The Servants of Twilight Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE - The Hag

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART TWO - The Attack

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  PART THREE - The Hounds

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  PART FOUR - The Chase

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  PART FIVE - The Kill

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  NEW AFTERWORD

  #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  An ordinary parking lot in southern California. Christine Scavello and her six-year-old son are accosted by a strange old woman.

  “I know who you are,” she snaps at the boy. “I know what you are.”

  A scream, a threat—and a grotesque act of violence. Suddenly Christine’s pride and joy, her only son, is targeted by a group of religious fanatics. They’ve branded him the Antichrist. They want to kill him. And they are everywhere. . . .

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  The acclaimed bestsellers

  THE EYES OF DARKNESS

  “Koontz puts his readers through the emotional wringer!”

  —The Associated Press

  THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT

  “A master storyteller . . . always riveting.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  MR. MURDER

  “A truly harrowing tale . . . superb work by a master at the top of his form.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  THE FUNHOUSE

  “Koontz is a terrific what-if storyteller.”

  —People

  DRAGON TEARS

  “A razor-sharp, nonstop, suspenseful story . . . a first-rate literary experience.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  SHADOWFIRES

  “His prose mesmerizes . . . Koontz consistently hits the bull’s-eye.”

  —Arkansas Democrat

  HIDEAWAY

  “Not just a thriller but a meditation on the nature of good and evil.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader

  COLD FIRE

  “An extraordinary piece of fiction . . . It will be a classic.”

  —UPI

  THE HOUSE OF THUNDER

  “Koontz is brilliant.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT

  “A fearsome tour of an adolescent’s psyche. Terrifying, kneeknocking suspense.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  THE BAD PLACE

  “A new experience in breathless terror.”

  —UPI

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  “A great storyteller.”

  —New York Daily News

  MIDNIGHT

  “A triumph.”

  —The New York Times

  LIGHTNING

  “Brilliant . . . a spine-tingling tale . . . both challenging and entertaining.”

  —The Associated Press

  THE MASK

  “Koontz hones his fearful yarns to a gleaming edge.”

  —People

  WATCHERS

  “A breakthrough for Koontz . . . his best ever.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  TWILIGHT EYES

  “A spine-chilling adventure . . . will keep you turning pages to the very end.”

  —Rave Reviews

  STRANGERS

  “A unique spellbinder that captures the reader on the first page. Exciting, enjoyable, and an intensely satisfying read.”

  —Mary Higgins Clark

  DEMON SEED

  “One of our finest and most versatile suspense writers.”

  —The Macon Telegraph & News

  PHANTOMS

  “First-rate suspense, scary and stylish.” —Los Angeles Times

  WHISPERS

  “Pulls out all the stops . . . an incredible, terrifying tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  NIGHT CHILLS

  “Will send chills down your back.”

  —The New York Times

  DARKFALL

  “A fast-paced tale . . . one of the scariest chase scenes ever.”

  —The Houston Post

  SHATTERED

  “A chilling tale . . . sleek as a bullet.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE VISION

  “Spine-tingling—it gives you an almost lethal shock.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  THE FACE OF FEAR

  “Real suspense . . . tension upon tension.”

  —The New York Times

  Berkley titles by Dean Koontz

  THE EYES OF DARKNESS

  THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT

  MR. MURDER

  THE FUNHOUSE

  DRAGON TEARS

  SHADOWFIRES

  HIDEAWAY

  COLD FIRE

  THE HOUSE OF THUNDER

  THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT

  THE BAD PLACE

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  MIDNIGHT

  LIGHTNING

  THE MASK

  WATCHERS

  TWILIGHT EYES

  STRANGERS

  DEMON SEED

  PHANTOMS

  WHISPERS

  NIGHT CHILLS

  DARKFALL

  SHATTERED

  THE VISION

  THE FACE OF FEAR

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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&
nbsp; (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from Something Wicked This Way Comes copyright © 1962 by Ray Bradbury, permission granted by Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Dark Harvest edition / 1988

  Berkley mass-market edition / May 1990

  Berkley premium edition / August 2011

  Copyright © 1984 by Nkui, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54328-3

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to very special people,

  George and Jane Smith

  —and to their lovely offspring, Diana Summers, and to their cats. May they have all the success and happiness they so well deserve. (I mean, of course, George and Jane and Diana, not the cats.) And may they have much fun catching mice and singing on backyard fences. (That is, the cats, not George, Jane and Diana.)

  PART ONE

  The Hag

  An’ all us other children, when

  the supper things is done,

  We sit around the kitchen fire

  an’ has the mostest fun

  A-list-nin’ to the witch-tales

  that Annie tells about,

  An’ the Gobble’uns that gits you

  If you

  Don’t

  Watch

  Out!

  —Little Orphant Annie, James Whitcomb Riley

  . . . the Dust Witch came, mumbling. A moment later, looking up, Will saw her. Not dead! he thought. Carried off, bruised, fallen, yes, but now back, and mad! Lord, yes, mad, looking especially for me!

  —Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

  1

  It began in sunshine, not on a dark and stormy night.

