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of the priest in the middle of the blood-stained apartment. "We have to hope that right now, as much as anything else, Alexei is just looking for a shoulder to cry on.
    "Otherwise, there could be a lot more blood painting these walls before the night is out."
     
    "Go away!" the boy's voice shouted to her from the other side of the door. "Go away or I'll hurt you like I did the priest. Don't think I can't."
    Standing in the hallway outside the door to the boy's bedroom, Anderson felt a sudden tingling at the front of her face and the warmth of a spreading dampness underneath her nose. Putting her hand to it, she saw blood on her fingertips and realised her nose was bleeding. So much for knocking on the door to see if he's willing to come out, she thought. After all that's happened tonight, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised the kid's ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Doesn't matter though; if I'm going to be able to end this thing peacefully, I just have to go in there and hope he's in the mood to be talked down.
    Taking a deep breath, her psychic senses alert for any sign of a disturbance in the psi-flux that might warn of another impending attack, she pushed the door open. Finding that the door wasn't locked, she wondered whether it might be a good omen. No matter what the boy might say, if he really just wanted to be left alone, surely he would have locked the door behind himself? A tenuous line of reasoning, perhaps, but, one way or another, she was about to find out whether it was true.
    "Go away!" Her eyes adjusting to the shadowy semi-darkness before her as she stepped into the room, Anderson realised the boy's voice seemed to be coming from beneath the bed. "I'll hurt you. Haven't they told you? I'm the Devil. I'm evil. I can kill you just like I killed the priest."
    "No, you aren't the Devil, Alexei." Anderson stood just inside the open doorway, careful not to advance further into the room in case the boy felt threatened. She talked calmly and quietly. "You aren't possessed. You aren't a monster. Everything the priest and your parents told you was wrong. They were wrong, Alexei. You're not the Devil. You're psychic."
    For a moment, there was silence. As she began to worry that perhaps she had broached the subject too bluntly, the boy finally spoke.
    "Father Grigori said there was no such thing as psychics." The boy's voice beneath the bed was terse and wary. "He said psychics were a story made up by the Judges. He said they lied about things like that 'cause they wanted to gather up all the witches and use their powers for themselves."
    "Witches?" Remembering Jansen's comments earlier, she slowly came to understand what the boy meant. "Like me, you mean? Father Grigori told you the Psi-Judges were witches?"
    "That's right." Still hiding beneath the bed, the boy answered her. "He said you were witches in league with the Devil. That's how come you had your powers. 'The Judges have turned away from the laws of Grud. That's what he told Momma and Poppa, but he said if we were righteous, we would follow the laws written in the Holy Book. The law that says 'Suffer not a witch to live.'"
    "And do you think Father Grigori was right?" Cautiously, Anderson took a step forward into the room, testing the waters. "Do you think he was right to call you evil? Do you think he was right to beat you?"
    "No!" As the boy shouted, Anderson felt a wave of psychic force surging towards her. Desperately trying to raise her own defences, she wondered if she had made a mistake in confronting the boy so directly. Abruptly, the threat receded, the psychic wave losing its power before it reached her. "He was wrong." The boy's voice became quiet and sorrowful, the words broken up by ragged pauses as he started to cry. "But Momma and Poppa- they let the priest hurt me- they let him beat me..."
    "I guess they were frightened, Alexei." Anderson's tone was conciliatory, but inwardly it sickened her to find herself trying to justify his