by Kay Hooper
A twisted and impenetrable mind, at least to Hollis. She almost wished Dani were here; as far as Hollis knew, Dani Justice was the only person living who had firsthand experience with at least some of the thoughts in this twisted monster’s mind. And was, moreover, possibly the only person who had ever hurt him in a psychic sense.
And therein lay the danger.
Dani was someone else too easily recognizable to Samuel, and she, unlike Hollis, posed a very real and deadly threat to him. Hollis he wouldn’t be happy about; Dani might be able to destroy him, and that was a threat that could push him over the edge.
“Call me,” Dani had said to Bishop. “If it comes to that. If you need me there. Call me. In the meantime, I’ll keep practicing.”
“What about Marc?” Bishop had asked, referring to the man with whom she was in the process of forming a unique partnership.
“Marc understands the stakes. And he knows how I feel about finishing this, once and for all. Call me, Bishop. If you need me.”
Hollis hoped they wouldn’t need Dani. As remarkable as her ability was, Dani had not faced Samuel in a literal sense, had not pitted her strength against his directly. What she had done in Venture had been self-defense, not an offensive attack.
Facing him here would be . . . something very different.
Something deadly.
“He recharges,” Hollis said aloud to herself as she stared down at a detailed drawing of the church Sarah had managed to get out to them weeks before. She fixed her gaze on the third-floor layout and Samuel’s suite of rooms in the rear of the building. “He controls. He kills. Why does he kill? Because he can? Because he wants to? Because he has to? Why—”
The physical reaction was always the same. All the fine hairs on her body stood out as though electrical energy filled the room, and goose bumps rose on her flesh as if someone had suddenly opened a door into winter. And there was, still, a jolt of fear, a sense that some doors were really never intended to be opened by the living. Not, at least, without some dreadful cost. Hollis looked up slowly.
The woman was young, pretty, with long fair hair, and her expression was unhappy.
Possibly because she was dead.
But she looked alive, looked flesh-and-blood real; Hollis had the uneasy suspicion that if she could reach across the table and touch this spirit, the woman would feel just as alive as she looked. Hollis always had that notion and probably would until—if—she put it to the test.
“I told you to look for her in the water. Why didn’t you listen?” Her voice was low, anxious.
Hollis ignored the question to ask one of her own. “Who are you?”
“Andrea.”
“Andrea who?”
“You have to look for her in the water.”
“Look for who in the water?” Hollis countered, trying for once to get at least a few bits of useful information she could focus on.
“Ruby.”
“Is Ruby in the water now?”
“I told you.”
“You told me more than three months ago.”
Andrea’s expression turned uncertain. “Three months ago.”
“Three months ago and in another town. Another state. I saw you in Venture, Georgia. At a murder scene. We’re in North Carolina now. Don’t you know when you are? Where you are?” A breath of a laugh escaped Andrea. “I’m in hell, I think.”
“Andrea, when did you die?”
“You don’t know about me yet.” She said it in an odd, automatic way, as if reciting something memorized.
“You said that before. In Venture.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. When did you die?”
“Before.”
“Andrea—”
“It’s my fault. What he’s doing. I should have made him understand. I should have . . . He’s made it so much worse, and it’s all my fault.”
“What’s your fault?” Hollis’s question was more insistent, because she could see that Andrea was fading, losing substance and energy, and knew the contact would last only seconds longer.
But Andrea was shaking her head. “Please, look for her in the water. Help Ruby.”
Hollis drew a quick breath. “If she’s already in the water, then I can’t help her.”
“You can. You have to. All of you have to.” Even her voice was fading, the final words holding a curiously hollow sound. “You need her help to stop him.”
Hollis stared at the empty space on the other side of the table, vaguely aware that the room was a normal temperature again and that the sensation of a live current in the air was gone. She pulled a legal pad from under one of the maps and made several quick notes, jotting down what had been said while it was still fresh in her mind.
Then, conscious of a nagging uneasiness, she searched among the folders for the right one and from it pulled a list of names Sarah had provided for them. Members of the Church of the Everlasting Sin.
One of Sarah’s goals once inside the church had been to both compile this list and provide basic information about each person, trying to determine which of Samuel’s followers might possibly be active or latent psychics. She had placed a check beside possible latent psychics and added a star if she had sensed a particular strength or awareness of their ability in the person.
There was a score of checks, which was an extraordinarily high percentage of potential psychic ability for such a small community. Several names boasted question marks. But there were no more than four names with stars beside them. Hollis ran her finger slowly down the list and was almost at the bottom when she found it.
Ruby Campbell had a check beside her name. And three stars.
She was twelve years old.
“I hesitate to interrupt the brooding,” Tessa said, “but we really don’t have time for it.”
Sawyer felt his eyebrows climbing as he looked at her. “Well, forgive me for needing a minute or two to let it all soak in.” She had spent the past ten minutes or so telling him about the Special Crimes Unit, the very concept of which he was having a hard time dealing with.
