The Hounds of Devotion

by Eva Chase

  No, a large part of me wouldn’t mind seeing them tormented just as much in return.

  I did still have a conscience, though. And there were practical concerns as well.

  “You commit a mass murder, and there’ll be a huge investigation,” Garrett said. “I’d rather not stake my career on the police up here being too stupid to put together the evidence.” He sighed and grabbed a donut for himself. “It’s too bad these commune arseholes don’t take the same route as plenty of other cults and mass suicide themselves.”

  At his words, an idea sparked in my head so abruptly and insistently that I looked at Sherlock, assuming if I’d thought of it, the same thing must have occurred to him even faster. But he was gazing toward the van’s tinted window with an expression that was either thoughtful or dazed, depending on how generous you were being.

  I waffled for a few seconds. If the possibility hadn’t occurred to him, it probably wasn’t a good one. I might be better off keeping my mouth shut. But maybe he hadn’t even registered Garrett’s remark, deep in his own contemplations.

  If he and Garrett didn’t have the best grip on themselves, then someone out of the three of us needed to keep us on track.

  I wet my lips. “What if… what if we made it look like they did it to themselves? A mass suicide?”

  Sherlock’s head jerked around. He blinked at me. “Are you seriously suggesting we murder all those people?”

  “No!” I said quickly, to Jemma’s amused smirk. “I was thinking—we can’t get them to take the bait for an actual crime. We’re not sure we could convince the authorities to go after them if we simply make one up. But while the police force is hesitant to pin the locals with a crime, especially one we’re presenting them with, they’re a lot more likely to rush in if it’s to help, aren’t they? We find a way to call them in so they’ll find the cultists unconscious but not yet dead—so there’s still time for medical treatment.”

  Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “And how exactly would that play out, as you’re seeing it?”

  Under his scrutiny, my instinct was to bite my tongue. The idea was on the table now, and he still wasn’t jumping on it, so how viable could it be?

  Then I thought of the graying of his face and the tremble of his hand, and resolve hardened inside me. Jemma’s voice from our talk in the hospital echoed up from my memory. You’re more than just his goddamned sidekick. How many people did you save before you even met him?

  She was right. I had to give myself more credit—starting right now. Sherlock didn’t have all the answers, and I shouldn’t expect him to. Maybe it was all that pressure that had pushed him over the edge, even if mainly from himself.

  I glanced at Bash, who was watching me with evident curiosity. “You have military contacts, don’t you? On the black market side of things? There are a couple of different gases that contain chemicals people could have taken by other means, and that would give us enough of a window between knocking the cultists out and them actually dying for a rescue team to come in and get to work.”

  Jemma’s eyes glittered with eager understanding. “We set them up to look like they’ve done the whole suicide pact thing. Stick cups in their hands with residue of the same chemicals, that sort of thing. That’s what you’re thinking?”

  Her approval gave me a renewed burst of confidence. “Exactly. We could drag out some of the most egregious evidence of their crimes too—we could plant some obvious things related to Tillhouse to tie him into the whole mess and, er, kill two birds with one stone.”

  Sherlock’s gaze had gone distant again but in a more intent way. It shifted to me after a moment.

  “You’re sure about this, John?” he said. “The use of the gas wouldn’t be evident? We wouldn’t end up with a few dozen deaths on our hands?”

  “This is my area of expertise,” I reminded him. “I treated soldiers who’d inhaled one thing or another in the field. It’s not a common tactic anymore, but it’s still used frequently enough and in much more variety than before that we can pick our materials to suit our ends. Most of the modern forms disperse quite quickly. It won’t be hard to time, either. We can alert the authorities before we even douse the place, wait until we know the emergency vehicles are close enough.”

  Jemma made a derisive sound as if she didn’t much care whether we saved the people, which she probably didn’t. I ignored that. Garrett had leaned forward on the bench, his usual energy back in his stance.

  “And if there’s enough evidence of suicide and their general insanity, no one’s going to be looking for evidence that it was anything else. It’ll be a simple case, cut and dried. They’d be able to say whatever they wanted about their supposed innocence and no one would believe it was an attack.”

  A slow, grim smile crept across Bash’s face. “I have the contacts to get whatever we need,” he said in his low voice. “Give me a list, and I can have it within a day or two.”

  That was barely any time at all. My heart skipped a beat at the thought of the course I was launching us into.

  A hint of a smile had touched even Sherlock’s face. He clapped me on the shoulder with a glint of emotion in his pale blue eyes that flared a little hotter than just admiration.

  “It sounds as though you’ve hit on just the thing, my dear Watson. Let’s get to work, then.”

  Even though the course I’d just set us on terrified me, I had to grin back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jemma

  Now that I’d tackled a few of these communes, I could predict where the guards would be stationed with great accuracy. Between my stealth, my night vision goggles, and the element of surprise, it didn’t take me very long to dispatch each of them before they could give the slightest warning.

