"I understand," he answered, his eyes avoiding her gaze. "What existed between you and me died a long time ago. But why should Tim suffer?"

  He rushed on, blurting out the words as fast as he could speak. "I want to see my son. I need to see him. You owe me that much. He's as much mine as yours. I want to be the father he never had. I need him and he needs me."

  It suddenly no longer rang so true. The line about the open door bothered her. As did his appearance. Silently, she noted how tightly clenched together he held his hands. His whole body trembled with the effort, as if ready to explode.

  "Well," she said, temporizing. "Maybe we could work out some sort of visitation arrangement."

  "I've got a better idea," he said, his voice a little more hurried, a little more anxious. "Like I said, I've nailed down a good job. I work for an import-export line. Main office is located in Chicago. Good central location for our type of work, but we deal with firms throughout the country. We're expanding at an incredible rate."

  "Go ahead," she said, not knowing where this was leading.

  "Big business makes demands on you. I've been working real hard. You know the story—day and night, seven days a week, driving myself into the ground. No need to tell me how terrible I look. I see it every time I walk by a mirror."

  "Maybe you should get more sleep," she said, as if compelled to make some remark.

  He laughed. It wasn't the hearty sound she remembered but a high-pitched whine that broke off as quickly as it began. "You sound like a mother now. I don't need much sleep. Two, three hours a night keeps me going."

  He leaned forward, hunching his shoulders together, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Sleep," he said in a whisper barely audible, "is the next closest thing to being dead. I don't want to spend part of my life pretending to be dead. I want to live." His eyes widened as his voice grew louder. "Live."

  His hands were visibly shaking now as he continued. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get distracted. My mind wanders a bit these days. You're right, of course. I've got to get away before I collapse. That's where Tim comes in."

  "Tim?" Cold fear gripped her. Beads of sweat dotted Roger's forehead and his eyes glared wildly at her.

  "My boss is sending me on vacation. We do a lot of business in Florida. I told you we're involved in import-export, right? We've lots of contacts down south. Anyway, I leave day after tomorrow. Thought it would be the perfect chance for me and Tim to get to know each other a little better. I'd take him to Disney World. We could see all the sights, maybe spend some time at the beach. What better way to reacquaint myself with my son?"

  Janet laughed. She couldn't help it. It burst out of her like an explosion. "You want to take Timmy with you on a trip to Florida? Just like that, after ignoring him for eight years, you've suddenly decided to make amends by taking him to Disney World. Give me a break, Roger."

  "Don't laugh," he said slowly, traces of anger in his voice. "Don't you dare laugh at me."

  His hands clenched and unclenched constantly as he spoke. "I'm finally making my mark in the world. All the breaks are turning in my favor. No more two-bit crapola jobs for me. Important people are noticing my work. They even invited me to join their Lodge."

  His body shook with every word he spoke. Abruptly, he thrust out his left hand, almost punching her in the face. A heavy gold ring encircled his middle finger. Janet caught a brief glimpse of an inverted cross with a serpent twined about it. Then he pulled his fist back, as if having second thoughts about showing her the emblem.

  "Only a select few belong to this organization.They're the smartest, most powerful businessmen in the city." His voice trembled as if in awe of the group."And they want me to become a member."

  "Wonderful," she said, rising from her chair. Roger's behavior frightened her. More than a trace of madness echoed in his voice. "But I still can't let you take Tim with you. He's in school this week."

  "He can miss a few days," said Roger, also rising to his feet. "Kids always take time off for vacations. By the way," and his tone grew suspicious, "where is Tim tonight?"

  "I told you already. He's spending the night with my father."

  "No. You said nothing of the sort." Roger's features twisted in rage. "You never mentioned that old geezer. He's why you won't let Tim go with me, isn't he. The old man always hated me. Thought his daughter was too damned good for me. That's the real reason, isn't it? Isn't it!"

  Roger's voice grew wilder and wilder. Angrily, he reached out and grabbed her with clawlike hands. Thin fingers dug sharply into the skin of her shoulders, causing her to scream in shock. Despite his wasted appearance, his body blazed with maniacal strength.

