Blood Sins

Chapter Eleven

TESSA LOOKED AT Sawyer steadily for a moment, then said, "We should probably move from here. Walk around. Take advantage of our presumed solitude." Sawyer got up from the boulder seat as she did, but said, "Avoiding an answer?"

"No, I think you're probably right. I also think Samuel can do a lot of damage before he finally destroys himself, even if that's the way this is going. I asked you once before, but can't you feel the energy of this place? How strange it is?"

They had turned with tacit agreement away from the natural church to continue down the slope, and Sawyer walked beside her for several steps in silence before answering. He still felt that wary sense of danger, but it was oddly unfocused.

It's not this place. It's more than that. Different. There's something else now.

It made him want to reach for his gun.

"I feel it," he answered finally. "Sets my teeth on edge. But it wasn't always like this. Years ago, I mean. It's only been in the last few months that I really noticed a difference up here in the way the air felt. The way I felt when I was here."

"Before then it was normal?"

"As far as that goes, yeah. What changed?"

"Him, probably."

"Do you know why?"

"Not really. Psychic abilities tend to evolve, or do when they're used. And they can be affected by everything from the person's mental and emotional state to a summer storm or other strong electromagnetic field."

"That's a wide range of possibilities."

"I don't have any easy answers, Sawyer." She sent him a look that was a little wry and more than a little reluctant. "Most of this is new to me too. Until about a year ago, all I knew about psychic abilities was what I was coping with myself."

"Alone?"

"Pretty much. No family to speak of, and I've been on my own since college." A frown flitted across her face and then vanished. "It wasn't until college that I really built my shields, and then it was from necessity. I kept picking up test answers, responses the professors wanted from us, stuff like that. It was cheating, and I didn't like it. So I learned to shut it out."

"What's wrong?" Sawyer asked.

"Well, cheating"

"Not that. You winced. What is it?"

Tessa wasn't at all sure she was comfortable being observed so closely even though a part of her was keenly aware of his every move and expression, but heard herself replying, "A little headache, that's all."

"Starting when?"

"Just now. Probably this place."

With his own senses or instincts still nagging at him, Sawyer said, "Is the hair on the back of your neck standing up? Because mine is."

She looked at him, then looked around them. "The cameras. Probably. They're all over the place."

"And if it's not the cameras? Tessa, you told me Samuel can kill without touching someone. Without even being near them. So how would you know if you were a target? How would you know that sort of attack was coming?"

Tessa thought about the report of Sarah's death, of how quickly she had died, without warning, and drew a deep breath, aware now of building tension inside her. "I don't know," she replied.

"Could it start with a headache?"

"I don't know."

"Tessa"

"He has no reason to consider me a threat. So why would he feel the need to kill me?"

"You don't know he doesn't consider you a threat," Sawyer countered. "He could have been delving into your mind this whole time."

"He hasn't been. I'd know."

"Would you?"

"Yes." She thought so. She hoped so. But a chill stole over her, and it had nothing to do with the crisp winter day.

Sounding a little frustrated, Sawyer said, "So I guess that means I can't talk you into leaving right now?"

"I can't leave yet. Do you have any idea how difficult it's been to get someone inside the Compound, let alone the church?"

"Does it have to be you?"

"I'm here. The universe opens doors for a reason."

Sawyer quite abruptly took her hand, his fingers twining with hers.

Surprised, Tessa said, "Why did you"

"You're not going through this door alone," he told her. "Whether you like it or not, I'm here too. That open door is as much mine as it is yours. And I'm a stubborn man."

She thought about protesting, but his hand was surprisingly warm, and surprisingly comforting. She liked it. She liked it too much. And all she could think of to say was, "Better be careful. One thing I've learned is that when two psychics make a connection, even a simple one odd things can happen."

"Odd things are already happening," Sawyer said, sounding calmer now. "For instance, have you noticed there's no livestock here in the Compound? No pets visible?"

Tessa followed his lead obediently, even as she wondered if he meant this as a distractionor if he was just able to keep his mind on business a lot easier than she could. "I noticed yesterday. Kept hoping today I'd see a few cows or horses, but no luck. There were once pets and livestock, I take it?"

"There were last fall."

"And they disappeared suddenly?"

"Well, sometime since late September. That was the last time I was up here until we pulled the first body from the river almost two weeks ago."

"What are you thinking?"

Sawyer didn't hesitate. "Sacrifice."

