And as she repeated it, Ruby kept her eyes half closed. She refused to watch what she knew was happening.
He always began with Amy, in the west, though Ruby had no idea why. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the direction and was only because Amy was oldest.
But I can’t look. It makes me weak when I look. It scares me so much that I forget to keep my shell wrapped around me.
Above the steady chanting came a sudden loud moan, and the sound made her look despite herself.
He was standing behind Amy, both hands folded on top of her head. His eyes were closed, and he continued to chant, his face lifted toward the ceiling—or toward heaven.
No, not toward heaven. God didn’t choose him. God wouldn’t want this, I’m sure of it.
Amy knelt, her head bowed. Eyes closed. She had stopped chanting; her mouth was open, slack, wet. She moaned again, her body visibly shivering, jerking.
Ruby knew what was happening to her friend. Ruth and Father and her mother might call it something holy, but she knew better. It wasn’t holy at all. It was obscene. And the fact that Amy remained a virgin and that she felt nothing but pleasure during the act didn’t change the fact that it was rape.
Nobody needed to explain that to Ruby.
And nobody needed to explain to her the terrifying fact that Father stole more than just his Chosen ones’ innocence. Every time she looked at her mother’s face, or Ruth’s face, or the faces of so many of the women of the church, the women who had once been Chosen themselves, Ruby was offered a stark reminder.
Father stole life.
Father stole self.
A little bit at a time. A Ceremony. A Youth Ritual. A Testimony. Whatever he chose to call it, the end result was the same.
He destroyed.
——
“So Bambi is okay?” Tessa asked.
“She was at breakfast this morning and seemed the same as always.”
“So he hasn’t drained away her personality yet.”
“No. That process seems to take at least a dozen private visits with Samuel, over a span of months. Or, at least, it did. Things do seem to be moving faster now, happening quicker or more often. Like that black hole I compared him to, he’s sucking in energy at an ever-increasing rate.”
Hollis muttered, “A psychic vampire. Tessa and I talked about that after she told me about the dream, but in the sane light of day it sounds a lot worse.”
“It is worse,” Sawyer said. “Dracula seems sweet and cuddly by comparison.”
Nobody laughed.
DeMarco checked his watch and swore softly. “I need to get back. If everybody’s reasonably up to speed, I suggest we start talking about what we’re going to do next.”
“We have to help Ruby,” Tessa said.
“She does seem to be one of the keys,” Hollis said. “The other spirit that visited me—this Andrea I haven’t been able to identify—told me back in Venture that we had to help Ruby. Wasn’t by name then, but this morning she was a lot clearer about it being Ruby. Though I don’t have a clue what ‘Look for her in the water’ means, Andrea definitely said Ruby could help us stop Samuel.”
“Ruby’s only twelve,” DeMarco said. “How can she help?”
“I don’t know.” Hollis frowned at him. “Can’t you read her?”
“No. Until I caught Samuel watching her a couple of times in the last few weeks, I wasn’t even sure she was a latent.”
“She’s not a latent, she’s active. And we think she may have a really nifty ability or two—”
Tessa interrupted to say, “My car’s still up there; that’s my excuse for going back. Not to try to get her out today,” she added quickly. “But maybe if I can talk to her—”
“You need to be very careful anywhere near the Compound,” DeMarco warned, and all of them heard the faint emphasis on the first word.
“Why? The vulnerability is just pretend, you know. It—”
“No,” DeMarco said. “It isn’t. You are vulnerable, Tessa. What happened to you in the Compound today, that uneasy sense of being watched, of being threatened? That was Samuel.” “How do you know that?”
“Because while he was trying to push his way into your mind, trying to affect and influence you, I was trying to hold him off.”
“You weren’t in my mind. Either of you. I would have known.”
DeMarco shook his head. “That’s not what I was doing. Like I said, I can’t send, which means I don’t have the ability to reach into someone else’s mind, not like that. But my shielding ability has been . . . evolving.”