  "Enough of this nice guy crap," he barked out and flung her back into the armchair. Instantly he was straddling her, his legs pressed hard against her thighs.

  Brutally, he reached down and grabbed her blouse. With a savage rip, he tore the garment down across her breasts, revealing her naked flesh.

  "Still not wearing a bra." He laughed. In seconds, he had passed from normalcy to madness. "How about a quick feel?"

  His hands grabbed her breasts and squeezed hard. Jagged flashes of pain coursed through her body. Screaming, she lashed out with both hands, trying to push him away.

  Snarling like a mad dog, he grabbed both her hands with one of his. He squeezed hard, laughing as the bones of her wrists grated against each other. Sneering in her face, he reached down with his other hand for the waistband of her skirt. She could feel the hardness of his erection pressing against her through the coarse material of his jeans. Hurting her like this excited him.

  Summoning all of her remaining strength, Janet jerked her knees up hard. But Roger was too high up on her body for the thrust to be very effective. He grunted in shock but held on tight.

  "Bitch!" he shouted and slapped her hard in the face. The taste of blood filled her mouth.

  "You'll beg for me to do it by the time I'm finished with you," he said, and slapped her again. And then again.

  Janet could feel her grip of consciousness slipping. Everything grew black. Panic-stricken, she was dimly aware of Roger struggling to pull off her skirt. He's going to kill me after he's finished, the thought flashed through her head. The crazy bastard is going to kill me.

  Then, miraculously, his weight was no longer on her body. As if from another world, she heard furniture crash on the other side of the room. Trying to gather a deep breath into her lungs, she forced open her eyes.

  Her ex-husband lay sprawled against the TV, moaning softly, barely conscious. Standing close by him was Bruno, face red with anger, his huge hands clenched in massive fists.

  Glancing around, the chauffeur saw her struggling to rise and rushed over. Still gasping for air, Janet tried pulling the remnants of her clothing over her body.

  "After so long, I started to worry, Miss Janet. Even with the light on, it seemed like you were taking an awfully long time. I got more and more worried. So I finally decided to investigate. Are you okay, miss?"

  "The cavalry arrived just in the nick of time," whispered Janet, still feeling a bit groggy. Her face hurt like hell. She didn't even want to think what it looked like.

  "He just went nuts all of a sudden," she said, trying to explain to herself as much as Bruno. "One minute, we were talking. The next, he was trying to rape me."

  "It's the dope, Miss Janet," said Bruno, trying to avert his eyes from her near naked body. "That stuff drives them out of their mind. Once it takes control, they don't know when to stop. They lose all sense of what they're doing. He would have killed you without even realizing it."

  "Bruno!" Janet screamed, catching a sudden motion out of the corner of her eye.

  The big chauffeur whirled just as Roger swung a heavy brass table decoration at his head. The blow caught Bruno on the shoulder instead. He crashed to the floor, but not badly injured as his attacker intended.

  Roger made the most of a few seconds. He dashed for the front door. Without a word, he disappeared into the darkness of the night.

  Groaning, Bruno rose to his feet. "He's a bad one, Miss Janet. A real bad one."

  Mutely, Janet nodded in agreement. And she thought, he wanted her son.

  10

  The smell of blood filled Papa Benjamin's dreams. A mystic circle surrounded him and one other, while outside howled a bit of the dark world.

  With a shudder that shook his whole body, Papa Benjamin opened his eyes and looked around his small bedroom. The clock on the nightstand said five-fifteen. Drawing in a deep breath, he forced himself to sit up in bed. No more sleep this morning. Not after a nightmare like that.

  His old bones creaked and groaned in protest as he swung his legs off the mattress and onto the threadbare carpeting. Dressed only in a pair of white undershorts, he wobbled across the room to the bathroom. It mattered little that it was two hours before he normally started his day. For nearly thirty years, his routine never varied. He saw no reason to change it just because of a vision from the voodoo Mysteres.

