by Jan Coffey
To Linda, Shannon, Arhonti, Karen, Dr. Hafti, and all the other wonderful people at the Hunter Radiation Therapy Center at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Thank you for your excellent care, for your compassion…and also for being such great fans of our books.
We dedicate this book to the women and men who are going through breast cancer treatment right now…and to the millions of survivors.
There is great hope. Keep on living.
Table of Contents
Prologue – New Mexico
Chapter 1 – New Hampshire
Chapter 2 – Stranger in Town
Chapter 3 – Signs of the Zodiac
Chapter 4 – Blade
Chapter 5 – Cop on Hand
Chapter 6 – A Burned Letter
Chapter 7 – Immortality
Chapter 8 – Change
Chapter 9 – Jam
Chapter 10 – The Man at the Camp
Chapter 11 – Troopers
Chapter 12 – Ancient History
Chapter 13 – The Prophet’s Child
Chapter 14 – Drowning
Chapter 15 – Hijacked
Chapter 16 – Poison
Chapter 17 – My Soul Will Rise
Chapter 18 – A Hunting Moon
Chapter 19 – Gone
Chapter 20 – Luna-J
Chapter 21 – The White Robe
Chapter 22 – Subversion
Chapter 23 – Revelation
Author’s Note
Prologue
The bright desert moon illuminated miles of scrub pine and yucca on either side of the highway. Flares and a trooper funneled the late night traffic on Interstate 10 into one lane, and three ambulances, three state police cars, a tow truck, and the local sheriff’s black-and-white blocked off the rest of the westbound lanes, putting on a light show that could be seen as far as Albuquerque.
A few passenger cars and a number of trucks crawled past as the drivers gaped at the wreckage of the station wagon that was lying with its wheels in the air beside a knocked-out section of guardrail. A hundred feet up the road, an eighteen-wheeler was sitting on the shoulder of the highway. The shaken driver sat on the cab’s running board, making statements to a trooper. News of the accident was already on the local station, advising travelers to take alternate routes.
The acrid smoke from the flares burned everyone’s eyes as they worked. Pebbles of glass covered the road, crunching beneath rescue workers’ shoes as they tried to extricate the passengers from the station wagon.
There was already one fatality that they knew of. A toddler thrown out of the car when the station wagon flipped over repeatedly before coming to a stop. No car seat. No seatbelts. The middle-aged woman who was driving had been unconscious when they took her out in an ambulance to Deming only moments earlier. The three other passengers in the back seat were all minors. A baby tucked between two young teenagers.
It was a few more minutes before the rescue workers successfully removed the seat that had trapped the children in the car. The state trooper who’d arrived first on the scene stood back as two EMTs removed the wailing infant and the teenage boy from the wreck. They put the boy carefully on a stretcher and strapped the baby into a special carrier. A few cuts and bruises. Neither seemed seriously hurt, only upset. The same trooper had pulled out the driver.
He crouched down and flashed his light into the vehicle. The last passenger was a young girl, maybe ten or eleven.
“Everything will be okay now,” he said calmly. “They’ll be back to take you out in a minute.”
With the car upside down, she was twisted on her side. But her green eyes were open. They glistened in the light. No cries, no moans, no complaints. No response at all to the blood streaming from the ugly gash in her forehead, soaking the short curly brown hair, and running down her pale face.
The trooper felt the tap on his shoulder as another EMT came for the girl. As he stood up, a cool breeze swept in off the desert, mingling the smell of pine with the scent of gasoline from the overturned vehicle.
“Head injury, concussion. She’s not responding,” the first man called out, crawling inside the vehicle. Two others bringing a stretcher arrived at the car.
The trooper touched the letters BDM stenciled beneath a gold crescent moon on the mangled driver’s door, and went around the car. Flashing his light inside, he searched the glove compartment for any documents they might have missed. They had already found the car’s registration, but there was no purse or ID on the driver.
“Be careful now.” Two of the EMTs were handing the girl out. The officer hustled around to help the other worker bring the stretcher closer. The green eyes were still open, and as the workers placed her on it, the girl focused on him and said something under her breath.
He leaned closer. Her face was deathly white. She whispered it again.
“…me!”
“What did you say, hon?” he asked, crouching down on one knee as they strapped her in.
“Take me away. Please…take me.”
He placed his hand on her icy fingers. “They’re taking you to a hospital. You’ll be as good as new in no time.”
She began to shake and strained against the straps. “Don’t leave me…here. Don’t…”
“You’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.” He tried to hold on to her, but the EMTs rushed her toward the ambulance.
He stared as the back doors closed. A moment later, the sirens began to wail, and the ambulance pulled away.
The station wagon had come from the compound of a religious group led by Reverend Michael Butler. The Butler Divinity Mission—made up mostly of women and children and a few retired folks—lived and worked on a two-hundred-acre ranch little more than a half hour south of here. Interrupting his thoughts, the barracks captain from Deming called to him from his cruiser.
