He had to know exactly who was where before he called in the other agents. It was still, very still. He got to his feet and ran hunched over toward the tack room door, his gun fanning continuously, his breathing low and steady, his steps silent. He pressed his ear against the rotted wooden door of the tack room.
He heard a male voice, clear and strong, and angry, suddenly louder.
“Listen, you Little Bloods, it’s time for you to get in the middle of the circle. The Ghouls want you; they told me to hurry it up. They want to carve you up with their axes and knives—they really like to do that—but this time they want to tuck you away in their carryalls and fly away with you. Hey, maybe you’ll end up in Tahiti. Who knows? They haven’t wanted to do this before. But it doesn’t make any difference to us. Here come the Ghouls!” And he laughed, a young man’s laugh, not all that deep, and it sounded quite happily mad. It made Savich’s blood run icy.
Then another man’s voice, this one deeper. “Yep, almost ready for the Ghouls. We don’t want to disappoint them now, do we? Move it, Little Bloods.”
He heard them coming toward the door, heard the scuffling of feet, heard the boys’ crying, probably beyond reason now, heard curses and prods from the Tuttle brothers. It was then that he saw the huge, crude circle painted with thick, black paint on a cleared-out part of the rotting wooden barn floor.
Zero hour. No time, simply no time now to bring the others in.
Savich barely made it down behind a rotted hay bale before one of them opened the tack room door and shoved a slight, pale boy in front of him. The boy’s filthy pants were nearly falling off his butt. It was Donny Arthur. He’d been beaten, probably starved as well. He was terrified. Then a second terrified youth was shoved out of the small tack room next to him. Rob Arthur, only fourteen years old. Savich had never seen such fear on two such young faces in his life.
If Savich ordered the Tuttles to stop now, they could use the boys for shields. No, better to wait. What was all that crazy talk about ghouls? He watched the two men shove the boys forward until they actually kicked them into the center of the circle.
“Don’t either of you move or I’ll take my knife and shove it right through your arm into the floor, pin you good. Tammy here will do the other with her knife. You got that, Little Bloods?”
Tammy? Her knife? No, it was two brothers—Tommy and Timmy Tuttle, more than enough alliteration, even for the media. No, he couldn’t have heard right. He was looking at two young men, both in black, long and lean, big, chunky black boots laced up the front to the knees like combat boots. They carried knives and guns.
The boys were huddled together on their knees, crying, clutching each other. Blood caked their faces, but they could move, and that meant no bones were broken.
“Where are the Ghouls?” Tammy Tuttle shouted, and Savich realized in that instant that he hadn’t misheard; it wasn’t the Tuttle brothers, it was one brother and one sister.
What was all this about the ghouls coming to murder the boys?
“Ghouls,” Tammy yelled, her head thrown back, her voice reverberating throughout the ancient barn, “where are you? We’ve got your two treats for you, just what you like—two really sweet boys! Little Bloods, both of them. Bring your knives and axes! Come here, Ghouls.”
It was a chant, growing louder as she repeated herself once, twice, then three times. Each time, her voice was louder, more vicious, the words ridiculous, really, except for the underlying terror they carried.
Tammy Tuttle kicked one of the boys, hard, when he tried to crawl out of the circle. Savich knew he had to act soon. Where were these ghouls?
He heard something, something that was different from the mad human voices, like a high whine, sort of a hissing sound that didn’t belong here, maybe didn’t belong anywhere. He felt gooseflesh rise on his arms. He felt a shock of cold. He was on the point of leaping out when, to his utter astonishment, the huge front barn doors whooshed inward, blinding light flooded in, and in the middle of that light were dust devils that looked like small tornadoes. The white light faded away, and the dust devils looked more like two whirling, white cones, distinct from each other, spinning and twisting, riding up then dipping down, blending together, then separating—no, no, they were just dust devils, still white because they hadn’t sucked up the dirt yet from the barn floor. But what was that sound he heard? Something strange, something he couldn’t identify. Laughter? No, that was crazy, but that was what registered in his brain.
The boys saw the dust devils, whirling and spinning far above them, and started screaming. Rob jumped up, grabbed his older brother, and managed to jerk him out of the circle.