by Hopkin, Ben
“I wanted both of you. My reasoning for wanting you to come was sound,” Darc replied, his tone unruffled. Maybe part of the problem was that Darc didn’t recognize Mala’s mama bear tendencies. The way she went into defender mode the second anything came close to threatening Janey was spooky. Trey was just glad he wasn’t usually on the receiving end of it.
But then Mala surprised him. “There’s part of me that thinks it might not be such a bad idea,” she said. “But with the DSHS all over us--”
“We get it, Mala. Don’t stress it.” Trey assured her.
“No, I do not get it,” Darc interjected. “My reasons for wanting you both involved in this case are still very much present. And the chances of Janey’s involvement becoming known are small.”
“With this guy involved? I think you underestimate how much he seems to dislike me.”
Trey once more felt like he was stuck in the middle between an immovable object and an irresistible force. When Darc wanted something, there were very few people who managed to stand in his way. Mala was one of them.
But once again, Mala surprised him. “Well, there’s no way I’m going out there without her. And we’re both up anyway.” She sighed. “Are we going to a crime scene?”
“No, we’re going to talk to Satanists.”
Man, did Darc need to work on his revealing-big-news skills.
CHAPTER 6
Mala had spent most of her life dealing with men who were threatened by her, whether that was in her personal life or her professional one. In work settings, the threat seemed to revolve around the fact that Mala was smart, capable and feminine. The combination of those three qualities seemed to enrage certain masculine personality types. In fact, now that Mala was thinking about it, that might be the problem with Richard Templeton.
When it came to dating, things were usually fine until the man learned how much money she made. Or how much schooling she had. Or how much she knew about so many diverse topics. Actually, there were so many different ways in which Mala could get tripped up in this area, it was shocking that she’d been on as many dates as she had in her life.
Another point for Darc when it came to that. He didn’t seem threatened by her at all. The fact that he couldn’t carry a simple conversation with her without someone in his ear… well, that was a whole other issue that they’d have to address at some point.
So men were complicated. But when it came to women, Mala found it relatively simple. There were those that were jealous of her professional success, and she supposed her looks as well, although that was always a bit of a surprise to her.
But she had never, ever had the kind of responses from women that she was getting here tonight on the ferry. Every woman she encountered, including the Satanists, took one glance at Janey there at Mala’s side and the looks they directed back to Mala turned to acid.
Mala had never felt so judged in all of her life.
Little snippets of conversation drifted her way. “I can’t believe she has that little girl out so late” and “Some people are so irresponsible with their children” and even “This is why some people shouldn’t have kids.” It was more than a little devastating.
She pulled Janey closer into her side, giving her a side squeeze. Janey looked up at her and smiled her radiant grin, and all of the nasty comments seeped away, washed clean by the pure love of this little girl. She was so happy right now.
And it wasn’t like tomorrow was a school day. It was Saturday. Janey could sleep in as long as she needed to, and she would be completely caught up on her sleep by Monday. Completely.
Mala tried to ignore the tiny voice in her head that was saying It’s impossible to catch up on sleep. You can only sleep the normal amount of time and gradually readjust.
It might be true, but experiences were sometimes more important that an anal-retentive sleep schedule. And this was turning out to be one hell of an experience.
The Satanists weren’t what Mala had expected. Well, some of them were. There were the goth-looking types, dressed in all black and eyeliner, pentagrams dangling from chains or tattooed onto foreheads. But there were others there that Mala would never have guessed were Satanists. Normal. Well dressed. Nothing out of the ordinary.
To be honest, they were much more troubling to her.
Darc and Trey had made the rounds of the group, trying to find some sort of a leader with whom to speak. That proved to be an almost impossible task. There was no centralized group. There were several different churches represented, The Church of Satan, the First Satanic Church, the Temple of Set and the Misanthropic Luciferian Order among them.
They had finally stumbled upon one man who was respected, or even revered, by everyone who was there for the Satanic ritual. A High Priest of the Church of Satan. He was also one of the ones that was creeping Mala out the most.
To all outward appearances, Edward Hoffman was nothing more than a normal businessman out late at night, taking a ride on the ferry. He was dressed in a striped red golf shirt, khaki slacks and dress shoes. His hair was neatly groomed, and there didn’t seem to be anything at all out of the ordinary about him.
Looking a bit closer, Mala spotted what appeared to be a small pentagram tattooed on his inner left wrist, mostly covered by his watch. But if she hadn’t been looking for it specifically, she doubted she ever would have noticed.
The man was leaning against the railing of the boat, meeting the gaze of Detective Darcmel with a look devoid of fear. This was someone who seemed to know and revel in his personal power and charisma. There was no awkwardness about him whatsoever.
Moving in closer to hear the conversation, Mala kept Janey behind her on the opposite side of the man. Maybe Satanists were just like anyone else, but this one was giving her the screaming heebie-jeebies.
“Took you two long enough,” the Satanist yawned.
Trey pounced on that. “So you were expecting us?”
Edward Hoffman leveled a withering look at the poor detective. “I read the news. I’ve heard about the murders. Doesn’t take a genius to take a look at a pentagram and leap straight to Satanists.”