  The last of the guards crumpled from my arms. I jerked back the syringe I’d used to dose him, shoved that into my bag, and arranged his body with a chemical-laced cup a few inches from his limp hand. Then I touched the button on my mic.

  “They’re all down,” I murmured to the four men waiting in the van farther off. My gaze settled on the distant shadows up the slope between the trees where I knew the main commune lay, just beneath the mountain’s peak. Some night creature rustled in the brush, and I tensed instinctively, the cool, fresh Highlands air rushing into my lungs.

  It wouldn’t be so fresh in a few minutes. “We’re coming in with the gas,” John said.

  Bash’s voice followed. “I’ll meet up with you in the commune. All suited up and ready to go.”

  The two of us were going to be laying out our evidence in the settlement. I reached for my own gas mask, procured via one of Bash’s ex-military contacts.

  A pale shape swooped between the trees up ahead, and my pulse hiccupped. It was probably only an owl, but the image triggered too many associations deep in my brain. Olivia with her pale blond hair, spinning in a white dress. Olivia running between the stunted trees around the commune we’d called home.

  A chill much sharper than the one in the air dug into my skin. Shit. I hadn’t even thought.

  My hand paused with my gas mask against my chest. “John,” I whispered. “The dose you’re going to be giving them all—it’s enough to bring down an adult. What about the kids?”

  The hesitation on the other end made my heart thud faster. When we were thinking of the cult is a bunch of sadistic demon worshippers, people who’d been indirectly responsible for Sherlock’s near death, it was easy to forget the innocents among them. I had no idea how many children might be in this commune, but I had to assume there’d be at least a few. The shrouded folk demanded their sacrifices.

  “I picked the levels carefully,” the former doctor said. “It should be just enough to knock out a big guy, but not so much it’d do immediate damage even to someone small. They should be all right.”

  Should be. That wasn’t enough of a guarantee for my liking. I yanked the mask up over my face and hurried through the forest toward the commune.

  If anyone di
ed tonight, it’d be the right people, at least this once.

  A mist started streaming through the woods from where the guys must have parked. I picked up my pace, my breath muggy inside the gas mask. If this commune operated like the others I’d known did, I’d have a tiny window between the point when the adults had fallen and when the kids might be in danger. I just had to make it there in time.

  Someone coughed in the distance. Someone else let out a shout of warning. It was too late for them. Most of the commune would have been sleeping at this hour, sucked even deeper under by the chemical cocktail, but the few who’d been on watch right in the settlement hadn’t stood a chance either. The thumps of their bodies hitting the ground reached my ears a few seconds later.

  I outright ran then, not bothering to worry about the crunch of twigs or the rattle of pebbles under my feet. The rough wooden buildings came into view, Bash’s brawny form moving among them. He bent down to shift a body and place one of our doctored cups.

  I raised a hand in acknowledgement as I dashed past him and spun around to scan the settlement’s erratic layout. They tried to avoid any sort of pattern that might disturb the shrouded folk in planning the placement of their buildings, but they had other patterns of inhabitation. Usually the kids slept in one of the north buildings…

  Or rather, under one of the north buildings. I threw open one door, scanned the floor, rushed to the next, and spotted the half-open trap door beside a bed where the two cultists on “parental” duty were sprawled in their beds.

  The gas was already seeping through that opening into the dug-out basement room where the younger members of the cult spent their nights. The close quarters and uncomfortable surroundings gave them more motivation to harass each other for the shrouded folk’s pleasure, and the door was always left partly open so the adults could hear if any conflict became too violent. Now it could spell their doom.

  A small voice was coughing below, another whimpering. I dropped down by the door and leaned my face to the opening. I couldn’t make out more than a few huddled outlines of small bodies, but the fragility of even that sight was enough to constrict my chest.

  When the cops came, they’d be saved. They’d be placed with real families, families that wouldn’t offer them up in bloody worship. I was saving them right now.

  “Stay here,” I told them in a voice muffled by my gas mask. “Don’t come out until you hear footsteps coming in up here. Then you can yell for them to get you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” a thin voice murmured, and coughed again. “Who are you?”

  I smiled behind the mask. “A guardian angel,” I said, and shoved the trap door shut.

  If the kids reported my arrival to the police or the emergency workers, they’d assume the gas had made them hallucinate an angel. That suited me just fine. I yanked a blanket off one of the slumped forms and spread it over the trap door to seal it even more from the gas. Then I jerked at the adults’ bodies and set them up with their own drugged cups.

  When I emerged, Bash was just coming out of another of the buildings, his face disguised by his mask. He motioned to his duffel bag, and I nodded. With swift efficiency, we unrolled the banner we’d made, the letters painted with chicken’s blood, and strung it between two of the trees.

  In honor of our great provider, Harvey Tillhouse, we offer up our spirits. We’d even pasted a photograph of the MP on there for good measure.

  We raced through the commune, setting up the rest of the bodies, scattering our additional evidence. Notes of gratitude and more photos of the MP here. The tools of the blood-letting and other torture there. No one who walked through this place would be able to deny something deeply sick had caught hold of these people.

