Book excerpt: In a peaceful Vermont courtroom, humanity will be called to trial by endless evil. Ancient and implacable -- armed with sensuality, delusion and horrible death -- it will join itself to human weakness in an unholy alliance. Against it stand only imperfect human beings, caught in a world-spanning struggle in which they have everything to lose -- for all of us -- and only human strength to help them. Not since The Exorcist has there been such a powerful novel of demonic possession as Son of the Endless Night; perhaps never has there been a novel that so weds supernatural horror with human weakness as to make the two inextricably one.