The Sinner

by Amanda Stevens

  “I should put that in my pocket,” I said. “I’ll forget it if I don’t.”

  “You won’t forget it. I’ll make sure you don’t.” He turned back to me. “Now tell me why you’re really here.”

  “But... I just told you.”

  “No, you told me why you’re upset. Why did you come here? To me?”

  “Because... I wanted to see you. I needed to see you.”

  Moonlight glinted in his golden eyes. “Lucky for me you remembered the way.”

  I listened for a telltale shift in his voice, a giveaway nuance that would let me know he was on to me. But he sounded steady. Calm. Perhaps even a little flattered. He couldn’t know that I’d found the ruby earring or that his mask had slipped, exposing his true nature.

  Panic welled at the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down and managed a tremulous smile. “Thank you for being so understanding, but now I’m embarrassed. This isn’t like me. I’m never impulsive. I should go and let you get back to your evening.” I reached into my pocket for the car key and my fingers brushed up against the cool metal canister of the pepper spray.

  “Stay,” he said. “You can go out in the boat with me.”

  The thought of going with him into the swamp sent a fresh wave of terror spiraling through me. “Thank you but another night. I really do need to get home to Angus.”

  “He won’t miss you.”

  “How do you know?” Too late, I realized I’d fallen for his bait. I saw something glimmer in his eyes as he reached for my hand, gently removing the car key from my fingers and placing it on the step with my phone. I couldn’t keep the fear from my voice now, but it didn’t matter because he knew. I could see it in the gleam of his eyes, in the smirk that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  An image came to me then of a young Kendrick, naked and bound, eyes glowing with the flame of devotion as the fiery brand of the Brotherhood scorched a triskele at the back of his neck.

  He had purposely lowered his guard, letting me see what he wanted me to see.

  “My mother first took me to see Atticus Pope when I was just a child. I was frightened of him at first. I could see the beast inside him and I tried to run away, but in time, I came to accept my destiny. I came to see that our union was inevitable. I had the sight and he, the power. Together we would be invincible. Immortal. My father tried to stop it by taking me away, but he was too late. I had already been chosen. I was the only one who could hide Atticus from his enemies. For two decades he lay dormant inside me until the time came to rebuild the Brotherhood.”

  He was letting me see other things now. Allowing me into his memories so that I could fully comprehend Pope’s evil, so that my terror would strengthen his magic.

  I saw the young female Congé prone on the ground beside the mortsafe as Kendrick snipped the old lock and opened the gate. Then she was gasping and choking and trying to claw her way up out of the grave as the gate clanged shut and a new padlock was snapped into place.

  That image faded as older memories surfaced. Pope and Mary Willoughby entwined in her bed. Pope leaning over Annalee, touching her, mesmerizing her, blowing a powerful dust into her lungs so that she would do his bidding.

  He showed me other victims, too. The homeless and the lost. Children that had been taken from their families. He wanted me to see them all. He wanted me to look upon those innocent faces as their screams echoed through my head.

  And then the images faded, replaced by even older, darker memories dimmed by time and space. I tried to block the visions, but Kendrick laughed at my futility.

  “It would be easier if you would come into the swamp willingly, but...” He shrugged. “Either way, your blood will flow just as freely.”

  He plucked my car key from the step and rose to fling it into the shadows. Then he tossed my phone to the ground and cracked it with his heel. He turned his back to me for just an instant, so certain was he of his dominance and my submission.

  But he had misjudged me. He had underestimated my power and cunning. By the time he faced me again, I’d flipped open the pepper spray and aimed the fiery irritant straight into those strange, golden eyes.

  Thirty-Five

  I didn’t call out to Rhapsody. The only way to save her was to lead Kendrick away from the house, buy her some time so that she could get to the road, find a phone and call for help. As soon as the effects of the pepper spray wore off, he would come after me, and so I raced across the yard and plunged into the trees, letting moonlight guide me through the ground mist.

