Ceremony in Death

  “Enough to know he was a cop,” Eve put in. “A cop who rode a desk. How’d you know that, Lobar?”

  Realizing his mistake, he crushed out what was left of the cigarette in quick, vicious little jabs. “Somebody must’ve mentioned it.” He exposed his fangs in a wide grin. “Probably Alice did, while I was banging her.”

  “Doesn’t say much for your performance rating, does it, if she was talking about her grandfather when you were…banging her.”

  “I heard it somewhere, all right?” He grabbed his drink, gulped deeply. “What’s the big fucking deal where? He was old, anyway.”

  “Did you ever see him? In here?”

  “I see a lot of people in here. I don’t remember any old cop.” He waved a hand. “Place rocks like this most every night. How the hell do I know who comes in? Selina hired me to keep the occasional asshole in line, not to remember faces.”

  “Selina’s got quite the enterprise going here. Is she still dealing? She deal for you?”

  His eyes went sly. “I get power from my beliefs. I don’t need illegals.”

  “Have you ever participated in human sacrifice? Ever slice up a child for your master, Lobar?”

  He polished off his drink. “That’s an outsider’s hallucination. People like you like to make Satanists out to be monsters.”

  “People like us,” Roarke murmured, skimming his gaze over Lobar from the fire-tipped hair to the nipple rings. “Yes, obviously we’re biased when anyone can see you’re simply… devout.”

  “Look, it’s a religion, and we’ve got freedom of religion in this country. You want to push your God down our throats? Well, we reject him. We reject him and all his weak-kneed creeds. And we’ll rule in Hell.”

  He shoved back from the table and stood. “I’ve got nothing more to say.”

  “All right.” Eve spoke quietly, looking up into his eyes. “But you think about this, Lobar. People are dead. Somebody’s going to be next. It might just be you.”

  His lips trembled, then firmed. “It might just be you,” he shot back and slammed out of the booth.

  “What an attractive young man,” Roarke commented. “I do believe he’ll be a delightful addition to Hell.”

  “That may be where he’s going.” After a quick glance around, Eve nudged the empty glass into her bag. “I want to find out where he came from. I can run his prints at home.”

  “Fine.” He rose, took her arm. “But I want a shower first. This place leaves something nasty coated on the skin.”

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Robert Allen Mathias,” Eve stated, reading data off her monitor. “Turned eighteen six months ago. Born in Kansas City, Kansas, son of Jonathan and Elaine Mathias, both of whom are Baptist deacons.”

  “A PK.” Roarke put in. “Preacher’s kid. Some can rebel in extreme manners. Looks like little Bobby has.”

  “History of problems,” Eve continued. “I got his juvie file here. Petty theft, break in, truancy, assault. Ran way from home four times before he hit thirteen. At fifteen, after a joy ride that landed him a grand theft auto, his parents had him termed legally incorrigible. Did a year at a state school, which ended with him being kicked to a state institution after an attempted rape on a teacher.”

  “Bobby’s a sweetheart,” Roarke murmured. “I knew there was a reason I wanted to jab his little red eyes out. They kept latching onto your breasts.”

  “Yeah.” Unconsciously, Eve rubbed a hand over them as if to erase something vile. “Psych profile’s pretty much what you’d expect. Sociopathic tendencies, lack of control, violent mood swings. Subject harbors deep, unresolved resentment toward parents and authority figures, particularly female. Displays both fear and resentment toward females. Intelligence rating, high, violence quotient, high. Subject displays complete lack of conscience and an abnormal interest in the occult.”

  “Then what is he doing out on the street? Why isn’t he in treatment?”

  “Because it’s the law. You have to kick him when he turns eighteen. Until you nail him as an adult, he’s clear.” Eve puffed out her cheeks, blew out the air. “He’s a dangerous little bastard, but there’s not much I can do about him. He corroborates Selina’s statement for the night of Alice’s death.”

  “He’d have been instructed to,” Roarke pointed out.

