Witch Hunt (46 page)

People panicked as Junkman crumpled to the ground.

Melanie saw another man’s rifle turn toward the window. “Duck!” she yelled, but Vivian didn’t respond fast enough. The second bullet fired in as many seconds caught Vivian in the throat, knocking her to the floor. Her eyes wide, she gurgled for a moment, and then lay silent.

Melanie tried to sight in Vivian’s murderer, but he had disappeared in the crowd.

Neither Leigh nor Cody moved. They stood facing each other, their mutual gaze unwavering.

Something within told Leigh to drop the gun she held. Without thought, she obeyed.

Her action served to momentarily defuse the situation. Others who had raised their guns stood hesitant.

“Don’t you understand that love bears the fruit of love, but hate breeds only hate?” The voice was Leigh’s, but the words weren’t her own. Something powerful had taken charge. “How much more suffering is it going to take before you learn?”

Cody’s eyes smarted from the bright light. Was it the rays from the setting sun? Or perhaps the insurgents had some new secret weapon?

Leigh lost herself totally in the warm radiance of the Lady.

Adrian, his hands empty, his demeanor trancelike, appeared on the porch beside Her.

“Listen to the words of this child,” Leigh’s voice said. “See the visions he has to share.”

“This is the beginning of the greatest of holocausts,” Adrian said, his voice old and wise. “More will die than in any other battle ever fought. Fear, superstition, avarice, and hate will take man captive, and the darkest night of the human soul will fall like a smothering, putrid cloak. It will leave none of us untouched.

“Alexander Cody, your hatred has damned your wife to an endless sleep. The witch hunt you’re instigating will cause your daughter to come to forever fear and resent you.

“Nate Randall, your sister will be stoned to death outside her home in Georgia. The accusations of witchcraft will come from her estranged husband; it’ll be his way of gaining custody of their children.

“James Bradshaw, your brother will suffer a fatal stroke defending his daughter, Stephanie, who will find charges of witchcraft leveled against her for her interest in New Age ideas.

“Maggie Kolatch, your son and daughter-in-law are going to have you committed to an insane asylum for practicing witchcraft; and they’ll thereby achieve their goal of obtaining control of your estate.

“John and Penny Denman, your daughter, Autumn — who has epilepsy — will be set on fire by her little friends, Shannon and Lisa. They’ll just be imitating their parents, who were party to the deaths of Craig Hawthorne and Dorian Wildes. Shannon and Lisa have been told burning witches is a righteous thing to do.”

Adrian paused. “If there’s not enough love left in you to care about what happens to faceless millions of people, then maybe there’s enough selfishness in you to make it stop before those you love fall victim to the evil that has been unleashed here. You stand at the turning point. After today there will be no reversing the tide. The time has come to make a choice.”

Both Leigh and Adrian came out of their trances while the people were still reeling from the revelations Adrian had made.

“How could he possibly have known about Autumn’s condition? We’ve kept it a secret,” Leigh heard one woman say.

“Stephanie’s into that shit, too. Could she really be a witch?”

“Mark Kolatch has always been a greedy
SOB
.”

“Cody, how’d the runt know my name and that my sis lives in Georgia?”

Leigh bent down and whispered, “Give Frank the signal.” Then she took his hand and led him into the house, closing and bolting the door behind them.

Vivian’s body lay wide-eyed in a pool of blood, and Glynis’s body was slumped in a lifeless heap on the couch.

“Her heart stopped,” Kamelia said, looking much older than she had only an hour before.

“Get to the back door.
Quickly
.”

Kamelia, Adrian, Melanie, and Helena all ran toward the kitchen. Leigh paused to grab the old carpetbag full of the Hawthorne magical treasures. She gave a final, loving look at the bodies Vivian and Glynis had left behind. “We’re of the same blood now, ladies. We’ll meet again.”

At that moment, with a rock heaved through the front window and a volley of wild gunfire, the crowd outside declared the choice they had made.

Epilogue

Winter

Leigh danced. Her bare breasts swung wildly as she undulated to the hard rock music that filled the nightclub. Craig had once dubbed her style hot-to-trot T-and-A sexery, and never had the label been more applicable than now.

As she danced, she tuned out the men who gawked and shouted lewd suggestions. She had long since overcome her stage fright. In her mind, she dedicated her dance to the Goddess; she was dancing in celebration of life and womanhood and beauty. It became her form of worship of the Lady in a world that sought only to defame Her.

Sometimes a man in the crowd would respond and find himself unconsciously a part of the ritual. Leigh would occasionally feel such a man lifted from a sensual reaction, to a disconcerted awe that defied his own reason. Through Leigh, the Goddess occasionally blessed such a man, and that was good.

