“Authorities suspect foul play but have declined to comment on a possible connection with the case of Sarah Hart. Hart disappeared from the same parking lot just under one year ago. Her badly decomposed remains were found several months later in a wooded area along the Missouri River. Anyone with information should contact the Major Case Squad at the number on the bottom of your screen.”

Eldon Porter was paying little attention to the prattle of the reporters. They were nothing more than background noise filling the small motel room. He listened with only passing interest to the periodic weather updates and even less concern for the actual news.

Pipes sang a pained lament once again as he twisted the faucet handle on a rust-stained basin that barely clung to the wall-supported more by the deteriorating drain pipe beneath than the corroded lag bolts that were supposed to be doing the job. He frowned at a cracked rectangle of glass mounted on the wall over the canted sink, peering into a kidney-shaped section where the silver had not yet peeled from the back. With no more than a sigh, he automatically set about the task of washing his right hand. There was a time in his life, not that long ago, when he would have washed his hands. Not the singular, hand. But the plural, hands-as in two.

However, there is no reason to wash something you almost never use, and that is how it had been for almost a year now.

Ever since that night on the bridge-ever since the warlock, Rowan Gant, had tried to kill him with something so mundane as a bullet.

Of course, Gant had been left with no other choice than to turn to such a commonplace method of attack to save himself. Eldon’s devotion had prevailed, and he had not been taken in by the sorcery and tricks. He had seen through the chicanery that masked the true depravity of the Satan-spawned heretic. The mundane was all that was left, for he was immune to the mystical. Had he only realized that the warlock would be carrying a pistol, he would have been triumphant.