Tessa glanced at him, then allowed her gaze to roam around as they walked, for all the world as if she were mildly curious about her surroundings. Not that there was much to see except a large, unnervingly vacant pasture. She definitely had a sense of being watched but had to assume it was a camera somewhere nearby.

Needed to assume that.

Because the alternative was a lot more unnerving than the empty pasture. And, potentially, a lot more dangerous.

I see you.

Samuel reached out further, harder, irritated by his own weakness. He was tired, yes, but this should have been easy.

Relatively easy, at any rate. Because she was just a woman, and women were, after all, designed by nature to let men in.

This one was stubborn, though. Well guarded. He could sense an open door there but couldn't seem to find it. He forced himself to draw back a bit, to probe more delicately, even though it meant fighting his own instincts.

He always wanted to break them. To reach inside and crush, rewarded by the incredible burst of energy they released when death took them.

But that was for his enemies and for those who wanted to leave him and leave God's grace, not his Chosen.

And he wasn't yet sure which this one was.

So he used up precious energy by testing her defenses with all the delicacy of years of practice, probing, searching for the door he could sense was already opening for him

That simple statement again in her mind. Just thatand a sense of a presence that was incredibly strong but not threatening.

Still, Tessa felt a strong urge to shore up her shields, to protect herself. To close the door she had edged open in an effort to sense this place, to figure it out. Because she wasn't here to protect herself. She was here to gather information about the church and/or Samuel. And she was here to try to figure out who or what had made a connection with her yesterday.

I see you.

She looked down at their clasped hands and for just a moment wondered if Sawyer had made the connection. But almost immediately she knew it wasn't him. Hadn't been him yesterday, at any rate; she wasn't at all sure a connection of some kind wasn't being made right this moment. Because his hand was warm and she liked it. Because he smelled of some spicy soap or aftershave, and she liked that.

Tessa pushed that away, not ready to deal with either her own feelings or some very basic emotions she could feel in Sawyer.

Man, he has a lousy sense of timing.

Or maybe it was her timing that was off. Way off. Or was being affected?

Yesterday, and just nowwho or what had connected with her? Was even now there, as though waiting for something. And even though she was conscious of no threat from it, why was she still unsure whether that connection was a good thing or a bad one?

It brought you back here. And maybe not for a good reason.

Probably not for a good reason.

"Tessa?"

"Are you thinking ritual sacrifice?" she asked, trying to focus thoughts that were becoming more scattered.

"No. I'm thinking that maybe it was an unexpected or at least unintended consequence of something else. Is that possible?"

"I suppose so."

She felt an odd tugging, an almost physical sensation, as real as Sawyer's hand holding hers. But it wasn't him. Something else tugged, pulled as though to get her attention. Tessa looked around, and immediately a flash, as though from sunlight off something metallic, caught her eye. It had originated, she thought, from just inside the woods that edged this pasture to the west.

"What is it?"

"Over there." She had turned in that direction without even thinking about it. "I saw something flash."

Since he hadn't released her hand, Sawyer also turned, remaining by her side as he lowered his voice to say, "It might be another damn camera."

"I don't think so." Tessa realized they were following a very faint path through the pasture and had a sudden almost overpowering sense of many feet walking it before them.

Small feet.

Be careful He wants in. You mustn't let him.

"Tessa?"

She frowned but continued along the path. "This way."

"You're beginning to scare me," he said, following.

That was an odd thing to say. "I can't imagine why. I'm not very scary." She thought he swore beneath his breath, but her attention was fixed on the woods that lay just ahead.

Be careful Tessa.

It was only a patch of sparse woods, maybe an acre in size, and in the center was a clearing that probably occupied half of that acre. Tessa stopped only a few feet inside the clearing, staring down at a cross that had been roughly fashioned from two sticks, a little crooked because of the weight on one arm of the cross.

She bent down and then straightened, holding a leather collar in her free hand. It had a rabies tag and a second, bone-shaped tag with the name Buddy engraved on it. As she moved the collar, the silvery tag caught a glint of sunlight and flashed, as it must have done to catch her attention in the field.

Vaguely aware of Sawyer standing just behind her, Tessa looked across the clearing at countless small mounds of dirt, most of them with a pile of stones or a rough stick-cross at one end, and almost all of them boasting a collar of some kind, either on the ground or draped over crosses and stones. There were bright plastic flowers here and there, stuck down into chipped, handleless coffee cups or in the ground, some of them faded by time but quite a lot of them not. There were even bedraggled toys and rawhide chews.