“I really am sorry. I know it’s a lot—Haven, the SCU, what we believe about Samuel and his church. And you have every right to feel overwhelmed. You also have every right to mistrust me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But I’m afraid I need to know—now—whether I made a mistake in confiding in you.”
“Wasn’t sanctioned, huh?”
“It’s not quite like that. Field operatives make judgment calls all the time, and one of those is often whether—and when—to take local law enforcement into our confidence. Nobody’s going to second-guess me for making that decision. But I need to know if it was the right one.”
After a moment, he said, “I honestly don’t know how I feel about any of this, Tessa. But I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t happy to know that I’m not the only one suspicious of Samuel and his church.”
“Good enough.”
“Is it?” He didn’t want to be accused again of brooding but couldn’t do anything about the frown he knew he was wearing. “If Samuel is even half of what you say he is, then I’m a bit doubtful of my own control, my—what did you call it? shields?—my ability to keep him from sensing my thoughts. I don’t know if I can keep your secrets.”
“Just try to concentrate on your own suspicions of him whenever you’re around him. That’s no secret to him and could very well keep him from delving deeper.”
“Delving? Into my mind? Jesus.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, we aren’t sure he can do that. Delve, I mean.”
“It doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Sorry. But, look, we’re all in that boat, more or less. We don’t know how powerful he is. Even worse, we don’t know for certain what abilities he has. Is he telepathic? Is he precognitive? Empathic? What’s his range? What are his limitations? He can . . . suck up energy from other sources to recharge his own, even from other people, but can he channel that energy? Literally?
Make it a weapon? Or has he found some other way of killing with his mind?”
“Jesus,” Sawyer repeated.
She nodded. “Scary, isn’t it? The law doesn’t cover what he is, what he can do. He doesn’t use a knife or a gun or a garrote, or even a big stick. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t have to be anywhere near his victims. He certainly doesn’t have to touch them. And yet, somehow, he murders them. He steals their very life energy, and in a way that has to be unimaginably painful and terrifying.”
“Why? Why is he killing?”
“I don’t know. But I believe he won’t stop. I believe every one of his followers is at risk.”
“Nearly a hundred people live in this Compound.”
“Yes.”
“People who practically worship him.”
“Don’t kid yourself—they do worship him. He’s spent a lot of time and expended a great deal of energy to make certain of it.”
“Then why the hell isn’t that enough for him? What more could he want than to be considered a god by his followers?”
“Maybe . . . to be considered a god by the world.”
Sawyer drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I really, really hope you’re wrong about that.”
“So do I. But if you want to consider the textbook definition of a cult leader, he pretty much fits, and for a cult leader it’s always, at the end of the day, about power. About controlling his followers. And about convincing them that only he can lead them to . . . peace, or heaven, or some version of utopia, of the promised land, whatever it is they want to believe in. I haven’t heard his sermons yet, but I’m told they can turn on a dime from God Loves You to Those Who Don’t Understand Will Try to Destroy Us.”
“I’ve been told the same thing, though I’ve personally only heard the God Loves You version.”
“And have you seen his effect on his female followers?”
“I’ve seen it. Creepy as hell. Whatever he’s doing to them . . . if it isn’t a crime, it’s sure to God a sin.”
“It’s worse than a sin.” She told him their theory.
Though it pretty much confirmed his own suspicions, Sawyer nevertheless felt queasy. “Christ. So he’s killing some of them and regularly . . . feeding off others? Off the sexual pleasure of the women?”
“We think so.”
“For energy? Literally?”
Tessa nodded.
“Why does he need so much energy?”
“We don’t know. Maybe because he’s using so much to control his followers. Maybe he’s stockpiling for some . . . future need.”
“What kind of need?”
“If he’s paranoid, and cult leaders mostly are, he has to be afraid someone really will try to stop him. In his mind, that would be an ultimate battle. An apocalypse. Armageddon. He may be trying to build up his power, strengthen his abilities, for that last stand against whoever is perceived to be attacking cults either explode or implode, sooner or later, and it’s virtually always because the cult leader has lost it.”
“If he’s using so much energy, even if he’s just storing it, won’t that have an effect on his brain?”
“Probably. And we’re pretty sure he was twisted to begin with. There’s no telling what’s happening inside his head, but I can pretty much guarantee you it isn’t good.”
“Maybe his own ambition will destroy him,” Sawyer said. “I don’t have to be a doctor to know that the human body was
never intended to contain too much electrical energy. What ever’s building up inside him, sooner or later, it’s gotta blow.”
The morning meditations were always the most difficult for Samuel, at least these days. He thought it was because there was
seldom an opportunity to recharge his energies so early in the day, but he also felt certain it was part of God’s plan.
To keep him humble.
On this morning, however, he’d been forced to deal with the small problem of Brooke—poor child, to believe she could escape God’s plans for her—and while he was saddened by her loss, her energy had certainly made his early meditations much easier on him than usual.
So it wasn’t quite so difficult to work his way through the memories one more time, to relive his childhood. His slow, hesitant acceptance of God into his life. Until . . .
