Then the stage beneath his feet exploded. He scarcely had time to look down when sharp metal blades took his legs at the knees. Excruciating pain raced through his body, setting him on fire. He looked down into three slanted yellow eyes and the thought that flashed into his mind was, how ironic that on the eve of his greatest triumph and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, it was not an angel come to greet him but rather the devil himself.

He screamed and the creature opened its jaws, allowing more of his body to fall into its gaping mouth. It bit down again and took Pastor Keith to his ribcage, deflating his lungs and cutting off his air. He moved his mouth to scream again but sprayed the stage with blood instead.

It opened its jaws once again, taking all but his head and arms, which it lifted into the air as it rose from its hiding place. His head fell, bounced off a child, and rolled down the center aisle to the fourth row.

Terrified, the children scattered. The ones nearest the edge of the stage jumped, screaming for their parents. Those close to Pastor Keith were right behind them, running and jumping into the darkness, landing on the others, breaking bones.

The congregation of five hundred plus erupted into a mob of terrified screaming banshees, racing in all directions. The elderly and weak were shoved to the ground and trampled as hundreds of people tried to escape or rescue their children.

Everyone in the back of the tent soon discovered there was no exit at their end, so the cry went out to run to the front and the crowd surged forward, pushing and shoving everything and everyone in its way.

The only lights, the candles, were extinguished in the chaos and the tent was thrown into complete darkness.

("Evil One, what do you see?") ("Darkness. We are patient.") Lawless's voice was deep and hollow when he spoke for the creature.

Then, ("Now it is time to feed, for the prey have extinguished their bright lights. We will tear them to pieces.") Baskel watched Lawless's face contort and his mouth open and close, snapping shut with great force. Without thinking, he pushed back into the couch; his skin crawled and the room closed in around him.

("Evil One, what do you see?") ("I see prey. They run from my jaws but it is dark and they cannot see. They are pathetic. The strong knock the weak down and tread upon them. They scream and scatter like insects. They can do nothing to us. We will feed on as many as we wish.") Lawless made a sound in his throat, unlike anything Baskel had heard before; his bones vibrated.

("What are you doing, Evil One?") ("I am calling the young ones to the feast.") ("Yes, call the young ones. They must feast, too, Evil One. They need nourishment to grow and evolve.") Baskel couldn't believe it; why would she encourage the creature to call the other monsters when it meant more of the people trapped in the tent would die?

("Is it not better for a few to die than all?") Jensen's voice said in his mind.

("Easy for us to say, sitting here miles away from their sharp teeth.") he thought back, without realizing what he was doing.

("You have learned well, Detective. You will be a good Advocate.") Howard panicked when the lights went out.

He froze, waiting for the cries of terror and pain. When nothing happened, he peered into the tent and saw that not all the lights had gone out; a small spotlight remained lit, shining down on the man he recognized as the pastor. He was kneeling on the stage in the middle of twenty or thirty children.

Howard stepped into the tent and looked for someone, anyone, with authority. The light from the small spotlight didn't illuminate more than the first three or four rows of chairs, meaning most of the tent was deadly dark. The people sitting closest to the stage were in a trance, staring at the stage. The place was quiet as a tomb.

The woman he'd spoken to earlier stood inside the entrance. She was also in a trance, staring at the stage like everyone else. "Hey," he whispered, touching her shoulder.

"Shh." She pointed at the stage.

Howard turned and watched as several adults walked onto the stage, lighting candles they handed to the children. He immediately thought: fire. The kids are going to set each other and the tent on fire. But they didn't. They were in the same trance the adults were in.

He turned back to the woman and whispered, "We need to evacuate the tent."

When she didn't respond, he stepped closer and said, three inches from her ear, "We've got to get everyone out of here, now!"

She gave him a dirty look and the spotlight over the stage went out.

This is bad. Very bad.

"Turn those lights back on!" he whispered to the woman. She ignored him, transfixed.

On the stage, the children's faces glowed like saints. The congregation "ooh'ed" and "ah'ed." More candles lit up near the tent walls.

