See No Evil
Page 34
The lancet, Lauren thought through her haze. The lancet had the power. The lancet was the way. Dorcas had told her she was stronger than she thought. So had Steve Conway. “These people believe everything Deborah tells them,” Gabe had once said. “They think if the lancet is destroyed, they will be too.”
Deborah gently lifted Lauren’s hand and placed one of the knives against her neck. “To new life.”
Lauren closed her eyes. Before her stood her own death. A cold and shadowy void. A death that would deprive Drew of his mother. A death that would give Deborah her victory. And in that moment, Lauren rebelled against the void. Rejected it with all her being. She was suffused with an energy, a powerful resolve. She would not die. No matter what the risk, she would fight to live.
Her fingers were beneath Deborah’s, the lancet in her grasp. She could feel Deborah’s cockiness loosening her grip. It was the chance she needed.
With every ounce of strength within her, Lauren ripped her hand free of Deborah’s and threw the lancet as far across the water as she could. She was amazed at her own power. The lancet flew as if it had wings, arcing upward, twisting over itself again and again, its blades blindingly white in the moonlight, until suddenly it dropped straight into the black waves.
“No!” Deborah screamed as if she had been stabbed. She dove into the water and started swimming toward the spot where the lancet had fallen. With wails of outrage, the other members of the coven followed.
As soon as Lauren was free of the coven’s hold, she lunged toward shore. But the ocean fought her every effort. A powerful undertow grabbed at her feet, dragging her out to sea, while waves slammed into her back, pushing her forward—and down. She fell and went under. She came up coughing and flailed against the crosscurrents. She couldn’t allow her fears to stop her now. She had to reach shore. She had to live.
The ocean floor was rocky and hard to traverse. She fell again, pushed herself up, struggled on. Finally, after what felt like aeons, Lauren stumbled out of the water and collapsed onto the sand. She looked out to sea and thought she saw heads bobbing on the waves, but she couldn’t be sure. She had to get up. Reach her car. Get away.
Shivering uncontrollably and covered with sand, Lauren struggled toward the woods. Still coughing, she sobbed as she stumbled along the seemingly endless path. Pushing her battered body forward, she covered the final distance, wrenched open the car door, and threw herself down onto the seat. Her head dropped to the steering wheel. As she sucked in deep gulps of air, she thought she heard sirens in the distance. Certain she was hallucinating, she lifted her head and saw blue lights strobing through the trees. A line of police cars was screaming down the dirt road.
A Cambridge police cruiser came first, followed by three with Moorscott written in large black letters on their sides. The four cars sped into the parking lot and stopped with a massive screech of brakes and a powerful updraft of dust. Dan Ling, in uniform, jumped from the lead car and ran to her.
“Are you all right?” he demanded as she climbed from her car.
“The witches,” she gasped. “Six of them tried to kill me.” She pointed toward the path. “On the beach. In the water.”
Dan waved the policemen in the direction she indicated. They took off at a run. Then Dan led her to his car. He pulled a blanket from the trunk and wrapped her up in it.
“Come sit,” Dan said, opening the door and indicating the backseat.
Two cruisers from Lynn pulled in. Dan told her to sit again and walked over to one of the cars. He came back with a patrolman. “Officer Walbrom will stay with you—I’ll be right back.”
Still leaning against the car and shivering inside her blanket, Lauren said, “I don’t understand. What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”
“Gabe Phipps,” Dan said. “I stopped by to see him when I was coming off my shift. He said that after you left, he began thinking about what he had read in the chronicle, and figured out the witches were planning to kill you tonight. He was frantic—nearly hysterical. He convinced us to go to your house and make sure you were safe. When you weren’t home—and Lieutenant Conway remembered you telling the Sewall woman you might join her tonight—we came here.”
“But—”
Dan placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the open door.
“I’m coming with you,” Lauren argued, struggling to stay on her feet. But under the gentle pressure of Dan’s hands, her knees buckled and she collapsed gratefully onto the seat.
“I’ll be right back.” Pulling his gun from its holster, Dan ran toward the path. Officer Walbrom climbed into the front.
Before Lauren could begin to get her bearings, a policeman emerged from the woods. He jogged to his car and yanked a transmitter from its housing. Lauren could tell from his body language that something big was taking place. She looked at Officer Walbrom, but he shook his head. Within minutes, Dan came down the path and climbed into the backseat next to her. He took her hands in both of his.
“What?” she demanded, fear hammerlocking her heart. “What?”
“There’s nobody on the beach. Just a weird bush and a pot and the remnants of a fire.”
Lauren wrapped her blanket more tightly around her.
“My guess is they’re all still in the water,” Dan said. “The Coast Guard’s been called and they’re coming with boats and helicopters. The Moorscott and Lynn police are going to continue to search the beach area—and I’ll need information from you to get out an APB on everyone who was here.”
Dan paused and stared out the window. She followed his gaze and they watched the police lights strobing the knobby white birches blue, then black, then blue again. Dan cleared his throat and turned back to Lauren. “They say the ocean’s bad tonight. Strong undertows. Crosscurrents …”
Lauren closed her eyes, but still the lights strobed across her vision. As did the image of six small bodies being carried into the vast blackness by the swiftly moving waves.
By daybreak, the Coast Guard had recovered five bodies and were certain they would find the sixth in the shoals of an unnamed island to the southeast of Moorscott. After spending the morning being interviewed by detectives, Lauren returned to White Horse Beach. But the police wouldn’t let her go beyond the yellow tape strung between the trees at the edge of the sand.
She stood at the tape, staring across the beach at the dead embers of Deborah’s bonfire, searching for something that would explain what had happened here. But the crashing waves told her nothing. Neither did the blackened wood. Nor the birds flying and diving overhead.
Epilogue
Cambridge, Massachusetts
December 1996
THE LABOR WAS LONG AND HARD, AND WHEN SHE FINALLY felt the baby slip from her body, Lauren greeted her daughter’s birth with as much relief as joy. Todd, on the other hand, was a portrait in ecstasy.
“Look what you’ve done, Laurie,” he whispered as he gazed down at the new life in his arms. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lauren watched her husband with a deep welling of emotion. “That’s exactly what you said when Drew was born.”
“But this time I mean it,” he said, a wide sheepish grin on his face. “She truly is beautiful. I’ve never seen a baby with such incredible eyes. The color is just amazing.”
“All babies have blue eyes,” Lauren told him, glancing over at the nurse for verification.
The nurse nodded and smiled tolerantly. “And all new fathers are a bit daffy.”
“Not this one,” Todd crowed as he sat down on the edge of Lauren’s bed and swung his daughter up for her inspection.
Lauren caught her breath. The baby’s eyes were an eerie white-brown, and at the base of her neck was a tiny birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A theme appears to be emerging on the acknowledgment pages of my books: the same people keep showing up. My writers’ group: Diane Bonavist, Jan Brogan, Fl
oyd Kemske, Rachel Plummer, and Donna Baier Stein. My family: Dan, Robin, and Scott Fleishman. My parents: Norman and Sandra Shapiro. My agent and editor: Nancy Yost and Ellen Edwards. To all of you, as before, my deepest thanks.
For their professional expertise, manuscript critiques, or just plain great ideas, I want to thank Amy Agigian, Margie Bogdanow, Steve Corr, Deborah Crombie, Tamar Hosansky, Phyllis Kapken-Silverman, Larry Starr, Kelly Tate, and Steve Womack.
And to Ellen and Nancy, although you have already been mentioned, double thanks are indeed appropriate.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by B.A. Shapiro
978-1-4804-8162-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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B. A. SHAPIRO
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