"It's a pet cemetery," Sawyer said. "But an awful lot of graves for a community that didn't exist barely a decade ago. And a lot of them look to be fairly recent."

Tessa hadn't intended to open the door in her mind wider, to open herself up. The opposite, if anything. But as she stood there holding the collar, she was abruptly conscious of sounds, of barks and meows and children laughing. The sounds grew louder and louder inside her head, and as they did, waves of pain and grief swept over her. And fear. Desperate fear.

"Tessa?"

"They thought it was an act of God," she whispered, trying in vain to close down her senses, to protect herself from the assault. "An act of their God. He was there was a storm, and he was angry. They had sinned. And their God punished them."

He killed them. He killed them all.

Tessa felt the agony of that, the grief, and tried to cope, tried to ride out the ferocious emotions.

Stop it. He uses feelings to get in, don't you understand? He makes you feel things, and that opens the door for him. Don't feel, Tessa. Don't let him in

She swayed on her feet, the collar dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers. As a wave of darkness swept abruptly over her, Tessa wasn't even aware of Sawyer catching her before she could fall and lifting her into his arms.

Reese DeMarco opened his eyes slowly and for a moment stared across his office at nothing. He finally pushed his chair back from the desk and rose, absently rubbing the nape of his neck as he crossed the spacious room to the door and unlocked it.

He made his way silently down the short, carpeted hallway that separated his office from the living quarters of Reverend Samuel, encountering no one else. It wasn't quite lunchtime, and everyone knew and respected Samuel's habit of meditating in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, so the upper floor of the church tended to be all but deserted at those times.

DeMarco reached a big, paneled wooden door and opened it without knocking. He passed through the familiar foyerspare and simple, as all these rooms wereand through the living room, notable only for the colorful light splashed all about from the stained-glass windows.

Off to the right, two more closed doors offered access to a study and a bedroom suite. DeMarco paused at the study door for a moment, then quietly opened it and stepped into the room.

This room, too, was alive with color from three large stained glass windows, but the decor otherwise was very plain. Simple shelves held scores of booksnot elegant leather-bound volumes but once brightly colored dust-jacketed books, obviously collected over time. A big desk sat with its back to the center window, and two low-backed visitor's chairs sat on the worn old rug before it. A leather sofa and matching chair and ottoman were positioned opposite the windows.

Samuel occupied the chair. He sat with his feet flat on the floor, hands relaxed in his lap, head slightly bowed. Eyes closed.

DeMarco waited silently.

It was at least a couple of minutes before Samuel finally opened his eyes and lifted his head. He didn't look like a man who had been meditating, resting; he looked like a man on the edge of exhaustion. His face was pale, haggard, and there were deep shadows beneath his dull eyes. When he drew a breath to speak, it appeared to require a tremendous effort.

"They're leaving," he said.

"Yes."

"Tell Carl to let them through the gate. No questions asked."

"I'll see to it."

Samuel drew another difficult breath. "The weather report?"

"Rain by the weekend. No mention of storms."

A ghost of a laugh escaped Samuel. "Murphy's Law."

In a measured tone, DeMarco said, "With all due respect, this is a waste of your energy."

"I have no choice."

"According to the Prophecy, we're safe for now You said it was summer. You said she was older."

"I may have been wrong."

"Prophecies," DeMarco said, still in that deliberate voice, "are tricky beasts. By acting before it's time, you may bring about the very thing you hope to avoid."

"Perhaps I can't avoid it. Perhaps I never could." Samuel's lips twisted into something more grimace than smile. "They don't understand. They'll never understand. They want me dead, Reese. Worse than dead. Broken. Destroyed. Especially him."

"It doesn't have to end that way."

"It willunless I destroy him before he can destroy me."

"They have no proof. No evidence. If they had, they would have come after you a long time ago. You're safe here."

"Among my people."

"Father"

"They are my people, aren't they? Bound to me body and soul?"

"Of course, Father."

"Will they die for me, Reese? Will you?"

Steadily, without hesitation, DeMarco replied, "Of course, Father."

Samuel's mouth twisted into another of those not-quite-smiles. "Good. Now, let Carl know he's to allow the chief and Mrs. Gray to leave. Andsend Ruth to me."

"Of course, Father." DeMarco withdrew from the study, closing the door quietly. He passed back through the apartment, and it wasn't until the main door was closed behind him that the tension in his shoulders eased.

