Evil Ways (31 page)

Pardee had just finished stripping Libby Chastain, and he was looking with interest at her nude body when he sensed something… wrong.

He focused all his concentration, and suddenly knew what it was. There was white magic being practiced in the immediate vicinity, and from a number of individual sources.
So
the Whities have figured out what my plans are, and have assembled outside somewhere to try and stop them. Well, we'll just have to see about that, won't we?

Pardee reached under his robes and produced a cell phone with a walkie-talkie function. He depressed the button and brought the device to his mouth. "Hannigan! Hannigan, pick up damn you!"

The voice of the security detail's commander sounded in his ear. "Yes, sir, Mister Pardee."

"Hannigan, there are some people, probably all women, outside the wall somewhere. They are disrupting my ceremony here. Send your people out there and stop them! At once!"

"Yes, sir. Uh, when you say 'stop them,' do you mean we should
—"

"Hannigan, I don't care if your goons shoot them, hit them on the head, arrest them, or tie them down and fuck them. Just stop them! Now!"

"Uh, yessir, Mister Pardee. Will do. Hannigan out."

Pardee had no way of knowing that behind him, Libby Chastain's eyes had cracked open, briefly, before closing again.

He turned back to the altar, and made sure his sacrificial knife, which he had made with his own hands, was nearby. He pushed down on Libby Chastain's knees to make her body lie flat. He would wake her up and remove the tape from her mouth just before he was ready to put the knife into her. He hoped she would give a good long scream to welcome the Lord Satan to His new kingdom.

Pardee began to recite the "Ritual for Calling forth Shaitan" from Abdul Alhazred's
Book of Shadows.
It
had taken him months to memorize, but he knew the thing by heart, now.

Pardee had just completed the first section, and was rewarded by a shimmering in the air over the Sacred Circle. His Lord was not here yet, but was on his way. Pardee had no idea whether the magic circle would contain Satan's power
—but, then, it was never his intent to contain it. If the circle proved a barrier, Pardee would simply break it, to allow his Lord ready access to the world he had coveted for so long.

Pardee was well into the second part of the ritual, the section that would end with Libby Chastain's slow disembowelment, when his concentration was disrupted by the sound of gunshots
—
lots
of gunshots. And some of them, by the sound, were being fired by heavy rifles, which were
not
part of the arsenal provided to the compound's security people.

Pardee turned his back on the altar again and produced his walkie-talkie phone. "Hannigan! What the fuck is happening? Hannigan!"

Behind Pardee, two important things were taking place. One involved the Sacred Circle, where the shimmering in the air had increased noticeably, and the vague outlines of a humanoid form could now be perceived. The second event involved Libby Chastain, who slowly spread her naked legs wide and began to bear down hard with certain muscles that she had trained to suppleness over the last twenty-eight hours.

"Hannigan!"

When that heavy metal crap had stopped screeching from inside the walls, Fenton knew that the time for action was very nearly upon him. He was in a good position, concealed by some brush, a clear field of fire to the front gate, the weapon's stock tight against his shoulder. It wasn't long before there was a flurry of activity inside the big gate, and then it swung open.

All of the entrances to Grobius's little fortress were well lit by floodlights, so vision was not a problem. Fenton had been worried they might have to rely on nightscopes for their rifles, and those things were not only heavy and clumsy, but also unreliable.

Fenton had decided the best way to show the dudes in the khaki uniforms that he meant business was to drop one of them. Not kill him
—not unless absolutely necessary. But despite that bitch Hannah's sneers about shooting to wound, Fenton was betting he was still a good enough marksman to maim a stationary target, especially one who had no idea that Fenton was even in the neighborhood.

A heavyset guy with sergeant's stripes on his khakis was standing out in front of the gates, apparently giving orders to his crew of guards. Fenton interrupted the briefing by putting a round into chubby's leg from what he estimated to be 320 meters away. Sarge dropped like a marionette with the strings cut, and after a second for the sound of the shot to catch up with the bullet, the rest of the group scrambled for cover.

Center of body mass, my smooth black butt. Put
that
pipe up your ass and smoke it, Widmark!

"All right, then, have them split up and go out the side gates, both groups at the same time," Pardee said. "This isn't fucking World War Two, Hannigan. It's just one man with a rifle, and he's at the main gate, which is the logical place for him to be. It isn't physically possible for him to cover the front and both sides at once. And if you don't get your people moving
right now,
Hannigan, I promise you, getting fired is going to be the
least
of your worries. Do you understand me? Then do it!"

While Pardee had been yelling into his walkie-talkie, Libby Chastain had carefully pulled from her vagina an object about the size of a thick pen. It was still slick with the thick coating of KY Jelly she had applied before inserting it, just prior to taking part in the Circle the other night. It wasn't that Libby distrusted Quincey's vigilance, but this was something she did every time she had to send her spirit out of her body
—it made her feel more secure, knowing that she had a collapsible, fully charged magic wand secreted inside her body, just in case.
Well, Libby, welcome to "Just in case."

Libby grasped the wand at both ends to extend it to its full length. She had to move slowly, carefully, since the thing was so slick, and to drop it now would be to send disaster an engraved invitation.