"You've got to turn the lights back on, now!" he whispered again to the woman, who continued to ignore him.

His heart was pounding and he fought the urge to run, to clear out, leave the fools in the dark tent to face their fate alone.

The pastor stood and said something about "little ones" and Howard looked at the children again. They weren't here by choice, not at this late hour on a Saturday. He would stay, if only for them.

He turned back to the woman, intent on really getting her attention, when something exploded on the stage. Icy fingers squeezed his heart.

Howard saw the pastor sink into the stage, a look of shock and surprise plastered across his face. He ran to the stage, confused: why was the guy shrinking? Had the stage broken under the weight of all the people, was that all it was? His heart leapt at the idea.

He skidded to a stop as the monster appeared, holding the pastor's head and arms in its jaws. The children scattered, trying to get away from the monster that was eating the pastor. Their candles went out in twos and threes.

Pandemonium broke out. People started screaming, some the names of their children, others in pure panic. Howard was knocked to the ground by people rushing the stage. He jumped up, pulled out his baton and used it to push people away.

The last of the candles went out, and, in the complete and utter darkness, Howard thought he could feel the monster roar.

The adult creature paused to absorb the prey's rich emotions.

It made a vibration and called the young ones; they slithered out of their hiding place and began feeding, slashing and cutting with their metal teeth.

Prey began leaving the structure through an opening. It made a vibration and one of the young moved to block the opening, biting the legs off a prey.

It checked on the other young ones and was satisfied they were feeding well on their own, then jumped off the structure and lashed out at a prey, cutting off an arm.

As it bit down over the top of the prey's body, something happened in its head that stopped it. This ... sensation ... was new, and it was not pleasant.

It shook its head, but the sensation grew stronger.

Biting through the prey, it found it could not swallow and so spat the flesh out. It shook its head again and blinked its eyes, and its vision faded.

It went blind.

It lost consciousness and fell to the ground.

The Assassin went deep into the creature's brain and performed the second part of his great gift: he inserted new instructions into its programming that allowed him to make suggestions the creature would think were its own. Then he planted a lie.

The creature lost consciousness while the new program started itself.

("It is done.") ("Good. Tell me when the Evil One awakens.") A few moments later, ("It is awake.") The Facilitator knew what to do.

("Evil One. Look, the young ones are taking too much of the prey for themselves. Perhaps they will feast on all the prey and leave none for you.") The Assassin's face contorted and he said, in his deep voice, ("The young ones must grow and mature so we can disperse. They must have nourishment so they feast on the prey's flesh.") ("But Evil One, must they take all the prey? Will you not go hungry?") The Facilitator knew that aside from light the Evil Species feared only one thing: starvation. She had been taught how to take advantage of this great fear.

("Look, Evil One! They are taking your prey. You will starve! Did you not hunt these prey? Should they not be yours as well?") ("There is enough.") ("There is not enough, Evil One! The young ones are taking your prey. You must stop them, stop them from taking your prey! There is so little left already, so few prey.") ("The young ones must not feast on my prey.") ("That is right, Evil One. How dare the young ones take all the prey. Were you not the first of your kind on this planet? The young ones should not feed until you have feasted. They do not care about your hunger.") ("The young ones...") ("You must stop the young ones from eating all the prey. If you don't, you will starve! Kill the young ones, Evil One. Kill them before they kill you!") ("The young ones must not devour all the prey!") ("You are wise, Evil One. These spawn are bad, they do not understand the way of your kind. You must kill them Evil One and have another brood. Those spawn will learn their place, they will learn they cannot feast on your prey. Kill them, Evil One. Kill the bad spawn. Kill them now!") Baskel watched Lawless's face twist and darken. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees and he shivered.

With the complete darkness came a tenfold increase in the crowd's panic and terror. Men and women screamed, louder than before, and Howard could pick out the sounds of fists hitting bodies, followed by more screaming. He wanted to cover his ears before the noise drove him mad.

The mob was disoriented; only a few made it through the exit. They struggled to breathe and remain on their feet, to not be eaten by the thing they had seen kill their pastor.

