by Kay Hooper
“Yes, Mama?” She tried hard to see her mama’s face as it had been, once. Before the church. Before Father. Before last October. “Father wants to have a Ritual before supper.”
A chill crawled up and down Ruby’s back, and she wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.
“So you’ll need to finish your lessons and go take a shower. I’ve laid out your robe for you, and I’ll do your hair. Hurry up, now.”
“Yes, Mama.” She saw beneath the pleasant, pretty features to the cold, hard shell that lurked under the surface, the shell that was blackened, as though scorched, and contained only an emptiness so vast Ruby didn’t have words for it. All she knew was that her mother no longer lived there.
Her mother, she knew now, had been gone for a long time.
“Hurry up,” Emma Campbell repeated.
Ruby nodded but said, “Mama? Do I . . . do I have to be naked under the robe? Like last time?”
“Ruby, you know it’s part of the Ritual.” Emma Campbell smiled. “You’re at the Youth Level. Even more, you’re one of the Chosen. It’s a great honor, and your father and I are so proud of you.”
“Yes, Mama.” Ruby didn’t try to argue, didn’t try to protest. It was useless. And it was dangerous.
“Use the special soap I bought for you when you shower. So you’ll smell nice for the Ritual.”
Ruby’s stomach lurched, a reaction she tried to hide as she reached for normal, everyday things. Reassuring things. “I will. Is Daddy coming home in time for supper?”
“No, I’m afraid not. He called earlier to say the sales conference is going on longer than he expected, and he’ll probably be gone a few more days. But he’s signed up a dozen more accounts. I think they may make him Salesman of the Month after this trip.”
Ruby looked down at her hand, watching the pencil she held wobble slightly before she regained her fierce control. Looking at the half-circle wound made by her own teeth hours before, a wound she was hiding from everyone. In a very soft voice, she said, “Mama? When did Daddy become a salesman?”
“Oh, Ruby, don’t ask silly questions when you know the answers as well as I do. Your daddy’s always been a salesman. Now, hurry up and finish your work.”
“Yes, Mama.” Ruby dared not look up until she was certain Emma Campbell had returned to the kitchen and her endless baking. And when she did look up, she didn’t cry, even though her eyes stung and there was an aching lump in her throat.
Because her daddy had always been a mechanic.
And she was never going to see him again.
“That was when Reese called me,” Bishop said. “That was when we started putting the pieces together.”
“Lightning?” Sawyer cast about for something reasonable to say when presented with the fantastic. “That . . . doesn’t sound like any kind of psychic ability I’ve ever heard of.”
“It’s about energy.” Bishop’s tone was remote, the scar standing out whitely against the tanned skin of his cheek. “From what little we’ve been able to find out, Samuel was struck by lightning when he was a teenager. Not only did he survive, but he came out of the experience profoundly changed.”
DeMarco said, “He was already preaching his version of the Bible, not because he’d found God but because he’d found a way to make money. And a way to make people listen to him and respect him. After the lightning he was, as Bishop says, changed. He must have been a latent or even active psychic before then; we have no way to be sure. After that experience, he was very obviously psychic, clairvoyant, and precognitive.”
“Miracles,” Hollis murmured. “There will always be followers of people who claim to know the secrets of the universe.”
“And people who claim to be touched by God,” DeMarco said. “I don’t know if he believed that when the lightning struck, but eventually, over time, he certainly came to believe it. After that, the only laws he obeyed were the ones God supposedly gave him, and those were remarkably flexible. I don’t know much about his journey before he settled here, but I think it’s safe to say he discovered a long time ago how easy it was to kill.”
The sick feeling in Sawyer’s stomach intensified. “Those bodies in the river. Others that washed farther downstream. How long has he been killing here?”
“It was happening when I got inside, so I can’t tell you when it started, not for certain. My guess would be that it’s been going on for at least five or six years, maybe longer. But I was witness to none of it, he has never confessed any of it to me, and I have no proof whatsoever that would justify even a search warrant or an arrest, let alone a trial and conviction. Not for any of the murders he’s committed. Which is why I haven’t been able to take any action despite what I know absolutely.”
“You said you witnessed a murder last October,” Sawyer objected.
“I witnessed a man being struck by lightning,” DeMarco said flatly. “Samuel was yards away when it happened. Do I believe he killed that man? Yes. Do I believe I could convince a court of law that Samuel, for want of a better word, summoned a lightning bolt to do it? I don’t think so. Any more than I can prove that the enormous energies he released that day also destroyed virtually all the pets and livestock within the Compound. In an instant.”
“Which is our theory,” Bishop said. “It’s also our theory that his use of electromagnetic energy has so affected the very atmosphere above the Compound that even the birds stay away.”
Sawyer struggled to let all that sink in. Finally he asked DeMarco, “How long have you been inside the church?”
“You should know. We met shortly after you took office, two years ago.”
“Wait,” Hollis said. “You’ve been under that long?”
“Twenty-six months,” he said.
Frowning, Hollis turned her gaze to Bishop. “You knew about Samuel that long ago?”
Bishop shook his head. “You heard Reese. It wasn’t until last October that I began to suspect Samuel.”
