by Kay Hooper
But she worked for Bishop, for the SCU, and she had learned to be wary of things that bothered her.
The crows bothered her.
So just in case one of them landed on the railing of her balcony and decided to look in at her . . . Well, just in case.
Geneva studied the pictures one by one. All they told her, individually and in total, was that someone had been tortured somewhere else and dumped here, where organs from the trunk of the body had been removed and set aside. She had no clue what had happened to the brain, or at what stage of the process it had been somehow removed, along with a substantial part of the skull.
The photos also told her that whoever had dumped the body had painted a lot of nonsense on some rocks rolled around the remains, presumably to thoroughly scare the shit out of anyone who found the place.
It had certainly terrified and horrified the hunter, although Geneva thought the human remains alone would have done that, mutilated as they had been.
As she saw it, there were two options most likely. Another person had gone missing after heading to Salem, information Bishop had not been able to get to his agent since her one and only report to him very early on. Or an unlucky hunter or hiker had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of opportunity, and had been sacrificed.
Because she didn’t have any doubt about that. This was not the work of a serial killer, or a onetime murderer, or somebody who’d gotten pissed at this poor man and murdered him for the Universe only knew what senseless reason. This was ritual, yes, but not of the serial-killer sort.
It wasn’t anything she recognized as Satanism or any of its many offshoots. Not the sort of occult most people would think of as such. This, her training, experience, and instincts told her, was an even darker, thankfully rare type of ritual, an attempt to gain power by causing the maximum amount of agony to a victim. A human victim. Because death released energy, and a death in agony released a lot of very powerful, very negative energy.
And now the static Geneva had been aware of and on guard against since arriving became even more troubling. Because if someone was sacrificing people in prolonged torture, and if that person or those people were doing so for the purpose of creating and absorbing energy, then it was the darkest energy, and anybody on that deadly path had an agenda. A very bad agenda.
It was a possible answer—at least in part—for why three, possibly four, people had come to Salem to die. If they had died, and had died like this, which she could not, even now, be certain of. So far, all she had were these photos of one victim and a dump site she was almost positive would by this time have been sanitized. She hadn’t been able to take any biological samples, both because she’d lacked the necessary equipment and because she hadn’t dared leave any signs of her own presence there.
There would be no human remains now, she was sure. No signs of rocks painted with nonsense symbols in blood. No sign of a young man tortured to death. No sign anything bad had happened. And no news of it down in Salem. The militia would see to that.
But who were they protecting? That’s what Geneva didn’t know, what her best efforts had failed to uncover. Common sense said they could have been involved in the torture or murder at worst, or covering up what was happening under orders, willingly or not. But whose orders?
They looked like ordinary citizens, dressed casually without uniforms, and sported no badges or insignia she’d been able to see. But she had spotted handguns in shoulder holsters and clipped to belts under thick winter jackets or coats. It was an open-carry state, but as far as she could tell, only the militia felt the need to go armed. Or, perhaps, had made certain they were the only ones who were, no matter what state law was.
Otherwise . . . ordinary. Not, of course, that monsters boasted horns and a tail so they could be easily identified. Not human monsters, at any rate.
And there was, clearly, at least one monster in Salem.
She picked up one of the photos and forced herself to study it, seriously disturbed by one thing more than any other. As far as she’d been able to determine, only one organ had been completely missing from the remains.
His brain. And she wasn’t even certain it was missing. It could, given the condition of the skull, have simply . . . exploded somehow, leaving nothing except microscopic bits only a forensic pathologist could see.
And Geneva didn’t have a clue how that was even possible.
* * *
—
BETHANY HICKS KNEW she’d made a bad mistake when the first crow landed silently on a low branch of the tree she’d been hiding behind.
She looked up cautiously, not a whit reassured by the bird’s bright-eyed but seemingly benevolent gaze. Nervously pulling her coat tighter around her because it was really, really cold, she yanked her attention away from the crow and stared once more at the church. Not that it looked like a church, really. Just somebody’s old house tucked back in the woods where you couldn’t see it from the road. Or, really, from anywhere except close. An old farmhouse made more than a little creepy because the only light she could see through windows dressed with nothing except sheer, gauzy material was candlelight. Moving around all through the house as though people with candles were following some pattern she couldn’t recognize.
She could see the lights. But not the people.
But she could hear them.
They started chanting in a language Bethany didn’t understand. And it struck her as extra-creepy that she could hear the chanting even though every single window she could see was closed against the cold January night.
She felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck, and at first thought it was the eerie chanting that was spooking her. But then something made her look up slowly to find that the lone crow had been silently joined by two friends, all three regarding her with bright crow eyes.
There were a lot of crows around Salem, so she was familiar with them. Crows were big birds and made a lot of noise when they flew close, Bethany knew.
These hadn’t made a sound.