  The silence of the forest closed in on me. I could hear nothing beyond the rasp of my breath and the rush of blood in my ears. Panic robbed me of my sense of direction and I had no idea where I was or which way to head. But I kept going. On and on until a tangle of vines caught my feet and I tumbled down an embankment, twisting a knee and grazing my head on a rock.

  I lay there dazed as blood trickled into my eyes. Wiping the back of my hand across the wound, I tried to rise, but the knee gave way and I sprawled facedown on the hard ground. I heard him then, coming up fast behind me. So close I could detect the thud of his boots as he raced through the woods. Hitching myself over a dead log, I flattened myself on the forest floor, letting the mist roll over me.

  Everything went deadly silent. Even the birds had scattered. I couldn’t hear so much as a footfall now but I knew he was nearby. If I concentrated hard enough, I would be able to pick up the saw of his breath and the excited hum of his blood. He was undoubtedly listening for me, too, and it was all I could do to quiet my pounding heart.

  I was scarcely hidden by the mist and the log. He would be on me soon and I needed to keep moving, needed to put as much distance as I could between us.

  I flexed my knee, wincing at the pain, and then, rising to a crouch, I slipped deeper into the trees. I moved in silence, or so I thought, but he must have heard something—the crunch of a dead leaf, the catch of my breath. He vectored in on the minuscule sound and came at me, making no effort to conceal his approach.

  He was a powerful man and even uninjured, I couldn’t hope to outrun him for long. I needed to outwit him. Evade him. Snagging the lowest branch of a sweet gum, I swung myself up and scrambled from limb to limb until the thick foliage concealed me. Then I cleared my mind so that he couldn’t pick up so much as a stray thought or telltale emotion.

  Not a minute later, Kendrick sprang from the woods as silent as a panther and paused in a patch of moonlight, sniffing the air and listening to the night as he moved his head from side to side. He was so close I could have leaped down upon him from my perch and the thought did cross my mind that surprise might be my best weapon. But he was quick and far stronger than I. I may have caught him off guard with the pepper spray, but he would be ready for me now. Time was my only real weapon. I had to wait him out.

  He hovered beneath me for so long that I began to think he knew I was there. He was toying with me, prolonging the inevitable so that he could use my fear against me.

  Finally he took to the trees again and I waited several beats before climbing down through the branches and lowering myself to the ground. I stood with throbbing head and trembling knee as I listened to the night in much the same way that he had. I sniffed the air, turning from side to side as I tried to pick up his trail. He had gone north so I headed south, back to the house. Rhapsody had surely gotten away by now, but I had to make certain.

  I chose stealth over speed, but the pace was risky. If I lingered too long in the woods, he could intuit my plan and rush back to the house ahead of me. A momentary panic made me quicken my steps, but a snapping twig drew me up short. I couldn’t afford to get careless.

  Stay smart, stay focused. Concentrate on your breathing and your every footfall. Don’t make a sound. Don’t make a mistake. One misplaced step and you die.

  The first thing
I saw when I came out of the woods was the raised hood on my vehicle. He had taken the time to disable it before coming after me. I ran across the yard to the porch, calling softly to Rhapsody. When she didn’t answer, I whirled to survey the yard. She would have made for the nearest house, I felt certain. Which meant I needed to keep Kendrick away from the road.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I plunged down the embankment, slipping and sliding and scrabbling like a crab to the bottom. Then I dashed to the boathouse, yanking helplessly on the padlock. My gaze lit on the owl emblem and I flashed to the locks on the mortsafe and shed. Someone must have bought up a supply, Martin Stark had suggested that day in the circle. Now I knew that Kendrick had been that someone.

  I didn’t waste time trying to break in because I knew he wouldn’t have been so careless as to leave the key to the outboard. Instead, I headed for the rowboat.