“Well, you have to admit, they totally look like something straight out of The Exorcist,” Trey responded.
“Yeah. ‘Cause Hollywood never gets it wrong,” Edward said, his tone caustic. He turned his head and caught sight of Janey, who had moved out from behind Mala in spite of all of her efforts to keep the little girl behind her. “A little late for you, isn’t it, sweetheart?” He glanced at Mala and winked at her. “How very irresponsible of you. I’m impressed.”
Mala ducked her head, her face darkening. She was getting dinged left and right out here. A compliment from a worshipper of Lucifer had the opposite effect of what was said. Which she was sure Edward understood.
Trey stepped back in. The way he was behaving toward the High Priest seemed to indicate that the man’s very existence was offensive to the detective on every level.
“I don’t understand how anyone could worship Satan. I mean, the guy’s pure evil.”
“Look, I’m not a theistic Satanist,” Edward answered. “Most of us aren’t. Only a few of the more obvious nut jobs here are, and even they aren’t stupid enough to slaughter someone and slap them in a pentagram. It’s like pointing a gun at your own head.” He paused, apparently thinking that through. “Actually, I wouldn’t put that past a few of these idiots.”
“What’s a theistic Satanist?”
Darc spoke, his tone deep and piercing. “They are those who worship Satan as an actual supernatural being. Atheistic or agnostic Satanists venerate Satan as an allegorical ideal toward which they aspire.”
Edward’s eyes widened and he nodded at that. “Nice to meet someone who seems to know what they’re talking about.”
“Yeah, he’s a pain in the butt like that,” Trey muttered to himself.
“We use Satan as a guideline. We follow the five Satanic virtues,” Edward continued. “Selfishness, laziness, insolen
ce, lustfulness and vanity.”
“Just the kind of people you want to take home to meet Mom.” The skeptical detective appeared unimpressed with Edward’s list.
“If your mother was an intelligent, free-thinking woman, then yes.”
“Are you really insulting my mother?” Trey demanded.
“Let me explain,” Edward said, sneering at Trey. “I’ll put it in simple terms so that everyone can understand.”
Mala held out a hand to restrain the enthusiastic detective as his face turned bright red. Trey getting into a fistfight with a Satan worshipper would make a great byline for some enterprising journalist. And that wouldn’t help the case any.
The High Priest continued. “Selfishness is the idea that the greater good can never be served by self-inflicted misery. We reject sacrifice.”
“Well, that’s just—” Trey began.
Edward cut him short, ticking off his fingers as he went down the rest of the list. “Laziness is another way of saying that we loathe fruitless hard work. Insolence means we challenge authority. No outside power will take away our dignity and freedom. Lustfulness is just following our desires and passions without guilt.”
“That’s great. You’ve made the cardinal sins into a joke,” Trey said. “I don’t see how you’re going to explain away vanity, though. That’s just pride, dude.”
“Exactly, dude,” he confirmed. “Pride in our beauty, our majesty, our magic. We see the good in us and choose to nurture it, rather than wallow in false modesty and self-loathing.”
Was it just Mala, or did that all actually make a strange kind of sense? Was it possible that there was more to Satanism than she had thought? She shook her head.
“Fine. Whatever,” Trey groused. “But what about all the pentagrams? You can’t tell me that there’s no link here between you guys and the murders. I mean, come on.”
The Satanist smirked. “No, I can’t. No more than you can say that there’s no link between the murders and the Christian faith. After all, they used pentagrams before we did. It represented the five senses, or the five wounds of Christ.”
“What? That’s… no… that can’t be true,” Trey sputtered, glancing at Darc for confirmation. Darc nodded once. “Really? Sonofa…”
Mala stepped in at that point. “It’s been used by Christians, agnostics, the occult, Satanists, Freemasons, Mormons. It’s a very old and very powerful symbol.”
“Yes it is,” Edward agreed, turning his gaze on her. His eyes seemed to smolder as he maintained eye contact. “It’s a representation of the Golden Ratio.”
Trey looked back and forth between Darc, Mala and Edward. Mala felt bad for him. He always seemed to be a beat or two behind the conversation.
“What the hell are you talking about? And how come everyone here seems to know it but me?”
Edward shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t help that you’re ignorant. Each of the segments of the star is related to another segment from the same star, with the ratio always ending up phi, or approximately 1.618. It’s a ratio that’s found everywhere in nature, so it’s considered divine geometry.”
Trey shook his head and kept muttering to himself.
“We are here to discuss your alibis for the murders,” Darc said to Edward.
Edward chuckled. “I don’t have any.”
“How do you know?” Trey asked. “We didn’t tell you the dates.”
The Satanist shrugged. “Oh, and I also had personal reasons to hate all three of them. The mob guy screwed our church over on a construction deal, and the two council members kept trying to shut us down right before elections. Guess that makes me your prime suspect.”
Which is exactly what an intelligent guilty man might say, Mala found herself thinking. Just because he was calm about the whole thing and was offering up the information willingly didn’t mean he was innocent. And the more she talked with the man, the more Mala felt that she needed to take a shower.
