They’re going home, Jake thought, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong that he felt it would crush him. Going to eat supper and do homework and argue over which TV shows to watch and then go to bed. Henry may be a bullying shit, but they’ve got a life, those two, one that makes sense... and they’re going back to it. I wonder if they have any idea of how lucky they are. Eddie might, I suppose.

Jake turned, adjusted the straps of his pack, and crossed Rhinehold Street.

25

SUSANNAH SENSED MOVEMENT IN the empty grassland beyond the circle of standing stones: a sighing, whispering rush.

“Something comin,” she said tautly. “Comin fast.”

“Be careful,” Eddie said, “but keep it off me. You understand? Keep it off me.”

“I hear you, Eddie. You just do your own thing.”

Eddie nodded. He knelt in the center of the ring, holding the sharpened stick out in front of him as if assessing its point. Then he lowered it and drew a dark straight line in the dirt. “Roland, watch out for her...”

“I will if I can, Eddie.”

“... but keep it off me. Jake’s coming. Crazy little mother’s really coming.”

Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones.

“Get ready,” Roland said. “It’ll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush it.”

Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir’s basket. Her hands, rolled into hard brown fists, were held at the sides of her face. Her eyes blazed. “I’m ready,” she said and then shouted: “Come on, big boy! You come on right now! Run like it’s yo birfday!”

The rain began to fall harder as the demon which lived here re-entered its circle in a booming rush. Susannah had just time to sense thick and merciless masculinity—it came to her as an eyewatering smell of gin and juniper—and then it shot toward the center of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached for it, not with her arms or her mind but with all the female force which lived at the core of her: Hey, big boy! Where you goan? D’pussy be ovah heah!

It whirled. She felt its surprise... and then its raw hunger, as full and urgent as a pulsing artery. It leaped upon her like a rapist springing from the mouth of an alley.

Susannah howled and rocked backward, cords standing out on her neck. The dress she wore first flattened against her breasts and belly, and then began to tear itself to shreds. She could hear a pointless, directionless panting, as if the air itself had decided to rut with her.

“Suze!” Eddie shouted, and began to get to his feet.

“No!” she screamed back. “Do it! I got this sumbitch right where... right where I want him! Go on, Eddie! Bring the kid! Bring—” Coldness battered at the tender flesh between her legs. She grunted, fell backward.. then supported herself with one hand and thrust defiantly forward and upward. “Bring him through!”