  She wasn’t prepared for what happened, wasn’t on guard. Who would have expected trouble on a lovely Sunday afternoon like that?

  The sky was clear and blue. It was surprisingly warm, for the end of February, even in southern California. The breeze was gentle and scented with winter flowers. It was one of those days when everyone seemed destined to live forever.

  Christine Scavello had gone to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa to do some shopping, and she had taken Joey with her. He liked the big mall. He was fascinated by the stream that splashed through one wing of the building, down the middle of the public promenade and over a gentle waterfall. He was also intrigued by the hundreds of trees and plants that thrived indoors, and he was a born peoplewatcher. But most of all he liked the carousel in the central courtyard. In return for one ride on the carousel, he would tag along happily and quietly while Christine spent two or three hours shopping.

  Joey was a good kid, the best. He never whined, never threw tantrums or complained. Trapped in the house on a long, rainy day, he could entertain himself for hour after hour and not once grow bored or restless or crabby the way most kids would.

  To Christine, Joey sometimes seemed to be a little old man in a six-year-old boy’s small body. Occasionally he said the most amazingly grown-up things, and he usually had the patience of an adult, and he was often wiser than his years.

  But at other times, especially when he asked where his daddy was or why his daddy had gone away—or even when he didn’t ask but just stood there with the question shimmering in his eyes—he looked so innocent, fragile, so heartbreakingly vulnerable that she just had to grab him and hug him.

  Sometimes the hugging wasn’t merely an expression of her love for him, but also an evasion of the issue that he had raised. She had never found a way to tell him about his father, and it was a subject she wished he would just drop until she was ready to bring it up. He was too young to understand the truth, and she didn’t want to lie to him—not too blatantly, anyway—or resort to cutesy euphemisms.

  He had asked about his father just a couple of hours ago, on the way to the mall. She had said, “Honey, your daddy just wasn’t ready for the responsibility of a family.”

  “Didn’t he like me?”

  “He never even knew you, so how could he not like you? He was gone before you were born.”

  “Oh, yeah? How could I have been borned if he wasn’t here?” the boy had asked skeptically.

  “That’s something you’ll learn in sex education class at school,” she had said, amused.

  “When?”

  “Oh, in about six or seven more years, I guess.”

  “That’s a long time to wait.” He had sighed. “I’ll bet he didn’t like me and that’s why he went away.”

  Frowning, she had said, “You put that thought right out of your mind, sugar. It was me your daddy didn’t like.”

  “You? He didn’t like you?”

  “That’s right.”

  Joey had been silent for a block or two, but finally he had said, “Boy, if he didn’t like you, he musta been just plain dumb.”

  Then, apparently sensing that the subject made her uneasy, he had changed it. A little old man in a six-year-old boy’s small body.

  The fact was that Joey was the result of a brief, passionate, reckless, and stupid affair. Sometimes, looking back on it, she couldn’t believe that she had been so naive . . . or so desperate to prove her womanhood and independence. It was the only relationship in Christine’s life that qualified as a “fling,” the only time she had ever been swept away. For that man, for no other man before or since, for that man alone, she had put aside her morals and principles and common sense, heeding only the urgent desires of her flesh. She had told herself that it was Romance with a capital R, not just love but the Big Love, even Love At First Sight. Actually she had just been weak, vulnerable, and eager to make a fool of herself. Later, when she realized that Mr. Wonderful had lied to her and used her with cold, cynical disregard for her feelings, when she discovered that she had given herself to a man who was utterly without respect for her and who lacked even a minimal sense of responsibility, she had been deeply ashamed. Eventually she realized there was a point at which shame and remorse became self-indulgent and nearly as lamentable as the sin that had occasioned those emotions, so she put the shabby episode behind her and vowed to forget it.

  Except that Joey kept asking who his father was, where his father was, why his fat
her had gone away. And how did you tell a six-year-old about your libidinous urges, the treachery of your own heart, and your regrettable capacity for occasionally making a complete fool of yourself? If it could be done, she hadn’t seen the way. She was just going to have to wait until he was grown up enough to understand that adults could sometimes be just as dumb and confused as little kids. Until then, she stalled him with vague answers and evasions that satisfied neither of them.

  She only wished he wouldn’t look quite so lost, quite so small and vulnerable when he asked about his father. It made her want to cry.

  She was haunted by the vulnerability she perceived in him. He was never ill, an extremely healthy child, and she was grateful for that. Nevertheless, she was always reading magazine and newspaper articles about childhood diseases, not merely polio and measles and whooping cough—he had been immunized for those and more—but horrible, crippling, incurable illnesses, often rare although no less frightening for their rarity. She memorized the early-warning signs of a hundred exotic maladies and was always on the watch for those symptoms in Joey. Of course, like any active boy, he suffered his share of cuts and bruises, and the sight of his blood always scared the hell out of her, even if it was only one drop from a shallow scratch. Her concern about Joey’s health was almost an obsession, but she never quite allowed it to actually become an obsession, for she was aware of the psychological problems that could develop in a child with an overly protective mother.