  After the bathroom, he wandered into the kitchen. A bowl of raisin bran and milk, topped with a banana, served as his breakfast. He ate mechanically, hardly tasting the food. Normally he listened to the morning news on the portable TV, perched on the kitchen counter. Today he decided to leave the set off. He wanted his mind clear of distractions for what was to come.

  He returned to his bedroom to change. From the bottom drawer of his dresser he pulled out a pair of white cotton pants, a white cotton shirt, and matching white socks and shoes. All were spotlessly clean and pressed, though he had not worn the outfit in more than ten years. Almost reverently, he dressed, carefully pulling on his finest clothes. With a shake of his head, he remembered his wonderful straw hat, gone more than three decades. In those bygone days, it gave him a look of stern dignity that few houn'gans in Haiti could match.

  Standing, Papa Benjamin looked at himself in the full-length mirror hidden behind the door of his bedroom. Even without a hat, he decided with a small flicker of a smile, he cut an impressive figure for a man born nearly eighty years ago.

  Papa Benjamin stood five foot six inches tall and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds. His skin was the color of dark chocolate and appeared even darker against the pure white of his outfit. He was entirely bald, the result of a childhood illness. Not a trace of beard or mustache graced his slender, dignified countenance.

  High cheekbones, with a sharp nose and thin lips, gave his face a quiet dignity emphasized by his great age. All of his features combined to draw attention to his dark brown eyes—eyes that seemed to reflect a depth and wisdom beyond mortal man.

  Satisfied with his appearance, Papa Benjamin decided it was time to go downstairs to his oum'phor. Swiftly, he descended the steps from his apartment to the temple below. He often joked with the members of his society that the exercise going up and down the long flight of stairs kept him fit. He secretly half-believed the tale himself.

  He had bought this building thirty years ago, soon after his escape from Haiti. An abandoned warehouse, he had acquired it for a price little more than back taxes. Located in one of the worst slums in Chicago's South Side, the huge building perfectly suited his purpose. With the help of several other houn'gans in the midwest, he had converted the old storage barn into an oum'phor on the first floor and living quarters for himself on the second.

  In the three decades since his arrival, other buildings in the neighborhood had been bought and sold many times. Vandalism and gang warfare had decimated much of the surrounding area. Few landlords were willing to take a chance in such locations. Only Papa Benjamin's temple had remained undisturbed and untouched through the years. To him, the oum'phor stood as a living symbol of the power of the voodoo Mysteres. He refused to consider that its survival also owed a great deal to the continual presence of one of the most feared voodoo doctors alive.

  At this hour, the temple was dark and deserted. No services were scheduled for today. He suspected that there would be no celebrations for several days. His dreams of blood foretold of terrible things in the hours ahead. As houn'gan of this society, he made all the rules, set all the dates of worship. Until this trouble passed, there would be no gatherings.

  Papa Benjamin needed no light to make his way across the peristyle, the large room where most of the ceremonies took place. He had designed the entire first floor and knew every inch of it by heart. By necessity, he had taken liberties with the layout of the voodoo temple. The weather in Haiti was a great deal different than Chicago. Instead of a compound consisting of several partly enclosed buildings, one large room served as his peristyle, while an old office in the rear functioned as the Holy of Holies.

  Still, tradition reigned when possible. A thin layer of earth covered the wood floor. A model of a small ship hung from one of the beams of the ceiling—the ritual symbol of Erzulie, the most important goddess of voodoo. A color portrait of President Bush was thumb-tacked to the back wall of the room. Standing next to the picture was an American flag.

  At the exact center of the peristyle stood the center post, the poteau-mitan. The square-cut post, set in a circular pedestal of masonry known as the socle, stretched from floor to ceiling. It was here that all voodoo ceremonies took place. According to tradition, the top of the post touched the sky, while the bottom was anchored in the center of hell.

  From base to top, the pole was covered with a complex spiral design representing the two serpent gods of voodoo—Danballah Wedo and Aida Wedo. The beam itself represented the chief god of voodoo—Legba Ati-Bon, the Wood of Justice.

