“No, the neighbor. He should have let the poor animal go inside so we could all get some rest.”
She nodded and sat down, glancing at a few things that had been stacked on her desk.
“Got something for you,” Ed said, handing her a file.
“What is it?”
“The police report that was filed regarding the assault on Jane four months ago.”
Samantha took it and flipped it open. She skipped the written report and focused on the pictures, which showed Jane, half dead, covered in dirt and bruises. She felt for the girl and prayed fervently that she would find peace. Then she flipped to the last photo and stopped.
It was a picture of the mark on the back of Jane’s neck. It was an odd mark, part drawing, part scratch. Samantha looked more closely. Someone had drawn on her in pen and one portion of the skin had been cut, as though someone had traced a pattern and then begun carving it. Blood and inflamed tissue made it hard to see what the pattern was, and part of the ink was smudged, making the original lines unrecognizable. When Jane had shown it to her the day before, she hadn’t been able to make out much. She squinted now, staring at the picture. There was something about the placement that was familiar—
Her heart stuttered and she rose abruptly from the desk.
“What is it?” Ed asked.
“Did you see this?” she asked, showing him the picture.
He nodded. “Officers couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. They thought it was some kind of gang symbol or something.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Where?”
“We have to go talk to the coroner.”
Half an hour later Samantha stood staring down at the dead nun as a chill swept through her. “She’s got something carved on the back of her neck,” she confirmed. The skin was so mangled, though, that she couldn’t tell what it had been. She turned to Ed, who was looking down at the body of Camille.
“There’s something here too,” he confirmed.
Samantha turned to the coroner. “Have you been able to identify what kind of a mark this is?”
He shook his head. “But I can tell you that whatever made it was razor sharp.”
“An athame,” she mused.
“Pardon?” the coroner said.
“A ceremonial dagger, used by witches.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So are we actually going with the press’s whole witch theory?”
“More than just a theory,” Ed said grimly.
Samantha stood, thinking. Jane had been attacked, nearly sacrificed, four months before. Had it really taken them that long to find a replacement? It didn’t seem likely. They would have wanted to sacrifice someone else back then. She thought back, trying to figure out what ritual they might have been performing at that time of year. Practitioners of black arts did not celebrate the phases of the moon and the season in the same way as Wiccans or pagans did. There were, however, a few rituals that were tied to such things. It would have been too early for the summer solstice.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to figure out what they were doing based on the time of year of the first attack. What she needed to figure out was if it had been the only attack until the day before.
“Have any young girls come in during the last four months with something carved into their bodies? It wouldn’t just have to be the back of the neck; it could have been concealed elsewhere.”
The coroner thought a moment and then moved to one of the large filing cabinets in the room.
“Is that a yes?” Ed asked.
The man didn’t say anything, just started flipping through files. Finally he pulled one out and looked at it. Then he turned and looked at Samantha.
“She came in about three months ago. Jane Doe—we never did figure out who she was. Her body was discovered in a park and I estimated that she’d been dead a week. She had a symbol carved on the sole of her left foot.”
He held out a piece of paper from the file and turned it so she could see it. It was an eight-sided star cut into her foot with the skin from one section of the star completely removed.
Samantha fell to her knees and began to retch. Terror surged through her and she could feel her world flying apart.
“What is it?” She heard Ed ask it as though from a distance.
She stopped heaving after a moment and looked up at him. “An octogram,” she said, her voice shaking.
“What does it mean?” Ed asked.
Wholeness, regeneration, so many things—but only one of them was important.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “It means I have to go back.”
Samantha clutched the piece of paper the coroner had given her tightly in her fist. Captain Roberts’s door was open and she closed it behind her as she entered his office.
He looked up from his desk, a mixture of caution and hope in his eyes as he stared at her.
She tossed the piece of paper on his desk and then collapsed into the chair across from him. He picked up the paper and studied the symbol for a moment. “Okay, I give. Other than some kind of star, what is it?”
“Part of a spell to raise the dead.”
He stared at her, thunderstruck. “Is that even possible?” he asked at last.
She nodded slowly. “Not easy, not even probable, but certainly possible.”
“How?”
“Is that really the question you want to be asking right now?” she said with a sigh.
“That’s what all of this is about?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m not sure if that’s the endgame or just step one in whatever they’re planning.”
“Where did you see this symbol?”
“That was from our first victim. Her body turned up three months ago without any type of pentagram, so nobody made the connection right away. The other girls have slightly different versions of the same thing carved somewhere on their bodies. It’s all part of the process.”
He turned pale. “Do you expect me to go to the governor with this? He’d laugh me out of his office. And if the press gets wind of it, our little troubles are going to escalate far beyond our means to control them.”