Just a little.

He paused for an instant, almost leaning back against the door, then drew a deep breath, straightened, and went on to do Father's bidding.

"I would have put you in the backseat," Sawyer said, his voice more than a little grim. "But I thought there'd be fewer questions this way."

Tessa blinked at him, feeling a little dizzy and very confused. She looked down, realizing that she was buckled into the passenger side of his Jeeptightly buckled. She eased the shoulder strap a little and tried to ask a baffled question. "Where?"

"We just left the Compound. I'll send somebody to get your car later. Nobody was around when I carried you to the Jeep, and for once Fisk just opened the gates without comment."

"Carried me?" Well, that's disconcerting. And I missed it. Dammit. She shoved the regret aside. Not now. I can't think about this now. "From where?"

"The pet cemetery. Don't you remember? What the hell happened to you back there? You were out. And I mean out. You didn't faintyou were almost comatose."

Tessa forced her sluggish mind off the subject of her apparently unconscious self being carried a goodly distance by a very attractive man she hardly knew, and tried to remember. It took a minute or two, but the fog in her brain seemed to be dissipating as they left the Compound behind. She felt bone-weary, but at least she could think again. And remember.

"The pet cemetery. Jesus. He killed them. All the pets, the livestock. It was He was furious."

Sawyer let out a rough sigh, and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "That's what I thought you said. You had a vision?"

"Of sorts. I don't really have visions, usually, I just know things. And I know that. I felt it."

"Shit. He killed them? All at once?"

"I think so. Last October. He was away for a while, for weeks at least, and when he came back there was some kind of power struggle going on inside the congregation. Somebody else wanted to run the church. Samuel was"

"He was what??" Sawyer shot her a sharp glance but then returned his attention to the road, intent on putting more distance between them and the church.

"Weakened." Tessa's voice was hardly more than a murmur, and she stared straight ahead, struggling to sort through the images and emotions she was remembering. "Hurt. He had tried to use his abilities in different ways, new ways, but there was somebody stronger fighting back. He lost that fight. Badly. And then came back home to rebellion. It was more than he could stand. He called them all to that outside pulpit, even though there was a storm coming. Maybe because there was a storm coming. He didn't think he'd have the strength to tap into it, but"

"But?"

She shook her head. "Somehow he did. Somehow he drew energy from the storm. I'm not sure exactly what happened; it's all fuzzy and jumbled. All I know for sure is that the problemthe man who wanted to run the church his wayvanished. Samuel's congregation was convinced all over again that they should follow him. And all the animals died."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Tessa felt something move against her foot. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have jumped in alarm, but she was too tired to waste the energy. Instead, she merely leaned forward to see what it was.

A big shoulder bag, the type students sometimes carried their books or notebooks or laptops in. Heavy canvas, with a flap opening.

"Is this yours?" she asked, even though she knew as soon as she touched it that it didn't belong to him.

He looked over as she lifted the bag from the floorboard and held it in her lap. "No, I've never seen it before. Tessa, be careful."

"It's all right." She unfastened the big clasp and pushed the heavy flap back. Inside, shivering and staring up at her fearfully, was a tiny white poodle.

Sawyer frowned. "A dog? From inside the Compound?"

"Unless you brought her with you today." Tessa was cautious until the little dog licked her fingers. Then she lifted what was hardly more than a handful of curling fur out of the bag and held the delicate creature in the crook of her arm. Instantly, the dog snuggled against her and stopped shivering. "Which I gather you didn't."

"No, I didn't. And if all the animals were killed, how could that little thing survive?"

"I think she had help." Tessa had used her free hand to rummage in the side pockets of the bag and discovered a folded piece of paper. What gave her pause was the fact that her own name was block-printed on the outside.

"What?" Sawyer asked.

"Did you see anybody around the Jeep? Somebody who could have realized I wouldn't be going back to my own car?"

"No, I didn't see a soul. And I was watching all the way down the hill. I figured I'd have to explain myself, or at least answer a question or two, especially with that camera trained on the so-called natural church. Kept expecting DeMarco to show up."

"I wonder why he didn't," Tessa murmured as she opened the note. Then she read the brief message written in the same carefully printed handwriting that was on the outside of the note, and the question of why DeMarco had allowed them to leave without comment became the last thing on her mind.

Please, take care of Lexie.

I can't protect her anymore.

Father's started watching me.