  Still operating as silently as I could, I untied the rope and carefully climbed in, settling myself on the middle bench facing the house and the woods. I used an oar to push off and then set both oars in the grooves and paddled.

  I was an inexperienced rower, but what I lacked in technique I made up for in strength from all my years of toiling in cemeteries. My rhythm established, I steered the boat toward the bank, gliding through shadows to put distance between myself and the black soul of Atticus Pope with each stroke.

  Thirty-Six

  My shoulders ached and my knee grew stiff. I kept to the shadows as night sounds assailed me. The buzz of mosquitoes, the croak of a bullfrog.

  More sounds came to me. Distant sounds. A car engine out on the road. A jet flying through the night.

  And then the terrifying rumble of the outboard.

  He was coming.

  I’d stopped paddling to listen and the boat drifted out of the shadows into full moonlight. I tightened my grasp on the oars and guided the boat back to shallow water, putting my back into the strokes until the outboard grew louder and the waves from the prop sloshed against the bank. Then I steered the boat into the bank, letting the prow run aground as I spotted the death’s-head.

  The wings spread across the night sky as the skull face grinned down at me in the moonlight. Once I had imagined that effigy coming to life. I had seen the thing swoop down from the treetop and dive toward me, but now I knew that the animation was a mind trick. Even then I had been under Atticus Pope’s influence.

  I sank ankle-deep in mud as I climbed out of the boat. Pulling myself free, I trudged up the bank to solid ground, pausing just beyond the tree line to get my bearings. If I could find my way to the caged graves, I could follow the trail to the cemetery and from there I could make my way to the house and look for Angus.

  I tried to keep my defenses up as I limped along, but there were too many obstacles along the way, too many dead branches and treacherous vines that tripped me up and tested my weak knee as well as my focus. But I kept going, ignoring the pain as I gathered speed and maybe even a little confidence.

  As I came out of the woods onto the path, I heard the sputter of the outboard as Kendrick pulled to the bank. The engine died and, in the ensuing silence, fear and doubt crept back in. I had distance on him but I didn’t know how long I could outpace him. I felt certain he would make for Seven Gates. He would go through the cemetery, out to the road and up to the Willoughby house, which had been my original destination.

  I left the path and waded out into the tall weeds toward the mortsafes. Toward Atticus Pope’s twelve buried disciples. I almost expected to see them rise up out of their prisons and form a circle around me, but they were silent tonight. Silent and waiting.

  I lowered myself to the ground and kept an eye on the path, praying that Kendrick wouldn’t think to look for me in the circle. He would go to the cemetery and up to the house. I desperately wanted to believe that. I lay flat on my stomach, chin on the ground as I watched the woods and waited for him to emerge from the trees.

  He didn’t come. Not for the longest time.

  Had he taken a shortcut through the woods to the cemetery? Was he lying in wait for me in the church ruins?

  Heart thudding, I listened intently to the darkness. The disciples were silent, but the dead woman wasn’t. She was with me in the circle, inside that caged grave, clinging to the grate as she allowed me to glimpse her last terrifying moments. I was trapped with her, gasping and sputtering and trying to claw my way up through the dirt. By the time I managed to shake off the vision, Kendrick was almost upon me.

  He burst out of the woods and paused on the path, clutching the hilt of a machete. For a moment, I thought he might do exactly as I had predicted. He even started along the path toward the cemetery before he whirled and plunged through the weeds at a dead run.

  I stumbled to my feet, but he was too quick. He seemed to sail across the mortsafe, machete lifted over his head. I turned to flee, but the flat side of the blade hit the back of my head and I crumpled. Rolling to my back, I looked up into the night sky as I slid backward into oblivion.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes and blinked as the scenery moved around me. It took a moment to clear the cobwebs from my brain and then terror crashed down upon me. Kendrick was dragging me through the grass toward the open mortsafe. I clutched at the weeds, but his strength seemed superhuman. And maybe he was. I wondered if anything was left of Lucian Kendrick in that powerful body. Atticus Pope seemed in full control now.

