Plague Cult

by Jenny Schwartz

  Shawn pulled out a chair for her at a window table where she could naturally observe the cult members. While she waited for her bowl of granola and fresh fruit, she sipped coffee and concentrated on the former cult member nearest her. Doug, they called him. Looking at his damaged aura, she suspected he’d been one of the men who attacked Shawn last night, compelled to do so by the enchanted medallion he’d worn. Now, his aura showed dully with a jagged bite out of it; possibly the scar of having Shawn tear the medallion from him.

  Slowly, Ruth sent out her magic, cult member by cult member, not trying to do a complete healing, but confirming that each was free of the taint of death magic, and not in a state where they’d do themselves harm. A couple of them were emotionally terrifyingly fragile. Those she’d check on again, later in the day.

  “More coffee?” Peggy topped up Ruth’s mug.

  While Ruth had been concentrating, other tables had eaten and left. Shawn’s plate of bacon and eggs with grits was gone. “Thanks.” Ruth glanced at her aunt. Usually, she and Peggy had a prickly distance. Had Ruth’s mom said something and Peggy was trying to be nicer? Or… “Aunt Peggy, what’s worrying you?”

  Peggy glanced towards the corner table where Mason usually sat. He wasn’t there this morning. She opened her mouth to say something, and at the same moment, four men walked in; all somehow obviously FBI. Perhaps it was their wariness that proclaimed their authority. Whatever it was, Peggy abandoned Ruth and Shawn to greet the newcomers.

  At the former cult members’ table, there was an uneasy shuffle, but no one actually left.

  “You about ready?” Shawn kept his posture casual, his gaze assessing as he studied the FBI agents.

  All of whom studied him back. But he looked so utterly part of the place that their gazes soon moved on.

  He looks at home. The thought brought a positive gleam to Ruth’s morning. She gulped her coffee and stood. “Ready.” Next on her To-Do list was to see Whitney, but that wasn’t something she’d say within FBI hearing.

  Shawn stood, paid for their meal—it would attract less attention and was on expenses anyway—and they walked out. “I take it the cult members are all okay? You didn’t look worried.” He clasped her hand. “You were busy but not concerned.”

  “They’re fine.” Ruth swiveled around to stare back at the diner. “Do you think Aunt Peggy was okay?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You think there’s something wrong because she wasn’t rude to you?”

  She had to smile. “Put that way, it sounds ridiculous. Should I drop you home before I go visit Whitney at the hospital or do you want to come with me?”

  He swung their joined hands, thinking a moment. “You’ll be safe. Drop me home, I think.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Sounds nice saying ‘home’.”

  “Sounds real nice,” she answered honestly.

  The hospital was in the next town over, past the big hardware store on the highway. Ruth sailed along in the truck, windows wound down and enjoying the fresh scent of the country after yesterday’s storm.

  Even if Whitney’s situation was bad, Ruth would be going home to Shawn after helping the woman. That made the coming emotional scene easier to accept.

  She parked the truck in the hospital car park and sat there a moment, not so much centering her magic as calming her soul so that she could connect with Whitney, empathize with and help heal the woman’s heartbreak, but not absorb her negative energy. Healers could be too empathetic. Self-care was essential or Ruth would burn out.

  And the first thing she had to do was heal Whitney’s aura of the damage done by using death magic—and by Zach controlling and exploiting her. Using her.

  Anger bit at Ruth as she thought of Zach’s betrayal. Shawn called the man evil. Ruth understood why, but she had her own term for Zach Stirling: psychopath.

  Psychopath’s were dangerous because by instinct or life-learning they knew that their greatest power came from abusing personal relationships. Such attacks were insidious and could be sustained over decades. In popular culture, people imagined psychopaths as serial killers or mad dictators. It was as if by imagining psychopathy as an extreme condition people comforted themselves that it would never touch their lives.

  Ruth got out of the truck, jumping down with a little thud onto the leaf-strewn car park. She slammed shut the door and beeped the lock.

