by Kay Hooper
But where it existed, no matter how it was created, the Barrier could be destroyed, Duncan had discovered. And when it was destroyed, if the Talent lying behind it was great enough, that destruction released enormous power.
He had discovered that, experimenting deliberately on a cousin whose branch of the family had left Salem long ago. That was when he had seen and understood that he could become even more powerful himself. If he did it correctly, that Talent released was something Duncan could claim for his own.
He wanted it.
He wanted it all.
FIVE
When he was set down at his drop point very early Thursday morning—by an eerily silent green chopper, the sort of which he knew Bishop used in these parts—Grayson was only a couple of miles, as the crow flew, from the Trail, and from there he’d be hardly more than two or three miles from Salem. As the crow flew.
Adjusting the heavy pack he carried with ease, he set off in a direct path for the Trail. He had no reason to suspect that watchers lurked this far from Salem, nor did he believe Bishop would have picked the drop point unless it had been thoroughly scouted ahead of time, likely by SCU members or Haven investigators. Nevertheless, once he was into the trees, he immediately changed direction.
He took a meandering path to the Trail, looking all around him with the experienced scouting gaze of one whose life had more than once depended on his awareness of his surroundings. He saw no one, though he crossed several faint trails made by wildlife, and at least one that appeared to be used on a fairly regular basis by humans.
But he also found two old campsites in the general area, rings of rock placed roughly, cinders and traces of old ashes within, so drew the conclusion that this was one of those places passed by word of mouth from hiker to hiker about various locations where it was relatively safe to camp.
He left the area untouched and moved a bit more swiftly until he reached the Trail itself and crossed over it to the east. He encountered no one, which didn’t surprise him; even this far south, it was a hardy and experienced hiker who braved the Trail in January.
Or a fool.
He was well down off the Trail and beginning to angle toward the northeast, and Salem, when he crossed another trail. This one gave him pause, and for a moment he hunkered down to get a closer look.
It was actually two trails, or two parallel narrow tracks. Made not by any wheeled vehicle, but by feet. Human feet. His trained gaze could see shoe and boot marks and even, faintly, the marks of bare feet.
Bare feet. In January? Or, for that matter, anytime during the last two or three months?
The trail was well-worn enough to tell him it was used on a regular basis—but not every day.
Grayson hesitated, then followed the parallel tracks, staying well to the side of both. He was heading in the general direction of Salem, but since he was well off the Trail, he doubted that many, if any, hikers would have stumbled across these tracks. Especially since the forest grew more dense, with the tracks he followed barely visible in the absence of light.
He used his spider senses, enhancing his vision, even though he knew the price he’d pay for that later. He also shifted his pack a bit, so he could more easily get to the rifle strapped across the top. Just in case.
Grayson always expected trouble.
The parallel tracks came abruptly out into a clearing, and Grayson stopped, going only as far as he needed to in order to see what there was to see.
It was a flat area, probably no more than sixty feet across before the mountain began to both climb and descend again. In that clearing was a single standing stone wall that rose to a point at the far end, with the other walls that had once risen to join it now only a tumble of stones that had fallen or been placed mostly inside the structure. The original building had probably been no more than twenty-five feet from the entrance to that still-standing wall.
And it was old. It was very, very old.
Grayson’s guess was that it had once been a church, typically one of the first buildings settlers erected when they chose their new home, especially in this part of the world, though he would have said this one was in an odd place in relation to Salem.
Then again . . .
In the semicleared space of the interior, someone had constructed a rough altar stone. Obviously hacked from a single larger slab of rock, the oblong was about two feet wide and at least six feet long, and laid across two big boulders beneath that brought the altar, Grayson estimated, as high as his thighs.
He wasn’t about to move closer; he could clearly see that the ground all around the structure was of the sort of loosely powdered dust that left tracks. He could see many, with the two trails he had followed continuing to the gaping doorway of the structure, and a number of tracks in between and around.
But what disturbed him, what kept him within the woods and back away from the structure, was the fact that he could see the rusty brown of dried bloodstains on that stone altar. A lot of bloodstains.
Grayson studied as much as he could see from his position, then worked his way carefully around the structure, always staying well back and counting on his enhanced vision to show him what there was to be seen.
There were a few streaks and splashes of dried blood on the two partial walls, and some on the stones that had been moved to clear space for the altar, but he couldn’t tell how old they were.
No signs at all of human remains.
He knew it was a lot more likely that some poor animal had been slaughtered here in a ritual sacrifice than it was that a human being had been a victim. In a normal world, at least.
The world he lived in was rarely normal.
