Ritual Sins

by Anne Stuart

  No, he had a much nicer place for Miss Rachel Connery with the broomstick up her ass. He’d send her to the psycho ward, and let her see what happened to those who doubted the power of the Foundation of Being.

  He glanced down at her as she stood outside the refectory. Not his kind of woman. Too angry, too upper-class, too lean, and too fierce. But she smelled damned good. And even her skinny little body called to him, even as she glared at him, making little attempt at superficial courtesy. He wondered what she would do if he pushed her back against the wall and put his hand between her legs?

  She’d probably scream her patrician little head off, he thought with dark amusement. She was a far cry from her mother, with the hungry appetites and the taste for trash. Princess Rachel wouldn’t be interested in dallying with the devil. And he doubted she needed Stella’s money. People like her came equipped with generations’ worth of money—she didn’t need Stella’s, and he did. It was just that simple.

  She just wanted to screw him. Figuratively speaking, of course. He smiled down at her, using his sweetest smile, the one that melted most of his followers, the one that left Rachel stony-eyed and glaring.

  “Are you afraid of illness?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” she said.

  “Aren’t you? Well, you’re young,” he said, deliberately dismissive.

  “I suppose you think that when I get to your advanced age I’ll be wise enough to be frightened,” she snapped, obviously irritated by him.

  He wanted to keep that irritation alive. It amused him, and it made her vulnerable. “Somehow I can’t imagine you ever being as old as I am,” he said.

  “I did my research, O Great White Spirit,” she said sarcastically. “You’re somewhere in your late thirties. You think I’m not going to make it another ten years?”

  “Oh, I imagine you’ll live to a ripe old age, unless you annoy someone enough to kill you. But you’ll always be an angry child, spoiled and fretful.” He waited patiently to see her reaction to that particular salvo.

  It wasn’t what he expected. She didn’t go pale with rage or denial—she seemed more amused at his description. “You think so?” she murmured. “And what will save me from such a horrible fate? Wearing pastel cotton pajamas and listening to your pontifications?”

  “I seldom pontificate,” he said. He’d misjudged her, not a mistake he often made. He’d viewed her as a spoiled little rich girl, wanting her own way. He was beginning to suspect things weren’t quite that simple. What else had Stella said about her? He couldn’t remember, and details like those were too important to overlook. “You might start with an open mind.”

  He’d managed to move closer to her without her realizing it. She was amazingly skittish, considering how determinedly confrontational she was. “An open mind?” she echoed. “I suppose I could try it.” Her smile was incredibly snotty. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  He wasn’t about to rise to her bait. “Including a grain beverage for breakfast and a hard day’s labor,” he said, pushing open the refectory doors. “I think we’ll start you out in the east wing of the hospital, helping the caregivers. You’ll feel at home there.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “I’ll leave you in Calvin’s capable hands. He knows more about the running of this place than I do, and he’ll get you settled in your work. You can even see if he’ll divulge all the dark secrets behind this pristine exterior on your way to the east wing.”

  She glanced over at Calvin, waiting calmly by the table, and he had to admire her sangfroid. She didn’t even blink. “What’s in the east wing? The nonbelievers?”

  He bestowed his sweetest smile on her. “No. The mental patients.”

  Calvin’s loyalties and goals were clear, and they had been since the day he’d first set eyes on Luke Bardell. He didn’t like to remember that time—it had been a bad stretch for both of them, and he was a simple man with simple needs. Dwelling on fear and pain was a waste. Particularly when things were going so well right now.

  Not that it was safe. Things were never safe, and Luke ought to have known that, but after years of people telling him he was perfect, the man was starting to believe it. Until Calvin set him straight.

  Luke had enemies. More than that stuck-up bitch who wanted to get her hands on her mother’s money. Fat chance of that—in the years he’d known Luke he’d never known him to willingly give up anything he’d earned, stolen, cheated, or lucked into. Not if someone tried to take it away.

  Rachel Connery was far from the worst of Luke’s problems, but she wasn’t harmless either. If he started ignoring the little threats, underestimating them, then sooner or later he would lose it all.

  Calvin didn’t intend to let that happen. He needed Luke too much. He needed Luke’s gift for conning money out of the most unlikely sources. He needed Luke’s cool, wise, sensible attitude toward a life that started out bad and had taken too damned long to get comfortable. He needed Luke’s love and friendship. And there weren’t any lengths he wouldn’t go to, to protect those things he needed.

  Including disposing of an inconvenience like Rachel Connery. He’d done it before and he had no qualms about doing it again. An ugly necessity. Luke had never been able to make peace with the ugly side of reality, and it was up to Calvin to look out for him. He protected his own, and he knew a threat when he saw one. He just wondered if Luke had lost that particular ability.

  Rachel Connery was a threat all right, he thought, as he led her across the compound beneath the bright New Mexico sun an hour later. “How long have you known Luke? How did you happen to meet?” she asked in a light, innocent voice that didn’t fool him for a minute.

  He was tempted to tell her, just to see her reaction. Pretty little rich girl with her safe life, she wouldn’t know a thing about …

  “Long enough,” he said.

  “You’re not like the others.”

