Witch Hunt (40 page)

Cliff lit a cigarette and shook his head. “You’re too mighty a force.”

Father Nolan hoisted the large white flag with the bright red cross on it, and the four men emerged from hiding. The Germans’ gunfire didn’t die off immediately, but Cliff issued an order for his men to hold theirs. His mind sought out the German officer, Karl Eberlein.

Christ, my men aren’t going to go for this,
Eberlein, in his own language, was thinking
. If I order them to cease fire, they might take me out; they haven’t gone through all of this just to let the poor bastards go. Ah, but it’s all such a damn waste. Maybe I can show my support of the humanitarian effort and appeal to their higher instincts despite their anger and hate.
He felt a moment of fear for his own safety
. If I don’t try, I won’t be able to live with myself, so what the hell?
Eberlein put his own gun aside and began to sing, in his loud baritone, the Christmas hymn “Silent Night.”

Cliff’s own shock at Eberlein’s actions was echoed by the thoughts of the German soldiers. Cliff’s mind swept theirs, and he could hear the resistance and, finally, the acceptance. The gunfire died off as, one by one, the members of the German line began to take up the song.

Cliff’s men couldn’t understand the words of the German song, but they knew the tune. Soon they began to sing the words as they knew them. Cliff, moved beyond words, couldn’t join them. Instead, as the rescue party began to remove the fallen Americans from the marsh, he wept.

The experience on the battlefield the night of the Winter Solstice changed Cliff. Dori’s self-sacrifice in his effort to save Glynis had impressed him, but he understood the power of human love and the courage it could lend. However, the selfless love and courage exhibited by Kibby, Father Nolan and his team, and Karl Eberlein toward others whom they didn’t even know spoke of a higher love with which Cliff had been totally unfamiliar. It was a kind of love he now longed to know intimately. It was spiritual, and Cliff knew that his religion, as his family had come to practice it, couldn’t provide such an experience. He set aside his prejudice, and with profound humility, asked Father Nolan for religious instruction.

Autumn, 1945 - Montvue, Colorado

“A priest? You’re going to become a damnable Catholic priest?” Bea’s shock mirrored that of all the family.

“How could you?” Glynis asked. “I’ve always admired you so.”

“I’ve found what I want to do in life,” Cliff said. He had expected a bad reaction.

“But the way they persecuted us,” Vivian — the new Mrs. Alan Hawthorne — said.

“The church has an inglorious history. And there are no excuses for the atrocities it has committed in the name of God. But through it all the church has preserved a spiritual gem that has remain unflawed. It’s that beauty to which I’ve responded.”

“But the persecutions,” Bea said.

“Well, as a member of the hierarchy, maybe I’ll be able to help prevent that from recurring.”

“How can you just forsake your beliefs like that?” Dori asked.

“I haven’t. I’ve just added something.”

“That’s bullshit.” Dori shook his head. “Pure bullshit.”

Alan shrugged. “Shucks, I guess we planned this welcome home party for nothing.”

“Because I’m not welcome now?”

Alan looked at Tony, whose face was glowing with rage.

Tony stood up and pointed at Cliff with a trembling finger. “This party was for my eldest son. My eldest son is dead.”

Cliff swallowed his pain and tried to remain centered in his understanding of the greater Father. He put his hat and coat back on. “In that case, my condolences to you and your family. I’ll pray for you.”

“We don’t need your prayers,” Bea said.

“Madam, I have a feeling that you and yours are going to need them very much.” Cliff dodged her airborne sherry bottle as he let himself out the front door of Hawthorne Manor.

Before he left the grounds, he paused by the statue of Venus and reverently dropped a shiny new penny at her feet. “You need to help them find a higher kind of love,” he told her. “You’re the one they understand. Help them, somehow, at sometime before their mighty reign comes to an end, to regain what they’ve lost.”

Chapter Eleven

Summer

Montvue, Colorado

Friday Night

Melanie threw up into the cobra fountain.

“Oh, now you’ve ruined it,” Hemlock said. Essex’s followers were reveling in debauchery, while Essex surgically removed Amber’s internal organs and placed them in a cooler of ice.

“This isn’t real, it’s a nightmare,” Melanie said, trying to convince herself.

“What a pussy,” Hemlock said. “I thought you were a witch.”

“Witches celebrate life. We don’t destroy it.”

“That sounds boring,” Hemlock said.

Melanie kept her eyes averted from the desecration of Amber’s body and crawled into a corner, where she huddled in terror. She had never been too interested in the religion of her people, having been more entertained by the power. But now she felt an urgent need for spiritual solace. From the Hawthorne Book of Shadows entries made by her father’s great-great-grandmother Sylvan, she had learned about the legend of Aradia, the holy woman who had appeared among the oppressed Italian peasants in the fourteenth century and helped them regain their lost power. Melanie found it easier to supplicate a great spirit who had once lived as a human being than a nebulous force of creation contained in the concept of Earth Goddess. So she prayed to Aradia and asked for protection.

Jason and Gil rendezvoused shortly before midnight at the appointed place, beneath one of the towering elm trees on the Hawthorne grounds.

“Did you bring it?” Jason asked.

Gil pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it. He removed a thick lock of pale blond hair.

“How’d you get it?”

“Gloria — the fat girl who tried to get in my pants all last spring — she works at the shop where Mrs. Cody gets her hair done.”

The moonlight reflected off the hair as Jason examined it.

“Do you think we have the power to pull this off?” Gil asked.