And all of a sudden, Bethany didn’t really care what was going on in the spooky old house back here in the woods at the edge of Salem. She didn’t care if it was a church or not. She didn’t care what they were doing in there, not a bit.
All of a sudden, she didn’t want to break off one of the geraniums in the pot on the front porch, the ones Jason swore were real even though it was January and they shouldn’t be real, shouldn’t be blooming. She didn’t want to steal a flower and run and show it to Jason and the other boys to prove she was brave.
Bethany didn’t feel very brave.
She didn’t feel brave at all.
Holding her breath so there was no mist at all in front of her face, she backed away from the tree, her gaze flicking back and forth from the strange house with its increasingly creepy chanting sounds that seemed to grow louder as she backed away to the three watching crows that turned their heads in perfect sync to watch every movement she made.
She backed away slowly, her heartbeat thundering in her ears, until she couldn’t see the house or the crows, until the silent, dark woods closed around her, and then Bethany Hicks ran as fast as her long ten-year-old legs could carry her.
And she almost made it.
WEDNESDAY
Geneva followed her established habits when she went out just before lunchtime on Wednesday. She carried her camera; she smiled at people; she took a few pictures of stunning scenery. And all the time, behind her pleasant facade, she was mulling possibilities, questions, speculation.
She wouldn’t have been the first agent to complain that the job was too often like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the finished picture was supposed to look like. Trying this piece, then that, rotating, flipping, trying to see the pattern.
The fact that there always was a pattern was the saving grace. It was just usually
difficult as hell to find it.
And the extra senses that were tools in her investigator’s toolbox hadn’t been a lot of help on this one so far. She had picked up little telepathically. Practically falling over the frantic hunter had been sheer happenstance.
Worse, after her speculations and tentative conclusions of the night before, she was even more wary of using her telepathic senses. Especially once she was roaming about today and was uneasily aware that the static she sensed was indeed growing stronger and seemed to hang over the town now like an invisible cloud that made her skin crawl just a bit.
It hadn’t been like that yesterday. Or else it had, and she hadn’t sensed it as strongly, for whatever reason. It wasn’t, after all, that unusual that her extra senses might wax and wane in strength; very often they seemed to have a mind of their own. And they could be affected by external energy sources, so there was also that troubling thought.
But maybe it was only her growing uneasiness over the victim she had found, solid evidence of evil lurking, that made it seem to her today that there were even more walls around her now, walls blocking the minds of people who smiled pleasantly and casually at her as she passed.
Maybe. Or maybe that building static was changing things somehow. Changing those around her. Changing her. Walls could strengthen and weaken even as paranormal senses could and did, but they were built for a reason, shored up for a reason, and whether it was to keep something in or something out, it roused the caution in Geneva’s nature as nothing else could have. So she went carefully and used only her usual senses as much as possible.
She had worked her way to the end of Main Street, to the playground, almost a part of downtown, and because she was preoccupied, she very nearly missed it. A young and quavery voice expressing worry and concern.
“You didn’t do nuthin’ wrong,” a still-young but tougher voice was saying as Geneva found herself a bench on the other side of the hedges where she could hear but not see. She fiddled with her camera, head bent over the seeming task, listening intently.
“I never should have dared Bethany to do it, and you know I shouldn’t of. It’s too far, up in them woods, and I told her”—the young voice quavered even more—“I told her she had to sneak out after bedtime, or it wouldn’t be a real dare.”
“Jase—”
“I told her she had to grab one of them flowers off the pot on the porch, beside the front door.”
“Jase, she prob’ly just got scared and ran home. You know she prob’ly did.”
“She wasn’t at the bus stop this mornin’!”
“Listen—”
“She wasn’t at lunch neither, so that’s why I snuck out and went over to her house. It’s empty, Trev, nobody’s home.”
“That’s why I had to come sneaking out myself to find you? Jeez, Jase, her dad works out at the paper mill, and—”
“No, they left, that’s what old Mrs. Carney said. She was out walkin’ her dog and I asked, and she said they packed up their car even before the school bus came this morning and left.”
“Well, then Bethany—”
“She wasn’t with ’em, Trev, that’s what Mrs. Carney said. And she looked for her special, ’cause she’s the only other person that old dog of hers likes. Growls at me, like he did when I asked her. But . . . but Bethany didn’t leave with her family, Trev, I know she didn’t. An’ it’s all my fault!”
Geneva shut out the voices, concentrating instead on sending a very narrow seeking tendril toward the boys on the other side of the bushes. The minds of children were always difficult and often chaotic, thoughts darting here and there, sometimes only fragments. And she hated invading someone else’s mind without so much as a by-your-leave anyway, so that made it harder.
But she guarded herself as best she could and probed, carefully, looking for a memory of that place young Jason had sent Bethany Hicks, and looking for the address of the Hicks home because it would save her time.
