‘Come on. Let’s see some enthusiasm down there. Let’s see you get your mouth round it!’
Vee began to weep, silently, but as she wept she did what she was told, and thrust her tongue deeper between her sister’s thighs. Oxnard watched her appreciatively for a while, then he asked Season under his breath, ‘You know what I’m going to do? That’s right, you guessed it. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to need your help, so when I start to push you’d better start pushing back.’
Season nodded dumbly, her eyes still closed. All she was thinking was: do it, do it, for the love of everything in the whole world do it, and then let me alone.
‘Push!’ commanded Oxnard. One of the Angels whooped, and said, ‘That’s doing it, Oxnard! That’s really doing it!’
‘Push!’ Oxnard shouted, even louder.
Season pushed, but her muscles were too clenched, and she couldn’t admit him even a half-inch. He furiously grabbed a handful of her hair, and wrenched it so hard that she could hear the roots tearing.
‘Push,’ he told her. ‘And this time don’t fight me. Because if you fight me, I’m going to kill your little girl, and you, too, and everybody in die whole festering house! You think the cops are going to care? The whole of LA is littered with dead people! You think they’re going to care about one or two more?’
Season fought back the panic which was rising in her chest. ‘Okay,’ she said, in a barely audible whisper. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Gradually, gritting her teeth, she opened herself up to him. He grunted with effort as he worked his way up inside her. She could feel nothing but intense, wincing pain, as her mind said yes, you have to, but her body resisted.
For a few seconds, the three of them were twisted and locked together in a painful tableau of mutual hatred and physical stress.
‘Isn’t this it!’ panted Oxnard. ‘Isn’t this it! Don’t you dumb screwed-up canyon-dwelling broads do anything for kicks? Don’t you know that a woman with any class would rather die than do this? You cheap cunts!’
From outside the house, without warning, there was a dull, echoless thump. Oxnard raised his head. ‘What was that?’ he said. ‘Gene – what the hell was that?’ Immediately, without any conscious effort. Season expelled him.
There was another thump, louder than the first. The Angel called Gene opened the kitchen door and went out on to the white-painted wooden landing outside. Season, clenched-up and shaking, backed away from the sink, and Vee climbed slowly to her feet.
‘Oxnard – it’s the bikes, dammit!’ yelped Gene. ‘Somebody’s blown up the bikes!’
Oxnard shouted, ‘What? What the hell do you mean?’ and stormed across to the door. Outside the house, on the driveway, the Angels had parked their five motorcycles; and now two of them were blazing fiercely.
That’s my bike!’ yelled Oxnard. ‘That’s my BMW, for God’s sake!’
He started to scamper down the wooden stairs, his shirt-tails flapping in the breeze. The Angel called Gene followed closely behind him. Together, they ran across the driveway until they reached the fiery motorcycles, shielding their faces against the flames. But it was far too late: the motorcycles’ polished chrome was already brown from heat, and the fuel tanks were spouting blazing fuel all over the cylinders. The air rippled, and there was a strong smell of burning rubber.
Oxnard turned around. ‘If those people did this—’ he raged. ‘If any one of those people did this—’
He didn’t get the chance to say any more. There was a sharp, distinctive crack, which any expert would have recognised as the report of a powerful hunting rifle. Oxnard’s shirt was blasted with a pattern of bright red blood, and he toppled backwards as if someone had given him a shove in the chest.
The Angel who had been holding Carl said, ‘What goes on out there?’ and took two or three steps towards the door. Carl lunged for the cutlery drawer, tugged it right out on to the floor with a crash, and scrabbled for a knife. The other Angel tried to stop him, but Carl shoved him away with his elbow. The Angel missed his footing, reached for the edge of the sink, and steadied himself. But then Carl was on top of him with maddened ferocity, both arms upraised, and a twelve-inch carving knife in each hand. The Angel raised one hand to protect himself, but Carl’s first carving knife chopped right through the palm of his hand and out through the back. The second knife caught the Angel in the side of the neck, and crunched almost six inches through solid muscle. The boy reeled, bleeding, and trying uselessly to shake the first knife out of his hand.
The tall Angel at the door had gone by now, running down the outside stairs and trying to reach his bike. There was another brisk rifle shot, and he staggered, tripped, and toppled sideways into a flower-bed, dying noisily amongst the azaleas.
Season, almost blind with fear, ran through to the living-room. She said, ‘Sally! Sally!’ in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own. But as soon as she saw what had happened, she slowed, and lowered her arms, and walked the rest of the way across the floor as if she were being filmed in slow-motion. She was suddenly aware of the sunlight, and the breeze, and billowy drapes that rose and fell.
Granger Hughes was standing in the centre of the room, smiling and holding Sally’s hand. The only sign that the Angel called Carlo had been there was his black Magnum revolver on the glass-topped coffee table, and a broken lampshade. As Season knelt down in front of Sally and reached out her arms for her, quivering with the fright of what had happened, her eyes glistening with tears, Granger laid his hands on both of them in what was almost a benediction.
A young man in a clipped brown beard and a black T-shirt came in through the french windows, holding a rifle over his arm.
‘That’s all of them,’ he reported, quietly.
Season hugged Sally closer, and cried. They both cried. Then Carl came in with Vee, dabbing his mouth with a bloody kitchen towel.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Granger.
‘Thanks to you, yes,’ said Carl. He looked down at his safari suit and realised it was splashed in squiggles of the Angel’s blood. ‘My God, I don’t know what happened. How did you get here?’
‘I was coming up this morning to see if you wanted to join us down at the Church of the Practical Miracle,’ said Granger, gently and almost absent-mindedly stroking Season’s hair. ‘When we drove up from the road, we saw the bikes. That’s all. We were suspicious about what was going on, so Helmut here went around the back to the pool-deck and saw one of the Angels in the living-room with Sally. The dull bulb had laid his gun down on the table; I guess he didn’t think he was going to get any trouble from a nine-year-old girl. So Helmut crept in behind him and gave him the benefit of five years’ karate lessons.’
‘Is he dead?’ asked Carl.
Helmut, the bearded one, rubbed his knuckles. ‘If he isn’t,’ he grinned, ‘he’ll be lying there wishing he was.’
‘Now then,’ Granger admonished him. ‘Love thine enemy, even in defeat.’
Carl pulled a Mexican blanket off the sofa, brought it across, and draped it around Season’s shoulders. Vee had already pulled on her sun-dress again, although it was back to front.
‘We’re all pretty shocked,’ Carl told Granger. ‘I guess Season and Vee are both going to feel like a good hot soak in the tub, and we’re all going to need a brandy. You’ll have to forgive us if we act a little odd. I thought we were all going to die for a moment there, and what these girls have been through doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘I’d like to stay and help, if I can,’ said Granger. ‘But won’t you think about coming down to join us? From what I hear, there are mobs attacking private houses all over. We saw five or six houses burning along Topanga Canyon alone.’