Divine Evil (49 page)

It was supposed to make him feel good, he reminded himself. It was supposed to make him belong.

But he saw her, struggling, terrified. Screaming and screaming as Sarah Hewitt had screamed. It made him ill with pity. How could he belong if he felt such things? How could he be one of them when what they were about to do revolted him? Frightened him.

She shouldn't have to die.

His fault. His fault.

Her eyes met his once, pleading. In them, he saw his last hope for salvation. With a cry that was both pain and triumph, he lurched forward as Atherton brought the knife down.

Clare felt the body fall over hers. She smelled the blood. But there was no pain. She saw Atherton stumble back. Groaning, Ernie slid from her and crumpled on the ground.

Snarling in fury, Atherton raised the knife again. Two shots rang out. One caught him in the arm, the other full in the chest.

“Don't move.” Cam held his weapon firm, but his finger trembled on the trigger. “I'll send every fucking one of you to hell.”

“Sheriff—it's Bud.” Bud stepped forward, arms shaking. “I followed the kid. I saw—Christ, Cam, I killed a man.”

“It's easier the second time.” He fired into the air as one of the men turned to run. “Take another step, and I'll show my deputy here just how much easier it is. On your
faces, all of you. Hands behind your heads. Bud, the first one of them that moves, kill him.”

Bud didn't believe it would be easier the second time. Not for a minute. But he nodded. “Yes, sir, Sheriff.”

Cam was with Clare in three strides, touching her face, her hair. “Oh, God, Slim, I thought I'd lost you.”

“I know. Your face.” In reflex she tried to reach out to him but was held down by the rope. “It's bleeding.”

“Briars.” He pulled out his pocket knife to cut the rope. He couldn't break down, not yet. All he wanted was to hold her, to bury his face in her hair and hold her.

“Take it easy,” he told her and stripped off his shirt. “Put this on.” His hand trembled as it stroked over her skin. “I'm going to get you out of here as soon as I can.”

“I'm okay. I'm okay now. Ernie. He saved my life.” And his blood was wet on her skin. “Is he dead?”

He bent down, checked for a pulse, then tore the ripped robe aside. “No, he's alive. He took most of it in the shoulder.”

“Cam, if he hadn't jumped over me …”

“He's going to be all right. Bud, let's get these bastards tied up.”

“One of them's Mick,” he murmured, shamed that he was fighting tears.

“Yeah. I know.” He tossed over the rope that had been used on Clare. “Let's get it done, then you take Clare back and call the state boys. Bring them here.”

“I want to stay with you.” She closed a hand around his arm. “I need to stay with you. Please.”

“Okay. Just go sit down.”

“Not here.” She looked away from the altar. “There's more rope over there.” Where they had stripped her. “I'll help you tie them.” Her eyes lifted, glittered. “I want to.”

* * *

Unmasked, bound, they looked pitiful. That was all Clare could think as she knelt beside Ernie, holding his hand and waiting for Bud to get back with the state police and an ambulance.

“I can't believe Annie brought you here.”

“She was terrific. She'll be getting quite a charge from riding with Bud with the siren going.” He glanced down at Ernie. “How's he doing?”

“I think I stopped the bleeding. He's going to need help, but he's going to be okay. I mean really okay.”

“I hope you're right.” He reached down to brush his fingers over her hair. Just to touch. “Clare, I have to check the other one.”

She nodded. “It's Atherton,” she said flatly. “He started it all.”

“Tonight, it's finished.” He walked around the altar. Atherton lay facedown. Without pity, Cam turned him over. The chest wound was mortal; he didn't doubt it. But breath still hissed out of the opening of the mask. When he heard Clare behind him, he rose quickly and turned to shield her from the body.

“Don't protect me, Cam.”

“You're not as strong as you think you are.” He lifted one of her hands and touched the bandaged wrist. “They hurt you.”

“Yes.” She thought of what she had learned, of how his father had died. “They hurt us all. Not anymore.”

“Do you think it's over?” The question rasped obscenely through the mask of the Goat of Mendes. “You've done nothing. You've stopped nothing. If not you, your children. If not them, their children. You didn't get the head. You never will.” Fingers curled like claws, he made a
grab for Clare, then fell back with a rattling laugh and died.

“He was evil,” Clare whispered. “Not crazy, not ill, just evil. I didn't know that could be.”

“He can't touch us.” He drew her back, then closed her tightly in his arms.

“No, he can't.” She heard the sirens echo in the distance. “Bud was quick.”

Cam pulled her back just to look at her face. “There's so much I have to tell you. So much I have to say. Once I start I don't know if I'll be able to stop. It's going to have to wait until we're done with this.”

She closed her hand over his. Behind them, the fire was going out. “We've got plenty of time.”

Two weeks later, wearing mourning black, Min Atherton boarded a train going west. No one came to see her off, and she was glad of it. They thought she was slinking out of town, shamed by her husband, shocked by his actions.

She would never be shamed or shocked by her James.

As she maneuvered herself and her one huge bag back to her compartment, she blinked away tears. Her dear, dear James. Someday, somehow, she would find a way to avenge him.

She settled on the wide seat, thumping her bag beside her before folding her hands on her generous lap for her last look at Maryland.

She would not come back. One day perhaps she would send someone, but she would not be back.

Still, she sighed a little. Leaving her house had been difficult. Most of her pretty things would be shipped, but it would not be the same. Not without James.

He'd been the perfect mate for her. So thirsty, so malleable,
so anxious to pretend he was the power. She smiled to herself as she took out a fan to cool her heated flesh. Her eyes glittered. She hadn't minded playing the woman behind the man. So satisfying to wield the power over them all without any of them—not even James really— understanding who had been in charge.

He'd been no more than a dabbler when she had taken him in, taken him over. Interested and angry, but with no clear idea of how to use that interest and anger for more.

She'd known. A woman knew. And men were only puppets, after all, to be led where a woman chose by sex, by blood, by the offer of power.

A pity he had become so bold and careless at the end. Sighing, she fanned herself more briskly. She had herself to blame, she supposed, for not stopping him. But it had been exciting to watch him spin out of control, to risk all for more. Almost as exciting as the night all those years ago when she had initiated him. She, the goddess of the Master, and James her servant.

It was she, of course, who had started it. She who had looked beyond the accepted and grabbed those dark promises with both hands. She who had ordered the first human sacrifice. And had watched, oh, and had watched from the shadows of trees as blood was spilled.

And she who had felt the power of that blood and craved more.

The Master had never granted her fondest wish—the wish for children—but He had given her substitutes. He had shown her greed, the most delicious of the deadly sins.

There would be other towns, she thought, as the train's whistle shrilled. Other men. Other victims. Whores with fertile bellies. Oh, yes, there would always be more.

And who would look to her, the poor Widow Atherton, when their women disappeared?

Perhaps she would choose a young boy this time. A lost, angry boy like Ernie Butts—who had turned out to be such a disappointment to her. No, she would not search for another James but for a young boy, she thought comfortably. One she could mother and guide and train to worship both her and the Dark Lord.

As the train pulled slowly away from the station, she slipped a hand down her bodice, closed her fingers over the pentagram.

“Master,” she murmured. “We start again.”

DIVINE EVIL

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved
Copyright (c) 1992 by Nora Roberts

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004041055

eISBN: 978-0-307-56740-6

www.bantamdell.com

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