“You seemed pretty cozy with Bridget the other day.”
Autumn shook her head glumly and sat down at the desk. “I’m not sure she even knew my name until I told her about you.”
“That’s okay, Autumn,” Samantha said, making her voice soothing. “You’re a smart woman. You’ve been watching, listening. I’m sure you’ve gathered a lot of useful information. You might not even know how valuable some of it is. So, take your time and tell me everything you can think of.”
“I was recruited about six months ago.”
“By Bridget?”
She shook her head. “Jace and I are friends, and she introduced me to Calvin. By the way, whatever you did to him was totally amazing. It really got Bridget’s attention. Maybe you could teach me?”
“Just tell me more,” Samantha said, forcing herself to stay calm.
“It started off with small stuff, pretty boring, really. Then a couple of months ago we did the first one of those blood rituals like you saw the other night. I have no idea how you managed to stomach drinking the blood. Just the smell makes me sick.”
Samantha was starting to regret her decision to try to make Autumn relax. The girl was too chatty for her taste.
“What are those rituals for?” Samantha asked.
Autumn shook her head. “I don’t know. A lot of us don’t. I know for sure that Karen and Jace don’t.”
“What do you think they’re for?”
“I think we’re trying to invoke something,” Autumn said. “Spooky, huh?”
“What about the people who are getting hurt?”
Autumn looked at her for a moment, uncomprehending. “I don’t understand.”
“The women who’ve been killed?” Samantha prompted.
“What women?”
“Do you ever watch the news?”
“I can’t afford television and I need to get a new computer. I keep frying them.”
Samantha took a deep breath. Autumn, and likely several others, were even more in the dark than she’d guessed. She’d been right to want to get Karen away from the group. She considered trying to steer Autumn in that direction as well.
“Have you ever heard anyone mention the name of the high priestess?” Samantha asked.
“High—” Autumn started to say, then shuddered and collapsed on the floor, her eyes rolling back in her head.
Samantha stared for a moment, startled, and then knelt next to her.
“Autumn!”
The girl was comatose. Samantha touched her and received a mild electrical shock. What on earth? she wondered.
She sat there, unsure what to do. The act of saying the words “high priestess” had caused Autumn’s mind to shut down. That implied that someone had rigged it that way. There was no reason to do so in a coven, since it would be normal to make reference to the high priestess, either the position or the person.
It had to be something more. Like maybe Autumn actually knew the name of the high priestess.
But why would that be a secret? Her entire coven had known the name and identity of Abigail Temple. She thought back to the ritual she had attended. No one had mentioned the high priestess’s name. Most of the coven had never even revealed their faces to one another. She hadn’t thought it strange, since performing some rituals fully cloaked was not uncommon.
But what if it was more than that? What if identities were being protected? If the coven was really committed to doing what they were doing, that seemed absurd. What Bridget had said came back to her, though. They needed the extra bodies.
Except for Bridget, the leaders must be unknown to the extra coven members, the ones who could be removed once their purpose was fulfilled. Autumn would seem to fall into that category, but for some reason she had learned a name she was never supposed to know.
And they hadn’t killed her because they needed the bodies. So they put a block in her mind to keep her from revealing the name.
Excitement rushed through Samantha. All she had to do was figure out a way to get around the block. She checked Autumn’s vital signs and they seemed stable. If they didn’t kill her outright but bothered to put in the blocks, it stood to reason that the effects would be temporary.
She got up and paced around the room, running through everything she knew about mental blocks and curses. Figuring out how to remove them would require far more medical and psychological knowledge than she had. She couldn’t even remember parts of her past that she had blocked herself, let alone figure out how to remove blocks from someone else’s brain that a third party had put there.
Until she could figure out a way to get at the knowledge inside Autumn’s brain, she couldn’t encourage the woman to leave the coven.
A few minutes later Autumn stirred. She opened her eyes and pressed her hand to her head. “What happened?” she asked.
Samantha briefly debated telling her the truth, but was concerned that even thinking too hard about it might cause her to pass out again. “You fainted,” she said.
“Wow, that’s never happened before,” she said.
“Better take it easy. You know, maybe you should see a doctor just to get checked out. Does anyone in the coven have any medical experience?” she asked. “Nurse, doctor, anyone?” She held her breath, hoping she might also find out the creator of the toxin.
Autumn shrugged. “We don’t talk about our jobs, so I don’t know.”
Frustrated, Samantha tried another tack. “Who is in charge of healings?”
Autumn shook her head. “We’ve never done any healings. At least not since I’ve been there.”
Samantha wanted to scream. Autumn was completely useless. The only bit of important information she had was locked inside her brain and even she couldn’t get at it.
“You might want to ask around anyway,” Samantha suggested. “It’s better to have one of our kind work on us whenever possible.”
“Thanks, I will,” Autumn said. “What were we talking about?”
“You had asked me about splitting from the coven.”