Howard pushed toward the exit and felt something cold and smooth brush by. Terrified, he ran toward the front of the tent until he felt the thick canvas.

With his back to the tent, he looked for the thing that had pushed by him, found it at the exit. It bit a man's legs off and began tearing him to pieces. Several other people tried to escape and were cut down.

Howard was struck with the thought that if there was one of these smaller, non-legged monsters, the others would be here too, feeding on the churchgoers. The tent must be crawling with them. How many were there? Five? Six? His own panic soared and he screamed when someone fell at his feet. He swung his baton in terror.

He had to get out, save himself somehow. There was nothing he could do for these people.

Something cold and hard touched his leg; he jumped and swung his baton again. He reached to check his leg, half expecting something to bite his hand off, and felt the Mag-Light. He had forgotten the flashlight in his panic. Remembering that the monsters didn't like bright light, he switched it on and directed the beam into the tent.

Then wished he hadn't. It was a scene from the deepest darkest corner of hell.

The bigger, legged monster stood in front of the stage, seemingly supervising the mayhem. The smaller monsters were maiming, killing, and eating; their faces and teeth red and blood dripping from their jaws. A coil of intestines hung from the corner of one creature's mouth, shaking and quivering as the monster bit and tore at people.

The people ...

The group of churchgoers had turned into a pack of terrified animals, tramping and stomping as they tried to escape hell's own fiends. Children lay facedown in the dirt, motionless, limbs bent the wrong way, limbs missing.

Howard moved the beam back to the big creature and saw it attack a woman, biting her in half as they liked to do. Then it spit her out, staggered and fell down, pinning a man who shrieked and flailed with his arms.

Something was coming at him, to his right; he moved the beam in time to drive off one of the smaller monsters. It slithered away from the bright light.

He flicked the light back to the big monster, saw that it had stood. It watched the smaller creatures, as if observing their technique, then walked to one, knocking people over, stepping on and breaking arms and legs.

Then it did the most incredible thing: it picked the smaller creature up by the head and shook it like a pit bull shaking a kitten, crushed its skull, dropped it, walked to another and killed it the same way.

Howard followed the big creature with his flashlight as it moved around the tent, stalking and killing the smaller creatures. The one guarding the tent's exit was the last to die. After dropping its carcass, the creature surveyed the room, looked Howard's way but was repelled by the light and moved off into the safety of the dark tent.

Seeing the exit open, people near the front rushed it, pushing and shoving in a frenzy to escape. Someone tripped, and tripped others, who in turn tripped more until there was a mass of writhing bodies blocking the exit.

Relieved there was only one monster to worry about, Howard looked for another way out. There had to be another exit, how could there not in such a huge tent? Sweeping the light over the shattered stage, he remembered seeing another opening in the northeast corner of the tent when he and Wendover had talked to the pastor. Hoping he was properly oriented, he shuffled toward the corner, with his back to the canvas so he could keep an eye on the monster.

He found the exit and ran, passing the main exit on the way to his patrol car; the clot blocking the opening was breaking up and survivors were trickling out.

He jumped in his car and sped through the parking lot to the street, where twenty to thirty heavily armed cops, and three ambulances, were waiting. He parked and got out, and the cops crowded around.

"There's only one left," he told them, "the big one. It's still in the tent, eating. The smaller ones are all dead."

Stunned survivors staggered toward the group of cops. The EMTs grabbed them and took them to the ambulances.

"We're going to need a lot more of those," Howard said, nodding toward the ambulances.

"You were inside the tent?" a cop asked.

"Yeah. I got there to break the revival up but as soon as I went inside the monsters attacked. What's been going on out here?"

"Not a damn thing. We're just keepin' the street clear," the cop said.

They were staring at him.

"Where's your partner?" another cop asked.

"Wendover? Took off."

They continued to stare and Howard finally got it. "Hey, I didn't do anything in there. I didn't save anyone and I didn't kill any of the monsters."

A cop grunted and said, "No, but you survived a face-to-face again."

"Shit Howard, you got more lives than a damn cat."