  The truth of psychopathy was similar to that of most psychological disorders: it ranged along a spectrum. Zach Stirling had caused so much damage not because he ran amok with an ax, but because he quietly, cleverly exploited the fears and trust of those near him.

  Ruth would suggest to Whitney that she get counselling to recover from Zach’s betrayal and not let it scar and shape the remainder of her life.

  There would be closure. Ruth couldn’t imagine Shawn allowing Zach to escape. Once he had permission from the commander of the Collegium guardians to pursue the ex-cult leader, she knew Shawn’s hollerider nature wouldn’t rest till he’d caught him.

  The hospital doors opened automatically as she approached, releasing a gust of warm, musty fusty, disinfectant smells. To smell that air was to instantly know you were in a hospital.

  Ruth ignored the reception desk. Given Whitney’s status as the ex-cult leader’s wife, the hospital wouldn’t be giving out her whereabouts to strangers who might be journalists, or were simply nosy. Fortunately, although Ruth’s magic wasn’t as hunt-focused as Shawn’s, she had clearly identified Whitney’s magic and aura, and could follow a scan spell to home in on where Whitney was in the hospital.

  Darn. She couldn’t locate Whitney’s bed. Ruth veered away from her confident approach to the bank of escalators and stood by a window, gazing out to the highway. She didn’t see the traffic, though. Instead, she recalled the flickering feel of Whitney’s magic and re-scanned the hospital.

  Nothing! Could Whitney be awake and blocking a search spell? If so, intensifying the power of her own scan might scare the witch.

  Ruth hit the elevators’ call button and the nearest door opened. She stepped in. She would find Whitney the old-fashioned, mundane way: by heading for the wing most likely to hold a woman admitted for shock and kept in for observation. Ruth exited to the general women’s ward.

  She walked along it, glancing swiftly and with apparent casualness into each room. In mage sight, she could see the auras of the people inside. None were Whitney, although two rooms and three beds in common rooms were empty. Ruth retraced her steps, slowly. Had the hospital put Whitney somewhere else? Perhaps discharged her at breakfast time? It seemed unlikely.

  “May I help you?” a nurse challenged her.

  Ruth paused. “I’m looking for Whitney Stirling.”

  The nurse’s tired, professionally sympathetic face firmed into sternness. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “She’s not here.” Ruth stood firm.

  “Mrs. Stirling is—pardon?”

  “I can’t find Whitney in any of the rooms. She should be here, shouldn’t she?”

  The nurse’s gaze darted down the corridor to one of the empty private rooms. “Who are you?” What right do you have to question Whitney’s whereabouts, she meant.

  But Ruth had her answer. Whitney had been meant to be in that private room. “Never mind.” Ruth headed fast for the elevators. When she glanced back, the nurse was hurrying into the empty room.

  Ruth called Shawn as she exited the hospital. “Whitney’s gone. She’s not in the hospital, and I don’t think she discharged herself.”

  “Come straight home.” Shawn closed his phone and stared a moment at the side wall of the kitchen, fighting the urge to throw the phone against it. My fault. He had waited for the Collegium to approve his pursuit of Zach Stirling. He’d squashed his hollerider instincts, always so wary of being controlled by them, and the result could be that Whitney Stirling had been kidnapped by her husband.

  Ruth had no evidence that Whitney had been kidnapped. But authoritie
s like the FBI would have told the nurses if they were taking her in for questioning.

  Could Whitney have walked out herself?

  Impatiently, he pulled on the shirt he’d discarded during the slow, arduous levering up of the linoleum stuck to the kitchen floor. He didn’t have a vehicle, but that didn’t mean he was stuck at Rose House till Ruth’s return.

  “Carla?” he shouted. His mamaw said she spoke with haunts. The ghost here had said she’d keep evil out. If she would, and could, then he wanted her on duty. “Carla, if you’re listening, look out for Ruth. She’ll be coming back here. I’m going out hunting.”

  He walked out the front door, left the warded house unlocked, and blurred. The fast travel of his hollerider nature had him at the cult’s compound within a minute. He stayed back, in the woods, assessing the situation. A man and a woman poked about in the ruins of the main building. Arson inspectors. It wasn’t just the FBI and police who’d be interested in the situation. Insurance companies would be just as alert to the chance not to pay out on a policy. A cop watched the arson investigators from the dubious comfort of his car. The woods smelled sour from the wet, burned building.