“I don’t want you to tell anyone. It takes someone with experience, someone like me, to understand the significance of that symbol.” She took a deep breath. “If the other side discovers that we know what it means, they’ll realize we have someone on the inside.”
“Inside?” he asked, arching a brow.
She bit her lip and nodded. “I’m going undercover, like you asked me to.”
Relief and fear mixed in his gaze and after a moment he looked away from her. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered hoarsely.
She stood up and tapped the symbol. “This says otherwise. Unless there are more bodies we haven’t found, several more women are going to be killed. Each one is a point of the star. And odds are good that whoever they’re trying to resurrect is not a candidate for humanitarian of the year.”
“What about Kyle?”
“He’s part of this whole mess, but not one of the eight. He wasn’t a sacrifice. If I move fast, hopefully there won’t be any more sacrifices.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. How do you want to play this? I can let Salem PD know you’re coming.”
“No. The fewer people who know, the safer I’ll be. If you need to reach me, send Ed to Red’s Sandwich Shop. I’ll check in there most mornings.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll need a day to get some things in order and then I’ll be going in.”
“Will that give you enough time to stop them?” he asked.
“I hope so, for all our sakes.”
“I’ll get some paperwork taken care of for you.”
“Good.”
She turned and started out the door, then stopped. “Do you know anyone who can recommend a discreet tattoo artist?”
“Why?” he asked, startled.
“If I’m going to be a
witch again, then there’s something I must do,” she told him.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“Like you said, someone has to go in and it should be me,” she said.
Even if it kills me.
9
Samantha sat down in the chair at the back of the tiny shop and did her best not to betray the powerful emotions within her. The proprietor, a gentleman covered in a hodgepodge of ink ranging from tattoos of tribes he could not possibly be descended from to depictions of animals of prey and the obligatory girl’s name on his bicep, sat down next to her.
“Little lady, what can I do for you today? Nice little butterfly, heart maybe?” he asked patronizingly.
Samantha smiled at him. “Actually I had something a little more exotic in mind.”
He lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “Really?”
“Really,” she said, handing him a slip of paper that showed a series of lines and curves surrounded by a circle.
He took it, looked at it for a moment, and blanched. “I don’t think so,” he said, standing abruptly and dropping the paper in her lap.
“I think so.” She contradicted him, allowing her voice to become softer. It had the desired effect. He began to pace and sweat beaded on his brow. Slowly she pulled off her shirt, so that she was wearing only her sports bra. “Right here,” she said, indicating a patch of skin near her heart.
He glanced at her and then took a closer look. “You had a tattoo there at some point, had it removed?”
“Very good.”
“Lady, look, you don’t want this tattoo. Trust me. This is some serious shit, bad juju. I can give you a nice pentagram or something if you want to do the whole Wiccan thing.”
“I’m not a Wiccan,” she said. “The pentagram is a symbol stolen from the Christians—why would I want to put something like that on my body?”
“Why did you get your tattoo removed?” he asked, clearly trying to work up the courage to deal with what she was asking.
“It was a little hard to hide who I was while wearing it,” she said evenly, staring him straight in the eye.
If anything, he grew more agitated. “And who are you?” he asked.
Samantha picked up the piece of paper and turned it around so the symbol was facing him. “This is who I am.”
He groaned deep in his throat. “Please don’t kill me.”
Samantha continued to stare at him. “Do as I say and I won’t.”
He nodded and then set to work. She watched him closely. The symbol had belonged to one group only, and most of its members were dead; not even the police files held pictures of the symbol. Somewhere, somehow, he had seen one on a living person. Where, though, and on whom? It was possible he had seen one years before, but she didn’t think that was the case. The lines inside the circle were an ancient script and when the letters were combined in the pattern Samantha had given him, it meant I am as god. It was the epitome of blasphemy, and it pained her that she was having it put back.
He paused and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His hands were shaking and his breathing was shallow. She frowned, not wanting his hand to slip while he was working.
“Relax,” she said, deepening her voice and pushing the words out.
He looked up at her, fear in his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say, lady,” he muttered.
She reached out her hand and put it on the top of his head. He jerked in alarm, but she didn’t move. She pushed energy through her hand until the skin on his forehead was warm, which she knew would produce a calming effect.
“You are doing well,” she said, dropping her voice even lower.
He nodded slightly, his pupils dilating, and then returned to work.
When he was finished she nodded her approval even though her blood ran cold to see the familiar symbol once again on her flesh. Everything that was in her rebelled and she wanted to claw it off. She forced herself to smile at him, though. He gave her a tentative smile in return.
She needed to find out what he knew about the symbol. She took a deep breath, and thought about her mother and what she would have done to get the information she wanted.
Samantha grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. “Tell me where you’ve seen one of these tattoos,” she hissed.
“I can’t! She’ll kill me!”
“And what do you think I’ll do to you if you don’t?” she asked, squeezing her fingers tighter around his throat.
