Cry Wolf (23 page)

“Whoa, I’m not going to hurt you. Are you here alone, miss, or do I need to get some help?” Ahmir sounded genuinely concerned.

Kelly tried to get a grip on herself again for his sake. She tentatively accepted his hand. He pulled her upright with prodigious strength.

“Sorry,” she said. The flames tapered off to their usual flickering. A few of the guests murmured anxiously to each other, but conversation began to rev up when the fireworks showed no signs of returning. “You caught me by surprise. I’m fine. And no, I’m not alone. I came with someone else.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Ahmir said. “I was afraid you were going to faint.”

“Hello,” Malcolm said, walking up with another plate. He gave Ahmir a great smile, but Kelly noticed the strain around his eyes from his efforts to be enthusiastic and friendly.

“Ahmir Fara, brother of Salvation,” he said. “I’d shake, but your hands are kind of full. I almost tripped over your friend here. If you don’t mind my saying, there’s no need for either of you to be nervous. You belong here. Everything will be just fine. Ask for me if you need anything.” He clapped a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder and squeezed Kelly’s arm lightly before heading around the tent.

“Malcolm, I’m only going to ask you this once,” Kelly said as soon as Ahmir was out of earshot. “Can we please leave? I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but the Father—whose name is coincidentally Abraham, by the way, ring any bells?—was part of my prophecy, and it wasn’t a good prophecy. So can we just go now before we get sucked in? Please?”

“You don’t know what’s wrong other than that
something
is wrong?” Malcolm asked.

“The magic won’t let me know anything else, but I’m afraid we’ll know better only when it’s too late to do anything about it,” Kelly said. She clasped his wrists and stopped just short of pleading. “I know I promised we could do this one thing, but there is something
very wrong
here. Surely you feel it, too.”

“Yeah, I feel something,” Malcolm said. “And I trust your instincts. But the truck and trailer are right there. It should be easy enough to escape if we have to, and if we’re talking feelings, I also get the feeling that I have to see this through. I’m not leaving. Not yet. Do you feel that?”

Kelly closed her eyes. She did. There was nothing she could do to stop this. Malcolm was woven into the Father’s story, and since Kelly was interwoven with Malcolm, she had to come along for the ride.

In spite of all of her power—even just the small bit of it she ever used—as well as with all the strength of the werewolf, she couldn’t shatter fate the same way she had shattered her faith.

No matter how deep the dread, they had to see Father Abraham.

* * * *

Music started playing through the rigged-up sound system.

Kelly would have expected some kind of New Age music or gospel old-time religion. Instead, the music was classical, something dramatic. Kelly didn’t remember much from her music appreciation classes, but the Germans and Austrians were supposed to have some robust collections.

Either way, the effect it created was neither peaceful nor righteous, but instead gave the impression of being part of an epic quest or adventure. The music might have been old, but it roused the energy of the young crowd and spurred them in a hyped river flow to the tent as regulars helped direct newcomers to the entrance.

Since Kelly and Malcolm were already near the entrance, they slipped in early. For politeness’ sake, they sat in the outer aisle of the back row rather than the inner aisle so people wouldn’t have to climb over them on their way in. It would be easy enough to make a run for it if they had to.

As they waited for everyone to settle and for the service to begin, Kelly concentrated on keeping the prophetic dread from chilling her insides, an unusual ailment for a werewolf to have. She couldn’t remember many times in the last four years that she had been even close to cold.

Her uncharacteristic timidity kept Malcolm distracted from the crush of humanity. He didn’t ask her why she had suddenly gone white with dark circles under her pale lashes, nor why she had hooked her arm in his and leaned against his shoulder, nor why the chill in her hands seeped through his shirt when he should have only felt heat equal to his own. But he let her hold onto him, and he wrapped his warm fingers through her cold ones.

She trained her eyes on the empty stage, adorned only with a lectern. There was a sound system to the sides, but no microphone.