After a thoughtful while, Grayson studied his surroundings carefully for landmarks, fixing this spot in his mind. He shrugged off his pack long enough to remove and use his camera to take a number of pictures of the building, the clearing, and the parallel tracks leading to the spot from as many angles as he could manage. Then he put the camera away, shrugged on the pack again, and continued down the mountain, following no path now but heading for Salem.
It was still early, not yet noon; if he had not detoured to follow the tracks, he probably would have been in Salem by now. Still, Grayson didn’t hurry, and he frowned as he picked his way down the mountainside. He was not an expert in the occult, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t picked up knowledge of it here and there as most of Bishop’s people had. And what he’d seen back there in that . . . church . . . pointed to the occult. Or at least to something very like it.
Geneva had been here two weeks; she may well have found what he had found, or she may have been concentrating on the town itself. Until they met up and compared notes, there was no way to be sure.
No way to be sure of anything.
Especially with Geneva in the picture.
* * *
—
BETHANY HAD NO idea how much time had passed, because the faint glow of light just beyond the curve of the cave never seemed to change. She had cried quietly at first, for a long time, until her eyes were swollen and her nose ran and her throat felt raw. Shudders of fear had racked her slender body as she sobbed, and even though her thick jacket and other clothing kept the faint chill at bay, she felt so cold, so cold and alone.
At some point she had cried herself out, at least for the moment, and curled up on the cot without blankets or a pillow or anything except the thin, musty-smelling mattress, and somehow she had fallen asleep.
When she woke, the momentary confusion of where she was and what had happened returned, but before she could begin to cry again, she saw that a little tray had been slid through a slot near the floor she hadn’t even seen before. It held only a shallow bowl and cup, small enough to slide easily through the cramped opening.
Bethany sat up and leaned forward, able to reach the tray easily from the cot. The cup held only water, and only a fe
w sips of that. The small bowl held a thin liquid that, when she cautiously tasted it, proved to be lukewarm chicken broth.
At least that’s what it tasted like.
Bethany wanted to cry again. Because there was so little. Because someone had delivered the tray and she hadn’t awakened to ask the desperate questions and plead as she wanted to plead to go home. Because she was afraid. So afraid.
The pinched feeling in her stomach told her that supper had been a long, long time ago. So Bethany fought back the tears and placed the tray beside her on the cot, lifting the bowl and cup to drink the broth and the water. The broth was salty, and too late she realized it made her more thirsty; her vague plan to try to save some of the water in case nobody came again vanished as she drained the cup.
She told herself she should be brave, like the heroic kids she saw on TV shows and in the movies, brave and smart enough to get herself out of this cage.
With that prodding her, she managed to get to shaky feet and step out to touch the cold, rusty metal that formed her cage. She tried pulling and pushing only to find no give at all in the metal. She hooked her fingers and tried to pull upward. Again, the cage didn’t budge. Then she looked for an opening other than the padlocked door and the shallow slot that had admitted the tray and its contents.
She thought she must have checked every inch of the four sides of the cage, even stood on the cot to try to reach the top, only to find her stretching fingers inches short of their goal.
Not that it mattered, she thought wearily as she sat down on the cot again, scrunching back and lifting her legs so she could hug them against her body. She was still cold. And despite the broth and water, the pinched feeling in her middle remained.
Rocking back and forth a little, Bethany Hicks began to cry again, silently.
* * *
—
THE FACT THAT it took Grayson most of the morning Thursday to cover the scant few miles from his drop point to Salem was hardly something he could blame on the pause to study the ruins he’d found. He told himself he was simply out of shape. It had been a few years since he’d done any serious hiking, after all. And the Trail was serious, especially the section he’d been called upon to traverse just coming from west to east across it.
Never mind that he was a daily runner and worked out with a few of his fellow SCU agents in mixed martial arts at least two or three times a week. Never mind that.
Ass. You know what it is. You know the truth. You’re just not sure what mood you’ll find Geneva in. She could be utterly professional and pleasant.
Or she could shoot you.
The truth was, he figured he had a fifty-fifty chance either way. He decided to ignore the truth, at least for now.
He was, after all, on a job, and hardly had the time for the nonsense in his head. Later. Later for all that.
Or maybe never. Never would be best.
Pausing on the faint trail leading down the mountain to the valley, he pushed everything else from his mind and absently adjusted his heavy pack as he studied as much of Salem as he could see.
Peaceful little mountain town, to all appearances. Spread out over most of a pretty valley, the far third of it, or roughly that, farmland. Dairy, from the looks of the cattle he could see when he focused his spider senses intently enough to get a good look at the far end of the valley.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes with one hand, reminding himself not to keep doing that. He’d already strained his eyes following those tracks; why add to the problem for no good reason? He’d have a headache later, dammit, if not a migraine, and for what? So he could see the dairy cows he’d already known made up part of Salem’s local economy?