Autumn colored and then dropped her eyes. “Sorry. I get a bit full of myself sometimes. Forget I said anything.” She stood up slowly. “I’ve really got to get going.”
“It’s okay,” Samantha said, willing to let her go since she wasn’t likely to get anything else useful out of her.
“And please, don’t tell anyone I was talking like that,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
Autumn left in a rush and Samantha closed the door after her with a frustrated sigh. Moments later she felt the girl exit the building and she allowed herself to relax slightly. It was important for the coven leadership to keep their identities hidden.
That was why she had to make uncovering them a top priority.
Suddenly there was a pounding on her door. It couldn’t be Autumn. Perplexed, she went to the door and opened it. Anthony stormed in, his face like a thundercloud. She closed the door and turned to look at him.
“Anthony, why aren’t you at the motel? What’s wrong?” she asked.
He lifted a gun and aimed it at her heart.
“I just found out who you are. You’re a Castor witch… the one I’ve sworn to kill for what you did to my mother.”
22
Fear wrapped its icy hand around her heart and squeezed. Samantha had faced down a gun before, but never without one of her own, and never in the hands of someone she knew, someone she cared about.
“Anthony, listen to me,” she said, trying to make her voice as soothing as possible.
It served only to inflame him more. “Don’t!” he roared, shaking the gun at her. “Don’t try to hypnotize me, witch! You might have escaped sixteen years ago, but not this time.”
“I was a child when my family was slaughtered. I was adopted by a kind man and he and his wife raised me as their own, taught me right from wrong. I turned my back on the old life, happily, gratefully—”
“Then what the hell a
re you doing here, and what’s all this in your room?”
“I’m a cop. You were right about that. When young women started turning up dead with occult symbols on them, my captain asked me to go undercover, put a stop to all of this.”
“All of what? You talk a pretty story, but you still haven’t told me what’s going on.”
She took a steadying breath, “The witches here—they’re trying to resurrect somebody.”
“Who?”
“The woman who killed your mother.”
He jerked and nearly dropped the gun. “It’s true,” Samantha hastened to say as the color drained from his face.
“Can it be done?”
“Yes. They’re close.”
“And you’re helping them!”
“No! I’m trying to stop them. That’s why I’m here. Trust me, the one person that wants her to stay dead more than you is me.”
He was staring her straight in the eye, which was good. She tried to keep him pinned with her eyes so that he wouldn’t look down and see her sliding her left foot out of her shoe. The rubber sole on the shoe wasn’t good for conducting electricity. But his shoes weren’t so protected. She put her stocking foot on the floor and began rubbing the toes back and forth against the carpet, building up a static charge that she could use as a jumping-off point for sending electricity to him across the floor, shocking him hard enough that he would either drop the gun or miss wildly when he fired.
She could see the rage that twisted his features, the almost feverish light in his eyes, and for a moment she worried that he too had been affected by the toxin. But as she stared at him, she realized that what he was feeling wasn’t enhanced by anything like that. It was the natural result of years of being fixated on revenge.
She was still talking, pleading with him to see reason, but she was only half aware of what she was saying anymore. All of her focus was on reading his body language and preparing for the moment when she would have to strike first.
Revenge against the witch who had killed his mother. He wanted it so badly. For an instant her heart stuttered as she wondered whether he was actually part of the coven, intent on resurrecting the woman who had taken his mother from him so he could kill her himself.
She quickly dismissed that notion as crazy. Anthony had no powers. And as damaged as he might be by what had happened to his mother, he wasn’t capable of killing other innocent women just to try to kill her killer again. It was the toxin, making her see witches where there were none.
No, what he’d said was true—he planned to take his revenge on the only survivor of the coven.
Which was her.
She continued talking and rubbing her foot against the carpet while she watched him. She felt as if all her senses were enhanced as she shifted her gaze from his eyes to his finger on the trigger of the gun and back. She could see the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes, the rippling of the muscles beneath the skin of his fingers.
And then she saw the moment when he finally made his decision, when rage overcame the last shred of reason and his finger began to tighten. She slammed her foot down hard, throwing electricity toward him. It shocked him hard enough that his entire body jerked as the volts raced through him.
And, thankfully, he dropped the gun. She jumped forward, scooping up the gun with her left hand even as she kicked him in the chest with her right foot.
He crashed backward, hitting his head on the ground hard. His entire body went slack and for one terrible moment she thought he was dead. But when she leaned over him, she could see the rise and fall of his chest.
She removed the bullets from the gun and placed the weapon on top of the bureau. She grabbed a length of twine from her bag of supplies and quickly tied his wrists together. She didn’t want a fight on her hands when he came to.
She wished more than ever that she knew how the mental blocks worked. She would have loved to give him one so that he could never remember who she really was. Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to kill her. Had their positions been reversed she might have done the exact same thing.