“Dispatch says there’s no answer out at Reverend Butler’s place,” the captain said. “I want you to ride out there and let them know about the accident. See if you can get the Reverend or one of his deacons to come into the hospital in Deming. We’re going to need someone to ID the deceased boy, too. Take Mac with you.”
Ten years older, with nine years seniority, Mac was a veteran compared to the number of recent academy graduates working out of the newly built State Police barracks in Deming. Southwestern New Mexico was growing, and the force was growing with it.
They drove in silence for a while before Mac started in. “So, I hear you’re just back from your honeymoon.”
“Yeah. Today was the first day back on the job.”
“Where did you two lovebirds go?”
“Back East. That’s where Anne’s family is.”
“Big family?”
“She’s got enough aunts and uncles and cousins to pack a football stadium.” He smiled. “And I’m only talking about the ones that I met during the ten days we were there.”
“You wanna talk about big families? In my first year on the force it seemed like every goddamn car I pulled over was some cousin of mine, or a neighbor to a cousin, or a girlfriend to the cousin of a neighbor to a cousin.”
Mac had a story for everything, and he continued to ramble on as they took the exit off the highway.
The young trooper had already heard a lot of the officer’s stories, but he enjoyed hearing these about family. Everything he could put together from his own past wouldn’t fill a five minute coffee-break. A father who ran off when he was too young to remember. A mother who was always working to make ends meet. No brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles or cousins. Certainly, no family reunions. His mother never talked about her folks, and he’d never asked. Then one day she’d fallen asleep at the wheel coming home from a second shift job. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. It was too late to ask anything, then.
He’d been a loner until he’d fallen for Anne. She’d made him complete in more ways than he could say. After seeing what he’d been missing all of his life, having a big family was somet
hing that he was looking forward to immensely over the next sixty or seventy years of marriage.
“Your Anne must get a mite homesick with none of her folks around.”
“I don’t know. I keep her pretty busy.”
“Wash that damn newlywed grin off your face, or I’ll put in to have it surgically removed,” Mac threatened. “B’sides, you just wait a few years. All that will change. Believe you me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I was talking about when your sweet ass is at work, lover boy. What’s she do with herself?”
“Anne is keeping her job,” he replied.
Mac answered a call from the dispatcher and told her their destination before continuing with their conversation. “Shoot, and here I’ve been telling everyone how you robbed the cradle. That gal looks like she’s still in school.”
“She graduated this past May. Had a job waiting for her.”
“That a fact? Where?”
At a colorfully painted, oversized mailbox, the trooper turned off the state highway onto a dirt road.
“Department of Child and Family Services.”
“Both of you dipping into the New Mexico public trough. Way to go, fella.”
“Hey, she works hard.”
“I know,” Mac said seriously. He shook his head. “Family Services is tough. Juvenile delinquents, welfare cases, drunken fathers, abuse. You’ll work with them plenty. I don’t envy her none.”
“Actually, Anne got lucky. She works in this new program they’re trying out with a bunch of teenagers in test groups across the state. It’s kind of a...” He slowed the cruiser and turned his spotlight on the brush to the right of the road. He thought he saw something or someone come out of the dark and then disappear again into the sparse brush.
“What was that?” Mac asked.
“You saw it, too?”
Mac looked at the open stretch of land to his right, where the figure had disappeared. There were no other cars on the road. No lights other than the cruiser’s as far as they could see. No houses. Nothing.
“I’ll tell you the truth. This area has spooked me since I was a kid. All them stories about ghosts haunting these hills. Indians and Spaniards and God knows what else.”
“Come on, Mac. That’s a bunch of crap.” The young officer turned off the spotlight and put his foot on the gas. “Those are just stories to give little kids nightmares.”
“And I s’pose you don’t believe in no ghosts.”
“I don’t think anyone sane over the age of five does.”
“That right?” Mac huffed. “Well, a few do. Anyway, that’s how this guy Butler was able to pick up that ranch and all this land for a song.”
“Well, however he got it, having somebody use it for a good cause is better than having it sit empty and rot.”
“That’s what I keep hearing.” Mac turned to him. “You know him?”
“Not personally.”
“Been out here before?”
“No, but some of Anne’s kids are staying at the Mission, so she’s been visiting them pretty regular. She can’t say enough nice things about the place and the Reverend. She calls him Father Mike.”
“Watch out there, fella. That’s how it starts.”
“What starts?”
“The chick magnet.” Mac grinned devilishly. “Word is, that Divinity Mission is packed with women. Young women. Pretty women.”
“And kids,” the younger man responded defensively. “Kids whose fathers have shit for brains. These women come out here because they have no place else to go. They’re running for their lives, some of them.”
“I know how that goes,” Mac admitted. “Did I tell you about this loser that my sister Adele is dating?”
Mac launched into an involved tale about how his younger sister was blind to some guy’s faults and her plans of moving in with the creep. The young trooper lost interest in the story, when he drove over the crest of the hill above the Mission compound. The silvery landscape glowed beneath the full moon. In the valley below, a handful of buildings hunched together, giving the appearance of a toy village. There was a parking lot with a dozen cars on the south side of an adobe building with a cross on top. An old windmill, the tallest structure in the landscape, stood two fingertips away. With the exception of a few lights in the distance, the Mission lay in total darkness. A new range fence encircled the cluster of buildings, but the gate was wide open.
