Devil's Eye (35 page)

Flames from the fire soon leaped upward, lighting the glen and warming the air around them.

“
Air and fire!” the witches chanted. “Air and fire, fulfill our desire! Air and fire, fulfill our desire! Water and earth, give us new birth! Water and earth, give us new birth!”

They repeated the chant as they walked in the circle, passing the pipe to the sister behind and chanting until they seemed in a trance. Then the High Priestess left the circle and approached Rick Masters. She undulated in front of him, her robe occasionally revealing her sinuous body. She methodically began to undress him while humming in time with her chanting sisters. He did not resist and felt no embarrassment as his body reacted to the alluring movements before him.

Rebecca came forward and draped the black velvet gown over him. She eased each hand into a sleeve and swayed back and forth in front of him too.

“
Horned god of yore, become this vessel we implore!” the High Priestess chanted.

“
Horned god of yore, become this vessel we implore!” the witches droned.

As they did so, each walked in a practiced gait back and forth around the restless Billy Goat, retrieving dried flower petals from pockets in their robes and scattering them in their tracks, until an obvious figure of a pentagram appeared.

“
Horned god of yore, become this vessel we implore!” the High Priestess repeated. “Horned god of yore, become this vessel we implore. Hear our call for unity!”

“
Manifest your dual identity!” the others chanted.

After several more incantations the Billy Goat bleated.

“
Tis true! Tis true! The god is in you!” Sarah Maddington intoned. “You’ve heard our call! We’re your maidens, all!”

She began to stroke Rick Masters over his body. Two blondes approached with a sultry gait and held his arms outstretched, making him look like a living cross.

One by one the women slipped out of their robes and placed them together on the ground at Rick’s feet. The High Priestess let her gown slip from her body while the two holding his arms, pulled the black gown from Rick. They urged him down onto the robes. He was woozy and happily complied.

After erotic stroking that fired common excitement, the group was in an orgiastic revelry laughing, gyrating, and engaging in lascivious acts with abandon. Several of the nubile witches were just as interested in each other as they were in their newly initiated Priest. Writhing bodies mingled and intertwined looking ghostly pale under the light of the full moon.

No one noticed the fire was dwindling until one or another of the young women’s energy was spent or they felt climactic satisfaction and lay sprawled on the ground. One of the witches, a long
‐
haired brunette, crawled over to the embers and tossed more logs on the fire. Soon the flames were alive again, throwing shadows of the witches and their Priest on the overhanging canopy of trees in the glen, appearing as a simmering cauldron under the beam of the full moon.

One by one, the members of the coven moved closer to the fire. The pale contours of their bodies disappeared, looking more alluring in the light. Each member draped a robe upon another and the two blondes draped the black velvet robe upon Rick. They arrayed themselves in a circle around the fire.

Sarah Maddington now opened one of the baskets. From it she took soybean meal, and murmuring incantations, presented it to the goat resting on the granite outcrop.

Masters was glad he met Rebecca on campus. He truly liked her, her lilting accent, self
‐
assurance and wit. And she offered some real field work in his major. These were free spirited women who worshipped nature. Can’t be anything wrong with that, he rationalized. He looked in a happy daze at the striking young women around him. “We don’t cackle,” he recalled Rebecca saying. This must be a coven of white witches and not the other kind—the demon worshippers. “It’s better to mix it up with these beautiful hotties,” he thought, “then to have to kiss the ass of that goat and swear allegiance to the devil.”

Rick Masters determined he was one lucky scholar.

The High Priestess returned and ceremonially opened the other baskets. Inside each was food and intoxicating drink.

“
Our energy is one with you!” she intoned kneeling on her haunches. “Air and fire. Water and earth,” she said more softly and bowed. “We thank you for your sustenance.”

Then raising her head towards the sky she proclaimed loudly: “Our gift to you is our spent desire! May it drive the energy of Gaia, Mother Earth!”

“
May it drive the energy of Gaia, Mother Earth!” the others said with finality.

The coven now relaxed in convivial, ordinary conversation, a midnight picnic. Some kept their robes draped casually over their shoulders, others stuck their hands through the sleeves as the night grew cooler and the fire waned.

Rick Masters munched on a chicken wing, his black velvet robe draped over his shoulders. He tilted his bottle in salute, took a swig of beer and smiled at Rebecca near him.

This small town in West Virginia would not be so boring after all.

“
Where did you get that—“ he hesitated lest he offend someone— “where did you get Pan for the ceremony?”

“
He’s from our farm,” Rebecca replied. “My folks have a shop at the mall. The tourists love goat milk fudge.”

***

At about the time the High Priestess was summoning the horned god of yore, Victor Sherwyck was swirling a snifter of Brandy in front of a fire at his mansion near Mount Vernon.

He felt a surge of rejuvenating energy as he took a liberal sip.

Chapter 34

E. Theodore Rawlins was walking his two bulldogs, Cisco and Juanita, along a densely wooded foot trail in Rock Creek Park several miles northwest of the National Mall. The Park meandered for more than twelve miles along Rock Creek between 16th Street and Connecticut Avenue to the border of Maryland.

