Greely's Cove (56 page)

God, spare us! This can’t be!

The corpse of the baby boy was perhaps a week old, bluish and greenish and mottled with fungus, the tragic little remainder of an innocent life that never really got going, thanks to a defective valve in the heart.

In the center of the pentagram Hannie knelt before a heavy cutting block, upon which lay a wide pewter bowl, and went to work with her long knife, singing an old song in a voice that could have curdled blood and maybe had:

Comes now yellow Wolfsbane, embrace Aloe Root,

   To sharpen the senses when Dark Wind’s afoot;

Monkshood and Nightshade, dried up brain of a cat,

   Comes now Mandragora, so purple and fat,

Combine with the fat of an unbaptized Child,

  An Innocent’s Blood, unpolluted and mild.

Her knife winnowed and flashed with easy speed, separated fat from muscle and muscle from bone, lopped the appropriate bits into the cold pewter bowl where they lay amid the chunks of powders and flecks of spices, the dark globules of—

Sweet flesh of a venomous Reptile I bring,

   For the Semen of the Wizard needs temp’ring.

She uncorked an ancient-looking vial and poured a white, almost vaporish fluid into the mixture, then picked up the knife again.

Juice of an Innocent Babe’s tiny Liver

  Is Poison, dread Poison to the Dream Giver!

The knife entered the infant’s body with surgical deftness found the liver, cut it out, and directed it into the bowl. The act seemed less a defilement than an honor. Next came boiling oil from the range, water from the tap, more chanting, but in the Old Tongue now. And dancing, and mixing, and beating, while Robbie Sparhawk stood nearby with the candle lantern that supplied light. With an amazing display of physical strength, Hannie, who was naked but for her mass of white bandages, held the heavy pewter bowl above her head with the one hand available to her. She danced. Lifted off the floor into the air and danced. She cast her crone’s gaze onto Lindsay, who fell immediately into a trance.

The dark came alive with eddies of air, the whining and buzz of unseen powers, the energies of the
words.

Lindsay ascended, her naked body gyrating slowly and her flaxen hair streaming as though underwater. She floated to the center of the pentagram. The forces in the air focused on the contents of the pewter bowl. The vile mixture formed itself into a thin column that stretched upward to the ceiling, undulating and twisting as though alive, then separated into two streams and snaked downward to flow into the open mouths of Lindsay and Hannie. When they had drunk until nothing was left in the bowl, Hannie lowered it, and Lindsay descended into the center of the pentagram, where she stood next to the pale and shaking Robbie Sparhawk, who looked as though he might throw up at any moment.

Hannie sliced the remains of the dead infant into chunks suitable for the food processor, then processed them into a thick paste, adding more spices and oils and old words. She scraped the mixture into the bowl, which she then handed to Lindsay. Now Carl felt himself being drawn into the center of the star, and he let himself go after casting a worried glance at Stu, who stood as though frozen in the shadow of the kitchen door. Hannie suddenly went rigid as a statue. Carl thought for one wild moment that she had died, but a closer look revealed that she was indeed breathing, but so shallowly, so slowly. It was Lindsay now who was animated, who was alive and vital.

When he was within her arm’s length, she scooped a handful of the paste from the bowl—it was more like a salve or a balm—and began to rub it on his chest. Old Hannie must have added something powerful to the mixture, for it felt warm and tingly on his skin. Another handful, more rubbing—onto his shoulders now, his neck, warm, warm. Onto his arms, down his belly—
Jesus!

He plunged his own hands into the bowl, took gobs of the balm, and rubbed it into Lindsay’s skin, marveling at the light in her eyes, only touching on the thought that there was someone
else
besides Lindsay Moreland behind those eyes. His hands found her firm breasts as her hands found his cock, his balls. He was oblivious now to the wide, watching eyes of Robbie and Stu. He knew only that he must touch the rusty mound of hair between Lindsay’s legs, that he must press his fingers into that velvety wet fold, that he must knead and knead, which is what he did. Lindsay uttered a cry and began to gyrate her beautiful hips, began to claw at his shoulders with her nails. Suddenly her mouth was on his, and he knew that even if someone else were inside her head, it was still
she
—Lindsay—who was kissing him like this, ramming her tongue against his, pulling him down to the floor, massaging his cock with the greasy, fiery balm.