  Shawn concentrated. He needed to know if Zach was here or if anything in the compound held the sort of power that Zach might be tempted to return for it.

  Last night, Ruth had cleared the site of the taint of death magic. The woods were no longer secretive and oppressive. They rustled with the brisk weather of fall. The activity and continuing human presence had driven away game, but birds flitted among the trees. Shawn sighted a jay, and took it as a good omen. He skirted around the main building, but no matter where he stood, there was no sense of active evil.

  He cast around for Zach’s trail. The man had fled here last night. Shawn had thought Zach would go as far and fast as he could, leaving not just the area, but Texas. However, with Whitney missing, Shawn had to rethink his assumptions. He had to test them.

  He was here to start again, from the beginning.

  Zach had gotten into his car and driven out along the driveway. Shawn blurred along the edge of it, paused and cast again for the scent of evil. With so many people passing this way, and many of them—the ex-cult members in particular—highly agitated, the trail was obscured. He couldn’t be sure that Zach had turned right, back into town, but that’s what his intuition said. However, commonsense would have had Zach drive away from where he was known.

  Shawn frowned, staring back towards the bridge. Finally, he moved. Now wasn’t the time to doubt his instincts. He blurred towards town.

  Ruth drove down the driveway to Rose House, straining for her first glimpse of the front porch. Her shoulders sagged even as her spine stiffened. Someone waited on the porch, but it wasn’t Shawn. She hadn’t really expected he’d be here, even as he’d insisted she return to the warded safety of her home.

  Carla drifted down to the bottom step. “Shawn asked me to stand guard. He said there’s evil loose.”

  “There could be.” Ruth shivered despite the sun. The day was beautiful, as if nature was trying to make up for the devastation of last night’s storm. Faintly, from far in the distance, came the sound of chainsaws. Somewhere people were tidying up damaged trees. “Whitney’s the witch who used death magic and whose curse I broke. No, before you condemn her, she was under her husband’s compulsion. I don’t believe she ever intended to become immersed in death magic. Zach Stirling used her, and he’s whom Shawn is hunting. The man is an enchanter and a psychopath.”

  “And not welcome here,” Carla said.

  The house subtly vibrated with her words. Ruth felt the surge of energy, felt it reinforce the wards of the yard. “No, he’s not welcome here,” she agreed quietly, joining her refusal of welcome to Carla’s.

  The ghost stopped barring the bottom step. “You need coffee.”

  “I sure do.” Ruth had promised Shawn she’d come home, so she hadn’t stopped at her mom’s diner. “Did Shawn make any?” Hey, it was worth hoping!

  Her phone rang.

  “Sh-hello?” She’d expected it to be Shawn and answered without checking the caller ID. Only at the last moment did she have a sudden strike of instinct and alter her greeting. She glanced up at the sky, but it remained clear. A cloud hadn’t covered the sun, so why had she shivered? She recognized the stuttering voice. “Aunt Peggy?”

  Shawn halted on the edge of town, near the school. Children were out, shouting and playing. Two were turning clumsy cartwheels. The intensity of his hollerider nature’s need to hunt burned in his veins, but against that was the discipline the Collegium had drilled into him. He needed transport. The fast travel, the blurring, required magic. Masking it, or rather masking the hollerider terror that accompanied it so that he didn’t scare the town, required even more magic. And magic might be needed to deal with Zach.

  He pulled out his phone. He’d call Ruth. If she was nearly home, he’d meet her there. Otherwise, he’d run to the diner and borrow her mom’s car.

  The punch of major magic from the far side of town stopped him cold. It reverberated through him like a shockwave. His hollerider nature snarled, but not to attack, not in response to evil. It was on high alert for a threat to him.

  And to Ruth?

  He blurred back to Rose House. If Ruth wasn’t home yet, he’d phone her from there. Urgency and the need to conceal his fast-speed travel had him cutting across country. He was at Rose House in seconds; swiftly enough to see Carla blocking Ruth on the porch, barring her from the steps by a vigorously wielded broom.