And all the while, Kelly inhaled, held it for a few seconds then exhaled. She was a little lightheaded from doing that, but it was better than causing the torches outside to fall and set fire to the fields or shorting out the sound system or the lights near the stage in a fountain of sparks.

Tim and Peter climbed up onto the stage with the same disquieting, bright smiles on their faces. Peter had pulled an acoustic guitar over his head, and whoever was in charge of the sound system brought the volume down until there was only the strumming of the guitar. Everyone in the crowd went quiet.

“We would just like to welcome all of you here,” Tim said. “I see some regulars, but I also see a lot of visitors. You folks are why we’re here. Sure, we like to see people stay, but it’s the new folks we do all of this for.”

Tim opened his arms like he wanted to embrace everyone all at once. Peter kept picking away at that infuriating guitar.

“We thirst for more. We go about our ordinary and not so ordinary lives and know in our hearts that there’s something beyond what we see and experience. Some people say they have the answer, but then you pull the curtain aside and you get to see all the same mundane, corrupt bells and whistles as everything else in this broken world. Well, here at Salvation, we love for people to stay, of course. But we’re not here to suck you of your time and money like the others trying to con a buck. We also love to see people go. We like to see their chains broken, the scales removed from their eyes, their hunger sated.”

Tim pressed a hand to his chest as though he were holding in his heart. There was a glint of divine ecstasy in his eyes, the kind of bliss that one might see in religious paintings.

“Me? I’ve been saved for three years. Brother Peter here, he’s been saved for five, back when the Father started Salvation,” Tim said. “We have weekly sessions for expanding your perspective and tapping into the magic that we
all
have inside of us, the gifts we
all
have and that the Father shows to us. If we live and breathe, we have that spark of magic, that bit of God’s breath inside of us.”

He stared into an unseen horizon before returning to the audience before him. “That’s what we at Salvation do if you want to stick around and learn more,” he said. “But that’s not why we’re here today. We’re not here for those who have been made healthy. We’re here for the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, those who have searched this wide world and found no sustenance to satisfy. We at Salvation have found that sustenance, brothers and sisters, in the Father. Please welcome our generous, compassionate Father Abraham.”

Sweeping in from the back entrance, there was the man himself, wearing the same robes as in the black and white picture on the website. Now that she saw him, she wondered how she hadn’t immediately known that the man in the picture was the man in the painting, even though the man in the picture had been clean-shaven and much younger.

The robes were a slightly darker shade of soft butter yellow than the tent canvas. He wore them open to expose the three-piece tanned linen suit underneath. His hair was dark and slicked back to display the natural, almost old-fashioned wave. His facial hair was just as dramatic, immaculately trimmed to frame his features. His nose flared and the bridge arched expressively. His eyes were dark and warm. He looked for all the world like a middle-aged university professor instead of a revival preacher.

When Abraham spread his arms, his robes looked like wings.

“Welcome,” he said. “It is always a joy to see so many people out there who hear the call of discontent stirring in their soul. You, you are the people who know that something in our society is wrong, not just at its fringes but also at its heart. We are a sceptical world, relegating magic to the realm of fairy tales and lunatics.

“You have lived a dull life in a dull world of electricity, mass transportation, assembly lines, fast food and sterile science. And you have come here now to see if my claims of wondrous magic are true or if I am just another charlatan trying to swindle you of your hard-earned money. You’ve come to see if what you’ve felt deep down inside—that you are special and this world is bright and full of greater promise and potential—is true.”

Father Abraham had one of the most beautiful baritones that Kelly had ever heard. Her chilly panic subsided under the influence of the eminently soothing quality of his deep voice. He didn’t even need magic to be captivating, blessed with such a natural gift. However, Kelly tried not to be taken in by it. In her childhood, she had met her share of the aforementioned charlatans, many of them silver-tongued charismatics with perfect staging and rousing, inspiring messages. People played to their strengths.

