4

Bill came in, entering her hospital room like an unarmed man entering a gladiator ring. "Are you okay, Carol?"

Carol's control almost dissolved at the sight of him. She remembered this afternoon—Bill carrying her to the couch, covering her with a blanket, calling the first aid squad, and staying by her side during the ambulance ride.

"Oh, Bill!" she said, sobbing.

She sat up and lifted her arms, aching to embrace him. Her unaccountable lust of a few hours ago was gone now, gone as if it had never been. This was for friendship, from a deep, simple need for someone solid to hold, to cling to.

But Bill only grasped one of her hands and looked down at her with worried eyes. That had always been his way, it seemed—when she had needed some hands-on support after her parents were killed, he had backed off, just as he was doing now.

But who can blame him for being gun-shy after the show I put on a few hours ago?

She felt her face redden with the memory of it.

"Please, Bill," she said. "I'm so sorry about what I did to you before. I don't know what happened to me. It was like someone else had taken me over."

"It's okay," he said softly, smiling and patting her hand. "We both survived."

"But the baby almost didn't."

His hand tightened on hers. "Baby?"

"Yes! Dr. Gallen says there's every chance the baby's still okay."

"You're pregnant?"

"Four to six weeks along. Maybe that's why I acted so crazy back at the mansion. They say the hormone changes in pregnancy make some women do crazy things."

"I don't know much about that sort of thing," he said, grinning shyly. "But please don't ever do anything like that again. I know they say beware the Ides of March, but you almost gave me a heart attack!" He paused as his smile faded. "A baby—"

His voice choked off and she saw tears spring into his eyes as he worked to speak again.

Finally he managed to say, "Carol, that's wonderful!"

She shook her head and then began to cry herself, unable to hold it in any longer.

"Not so wonderful!" she said finally. "Why couldn't this have happened a year ago? It stinks! Jim's child—and he'll never see him! He wanted a child so bad and we weren't sure we could ever have one, and now we do but he's gone and the baby will be born without a father! Why does God play such rotten, dirty tricks?"

"I don't know. But maybe it's not so rotten. I mean, in a way it means that Jim is still alive, doesn't it?"

Struck suddenly by the wonderfulness of the thought, Carol slowly leaned back on the pillow and allowed herself to float on the warmth and comfort it brought.

5

Grace felt cold all over. She rubbed her hands together as she spoke.

"Then you think we played into the hands of this… this Presence when we went out to Monroe. Do you think it was influencing us? Do you think we've been tricked all along?"

"Never!" Martin cried. "How can you say such a thing! The Spirit was with us, guiding us!"

"Wait, Martin," Brother Robert said. "Let us hear Mr. Veilleur's answer. Explain, please."

"Well," Mr. Veilleur said, looking older than when he had arrived here earlier this afternoon, "there are two sides to this. I think you've all been touched by the other side, the one that would resist the Presence. The reason isn't clear yet, but I think the one who has been chosen to stand against the Presence will emerge soon."

"The way is clear enough, isn't it?" Martin said. "The baby must never be born!"

"Carol is my niece!" Grace said, a fiercely protective urge rising within her. "Look what happened to Jim! I won't allow her to be harmed! Never!"

"Of course not!" Brother Robert said, glaring at Martin. "The girl is innocent! To harm her is to sink to the level of the evil we wish to oppose!"

"Then what," Martin cried, his expression anguished, "do we do?"

Grace could think of nothing to say. Mr. Veilleur was silent.

Brother Robert turned to Grace. "Do we accept that the Antichrist dwells within your niece?"

Grace turned away. She did not want to accept that, but it explained so much. It explained her own reaction that night a month ago when Carol and Jim visited. Carol must have been pregnant then, and Grace must have sensed the Evil One within her. And later that very night she had unconsciously turned a sacred hymn into blasphemy.

Silently she nodded. Martin, too, nodded. Mr. Veilleur sat motionless.

The monk's voice was soft. "Then we all must also agree that we cannot allow that child to be born."

"Carol is innocent!" Grace cried. "You cannot harm her!"

"I have no wish to. In fact, I forbid it. So we must find a way to strike at this unholy child without harming the woman who carries him. We need a way to cause a miscarriage, or to convince her"—he glanced heaven ward—"I never thought I would ever say this—to have an abortion."

Grace felt her blood turn to ice, and then to fire, a holy fire of renewed faith as the slowly growing spark of an earlier idea burst into an epiphany of diamond-clear light. Grace was lifted on wings of rapture as she wondered at the glory of God and His intricate ways.

"Oh, glory!" she cried.

"What's wrong?" Martin said, stepping back from her.

"The Chosen One, the one who will strike the fatal blow against the Antichrist. I know who it is."

Slowly, still feeling as if she were floating, Grace turned and walked into her bedroom.

This was the chance she had been praying for all these years. With this one deed she could undo all the sins she had committed in her youth. With this one death, the stains of all the other deaths on her soul would be cleansed.

Awed by the perfect symmetry of it all, she removed the bottom drawer from her dresser and reached into the open space below. Her questing fingertips found the dusty leather box she had placed there so many years ago. She pulled it out. It was as wide and as high as a cigar box but twice as long.

The tools of her salvation.

Ignoring the dust that coated it, she clutched the box to her breast and gazed into the mirror, remembering.

She had started in the mid-thirties when she had been twenty or so. After a few years, all the young girls in trouble had come to call her Amazin' Grace, for she was a trained nurse who was caring and careful with them and knew how to keep them from getting infections after her work was done. Eventually she came to see the sinfulness of what she was doing, and had put it all behind her.

Now she could only wonder if her becoming Amazin' Grace had been part of God's plan all along.

"I'm the Chosen One," she said, beaming at Brother Robert, Martin, and Mr. Veilleur as she returned to the front room.

"Chosen for what?" Martin said.

Grace opened up the box to show the curettes and dilators she had used for so many abortions.

"Chosen to stop the Antichrist."