Baskel stood outside Jensen's front door, drinking in the cool night air, escaping the horror that'd been rolling off Lawless's lips for, what, a half hour now?

So much death ... He was numb. At least it seemed the worst was over. Jensen and Lawless had been successful at getting the big creature to kill the smaller ones, so they only had one to worry about. Again.

Then he thought to ask Jensen the obvious question, and reentered the apartment.

("Why doesn't he get the monster to kill itself now? What's he waiting for?") ("The Evil One cannot bite itself to death.") ("Okay, well, lucky for us we have ourselves an Assassin right here, the guy whose head you've been rubbing for hours. Isn't it his job to kill the thing?") ("The Assassin cannot kill the Evil One himself.") ("What? What am I missing here? What's the plan, then? What's he waiting for?") ("Sunrise.") Lawless's voice said, startling Baskel.

He thought for a minute, then snapped his fingers.

("Ah, the sun comes up and you convince the monster it needs to work on its tan. It flops up on the canal bank and it's barbecue time for metal mouth. Nice!") ("That is the plan. The Evil Species has a great will to survive, it will not easily give up its life.") ("But, you're an Assassin. You're the man, right?") ("As I said, Advocate, the Evil Species will not willingly give up its life.") Baskel thought, to himself, now that he had some control, Why do they keep calling me that?

He realized he'd just carried on an entire conversation without once opening his mouth. He was amazed at how easy it was and how natural it felt.

But that led to a terrifying thought: What if I'm one of them?

He had to know.

("I'm not one of ... you ... am I?") Jensen smiled a sad smile.

("No. You are not from our planet.") ("Then why am I mind-talking? And how come you're not reading my thoughts anymore?") ("One cannot go to where the threads of time meet and not be changed. You have developed the ability to shield your thoughts from us and to project them at will. Other changes will happen, when you are ready.") Baskel knew he should ask what she meant by "other changes" but let it drop. The answer would likely be cryptic and raise ten other questions.

The creature left the tent shortly after midnight and reentered Lateral No. 6, six hours until daybreak and seven or eight until the sun would be strong enough to kill it.

It would take the authorities days to get a somewhat accurate body count; they never knew for sure how many died inside the tent because they knew some were probably completely eaten and there wasn't a roster or any sign-in sheets. The best estimate put the figure at close to two hundred, most killed by the monsters. At least fifty were trampled to death.

Exhaustion finally overcame Baskel at one and he fell asleep on Jensen's couch. He slept until six, but the five hours did him little good; he dreamed vivid, horrid dreams, several of them, where millions of Earth's inhabitants were cut down by flying, flame-breathing monsters or slowly choked to death by mutated strains of bacteria.

He awoke with a start, stifling a scream, and sat up. Jensen and Lawless looked as if they hadn't moved all night. He stretched and looked at his watch and said, with his mouth, "What happened? Did I miss anything?"

("Your captain has succeeded in getting the gates to the canals closed and they are draining.") Jensen thought to him.

"Good. I wonder if he got the National Guard here as well." Then he remembered the creature.

("What's the monster doing?") Now that he was fully awake, he projected his thoughts again; it so much easier.

("It spent the remainder of the night in its lair, preparing to spawn again.") Not good news.

("Did it?") ("No. It takes time for it to make the changes it needs to spawn.") ("How much time?") ("It will be ready to spawn tonight.") ("But that won't happen because it will be dead before then, right?") ("That is the plan.") Baskel's stomach rumbled so he went to the kitchen to scrounge up something to eat, shoved some bread into the toaster and thought about Jensen and Lawless.

("Hey, you guys want something to eat? I'm making food in here.") ("No.") ("What about you, Detective? Gotta keep your strength up you know, fighting monsters and all.") Lawless didn't reply, and he saw Jensen had on a long face, so he said, ("What's wrong?") ("One other thing happened while you slept. The Assassin became fully united with the Evil One and is no longer your kind or our kind. He will respond only to my voice.") A tear rolled down her cheek and hung on the line of her jaw, the line that was different.