by Anne Stuart
Maybe she simply didn’t believe it. Death was unreal to her—someone strong and young and healthy didn’t have her life ripped away from her without warning. This was all something out of a Gothic nightmare—terribly melodramatic and all that, but surely just a little too overblown.
She opened her eyes a crack to see Ferdy taking a deep swig of Doc’s flask. She could smell the keroseney odor of the torches, and she could see the silhouette of the stake in the shadowy night. And she knew it was no joke.
She shut her eyes again, letting the cool, damp breeze of the approaching storm wash over her. It had been a night like this when she’d gone to Ethan’s bed. Outside, the world had crashed and burned. Inside, their lives had exploded with a passion that managed to distract and weaken her even in her current situation.
She smiled wryly against the trunk of the tree. She was in a sorry state when erotic memories could make her forget that she was going to die a hideous death in a few hours. Still, what better thing to think about? A fate that she wasn’t sure she could escape? Or Ethan’s beautiful, long-limbed body, his wicked, knowing hands and mouth, his beautiful marked face…
“What are you smiling about?” Ferdy demanded in an angry screech. He’d moved over there on his spry little feet. Doc was leaning against the bulldozer, eyes closed, snoring slightly, peacefully passed out. Not that he would have been any protection from Ferdy.
She simply looked up at him, keeping her expression carefully blank, and Ferdy’s rage exploded. “Don’t look at me out of those witch’s eyes! I know your kind. Wicked, godless strumpets, leading men to their doom, ripping away their holiness, making them burn.” He grabbed a stick from the ground, a long, pointed one, and held it in the flame of one of those torches. “I can put out those eyes. I can stop you from watching, from seducing. It won’t matter to Pastor Lincoln. He’ll praise me. Yes, he’ll praise me for seeing the devil and blinding her. Yes,” Ferdy mumbled, drooling slightly as he advanced on her. “Yes,” he said. “He’ll praise me….”
And then he stopped. The flaming brand was in one upraised hand, and his twisted expression of malevolent determination suddenly altered.
She’d watched his approach with that same, detached curiosity, knowing her danger and yet not feeling it. Even as she felt the heat in that flaming stick, she didn’t whimper or panic. She just waited, very still, watching him out of expressionless eyes.
He dropped the stick to the ground with a pain-filled moan of his own. “No!” he said in a hushed whisper, sheer horror filling his voice. “No.” But this time it was a strangled scream as he stumbled backward, not looking where he was going.
She couldn’t say anything. She watched it happen with that same remote curiosity, knowing that in a few more steps, he was going to go over the edge of the cliff. She had no idea how far down it was, whether it was simply a short, gentle slope or a murderous drop-off. It wouldn’t matter. She opened her mouth to speak, to warn him, but no sound came out. He was looking past her in terror, and the noises from his ancient throat were garbled, unintelligible sounds of panic.
He tripped backward, over the carefully-laid bonfire. And then he disappeared over the side of the hill. Without a sound. Just the silent dropping away from sight, and Ferdy was gone. Leaving her alone in the darkness with only the comatose doctor for company.
She began to struggle at her bonds then, knowing that she’d somehow been granted a reprieve. She didn’t know how long she’d have—whether Ferdy would manage to struggle back up from his precipitous drop, whether Doc would reemerge from his drunken stupor, whether Pastor Lincoln and his brigade would return from their mission. Were they going to bring Ethan back? Or destroy him where he stood?
But the ropes that bound her wrists were tighter than she’d realized, and the more she struggled, the tighter they got, rubbing her wrists until she thought she could see blood in the wavering torchlight. The wind was howling, whipping the light into strange, dangerous shadows, and the threatening thunder rumbled overhead, a ghostly counterpoint to the darkness.
And yet for some reason, the night didn’t close down into inky blackness. There was a glow to the north, a bright glow, enough to be a good sized town. And then she smelled fire in the air, and she knew they were burning Ethan’s house.