  He looked at her. “I’m not the only freak here,” he said. “You stay here long enough and you’ll run into people even stranger than I am.”

  She didn’t instantly deny he was a freak, which raised her a small notch in his grudging esteem. Calvin knew who and what he was, and polite, politically correct responses didn’t make it any better.

  “I meant you aren’t sweet and saintly like the others,” she said. “Everyone else seems like something out of a Brady Bunch rerun.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “When I was growing up there wasn’t much time for television.” He pulled open the heavy carved door of the restoration center and started down the hallway, knowing she’d follow. “Gretchen’s the caregiver in charge—you just do what she tells you and you’ll be fine. But remember to keep away from Angel.”

  “Angel?”

  “Most of the patients are safe enough. They’re suffering from various forms of sickness, and with enough healing they’ll be better. But Angel’s beyond our help. She’s delusional, and dangerous. She’ll be leaving here tomorrow, but in the meantime don’t go anywhere near her room. It’s kept locked, so you shouldn’t have any problem.”

  “Is she really a danger?”

  “To herself, and to everyone else.” He glanced at her. She was taking it all in, rising to the bait like a starving guppie. “She thinks there’s a conspiracy going on. That Luke’s just using everybody, stealing their money, and then murdering anyone who gets in his way. Particularly the old ones who didn’t have that long to live. She thinks he helps them along. Imagine that?”

  “Imagine,” Rachel echoed faintly.

  “She’ll try to wheedle her way around you. Don’t listen to her. It’s all a pack of lies.” He rapped on a heavy door with a high, barred window. “Isn’t it, Angel?”

  “Go to hell.” Angel’s voice floated through the barred window, sharp and level.

  “See what I mean?” Calvin said. “She sounds as sane as you or me. But don’t believe it.” He raised his voice, pitching it toward the locked door. “I’m
leaving a new helper, Angel. Her name’s Rachel, and she’ll get you anything you need. Just don’t go playing your tricks, trying to fill her head full of your lies. You hear me?”

  Her response was succinct and obscene, and Calvin laughed. “I’ll come back for you just before five,” he said. “That’s when you start your training with Luke.”

  “Whoopee,” Rachel muttered, glancing toward the locked door.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he warned her. “She’s dangerous.”

  “I’m not interested in endangering myself,” Rachel said with great dignity.

  Sure you’re not, he thought. He only hoped he’d done a good enough job priming her curiosity. If Rachel Connery proved true to form, he could count on Angel to take care of the rest. And he could meet Luke’s accusing gaze with relative innocence.

  He loved it when things fit together.

  It took Rachel forever to get to Angel. The woman didn’t make a sound behind her heavy, locked door, and Gretchen, a long-haired, middle-aged woman in pale green pajamas, kept Rachel reasonably busy, reading to one patient who barely seemed to listen, rolling yarn for another who kept knitting the same square over and over again and then pulling it out. It wasn’t until late afternoon that she had a few moments to herself. Gretchen had gone for a cup of green tea, a refreshment that filled Rachel with horror.

  The corridor outside Angel’s room was deserted. The window was low enough that Rachel could peer inside, and the sight that met her eyes stunned her.

  It was no madwoman curled in a corner, drooling and babbling. The woman who sat at the table, writing in a journal, looked neat, sane, and even pretty, her thick blond hair curling on her shoulders, her face determined.

  “Angel?” Rachel whispered.

  The woman lifted her head, staring at the door. Her eyes were clear, calm. “What do you want?”

  “It’s Rachel. Stella Connery’s daughter. Did you know my mother when she was here?”

  Angel put her pencil down. “I knew Stella,” she said. “They killed her.”

  Rachel froze. “Are you the one who wrote to me?” she asked urgently.

  “Wrote to you? I don’t even know you. I knew your mother. They killed her.” There was the madness, and yet she sounded so matter-of-fact, so reasonable.

  “Why would they do that? She was dying anyway.”

  “So they say. Maybe she really did have cancer. Maybe they hurried her along to put her out of her misery. Maybe that’s what they did to all the others.”

  “All what others?”

  Angel rose and came to the door. She was a tall, slender woman, with strong-looking hands. “All the people who’ve died here. All the rich people who’ve come here to follow Luke’s way, only to find they have a terminal disease that no one can help. They die. They die very quickly. And they leave all their money to the Foundation.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Angel’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Why do you think I’m locked in here? You think people are really nutcases like that little weirdo Calvin said? They’re trying to silence me. I found out too much, but they don’t dare kill me. Yet.”

  “Are you going to have your parents do something about it … ?”

  “Parents? My parents have been dead for years. That’s just another one of Calvin’s lies. I don’t know what they have planned for me, but by tomorrow I don’t think I’ll be caring. Unless you help me.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “Let me out of here. Give me a chance to get away from them. You don’t know how bad they really are, how evil. You don’t know what they’re capable of. I have all the proof I need right here in my journal—times, places, names of victims—but they’ll never let me keep it.” She paused. “I could give it to you. That way if something happens to me, at least it won’t all be covered up. You’ll do that for me, at least, won’t you? Keep the journal, make sure it gets to the right people?”