  Sherlock’s voice carried into my ear. “The police should be arriving in approximately five minutes. A couple of news teams too. Complete your work and hurry out of there.”

  I was just laying the last finishing touches around one of the fallen guards. We also wanted the reporters we’d tipped off to have plenty of sensational material to capture with their cameras. Tillhouse could deny all he wanted, but he couldn’t stop the public commotion that would follow. No one was going to vote for a man known to associate with suicide cults.

  I caught Bash’s eye in a brief acknowledgement, and we took off in our respective directions. He was leaving with the guys, and I’d taken my own small car to arrive here a little ahead of them. We’d meet up back at the hotel in a couple hours.

  The breeze was already dispersing the gas. It teased through my hair as I tugged off my mask. I held the bulky thing under my arm and loped on.

  My thigh muscle was prickling beneath the gold cuff around my leg by the time I reached the little navy blue car. I grimaced as I hopped in, tossing my stuff on the passenger seat, but I didn’t want to take the cuff off until I was well away.

  The prickling expanded into an ache as I drove off down the narrow lane. The road wove back and forth through the trees down the mountain slope, with enough bumps that my stomach started to churn. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and focused on breathing evenly.

  We’d done it. The commune would be shattered, Tillhouse’s career would be upended—the shrouded folk couldn’t possibly counteract the mess we’d just set in motion. And with that shattering, all those connections they’d been building in their international network would fray too.

  The UK was clear now. Where to next? I’d have liked to tackle the fiends on my home ground now, but it’d be easier for the trio to follow me to continental Europe instead. If they were going to follow me. I’d kept in mind what Bash had said about letting them make their own decisions, and they had pulled this last desperate gambit off…

  The pain in my thigh jabbed all the way to the bone. I flinched, my foot jerking against the gas pedal and nearly shooting me off the edge of a bend.

  I managed to slam on the brake instead. The pain seared deeper as I caught my breath. It looked like I didn’t have a choice about this anymore.

  I yanked up the parking brake and fumbled with my pant leg as quickly as I could. The second I’d snapped the cuff off, the pain dissipated. I sagged back in the seat, waiting while the muscle gradually unclenched and the adrenaline of the moment washed away. My eyes drifted closed just for a moment.

  When I opened them, a pale filmy figure was floating just beyond the windshield.

  A startled squeak slipped from my throat before I could catch it. The shrouded one loomed closer, streaming its strips of faded cloth or skin or whatever that was. My hand reached for the gear shift instinctively, but if the fiend was going to try to fuck me over, maybe it was better if I wasn’t operating a moving vehicle.

  I rolled down the window, the cold night air flooding the car’s interior. “What do you want?” I said in my flattest voice.

  The shrouded one drifted around to the window, its dark void of a face even more impenetrable than the thickest shadows in the forest around us. Looking at it sent a shiver through my chest to my gut.

  “You are the one that escaped the contract,” it said in the dry, distant tone it shared with all the shrouded folk I’d heard speak.

  I didn’t see any point in denying that fact. “I am. What’s your point?”

  “I have a message for you. You will stop your interference, or your sister will die.”

  I stared at the thing until a hysterical laugh burst from my throat. “You’re a little too late with that threat. My sister has been dead for years.”

  “She is not. She was taken but not consumed. And the one who took her wants you to stand down.”

  “Yeah, right. Forgive me if I don’t believe you just because you said so. I’ll keep doing whatever the hell I feel like doing, thank you very much.” The shrouded folk didn’t kidnap people and then keep them alive for years. They seared them down to their souls and swallowed them whole.

  The gauzy figure wavered. A small wooden box appeared amid its flowing strips. “The one who has her sends
proof. The decision is yours. Make one more move against our supporters, and there will be much blood spilled that you’d rather avoid.”

  It flung the box through the open window. The container dropped onto the passenger seat. When I glanced back toward the shrouded one, it had already vanished.

  My stomach clenched tight. I reached for the box tentatively, half afraid simply touching it would hurt me somehow. But it felt like plain, solid wood.

  I held it in front of me and popped the lid open. My whole body froze.

  Lying on a bed of cotton in the middle of the box was a severed toe, so fresh it was leaking blood into the fabric.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jemma

  There were too many goddamned birds twittering outside the window. I tugged the pane shut with a thump, even though it was a hot morning in the Highlands and the farmhouse Bash and I had rented didn’t have any air conditioning.

  After the window was closed, I gazed out it down the lane that wove between the two nearby slopes and disappeared beyond them. In the summer sunlight, the grass shone emerald green.

  Bash came in with two cups of coffee. With only a brief glance away from the window, I leaned forward in the chair to accept one from him. I inhaled the steam before taking a sip. He’d put nearly the right amount of sugar in, enough that it cut through the bitterness to tingle over my tongue.

  “No sign of it yet?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Delivery is supposed to be by nine am. Someone’s getting their ear shouted off if it doesn’t turn up in ten minutes.”