On a scorching hot July day when he was thirteen years old, God reached down and touched him.
It happened more or less in the middle of nowhere, in an area so rural the cows by far outnumbered the people. It happened at a summer tent revival being run by an older preacher, a thin, unshaven, intense-eyed man named Maddox who had long ago fallen out of the mainstream but felt compelled to preach his radical version of God’s word to anyone who would listen.
Samuel had intended to pass through the tiny excuse for a town the day before, but a flyer tacked to a power pole had drawn his attention, and he had decided rather idly to stay for the revival. In his experience, the ladies of the town often brought cakes or cookies along, and sometimes casseroles, turning the event into a sort of family picnic.
There wasn’t much entertainment in such isolated areas, and a good preacher could brighten up an otherwise dull Saturday. And if he was really good, the crowd would return, possibly larger, on Sunday, choosing him as a onetime alternative to their more traditional churches.
So Samuel hung around the town, earning a few bucks sweeping out a couple of downtown stores forgotten by time and then hitching a ride out to the big pasture where a worn tent had been pitched, all the flaps pinned open because it was a sweltering day.
Inside were a few dozen folding chairs and benches, sitting unevenly on the harsh stubble of recently harvested hay. Some one had taken the trouble to rake up whatever manure had been on the ground beneath the tent, but there was nevertheless a pervasive odor of cow hanging heavily in the still, hot air.
Maddox passed out badly printed “programs” that consisted of a single sheet of cheap paper, folded once and filled with tiny, smudged type. His sermon, more or less. The highlights, at least. It was barely literate but filled with passionate belief.
Samuel settled onto a rickety chair at the back, happy that there had been a chicken and two beef casseroles but disgruntled because nobody had brought cookies. He listened to Maddox build slowly to a rant against government officials and established religions and anybody other than himself who believed they had the Answer.
Maddox alone had the Answer.
The Answer he cannily hinted at but never actually provided. Only the godly, he assured them, could hear the Answer. He was good theater, Samuel thought. The couple dozen townsfolk who had come out to listen fanned themselves with his program and nodded and occasionally threw in an amen to keep the show going.
Thunder began to rumble distantly, then closer, and a hot breeze blew through the tent.
Samuel saw a few people consulting watches and beginning to grow restless, and he saw that Maddox had also noticed. The old man’s words began to tumble and fall over one another as he rushed to get his sermon finished and reach the all-important ritual of passing the collection plates, which were, Samuel had noticed, old baskets.
But even with a storm approaching and his audience growing restive, Maddox took the time to ask if any wanted to come forward and offer their own testimony.
Samuel didn’t have to look around to know that no one else in the audience was interested. It was too hot to bestir themselves. Besides, it was time to be leaving, what with a storm coming.
He realized afterward that it was God who made him get to his feet and move to the “front” of the tent, where Maddox had been pacing back and forth. God who made him face the audience filled with sweaty, distracted faces. And God’s voice that thundered from his thirteen-year-old throat with all the passion Maddox possessed and all the power he lacked.
“God loves you!”
A few of the chairs lurched sideways as the people occupying them jumped in surprise.
“God loves you
and wants you to be happy. God wants you to enjoy this life in all its abundance! God sent His son to die for you, for your sins, so that you need never fear punishment. God has chosen you, of all His children, to hear the Truth!”
From the corner of his eye, Samuel could see that Maddox was hardly pleased by having his spotlight stolen, but he didn’t really care what the old man felt, because he was enjoying himself. Looking at the sweaty faces, intent now, some of them filled with a kind of wonder, he felt that sense of power that never failed to thrill him.
They listened to him. They believed what he told them. They believed he was special.
He lifted his arms, calling on God to verify the truth of his words and fill this congregation with that truth, and—
A freight train hit him.
Samuel opened his eyes to find himself on the ground, the hay stubble poking uncomfortably against his back. Above him was a ring of pale, sweating faces, most of them wearing anxious expressions that also, he realized in surprise, held more than a touch of awe.
“Son, are you all right?” It was Maddox, one of those worried faces. But his also held a curiously calculating expression.
Samuel struggled to his feet, aided by several hands, and instead of answering the question, he found himself staring at one of the men who had helped him up.
“You’re going to lose your farm,” he said.
The man started in suprise, his face going pale. “What?”
“Next year. Better get ready for it, if you don’t want your family to starve.”
“Son—” Maddox began.
But Samuel was looking at another face, this one younger and less careworn. “She did cheat on you, just like you thought. But she’s not the real Judas. Talk to your best friend. It’s his bed she’s been in.”
The man spun on his heel and walked away: he was nearly running by the time he left the tent.
Samuel turned his head and saw a woman’s face and, again, without knowing where the knowledge came from, said, “Go see your doctor. There’s something wrong with the child in your belly.”
She gasped, her hands going first to her face, then to cup her only slightly rounded belly. And then she hurried away, nearly falling over one of the chairs in her haste to leave.