“It must be past curfew,” Mac commented, turning in his seat as they drove past a hand-painted wooden sign, welcoming them to the Divinity Mission, Rev. Michael Butler, Pastor. “You said your wife comes out here a lot?”
“Yeah. Almost every day. In fact, I think she was stopping by this afternoon.”
“This is the worst part of the job,” Mac said as they drove down the hill to the compound. “Bringing people bad news at all hours of the night.”
“No dogs,” the young trooper muttered as he pulled in next to the first building. “Anne said they kept a bunch of dogs out here for the kids.”
Another hand-painted sign encouraged the visitors to sign in at the Mission office.
They sat silently for a few seconds. No one was out and about. No lights had come on in any of the buildings. Even the radio in the cruiser was totally silent for the first time since they’d set out.
“What do you say we just do the job and get the hell out of here,” Mac said in an attempt at sounding cheerful.
They both got out and approached the office. Mac knocked as the young trooper looked behind them at the dark buildings. It was dead quiet. They waited for a few seconds, and this time Mac called out, identifying himself and knocking again. Still nothing.
There were no locks on the door, so he pushed it open. The door swung noisily on rusty hinges. The light switch was right beside the door, and Mac flipped it on. A single bulb came to life overhead. In the office, there were two cluttered desks and a four-drawer file cabinet near a window.
“Nice to have a nine-to-five job,” Mac commented.
“I think that’s the only phone in the place.” He picked it up. There was a dial-tone. “Well, it’s working, anyway.”
Mac nodded and the two went out of the office. They walked along a gravel path, looking at the dark buildings. There was no sign of life. They exchanged a look.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the young trooper said. “Where should we start?”
There were three single-story buildings that looked like dormitories on either side of walkway. At the end of the path was a larger adobe building that looked to be the chapel.
“You take that door, and I’ll take this one. We knock until we get hold of a live one. Go ahead. I’ll watch your back.”
Not far off, the distinctive yip of a coyote cut sharply through the night and made the hair stand up on the trooper’s neck. He looked over his shoulder and found his partner already poised to knock on the first door. There was no answer at either building.
“You sure these folks ain’t on spring break or something?” Mac called across to him as they walked toward the next building.
“If I hadn’t seen those signs, I wouldn’t be sure we’re even in the right place. This is starting to look like a set from one of those Hollywood Westerns.”
“Yeah, a ghost town,” Mac chipped in.
“All we need is a saloon with a skeleton for a bartender.” He knocked on the next door and at hearing no answer, he pressed his face against the window. Total darkness was the only thing that greeted him inside.
“How about a lame dog?”
“I don’t remember that in any movies.” He looked over his shoulder at his partner.
Mac was approaching something. By the corner of the building, a black dog was growling at the trooper. Before Mac could reach it, the animal limped away into the dark, dragging a leg behind him.
He hurried over as Mac backed away. The two men peered into the darkness around them, their hands on their pistols.
“I don’t like this, kid. Go and call for backup.”
The tone had changed. Before he could move a step, he saw the older officer focus and move toward another dark shape in the shadow of the church building.
Mac turned to him. “Tell them we’re going to need ambulances.”
The trooper made it to the cruiser in seconds. While radioing in the information, he saw Mac moving to the door of the chapel. Drawing his weapon, Mac pulled open the door.
He stood still for a moment, and then staggered backward.
The trooper drew his own weapon and rushed toward the building. He hadn’t heard a shot.
“Are you hurt?”
Even in the darkness of the night, he could tell Mac’s face had turned chalk white. The older man leaned against the building, and a strange growl escaped his throat. “Don’t go in there.”
The young trooper focused the flashlight on his partner. No stab wound. No blood. He turned the light on the door.
“No. You don’t…want to see it.”
He was crying. Mac was crying. Unable to stop himself, the officer took a step toward the open door. Immediately, his gaze was drawn to the candles sputtering beside a pulpit at the far end of the building. Smoke from burning incense was rising from a small table beside the door. The smell was sickeningly sweet.
The beam of his light flashed into the church. Bodies. Right inside the door. Three bodies wearing red robes. They were lying on the floor. A woman’s legs stretched out along the threshold. Her eyes were open.
The trooper inched forward. There were more. White candles had been lit and blown out. They lay next to the bodies. He felt the blood drain from his head as he stared at the scores of lifeless bodies. The body of a man in a white robe lay on the altar behind the pulpit.
The smell of death hit him, paralyzing him. He heard himself saying that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
He didn’t know that his vision had blurred until the images in front of him came sharply into focus. He flashed his light on the faces.
He stepped unsteadily into the church. He could barely breathe. Shining his light at the foot of the pulpit, he saw a baptismal font. Paper cups lay next to it on a table and filled a wastebasket beside it.