by Nora Roberts
“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.”