  He dropped my legs and threw open the mortsafe gate. I tried to crawl away from him, but he pulled me back, picking me up and throwing me into the cage, into the still-open grave where the Congé’s body had been recovered. Where the remains of one of his disciples still lay restless.

  He stood over the cage grinning down at me as he reached for the gate. A movement on the path caught his attention and he turned with bared teeth, his countenance contorting into something primal and savage. I heard a low snarl as Angus slunk through the weeds. The dog halted and canted his head as if trying to pick up the scent of the man who had once soothed him. But Kendrick was gone, and in the blink of an eye, Angus lunged, going straight for the jugular.

  I scrambled out of the cage and grabbed the machete. When the man with two souls finally managed to free himself from Angus’s teeth, I was more than ready for him.

  Lifting the machete, I swung, but the blade never made contact. A shot rang out and then another. Pope staggered back, stopped and then toppled into the open mortsafe.

  I realized then there were people all around us, converging on the clearing. Tom Malloy. Annalee Nash. Martin Stark. Angus growled a warning as they formed a circle around the mortsafe but he needn’t have worried. They weren’t there for us. They had come for vengeance. They had come to make certain that what had been done to them as children would not be done to others.

  I huddled beside Angus as Annalee clanged the door shut and Stark knelt to fasten the padlock. I didn’t know if Pope was still alive, but Malloy kept his weapon drawn just in case.

  But he needn’t have worried, either, because justice was coming. A cloud moved over the moon as a deeper darkness crept in from the woods. Shadow beings surrounded the mortsafe waiting for Pope’s spirit to transcend. Waiting to carry him down, down, down into that place of torture and misery reserved for the blackest of souls.

  Thirty-Seven

  One month later

  With the help of Annalee Nash and Tom Malloy, I finished the restoration of Seven Gates Cemetery by the end of summer.

  An investigation had been launched into the shooting death of Detective Lucien Kendrick, but once sufficient evidence had been collected and witness testimonies gathered that linked him to the brutal slaying of Darius Goodwine and the still-unnamed woman who had been buried alive in the caged grave, Officer Malloy had been exonerated and reinstated. Kendrick’s house and property had been thoroughly searc
hed and among the strange and disturbing items recovered was a human skull, no doubt taken from the center grave in the circle.

  The authorities had been a little too anxious to accept the explanation of a psychotic breakdown. They didn’t want to be pulled back into the shadowy past of kidnappings, torture and human sacrifices. Of black magic and witchcraft and secret ceremonies conducted in the old church ruins.

  Some in Ascension would continue to harbor doubts about Annalee Nash and her role in her parents’ murders, but I knew the Congé had killed Mary Willoughby and perhaps George, too. Just as I knew the townspeople would continue to protect and watch over Annalee because that was their nature.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if there were others like Annalee and Officer Malloy and Martin Stark. The children and relatives of Pope’s followers who had been used in the rituals against their will. Were they out there even now plotting revenge or were they leading normal lives, still waiting for Pope’s resurrection?

  The one bright spot in all the darkness was Rhapsody Goodwine. She had made her way home that night and now bristled under Essie’s watchful eyes. She had been told of the lengths her father had gone to to protect her, but whatever she felt about his sacrifice lay hidden beneath her passive demeanor and the path she would ultimately choose remained a mystery.

  As for me, I was only too happy to leave Seven Gates Cemetery behind and return to Charleston. The dog days of August and September had finally given way to the milder temperatures of early October. One evening not long after my return, Dr. Shaw and I sat on the porch of our favorite restaurant on Queen Street sipping our drinks as I filled him in on everything that had happened since last we’d talked.

  Afterward, I fell into a pensive silence as I watched the street.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked over the flickering candle.

  “I’m feeling unsettled,” I admitted. “Like I have unfinished business.”