  “Damn it, Carla. Let me past!”

  “It’s not safe.” If ghosts could pant, Carla was. “Stay here. Shawn wants you safe.”

  “That was my aunt.” Ruth tried to climb over the porch railing. Carla shoved her back with a broom head to the solar plexus. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it was determined. Ruth landed back on the porch. “Carla, didn’t you feel the magic?”

  “I did,” Shawn answered.

  Both women spun towards him. Carla lowered the broom and Ruth ran down the porch steps.

  “It’s the plague,” Ruth said urgently. “I don’t know how or why, but it has exploded. It’s real and it’s powerful and…I was talking on the phone with Aunt Peggy and I heard a gunshot, and then, she just cut out. She made a gurgling sound and…nothing. We have to go to Mason’s house.”

  “Why?” He resisted her urgent pull on his arm.

  “Because Aunt Peggy went looking for Mason when he didn’t come into the diner for breakfast like normal and he wasn’t answering his phone. She finished off the breakfast rush before driving out to his place.” Ruth stared at him, the few freckles on her face stood out against the pallor of her skin. “She phone me because when she turned up, she walked around to enter via the back door, like family, and through a window she heard and saw Whitney and Zach Stirling. She said Whitney had a gun and was talking wildly about magic. Aunt Peggy thought magic meant maybe I should respond, not the sheriff.”

  “I’ll go.” Shawn tugged the truck’s keys out of her hand.

  “I have to go,” Ruth said. “You must have felt the magic. That was the plague unleashing. The power of it. Whitney or Zach must be dead, and their death ignited the old curse.”

  “Evil.” Carla hugged her elbows. She stood at the edge of the porch wearing a black jacket and trousers and sturdy boots.

  “We have to stop it,” Ruth said.

  Shawn nodded. As much as he wanted Ruth to stay at home, to stay safe, unlike Carla he wouldn’t try and make her. Ruth might be the town, and possibly, the country’s only hope of containing the lethal lonely hearts plague.

  Chapter 13

  Ruth gave clear if terse directions to her cousin Mason’s house and Shawn barreled the truck through town. The day was so perfect, achingly beautiful. The blue of the sky, the sunlight striking gold on fall leaves or deepening the green of pine needles, the shops and houses washed clean of dust by the previous night’s storm, all struck Ruth with the p
ower of home and how much she loved Bideer and its people.

  Fear for them, for Shawn and for herself felt like a compression bandage wrapped around her whole body and squeezing.

  So this was plague. She hadn’t even seen its effects yet, and she could feel the ominous force of its unleashing. There was no way anyone could describe the experience of confronting a magically-created plague. She had her Collegium training. She knew how to construct containment wards, lower a fever, hold onto the thread of life in a person and feed it energy. But a plague. This plague…

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  Shawn hit the brakes.

  They both jolted hard against their seatbelts. Ruth barely noticed. Her attention was for the fog of gray shot through with veins of red that rolled slowly but relentlessly towards them. She grabbed Shawn’s hand and pushed extra magic through the wards she’d put around him and herself. “That’s Mason’s driveway. Turn in there.”

  He put the truck in gear. “What do you see? I can sense your magic around me, clean and fresh, but I can’t see the threat.”

  “The plague is here. It’s pushing forward. Slowly, thank God. But moving on. We’re inside it, now.” They drove down the short driveway to Mason’s ranch house. It was such an ordinary scene.

  “It’s oppressive. Aunt Peggy and Mason—”

  Shawn squeezed her hand. “You’ll save them.”

  “Last time…” She broke off. Last time, when Mason crashed his car, she’d been fourteen. She’d barely understood her magic, was still growing into it. This time the stakes were unimaginably higher.

  “Anything I can do to help, it’s yours,” Shawn continued. “You don’t have to ask. If you can use my magic, then add its power to yours.”

  She nodded, but she wasn’t sure her healer’s magic could combine with the terror of Shawn’s hollerider nature.