Mark of the Witch
From
New York Times
bestselling author Maggie Shayne comes the first novel in her
thrilling new trilogy, THE PORTAL
She was born to save what he is sworn to destroy...
A lapsed Wiccan, Indira Simon doesn’t believe in magic
anymore. But when strange dreams of being sacrificed to an ancient Babylonian
god have her waking up with real rope burns on her wrists, she’s forced to
acknowledge that she may have been too hasty in her rejection of the unknown.
Then she meets mysterious and handsome Father Tomas. Emerging from the secrecy
of an obscure Gnostic sect, he arrives with stories of a demon, a trio of
warrior witches—and Indira’s sacred calling.
Yet there’s something even Tomas doesn’t know, an inescapable
truth that will force him to choose between saving the life of the woman he’s
come to love—and saving the world.
Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne
“A tasty, tension-packed read.”
—
Publishers Weekly
on
Thicker Than
Water
“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best
sense.”
—
RT Book Reviews
on
Colder Than Ice
“Mystery and danger abound in
Darker Than
Midnight,
a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers
turning the pages long after bedtime…Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no
one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”
—
Romance
Reviews Today
on
Darker Than Midnight
[winner of a Perfect 10 award]
“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every
wicked craving.”
—
New York Times
bestselling
author Suzanne Forster
“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven…A moving mix of
high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers
to bolt their doors at night.”
—
Publishers
Weekly
on
The Gingerbread Man
“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will
keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”
—
New York Times
bestselling author Lisa Gardner on
The Gingerbread Man
“[A] crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”
—
RT Book Reviews
on
Kiss of the
Shadow Man
Also by Maggie Shayne
Secrets of Shadow Falls
KISS ME, KILL ME
KILL ME AGAIN
KILLING ME SOFTLY
Wings in the Night
TWILIGHT FULFILLED*
TWILIGHT
PROPHECY*
BLOODLINE
ANGEL’S PAIN
LOVER’S BITE
DEMON’S
KISS
BLUE TWILIGHT
BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT
EDGE OF TWILIGHT
RUN
FROM TWILIGHT
EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT
TWILIGHT HUNGER
TWILIGHT
VOWS
BORN IN TWILIGHT
BEYOND TWILIGHT
TWILIGHT
ILLUSIONS
TWILIGHT MEMORIES
TWILIGHT PHANTASIES
*
Children of Twilight
DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT
COLDER THAN ICE
THICKER THAN
WATER
Look for Maggie Shayne’s next novel
DAUGHTER OF THE
SPELLCASTER
available December 2012
Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a friend like
my BFF Michele M. A friend you love so much that when you go out in public
together, people mistake you for a couple. A friend you share Stevie Nicks
concerts and road trips to the Grand Canyon with, even though it makes your men
jealous. A friend who, when you crawl inside an empty crypt and everyone else is
yelling “Ewwwww,” hushes them all and shouts “Hold still!” and takes your
picture. Then she Photoshops your name on the outside of the tomb so you can use
it in the back of your next book. A friend who will double-stick tape your boobs
into your too-low-cut Romance Writers of America RITA® Award gown on the big
night while making you laugh so hard you nearly bust the zipper but forget your
nervousness. A friend you would trust with your life—no, more than that: with
the lives of your kids. That’s the kind of friend I have in my beautiful
Michele.
Michele, you are the Thelma to my Louise and I love you more
than chocolate. The Portal Series (all of it) is dedicated to you. I even put a
treasure chest in it, sort of.
1
D
ammit straight to hell, I was being
sacrificed
again.
I stood on the edge of a precipice, the hard ground under my
bare feet already warming beneath the rising, scorching sun. The unblinking
red-orange eye of an angry god rose slowly over distant desert sands, beyond
endless dunes, watching as I paid for the sin of practicing magic without a
license.