“Then why was he sent in?”
“There are presently more than a dozen suspected cults on the FBI watch list because they’re believed to be dangerous or potentially dangerous. The FBI, ATF, or Homeland Security has undercover agents in six of them. The SCU has agents inside two of those—plus Reese here. We knew Samuel posed a danger almost from the moment Reese was inside and able to report. We suspected Samuel was psychic, but since he doesn’t read as psychic and has never openly displayed abilities we can define, we were never sure of his capabilities. I had no idea he had any connection to the murders in Boston last summer, or the murders in Georgia a few months later. Not then.”
“And now? Are you absolutely sure?” Hollis asked him.
“Ask Reese.”
Without waiting to be asked, DeMarco said, “Until about ten years ago, Samuel was fairly harmless, as cult leaders go. Like many of them, as I said, he started preaching young. Then lightning struck, literally. And suddenly he had a mission. To save his followers. He saw himself as their healer, their savior. Over time, he became convinced that he was God’s instrument on earth, chosen and set on a path that would lead his people through the dangerous days ahead.”
Sawyer grunted and said, “Sounds like most of the preachers I’ve heard in my life.”
DeMarco nodded. “Yeah, not much difference in the early days. But then, gradually, his sermons began to be less about God and more about the role of his flock in the coming End Days. They were, he taught them, persecuted or, worse, ignored by blind and faithless outsiders. The world was a perilous place and would become even more perilous. Only he could protect them; only he could lead them to salvation. They had to trust him, had to believe in him. Utterly.”
“And that,” Quentin said, “crosses over the line. From legitimate spiritual leader to the first dangerous stages of a cult.”
Again, DeMarco nodded. “Still, he wasn’t preaching violence as far as any outsider could tell—and by then some watch groups were paying attention. He preached the usual dire war
nings of the approaching End Times, of how the ungodly would be punished, but he wasn’t encouraging anyone to do anything about it, other than pray. No abuse reported, no stories from former church members that indicated any openly dangerous tendencies. They didn’t even isolate themselves particularly from the communities around them. Only thing that really stood out that long ago was the fact that he left his first small, fairly remote church outside L.A. in the hands of one of his trusted followers and took his act on the road.
“He didn’t seem to want to settle anywhere over the next eight or ten years. He traveled around the country. He’d spend maybe a year in a likely spot, usually a small town or other remote area, gathering a few converts and then choosing one of them to run that branch of his church. Then he’d move on to the next likely spot.”
“Why?” Sawyer asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does seem weirdly random,” Hollis agreed. “I’ve always thought so. If the branches he founded end up anything like the one we found in Venture, it was hardly more than a shack with a handful of loyal members.”
“A shack—plus a lot of property,” Bishop pointed out.
“Well, yeah, but mostly worthless property. Abandoned buildings, defunct businesses, and not a lot of land. What’s the good of owning stuff like that? Especially when you don’t even bother taking steps to improve the property?”
“I wish I knew.”
Hollis frowned again at Bishop, then turned her gaze to DeMarco. “You don’t know why he wants the land?”
“No.”
“His right-hand man doesn’t know?” Sarcasm tinted her tone.
DeMarco appeared to ignore the dig. “No, his right-hand man doesn’t have a clue. Samuel plays his cards close to the chest. Very close. He doesn’t confide his thoughts to anyone, far as I know—with the possible exception of Ruth Hardin, who’s been with him longer than anyone else. As Bishop said, he doesn’t read as psychic, and so far we haven’t found a psychic who’s able to read him. At all.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.”
Ruby lingered in the shower as long as she dared, using the special soap her mama had bought. It smelled like roses, so sickly sweet that her already queasy stomach churned even more as she soaped herself from head to toe and then just stood underneath the steaming hot water.
The Ritual.
She hated the Ritual.
Two of the other girls loved it, she knew that. Amy and Theresa. She saw it in their wide, dazed eyes and flushed cheeks. She heard it in their nervous, excited giggles.
They were Becoming, and it thrilled them.
Father thrilled them.
But Ruby and Brooke knew the truth, and what they knew had made their skin crawl.
Ruby’s skin was crawling even in the shower, a cold pit of dread lay heavy in her stomach, and she wasn’t certain how much longer she would be able to pretend otherwise. She wasn’t even absolutely sure Father believed her pretense, except . . .
He seemed to get what he wanted from her. What he needed. He seemed pleased. So maybe she could make Father see what wasn’t there as well. She allowed herself to hope that was true. That she could make even him see what she wanted him to see, believe what she wished him to believe . . .
Maybe.
And if she could do that—
“Ruby, hurry up! You’ll be late.”
She reluctantly turned the water off, then stepped out of the shower and began to towel herself dry. And it wasn’t until that moment, dripping on the mat with her wet hair in her eyes, that it occurred to her what she had done.
She had sent Lexie away.
She had sent Lexie to an outsider.
What if Father sees that? What if he knows?
What have I done?
“Ruby?”
All she could do was concentrate harder, to try her best to make the protective shell she had fashioned for herself even stronger. Stronger than it had ever needed to be before, even when she watched Brooke die. Her head began to pound, to throb, and she could feel her own heartbeat, first racing and then gradually slowing, growing more steady as she regained control over herself.