She got both, more or less, hazy and incomplete, but enough of a trail for her to follow. And just in time, because she heard a scolding adult voice, and both boys were rushing away with lame excuses and pleas for mercy . . .
Geneva sat there on the bench for a few moments, still fiddling with her camera, head bent as she apparently focused on whatever she was doing, while inside her trained and experienced mind she was carefully building up her shields. Because even though it had happened in the flash of an instant, she had a new and very uneasy sense that a second person had touched young Jason’s mind just as she had in that moment. And that maybe, just maybe, whoever it was had known she was there too.
It was extremely unsettling.
She was alone here, and undercover, with no authority. With the sharp-eyed militia about, she hadn’t dared carry her own weapon, leaving it well hidden in her room at the B and B. Not that she was defenseless without her gun, but still.
With an effort, she shook off the growing uneasiness. She would be even more cautious, that was all. Just take care and do her job, same as always. But as she rose from the bench and set off on a seemingly rambling walk, camera in hand, she could feel that slightly crawly sensation on her skin that experience told her was energy of a negative kind, and wondered if Bishop knew the static in this town, whatever its source or the agenda behind it, was getting stronger. She probably needed to let him know that.
But, in the meantime, she had a house to break into. And another one up on the mountain to find.
THREE
Bethany had no idea where she was when she woke up, her head aching, memories fuzzy. And she felt sick, like when she’d had the flu and hadn’t been able to keep anything down.
She started to move, then stopped, eyes still closed, when her stomach protested and she had to choke back what was rising in her throat. It was a long time, she thought, before she was able to slowly open her eyes.
She was . . . where was she? It was dark, but not so dark that she feared she’d gone blind. Dim light coming from just around the bend of . . . of what looked and felt to her like a cave. Maybe close to the entrance since there was some light, but she was afraid to hope. There were a few caves and old mine shafts in the area, she’d heard, though her daddy had forbidden her to go exploring for them.
She wished now she had. Not that it would have helped her, probably. She was at the back of a cave or a mine shaft, just tall enough for a man as tall as her daddy to stand upright, and maybe wide enough for two of them to stand with outreached hands touching the walls and each other.
She wanted to cry out, to scream for help, but a primitive sense deep within warned her to make no noise until she was certain where she was. And because of something else.
Because the really scary thing, the thing that made her shiver even though it wasn’t too awfully cold in the cave, was that within that small, hacked-from-rock space, she was in a cage.
It was just large enough for the small cot she lay on—she could see that as soon as she sat up—and again just tall enough for a tall man to stand up in. She didn’t get up, but judged it would only take her two or three steps from the cot to reach what looked like the door of the cage.
Closed by a shiny chain and padlock that looked a lot newer than the crisscrossed, rusting metal of the cage itself.
She didn’t know what time it was. How long since she had been taken. Where she was. Or who had her—and why.
That last unknown scared her even more than she’d been before, because she knew nice people didn’t put little girls in cages and hide them away in caves. And because . . . because there had been whispers she’d heard about stuff the grown-ups hadn’t intended for her to hear, about bad things that had happened to people up in the mountains.
Up in the mountains.
Where the caves were.
Quantico
Noah Bishop, chief of the Special Crimes Unit, was an impressi
ve man even when seated and seemingly at ease. It might have been the obvious strength of his broad shoulders that was hardly disguised by the formal suit he wore; it might have been the way his powerful hands rested almost negligently on the closed file on the table before him. It might even have been the lean face that was handsome and somewhat enigmatic, marked by the level gaze of striking tarnished-silver eyes beneath winging brows, and by a dramatic, exotic widow’s peak of raven black hair on his high, curiously unlined forehead.
It might also have been the odd, stark streak of white no wider than two fingers winging back from his left temple, or the very faint but visible scar that twisted down that left cheek, lending him an air of danger that was not at all deceptive.
It might have been all that, Grayson Sheridan thought as he joined his unit chief in the conference room that was seldom used except for briefings, or unless a case was local. But he thought privately—he hoped, being pretty much surrounded by telepaths most of the time—that Bishop was impressive simply because he was one of those innately powerful men, natural leaders, who came along maybe once in a generation but usually even less often than that. A man who commanded others seemingly without effort, winning the absolute loyalty of those who worked with and for him.
A man who was, in simple reality, changing the world.
And how many humans could say they had done that?
“You’ll be taken to your drop point just west of the Trail tomorrow morning,” Bishop was saying in his low, calm voice, seemingly oblivious to the other man’s thoughts. (Which might or might not be true, given his truly formidable telepathic abilities.)
“It’s in the Southern Appalachians, isn’t it?” Grayson said with more resignation than anything else. “Salem. One of those little towns all but forgotten by time.” It was entirely possible, after all, to more or less hide an entire town in the old, forest-dense Appalachian Mountains. Or more than one town, if it came to that.
