It was 8:45. She was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. She’d shifted her schedule to match his, so they ate at quite a continental hour. There was a ham baking in the oven; Peter’s favorite. It would be years to come before she could smell ham without feeling nauseated.
She was filling a saucepan at the tap and turned to place it on the stove. And then, in an instant, her world fell away.
She was lying on the ground, in the dark. Above her, she could see the bright lights of the convenience store a few blocks from their house.
There was no pain. Only cold, and wet, and a vast calm, knowing that death had come, and that now everything stopped.
“Peter!”
The sound the saucepan made as it hit the linoleum brought Claire back to the world. There was water all over the floor, but she did not stop to mop it up. She grabbed her car keys and ran for the door.
She knew where he was. She would have known even if the ties that bound them hadn’t drawn her to the little shopping plaza less than fifteen minutes from their house. She had no memory of the drive, only of the moment when she turned the corner and saw the two patrol cars parked in the lot.
“Hey, lady—oh, Jesus, it’s Claire—honey, don’t—” The words went by her meaninglessly; she tore at the hands restraining her until they let her go.
They’d covered Peter with a blanket out of the back of one of the patrol units; impatient, she pulled it away, kneeling beside him. The ground was slippery and wet, and just then she didn’t understand why. Why had they covered his face?
“Peter?” Claire whispered: She reached for his hand, her fingers closing over the pulse-point in an automatic nurse’s gesture. But she was too late. The hand was cold and lifeless in hers. He was already gone.
It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair—he wasn’t even on duty. How could somebody shoot him when he wasn’t even on duty … .
Nothing mattered then. Later they would tell her the whole story—a hold-up, a sawed-off shotgun. They would assure her that Peter’s death had been merciful, painless, and quick. They would tell her that her husband died a hero. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was the realization that with her husband dead, she must be the one to go and tell his mother.
One of the uniformed officers drove Claire to Mrs. Moffat’s house. He’d wanted to drive her home, but Claire had been firm. She felt an urgent need to tell this news at once, as if by waiting it could somehow become worse. She knew that her calmness was an illusion wrought by paralyzing emotional trauma. She knew that it might be kinder to wait, to break the news to Mrs. Moffat in daylight. But in some part of Claire’s heart the irrational conviction survived that somehow Peter’s death was not real, that Elisabeth Moffat would have some secret magic that could make the bad news go away.
The car pulled into the driveway.
“Claire, why don’t you wait here and—”
“Don’t be silly, Steve,” Claire said. Her words had the blunt cruelty of shock. “It won’t get any easier for me if I don’t hear the words. I already know that Peter’s dead.”
She yanked open the door and swung out of the car.
Peter’s mother knew before Claire said a word. What member of a policeman’s family would think anything else, when a uniformed officer appeared at her door in the middle of the night?
Only later did it occur to Claire that she must have looked like the Angel of Death herself. She’d wiped off the worst of the blood on the drive over, but her legs were still smeared with it.
Steve said everything that was proper, but Claire could tell that he was grateful when his partner pulled up at the curb a few minutes later and he could leave. She knew that he could imagine too vividly that it could have been him lying in that parking lot. It could have been any of them.
“I’m so sorry. Oh, Claire, my dear girl, I’d hoped this would never happen to you,” Elisabeth Moffat said.
Why are you so worried? Claire wondered, faintly puzzled. Peter is dead. There’s nothing more we can do. There’s nothing to worry about. And deep inside, she felt a sense of relief that the waiting was over, and pride that Peter had never known what it was she waited for, all those long weeks.
“It’s all right,” she said meaninglessly. Unheeded tears rose up in her eyes; for a moment she could not understand why her vision had blurred, then she blinked them away. “Why don’t I make us a nice cup of tea? And then I suppose we need to think about what to do.”
Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered, or would matter again for a very long time.