He can’t know where I’ve sent Lexie. He can’t.
“Ruby!”
Her fingers felt a little numb as she hurriedly finished drying herself and wrapped the damp towel around her. She went out into the bedroom, her parents’ bedroom, where Emma Campbell waited.
“Here, sweetie, come sit down at my dressing table while I do your hair.”
Ruby obeyed, keeping her gaze fixed on her own reflection in the oval mirror. Still her face, thank goodness, with nothing dark and empty underneath. She checked every day, always worried that it could happen at night, when she slept. When she couldn’t concentrate to keep her shell around her for protection. She dreaded looking into the mirror every single morning.
She didn’t know what she would do if she saw beneath her own skin what she saw beneath the skin of so many of those around her.
Except that I wouldn’t be here to see that. I’d be gone. Only my empty shell would be left.
She glanced up at Emma Campbell’s reflection, then just as swiftly returned her gaze to the reflection of her own face. She didn’t know where they went, the people who’d once lived inside their skins. She wished she could believe they’d gone to heaven but knew that wasn’t the case. People went to heaven when their bodies died naturally; their souls went to heaven. That was what Ruby believed.
But what Father did—what Father took—that was something else.
Something horribly unnatural.
He took it, Ruby was sure, from the people who no longer believed, the people who just . . . went away.
And he took it from his Chosen ones.
Emma Campbell had been a Chosen one.
And now Ruby was Becoming. Almost ready. Almost old enough to endure the True Ritual. That was when she would lose herself. Give herself, Father said, to God.
That was when she would stop being Ruby Campbell and become just an empty shell with a pretend person inside.
“I believe I’ll put your hair up this time, Ruby. You look so pretty when your hair is up.”
She braced herself and looked steadily at the reflection of Emma Campbell’s face. The face that her mother had worn and that the pretend person wore now. The face that was so familiar, and yet so alien.
This isn’t my mother. Not anymore.
“You can’t read him because he has a shield?” Sawyer asked.
DeMarco shrugged. “Maybe. Though I’ve come to think of it more like a black hole. He draws energy in, constantly. It seemed a fairly minor characteristic at first, possibly an interesting variation on a shield, negative energy, but over time it’s grown stronger, to the point that if you’re within ten or twelve feet of him it’s an actual physical sensation of being pulled toward him.”
Hollis muttered, “Bet his congregation calls that charisma.” “They call it part of his divine gift,” DeMarco said calmly. “And either he’s hardwired for it or else he has amazing concentration and focus, because while he’s pulling energy in, nothing of himself escapes. Nothing of his personality. None of his thoughts or emotions. Even when he’s . . . stimulating female members of his flock in order to feed off their energy, he still reads as a null field. As if there’s no person, no mind, no soul there.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know.”
Sawyer said, “But you do know that’s one thing Samuel is doing? Feeding off those women?”
“I believe he’s been doing that for a long time. But it wasn’t so obvious at first, and I doubt he was pulling much of their energy then. I think he was doing more giving than taking, at least in the beginning, with the members of his congregation, whether that was building their trust or somehow making them . . . dependent on him. Maybe even addicted to him.
“I spent a lot of time trying to understand how he was able to contro
l them so thoroughly. There were none of the typical signs or methods of a cult leader brainwashing his followers. And yet those followers were devoted to him, and way beyond any normal sort of devotion. That was obvious. That was why I was sent in twenty-six months ago.”
Bishop said, “As a group, they had become even more isolated, more reclusive. We try to learn from history, Chief, and from our mistakes. We needed to know what was going on inside the church.”
“To avoid another Waco. Another Jonestown.”
“Exactly. But since cults are, by nature, isolationist and highly suspicious of outsiders, the only way to really know what goes on inside is to get someone inside. Not an easy thing to do, especially with a paranoid leader already warning his congregation about enemies everywhere and a looming apocalypse.”
Sawyer looked back at DeMarco. “So how did you get in?” “The same way most of his followers did. I hung around church shelters and halfway houses in Asheville for weeks, obviously one of the castoffs of society, homeless and unemployed. I was a loner, bitter, openly . . . disenchanted with our government, and though I didn’t have property to tempt the church, I made sure what I had to offer Samuel was visible to all.”
“Which was?”
“My army jacket, bearing the kind of service patches and insignia you don’t find in pawnshops. I’m ex-military. We had a hunch Samuel might be interested in building himself an army.”
“And?”
“And he was.”
Sawyer said, “An army? He’s building an army up there?”
DeMarco shook his head. “Not the way you think. Not the way we expected. There are a few handguns in the Compound, a few shotguns. Nothing more than that. He’s convinced his followers—most of them—that they won’t need weapons to defeat their enemies. Not man-made weapons, at any rate. His followers are his army, and he’s been building that army carefully for at least the last few years.”
Sawyer thought about that and decided it needed to sink in a bit more before he tried to do something with that particular puzzle piece. “But you were still valuable to him. Your nonpsychic skills were valuable.” He realized suddenly that he had no idea what psychic skills DeMarco could boast, and the realization made him acutely uncomfortable.
