She could feel it.
And maybe . . . maybe she could use it.
Ruth paused outside the door of the Ritual Room and looked at the four girls in turn, making sure each still held their candle correctly, that each was still properly solemn.
Ruby wondered if she even noticed that Amy swayed slightly, her eyes wide and almost unseeing.
No. Because Ruth nodded in satisfaction, then used yet another key to unlock the door and lead the way inside.
Ruby drew a deep breath and followed the others.
“All,” Sawyer muttered. “That’s all he saw.”
Tessa said to Quentin, “What about that vision told you that you were seeing what would happen if we tried to help Ruby?”
“It wasn’t anything I saw. But it was a certainty. I knew you guys would try to get Ruby out of the Compound today. And I knew that if you tried, what I saw would happen.”
“No question? No doubt?”
Quentin shook his head. “Not a single one. I knew. And I’ve learned that I can trust that kind of certainty, because it’s as rare as hen’s teeth.”
Hollis looked at Bishop. “You’ve dealt with visions longer, you and Miranda. Did Quentin see a possible future we’ve avoided because you guys chose to act? Or was it a prophecy we’ve only temporarily averted?”
Sawyer all but groaned. “A prophecy like Samuel’s Prophecy? End-of-the-world stuff?”
Bishop said, “Only in the sense of being . . . ultimate. Un changeable in its inevitability. We’ve come to realize over the years that some things we see, some visions of the future, can be changed—if we act at the right time and in the right way. But sometimes our . . . interference is exactly the catalyst necessary to bring about the very events we try to stop. Some things have to happen just the way they happen. And they will happen. No matter what we do or try to do. So we tend to be very, very cautious in acting on a vision.”
“And as far as we’ve been able to tell,” Quentin added, “there’s no good, consistently reliable way to determine whether one of us is looking at a possible future—or an inevitable one. There’s always a choice of whether we try to change what we see or just work to try and minimize the train wreck heading our way. Quite often, the precog who has the vision isn’t certain whether to act. Sometimes, on the other hand, we feel quite strongly about it. Though I’ve never been sure whether it’s gut instinct or, hell, just a guess.”
“Cosmic Russian roulette?” Sawyer looked around the table, hoping somebody would offer a less deadly analogy.
Nobody did.
Tessa said to Quentin, “But you’re sure this time that by stopping us, you prevented the events in your vision?”
Quentin frowned slightly and his eyes went a bit distant, as though he was listening to some sound only he could hear. Then he blinked, shook his head, and replied, “I’m sure what I saw won’t happen. Not the way I saw it happen, at least. But every instinct I can claim is telling me that Reese is right. Samuel intends to bring about whatever prophecy he saw, his version of an apocalypse. I don’t know when it will happen, and I don’t know why he needs it to happen, but I know that’s his plan. And I know it’s going to be soon. Very soon.”
“How?” Sawyer asked finally. “How could he hope to have enough power to do anything on a scale like that? And don’t anybody say lightning. I mean besides lightning.”
“His army,” DeMarco said. “Somehow, he means to use his followers to bring about his vision.”
“In what way?” Sawyer demanded. “I mean, how could those ordinary people become a . . . a power source for a megalomaniac?”
It was Bishop who replied. “Psychics. We’re virtually certain that in recent years Samuel’s focused his recruitment efforts on active and latent psychics. Even aside from the abilities themselves, we always have a higher-than-normal amount of electrical energy in our brains.”
“Maybe a fun bonus for Samuel,” Quentin suggested. “Abilities he wants to steal and more energy to help fuel his efforts.”
DeMarco said, “He’s already stolen abilities from some of the latents, I think. People who likely never had a clue that a vital part of themselves was taken away. But the fact that he hasn’t gone after the abilities of a few psychics in the church I know are active tells me that he has something else in mind for them. Maybe it has to do with his growing need for energy, or maybe he does intend to use them to bring about his Prophecy. I don’t know.”
“What about the people whose abilities he went after?” Sawyer was bewildered. “Were they destroyed in the process?”
“Some simply disappear. One of the reasons law enforcement—including you, Chief—hasn’t had to deal with missing persons is because those who disappear tend to be new recruits, from outside this area. When they vanish, nobody outside the Compound knows or cares. And those inside are told and believe that whoever it was just didn’t fit in and chose to leave. There’s never any proof otherwise.”
“But some are known,” Sawyer insisted. “Some who go missing are either from this area or else have family and friends who notice they’re missing. Like Ellen Hodges.”
“Yes.”
“If he’s killed so many, why have we found so few bodies?”
“I don’t know. The bodies you have found, most of them, were people that appeared to me to be killed in haste, without much if any forethought. They posed some kind of threat to Samuel, and so he acted. Each murder was less about stealing abilities than it was about protecting himself. Unfortunately, I was never able to see just how he acted, how he was able to do what he did; I only saw the results, and only on some occasions, not all of them. A body, virtually always with no visible wound. Each time, I was merely informed that there was a ‘problem’ I needed to deal with. Samuel suggested the river rather than burial. I don’t know why.”