  “Still sticks—unless I can break it.” She pushed back. “I’ve got his current address. I can check it out, knock on doors. See if his neighbors can give me something on him. If I can get him in on something, lay on some pressure, I think little Bobby would break.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Otherwise, we keep digging.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “We’ll deal with him. Sooner or later, he’ll revert to type—bust somebody’s face, assault some woman, kick the wrong ass. Then we’ll lock him in a cage.”

  “Your job is miserable.”

  “Most of the time,” she agreed, then looked over her shoulder. “Are you tired?”

  “Depends.” He glanced at the screen where Lobar’s data scrolled. He had an image of her diving deeper, spending the quiet hours of night wading through the muck. He didn’t bother to sigh. “What do you need?”

  “You.” She could feel her color rise as he lifted a curious brow. “I know it’s late, and it’s been a long day. I guess I was thinking of it kind of like the shower. Something to wash away the grime.” Embarrassed, she turned back, stared hard at the screen. “Stupid.”

  It was always hard for her to ask, he mused. For anything. “Not the most romantic proposal I’ve ever had.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, massaged gently. “But far from stupid. Disengage,” he ordered and the screen went dark. He turned her chair around, drew her to her feet. “Come to bed.”

  “Roarke.” She put her arms around him, held tight. She couldn’t explain how or why the images she’d seen that night had left something inside her shaky. With him, she didn’t have to. “I love you.”

  Smiling a little, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “It’s getting easier to say. I think I’m starting to like it.”

  With a short laugh, he pressed a kiss to her chin. “Come to bed,” he repeated, “and say it again.”

  The rite was ancient, its purpose dark. Cloaked and masked, the coven gathered in the private chamber. The scent of blood was fresh and strong. The flames spearing above black candles flickered to send shadows slithering over the walls like spiders hunting prey.

  Selina chose to be the altar and lay naked, a candle burning between her thighs, a bowl of sacrificial blood nestled between her generous breasts.

  She smiled as she glanced toward the silver bowl overflowing with the cash and credits the membership had paid for the privilege to belong. Their wealth was now her wealth. The master had saved her from a scrabbling life on the streets and brought her here, into power and into comfort.

  She had gladly traded her soul for them.

  Tonight there would be more. Tonight there would be death, and the power that came from the rending of flesh, the spilling of blood. They would not remember, she thought. She had added drugs to the blood-laced wine. With the right drugs, in the right dosage, they would do and say and be what the master wanted.

  Only she and Alban would know that the master had demanded sacrifice for his protection, and the demand had been happily met.

  The coven circled her, their faces hooded, their bodies swaying, as the drug, the smoke, the chanting hypnotized them. At her head stood Alban, with the boar’s mask and the athame.

  “We worship the one,” he said in his clear and beautiful voice.

  And the coven answered. “Satan is the one.”

  “What is his, is ours.”

  “Ave, Satan.”

  As Alban lifted the bowl, his eyes met Selina’s. He took up a sword, thrust it at the four points of the compass. The princes of hell were called, the list long and exotic. Voices were a hum. Fire crackled in a blackened pot set on a marble slab.


  She began to moan.

  “Destroy our enemies.”

  Yes, she thought. Destroy.

  “Bring sickness and pain on those who would harm us.”

  Great pain. Unbearable pain.

  When Alban laid a hand on her flesh, she began to scream. “We take what we wish, in your name. Death to the weak. Fortune to the strong.”

  He stepped back, and though it was his right to take the altar first, he gestured to Lobar. “Reward to the loyal. Take her,” he commanded. “Give her pain as well as pleasure.”

  Lobar hesitated a moment. The sacrifice should have come first. The blood sacrifice. The goat should have been brought out and slaughtered. But he looked at Selina, and his drug-clouded brain shut off. There was woman. Bitch. She watched him with cold, taunting eyes.

  He would show her, he thought. He would show her he was a man. It wouldn’t be like the last time when she had used and humiliated him.

  This time, he would be in charge.

  He cast aside his robe and stepped forward.

  chapter eight

  The steady beep of an alarm had Eve rolling over and cursing. “It can’t be time to get up. We just went to bed.”

  “It’s not. That’s security.”

