Dark Rites

  He remembered listening until it was late, until even that beloved and heavily trafficked area of Boston had gone quiet. He’d stayed to the last song. He’d been thrilled because—right in the middle of it all—the pretty young singer had come to him and thanked him for being such a great audience member.

  He’d stood; he’d gone out to the street...

  And then the world had gone dark, and only images had swum before him, the people in line at the coffee shop, the musicians playing, the pretty singer, the bubbly waitress...

  Dark had turned to black.

  And he had woken up here, chained to the table.

  Why?

  Who the hell kidnapped a quiet and unassuming professor of history and brought him out here, far from Boston, to an abandoned mental institute in the wilderness? He wasn’t worth anything; he had no fortune. He sure as hell held no state secrets; he knew nothing about anything important. There was absolutely no reason to kidnap him, bring him here.

  Maybe someone who was mentally deranged themselves had done this. And they were just going to leave him chained here—leave him to slowly die without food or water, chained to the gurney, rotting away until something found him—a bobcat, a rare mountain lion or a black bear.

  Or even the rodents and insects that abounded...

  Stop; stop, he told himself.

  He was brilliant, or so they said. He should be able to find a way out.

  Screw brilliant. He wished he was a mechanic—or a superhero. Yeah, a superhero with the power to break chains.

  He studied the metal around his wrist and the chains.

  At least he wasn’t a victim of the Undertakers. He wasn’t buried alive; he had plenty of air to breathe.

  He thought of Vickie Preston. They had first met at the coffee shop—she had asked for his help. He knew she’d been instrumental in catching the killers who had so recently terrorized Boston and the city’s surroundings.

  Nice person, beautiful woman...she’d quickly become a true friend, visiting him at the hospital, working on the history of the note—she’d even gone to a concert with him. She was supposed to have been...

  Meeting him! Yes, with a friend! She would know that he wasn’t in the city—because he’d be standing her up!

  He could picture her now, emerald green eyes glazed with concern. She’d worry, twirling a lock of long dark hair as she wondered why he wasn’t there. She might even stand—tall and willowy—and pace.

  Surely she wouldn’t just think he’d suddenly become rude? Would she somehow know, and start to search for him, would she have any idea...?

  She had been working with the FBI. With the agent she’d brought to see him, the one who had probed the note, who had promised that he wouldn’t stop until his attacker or attackers had been found.

  He suddenly realized that he was thinking intently.

  Find me, Vickie, find me! Find me, find me, find me...

  He decided that his IQ statistics were wrong, and that he was an idiot—really, what kind of genius could he be? Did he really think that the woman had ESP and would hop up and send out the troops?

  But she saw the dead!

  True or not.

  He was a scholar. He believed in science but he also believed she spoke to the dead. He had kiddingly accused her of it one day when he’d come upon her and she’d appeared to be talking to herself.

  Of course, everyone looked as if they were talking to themselves these days—because they were wired to their phones!

  But it had been different with Vickie. The way she’d flushed, the way he’d even felt as if something was there...someone else! He’d been joking, of course, and yet...

  He’d never had such a feeling. Naturally, as an academic, he was above such fantasy. And, then again, because he was an academic, he did mull over the concept of memory and self and...

  There was so much about her that was extraordinary. He’d seen that when she’d worked with the FBI during the recent rash of murders in the state. He’d seen her incredible mind.

  Find me, Vickie!

  Maybe, just maybe, she really did talk to the dead, and if that was true, maybe, just maybe, it was possible that she had ESP, too!

  He frowned, realizing there was a lump of something in the corner. He twisted around enough to rise and see what it was.

  Oh, God.

  A body. A human body.

  And the head...

  Was gone.

  And there was movement upon the remains...rats running havoc!

  Terror raced through him, making it feel as if his blood ran hot and cold and then hot again, as if it tore through his muscle, turned even his bones into something more wobbly than gelatin.

  He fell back on the table.

  Then he heard the awful creaking sound of an old door, a sound something like a squeaky scream that cried out into the night.

  Someone...something...was coming in.

  1

  Griffin Pryce leaped over the fence that connected the houses and yards along the Hyde Park neighborhood. He’d been running hard, chasing a man in a red cape. A woman had just been attacked—the fourth victim of the thugs terrorizing the area. This time, the attacker hadn’t gone unseen; a neighbor had called it in right when it had happened.

  Miraculously, Griffin had been about to have dinner with friends and was being dropped off by another friend—Detective Barnes—at a restaurant on Hyde Park Avenue when they had both heard the call for help come over the police radio.

  He’d reached the scene just as the attacker—down on his knees to leave the rhyme about Satan in red marker on his victim’s chest—had seen him.

  And run.

  Griffin had taken thirty seconds to assure himself that the woman was alive; the neighbor’s call to 9-1-1 meant that an ambulance and police cars were on the way. He could already hear the sirens.

  And so he ran after the attacker, who was wearing a red cape.

  Stupid, Griffin thought. You want to wear a cape and attack people? Makes it harder to run and leap fences—and stands out like a...a red light!