  She didn’t even hesitate. Who was she to trust, Luke Bardell’s right-hand man, or a woman much like herself, who knew just what evil was going on beneath the saintly exterior of the Foundation of Being? Yet she denied being the author of that chilling letter. And if she wasn’t, who else knew of Luke’s horrific sideline? How many people were in on it?

  “Does anyone else know what’s going on? Is there anyone else I could talk to about my mother?” she persisted.

  “Your mother was a believer. Almost until the end. There are others who’ve begun to suspect, but they keep us separated, locked up if they can.”

  “Surely she must have had friends here … ?”

  “Stella was only interested in what Luke could give her.”

  That was her mother all right, Rachel thought grimly. All her life had centered around whatever man she currently slept with.

  “Let me out,” Angel said. “And I’ll give you the names of people who might know something about your mother.”

  It was too much to resist. “Yes,” she said.

  Angel didn’t move. “You have to open the door,” she said patiently. “I can’t slide the notebook underneath. You’ll need the keys.”

  Rachel looked around her, ignoring the prickle of uneasiness. “I don’t know where they are.”

  “In the drawer. Second drawer down on the right. Help me, Rachel. For your mother’s sake. And help those poor souls who’ve already died.”

  The key was there. It fit into the lock easily enough, and when Rachel pushed the door open Angel was standing a few feet back, a relieved smile on her face, the journal open in her hands.

  “You see,” she said. “This has all the answers.”

  Rachel looked at the open pages of the book. Word after word of scrawled obscenity, senseless, wandering across the paper, totally insane.

  She took one step away, one small, infinitesimal step back from the woman who towered over her. But it was already too late.

  “Oh, noooo,” Angel whispered, her face still eerily calm. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? I should have known. You were sent to tempt me. I won’t allow it. He sent you. But he’s mine. Luke is mine. You won’t have him!”

  Rachel had half turned to run when Angel’s body slammed into her, throwing her to the ground, knocking the air out of her. Those strong hands closed around her throat, and even as Rachel clawed at them, she could feel her breath slipping farther and farther away, as Angel shrieked obscenities, slamming her head against the floor.

  And in that moment Rachel knew she was going to die.

  4

  They convened once more, the Grandfathers, and their faces were grave in the reflection of the firelight. “We’re running out of time,” the outsider said.

  “Disrespectful,” George Landers hissed in disapproval. He cherished his power, and disliked allowing a mere penitent into their closed meetings. But George was a physical coward. Willing to let others take the real risks, while he played with stocks and bonds.

  Alfred held up a restraining hand, and the noise subsided. “This woman is dangerous,” he said. “Her presence here is a disruption. She’s forcing our hand, and the last thing we want to do is be precipitous. We need to take our time, make sure we don’t make any mistakes. We need to get rid of her as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m working on it,” said the outsider, ignoring George. “I have everything well in hand.”

  “And you aren’t going to tell us?” the old woman next to him asked in a soft voice. She was sleeping with the outsider. She probably already knew the answer, Alfred thought with a disapproving sniff.

  “The fewer people who know, the better. She’ll be taken care of. Punished.”

  “And Luke?” George demanded, glaring at him.

  “All in good time, Grandfather,” the boy said with mocking courtesy. “All in good time.”

  It was dark when Rachel awoke, and there was pain. Warmth pressed down around her, cushioning her, and she kept her eyes shut against the wavering light that teased
in the corner of her consciousness. If she opened her eyes she would have to acknowledge the pain, and she was afraid. Afraid there was too much for her to handle, afraid she would be vulnerable once more, when she’d spent so much of her life trying to fight her vulnerability.

  She’d learned, early on, that people hurt you if they possibly could. She tried to make it very clear that no one could hurt her, ever again.

  But someone had. Her throat was on fire, her head throbbed, and her entire body felt as if it had been trampled on by elephants. She didn’t know where she was, or how she’d gotten there. She only knew she had to escape.

  She blinked, unwillingly, finally giving in to the need to open her eyes. The room was murky, filled with a pungent smoke that ripped at her sore throat. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was, or what had happened.

  The faint flute music that drifted from a distance was her first clue, though she was certain she’d never heard it before. She was in New Mexico. Land of enchantment, though the retreat center at Santa Dolores was leaving her far from enchanted.

  She gradually realized she was lying on the floor, on some thin pallet in a dark, cavernous room. The flute music was coming from somewhere in the distance, the pungent smoke surrounded her. Her clothes were loose, comfortable, and she didn’t have to look to know that Luke had eventually gotten his way. She was wearing one of their damned sets of pajamas.

  She tried to lift her head, but the pain was so intense she let it sink back to the pallet with a groan. She could remember Angel now, the ill-named creature who’d tried to kill her, her strong hands around her throat, choking her, as she smashed her head against the hardwood floor.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, she berated herself. She’d come away with nothing but a bruised and battered body and a crazy woman’s ravings. A pack of lies. Much as Rachel wanted to believe the worst of Luke Bardell and his followers, on reflection the notion of wholesale murder was far too melodramatic. There were easier ways to extort money from gullible people—con men and evangelists had known that over the centuries. They didn’t have to resort to anything as messy as murder.