Galen spoke up for the first time to say, “You showed up within minutes of Sarah being killed.” It wasn’t an accusation, merely a comment.
“Sarah?” Sawyer looked around the table. “Are you talking about the most recent Jane Doe in my morgue?”
Hollis drew a breath. “Sarah Warren. A Haven operative.” Her voice was toneless. “Until today, nobody could really come forward and I.D. her for you. The fact that she was undercover there can’t come out until this is over. Sorry.”
Sawyer decided not to get angry about that. Yet. “Okay. I trust this woman’s family has been notified?”
“Yes,” Bishop said. “And they understand why they can’t claim her body yet or even publicly mourn her.”
“Do they?”
Bishop looked at him steadily. “They understand, Chief.”
Sawyer nodded. “Okay,” he repeated, then said to DeMarco, “So how come you were able to show up within minutes of her death, as Agent Galen says?”
“Because Sarah made a mistake,” DeMarco replied, something bleak in his tone. “She was spotted on one of the security cameras at the outer perimeter of the Compound, carrying one of the children. It was the middle of the night, and she was obviously leaving with the child. A child who didn’t belong to her. Security alerted me. I had no intention of alerting Samuel, but a guard had already done so. He didn’t come out but called me into his private quarters. And he was angry. He rarely shows anger, but that night it was clear he was furious.”
“Why?” Sawyer asked.
“Because Sarah was taking Wendy Hodges.”
Sixteen
HODGES? ELLEN’S DAUGHTER? You told me her father had taken her from the Compound.”
Rather dryly, DeMarco said, “You might want to take anything I told you inside the Compound with a grain of skepticism, Chief.”
“You’re a great liar,” Sawyer said finally.
“One of the best attributes of a deep-cover operative. Although I do think it was unfair of you to call me a ghoul.”
“I never called you that.”
“Not out loud.”
Sawyer scowled at him. “That really d
oesn’t help your case, you know. Just tell me I haven’t had your voice in my head during the last few days.”
“Excuse me?”
Either he’s really a hell of a liar or he doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.
It was Tessa who said, “He’s asking if you’re telepathic both ways.”
DeMarco shook his head. “I just read. Can’t send.”
“Technically,” Bishop said, “Tessa is the only one here who can send as well as read.”
“Technically?” Sawyer asked.
“My wife and I are telepathic both ways, but only with each other. Sending is generally much more difficult even for powerful telepaths, though sometimes we can manage it in extreme situations.”
“Like death,” Hollis murmured. She looked up to find Bishop staring at her and added hastily, “Sorry. Just . . . thinking out loud. I mean, with so many telepaths around most of the time, what’s the use of keeping things to myself?”
Sawyer didn’t want to add another question to those still rattling around in his mind, so he decided to ignore the byplay. “Getting back to Ellen Hodges’s daughter,” he prompted DeMarco.
“Sorry. As I was saying, the little girl Sarah took that night—Wendy—was a very special child, highly valued by Samuel. A born, active psychic. Telekinetic. Far as I know, the only telekinetic he’s ever found.”
“They’re rare,” Bishop said. “Extremely rare.”
DeMarco nodded. “And he was losing the only one he’d found, before she was old enough to come fully into her abilities. Before she could play whatever part Samuel intended her to play in his . . . end game.”
“So he—what? Sent you after the child?”
“He told me to take a security detail and cut through the woods, try to get to Sarah before she could take Wendy out of the Compound. I honestly believed he meant that we were to bring them both back to the church. But I think he knew she already had Wendy safe. That’s why he was so enraged. I think he knew even as he was issuing those orders to me that he was going to kill Sarah. But I still don’t know how he was able to do it. He never left the church. Never left his quarters. Sarah was two miles from the church when she died. We heard her scream.”
“Yes,” Galen said. “So did I. Her body was still warm when I got to her. And all I can tell you about how she died is that she died terrified and in agony.”
Sawyer remembered the body he had found in the river, remembered the M.E.’s report that the dead woman’s bones had been virtually crushed, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful and terrifying that must have been. And he couldn’t begin to imagine how Samuel had done that to her.
“You’re sure Samuel killed her?”
“I’m sure,” DeMarco said bluntly. “Nobody else up there has anything like enough power to kill, let alone do it at such a distance. But I believe Samuel can. And he’s getting better at it. Faster. More brutal. I believe he kills them and then draws every bit of energy from them.”
DeMarco paused, then said deliberately, “Hell, for all I know, he takes their souls.” His gaze was on Hollis. “We haven’t had a medium close enough to tell us that for sure.”
“He didn’t take Ellen Hodges’s soul.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes. And a long way from here. That took amazing determination and made what she had to tell me more than usually worth paying attention to.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That I needed to be here in order to help stop Samuel.”
With a glance at Bishop, DeMarco said, “I wondered. Having a medium even this close is dicey. It’s the one ability he does not want.”
“Yeah,” Hollis said. “I know. It’s why he tried to feed me to his pet monster. He really, really doesn’t want to be able to tap in to the spirit world. Which means he knows he doesn’t get their souls—or he believes there’s something else on the other side that could destroy him.”