  But the young man was fast and agile.

  Griffin leaped fences, tore down alleys, ducked beneath drying sheets and leaped another fence.

  At one point, he could nearly touch the young man. When he turned to glance at Griffin, his face was clearly visible. He couldn’t be more than twenty, twenty-five tops. He was clean-shaven with green eyes and a clear complexion, long nose, good mouth.

  Then he was gone. This time he ran into an alley that led to a seven-foot fence—no Dumpster to use to leap over it...nothing at all.

  The man threw himself against the dead end.

  “Stop!” Griffin demanded, pulling out his Glock and aiming at the young man. “Stop. Put your hands behind your head. Get over here, and get down on your knees.”

  The young man stared back at him.

  “Throw down your weapon.”

  The man did; he tossed the club he’d used—it resembled one of the billy clubs used by British police—and shouted, “I’m not armed.”

  He started to open his cape.

  “Stop—I’ll fire,” Griffin warned.

  “Hey, just showing you... I’m not armed! So shoot me. Come on, shoot me.”

  “I’m not going to shoot you. I am going to arrest you. Do as I say, get down on your knees, hands behind your head.”

  The man ignored Griffin. He reached for something in his cape; Griffin rushed the twenty or so feet that stood between them.

  The man stuck something in his mouth. Griffin shoved him to the ground, reaching into his mouth, trying to find what he’d taken.

  Too late.

  Even as Griffin sought whatever it was, the man began to tremble—and t
o foam at the mouth.

  Griffin swore, trying to support him as he began to thrash and foam. As he did so, Detective David Barnes—who had been close behind him all the way—came running down the alley.

  “Ambulance, med techs! He took something,” Griffin shouted.

  The man stared up at Griffin with wild eyes—terrified eyes.

  Maybe he’d never really imagined what dying might be like.

  But he was defiant.

  “Long live Satan!” he choked out.

  Then he twitched again, and again—and went still.

  Barnes hunkered down by Griffin and the young man. “He’s gone. What a fool. He must have taken a suicide capsule!”

  “He wanted me to shoot him,” Griffin said, shaking his head. What a waste of life.

  “Anyway, it’s over. People in Boston will be safer,” Barnes said. “You caught the guy, Griffin. Bastard killed himself. Sad as anything, but it’s over at least.”

  “Ah, hell, Barnes, come on!” Griffin said. He liked Barnes, didn’t mind working with the detective, and they had a pretty good rapport. But Barnes was way off base with this one.

  “It’s not over,” Griffin said quietly. “Why do you think he killed himself? They’ve got some kind of a pact. There’s a cult working here.”

  “Well, yeah, obviously, this kid is some kind of Satanist. But, Griffin, you were right on top of this one. And we’re looking at one man. One man who smashed the skull of a young woman—and ran. This has been too hard for us because the attacks have been so random. But it’s got to have been the act of one crazy man. All he had to do was find someone alone on a dark street, strike fast, leave his message and run. It just took one person, Griffin.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t know if it’s been the same one person. I’m telling you, Barnes, we’ve got a real problem here. The violence isn’t going to stop.”

  “Griffin, you’re concerned because you thought you’d be heading back to Virginia by now. You chose to stay because of the attack on Alex Maple—Vickie’s friend,” Barnes told him.

  It was true; after the Undertaker case, he’d planned on going back to Krewe headquarters in northern Virginia.

  But it wasn’t just that Alex had been involved.

  The writing on the victims had been disturbing. His instincts told him there was more to it.

  “I wish I felt like celebrating, Barnes. I’m sorry. I’m worried. I’m afraid that we have a Charles Manson, David Koresh or Jim Jones–type active here. I believe you’ve got someone out there who has been preaching witchcraft or paganism or—from what we’ve seen—the rise of Satan. If that’s true, you’ve got a group of people running around assaulting random but easy targets—and this won’t be the last attack.”

  * * *

  “He’s never stood me up—I’m worried,” Vickie Preston said to her longtime friend, Roxanne Greeley, looking at her phone again as she did so.

  She’d been looking forward to the evening; she had become good friends with Alex Maple. She really liked him. He was boyish and enthusiastic, smart as a whip—and it was wonderful to know someone who loved history as much as she did. Alex was a professor; Vickie wrote guidebooks, and she was known for making the history within those books readable and relatable. She’d called on Alex for help in the recent Undertaker case and they’d quickly become good friends. And Alex had a great time talking to Griffin, as well. Ever since she and Griffin had come together during the horror and solving of the recent murders in the city, Vickie couldn’t imagine having friends who didn’t get along with Griffin. She was very much in love with him. As far as he and Alex went, they had similar taste in music and sports—Alex might be quite the intellectual, but he loved the Patriots. While others might scoff at the home team’s arrogance, in Alex’s mind they deserved to be a bit arrogant.

