could barely hold it.
    He was caught in the drape. Tangled somehow. Jesus. The front sight on the Heckler & 
Koch was not prominent, barely more than a nubbin, but it was snagged in the liner, 
caught as securely as a fishhook.
    A wet guttural snarl issued from the mini-kin, and it gnashed its teeth, trying to 
bite his fingers, striving to sink its claws into him again.
    With a zipper like sound, the liner material tore away from the gun sight.
    The creature’s cold, slick tail slithered around Tom-my’s wrist, and the feel of it 
was so singularly repulsive that he gagged with disgust.
    Frantically he flailed out from beneath the entangling drape, and with all of his 
might, he threw the beast as though firing off a killer pitch in a baseball game.
    He heard the damn thing shrieking as it was hurled across the room, and then heard 
the shriek cut off abruptly as it thudded hard against the far wall, perhaps hard enough 
to snap its spine. But he didn’t see it hit the plaster, because in the process of 
freeing himself from the drape, he pulled the brass rod out of its supports, and the 
entire assemblage - rod and two panels of material, trailing cords - fell on him.
    Cursing, he tossed the blinding cowl of faux brocade off his head and thrashed loose 
of the drapery cords, feeling like Gulliver resisting capture in the land of Lilliput.
    The hideous mini-kin was crumpled on the carpet against the baseboard at the far side 
of the room, near the door. For an instant Tommy thought the thing was dead or at least 
badly stunned. But then it shook itself, moved.
    Thrusting the pistol in front of him, Tommy took a step toward the intruder, 
intending to finish it off. The mound of fallen drapes snared his feet. He stumbled, lost 
his balance, and slammed to the floor.
    With his left cheek flat against the carpet, he now shared the murderous mini-kin’s 
plane of view, though from a tilted perspective. His vision blurred for a second when his 
head hit the floor, but it cleared at once. He was staring at his diminutive adversary, 
which had risen to its feet.
    The creature stood as erect as a man, trailing its six-inch black tail, still dressed 
in - and mostly concealed by - the rags of the doll’s skin in which it had hidden.
    Outside, the storm was reaching a crescendo, ham-mering the night with a greater 
barrage of lightning and thunder than it had produced thus far. The ceiling light and the 
desk lamp flickered but did not go out.
    The creature sprinted toward Tommy, white cotton cloth flapping like tattered banners.
    Tommy’s right arm was stretched out in front of him, and the pistol was still firmly 
in his grip. He raised the weapon perhaps four inches off the floor, squeeze-cocked it, 
and fired two shots in quick succession.
    One of the rounds must have hit the mini-kin, because it flew off its feet. It 
tumbled backward all the way to the wall against which Tommy had thrown it earlier.
    Proportionately, the slug from the.40 Smith & Wesson cartridge was to this beast what 
a shell from a major piece of battlefield artillery would be to a human being; the damn 
thing should have been as devastated - as stone dead - as any man would have been after 
taking a massive mortar round in the chest. It should have been smashed, shattered, blown 
to bits.
    Instead, the small figure appeared to be intact. Sprawled in a tangle of limbs and 
scorched white cotton cloth. Racked by spasms. Tail slithering spasmodically back and 
forth on the floor. Wisps of smoke rising from it. But intact.
    Tommy raised his throbbing head for a better view. He didn’t see any splatters of 
blood on the carpet or on the wall. Not one drop.
    The beast stopped shuddering and rolled onto its back. Then it sat up and sighed. The 
sigh wasn’t one of weariness but of pleasure, as though being shot point-blank in the 
chest had been an interesting and gratifying experience.
    Tommy pushed up onto his knees.
    Across the office, the mini-kin put its black-and-yellow-mottled hands on its 
scorched, smoking abdomen. No it actually reached into its abdomen, digging with its 
claws, and wrenched something out of itself.
    Even from a distance of fifteen feet, Tommy was pretty sure that the lumpish object 
in the beast’s hands was the misshapen slug from the.40-caliber cartridge. The mini-kin 
tossed the chunk of lead aside.
    Shaky, weak-kneed, slightly nauseous, Tommy got to his feet.
    He felt his scalp, where the puncture wounds from the beast’s claws still stung. When 
he checked his fingertips, he saw only tiny dots of blood.
    He hadn’t been seriously hurt.
    Yet.
    His adversary rose to its feet as well.
    Although he was seven times taller than the mini-kin and perhaps thirty times its 
weight, Tommy was so terrified that he felt as though he might pee in his pants.
    Chip Nguyen, hardboiled detective, would never lose control of himself in that 
fashion, humiliate himself to that extent, but Tommy Phan no longer gave a damn what Chip 
Nguyen would do. Chip Nguyen was an idiot, a whiskey-drinking fool who put too much faith 
in guns, martial arts, and tough talk. The most precisely executed and powerfully 
delivered Tae Kwan Do kick wouldn’t stop a supernaturally animated devil doll that could 
take a 40-caliber round in its guts and keep on ticking.
    Now there was an indisputable truth. Not the kind of truth you would hear on the 
evening news or read in the newspaper. Not a truth they taught in school or church. Not a 
truth that would be acclaimed by Carl Sagan or the scientific establishment. Truth 
nonetheless, from Tommy’s point of view, truth even if the only forum that might report 
it was a rag like the National Enquirer in a story about the ominous rise of demonic 
presences in our apocalyptic age and the inevitable forthcoming battle between Satan 
Incarnate and Saint Elvis on the eve of the new millennium.
    Pointing the P7 at the mini-kin, Tommy felt a mad laugh swelling in him, but he 
choked it down. He wasn’t insane. He had gotten past that fear. It was God Himself who 
must be mad - and the universe a lunatic asylum - if He made room in Creation for 
something like this predatory gremlin in a rag-doll disguise.
    If the mini-kin was a supernatural presence, as it seemed to be, resistance to it 
might be stupid and pointless, but Tommy couldn’t very well throw the gun aside, bare his 
throat, and wait for the killing bite. At least the round from the pistol had knocked the 
thing down and temporarily stunned it. He might not be able to kill it with the gun, but 
at least he could fend it off.
    Until he ran out of ammunition.
    He had fired three rounds. One when the thing had dropped from the drapery rod onto 
his head. Two more when he had been lying on the floor.
    Ten rounds remained in the thirteen-shot magazine. And in his bedroom closet was a 
box of ammunition, which would buy more time if he could get to it.
    The doll-thing cocked its rag-swaddled head and regarded him with a fierce green-eyed 
hunger. The strips of cotton hanging over its face looked like white dreadlocks.
    Thus far the gunfire had probably been pretty much masked by the peals of thunder. 
Eventually, however, the neighbours in this peaceful city of Irvine would realize that a 
battle was being waged next door, and they would call the cops.
    The doll-thing hissed at him.