He knew the basics, from the initial brief and what information he’d studied on the trip to his drop point. Five families who had been among those who had originally settled the town more than three hundred years before still controlled the major businesses or industries that provided most of the jobs for the townspeople.
Five families. The Blackwoods, the Cavendishes, the Deverells, the Ainsworths, and the Hales.
Their descendants were still the families of Salem, the town leaders, elected or not. The ones who owned most of the land and controlled the major industries that kept the economy of Salem healthy and, really, more than adequate, if not flourishing, especially for such a small, isolated place.
The Deverells owned a huge paper mill miles outside town on one of the cold mountain rivers, its facility designed to be divided between the mostly automated mass production of the sort of paper most people used in their daily lives and a smaller, far more labor-intensive section where beautiful, expensive, specialized paper was still made the old-fashioned way, with vintage tools and machinery the Deverells might well have brought along with them in their wagons hundreds of years ago.
Grayson was vaguely surprised there was still a demand for that sort of thing. Did people even write elegant letters on elegant stationery in these days of texts and e-mails?
In any case, the mill provided quite a few skilled jobs for true craftsmen and craftswomen living in Salem, as well as a number of machinists, maintenance people, and other specialists to keep the equipment of the mass-production side of the company running and in good order. There were also the usual necessary office staff and administrative positions providing jobs, even careers, for townspeople. And as far as Grayson had been able to find out, all positions in the company, all jobs, paid very well indeed, with benefits like very good insurance and generous yearly bonuses.
Way to earn dependable loyalty from your workers.
And it was the same with the other four families and their businesses as well. Good working conditions, generous pay and bonuses, safety standards above what was required by law.
An interesting variation on a company town. Only Salem was a Five Company Town. Something the town itself benefited from, at least financially.
The Ainsworths ran the huge dairy farm Grayson had spotted earlier that occupied most of the relatively flat land at the far end of the valley some distance outside Salem.
There had been a company upriver from the paper mill that for decades had produced electricity for the area; owned by the Blackwood family, it had begun years before to transition to solar, which provided more company-trained skilled jobs and, as of only a couple of years before, provided all the power for the town via solar alone, a rare monopoly for a power company, especially for one in a mountainous region.
Clean energy. A necessary product in high demand supplied at reasonable prices, and still more company-trained jobs for the townsfolk. As were also provided by the Cavendish bank and the Hales’s small-town real estate empire.
Salem was as close to being a completely self-sufficient town as any he had ever seen or heard about. It was certainly protected geographically from most any man-made disaster, though forest fires and the rare flash flood from one of the mountain streams were always possible. And winter storms could be fierce.
Still, a very self-contained town way, way off the beaten path and yet with the resources to support its population comfortably. A population surrounded by wilderness.
It was probably one reason why the unnamed militia group, likely made up of at least some current or onetime survivalists, had chosen to settle here.
Which was reasonable. But . . . oddly weird when you added in the fact that they were the accepted agents of law and order in Salem, this calm little town where, according to their website, hunting was forbidden for sport and strongly discouraged for food. An open-carry state, but hunting was discouraged here. Definitely weird. And he had a hunch he wouldn’t see anyone openly carrying guns while walking the streets of Salem no matter what the state law said. That was unusual. That was unusual as hell.
And the main question uppermost in Grayson’s mind about that particular issue was whether the militia maintained law and order in Salem b
ecause that’s the way the townsfolk liked it—or if they’d been given little or no choice in the matter.
* * *
—
“I SHOULD HAVE been able to stop it,” Finn said into the phone.
“You can’t be everywhere. You can’t control everything. And you know that.” The voice on the other end of the connection was deep and calm and held an authority that was curiously without force and yet one to command easily.
“I can damned well try.” He drew a breath and fought for control, something usually his without effort. “If you’re right about the others, your missings, they at least made it to town.”
“They grabbed him before he ever reached town. There was nothing you could have done.” That other voice was matter-of-fact rather than consoling.
“Maybe, but that makes four. Four young people dead in only a few short weeks. Tortured in ways I don’t even want to think about. Duncan’s feeling pushed, or he never would have ordered that. Never would have moved so fast.”
“Yes. I know. Because Nellie’s coming, the virtual unknown who could upset all his plans. And then there’s you. Your loyalists are nearly half the militia. You’re a threat, and one Duncan can’t deal with directly without upsetting the balance of the families in a way that would turn them all against him. They’re on your side, even if they haven’t said so openly. But they’d rather avoid any confrontation. They’re afraid of Duncan.”
“I know. And Nellie is his last chance to shift the balance in his favor. She’s . . . special. Not just with the Talent virtually from birth, but she’s a Cavendish.”
