Part 40 (1/2)

A trick, he realized. All this time she's been one of them.

”And, of course,” she added, ”that wouldn't be any way for them to treat your sister.”

My...sister?

”You should have read those books a little more closely, Phil,” she said. ”We're both Creekers, but we're perfect. It took a long time for our father to breed us. Trial and error, for ages.”

Then Phil thought back to the books about inbreeding.

The more intensively inbred the community, the more astronomical the chances of an undefected birth. One chance in thousands, he remembered. And Susan and I are it.

”We're living proof, aren't we?” Susan said. ”No red eyes, no black hair, no physical deformities. We're the offspring the Creekers have been trying to produce for a hundred years. But-” She took another step closer. ”Too bad for me I was born a woman. The progenitor has to be male.”

The Mannona, Natter said.

”You,” Susan said. ”Haven't you realized that by now? It's you.”

Then Phil remembered what Vicki had told him about Creeker speech-dyslalia-how spoken words were inverted. Skeet-inner meant skin-eater. Ona-prey-bee meant praise be to Ona. And now: ”Mannona,” he said in a voice that was dark as the room. ”And Onnamann.”

”The Man of Ona,” she translated.

Me, Phil thought.

The darkness seemed to hush.

The moonlight radiated.

Phil's heart slowed.

”We're hybrids,” Susan informed him.

Vicki had mentioned that too, hadn't she? Hybrids. Ona, she'd said. The female inbred of the demon and the Creekers. Most of the Creekers don't even look human. Because part of their bloodline isn't human...

And what had Natter said, just moments ago?

Tonight we start anew.

Something thunked to the floor. Phil stared down. It was Vicki's head-cleanly severed-just dropped from Susan's scarlet hand.

Poor little wh.o.r.e, Natter's black voice remarked.

”The whole thing, I'm sure you realize now,” Susan said, ”was a set-up. To lure you here at precisely this time.”

”Why?” Phil asked dryly.

”It's generational.”

”What is?”

The fertility of our G.o.d, Natter answered.

”Skeet-inner,” Phil whispered. ”Ona...”

The thing you saw when you were ten, Vicki's dead words echoed now.

Two more figures-Druck, and another male Creeker, grinned as they came out of the obsidian dark. But they were dragging a third figure by-its elbows.

The figure was naked. Bound and gagged.

The figure was Sullivan.

Watch, Natter said in Phil's head.