And then she knew why she hadn’t been frightened. Somehow, deep inside, she’d been sure that Ethan would come, Ethan would rescue her in time. Now that certainty had vanished, doubt for the first time creeping in and terrifying her. He was probably deep in the center of the huge octopus of a building, deep within, not hearing anything. He probably still assumed she was safely locked in that bedroom, that Sal was on patrol, that everything was all right. He wouldn’t know until he smelled the smoke, and then it would be too late.
She had to get back to him. Had to warn him. Except the glow in the sky told her it was already too late. The house was burning, filling the sky with an unearthly light. And Ethan might be dead already, caught in the conflagration, his beautiful flesh in torment….
The hand holding hers was solid, cool, and strong. Flowing through that hand were courage and hope, flooding her once more, so that she raised her head, her tear-drenched face, and looked into nothingness.
There was no one there. Someone was holding her hand in a firm, reassuring grip, and there was no one there.
She tightened her fingers and the unseen comforter tightened back, and reassurance flowed through her. She waited, patient, unmoving. And there was Joseph, sitting cross-legged in the dirt beside her, holding her hand.
“Did they hurt him…?”
Joseph shook his head. “He’d already left. He’s coming to get you, Megan. He’s coming to get you away from here.”
“But the others…”
“They can’t hurt you. No one will hurt you,” Joseph said with infinite gentleness.
She glanced uneasily over her shoulder. “Ferdy…”
“He’s dead. That’s a sixty-foot drop onto rocks below. A hundred years ago, when a group of bored and lonely women came out here and played harmless games, the other townspeople rose up against them, led by Pastor Lincoln’s grandfather. They came and they drove those poor women over the cliff. The two who survived wished they hadn’t.”
Megan shivered, cold on this hot, stormy night. “Can you untie me, Joseph?”
“No,” he said, with great regret.
She looked down at their clasped hands. She only saw hers. He sat distant and apart, his ancient face creased in sorrow, and she knew.
It wasn’t a conscious knowledge. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, to understand. Instead, she simply accepted what was unbelievable, letting her hand rest in his reassuring, unseen grip while she waited for Ethan.
She might have, unbelievably, slept. Or merely let her mind drift, overloaded by the danger and terror that surrounded her. At one point, Doc stumbled to his feet, wandered over to the edge of the cliff and relieved himself. Whether he noticed Ferdy’s body beneath didn’t make any difference at that point. And then he went back to his spot by the bulldozer.
The flask was empty by then, and he flung it away in disgust. He glanced over at Megan with no more than casual interest, and then he froze.
She’d seen that expression before. On Ferdy’s face, just before he died trying to escape from whatever had frightened him.
Doc didn’t move. He couldn’t. He sat there, his face pale in the storm-whipped night, his mouth moving and not a word coming out. And Megan knew it wasn’t her who had frightened him. It was Joseph.
She glanced back at her distant companion and comforter to see what was so frightening about him. He looked the same, old and harmless and slightly wavering in the night air. Nothing to terrify two old men.
Doc rose again on unsteady feet, coming marginally closer, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You’re dead,” he said flatly.
For a moment, Megan thought he meant her, and the notion was chilling. And then Joseph spo
ke, and his unseen hand still gripped hers tightly.
“Yes,” he said in that peaceful voice of his. “You did your part in killing me.”
Doc swayed slightly, and his eyes were bulging. And then a shiver went through his body like a massive electric current, and he collapsed, almost at Megan’s feet, his hand outstretched, clutching the hypodermic needle he’d been holding broken in the dirt.
“Tried to…make it easier for…you,” he gasped. “Can’t stop Lincoln. Can only make it…less…” And then he stopped. His breathing was loud, tortured in the moonlight, but his eyes were staring blindly, his mouth moving without a sound issuing forth.
She looked down at the broken needle. “What was it?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“Some kind of narcotic, I suppose,” Joseph murmured. “Something to make you oblivious to Lincoln’s plans.” He didn’t bother looking at Doc’s comatose body. Instead, he glanced skyward at the rolling clouds. “Storm’s getting closer.”
“Yes,” she said.