“Are you confessing?” Trey asked.
“Come for me,” the High Priest challenged him. “Please. I would like nothing better. No press is bad press for those who follow the left-hand path.”
The Satanist swiveled to look at each of them in turn, ending with Mala. It was a gaze that she could only describe as lascivious. He grinned at her.
“Well, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to my group.” He pointed off in the direction of the Satanists who were gathering around each other. “We have initiations, renewals, pledging of souls to the Dark Master. You know. Satan stuff.” He strolled off toward his group, looking to all the world like a man out for a midnight walk.
“What a prick,” Trey said, then peered after him. “Doesn’t help any that he’s cool as a cucumber.”
“Yes. There is little hope that he will give us information willingly,” Darc agreed.
But as they moved away from the group of Satan worshippers who had begun chanting, Mala couldn’t help but recall the heated gaze of Mr. Hoffman. She remembered and shuddered at the memory.
That was not someone she would ever want to meet in a dark alleyway.
* * *
Glistening symbols, glittering threads, a gleaming patchwork cloth of logic flowed through Darc’s mind, tracing pathways of data to their ends. Those ending places could be intellectual dead-ends, revelatory conclusions or simply the beginning of another logic stream.
And all of them were leaving him feeling somehow… hollow. The ending of his date with Mala had been less than satisfactory. But then during the subsequent search for Janey and the questioning of the Satanists, he felt that surge of energy and renewal that he only seemed to get from his interactions with Mala.
He was drawn to her in a way that the illuminating fragments of logic in his mind could not track. The strange landscape of his inner emotional life was becoming more familiar to him, almost welcome, the more he spent time with her. And that link between the cold and shimmering logic and the murkier depths of emotion had been proven worthwhile during their last case together.
With that said, it didn’t seem to be getting any less excruciating to explore those deep chasms within his soul. Soul? That was a word Darc would not have used before encountering Mala. He had heard the expression used, and understood its meaning. But the existence of a soul was so far in question that it wasn’t part of his everyday lexicon.
They were standing on the dock after leaving the ferry. Janey had fallen asleep and was slung over Mala’s shoulder, her bear still clutched tightly in her grip. Trey was talking to a group of goth girls, all of whom were giggling in a very non-goth way.
Mala caught Darc’s eye and made her way over to him. Her lips were turned down, and there were lines etched on her forehead. There were several emotional options here to explain that expression, but as Darc felt the surging of his emotional topography, he came up with sadness.
She was sad. And that emotion seemed to be connected with him.
“Something is wrong,” he said as she settled in directly in front of him. She seemed to peer closer at him with that statement, her face registering something. Surprise? That appeared to be it.
“Yes, Darc. Something is wrong.” She sighed, and shifted Janey’s weight on her shoulder. She indicated with her chin toward the little girl. “Everything I do right now is for Janey. And you know some of what’s happening with the DSHS.”
“Yes, although I don’t see--”
“Darc, please. This is hard enough without you interrupting.” Mala took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t think that right now is the best time for us to pursue any sort of relationship.”
The ribbons of logic swirled around this statement, tasting it, testing it, feeling out its contours with their bright and cold intelligence. They confirmed the veracity of her thesis. She was right.
And yet, the emotional terrain trembled, a psychological tremor that left Darc’s chest aching. It somehow burned and felt empty and cold at the same time. How was that possible? There wa
s nothing about his reaction that made sense.
“I understand,” Darc finally said, and moved off in the rain that had just started falling. It was a cold rain, preparatory to the winter that was coming soon. The chill began to sink into his clothes with the moisture. Darc had hoped the cold would soothe the burning in his chest.
But all it did was feed the empty chill that was growing inside.
* * *
Trey had driven Darc’s car through the rain, taking Mala and Janey home. There had been more than enough time for him to sober up, and he always kept a copy of Darc’s keys on him. He’d learned to do that a long time ago. Darc had many good qualities, but standard behavior like taking his own car home and making sure everyone he took with him had a ride back was not high on his list of priorities.
Now Trey was back at his apartment with Mala and a sleeping Janey, along with Maggie, his partner in crime. He’d convinced Mala to come up for a cup of Maggie’s hot chocolate. She’d said no at first, but his apartment was on the way to Mala’s, and he told her it was probably good to clear the air now, before it got to be impossible. To say that it was awkward was an understatement.
It didn’t help that Mala hadn’t said a word since she stepped into the car. That could have been due to the sleeping girl at her arms, but it felt much stronger than that.
“Sooooo… how’s it going?” he ventured as she laid Janey down on the sofa.
Mala met his gaze as she sank down beside the little girl who was still clutching her bear. “I’ve had better nights,” she finally replied.
“Yeah… About that… Listen—”
“Trey,” Mala cut him off. “This isn’t about what you did. I mean, don’t misunderstand, I don’t want you to do it again. But I almost understand why you would help him that way.”
“It’s just that he cares—”
Mala held up a hand. “Don’t. Please. This is hard enough.”