Just as I had been at every execution before, I was dressed in
almost nothing. A white scrap of fabric tied at my hip, covering one leg and
leaving the other bare below the knot. Another length of the same stuff was
draped around my neck, crossed in front to cover each of my humongous boobs, and
then tied behind to keep it there. My hands were tied behind my back. I wore no
jewelry. Resentment rose up in me at the notion that Sindar, High Priest of
Marduk, had stolen it. And then I wondered how I knew that.
This isn’t me. I mean, it feels like it’s
me, but it can’t be me. She’s olive-skinned. She’s gorgeous. Her boobs are
huge. I’m pale and blonde and too thin. No curves here. Not like those,
anyway.
And yet it was me. I was there. On that cliff. In that body. No
denying it.
There were two other women, dressed pretty much the same way I
was, one standing on either side of me. I felt close to them. I loved them.
Three men stood behind us. I felt the one behind me, his hands,
warm and trembling, resting softly on my back, low, near my waist, where the
skin was bare. My back was screaming with pain I didn’t understand, but that
man’s touch was good. Soothing. I tried to relish it, thinking it was the last
time I would feel it or anything good. Ever.
I wanted to turn my head, to look back at him, to see his face,
but somehow I could not convince my dream self to do that. It didn’t matter,
though. I knew what he looked like. In my mind, I saw him clearly: his long
black hair, his fine white tunic with a sash of scarlet, the fat gold torque
around his corded neck. His arms were banded with steel and coated in fine dark
hair. He was strong, and he had ebony eyes.
I didn’t need to see him, nor the poor, half-dead man being
held captive by soldiers a bit farther away. He’d already been beaten bloody,
but he was struggling to break free as they forced him to watch. I’d glimpsed
his face as they’d marched us up the cliff, far from our city gates. He barely
looked human. His own mother wouldn’t have known him.
And Sindar, the High Priest, he was there, too. I knew his
face, as well. Eyes lined with kohl, lips darkened with the juices of rare
desert berries. The rolls of fat at his neck, sporting layer upon layer of gold.
His robes of the finest fabric, imported from the East. His belly so big that
the golden cords of those robes had to be tied above the bulge, making him look
like a mother about to give birth. I knew he was there, knew the secret lust in
his eyes for what was about to happen to us. He was twisted, turned on by
violence. Or maybe just by the rush of knowing he held the power of life and
death in his hands.
I was going to have to kill him one day.
I tried to look at the other women, because, aside from the
touch of those large male hands on my skin, they were the most interesting part
of this whole thing. They had dark hair and dark eyes, just like I did. But as I
looked at them, they changed, the way a reflection in still water will change
when a stone is dropped into it. One briefly became a blue-eyed platinum blonde,
the other a fiery redhead, modern women in modern clothes. It was brief, the
illusion, and then the High Priest was speaking in some long-dead language, and
the hands at my back began trembling harder than before—kneading my waist, I
thought—and I closed my eyes in bittersweet anguish.
“Remember, my sisters,” said the raven-haired woman who had so
briefly been a blonde. “Remember what we must do. We cannot cross over until it
is done.”
Oddly, the words I heard were spoken in an exotic language I
knew
I didn’t know, yet I understood every
word.
I tugged at the ropes that bound my wrists, tugged so hard I
felt new blood seeping from the welts already cut into my flesh from my
struggling. My gaze strayed to the jagged rocks far, far below, and my toes dug
into the hard earth as my body instinctively resisted.
But, as always, it was futile—and I knew it. So I relaxed and
reminded myself of the plan.
An instant later, my body was plummeting.
There were no screams, not one, not from any of us, as we
arrowed downward like hawks diving onto their chosen prey. Our own weight
propelled us as our feet pedaled uselessly. The only sounds were the soft
flapping of our garments and the arid wind rushing past my face, whipping my
long black hair above me. I smelled that wind, sucking it in deeply, tasting
every flavor it held in my final breath. I closed my eyes, and awaited my fate.
Then I heard the others, their voices chanting a familiar verse, and I joined
them. My heart raced faster and faster as I waited to feel the impact of the
already bloodstained rocks below.