She hadn’t managed to calm herself down before he woke up with a jolt.
“What did you do to me?”
“Mild electrical shock. You hit your head when you fell,” she said. “That’s what knocked you out.”
“Why not just kill me?” he said, glancing down at his bound wrists.
“I have no desire to kill you. And I didn’t kill your mother! I was a child.”
“You were there! You let it happen.”
She couldn’t deny that. She had recognized his mother’s face, knew that she had been sacrificed. She had hazy memories of such things, nothing clear, but she knew enough to know that she had been there when his mother died.
“For the last time, I was a kid! I didn’t have control over anything in my life back then. What I did, where I was, how I acted—everything in my life was controlled by others. I was made to do terrible things. Things you can’t even imagine. I was in hell with no way out until the day I was freed.”
She was shaking just thinking about how her life had been. It had been such a relief to be away from it. And the last several days she had been painfully reminded that the power she was wielding didn’t come from freedom but from oppression. She remembered how it felt to stand there in the circle, holding the goblet, knowing that she had to drink. No choice. Even if she had been a real member of the coven and not an undercover one, there would have been no choice.
She hated living without choice.
“You should have told me who you were!” he hissed.
“I didn’t have time to try to make things okay with you. I had too much work to do. So I just had to hope that you wouldn’t find out until everything was safe and I could find a way to tell you.”
“That worked out real well.”
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“It wasn’t hard,” he said sarcastically. “I called the hotel to leave a message for you. The operator was quite perplexed that I thought a Samantha Hofferman was in your room. She did, quite helpfully, tell me that a Samantha Castor had that room. You didn’t even try to hide who you were! I can’t believe you had me eating out of your hand. You were probably laughing the entire time.”
“Never laughing,” she said. “I felt awful when I realized how we were connected. Everything I told you was true. I just omitted the fact that I was the survivor you were looking for.”
“Pretty big fact. I can’t believe you kissed me, knowing who you were, what you’d done.”
“I didn’t want to kiss you,” she flared, feeling her cheeks flushing at the memory. “There’s something between us. I don’t know—”
“You mean my mother’s blood?”
She hated him in that moment. She could feel energy surging through her, flowing to her hands. It would be so easy to kill him, to make the accusations and the pain and the confusion stop.
She spun around, wrestling with herself, trying to regain control of her careening emotions. She couldn’t believe how she was feeling. She collapsed to her knees, shaking. I almost killed him, she realized, struggling to control the energy that was pulsing through her. She could smell something burning and realized that she had set the carpet beneath her on fire.
She put the fire out and dissipated the smoke so it wouldn’t set off any smoke alarms, then hunched there, stunned. She was losing control, if she’d ever had it. She was starting to think that when it came to using the powers, to doing anything magical, control was an illusion. You only think you control it, but it controls you.
“Um, are you doing that on purpose?” Anthony asked.
She looked up and realized that everything in the room was vibrating, pictures were swinging on the walls, lamp shades were tilting, objects were sliding off the table, and the drawers of the bureau were sliding open and closing.
She was releasing energy in uncontrolled spurts and it was creating havoc in the
space. It was probably leaking into the rooms on either side too. The occupants will think the hotel is haunted, she thought.
She took a shuddering breath and tried to calm herself.
“Seriously, are you doing that on purpose?” Anthony asked, fear edging into his voice.
“No,” she said. She moved so that she was actually sitting down and crossed her legs. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to bring order to her mind.
“Okay, this is not cool!” he said as a candle flew across the room, barely missing his head.
“You’re not helping,” she said.
“Tell me what’s going on!”
“I’m overloaded with energy and I can’t focus enough to keep it under control.”
“So you need somewhere else to put that energy?”
“That would be helpful since I can’t seem to focus.”
“My head’s killing me.”
She looked at him, her eyes narrowed.
“If you’ve got to put it somewhere, how about you help fix the bump on my head? Or finish patching up these broken ribs?”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” she said darkly. “Like I’m just going to let you go.”
His jaw tensed. “Look, I believe you. I don’t think you killed my mom.”
“I’m not sure if you’re telling the truth or if you’re just afraid of what I’m going to do to you.”
“I admit I’m afraid of what’s happening right now,” he said as a picture jumped off the wall and crashed on the floor near him. “So, whatever we need to do to stop all this, I’m good with it.”
She moved over next to him and put her hand on the back of his head. She could feel the wound, feel the swelling around it. She channeled the energy through her hand, and his skin grew warm to the touch. He jerked slightly. He didn’t trust her. And after what she’d almost done to him, maybe he was right not to.
She felt pain in her own head even as she healed his. She next moved her hands over his ribs and sucked in her breath sharply as pain knifed through her side. When she was done he heaved a sigh and she could tell he felt better. After a minute the pain she felt subsided. She pulled her hand back and around them the room started to settle down and soon all was still.
The Thirteenth Sacrifice Page 23