The funeral was the following Monday, and in defiance of everything seemly, it was a beautiful day. The sky was cloudlessly blue, the sunlight was golden, and the air was summer-hot. The gravestones and tall monuments were brilliantly white.
The department turned out in force for the funeral, of course. Peter had been well liked. The minister from their church conducted the service; there was no need for Peter to be laid to rest by the words of strangers who had never known him.
Colin had come, thank God. Claire did not think she could have stood it otherwise. Elisabeth was steadfast, calm and composed, but now she had buried both her men, husband and son, and the strain of it etched stark lines into her face. Elisabeth Moffat had always seemed an incorruptible rock, but she seemed to have aged twenty years overnight, and Claire feared for her well-being. For herself, she feared nothing. She did not think she would feel anything, ever again. That part of her had died with Peter, killed as surely as a summer rose withered in an early frost.
Some part of her knew that she would live past this moment, that time, if nothing else, would numb the insistent pain of this amputation and teach her to find life good again. And so she would—even in the shock of her first grief Claire knew that—but the reckless merry part of her that Peter had opened to joy was gone forever.
“Claire.”
The graveside service was over, and everyone else was gone, but Claire couldn’t bring herself to leave. Terrible as this moment was, she clung to it, because when it was over, her life without Peter would begin.
“Colin. A fine hello this is,” she managed to say.
“I wasn’t expecting dancing girls, all things considered. I know it sounds trite and superficial, but if there’s anything I can do—”
“Not unless you can resurrect the dead,” Claire shot back before she could stop herself. “I’m sorry, Colin. That was unworthy. This isn’t your fault. It isn’t anybody’s fault—except that little bastard with the shotgun, and they’ve picked him up.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly. They were dry, but only because she had cried so much already. “So there’s a happy ending after all, isn’t there?”
“I don’t think anyone can claim to be that detached,” Colin said. He put an arm around her shoulder. “And anyone who tries to tell you that this is all for the best is a coward and a sadist.”
Claire rubbed at her eyes. “I suppose I ought to cry, but I’m just too tired. Everything seems so pointless, somehow. I know its just shock, but—” She shook her head.
They turned and began to walk back to the car.
“‘But’ nothing,” Colin said firmly. “You’ve suffered a grave loss. Take the time to grieve before trying to get on with things.
Peter was a good man. We will all miss him.”
“But it didn’t help, did it, Colin? Being good, or … anything. He still died, didn’t he? So what’s the point? What’s the point of doing anything?”
Colin had no answers for her.
NINE
NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1969
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
“THE SUN! COMES THE SUN! By OAK AND ASH AND THORN, THE sun! Comes the sun!”
He was in some kind of temple, but he had never seen its like. Not dedicated t
o the Light, nor yet tainted by service to the Great Dragon. Not Black, not White—but Grey, grey as mist … .
“The sun is coming up from the South!” cried the red-robed woman. “I call thee: Abraxas, Metatron, Uranos—”
The ancient Names echoed through the temple. Twelve great stones set in a ring, and where the thirteenth should have been a great oak, its bark grey with weather and age. The trunk split, and out of it stepped a Horned Man.
There was a woman clothed in the sun; she stepped from the shadow of the red-robed Caller to greet the Lord of the Oak. “Come, the Opener of the Way,” she said.
“By Abbadon! Meggido! Typhon! Set!” cried the red-robed woman. “Open now, open now the Way!”
But instead the Serpent raised its head, coiling over the three of them, dragging. them down into the Great Darkness as the church bells rang.
And rang … and rang … .
Ringing …
His hand found the cold plastic of the receiver and lifted.
“Colin? Colin, is that you? Please, Colin, are you there?”
The words spilling out of the telephone in the dark were frantic, mixing disorientingly with the dispelling mists of sleep in Colin MacLaren’s mind.
“Yes, yes I’m here. Give me a minute.”