She had just gotten the wand extended when Pardee turned back toward the altar and looked right at her.

Any soldier who's fought in a war will tell you how important luck is when it comes to staying alive in combat. Your buddy happens to step on the mine, instead of you; the mortar shell lands in somebody else's foxhole, instead of yours. No matter how brave, or quick, or well-trained you are, luck, whether good or bad, has a lot to do with making that age-old distinction between the quick and the dead.

In the small war that took place around Walter Grobius's compound that night, luck also had its role to play. Captain Seamus Hannigan, who had assumed personal command of the security detail after Sergeant Willner was wounded, divided his troops into two
groups, acting quickly and arbitrarily. The group you were assigned to was determined by where you happened to be standing when Hannigan made his selection.

One group of ten men was lucky. They were sent out the south gate, where Quincey Morris was waiting to shoot above and around them, thus urging the wisdom of their staying exactly where they were.

The other group was arbitrarily assigned to the north gate, where Hannah Widmark was prepared to receive them. They did not fare as well.

The men who, at Hannigan's command, had surged out the south gate, surged back in shortly thereafter. Their only casualty was a man who had been hit in the eye by a splinter of stone that was sent flying when one of Morris's rounds hit the wall close to his head.

Of the ten men who charged out through the north gate, only six returned, one of them bleeding heavily from a wound to the arm that looked as if it would require amputation below the elbow.

None of the security guards had tried to leave by the rear gate, so Colleen O'Donnell never got to see how badly she could scare them with near misses. After a while, she began to doubt that the rear gate was figuring in the plans of anyone inside the compound. Colleen was not impatient by nature, but she was acutely aware of how precarious was the situation that pitted her Sisters' magic against that of the unknown number of black witches inside.

Finally, when the shooting from the side gates had died down, and with no activity at all at the rear, Colleen put down her rifle close to hand, and opened her carryall to remove the implements of her craft. Within three minutes, she was adding her power to the ritual being performed by her Sisters all over the property. It was, she concluded, the best use of her time and talents.

Walter Grobius, with the help of two trusted employees, had been brought to the scene of the ceremony just as Pardee ordered the music stopped. Grobius was glad
—all that noise, which apparently passed for music in some degenerate circles, made his head pound.

His people had led him to a throne-like chair that had been set up on the other side of the Sacred Circle from where Pardee was presiding over the altar. From the moment the air began coruscating over the circle, Grobius was mesmerized. Once the dimly perceived shape of The One could be seen, he was positively transfixed. He paid no real attention to the distant gunshots, or even to what difficulties Pardee might be having up on the altar. Walter Grobius knew that his time was at hand, and he sat ready, in breathless anticipation of his coming glory.

As soon as Libby Chastain had seen Pardee turn around, she had rolled her naked body away from him, off the altar and onto the marble floor. The drop of three feet had hurt like a bastard, but Libby was pleased by what followed her to the floor a second later: Pardee's ceremonial dagger. Libby wasn't sure exactly what use it would be to her, but at least if she had it, Pardee couldn't use it to slice her open like a Christmas goose.

And Libby had maintained possession of her wand.

Pardee rounded the corner of the altar quick as a cat, already declaiming a spell, which was no doubt intended to subdue her in some way. As he came into sight, Libby pointed her wand at him and began reciting the words of an all-purpose defense spell that might not stop Pardee, but would surely slow him down.

And Libby could hear the shots, too. She had never doubted that Quincey would find her, and he had not only found her in time, but brought help with him, by the sound of it. Libby was fairly certain that time was on her side.

But then Pardee bore down, and she felt the full force of his power. It might have been Libby's weakened state (not having eaten in almost forty-eight hours) or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, anyway. Because Pardee had been right about one thing.

His magic was stronger than hers.

Frank Durkin was a smart guy. He knew it, even if the other guys he worked with were too jealous to admit his intellectual superiority. While everybody else was running in and out of the front and side
gates like headless chickens, getting shot at each time, Durkin realized that nobody had tried getting out through the back.

Sure, he knew he was taking a chance. The people attacking, whoever they were, might have the back gate covered, too. But it was one thing to hit somebody who was part of a bunch of guys all coming out together. It was something else to nail one guy who you weren't expecting, in the first place. Especially if the guy in question was Frank Thomas Durkin, who had been a track star in high school, and never let anybody he knew forget it.

Durkin approached the back gate slow and sneaky, so he wouldn't be seen coming by anybody who might be lurking out there in the dark. If he made it through okay, he'd break left, then find some of those chicks that Captain Hannigan had said Mister Pardee was so pissed off about. He'd take out a couple of them, which none of the other guys had been able to do, and be the fuckin' hero. Hell, he might even get a big, fat check from Mister G for being the only guy on the security detail with enough brains and balls to try something like this. Thinking out of the box, that's what they called an idea like his.

Durkin was at the gate now, a few yards to the left of the entrance.

Okay, running start, slam the gate open without stopping, then run like hell off to the left and into the trees. No problem at all. Ready, set, and here's the starting gun! Go!