“So’s the mob.”
“Yes,” she said again, clinging tightly. Waiting. Waiting for death. Or waiting for Ethan. She had no choice. Doc’s breathing grew more erratic as he struggled and gasped, like a fish out of water, flopping slightly on the damp ground. And then Megan realized he wasn’t making any noise at all. He lay there, still and cold, and his breathing had stopped.
Even as the darkness descended around them, the brightness grew, and she knew it was the headlights of Pastor Lincoln’s brigade. They were going to make it back before Ethan found them. And she knew there was no hope for her.
She considered trying to reach the broken hypodermic, then dismissed the notion. She wasn’t going to die a coward. The hand holding hers told her she wasn’t going to die at all. Though at the moment, she wouldn’t have put any money on that certainty.
It seemed as if there were more trucks returning than had left. In the wind-tossed darkness, the clearing seemed covered with blinding headlights, and yet the crowd of people moving toward the grove seemed diminished. She didn’t stop to consider why. She simply clung to Joseph, keeping her head high and her gaze steady as Pastor Lincoln advanced on her.
He looked straight at her, unaware that she wasn’t alone. “What have you done, you harlot? Where’s Ferdy? What’s happened to Doc? Answer me, or God’s wrath will pour down upon you….”
She was getting a little tired of his direct connection to God’s wrath. As far as she was concerned, she was of equal value in His eyes. “I gave them the evil eye and they both dropped dead,” she snapped, trying to dredge up her courage.
Definitely a major mistake, she knew that immediately. Pastor Lincoln began to shriek, calling upon God and all his saints to strike her dead, ordering his faithful followers to punish her.
His faithful followers were already looking a little uneasy. Mob frenzy could only last so long, and the drive between the knoll and Ethan’s house was a long one. The fire seemed to have sated their blood lust, for no one moved.
“She’s murdered Doc!” Lincoln shrieked, his face red with fury. “With her witchcraft, she’s broken every holy ordinance. She must die.”
Still no one came close. They were looking at what Pastor Lincoln couldn’t see. The man sitting in the dirt behind her. The old man, watching, warning them away.
The knife glittered in the darkness as Lincoln slashed through her bonds. She could feel the hot, sticky wetness of her own blood as he hauled her to her feet, but she no longer wondered why Joseph didn’t stop him. He couldn’t.
Lincoln dragged her over to the stake, shrieking prayers that were both macabre and eerily familiar. On that hilltop, they were the only two people moving, the others were transfixed, watching the gory tableau as Megan kicked and fought and scratched, ignoring the vicious blade in the pastor’s deft hand. “Help me,” he called to the others, panting as he struggled with her desperate fury, but no one moved. No one helped him, but no one stopped him, either. They stood there, transfixed, watching.
He slapped her hard across the face, momentarily stunning her, and she fell back against the hard, wooden stake. He had ropes in his hands, to bind her to her funeral pyre, and as he advanced on her, she screamed.
She felt his presence before she saw him. The lightning was all around, snaking down on the high, exposed place, with the thunder shaking the ground. From over the cliff, he appeared, climbing up the sheer rock face, and as the bolt of lightning illuminated him, Megan felt a sudden, superstitious terror.
Ethan looked like Lucifer, the fallen angel. His long black hair flowed around his narrow, marked face, the beauty and the deformity a contrast in rage. He was dressed in black, and he stood there at the edge of the cliff, intent on Pastor Lincoln’s mesmerized figure.
“Get away from her.”
Lincoln dropped the ropes in sudden superstitious terror. And then he managed to regain his fury. “Kill the ungodly!” he screeched to the skies. “Send your lightning down and kill the evil ones.”
The slashing sizzle of fire was instantaneous, followed immediately by a thunder that shook the valley below. The bolt of lightning snaked down, a direct hit. Slicing through the upraised arm of Pastor Lincoln. Killing him instantly.
It was a moment of speechless horror. The smell of fire and electricity, the sudden finality of it. For an endless moment, he stood there as the very air around him crackled. And then he fell, face forward. His body spread-eagled across the pile of kindling he’d planned for Megan’s execution.
