The Blood of the Lamb by Monteleone Thomas F

Author:Monteleone, Thomas F [Monteleone, Thomas F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Acclaimed.Bram Stoker Award, Fiction.Horror, Fiction.Thriller/Suspense, Fiction.Mystery/Detective, Acclaimed.Dark Thoughts, Fiction.Dark Fantasy/Supernatural
ISBN: 9780812522228
Google: 4fffGwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0812522222
Barnesnoble: 0812522222
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1992-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTY

Bessemet, Alabama—Cooper

November 21, 1998

A digital signal sounded on the control console behind his water bed. It had been programmed to sound like a cageful of canaries singing sweetly. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, Freemason had a thing for birds.

“Gee, that sounds pretty, honey,” said Stephanie June as she looked up from her work under the sheets. “What is it?”

“The intercom,” he said, twisting around, reaching for the correct keypad, finding it, punching it in. “Yeah?”

“Mason ... ?” Preston J. Pierce’s voice was thin, reedy. “Who’d you expect—Oral Roberts? Press, I told you never call me in here unless it’s a barn-burner ...”

“Did you catch the eleven o’clock news?”

“Now what do you think?” Freemason said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. Which was hard to do with Stephanie June working so hard. She was a splash of red-gold hair across his stomach, half covered by the silk sheets.

“I’m serious, Reverend. There’s something I think you oughta see.”

“This better be worth it, Press,” he said.

Pierce cleared his throat. ‘Trust me on this one, Mason. Just get down to the studio as soon as you can.”

“I’m coming,” said Freemason.

“Gee, Reverend,” said Stephanie June. “That’s mighty nice of you to tell me like that. You wouldn’t believe how inconsiderate most men are...”

❖

“We pulled this off the eleven o’clock news,” said a bespectacled, white-shirted engineer named Ames.

“Local?” asked Freemason.

“Montgomery,” Pierce said, nodding. “But they were picking up a national feed.”

Freemason Cooper sank into a padded leather chair and focused on a big flat-screen monitor. He and the boys were in the mansion’s east wing, which had been renovated into a state-of-the-art recording and broadcasting facility. The screen flickered, then revealed the auburn-haired woman he’d seen before—and a sweet-looking piece of cake she was, too. She was standing alongside a highway, beneath a dark sky tinged with the soft glow of a distant fire. The name “Marion Windsor” and her station ID flashed for an instant across the bottom of the frame.

The words “New York” caught Freemason’s attention. What the Christ-on-an-aluminum-crutch was a New York reporter doing out in Illinois? Something didn’t add up, he thought as the woman began speaking.

“Interstate 64 just east of Saint Louis, near the Richview, Illinois exit, marks the scene of one of the most horrible highway catastrophes in Illinois history ...”

Marion Windsor remained in the left foreground, but the image behind her changed, zooming in to reveal, under the harsh reality of emergency lighting, a panorama of carnage and demolition. Twisted, burned-out husks of all kinds of vehicles littered the six-lane swath of road like toys fallen off a playroom shelf. Fire equipment and rescue vans skittered across the scene in erratic paths. Body-bag crews slicked into the darkness carrying their grim cargoes. State police officers shambled by with slack faces.

“Thirty-eight vehicles became entangled in a chain-reaction collision which has thus far claimed sixty-four lives. Eyewitnesses claim the huge, multi-car mishap ensued when a tractor-trailer carrying jet fuel careened into a log-jam of commuter traffic.”

The image changed again.

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