Blood Sins (20 page)

"Tessa?"

"They thought it was an act of God," she whispered, trying in vain to close down her senses, to protect herself from the assault. "An act of their God. He was . . . there was a storm, and . . . he was angry. They had sinned. And their God punished them."

He killed them. He killed them all.

Tessa felt the agony of that, the grief, and tried to cope, tried to ride out the ferocious emotions.

Stop it. He uses feelings to get in, don't you understand? He makes you feel things, and that opens the door for him. Don't feel, Tessa. Don't let him in
--

She swayed on her feet, the collar dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers. As a wave of darkness swept abruptly over her, Tessa wasn't even aware of Sawyer catching her before she could fall and lifting her into his arms.

R
eese DeMarco opened his eyes slowly and for a moment stared across his office at nothing. He finally pushed his chair back from the desk and rose, absently rubbing the nape of his neck as he crossed the spacious room to the door and unlocked it.

He made his way silently down the short, carpeted hallway that separated his office from the living quarters of Reverend Samuel, encountering no one else. It wasn't quite lunchtime, and everyone knew and respected Samuel's habit of meditating in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, so the upper floor of the church tended to be all but deserted at those times.

DeMarco reached a big, paneled wooden door and opened it without knocking. He passed through the familiar foyer--spare and simple, as all these rooms were--and through the living room, notable only for the colorful light splashed all about from the stained-glass windows.

Off to the right, two more closed doors offered access to a study and a bedroom suite. DeMarco paused at the study door for a moment, then quietly opened it and stepped into the room.

This room, too, was alive with color from three large stained-glass windows, but the decor otherwise was very plain. Simple shelves held scores of books--not elegant leather-bound volumes but once brightly colored dust-jacketed books, obviously collected over time. A big desk sat with its back to the center window, and two low-backed visitor's chairs sat on the worn old rug before it. A leather sofa and matching chair and ottoman were positioned opposite the windows.

Samuel occupied the chair. He sat with his feet flat on the floor, hands relaxed in his lap, head slightly bowed. Eyes closed. DeMarco waited silently.

It was at least a couple of minutes before Samuel finally opened his eyes and lifted his head. He didn't look like a man who had been meditating, resting; he looked like a man on the edge of exhaustion. His face was pale, haggard, and there were deep shadows beneath his dull eyes. When he drew a breath to speak, it appeared to require a tremendous effort.

"They're leaving," he said.

"Yes."

"Tell Carl to let them through the gate. No questions asked."

"I'll see to it."

Samuel drew another difficult breath. "The weather report?"

"Rain by the weekend. No mention of storms."

A ghost of a laugh escaped Samuel. "Murphy's Law."

In a measured tone, DeMarco said, "With all due respect, this is a waste of your energy."

"I have no choice."

"According to the Prophecy, we're safe for now. You said it was summer. You said she was older."

"I may have been wrong."

"Prophecies," DeMarco said, still in that deliberate voice, "are tricky beasts. By acting before it's time, you may bring about the very thing you hope to avoid."

"Perhaps I can't avoid it. Perhaps I never could." Samuel's lips twisted into something more grimace than smile. "They don't understand. They'll never understand. They want me dead, Reese. Worse than dead. Broken. Destroyed. Especially him."

"It doesn't have to end that way."

"It will--unless I destroy him before he can destroy me."

"They have no proof. No evidence. If they had, they would have come after you a long time ago. You're safe here."

"Among my people."

"Father--"

"They are my people, aren't they? Bound to me body and soul?"

"Of course, Father."

"Will they die for me, Reese? Will you?"

Steadily, without hesitation, DeMarco replied, "Of course, Father."

Samuel's mouth twisted into another of those not-quite-smiles. "Good. Now, let Carl know he's to allow the chief and Mrs. Gray to leave. And--send Ruth to me."

"Of course, Father." DeMarco withdrew from the study, closing the door quietly. He passed back through the apartment, and it wasn't until the main door was closed behind him that the tension in his shoulders eased.

Just a little.

He paused for an instant, almost leaning back against the door, then drew a deep breath, straightened, and went on to do Father's bidding.

"I
would have put you in the backseat," Sawyer said, his voice more than a little grim. "But I thought there'd be fewer questions this way."

Tessa blinked at him, feeling a little dizzy and very confused. She looked down, realizing that she was buckled into the passenger side of his Jeep--tightly buckled. She eased the shoulder strap a little and tried to ask a baffled question. "Where . . . ?"

"We just left the Compound. I'll send somebody to get your car later. Nobody was around when I carried you to the Jeep, and for once Fisk just opened the gates without comment."

"Carried me?"
Well,
that's
disconcerting
.
And I missed it. Dammit.
She shoved the regret aside.
Not now. I can't think about this now.
"From where?"

"The pet cemetery. Don't you remember? What the hell happened to you back there? You were out. And I mean out. You didn't faint--you were almost comatose."

Tessa forced her sluggish mind off the subject of her apparently unconscious self being carried a goodly distance by a very attractive man she hardly knew, and tried to remember. It took a minute or two, but the fog in her brain seemed to be dissipating as they left the Compound behind. She felt bone-weary, but at least she could think again. And remember.

"The pet cemetery. Jesus. He killed them. All the pets, the livestock. It was . . . He was furious."

Sawyer let out a rough sigh, and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "That's what I thought you said. You had a vision?"

"Of sorts. I don't really have visions, usually, I just know things. And I know that. I felt it."

"Shit. He killed them? All at once?"

"I think so. Last October. He was away for a while, for weeks at least, and when he came back there was . . . some kind of power struggle going on inside the congregation. Somebody else wanted to run the church. Samuel was--"

"He was what?" Sawyer shot her a sharp glance but then returned his attention to the road, intent on putting more distance between them and the church.