“Something else he’s afraid of,” Tessa said. “Bishop, the SCU, and, specifically, mediums. Weaknesses we can exploit?”
“Let’s hope so,” Bishop said.
Sawyer looked around the table. “You got a plan?”
Quentin said, “We’re working on one.”
Sawyer wanted to say that it was a little late in the day to only be “working” on a plan but instead directed his attention back to DeMarco. “You said some of the psychics whose abilities he steals turn up dead or go missing. But not all of them?”
“No. Some are still there, part of his congregation.”
Tessa said, “But changed. Right? Different from the way they used to be.”
DeMarco looked at her. “Yeah.”
“Changed how?” Sawyer wanted to know.
“Hard to say precisely. They no longer read as psychic, but . . . It’s more than that. If I had to guess, I’d say that they lost more than their psychic abilities to Samuel. Maybe a lot more. Maybe as much as a person could lose and still be able to walk and talk and be almost human.”
“Stepford people,” Tessa murmured. “Going through the motions, all scrubbed and nice. But empty inside.”
She was wearing a slight frown, and Sawyer could still feel her impatience; in fact, he could feel it growing. She had Ruby’s bag on her lap, open wide enough so that the tiny white poodle’s head was visible as Tessa petted her gently.
Odd, Sawyer thought for the first time. Nobody’s said a word about the dog. Or even seemed to notice her.
“Pretty much,” DeMarco said, agreeing with Tessa. “They smile and talk to you, and they’re almost the people they used to be. Only not quite.”
“All of them?” Sawyer asked, distracted by this new horror.
“No. But a majority of them now. Including the non-psychics.” He shook his head. “The women can maybe be explained by the way Samuel sucks energy from them. Maybe there’s a point of no return. Maybe they can only lose so much energy, so much of the essence of what makes them unique, before the person they were just . . . dissolves.”
Maybe the creepiest thing yet, Sawyer thought. “And the men?”
“It’s the same result; I’m just not sure how he does it. If he’s drawing energy from the men, it isn’t such an open, visible thing and not part of any kind of formal ceremony or pseudoreligious ritual. Not like the Testimony ritual, where one or more women are obviously stimulated to the brink of orgasm.” His voice was matter-of-fact.
Tessa told them then about the “dream” she had had the night before. She kept her eyes on DeMarco the whole time, and when she finished he was nodding his head.
“Yeah, that happened last night. Exactly as you described it—my part of it, at least. I’m never present when he has one of the women in his office, but it always ends the same way. I’m called in, and I carry an unconscious woman back to her bed.”
——
The Ritual Room was about twenty feet by twenty feet, Ruby guessed, though the size was deceptive because of the dark, floor-to-ceiling velvet draperies that hid the walls and the thick, dark carpet that cushioned underfoot. Though the ceiling of the room was far higher than was normal for a belowground level, the five pendant lights that were the room’s only illumination hung low, no more than six feet or so above the floor, and each cast below it a perfect circle of light: one in the center and four encircling it.
About three feet out beyond the outer four circles stood a copper candle holder taller than Ruby, fashioned to hold a single candle. The copper gleamed even though it lay outside the light.
Ruby knew, because it had been explained to them, that each of the four outer lights and the tall candle holders were placed precisely to represent the four directions—north, south, east, and west—while the light in the center represented just that.
The center. The center of everything.
That was where Father stood waiting for them.
Ruby had wondered more than once if there was another door hidden somewhere behind the draperies, be
cause Ruth always unlocked the door to usher the girls in, and it didn’t seem likely that Father would be waiting inside a locked room for his Chosen ones. But Ruby had never gotten the chance to look around; Ceremonies and Rituals were always carefully controlled, usually by Ruth, this one especially.
The four girls silently took their assigned places. Ruby was north; Mara was south; Theresa was east; and Amy was west. Each went to the circle of light and knelt on a little velvet pillow facing the center, heads bowed, flickering candles held steadily before them.
With hardly a sound, Ruth left the room, drawing the long draperies across to hide the door and then disappearing behind them.
Ruby didn’t have to look up to know that Father was smiling, that his face wore the serene expression it always wore.
His outer face, at least.
She didn’t want to think about his other face, and she most certainly didn’t want to see it again.
It terrified her.
“You are the Chosen,” Father said, his voice unutterably loving as he spoke steadily while he turned in a slow circle.
“We are the Chosen,” Ruby heard herself repeat, as the other three girls did. Ruby fought the strange, wordless urge to give in to him, no matter what he asked of her, no matter what he did to her.
It was always so hard to fight him.
“Loved by God.”
The girls repeated the words.
“Given by Him to bless this world.”
Again, they repeated the words after him.
“Given by Him to serve this world.”
Ruby was trying not to think about anything except making her shell harder, repeating the familiar words and phrases without even listening to them.
“Given by Him to save this world.”
The last sentence was repeated, over and over, a mantra or a prayer or an offering, spoken in low voices but faster and faster until the words seemed to blur together, until the sound was almost . . . a moan.