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REVELATION 6:10

And they cried with a loud voice, saying

"How long, oh Lord, dost Thou not judge and avenge our

blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

~ * ~

"Oh, Father," Jo said unhappily as she stepped outside St. Peter's and gazed up at the still dark sky. "Your will be done. But I sure wish I knew Your reasons sometimes."

She shivered and hugged herself. The temperature was at least twenty degrees lower than last night, with sunrise later because of the heavy, ominous clouds rolling in from the west, and she could smell harsher things coming. Still rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms, Jo headed toward the south branch of the river without bothering to go back for a coat. Her hair was like a blanket anyway, and it wasn't the cold that bothered her but the danger she knew would come with it. Crossing Wacker, she stood at the metal railing on the Adams Street Bridge and looked south. What was happening far beyond the range of her eyesight or imagination? This river led to other parts of the country, warmer climates where perhaps the men and women were not so crippled by nature's cold whims. Did they struggle as hard as the small, pathetic groups here? If so, were they successful in those struggles? And who helped them?

I am not alone, she told herself sternly. There are others like me in other places, fighting this evil. I am not alone.

The water rippled like thick ink and she watched it for a few minutes. To her right the shadowed recesses of the train tracks of Union Station stretched along the river until water and retaining wall merged into one indistinguishable blur, hiding the creatures of death that dared the sunrise just enough to scuttle amid the concrete supports and stare up at her. Jo could feel their hungry eyes crawling over her flesh like fire ants, but this morning she felt no compulsion to go to them. She twisted and looked at the buildings lining the north waterfront, gleaming monoliths of steel and glass lightening under the growing glow from the eastern sky, marveling that man could build such a structure when as a child she'd hardly been able to stack blocks five high. Tilting her head, she glimpsed the sleek shape of a falcon overhead, one of the peregrines—or perhaps a new generation—freed in the city years ago to help control the pigeon population. There were still pigeons, though not as many. Lazy, trusting birds, they had been quick and easy food when starvation had begun to run its spasming hand among the vampires. Now the pigeons roosted high atop the skyscrapers with other, more timid species and took their chances among their more natural predators.

She watched the falcon until it was out of sight, then began picking her way along the riverwalks toward the Merchandise Mart. Chicago was a sad place now, full of death and immense abandoned buildings, with few corpses to show man had ever existed in this once-magnificent place, and it gave her a feeling of inconceivable emptiness, as if the city had become nothing more than a doll's world cast aside by a bored, giant child.

It was full light by the time Jo walked the northwest curve of Wacker Drive and saw the Mart, the sight of the building enough to make her ache to bring some solace to the terrified people trapped on its third floor. She had only an inkling of their future, but the time wasn't yet right and Jo did not question the things she was compelled to do.

Still, she could bring comfort.

She slipped inside at the Wells Street entrance. The west corridor was still deeply shadowed and would stay that way for another half hour, the dribble of light from the doors at either end combining with the high windows on the river side to give just enough illumination to drive the night creatures to their beds. Could they sense her presence here as she could sense each and every one of them? It would be so easy to find the lairs, but she wasn't physically capable of destroying more than one every couple of nights. But there were other roads to victory

Jo's feet made only sibilant whispers along the scuffed, dusty hallway as she climbed the stairwell at the far end and stepped into the fourth-floor hallway, where only a few feet of stone and iron separated her from the prisoners directly below. No one had been up here in some time and Jo dropped to her knees, her dress and hair making feathery swirls in the silvery dust on the floor. She could feel them below, the pain, the hopelessness. How many were there? The rush was too strong and befuddling; she knew there were men and women but no children, though one woman had already tried to destroy the blameless child in her womb, a son fathered in rape by the man who traded their lives for his own twisted pleasure. Another, forced to womanhood at fifteen, carried the seed of a daughter though neither she nor her rapist knew it. One man had wanted nothing more than to serve God, and his torment and self-loathing seethed like hot acid in Jo's heart. Their misery filled her and made her temples pound; her breath shortened as she swept her palms along the floor and hung her head.

"Hear the voice of our supplication when we cry out to Thee," she said quietly. Her echoing voice trembled as she fought to keep going. The pain was monstrous, like a huge animal chewing on her insides in a frenzied, useless attempt to escape, making it unlikely she could last more than five minutes without fainting. But comfort, even a little, was never wasted.