  “What?” Now she sat up quickly. “Our security?”

  Roarke was already out of bed, already pulling on slacks, and answered with a grunt. Instinctively Eve reached for her weapon first, clothes second. “Someone’s trying to break in?”

  “Apparently someone has.” His voice was very calm. As the lights were still off, she could see only his silhouette in the scattered light of the moon through the sky window. And joining that silhouette was the unmistakable outline of a gun in his hand.

  “Where the hell did you get that? I thought they were all locked up. Goddamn it, Roarke, that’s illegal. Put it away.”

  Coolly, he plugged a round in the chamber of the antique and banned-for-use Glock nine millimeter. “No.”

  “Damn it, damn it.” She snatched up her communicator, shoved it in the back pocket of her jeans out of habit. “You can’t use that thing. I’ll check it out—that’s my job. You call Dispatch, report a possible intruder.”

  “No,” he said again and started for the door. She was on him in two steps.

  “If someone’s on the grounds or in the house, and if you shoot him with that, I’m going to have to arrest you.”

  “Fine.”

  “Roarke.” She grabbed at him as he reached for the door. “There’s procedure for something like this, and reasons for that procedure. Call it in.”

  His home, he thought. Their home. His woman, and the fact that she was a cop didn’t mean a damn at the moment. “And won’t you feel foolish, Lieutenant, if it’s a mechanical malfunction?”

  “Nothing of yours ever malfunctions,” she muttered and made him smile despite the circumstances.

  “Why, thank you.” He opened the door, and there was Summerset.

  “It appears someone is on the grounds.”

  “Where’s the breech?”

  “Section fifteen, southwest quadrant.”

  “Run a full video scan, employ full house security when we’re out. Eve and I will check the grounds.” Absently, he ran a hand down her back. “A good thing I live with a cop.”

  She looked down at the gun in his hand. Attempting to disarm him would likely prove unsuccessful. And it would take too much time. “We’re going to talk about this,” she said between her teeth. “I mean it.”

  “Of course you do.”

  They went side by side down the stairs, through the now silent house. “They haven’t gotten in,” he said as he paused by a door leading onto a wide patio. “The alarm for a breech of the house is different. But they’re over the wall.”

  “Which means they could be anywhere.”

  The moon was waxing toward full, but the clouds were thick and shadowed its light. Eve scanned the dark, the sheltering trees, the huge ornamental bushes. All provided excellent cover for observation. Or ambush. She heard nothing but the air teasing leaves going brittle with age.

  “We’ll have to separate. For Christ’s sake don’t use that weapon unless your life’s threatened. Most B and E men aren’t armed.”

  And most B and E men, they both knew, didn’t attempt to ply their trade on a man like Roarke. “Be careful,” he said quietly and slipped like smoke into the shadows.

  He was good, Eve assured herself. She could trust him to handle himself and the situation. Using the dim and shifting moonlight as a guide, she headed west, then began to circle.

  The quiet was almost eerie. She could barely hear her own footsteps on the thick grass. Behind her, the house stood in darkness, a formidable structure of old stone and glass, guarded, she thought, by a skinny snob of a butler.

  Her lips curled. She’d love to see an unsuspecting burglar come up against Summerset.

  When she reached the wall, she scanned for any breech. It was eight feet high, three feet thick, and wired to deliver a discouraging electric shock to anything over twenty pounds. Security cameras and lights were set every twelve feet. She whispered out an oath when she noted the narrow beams were blinking red rather than green.

  Disengaged. Son of a bitch. Weapon drawn and ready, she circled to the south.

  Roarke did his own circuit in silence, using the trees. He’d bought this property eight years before, had had it remodeled and rehabbed to his specifications. He’d supervised the design and implementation of the security system personally. It was in a very real sense his first home, the place he’d chosen to settle after too many years of wandering. Beneath the icy control, as he slipped from shadow to shadow, was a bubbling, grinding fury that his home had been invaded.

  The night was cool, clear, quiet as a tomb. He wondered if he was up against a very ballsy thief. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be something, someone much more dangerous. A pro hired by a business competitor. An enemy—and he hadn’t fought his way to where he was without making them. Particularly since many of his interests had been on the dark side of the law.

