. “The dark before the sun rises, and the cold of the winter that never ends. It’s threatening us, demanding our worship.”

Suddenly, it was there with them. A vast, endless Presence hammering on the night, manifest but not material, enforcing its awful Presence on the world through an act of sheer malicious will. The monster in the dark that all children know and fear because they are so much closer to the primitive. An ancient Presence, powerful and pitiless, demanding worship and sacrifice, blood and horror. Out of the Past, out of Time, come to drag Humanity down to its own level again.

Happy fell to his knees, both hands pressed to his head. He was crying raggedly, his face distorted by strange passions as he fought to maintain his psychic shields and keep out the primordial demands beating against his thoughts. Melody stood close by him, swinging her machine-pistol back and forth, desperate for something definite she could fight. And JC . . . stood thoughtfully, frowning a little, as though considering some difficult but distasteful problem.

“It wants a sacrifice!” Happy cried out miserably. “A human sacrifice!”

“No,” said JC. “We don’t do that any more.”

“If we don’t give it what it wants, it’ll take us!” said Happy. “And after us, it’ll move on to the city!”

“Well,” said JC, his voice carefully calm and composed, “we can’t have that, can we? Consider the haunting, my friends; every manifestation has its heart, its focus, its specific link to Present Time. And in this case . . . that focus, that last link in the chain of events, has to be the poor little old lady who was killed during the opening ceremony. Find her for me, Happy.”

“Are you crazy?” Happy glared at him through teary eyes. “I don’t dare drop my shields! It’ll eat me alive, I can’t . . .”

JC looked at him, and Happy’s babbling cut off immediately. JC could do that. One moment he was talking quite calmly and reasonably, and the next he was looking at you with eyes dark as the night and twice as cold. JC tried hard to be a good man, but you only had to look into his eyes at moments like that to know he had the potential to be something else entirely. Happy swallowed hard, sniffed back his tears, and concentrated.