Rock Creek Park and other parks circling Washington were a legacy of the Civil War when nearly 90 forts were built in a ring around the capital to protect it from Confederate attack. Now the old fortifications were part of vast urban woodland—much of it isolated and quite rugged—encompassing thousands of acres in and around Washington managed by the National Park Service.

Rawlins was a retired professor from Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. He specialized in International Security and was an occasional consultant to the government on homeland security issues. Actually, he had been eased out as a scaremonger because of his persistence—even to an annoying degree—that Washington was very vulnerable to attack from the public attractions known as the Circle of Forts. The wooded preserves were a perfect hideout or a staging area for terrorists bent on doing harm in the heart of Washington. Rawlins had occasionally said so publicly and was perceived by various colleagues in the prestigious university as somewhat paranoid and a negative influence on tourism.

He had received anonymous death threats that his government sources suggested might be of foreign origin related to his security consultancy. They urged he retire with full pay and benefits and stay in touch. Rawlins remembered the old adage: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” He did so, on both counts.

He bought the dogs for companionship and protection. Cisco, the white male, and fawn colored Juanita—both looking like overgrown pit bulls—were eager for their daily off
‐
leash exercise in the hilly woods they loved to explore.

Rawlins was mindful of the fact that the remains of two sensationalized crime victims were found in the vicinity some years earlier. The skeletal remains of a female government employee were found in a wooded ravine more than a year after she disappeared. And the body of a young Washington administrator was found in the Creek in the same general vicinity. Both victims had lived several blocks from each other in Washington. A suspect was eventually named and jailed—but on an unrelated charge, because the investigation was lacking firm evidence.

The prematurely retired professor had no compunction about walking the trails in the early morning hours. Fixated on his security threat theory, he envisioned himself as a private patrol. He was accompanied by two fierce looking dogs, and he had his cell phone with quick dial numbers to several government agencies. His ultimate comfort, however, was the Smith & Wesson .38 Special he carried ever since federal law permitted concealed weapons in national parks.

Cisco and Juanita were following their noses along a treed embankment while Rawlins ambled along the parallel trail. Farther ahead of him was Military Road, which bisected Rock Creek Park and united east and west portions of Washington across the rugged parkland. Some morning traffic could be heard on the road, unseen through trees, but obvious by the drone of tires on pavement where no other urban sounds interrupted.

Suddenly Juanita’s fur bristled and she uttered a low growl. Cisco perked his head up and sniffed the air in her direction. Rawlins looked their way and slowly put his hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, grasping the handle of his revolver. The two large bulldogs disappeared over the embankment. Rawlins, who was in his mid fifties, scurried up the gentle slope and looked through thick underbrush toward a fallen tree trunk that bridged a small ravine. Through the brush he glimpsed flashes of white and tan busily circling a small mound under the tree trunk, whining and sniffing frantically.

Instinctively, the retired consultant on national security drew his revolver and looked around him. He shuddered involuntarily, suspecting what he might find. He pushed aside some bushes with his revolver in hand and made his way towards his dogs. Rawlins stooped under the tree trunk. He noticed jutting from the earthen mound what looked like polyester legging from a jogging suit. The dirt around it was fresh and recently turned.

“
Why am I not surprised?” he said aloud in a plaintive voice.

Cisco and Juanita pawed at the mound and snagged the crook of an arm.

Rawlins was already on his cell phone dialing a programmed number while he stood next to the fallen tree trunk, his dogs sniffing, growling and whining at the ground near his feet.

***

Within an hour the area was cordoned off with yellow tape. A half dozen patrol cars with a laboratory and coroner’s van were parked along Ross Drive south of the Military Road interchange. Several scenic roads branched off towards populated areas of Washington. Park rangers, together with Washington Metropolitan police officers, were huddled around the fallen tree trunk. Among them was Colonel Garrison Jones, whose number Rawlins had called. He had arrived in a civilian suit so as not to draw undue attention, and was there to ascertain whether the victim could be the missing Jeannie McConnell.

Forensic technicians had carefully removed dirt to reveal the face of a female who had been placed on her back with her arms crossed over her chest. When the pawing dogs snagged her arm they had pulled back an unzipped jacket that revealed part of a pattern of blue markings on her upper body.

Several men and a woman probed gingerly with medical gloves to uncover more of the face and torso from the dirt. One of them stood over the corpse and took pictures from various angles.

“
Another sad story, Todd,” Colonel Jones uttered looking towards Rawlins who was calming his dogs after leashing them. “Thanks for calling it in.”

“
It’s the least I could do,” Rawlins said patting the heads of Juanita and Cisco in turn.

“
Thanks for taking walks in the park,” Jones emphasized.

“
Like I said, Arie, it’s the least I can do.”

They both turned their attention to the investigators who were carefully digging around the body as if on an ancient archeological find.

“
From the looks of things, she hasn’t been here too long,” one of them said.

“
There’s some strange markings on her torso,” the woman technician added. “Some incisions too.”

“
Not like others we found,” her colleague replied.

“
Well, the others were skeletal, so we’ll never know.”

“
True,” the first technician remembered. “So it’s still likely there could be some connection.”

“
That’ll take some serious investigation.”

Colonel Jones hovered over the forensic specialists. “Those markings don’t seem random,” he ventured. “It looks like blue grease paint. Almost a design.”