  Griffin had gone to dinner with old friends, members of his unit who were passing through Boston on their way to their home a bit north, in Salem; Vickie hadn’t gone with him only because she’d already made plans with Alex this evening, and she’d invited Roxanne—she had it all set up. She already regretted the fact that she’d made previous plans. She really wanted to get to know Griffin’s friends—Devin Lyle and Craig Rockwell. Craig was known as Rocky, she had learned, and he’d grown up in Peabody, Massachusetts, while Devin had grown up in Salem. Now they were a married couple, and though Devin was still a children’s book author, she had also gone through the academy and become part of the Krewe of Hunters unit down in Virginia.

  But Vickie had never ditched one friend for another, or ignored a promise of a dinner date with one person to go out with someone else. She had thought of switching dates with Alex. That hadn’t worked, however, because she hadn’t been able to reach him.

  And she couldn’t just not show up—Alex had been so excited. He’d made what he thought was a pretty amazing discovery about something that had to do with Massachusetts. He was enjoying lording it over her—though he said he couldn’t wait to tell her about it.

  Even though their friendship was pretty new, Vickie felt she knew Alex. He was often crazy busy, and still, like her, if he’d made a date, he’d be there. He didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would simply forget a friend, under any circumstance. Not that unexpected things didn’t happen, but he did have a cell phone, and he should have called.

  Naturally, Roxanne was aware that Vickie had been entertaining ulterior motives in insisting that she come with them to dinner at the café.

  They were both great people, and Vickie wanted them to get together. She wasn’t matchmaking; if they happened to like each other, that would be great. If not, it was just a dinner with friends.

  Vickie’s pretense to have Roxanne join them at dinner was that she was worried; Alex had taken quite a beating when he’d gone down. Vickie had said that she was afraid that she’d be ridiculously emotional, embarrassing everyone, if they were alone.

  Dumb excuse, yes. And Roxanne had finally accused her point-blank of trying to set her up.

  “You are playing matchmaker,” Roxanne said. “Never a good thing.”

  “No, not usually a good thing,” Vickie had corrected.

  But Roxanne had laughed. “Let’s do it. My last affair fell apart quickly enough. Hot and heavy—and over in the two seconds we realized I love a good art show and he loves watching sports in his boxers and guzzling beer. I mean, lots of guys do that, but not twenty-four hours a day or every single second out of work! I don’t seem to choose well—maybe you choosing for me will be the right thing. How could meeting this guy be anything worse than what happened before?”

  Roxanne had been—for a brief time—growing heavily involved with an old boyfriend of Vickie’s, but in the rising intensity of the case just solved, she’d not only been seriously injured, but forced to rethink where she wanted to be in a relationship.

  And yes, Vickie wanted to set her up with Alex.

  But now, of course, the guy wasn’t there.

  Vickie dialed his number again. No answer.

  “Maybe he knew I was coming,” Roxanne said. “That could scare a guy away.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Vickie said. “You’re beautiful.” Her friend was beautiful: blonde, trim, with a great smile. She just didn’t have luck with men. Vickie continued. “I know he wants to see me. I’ve been working on all kinds of things having to do with his assault. I was tracing that rhyme that was left written on his chest—and now, the same rhyme that was left on the other victims of this attacker, as well.”

  “Of course you have,” Roxanne murmured. She was a visual artist, filled with all kinds of insight and art appreciation, but she was nowhere near as fond of history as either Vickie or Alex.

  “Bear with me,” Vickie said. “That saying that was written on him—it goes back—way back. I don’t believe there wer
e really any kind of Satanists running around when the whole thing started. I found reference to a man named Ezekiel Martin, who had studied to be a Puritan minister. He was never ordained, but he practiced his own brand of religion and managed to take a slew of people with him west into the woods to form a new colony and sect—one that he ruled through preaching a different higher power—that, apparently, being Satan.

  “In truth, he seemingly followed a young woman named Missy Prior, who had left of her own accord, being against the repression of the society. Anyway, Ezekiel had a thing for Missy—but she didn’t have a thing for him. He managed to blame her for every ill that befell his community. He claimed to have found those words written in the ground near where Missy Prior lived, and that Missy was trying to conjure Satan, and that Satan came to him at night and claimed that Ezekiel would have Missy Prior. Naturally, he saw himself as Satan’s representative. Satan in the flesh until Satan should appear... His personal religion afforded him lots of benefits.”

  “Wow—and yuck! Even way back, people were going on icky ‘I’m close to God so I get to have all the sex’ trips, huh?”

  “I’m still trying to find more on Ezekiel Martin,” Vickie said.

  “Isn’t Alex a history professor?”

  “Exactly. He’s in a guest position, or whatever they call it right now—and he loves Harvard, so he’s hoping to stay on.”

  “And I’m sure he’s researching all this himself.”

  “He is, but that’s also why he’s anxious to meet with me. Compare notes.”

  Their waitress came by, a pretty, gamine-faced young woman with dark brown hair.

  “You still waiting for your friend?” she asked.

  “We’re going to give him a few more minutes,” Vickie said.

  “Is it that fellow you’ve met here before?”

  Vickie looked at her with surprise, and then realized that the young woman usually wore her hair down, and that—yes, of course—she’d had her several times as a server at the coffee shop.