  On the far side of the room was the door to the office that functioned as the actual oum'phor, the Holy of Holies. It was there that Papa Benjamin conversed in private with the Great Invisibles. Though basically a trusting man, he kept the only key to the chamber on a gold chain around his neck. Trust extended only so far. Unlocking the door, Papa Benjamin entered the small room and turned on the overhead light.

  As always, a flicker of emotion passed through his body as he looked about the room. This room was the center of his life. Here, he communed with the gods of voodoo. Though the Mysteres were often raised during ceremonies in the peristyle, they normally only spoke with Papa Benjamin when he was alone in the oum'phor, seeking instruction or wisdom.

  Unlike most religions, a voodoo priest served as much more than a mere religious leader. Not only did he direct his followers in worship, but he also functioned as spiritual adviser, doctor, magician, and sometimes prophet. He was the center of the voodoo community.

  Every voodoo society worked independent of all others. No higher authority governed individual houn'gans. Each priest served the gods directly. His word was law.

  Papa Benjamin took his responsibilities quite seriously. For more than sixty years, he had served the Mysteres. They were not the most important thing in his life. They were his life.

  Dominating the square cubicle was a rectangular platform, the height of a man's chest, known as the pe. It was here, leaning on the pe that he spoke with the gods. Resting on the platform were Papa Benjamin's most powerful voodoo charms.

  Instinctively, he picked up his asson, the calabash rattle that was the symbol of his office. For six decades that asson had summoned the Mysteres from the astral planes of the Invisibles. It vibrated with all the mystical powers of voodoo. Just holding it filled him with the glory of his beliefs.

  "The bones" whispered a voice from within one of the covered jars, the govis, that lined the altar. "Take the bones, houn'gan."

  Shocked, Papa Benjamin took a small leather bag from the rear of the pe. He recognized the voice of Ogou Fer, the god of logic and wisdom. Normally the Mysteres spoke to him only when summoned by the secret words and rituals. For them to bridge the gap from the world of the spirit on their own indicated vast and terrible powers at work.

  Visions of blood from the night before filled his thoughts and set his body shaking. Drawing in a deep breath, Papa Benjamin gathered his things together, shut the light and departed the chamber. Carefully he locked the door and hung the key around his neck.

  No longer feeling quite so confident in the dark, Papa Benjamin hurried over to the light switches on the outer wall of the peristyle. With the touch of his hand, light flooded the meeting room. The overhead clock, another touch of reality dictated by the modern world, read seven-ten.

  Gently rattling the leather bag in his hand, Papa Benjamin slowly made his way back to the center post of the peristyle. He suspected it would be hours before his visitors arrived. The scum of the night rarely stirred in the early brightness of the morning.

  11

  When they finally came, they arrived in spectacular style. Loud fists pounded on the doors of the temple. The room shook from the force of the blows.

  Papa Benjamin calmly gathered together the bones spread out on the socle and returned them to the leather bag. He carefully rested the small sack next to his asson on the masonry.

  "Only fools knock at the doors of a church," he called, in a voice surprisingly strong for one so old. "All are welcome here. Even the Children of Danballah."

  There were four of them, as he knew there would be. First came the bodyguards. Two huge black men, each well over six feet tall, they pushed open the doors cautiously, as if expecting a trap. They could have been twins, with their shaven heads and wraparound metallic sunglasses. Their open-weave muscle T-shirts proudly displayed every inch of their massive chests and arms. Anger surged through Papa Benjamin's mind as he stared at their arrogant expressions.

  Thirty years ago, in Haiti, two similar men killed his son during an argument over a delinquent tax bill. The pair belonged to the Tonton Macoute, the dreaded secret police of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the island's absolute ruler. Only afterward had the murderers learned the identity of their victim. By then it was too late. Even they were not safe from the wrath of the most powerful houn'gan in all of Haiti.

  The power of the Great Serpent claimed each of them. Friends found the first man dead in bed, his face a mask of terrible agony, his body swollen to twice its size. "Death by snakebite," the doctors ruled, even though no snake was ever found and it would have taken the poison of a dozen vipers to cause such a reaction.