They went to the floor, she on top of him. She maneuvered his stiff member into herself, sluicing it inward and up to the hilt. Carl pulled her down to him and felt the crush of her hard nipples into his chest, reached behind her and dug his fingers into her satiny buttocks, now slippery and hot with the balm. They began to thrust on the floor. Chanting came out of Lindsay’s mouth, old words that she could not possibly have known, but neither she nor Carl cared about this. They fucked with a frenzy and fortitude born of intoxicants and aphrodisiacs, of denial and desperation, of having endured too much terror and too much truth, of needing the elemental physical coupling of male and female to set their spirits straight. Too soon, too late, it was over, an eruption of raw love and bio-fury; Carl jolted and released. Lindsay screamed, fell against him.

The leathered form of Hannie Hazelford jerked back to life, shook and throbbed and distended. From the corner of his eye Carl saw that something was swelling within the old woman and
moving.
Had he not been so exhausted he would have screamed, because the sight was truly terrifying: Hannie bending out of shape, undulating like a snake who was unhinging its jaws to engulf some bulky prey. The mass inside her moved upward through the shapeless sack of her torso, bulged her neck as it passed out through her mouth: a wiggling, squirming
infant,
slick with mucous but lacking umbilical cord or any other accompanying membrane of a normal birth. It dropped from Hannie’s mouth into the crook of her waiting arm.

Lindsay and Carl lay in each other’s arms, not believing their eyes, though what they had seen in recent days should have made anything believable. The infant appeared to be alive, tiny and very male. It kicked and waved its arms, and, after a few choking breaths, screamed like any other newborn.

Hannie’s misshapen head now pulled itself back into normal shape, her jaw reconnected to her cheekbones, and her skin re-formed like flexible latex. She began to chant again in the Old Tongue as she lay the bawling infant upon the wooden block. She took up the knife.

“
No!
” Carl screamed, because he now knew what had happened: that Hannie had indeed been inside Lindsay. Sharing the repast of the pewter bowl had allowed Hannie’s and Lindsay’s souls to merge, to fuse. The old sorceress had thus tapped the incredible energy of Carl’s and Lindsay’s sexual union, and she had used that energy to fuel this atrocious magic, to vomit up a human baby for no other purpose than to—

“
No!
” he shrieked again, because the reality was too fulsome, beyond enduring. But the air grew very cold, and his muscles went numb and heavy like lead. His injured sensibilities seemed laughably irrelevant now, inasmuch as magic makes no value judgments, requires no elegant deductions about what is right and what is wrong. Magic simply
is.
Hannie Hazelford’s magic had provided the sacrificial flesh required for the next step. And now that the process was under way, there was absolutely nothing Carl could do about it.

Except cry, which had become so damnably easy for him in recent weeks.

The infant’s wailing abruptly ended in a skirling shriek as the knife sank deep, as Hannie’s voice sailed high in the dark:

Combine with the fat of an unbaptized Child,

   An Innocent’s Blood, unpolluted and mild.

The fat came away from the tiny body, flopped into the pewter bowl.

Juice of an Innocent Babes tiny Liver

   Is Poison, dread Poison to the Dream Giver!

Then came more flashes of surgical dexterity and a repeat of the horrible doings that had earlier utilized the corpse of a naturally dead child. But now the bubbling potion was not to be shared by Lindsay and Hannie: It was meant solely for Carl, who was himself to be a sacrifice. Together Hannie and Lindsay held the heavy bowl to his lips, as Robbie and Stu bolstered him into an upright position. That he did not vomit or struggle was because he had accepted the unavoidable fact: Nothing else could kill the Giver of Dreams, defeat Hadrian Craslowe, or free Jeremy. Nothing but the
magic,
the sacrifice of Carl Trosper—his body and soul poisoned by innocent blood.

So he forced himself to drink the thick stew. To breathe its horrific fumes and chew the bits of offal afloat in it. To swallow it and, with the help of magic, keep it down. The room swirled, the candle flames became shooting stars, the faces of the others were washed-out projections against a tattered screen.

