Del turned to Tommy Whitten, who sat on the edge of the podium platform. His sallow flesh all but glowed in the stark light of the overhead lamps. Behind him was “Fat Larry” Hovi, and Doug Baugh was there as well, cigarette grafted to his lip as always. They were dressed the same as when Del last saw them. Only their throats differed. Whitten had wrapped electrical tape around his neck, while Baugh’s had been stitched shut with a shoestring. Hovi had simply stuffed the ragged tear with a piece of black plastic from a garbage bag. They crowded around while Tommy looked at one of the pastor’s magazines with a smirking, gap-toothed grin, tsk-tsking as he flipped the pages. “Check this bitch,” he said to them, then turned it over so Del could inspect the spread-eagled female. Then he laughed and spit a stream of Knutson’s blood through his teeth.

“You can’t be here,” Del tried to sound firm. “This is a church. Holy ground.”

“Holy ground,” Fat Larry repeated, though in a dead teenager’s mocking tone. He tore a picture of a naked girl from a magazine and dangled it in the air and made it dance and gave it a falsetto voice. “Beat me, whip me, tie me up. It’s okay, we’re on hallowed ground.” He laughed. “You’ve gotta be kidding. You think beating the bishop’s a sacred ritual or something? Look at that fucker. It wasn’t holy to him. Why should it be to us?”

Del thought about making a run for the door but his eyes betrayed him. Before he could even convince himself to move, Doug Baugh jumped ahead of him into the central aisle. His teeth were showing now, a horrific set that made his jaws seem double-jointed. “It’s funny,” Tommy Whitten said, his own teeth bared and lips trembling. “No matter how much I take, person after person, it’s never enough. You’d think you’d get full after a while, wouldn’t you? But I don’t. I just want more. Always more.”

Del backed over to the podium and put the lectern between them. But Tommy growled, knocked it aside, and the three of them came forward, forcing him back even further. He turned, staggered into the pedestal behind the pulpit, heard the base crack under his weight, and the whole thing came loose in his hands. The solid wooden cross, fully four feet tall and three feet wide at the crossbar, was heavy and unwieldy but he still lifted it and held it out against his enemies.

Their response was like Danner’s. They giggled.

“You’ve got to have faith for that to work, Mr. Vincent!” Tommy quoted dramatically. “Didn’t you see Fright Night on HBO last week? Oh, I forgot. You hilljacks don’t have cable. Too bad. Then you would’ve known. You gotta believe, you little dick.”

“I believe.”