“Fancy that,” Quentin murmured.
DeMarco ignored him. “Several times in recent weeks, I’ve been able to project a kind of shield, a barrier, between Samuel and his target. It’s not much more than a dampening field, but I believe it has had some protective effect. I have to know who his target is, and I have to have some time to prepare. And to even attempt it, I always make sure I’m alone and likely to be undisturbed, because every time I try, I take the chance of being discovered.”
Tessa was pale. “How did you know I was his target this morning?”
“Because he knew you were coming.”
“What?”
“Before Ruth got back to the Compound, he knew you were coming. He told me you’d ask to look around by yourself and that it was to be allowed.” DeMarco’s smile was hardly worthy of the name. “He does that sort of thing sometimes, casually with one or another of us, as though reminding us of his . . .divine powers.”
“Well,” Quentin said in a practical tone, “if he really has had some kind of vision of his apocalypse, an actual prophecy, then it’s a given he’s a functional precog. And, I’m guessing, an exceptionally powerful one. Which means it could very well be all but impossible to catch him by surprise.”
Galen said matter-of-factly, “We may not be able to sneak up on him, but we can surprise him. I can shut down his entire security net with the push of one button.”
DeMarco looked over at him. “I saw you, by the way. Last night. You’re slipping.”
“Bullshit. You just sensed me because you can do that—and because my shield happens to be tuned to your frequency.”
“That sounds vaguely—” Sawyer decided not to finish that sentence. Even in his mind.
“Maybe it’s an odd frequency,” Hollis said almost absently, “because you have one of the strangest auras I’ve ever seen. It’s almost pure white.”
Polite, DeMarco said, “And why are you wasting energy trying to see auras right now?”
“I wasn’t trying to—until Tessa’s got my attention. Tessa, what’re you doing? Because your aura’s gone all strange.”
“Strange how?” Sawyer asked, wondering what it would be like to see people bathed in various colors of light.
“Sparkly. Like she’s expending an unusual amount of energy. Tessa?”
“Just a little experiment,” Tessa said. She drew a breath and let it out slowly, as though relieving some strain, then looked at the serious faces around the table. “Aside from Sawyer and Hollis, do any of the rest of you see anything unusual about me?”
DeMarco said, “Only if you mean the dog. And I didn’t see that until the chief thought about it.”
“Still creepy,” Sawyer told him.
“Sorry. You were thinking loudly.”
Sawyer wasn’t quite sure how to deny that, so he didn’t try.
Bishop frowned at Sawyer for a moment, then looked at Tessa. He went utterly still, his eyes narrowing. Then, softly, he said, “I’ll be damned.”
“Huh,” Quentin said. “Maybe we do have a plan. Or at least a better start to one.”
Seventeen
LET OUT a long, guttural moan and began to sway. Before she could topple over, Father smoothly took her candle and Ruth appeared out of nowhere to catch her. Held in the older woman’s arms, Amy continued to jerk and moan for seconds longer. Her face was flushed, her slack mouth wore a blissful smile, and she r
an her shaking hands down over her body from breasts to thighs in a gesture so sensual it made Ruby’s stomach lurch sickly.
Still chanting, Father placed Amy’s candle in the tall copper holder closest to her circle. And while he did that, Ruth was silently arranging Amy’s limp body on the floor—faceup, her head on the little velvet pillow and her arms spread wide, feet together and just touching the base of the copper stand holding her candle.
Amy’s lips began to move as she resumed chanting.
Theresa was next, and though Ruby tried not to watch it all happen again, she was unable to look away. Her heart was thudding as if she’d been running and running, and her mouth was so dry it was difficult to keep chanting, and she was desperately afraid that her shell was not going to be enough to protect her this time.