Whiteleather Place, once again, looming black against a stone-silent sky.

Deep night, perhaps midnight—Carl did not know. To look at his watch did not occur to him.

He got out of the van and shivered. The wind drove specks of moisture against his face. Before he could move away, Lindsay touched his arm, and he glanced back at her, saw that her face was pale in the glow of the dome light, her eyes huge with worry. For a few fleeting seconds, Carl saw the past in those eyes, saw the Yesterday of a young lawyer and his pretty artist-wife, their sick little boy, and the field of unknowable Tomorrows stretching before them. He wondered whether he would have chosen to go on living had he faced a choice back then, knowing what lay in the field: that Tomorrow and Tomorrow would bring
this.

This horror, this sacrifice.

That’s what moms and dads and husbands and wives are supposed to do: sacrifice!

Which is what Lorna had told him more than once, usually in response to Carl’s insistence that they institutionalize Jeremy. Which certainly would have made their lives easier, would have freed them to live like normal human beings.

Would
this
have made Lorna happy? he wondered absurdly. Did
this
meet her criteria for sacrifice?

Lindsay was talking now, not Lorna: “You’re holding up well, Carl. You look strong, and that’s good. I can see strength in your face, and I can”—she stammered, searched—“feel your love for Jeremy.”

In answer Carl reached out and touched her cheek, feeling close to her in a way that he had never felt with another woman, not even Lorna. Magic had brought Lindsay and him together. But wasn’t it magic that brought
all
men and women together? he wondered.

“I just want you to know,” Lindsay went on, whispering to keep the others in the van from hearing, “that I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve caused you over the years. I’m sorry for misjudging you, forjudging you at all. I hope you can forgive me. If we come out of this...” She lowered her eyes.

“No apology needed,” he whispered.

“Best not to waste time,” said Hannie with a scolding tone. “The longer we delay, the more likelihood there is of Hadrian discerning our intentions. Go now. But remember, Carl”—her tone changed to sympathy, concern—“we are all with you. We shan’t fail you.”

Carl shook hands with Stu, who was now the keeper of the stubby Roman sword, and with Robbie, who gave a thumbs-up sign. He then headed for the pair of crumbling gateposts that marked the entrance to Whiteleather Place.

The once-Teri Zolten met him at the front door of the mansion as though she were expecting him and made hideous small talk as she led him down to the undercroft. The sight and sound of her enraged him, but he tried to shut her out of his mind, tried to ignore the treacly stench of half-living flesh that trailed behind her. With every descending step into the curving stairwell, with every new breath of the stinking air, fear tightened its grip: He was about to give himself to the thing that had done
this
to a beautiful young girl.

Lindsay had said a few moments ago that he looked strong, and in truth he felt strong. He felt strong enough to destroy the squad of acolytes who slunk around him in the shadows of the tunnel—physically, with his fists and feet, ripping and stomping and bashing. But he fought down the urge and walked on, like a condemned heretic to Torquemada’s dungeon, following the Teri-thing.

His usher pushed through the heavy wooden door to the undercroft, moved aside, and retired into the shadows of the tunnel behind him. Carl stepped into the rubicund light of a hundred candles, then down three steps to the stone floor. Standing before the black maw on the far wall were Hadrian Craslowe and Jeremy, both robed in red and black satin, their eyes agleam and their faces grinning. They had apparently been busy with the array of silver bowls and chalices on the table before them, engaged in some unspeakable ritual that Craslowe had been reading from a massive old book.

“So you’ve finally come, have you,
Dad?
” said Jeremy by way of greeting, riveting his father with his laserlike eyes and grinning tightly. “So nice to have you, so nice indeed.”

The boy’s snideness aroused little feeling in Carl. This was not his son talking, not the child he had dreamed of nurturing and guiding to a love of truth and goodness; not the innocent babe he had deserted so long ago. This was an intruder, a thief of bodies and dreams and hopes. What horrified him was the sudden thought that he himself might be infiltrated by that evil, that Carl Trosper would become not merely a sacrifice but a living member of the enemy. The thought shook him to the cellar of his soul.