When her final set of the evening was complete, Leigh went back to the dressing room to change. When she walked in, the new girl — Jack had said her name was Holly — sat on the couch massaging her feet. Holly looked up at her, and Leigh sensed the same familiarity that she had earlier in the evening. Leigh momentarily lowered her psychic defenses, and she knew.

Leigh and Holly lingered in the dressing room while other dancers retrieved their wraps.

“‘Night, Nicki,” Janet said.

“Good night. Be careful going home,” Leigh replied. In this town, in this club, she was Nicki.

“Good to have you aboard, Holly,” Karen said. “Makes for shorter sets for me.”

Soon they were alone.

Leigh sat down next to her. “Did you ever find your daughter?”

Diane Fox shook her head.

“We both chose red. Think that means something?” Leigh was referring to their dyed hair.

“Color of blood,” Diane said.

“How long have you been on the run?”

“I was on your heels. You were right about the results of my stance.” She paused and looked around. “Funny about the world today. This place is more respectable than a Buddhist temple. Sad commentary.”

“This’ll be my last night. There was a man in the audience. I think he recognized me.”

“Pictures of you and yours have certainly gotten around. I think they’ve been shown in the media more than those of Kennedy’s assassination.” Diane sighed. “God, I’m sorry you’re leaving so soon.”

“What are your plans?”

“Just trying to survive. I’m compiling writings on the persecution. Some of my own, some from other renegades. When it’s over, I’ll publish it. Maybe it’ll help keep this from happening again.”

“I have a poem,” Leigh said. “Maybe when we meet again I’ll have a chance to give it to you.”

They shook hands.

“Good luck.”

“Stay alive.”

Leigh walked through the hushed, snowy night toward the seedy hotel that had sheltered them for the past six weeks. Six weeks had been a long stint … comparatively. However, they had made connections with others in the underground, and they were slowly developing a network. Leigh couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but she knew it was there.

A man stepped out from the shadows of an alley and blocked her path. “Where ya goin’ in such a hurry?” The steam of his breath carried the smell of whiskey.

Leigh wasn’t afraid. She was angry. She could sense his lust and his need to violate the sanctity of her femininity, to inflate himself by degrading her, to feel good by hurting her. That’s what they were doing to Her, too. Leigh was tired of always letting them win.

She made a sign with her hand and pointed it at his genitals. There were some spells she had learned to cast.

He doubled over and emitted an agonized scream.

Wordlessly, she stepped past him and continued her homeward journey.

She heard the names he yelled after her, but they didn’t faze her. She had long become accustomed to being called a witch.

Quietly, she let herself into their rooms. The baby — Melanie and Frank had decided to call him Marek — was fretting in the large basket that served as his crib. Leigh checked the state of his diaper and then cuddled him until he settled down.

Then Leigh performed her early-morning ritual of accounting for everyone. Her children were sleeping together in their bed, Melanie and Frank were asleep in tender embrace, and Helena was tossing and turning. Leigh put a cool hand on the woman’s forehead and soothed the ugly dreams that taunted her.

Leigh hung up her heavy wool coat, and made herself a cup of cocoa on the single-burner hot plate that served as their kitchen. Then she took the Hawthorne Book of Shadows from its hiding place. Her only contribution to it thus far had been the poem she had mentioned to Diane. It would probably be the only contribution she would make, too. She didn’t believe there was a greater lesson she could share with the future than that which it contained.

She read it again, to remind herself.

Shadow Play

With his eyes fixed on Paradise,

   the haunted Christian

blames the shadow. Plagued

by his own demons,

   soul bitten and loveless,

he is bound in the sackcloth of pride,

in cobwebs and ashes.

   While there, thrilled to the wild,

dizzying ride of the flesh,

of phallus and womb, the fresh

   dew of this world, the red,

simple wing of original joy,

like the berrying spring of a child’s

   renewal, the Witch slips out

of the black diaphanous robe

of our common sleep. Behind

   that half-curtain, lives with the sharp

knowledge of danger (Do not, whatever

else you may do, be discovered!).

   Out of that horn of magic, desire,

flesh at once richer and paler than ivory

is bathed — Look! — in original light!

   … Or are those only the elegant

ivory bars of the cage

in which both have been trapped:

   Earth-delighted no less than he

with his cross-obsessed pain?

While She-Without-Form,

   resurrected again and again,

cries out from the nailed thirst of this world

to our own resurrection, that single

   commandment: Love! O heart’s simple name!

O first and final salvation!