“And then some of you are here because society pushes those with magic to its fringes. That is one form of evil, when the world fails to recognise its magical potential. But so too is the imbalance of certain kinds of magic. You have been harmed by this lack of balance more than the rest of us. You have been torn from your safe, sane lives into a world of blood, gore and deep, abiding hunger.

“You have an advantage over most of our guests here tonight, because you, my friends, know that what I say is true, that magic is real and that you can be its slave or its master. I stand before you to offer a way to shed that darkness, to purge that evil, to cleanse all that is filthy in the magic of your soul. That is the Salvation I offer you—I who am the Father of all those who choose to become brothers and sisters in our growing family. I offer you protection. I offer you the opportunity to use your power to purge the darkness and spread the light rather than settle for the smog the world tells us is clear sky.”

Abraham’s words filled the tent to its very corners. The audience peered up at him with flushed cheeks and glittering eyes, captivated by the commanding figure in centre stage, seduced by the secret promise in his message.

They were aware of the shysters and pyramid schemers and con artists, they acknowledged as they nodded, but this guy, he was starting to make sense. He sounded so sure, so authoritative. He’d already managed to garner such a following of loyal disciples, and surely he couldn’t have fooled every one of them. The longer he talked, the more everyone believed that what he was saying had to be true.

“This is the truth—there are men and women here who are werewolves,” Abraham said.

There was a smattering of laughter among the humans, but not among the regulars.

“Oh, you laugh? Do you think they are just crazy people in pelts or with furry faces like the Wolf Man?” Abraham asked. His eyes were so dark, his face so severe and his voice so stern that the titters abruptly ceased. “The werewolves here know who they are. They come here to leave their skins behind because they deplore the destruction they rain upon the humans they once were and are no longer. They understand that any creature whose only natural prey is human is cursed with the deepest kind of magical disease. It blackens their soul. They who are here know that they are an abomination, an affront to their soul’s purer magic.”

He swept across the stage, his robes whipping behind him, and addressed the other half of the room. “This is the truth—there are men and women here who are vampires. Do you think they are just sad people living fantasy lives and wearing dental caps over their canines? The vampires here know who they are. They remember a time when there was something they craved more than blood. Their plight is similar to the werewolves’. Their predation of that which they once were is evil, yet they can do nothing to stop their appetites. And that is why you come to me, to purge your terrible appetite until the ache in your belly is filled with the light of your full magical potential.

“This is the truth—there are witches and devil worshippers here as well, surrounded by those who tell them that the rituals in which they engage are true magic when they are not. They are told that it is harmless when, in fact, it is the most harmful kind of magic that can touch your soul.

“I do not ask for any of you to reveal yourself to anyone but me. But take heart, you magical creatures who have come to me. You already know the magic that the human beings in this world only wish they could comprehend. However, your darker natures have led to these abominations you have become, your desires unsavoury even to yourselves. But also take heart because you are not like others of your kind. You
are
discontent, because you came here for
my help
. In that way, you, like the human beings here, are great strides in front of your community, your friends and family blind to the light that they themselves have dimmed.”

As Abraham spoke, his eyes seemed to meet each and every person’s in the tent, staring into them, speaking directly to them, a few precious seconds in which they had his full attention.

Kelly tried not to grip Malcolm’s arm too hard as Abraham’s gaze swung their way. She wanted to hide her face, afraid that he might truly see past the glassy windows of her eyes and into her. He would see she was a wilful abomination in his view. She didn’t think she could stand the outright condemnation. She had been called a demon by too many of his ilk. Her parents hadn’t believed it, of course—they had believed that she might have a demon
in
her, but they had never blamed
her
.

Father Abraham would blame her, though, like all the others. God, she’d never wanted to run with wolves as much as she did at that very second. She should have escaped with Damien’s pack while she’d had the chance. She shouldn’t have indulged Malcolm’s delusion and instead should’ve hit him over the head with a clue-by-four.