  Or the target could be Eve. She, too, had made enemies. Dangerous enemies. He glanced over his shoulder, hesitated. Then told himself not to second-guess his wife. He knew of no one better equipped to take care of herself.

  But it was that hesitation, that instinctive need to protect that turned his luck. As he paused in the shadows, he caught the faint sound of movement. Roarke took a firmer grip on the gun, stepped back, stepped to the side. And waited.

  The figure was moving slowly, in a crouch. As the distance between them melted away, Roarke could hear the puff of nervous breathing. Though he couldn’t make out features, he judged male, perhaps five-ten, and on the lean side. He could see no weapon, and thinking of the difficulty Eve might have explaining why her husband had held off an intruder with a banned handgun, tucked the Glock into the back of his slacks.

  He braced, looking forward to a little hand-to-hand, then lunged when the figure slunk by. Roarke had an arm around a throat, a fist clenched and raised in anticipation of quiet, perhaps petty revenge, when he realized it wasn’t a man, but a boy.

  “Hey, you son of a bitch, let go. I’ll kill you.”

  A very rude and very frightened boy, Roarke decided. The struggle was short and all one-sided. It took seconds only for Roarke to pin the boy against the trunk of a tree. “How the hell did you get inside?” Roarke demanded.

  The kid’s breath was coming in whistles, and his face was pale as a ghost. Roarke could hear the audible click in his throat as he swallowed. “You’re Roarke.” He stopped struggling and tried to smirk. “You’ve got pretty good security.”

  “I like to think so.” Not a thief, Roarke decided, but ballsy, certainly. “How did you get past it?”

  “I—” He broke off, eyes going huge as they shot over Roarke’s shoulder. “Behind you!”

  With a smoothness the boy would later appreciate, Roarke pivoted,
keeping his grip unbreakable. “We have our intruder, Lieutenant.”

  “So I see.” She lowered her weapon, ordered her heart to slow to normal. “Jesus, Roarke, it’s just a kid. It’s—” She stopped, narrowed her eyes. “I know this kid.”

  “Then perhaps you’d introduce us.”

  “It’s Jamie, right? Jamie Lingstrom. Alice’s brother.”

  “Good eye, Lieutenant. Now, you want to tell him to stop choking me?”

  “I don’t think so.” She holstered her weapon, stepped up. “What the hell are you doing, breaking into private property in the middle of the night? You’re a cop’s grandson, for Christ’s sake. You want to end up in juvie?”

  “I’m not your big problem right now, Lieutenant Dallas.” He made a valiant attempt to sound tough, but his voice wavered. “You’ve got a dead body outside the wall. Really dead,” he added and began to shake.

  “Did you kill someone, Jamie?” Roarke asked mildly.

  “No, man. No way. He was there when I came by.” Terrified his stomach would revolt and humiliate him, Jamie swallowed hard again. “I’ll show you.”

  If it was a trick, Eve considered it a fine one. She couldn’t take a chance. “All right. Let’s go. And if you try to run, pal, I’ll zap you.”

  “Wouldn’t make any sense to run, would it, when I went to all this trouble to get in? This way.” His legs were rubber, and he sincerely hoped neither of them noticed that his knees kept knocking together.

  “I’d like to know how you got in,” Roarke said as they headed for the main gate. “How you bypassed security.”

  “I fool around with electronics. A hobby. You’ve got a really high-grade system. The best.”

  “So I thought.”

  “I guess I didn’t disengage all the alarms.” Jamie turned his head, tried another weak smile. “You knew I was here.”

  “You got in,” Roarke repeated. “How?”

  “This.” Jamie pulled a small palm-sized unit out of his pocket. “It’s a jammer I’ve been working on for a couple of years. It’ll read most systems,” he began, frowning when Roarke plucked it out of his hand. “When you engage this,” he continued, leaning over to point, “it’ll scan the chips, run a cloning program. Then it’s just a matter of backing out the program step by step. Takes some time, but it’s pretty efficient.”