Chapter Twenty-one

Terry's tone made Mike want to slug him, but he resisted the temptation. "Everybody in the
neighborhood's being interviewed, you can bet on that."
"Oh, come on! You get your ass out of that chair and go and personally talk to Alex Parker. Do it for
me. For old times."
Mike regarded his friend. Too many disappointments, too much booze, too many hopes down the drain.
"OK, buddy, I'll give him a call right now." Terry had the number. Mike dialled, waited through three, then
five, then seven rings. He shrugged, put the phone down. "What can I tell you? No answer. We'll have to
try again later."
Terry Quist's face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. Mike could smell the stink of his fear.
It was the nausea as much as the riot of birdsong that awoke Brother Alexander. He opened his eyes to
blue morning sky. The lurching vertigo told him that he had been drugged. He could smell the thick ether
fumes still in his nose, could taste them in his dry mouth. His stomach heaved and twisted.
Above him puffy white clouds crossed the clear blue. He was bound hand and foot, chained to an iron
bedstead. He was in a forest glade. He could not move his head enough to see them, but he could sense
people about.
When he turned his head far to the right he caught a glimpse of a familiar face. His heart began to pound.
It was the notorious Jerry Cochran, and he was carrying something that looked very much like a blowtorch.
"Good morning, Brother."
Tears sprang to Alex Parker's eyes. He had heard stories of this man, terrible stories of flaying alive and
burning, of tortures beyond belief.
There was a whump and a roar. Then Jerry Cochran came into full view, tall, grim, his eyes crazy, his
face so rigid it might be made of stone. In his hand was a black blowtorch gushing fire. Alex turned and
twisted on the rocking bed­stead. His mind swarmed with terrors. In the deep of the night when he was all
alone he had sweated out the possibil­ity of just this martyrdom, death by fire.
"If you answer my questions, I will first garrote you," Jerry Cochran said softly.
Alex wept openly. He already knew what he would do, he had thought all this out very carefully.
Inquisitors must understand themselves well enough to know what they will do under torture. "I'm sorry,
Jerry," he said between sobs. Then he fixed his mind on the Jesus prayer, his only weapon against the
agony of the flames: "Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with me, Jesuss—oh! Oh, GOD! AAAHHH!"
Jerry had held the flame against Alex's chest. There was a stink of burnt hair. "You're very sensitive,
Alex. I hardly touched you."
Alex felt his bladder let go. But they had prepared for that. He could feel that a towel was stuffed
between his legs. "Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with—"
The flames sent tidal waves of razor-sharp agony up his thighs as Jerry played the flame along his legs.
Skin popped and crackled. Oily smoke rose.
"We know your drinking companion is a reporter, Alex. What is his name?"
"Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with me." Alex stopped in confusion when the next application
didn't come. To his utter horror he felt Jerry pulling away the towel that had protected him.
"The Judists are celibate, I think," he said. "Well, I don't suppose it matters one way or the other, does it,
my friend? No more worries about keeping your vow."
When he felt the fire this time it was as if his insides were being torn out, as if all the flaming stars of
heaven had fallen on him. Wild with torment he shrieked, he bellowed until his throat cracked, he jerked
and twisted on the iron bedstead.
Nobody could hear him, not out here on one of the Night Church's vast country estates.
"Name him!"
"Qui-i-st! QUIST! QUIST!!"
"Ah."
"Stop! Jerry, I told you! Stop! Stop!"
With lazy strokes, Jerry moved the tongue of flame up and down Alex's legs from his crotch to the
searing, crackling bottoms of his feet. "QUIST! QUIST! OH, GOD!"
Jerry gazed at him with the hooded eyes of great passion. His face was flushed. "Now we'll get started
on your belly, OK, Alex?" He smiled a little. "Maybe if you tried the Jesus prayer some more it would help.
Or if you told me the names of the other scum in your cell!"
"I told you, QUIST!"
"He was a recent contact. A reporter indeed. What an amateurish attempt to harm us—attracting the
attention of a reporter. I want to know the other names, Alex, all of them!"