I felt a sudden jarring blow, like the hit of a powerful
electric jolt, in every cell of my body. And then nothing. Blackness.
* * *
I opened my eyes and stared through the darkness at the
ceiling of my tiny Brooklyn apartment, willing my heart rate to drop back to
normal. It was running like a late bicycle messenger on deadline, banging so
hard against my rib cage that I thought for a second I might be having a heart
attack. I lay very still, afraid to move and make it worse, my eyes wide,
blinking at the ceiling.
I’m not in some fucked-up desert. I’m not
wearing an
I Dream of Jeannie
Halloween costume.
I have little boobs. Nice, firm, little boobs. And blond hair.
I moved my hand carefully, as if I was afraid to set off some
unseen trap, and lifted a lock of said hair, so I could see it for myself by the
glow of my plug-in night-light.
Yep. Blond. Perfectly blond. Or
amber-gold, as my stylist calls it. Crimp curled, only without need of a
crimper. And hanging just below my ears, right where it belongs. No long,
flowing, ebony tresses in sight.
I took a deep, cleansing breath, inhaling till my lungs wanted
to burst, then holding it for a beat or two, before blowing it all out, real
slow. And then I did it again. And again. It was a technique I’d learned in the
open circles I used to attend, led by my friend Rayne—Lady Rayne, that is—back
when I used to believe in magic and shit. Which I didn’t anymore.
When I felt it was safe to move again, I turned my head to look
at the clock on the nightstand. Midnight. Again. It was always midnight when I
woke from the damned recurring dream—
The Witching Hour. And on the night before
Halloween, too.
Shut up. I’m not a witch
anymore.
—and I could almost never get back to sleep.
The adrenaline rush of being shoved off a cliff tended to get a
person’s blood flowing, I supposed. Sitting up in bed, I pushed both hands
through my hair. My spiky bangs were sideswept and tended to fall into my eyes.
I thought it made me look mysterious.
My heart was still hammering. I needed a smoke, but like a
jackass, I’d quit again, so there wasn’t a cigarette in the entire place. No,
wait, maybe—I’d switched out handbags just before my latest attempt to go
healthy. I might have missed one.
I swept off the covers and got up too fast, then pressed the
heels of my hands to my eyeballs to make the room stop spinning. Hell. Another
deep breath. Damn, I needed nicotine.
Okay, steady again. Good. I made my way across the bedroom to
the halfway decent-sized closet that had been the apartment’s one and only
selling point—besides it being only two subway stops or a good brisk walk from
work—and rummaged around in the darkness within. I stubbed my toe on my antique
replica treasure chest and cussed it out for being in the way before I located
my most recent handbag, a pretty little leopard print Dolce & Gabbana number
that had cost two months’ rent.
I had a weakness for shoes and bags, and killer good taste.
There were worse things.
Yanking the bag off the shelf by its tiny silver handle, I
opened it and had an instant rush of gratification at the whiff of stale tobacco
that wafted out. I pawed inside until I felt a crumpled, cellophane-wrapped pack
that still held one beautiful, stale menthol.
One. Just one. My precious.
Lighter? Junk drawer. I dragged a bathrobe off the foot of my
bed on the way into the living room-slash-kitchenette, then rounded the Formica
counter that separated one from the other. The junk drawer—official holder of
anything I didn’t know where else to put, size permitting—yielded a yellow
Bic.
I smoothed the wrinkles out of the slightly bent cig and put it
between my lips. It felt good there. Lighter in hand, I speed walked to the
bedroom window and wrenched it open. Then, sitting on the sill, illuminated by
the moonlight I used to dance beneath, one leg dangling outside, the other
holding me firmly in, I cupped my hands at the far end of the cigarette, like
any smoker does when there’s likelihood of an errant breeze.