"Weakened." Tessa's voice was hardly more than a murmur, and she stared straight ahead, struggling to sort through the images and emotions she was remembering. "Hurt. He had tried to use his abilities in different ways, new ways, but there was somebody stronger fighting back. He lost that fight. Badly. And then came back home to . . . rebellion. It was more than he could stand. He called them all to that outside pulpit, even though there was a storm coming. Maybe because there was a storm coming. He didn't think he'd have the strength to tap in to it, but . . ."

"But?"

She shook her head. "Somehow he did. Somehow he drew energy from the storm. I'm not sure exactly what happened; it's all fuzzy and jumbled. All I know for sure is that the problem--the man who wanted to run the church his way--vanished. Samuel's congregation was convinced all over again that they should follow him. And all the animals died."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Tessa felt something move against her foot. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have jumped in alarm, but she was too tired to waste the energy. Instead, she merely leaned forward to see what it was.

A big shoulder bag, the type students sometimes carried their books or notebooks or laptops in. Heavy canvas, with a flap opening.

"Is this yours?" she asked, even though she knew as soon as she touched it that it didn't belong to him.

He looked over as she lifted the bag from the floorboard and held it in her lap. "No, I've never seen it before. Tessa, be careful."

"It's all right." She unfastened the big clasp and pushed the heavy flap back. Inside, shivering and staring up at her fearfully, was a tiny white poodle.

Sawyer frowned. "A dog? From inside the Compound?"

"Unless you brought her with you today." Tessa was cautious until the little dog licked her fingers. Then she lifted what was hardly more than a handful of curling fur out of the bag and held the delicate creature in the crook of her arm. Instantly, the dog snuggled against her and stopped shivering. "Which I gather you didn't."

"No, I didn't. And if all the animals were killed, how could that little thing survive?"

"I think she had help." Tessa had used her free hand to rummage in the side pockets of the bag and discovered a folded piece of paper. What gave her pause was the fact that her own name was block-printed on the outside.

"What?" Sawyer asked.

"Did you see anybody around the Jeep? Somebody who could have realized I wouldn't be going back to my own car?"

"No, I didn't see a soul. And I was watching all the way down the hill. I figured I'd have to explain myself, or at least answer a question or two, especially with that camera trained on the so-called natural church. Kept expecting DeMarco to show up."

"I wonder why he didn't," Tessa murmured as she opened the note. Then she read the brief message written in the same carefully printed handwriting that was on the outside of the note, and the question of why DeMarco had allowed them to leave without comment became the last thing on her mind.

F
BI DIRECTOR MICAH HUGHES
would never be accused of being an extrovert, so the fact that he was expected to socialize with other law-enforcement officials from all over the world was a trial, not a pleasure.

Even in Paris.

He would have preferred to attend the seminars during the day and then retreat to his hotel room, where he could review on his laptop the day's happenings back in D.C., but cocktail parties and dinners were an expected part of the trip, and he was nothing if not doggedly professional.

Still, he was more relieved than especially curious or anxious when the post-dinner small talk on this Thursday night was interrupted as one of the waiters slipped him a note that said he had a phone call. Another waiter directed him to the hotel's house phones, in an alcove outside the banquet room where this particular dinner was taking place.

It was blessedly quiet out in the hallway, and he took a moment to enjoy that before going in search of the house phones. The alcove was, as promised, nearby, but as soon as he turned into it, he stopped. Nobody was on one of the half dozen or so phones lining the desk-height counter that ran around all three walls, but the room had one occupant.

"What are you doing here?"

The man was tall, broad-shouldered, and athletic, and could have been any age between fifty and sixty-five. He had the sort of regular features and good bone structure that made for a handsome face, and striking green eyes made it even more memorable.

"You should know by now that I can turn up just about anywhere." He had a deep voice with a note in it that Hughes had heard many times in his life: the absolute assurance of a man who was very much accustomed to getting what he wanted.

"I just . . . thought you were back in the States." Hughes heard the slightly nervous note in his own voice and bitterly resented it.

"I was. Yesterday." He paused a moment, then went on calmly, "I take it you've made no progress?"

"Look, I warned you it would take time. Bishop may be ruthless, but he isn't reckless, at least not openly. He knows he's being watched, that his unit exists only as long as it's successful--and he keeps it out of the news. He's careful. Very careful. He knows just how far to bend the rules and the regs without breaking them. And until he does cross that line, I can't touch him. Not officially."

"I see. And were you aware that he's currently in North Carolina investigating a church?"

"What?"

"Ah. Not aware, I see. Clearly my spies are keeping a closer eye on Bishop than your own are."

Hughes did
not
like the idea of anyone outside the FBI employing spies within it, but he had spent enough time with this man over the last months to swallow any retort or objection he might have made. But that didn't stop an increasingly familiar jolt of profound uneasiness.

It had seemed so clear at first. But now he wasn't at all sure he was doing the right thing.

"You'll be receiving a packet via courier by morning. Background information on the church and its leader, details your own people could have easily discovered and, in fact, probably have filed away somewhere. Plus some additional information less easy to acquire concerning recent activities of the SCU. And Bishop."

Hughes was reasonably sure at least one of the "spies" this man had within the FBI was actually inside the SCU, but he had never asked and didn't now. He had no need to know that. "Is there anything in the information that's actionable?"

"Perhaps. It certainly does raise questions as to whether Bishop is working for the FBI--or is conducting a vendetta of his own."

"A vendetta?"
Like yours?
"You believe this church or its leader has done something to personally injure Bishop?"

"What I believe is that he's a dangerous man who's pursuing an investigation based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever. And he's getting people killed."