He sat up, still clutching the receiver, and groped for the switch on his bedside lamp. Outside the window he could hear the hiss of traffic on the rainy streets outside his first floor right apartment. April in New York meant inclement weather, and a proper spring storm was battering at the windows of the old brownstone. The lights shining from the street made each separate droplet on the glass into a tiny crystal prism.
Finally he found the switch and turned on the light. Instantly the room shrank to its daylight contours and he felt more awake.
“Colin—” the voice keened through the open line, and finally he recognized it.
“Caroline? Card, is that you?”
Caroline Jourdemayne was Katherine’s twin sister; she worked as a librarian in a little town called Rock Creek far up the Hudson in Amsterdam County.
“Yes! Oh, Colin—I didn’t know who else to call, and—There are police everywhere, and I don’t know what to do. There’s been a terrible accident—”
“Calm down, Caroline. Of course I’ll come. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where are you?”
“Thorne’s place. Shadow’s Gate. It’s in Shadowkill—you just take the Taconic north to Dutchess, then take 43 to 13. Please hurry, Colin!” He could hear the tears in Caroline’s voice, the terror that she tried so hard to hold at bay.
“Caroline, what’s—” Colin started to say. But the line went dead.
A peal of thunder echoed through the sky, and the lights flickered; reason enough for the connection to have been broken without him needing to think up any darker explanation for it. Fortunately the service was still fine at this end. Colin sighed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He pulled the phone over to him and dialed another number. He glanced at his watch. Three A.M. Colin groaned quietly, listening to the distant ringing through the receiver. A hellish hour at which to have to awaken someone.
But his fears were groundless; Claire wasn’t home. When her mother-in-law’s death—of a stroke—had come only weeks after Peter’s murder, Claire had wanted a complete change of scene, and had accepted Colin’s suggestion of a move to New York. He’d been worried, when the double tragedy had struck, that Claire would not survive it. Her initial flight from everything she’d known, the violent rejection of her old life and all connected with it, could have been the start of a downward spiral, but Claire had pulled herself together and painstakingly rebuilt her life again. Never, even in her darkest moments, had she rejected the promptings of the Gift that infallibly led her to the side of people in trouble.
Colin sighed again, then got up to dress. He would have liked to have had her with him, but she was working as a private duty nurse these days and spent many nights away from home. He’d phone her again from the road if opportunity presented itself, otherwise, he could phone from Shadow’s Gate.
Cornby’s Garage, where Colin kept his car, was just around the corner, and the walk finished the job of waking him. By three-thirty he was on the road, heading north.
He’d never been to Shadow’s Gate, Thorne’s magickal Elysium, before. Their friendship had cooled a great deal since that day in the park, but the terms on which he and Thorne had separated hardly mattered. Caroline had appealed to him for help, and she would have all the help Colin had to give.
He called again from the road. The phone lines were still down at the house, and Claire still wasn’t home—and even if she had been, it was a bit over two hours from Manhattan to Shadowkill. By the time she could get here, the crisis would be over, so Colin hoped. He dreaded to think what he’d find by the time he reached Shadow’s Gate.
All that he knew of Thorne’s current activities came from seeing Thorne on Johnny Carson last fall along with millions of other Americans. Thorne had been wearing a silver headband set with moonstones, a pair of python-skin jeans, and sunglasses which he’d refused to remove all the time he was on. He’d talked about purchasing a magickal retreat, where he and his followers hoped to engage in cutting-edge research into the nature of human reality.
Whatever exploitation Thorne was engaged in these days, it seemed to be doing well for him. He’d looked sleek and prosperous, a far cry from the scruffy and far-out idealist that Colin had met in what now seemed like another lifetime.
The sky was lightening with the first rays of dawn by the time he reached Shadow’s Gate, and the storm had blown over, leaving the sky scrubbed and clear, filled with the last faint stars of morning. The gatehouse of Thorne’s estate was already barricaded by state and local police, two cars drawn across the entrance, lights flashing.