But before I could flick my Bic, I went very, very still, my
eyes glued to my wrists, which, I suddenly realized,
really
hurt. They’d been quietly hurting ever since I’d awakened
from that stupid nightmare. The pain had seemed like part of the dream, like the
pain all over my back and the impact with those rocks. I’d been waiting for it
to fade, like the rest, but clearly it wasn’t going to.
Clearly. Because there were angry red welts on my wrists, welts
that had been bleeding, and that still bore the twisted pattern of rough-hewn
rope.
My jaw dropped…and my one and only cigarette fell from my lips
and fluttered down,
way
down, to the sidewalk below,
looking a bit like a girl in white, plummeting from a friggin’ cliff overlooking
the desert in Bumfuck, Egypt.
Not Egypt. Babylon.
I turned around so fast I almost fell, looking to see who had
just whispered the correction. But that was stupid, because it had come from
inside my own head.
* * *
Father Dominick St. Clair led the way, and Father Tomas,
his chosen successor, followed with his heart in his throat. He was nervous, and
not ashamed to admit it. It wasn’t every day a man was asked to assist in an
exorcism. So far, it had all the markings of a made-for-Hollywood production.
Creepy old house sadly in need of a paint job, check. Careworn mother, old
beyond her years, dressed in clean but faded clothes, check. Narrow staircase
that creaked when you walked on it, check. Big wooden door with unearthly
moaning coming from the other side, double check.
He stood there and told himself he was a twenty-nine-year-old
man with a first-rate education—Cornell, for crying out loud—and a left brain
that ruled him. Practical. Intelligent. That part of him did not believe this
could be real.
And he suspected that was the part of him Father Dom was trying
to stomp out. The doubting side. The doubting Tomas.
The older priest couldn’t know it was already too late. Tomas
had made his decision. He couldn’t keep living something he didn’t believe in.
He was only waiting for the right time to explain that he couldn’t keep living
in service to vows that no longer meant to him what they once had.
Dominick paused outside the old wooden door. It had an oval
brass knob that had probably been there for two hundred years. “The job I’ve
been grooming you for is coming soon.”
He was being “groomed” to keep a witch from releasing a demon
from its Underworld prison. Great. He’d often wondered if the Church elders knew
about Father Dom’s obsession with the ancient legend of
He
Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.
All Tomas had wanted was to be an
ordinary priest, to help the poor and hungry and misled, to offer faith to the
faithless and hope to the hopeless, to pay back the kindness shown to him by the
Sisters of St. Brigit and Father Dom himself, who’d raised him from the age of
ten after his faithless, hopeless, addicted mother’s suicide.
He’d studied. He’d excelled. College, then the seminary. But
unlike every other seminarian, he’d been yanked out of school early and
personally ordained by Father Dom. He’d been given special dispensation with
regard to Tomas, the old man had said, because of the importance of the
mission.
“Did you hear me, Tomas?” Dom asked, sounding impatient.
Tomas snapped out of his thoughts and looked the old priest in
the eye. Dom’s face was like a white raisin, his body stooped. Yet his eyes were
sharp and his perception sharper. Sometimes Tomas thought the old man could see
right inside his brain, read the thoughts going on there. But then, he should.
He probably knew Tomas better than anyone.
“Your faith isn’t strong enough yet to do what will be required
of you, Tomas,” Dom said, and Tomas realized that he’d already said it once
while he’d been lost in thought. “Faith ought not need proof to sustain it. But
time is short, and you need to know. Demons are real. And powerful. See for
yourself.”
He opened the door, and Tomas looked inside. The girl in the
bed might have been twelve. Maybe less. She was thrashing, arching her back,
grunting and moaning. He froze in place as his mind tried to process what he was
seeing. And his initial feeling was that he ought to yank out his iPhone and
call 9-1-1.
Dom pushed past him, his black bag already open. He pulled out
a crucifix and a bible, small and black and worn, its pages edged in gold. “Get
the holy water. Bring it here.”
Tomas pushed his doubts aside to be considered later. He took
the bag from Father Dom and rummaged inside until he found the vial, pulling it
out and uncorking it.