Her eyes rolled back as her fingers pressed against the dirty linoleum until flesh and floor appeared to meld.

"Let not your hearts be troubled," she gasped, and reached for them.

The floor around her hands began to glow.

~ * ~

He was curled snugly within his blanket, warm and sated and . . . safe. In the seconds before he fully awoke, he didn't remember that the blanket encircling his wasted figure was filthy and crusted, that the floor was bare linoleum and streaked with dried urine and human waste. Then he heard a moan, low and pitiful, and Stephen's eyes flew open when he realized that the half-human wail was coming from his own mouth. He moved then, pulling free of the dirty trap of a blanket, kicking his sticklike legs until the cruel chain around his ankle stopped him.

Oh, Lord, he thought in despair, why am I still here? Your most merciful deed would be to allow me death. He stood and tried, as he did every morning, to reach the window, as though his chain had magically grown the extra links he needed. If Satan himself had appeared and offered him death or a breath of fresh air for his soul, Stephen didn't know which he would choose. As always, the chain stopped him just short of the glass and he sank to his knees, his face bleak, not understanding how someone as simple as himself could be caught in this web of . . . lust. That's what it was—sex. Not the kind that went with marriage vows or even the naughty fumbling that spent itself in the backseats of cars. This was much, much worse, the illicit disease of pimps and pornographers and those who went from peep shows and paper-wrapped magazines to slick, hidden photos of children.

If only he could die. What did it matter that nothing waited but hell? Was this not hell anyway? He was an unspeakable combination of food and love toy for a creature so evil and suffocating that even the dream of freedom became nothing, every last dream was destr—

Warmth washed over him and his eyes bulged. He felt . . . he felt healthy! For the first time in weeks, he stood easily and gave the chain a fierce tug. The smells that hung on the fetid air faded in his nostrils, and for a second Stephen imagined he actually smelled flowers.

Drawing the chain taut, he strained forward and tried to glimpse the corridor beyond the doorway, ignoring the chill slapping his skin as the blanket dropped to his feet. Down the hall he could hear others rattling their chains and calling out in suddenly strong voices. Below the din he could hear Siebold's bellowing, his shouts escalating to roars as the captives clamored from their cells. The clear voice of another man carried from one or two rooms away.

"Hey, mister, come on! Why don't you let us go? We understand how a guy might do anything to make it. Hell, you're scared, we're scared—we're all in the same trouble here. We won't hold any grudges. How about it?"

And Stephen knew, as warmth and an inexplicable serenity suffused him, that the man meant it. If Siebold were to go from room to room and open the padlocks, all these people, who had wanted nothing but to tear their jailer and rapist apart only a few minutes ago, would clap him on the back and walk from this building without so much as spitting on him.

They would forgive.

He thought fleetingly of Anyelet and found her only a shrinking black boil in his mind that was easy to shake away.

Howard Siebold appeared at his doorway, his rushed face florid with fear. Standing straight and proud despite the cold and filth, Stephen smiled calmly and motioned to the chain. "We could start fresh," he said. "Rebuild and live in God's light, be it sun or moon, the way it was meant to be." He stared into Howard's eyes. "Would you like to be free again?"

Siebold looked terrified and torn; sweat was pouring down his dirty face to layer another circle of salt crust around his stained collar. Eyes wide, he jerked at Stephen's words. "I can't do that! They'd kill me—they'd kill us all! Besides, I don't have the keys!"

"Not if we all stayed together," Stephen said reassuringly. "We could make it, Howard. We could."

The larger man hesitated, as if this strange feeling of contentment was affecting him, too. "I don—"

Abruptly the feeling was gone. Reality returned in a smothering flood of cruel sensations: cold, pain, hunger—all at once, followed for Stephen by the familiar unfulfilled desire and self-hatred. The sudden draft made his shoulders quake and Stephen was unable to stifle the perplexed groan that slipped past his lips. Siebold blinked at him, then hurried from sight. In seconds the sounds from the surrounding rooms returned once more to whispers of hopelessness and weeping.

Stephen sank to his knees on the stiff, gritty blanket and hung his head in despair.