It would be so easy to kill him.
She gasped as the thought entered her mind. She dropped him and he slid to the floor, clutching his throat. She took a step back, shaking herself. This was bad, dangerous. She had no business going undercover, not when after only a couple of hours she was slipping into old habits, deadly habits.
He didn’t seem to notice her sudden uncertainty. He raised a hand, begging her. “Please, please. I’ll tell you.”
She dropped into a crouch so she could look him in the eye. The terror that was there fueled something dark inside that she had tried for so long to suppress. She could feel the adrenaline racing through her body, making her feel strong, powerful, aggressive.
“Where?”
“It was a woman. Long blond hair. She had me give her that tattoo about a year ago. She was bad news. She got inside my head, knew things she shouldn’t. She told me she’d kill me if I ever revealed it to anyone else, or even thought of giving someone else the mark.”
Samantha studied him. It sounded like he was describing Bridget. If that was true, then the woman was even more formidable than Katie had let on. Bridget must have done a spell on him to make him so terrified of her.
“Did she have a name?”
“No. She paid cash. I’ve never seen her before or since.”
“This symbol,” Samantha told him, “is who I was raised. The woman you saw does not have the right to wear it. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Now, you’re not going to tell anyone about meeting me. But you are going to call this number if you see anyone else wearing this tattoo,” she said, pressing a card into his hand. “Do you understand?”
He nodded again.
She stood. “And just so you know that I’m the one you need to fear crossing…” She waved her hand, and fire appeared on his hands and arms.
He screamed and batted at himself.
The fire wasn’t real. It was only in his mind. She had touched him and put the suggestion of his greatest fear into his mind and he had done the rest, imagining what wasn’t there.
She leaned down and blew, snuffing out the imagined flames. He collapsed onto the floor, sobbing.
She stood up and walked outside. Once in her car, she leaned her head for a moment on the steering wheel as she struggled to regain control of herself.
After a moment, she left the tattoo shop and headed home. There she packed some clothes and a few other things she would need. She next gathered anything related to her life as a cop and put it all into a box.
Later that evening she drove over to her parents’ home, with the box on her car’s front seat.
When she walked in the door, her mother took one look at her face and hugged her even as her father grabbed the box to take to his office. Once he had stowed it away he returned and joined them in the living room.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked.
“I have to. What they’re doing, what they’re about to do—”
“We know,” her mom said.
She stayed long past the time she’d planned to go home. Fear gnawed at her that she would never see them again, or worse, that when she did she’d be someone they wouldn’t want to know.
In the morning she woke, grateful that there’d been no nightmares, at least none that she could remember. Ed showed up at her door looking like he hadn’t slept at all and handed her a cup of coffee.
“We’ve got things arranged for you,” he said, handing her a driver’s license. The picture was
hers. The name was Samantha Castor.
“So that’s your original last name?”
“Yes.”
“You sure you want to use it?” he asked.
“Names have power. That one is associated with a lot of dark things and if someone does enough digging, they’ll figure that out.”
“Then why still go by Samantha?”
She followed him out to the car, locking the door on her life, and chose her words carefully. “Same reason. Names have power. I can’t risk losing myself completely.”
It was only partially true. If someone knew your name, they could cast a variety of spells on you. Knowing her birth name would allow them to do that. And knowing the name she went by now would also allow them to do that. But mixing the two, new first name and old last name, created a false name that wouldn’t allow someone to curse her by using it.
She tossed her bags in his trunk and took one last look at her house.
“Okay,” he said as they climbed into his car. He handed her an envelope with papers in it. “So, you have an account at the bank in that name and a reservation at the Hawthorne Hotel for a week, although we’re all hoping you won’t need to be there that long.”
“Most undercover operations don’t play out overnight,” she reminded him grimly. “Not unless they go completely south.”
“Yeah, well, this one needs to be finished quickly.”
“Any more bodies discovered?”
“Not yet,” he said, his voice tense. “But I figure it’s early yet. Sure you don’t want me to drive you to Salem?”
She nodded. “I don’t want you anywhere near unless there’s an emergency.”
“Then Red’s Sandwich Shop. I got the message. One last thing.” He handed her a cell phone. “Samantha Castor’s phone. Charger’s in the envelope. Do me a favor and don’t be Samantha Ryan. Keep the damn thing on.”
She nodded, her throat suddenly tight as she slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. Ed had no idea how hard it was going to be not to lose Samantha Ryan.
He drove her to the airport. Once there, she retrieved her bags from the trunk of his car and made her way to the taxi stand outside baggage claim. Taking a taxi in from the airport ensured that anyone who saw her arrive would think she’d flown in from California, where she was going to say she’d been living with a distant relative.
The Thirteenth Sacrifice Page 10