Liz stood there trembling for a long time, then was struck by the injustice of having to cringe terrified in her own home from a man without any good reason to threaten her. Throwing back the curtain, she lifted her fist to the angry Proctor and made a show of picking up and dialing the phone. She pretended to be talking boldly and angrily, in a voice loud enough to carrying faintly through the window, and the farmer's resolve seemed to weaken. After hanging up, she stood there smiling at him with her hands on her hips, until Proctor turned, tossed the axe handle into the back of his pickup truck, and took off with an angry spinning of the wheels.

Apparently, he knew nothing of the tension between her and Clete. So much the better.

Up until the last couple of months, before Nancy's rape by Lobo and the beating by Clete that had turned the dog renegade, Liz had enjoyed living in Pickford's Meadows very much. She had had many friends and a lovely life. But now she couldn't walk the streets with her head held high. She found herself ostracized by people who once had been quite friendly and now it seemed that her only friend was, again, Lobo.

Lobo had begun to visit her again. Liz's house backed onto the woods ringing the small town and it was easy for him to come and go unseen. She usually left her bedroom window open so that he could come and go at will, and it was a pleasant surprise, just last week, when he had shown up with three more dogs, his young offspring through his mating with a bitch in the next valley. They were Dusty, the clever one, Sam, the swift one, and Bruno, the giant, whose huge inhuman cock exceeded even Lobo's in size. She often fed them, sometimes enjoying their maleness on lonely nights, and heaven knew there were quite a few of those since Nancy Pace's experience with Lobo.

Liz was jerked out of her reverie by a knock on the door. After making a check through the window that it was not Proctor returning to harass her, she opened to a young couple on the porch, a lovely, dark-haired young woman and a blondish and slender young man who sported designer stubble and a hand-held tape recorder.