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Synopsis

In the wake of series of bizarre murders in which claw prints are found near each of the victims, agent Pendergast teams up with officer Vincent d'Agosta in an investigation with apparent ties to the supernatural that takes them from the luxury estates of Long Island to the castles of Italy.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Agnes Torres parked her white Ford Escort in the little parking areaoutside the hedge and stepped into the cool dawn air. The hedgeswere twelve feet high and as impenetrable as a brick wall; only theshingled peak of the big house could be seen from the street. Butshe could hear the surf thundering and smell the salt air of theinvisible ocean beyond.

Agnes carefully locked the car-it paid to be careful, even in thisneighborhood-and, fumbling with the massive set of keys, found theright one and stuck it into the lock. The heavy sheet-metal gateswung inward, exposing a broad expanse of green lawn that sweptthree hundred yards down to the beach, flanked by two dunes. A redlight on a keypad just inside the gate began blinking, and sheentered the code with nervous fingers. She had thirty seconds beforethe sirens went off. Once, she had dropped her keys and couldn'tpunch in the code in time, and the thing had awakened practicallythe whole town and brought three police cars. Mr. Jeremy had been soangry she thought he would breathe fire. It had been awful.

Agnes punched the last button and the light turned green. Shebreathed a sigh of relief, locked the gate, and paused to crossherself. Then she drew out her rosary, held the first beadreverently between her fingers. Fully armed now, she turned andbegan waddling across the lawn on short, thick legs, walking slowlyto allow herself time to intone the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys, andthe Glory Bes in quiet Spanish. She always said a decade on herrosary when entering the Grove Estate.

The vast gray house loomed in front of her, a single eyebrow windowin the roof peak frowning like the eye of a Cyclops, yellow againstthe steel gray of the house and sky. Seagulls circled above, cryingrestlessly.

Agnes was surprised. She never remembered that light on before. Whatwas Mr. Jeremy doing in the attic at seven o'clock in the morning?Normally he didn't get out of bed until noon.

Finishing her prayers, she replaced the rosary and crossed herselfagain: a swift, automatic gesture, made with a rough hand that hadseen decades of domestic work. She hoped Mr. Jeremy wasn't stillawake. She liked to work in an empty house, and when he was up,everything was so unpleasant: the cigarette ashes he dropped justbehind her mop, the dishes he heaped in the sink just after she hadwashed, the comments and the endless swearing to himself, into thephone or at the newspaper, always followed by a harsh laugh. Hisvoice was like a rusty knife-it cut and slashed the air. He was thinand mean and stank of cigarettes and drank brandy at lunch andentertained sodomites at all hours of the day and night. Once he hadtried to speak Spanish with her but she had quickly put an end tothat. Nobody spoke Spanish to her except family and friends, andAgnes Torres spoke English perfectly well enough.

On the other hand, Agnes had worked for many people in her life, andMr. Jeremy was very correct with her employment. He paid her well,always on time, he never asked her to stay late, never changed herschedule, and never accused her of stealing. Once, early on, he hadblasphemed against the Lord in her presence, and she had spoken tohim about it, and he had apologized quite civilly and had never doneit again.

She came up the curving flagstone path to the back door, inserted asecond key, and once again fumbled nervously with the keypad,turning off the internal alarm.

The house was gloomy and gray, the mullioned windows in frontlooking out on a long seaweed-strewn beach to an angry ocean. Thesound of the surf was muffled here and the house was hot. Unusuallyhot.

She sniffed. There was a strange smell in the air, like a greasyroast left too long in the oven. She waddled into the kitchen but itwas empty. The dishes were heaped up, and the place was a mess asusual, stale food everywhere, and yet the smell wasn't coming fromhere. It looked like Mr. Jeremy had cooked fish the night before.She didn't usually clean his house on Tuesdays, but he'd had one ofhis countless dinner parties the prior evening. Labor Day had comeand gone a month before, but Mr. Jeremy's weekend parties wouldn'tend until November.

She went into the living room and sniffed the air again. Somethingwas definitely cooking somewhere. And there was another smell on topof it, as if somebody had been playing with matches.

Agnes Torres felt a vague sense of alarm. Everything was more orless as she had left it when she went away yesterday, at two in theafternoon, except that the ashtrays were overflowing with butts andthe usual empty wine bottles stood on the sideboard, dirty disheswere piled in the sink, and someone had dropped soft cheese on therug and stepped in it.

