Exorcist Road
easy.”
    Danny grabbed at Bittner, but with a single jab Bittner sent Danny reeling toward the wall.
    “I’ll rape your daughter, Bittner,” the Casey-thing said. “I’ll make her beg for mercy before I disembowel her.”
    “You’ll be dead first, you bastard.”
    The monstrous face on the bed changed, a new idea occurring to the presence inhabiting Casey. “Maybe I’ll make you watch while I do her!”
    Sutherland tried to intercede, but Bittner thrust him roughly aside. Bittner cocked a fist.
    The awful grin on Casey’s face split wider. “Give it to me, Jack. Give it to me hard .”
    Bittner complied.
    The boy’s head whipped sideways with the blow, a splat of blood stippling the ivory headboard.
    “Don’t touch him!” Sutherland shouted.
    But this time Bittner’s rage brooked no interruption. He grabbed Casey by the shirtfront and began shaking him, the boy’s head thrashing up and down in crisp, brutal arcs.
    “Leave him alone, Jack!” Danny shouted, but the moment Danny reached for Bittner, the big man whirled, seized Danny by the shoulders and head-butted him. The sound made me ill, like a blunt ax chunking into an oak tree. Danny staggered back, a crimson starburst of blood glistening between his eyebrows.
    Sutherland made for Bittner again, and while the older priest did not succeed in wrestling the giant cop away from Casey, he was able to deter him long enough to allow Ron and me to join the fray.
    Grabbing hold of one of Bittner’s railroad-tie-sized arms, I marveled at Sutherland’s ability to keep the man at bay so long. Likely attracted by the cacophony, Liz had joined us too. She was gamely hauling back on the collar of Bittner’s coat. Danny lay in a heap near the wall, apparently knocked insensate from Bittner’s attack.
    The four of us had just begun to achieve a measure of progress in our attempts to move Bittner away from the boy when Casey spoke up again in a new voice, one that chilled me with its wheedling cruelty.
    “Oh my , Jack,” the voice said in a tone so derisive and full of revelation that we all turned and looked at the boy, “I never would’ve guessed it of you. You love your daughter all right, but you lust after her friends.”
    Bittner’s eyes flared. “You son of a bitch.”
    “You dream of bending them over, of punishing them, of—”
    I lost the next part in the melee that ensued, which was just as well. The things Casey was saying were some of the vilest I’d ever heard. And coming from a priest who has taken thousands of confessions, that’s saying a great deal.
    Bittner slugged Sutherland in the gut. Sutherland went down, and without him there to aid us, I knew our resistance wouldn’t last long.
    Ron shouted something about brutality, but whatever it was only served to incite Bittner further. He grabbed Ron by the face and bounced the back of his head off the wall. Ron slumped to the floor, looking like he wouldn’t get up anytime soon.
    With Liz and me still clinging to the huge cop like barnacles, Bittner waded toward Casey.
    “Tell them!” Casey crooned, the sour odor of his breath making my eyes water. Casey laughed, the smell of rotten eggs and dead insects wafting over us. “Tell them how you dream of deflowering your daughter’s friends! How you imagine them spreading their legs for you and writhing in pain while you rut away your frustrations!”
    “Shut your sick mouth,” Bittner growled and backhanded Casey in the face. Blood squirted from the boy’s nose, drenching his already blood-spattered T-shirt so that it now looked as if Casey were wearing a red bib.
    Liz and I struggled with Bittner, but our attempts had little effect. I’m ashamed to say I was the next one to be discarded. The mad cop half spun and cracked my underjaw with a cudgel fist. My jaw aflame, I collapsed and watched in dismay as he tossed Liz toward where her husband lay against the wall.
    “Oh, Jack,” Casey moaned in a voice eerily like a young

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