“Sorry, mister. Nobody’s allowed in.” The state trooper, faceless beneath his broad-brimmed hat, leaned into Colin’s car.
“My name is Colin MacLaren,” Colin said. “I’m a friend of the family.” Fortunately, Colin had continued to work with the police when he’d relocated to New York; he pulled out Martin Becket’s card and offered it to the patrolman.
“You can check my bona fides with Martin, if you like. His home number’s on the back.” Detective Lieutenant Becket headed up NYPD’s informal Occult Crimes Unit, and he and Colin had worked together more than once.
“May I take this for a moment, sir?” The statie’s manner was a little more respectful. He walked away, and returned with a quiet man in a grey suit and hat who might as well have been wearing the letters “FBI” embroidered on his suit pocket. Colin’s heart sank. What kind of trouble had Thorne gotten himself into now? Drugs?
But Caroline had known Thorne from his San Francisco days, and a simple drug bust would not have prompted such a frantic phone call.
“Dr. MacLaren,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Cheshire. What can we do for you today?”
“You can let me in,” Colin said, beginning to become irritated. He plucked Becket’s card from Cheshire’s fingers. “A friend of mine called and asked me to come here. She said there was some trouble, and it looks as if there is. What’s going on?”
“And who would that be?” Cheshire asked, ignoring Colin’s questions.
Colin debated telling him. The man had no right to question him—or, at least, Colin had a right not to answer—but stonewalling Special Agent Cheshire wouldn’t get Colin into Shadow’s Gate.
“A friend of mine, Caroline Jourdemayne. She called me about two hours ago, but we were cut off by the storm. Is she all right, Mr. Cheshire? She seemed to be pretty upset.”
The agent smiled thinly. “An officer will drive you up to the house, Dr. MacLaren.”
Colin didn’t bother to argue. He got out of his car and climbed into the back of a Dutchess County Sheriff’s car. The car pulled away smoothly, passing through the mock-Neuschwanstein ornament of the gatehouse, and heading up the long drive. Sha
dow’s Gate was set at the back of a hundred-acre parcel, and it was almost a mile to the house.
“It’s good to see you here, Mr. MacLaren,” the sheriff’s deputy said. “You won’t remember me, but my name is Lockridge. Frank Lockridge. I was at an interdepartmental inservice about Satanism and cult crimes that you spoke at down in the city about eight months ago? It’s been a real help—especially since he moved in up here. I don’t know who whistled you up this time, Professor, but I’m damn glad to have you here.”
“Could you tell me what’s going on here? If the FBI doesn’t mind, of course,” Colin said.
Colin could see Frank Lockridge grimace in the rearview mirror. “Once the Fibbies get into a case, that’s usually the end of it. They think this son-of-a-bitch Blackburn was mixed up with the Weathermen, and that’s all they care about.”
“‘Was’?” Colin seized upon the word.
“Definitely past tense, for my money. They’ve been waiting for dawn to search the woods, but they aren’t going to find him. He’s run far and fast, and I can’t say I blame him. That, or he’s dead.”
Thorne dead. No wonder Caroline had sounded so upset on the phone, if that were true. Colin knew that Caroline Jourdemayne had loved Thorne nearly as much as her twin did, but had been unwilling to follow him as blindly. His death would devastate her.
Colin pieced the story together from his own knowledge as well as from what Frank Lockridge told him on the long drive up to the house.
The Dutchess County Sheriff’s department had been first on the scene, a little after two o’clock this morning. There’d been a call for an ambulance, which had taken away one Katherine Jourdemayne, pronounced dead on the scene by the medical examiner, autopsy pending. According to Deputy Lockridge, the whole house had reeked of incense, pot, and worse, and there was evidence that a Satanic ritual had been in progress at the time the girl died. The authorities very much wished to question Katherine’s lover, Thorne Blackburn, but no one could find him. Meanwhile, everyone in the house was being held as material witnesses to the crime, if crime it truly was.
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