Chapter Seventeen
Someone took her arm. Megan couldn’t remember when she’d managed to struggle to her feet. Pastor Lincoln’s body was nearby, but she kept her gaze averted, watching Ethan’s distant face.
Now that she was on her feet, she could see the conflagration in the distance as Ethan’s house went up in flames. The lightning seemed to have vanished, that final, murderous bolt the end, and now rain began to fall, a steady, soaking rain. She looked at Ethan, wanting to run to him, but the hand on her arm held her steady. And then he turned his back to her, to stare out into the rain-swept night toward his burning home.
“Come with me, Megan.’ The voice was gentle, familiar, and she half expected it to be Joseph. But it was Sal, his face bruised and battered almost beyond recognition, with more kindness than she’d ever heard from him. “You’re bleeding. You need to get to the hospital and have someone check you over. And the police are going to want a statement.”
“Hospital?” she echoed, dazed. “Police?” She looked around her and realized that the members of the motley crowd who’d been out for her blood just hours ago weren’t subdued simply by their leader’s shocking death. They were subdued by an astonishing number of uniformed policemen.
“Come along,” Sal said again, tugging her toward a police car.
She tried to pull back. “But Ethan…”
“I’ll take care of him. I always have. Go with Lieutenant Dixon. Now.” The shove was not as gentle as his hands had been, pushing her toward the waiting police officer.
She turned back, wondering if she could break away, but Ethan’s back was still turned. Tall, remote, he’d shut everything out. Including her.
The ride to the hospital in Millers Fork was endless. She sat in the back of the police car, staring blindly at the blinking lights on the dashboard, and answered questions in a dull monotone. And had her own unasked ones answered.
Sal had gone for help the moment he’d realized how far things had transpired in town. Pastor Lincoln had left him tied up in front of the altar in the old church, but the bonds had been looser than Megan’s, and he’d managed to escape, stealing a car and heading for Millers Fork and the nearest police station. It hadn’t taken much to convince the authorities—his own beaten face and Ruth Wilkins’s presence in the hospital were proof enough, and the stories about Oak Grove had been rampant.
They were too late to save Ethan’s house, but the crowd was so het up that it hadn’t noticed
a phalanx of anonymous sedans had joined the convoy back to the old oak grove. Lieutenant Dixon was just about to make his own move when Pastor Lincoln had met his abrupt end. Megan didn’t listen to the excuses or explanations. They no longer mattered. What mattered was that Ethan had come to save her. And once she was safe, he’d turned his back on her.
It took too long, too damned long at the hospital. Lincoln had managed to give her a substantial gash across her ribs, one that required several stitches, and she had various scratches, bumps and bruises that needed attending to. At three in the morning, she didn’t have the option of visiting Ruth, but she was told Ruth was recuperating quite nicely and would be released in another day. Though why anyone would want to go back to the town of Oak Grove was beyond Megan’s comprehension.
Except that was exactly where she was desperate to go. And she still had to wait, and wait, and wait while the inexorable Lieutenant Dixon drove her to the police station and plied the sleepy stenographer and himself with coffee that Megan steadfastly refused. She was already about to fly apart—she didn’t need caffeine on top of her monumental case of burgeoning hysteria.
The sun was rising when they finally decided they’d asked enough questions. There were three bodies that needed accounting for. They’d all been horrified witnesses to the Pastor’s demise, but Ferdy and Doc were a little more problematic. Dixon had seen for himself that Megan was still securely bound when they’d arrived and that both men were dead. But she knew he wouldn’t understand about Joseph. And she didn’t bother trying to explain.
It made the whole inquisition last longer, and Dixon was far from satisfied when he finally let her go. But there was nothing more she could say, not when she didn’t understand herself.
They offered to drive her to the nearest airport or, failing that, to the nearest car-rental place, but she turned them down. For one thing, she had no purse, no identification and no one she could call for help. She’d be damned if she’d ask her father for anything.