She raised her plump face and sniffed again. The smell came fromabove.

She mounted the sweep of stairs, treading softly, and paused tosniff at the landing. She tiptoed past Grove's study, past hisbedroom door, continued down the hall, turned the dogleg, and cameto the door to the third floor. The smell was stronger here and theair was heavier, warmer. She tried to open the door but found itlocked.

She took out her bunch of keys, clinked through them, and unlockedthe door. Madre de Dios-the smell was much worse. She mounted thesteep unfinished stairs, one, two, three, resting her arthritic legsfor a moment on each tread. She rested again at the top, breathingheavily.

The attic was vast, with one long hall off which were half a dozenunused children's bedrooms, a playroom, several bathrooms, and anunfinished attic space jammed with furniture and boxes and horriblemodern paintings.

At the far end of the hall, she saw a bar of yellow light under thedoor to the last bedroom.

She took a few tentative steps forward, paused, crossed herselfagain. Her heart was hammering, but with her hand clutching therosary she knew she was safe. As she approached the door, the smellgrew steadily worse.

She tapped lightly on it, just in case some guest of Mr. Jeremy wassleeping in there, hungover or sick. But there was no response. Shegrasped the doorknob and was surprised to find it slightly warm tothe touch. Was there a fire? Had somebody fallen asleep, cigarettein hand? There was definitely a faint smell of smoke, but it wasn'tjust smoke somehow: it was something stronger. Something foul.

She tried the doorknob, found it locked. It reminded her of thetime, when she was a little girl at the convent school, when crazyold Sister Ana had died and they had to force open her door.

Somebody on the other side might need her assistance; might be sickor incapacitated. Once again she fumbled with the keys. She had noidea which one went to the door, so it wasn't until perhaps thetenth try that the key turned. Holding her breath, she opened thedoor, but it moved only an inch before stopping, blocked bysomething. She pushed, pushed harder, heard a crash on the otherside.

Santa Marma, it was going to wake up Mr. Jeremy. She waited, butthere was no sound of his tread, no slamming bathroom door orflushing toilet, none of the sounds that signaled his irasciblerising.

She pushed at the door and was able to get her head inside, holdingher breath against the smell. A thin screen of haze drifted in theroom, and it was as hot as an oven. The room had been shut up foryears-Mr. Jeremy despised children-and dirty spiderwebs hung fromthe peeling beadboard walls. The crash had been caused by thetoppling of an old armoire that had been pushed up against the door.In fact, all the furniture in the room seemed to have been piledagainst the door, except for the bed. The bed, she could see, was onthe far side of the room. Mr. Jeremy lay on it, fully clothed.

"Mr. Jeremy?"

But Agnes Torres knew there would be no answer. Mr. Jeremy wasn'tsleeping, not with his charred eyes burned permanently open, theashy cone of his mouth frozen in a scream and his blackenedtongue-swelled to the size of a chorizo sausage-sticking straight upfrom it like a flagpole. A sleeping man wouldn't be lying with hiselbows raised above the bed, fists clenched so hard that blood hadleaked between the fingers. A sleeping man wouldn't have his torsoscorched and caved in upon itself like a burned log. She had seenmany dead people during her childhood in Colombia, and Mr. Jeremylooked deader than any of them. He was as dead as they come.

She heard someone speaking and realized it was herself, murmuring Enel nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espmritu Santo ... Shecrossed herself yet again, fumbling out her rosary, unable to moveher feet or take her eyes from the scene in the room. There was ascorched mark on the floor, right at the foot of the bed: a markwhich Agnes recognized.

In that moment, she understood exactly what had happened to Mr.Jeremy Grove.

A muffled cry escaped her throat and she suddenly had the energy toback out of the room and shut the door. She fumbled with the keysand relocked it, all the while murmuring Creo en Dios, Padretodopoderoso, creador del cielo y de la tierra. She crossed herselfagain and again and again, clutching the rosary and holding it up toher chest as she backed down the hall, step by step, sobs minglingwith her mumbled prayers.

The cloven hoofprint burned into the floor told her everything sheneeded to know. The devil had finally come for Jeremy Grove.

Copyright © 2004 by Lincoln Child

Copyright © 2004 by Douglas Preston

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