When Father was done with Theresa, Ruth laid her out on the floor in the same way, arms wide, toes touching the candle holder, and Theresa also resumed the chant, her voice languid. Always before, Father had come to Ruby next, but this time he went to Mara instead. And her experience was visibly different from that of the other girls. Father took more time with her, and it seemed to Ruby that Mara was slower to respond to . . . whatever it was he was doing to her. Maybe because she was only eleven and this was her first time.
Ruby and Brooke had talked about their first times, and both agreed that it was weird and scary—and not at all pleasant. Their skin tingled, their scalps crawled, and it was difficult to breathe. But both of them had shells, and they hadn’t been at all sure what a first time was supposed to feel like.
They had simply copied what the other girls did, how they behaved, and they pretended to enjoy their Becoming. Father had seemed satisfied by that.
But Ruby was alone now, the only one of the girls with a protective shell, and she wasn’t at all sure it was going to protect her this time.
All she did know was that she was next.
She was last.
And when Father turned toward her finally, there was something in his face she had never seen before, an odd smile, a curious light in his eyes.
Then she saw something in his true face, in that mask over the dark and hungry thing she had seen earlier, that thing she felt sure could swallow the world.
It was knowledge, awareness.
He knows.
“Ruby,” he said softly. “You’ve been naughty, my child. I’m afraid you must be punished.” And he stepped around behind her.
“I think the so-called plan stinks,” Sawyer said.
Hollis looked at him with slightly lifted brows, then glanced at Tessa. “You know, I think I’ll take my laptop up to my room. Check in at the office. Do a few other things to kill a little time. Or maybe I’ll take a nap, because it’s been a really long and eventful day.”
“Don’t go on my account,” Sawyer called after her.
Tessa leaned back against the kitchen counter, waiting for the coffeemaker to finish its work, and said mildly, “We really don’t have a lot of options, you know. When it comes to a plan.”
Despite her seeming calm, he knew she was tense and on edge. He could feel it. Almost as if he had a hand on her. Which he very badly wanted. Even though he knew that, once again, his timing was, to say the least, off.
“We’re assuming too much,” Sawyer said, doing his best to keep his mind on business. And even as he forced himself to remember that, all the risks of what they were going to attempt flooded in and nearly stole his breath. Christ, we’re all out of our minds. “For starters, we’re assuming that the weird energy inside the Compound is going to affect every psychic’s abilities.”
“Because energy fields do affect us. And that one certainly affected me. It’s affected DeMarco. And it affected you.”
“I’m still not so sure about that.”
“I’m sure. And so is Bishop.”
“Yeah? And what makes you both so sure I can control it?”
“You’re—what? Thirty-eight?”
“Thirty-six.”
Tessa nodded. “And became an active psychic in your teens.”
“I started shorting out electronics, is what I did.”
“It’s all about energy, Sawyer. You’ve spent about twenty years learning how to dampen down your own energy field. That can be a very valuable ability, especially when it’s enhanced by what’s going on in the Compound.”
“Yeah, right. Assuming it works like that. Assuming I can do what I need to do at will. And there’s no guarantee of either.” “No guarantee anywhere.” Tessa shook her head. “But the one thing we’re all agreed on is that we can’t just wait around for Samuel to make his next move. Because someone is likely to die and because he’s not likely to suddenly begin leaving evidence lying around for one of us to find.
“Besides, like Bishop said, the law can’t touch him. The courts wouldn’t know what to do with him. But we know how dangerous he is. We know he’s either going to continue to get more powerful until he reaches some kind of critical mass—or he’s going to explode trying to get there and kill an awful lot of people.”
“So we have to destroy him. Yeah, I got that. Fairly ruthless, your Bishop.”
“He isn’t mine. And the thought of doing something like that . . . isn’t an easy one for me. But in this case, I happen to agree with him. We have to make absolutely certain that Samuel can’t hurt anybody ever again. With his mind, at least.”
“Because he’s dangerous. And because you’re worried about Ruby.”
“I’m worried about all of them. But, yes, Ruby especially.” Tessa rummaged in the cabinets for coffee cups. “I hope she doesn’t mind that I left Lexie up at the mountain house.”