“You sound as if you wish we didn’t.”

“I do.”

Jason gave Gil a hard stare. “Wimps won’t survive these times. And I, for one, am not a wimp.”

Gil bristled. “Me either.”

“Good, then let’s get our revenge. Let’s give them a reason to be afraid of us.”

Leigh was dreaming about Craig. He was telling her something about someone named Tiffany — he was giving her a warning — when she felt her consciousness being insistently drawn back into her body.

“Mommy. Mommy, wake up.”

Leigh opened her eyes to see the shadowy form of Adrian by her bedside. When she switched on the lamp, the light fell on his tiny face, and she gasped at his pale, haunted expression. “What’s wrong?”

He swallowed hard. “I saw something.”

She took his hand and felt the dread he was feeling. “What did you see?”

Tears filled his eyes and spilled over into the deep shadows that outlined them. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Leigh sat up and urged him onto her lap. “It might help to get it off your chest.”

“I don’t wanna tell you the pacifics.”

“Mmmm. What about the generalities?”

“The what?”

“In general, what you saw.”

“Lots of blood.”

Leigh’s heart skipped a beat. “Anything else?”

“Melanie. Melanie needs help.”

“So, are you going to kill me tonight, too?” Melanie asked Essex.

“No need. One at a time pleases the bloodthirsty bloke we serve well enough.” He paused and ran a blood-encrusted fingernail along her cheek. “Actually, you hold the promise of two for one if we can keep you a secret long enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“The old bloke just loves newborn babies.”

Melanie’s panic took on a new dimension. She quickly decided that she’d rather they just kill her with the baby inside her, loved and protected until the end, instead of as a separate entity with all the fear that held in and of itself. And they’d probably torture it, too. “You might as well just kill me now, because if you hold me they’ll find me. You forget that we’re witches. We have power.”

Essex laughed. “Yes, I can see how far that power has gotten you, my little Damiana.”

“The police will find me if my family doesn’t.”

“Your car’s already been disposed of. And we have a hidden cellar where we’ve held others before you. You’re ours now. You do have a choice, though. You could join us. I could dig havin’ a priestess of your ancestry.”

Melanie thought about it. Maybe she could buy time and get away.

“We could even start tonight,” Essex said. “Pox brought along his collie. I’m sure he could be coerced into sacrificing it to the cause.”

“Cause?”

“Your first ritual murder.”

Melanie sighed. There was no way she could willfully destroy an innocent life.

Essex laughed again and unbuttoned her black robe. “I thought not. Besides, dead you’ll bring me a fortune. Big demand for organs with your blood type.”

“What? I don’t even know my blood type. How could you?”

“It’s my business to know. I sell body parts on the black market — for transplant, you understand. Desperate rich people don’t ask too many questions about how a new heart or kidney was obtained. I have a reputation for delivering quality stuff. I only kill young, healthy people. And I was a medical student for a time, so know how to handle the scalpel like a pro. I’m a whiz at cross-matching tissue types, too.”

Melanie was too stunned by his revelations to give much attention to the fact that his British accent had shifted to one more American.

“Adolf is a private pilot. We’ve got our own plane — the airport’s close by; he just left with the latest goods.”

His latest goods.
Amber
. Melanie was numb. “How industrious you young entrepreneurs are.”

“Exactly. But we still find time for sport.” He pulled the robe off her. “Tonight we play, for tomorrow we might die. Eh, love?”

Saturday

It was dawn. Leigh knelt next to Marek in front of the altar in his ritual room and tried to calm the pain, terror, and despair she felt. She was feeling Melanie.

After Adrian told her that Melanie was in trouble, Leigh’s thoughts reached out for her, and she had linked empathically with the girl. It was a horrible experience, but it did assure her that Melanie was still alive. Leigh remembered that Marek had said tracking was one of his gifts, and so she wasted no time in seeking his assistance.

Marek spread a county map across the altar and scanned it with a crystal pendulum. Its swing centered around a location east of the city limits.

“I’d say she’s out on the old Snyder farm,” he said. “Rumor has it that the man who owns it now is a drug dealer.”

“Adrian said he saw blood. And I feel the presence of quite a few people.” Leigh paused. “Should we get the police to go with us?”

Marek nodded. “I’d say it would be a good idea.”

“How do we explain ourselves to them?”

Marek chuckled. “Carefully.”

It was six-thirty in the morning when Sergeant Cosworth saw the Hawthorne woman enter the station with the Polish gardener. He took the last swallow of his coffee and braced himself for another installment of the Hawthorne string of tragedies.

Leigh approached his desk. “Excuse me, we need help.” Her face was anxious and drawn.

“Yep, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can I do for you?”

“You know me?”

“I’m Cosworth.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I remember. Thank you for your help with my husband’s funeral.” She stood awkwardly in front of his desk. “My niece, Melanie. I think she’s being held against her will.”

“By who?”

“I don’t know …” She faltered. “By the drug dealers who live at the old Snyder farm.”

“You say you know for a fact that Mr. Essex whatever-his-name-is is a drug dealer?”

“Well, no — ”

Marek spoke up. “Miss Melanie was heard to say she was going out there last night, and she’s not come home. We’re worried about her.”

“I see. Why did she go out there in the first place?”

“We aren’t sure,” Marek said.

Cosworth didn’t usually light up a cigar this early in the day, but he found himself reaching for one. “Okay, let me get this straight. Your niece — how old is she?”