“Bishop was right; the farther she is from the Compound, the safer she’s likely to be. Plus she’s not being a drain on your shiny new ability to hide things.” Sawyer paused, then added, “Interesting that she took right to Bishop.”
“Yeah, Hollis says he has that effect on animals and kids. They trust him instantly. Says something good about his character.”
“Or about his abilities.” Sawyer shrugged when she looked at him. “Well, it could be that, you know. Bishop’s a telepath, so he could be . . . using a shortcut to win their trust.”
“Cynic.”
“Realist.” He watched her pour coffee, then added wryly, “Though how I can call myself that after a day of talking about psychic abilities and—what’s the plural of apocalypse?”
“I don’t know. Apocalypses?”
Sawyer repeated the word aloud, trying it on for size, and accepted the cup she handed him. “Thanks. Apocalypses. Spending the day talking about psychic abilities and apocalypses, and I call myself a realist.”
“That’s the real situation. No sense in pretending otherwise.”
“I guess. But it’s still just so damn hard to believe. That Samuel could have killed so many over years without anyone noticing. And that he could kill them without even laying a finger on them. That’s not supposed to be humanly possible.”
“Maybe he’s not human.”
Sawyer eyed her. “Serious?”
Tessa sipped her coffee, then sighed. “No, not really. Whatever he is now, he’s the human variety of monster. We do seem to turn them out from time to time.”
“Yeah, but not many of them decide to be God Almighty. Literally.”
“Well, not only am I not a profiler, I also have no intuitive feel for the minds of cult leaders or other monsters, so I really don’t get the whole messiah complex. First, why would anybody want to rule over the world? And, second, if that’s what someone wanted, then why want to destroy the world over which one rules? I mean, what’s the point of that?”
“Absolute power.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Sawyer smiled at her faintly. “Probably just as well. That Nietzsche quote about hunting monsters and looking into the abyss is all too true. There are some dark places in the human mind, Tessa. Don’t go there if you don’t have to.”
<
br /> “Spoken from experience.” It wasn’t a question.
“An experience most every cop has.” He shrugged. “The things people do to each other, often for the stupidest reasons, is more than enough to keep us up nights. Even in a small town like Grace, we get our fair share of lunatics and losers.”
“So all this is . . . the extreme end of nightmare for you.”
“Well, not all of it is.”
The comment seemed to hang in the air between them, possibly flashing in neon. Sawyer could see that he had surprised Tessa, taken her off guard, and he swore at himself mentally.
Oh, yeah, idiot, a day spent talking about monsters and apocalypses is just a perfect day to cap off things with a totally awkward and uncalled-for hint that you’re glad you spent the day with her.
The only positive aspect of his seemingly chronic foot-in-mouth disease where this woman was concerned was that he was now reasonably sure that the sarcastic voice in his head was entirely his own.
He finished his coffee so quickly that he burned his tongue, then set the cup on the kitchen counter, saying, “Hollis was right—it’s been a long day. And no matter how tomorrow goes, I think we should all rest while we can get it.”
“Yes. You’re probably right.”
She set her own cup aside and walked him to the front door, her slight frown worrying him until she said, “On second thought, maybe we should spend some of our time tonight practicing. Whose idea was it to do this tomorrow, instead of waiting a few days? Oh, right—mine.”
Sawyer wanted to put his arms around her but fought off the impulse, determined not to make a second mistake on the heels of the first one. Instead, he said, “Well, you and the weather forecasters seem to be in agreement on this one. Get some rest, Tessa. I have to go see a friendly judge about some paperwork.” “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
Tessa closed the door behind him and leaned back against it.
“That,” Hollis said from the stairs, “was mean.”
“I thought you were going to take a nap.”
“I changed my mind. Besides, it’s so late now I might as well just wait for bedtime. And don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you throw the poor chief a crumb or two? In my book, he gets points for not being a practiced smooth talker.”