Dark Rites

“All hail Satan!”

The cry went up. The gushing blood was caught in a chalice. The cup was passed around.

It was brought before the girl; she was marked in blood over her breasts—what the markings meant, Alex didn’t know.

But she was alive!

The chalice was passed again. It came to him.

He was supposed to drink.

He did.

It was amazing what terror and the will to survive could do for a man.

* * *

He didn’t vomit until he was back in his little cell.

He fell on his little cot, shivering and sick.

“Vickie, please, please, find me!” he said softly. “Please, please!”

He thought he might cry; he felt he should, but didn’t. He was too bewildered, too weary, after the night.

He just lay there. He tried to assure himself that help would come.

“One thing for sure, Vickie, if I make it out of here alive. This fellow is going to be a vegetarian! Maybe I’ll even be vegan!”

His cell had no windows, but he thought that it was late in the night when he finally slept.

He might be an agnostic, but he drifted off whispering the Lord’s Prayer.

And he couldn’t forget the woman, the beautiful, blonde woman standing there, obviously drugged, smeared in the blood as if...

As if she was being prepared for a time when it was her blood that would be spilled.

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“Oh, no, no—I think that the mood has been quite killed for the night,” Vickie told Griffin.

“All right, I imagine that was a bit uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable? Understatement!”

“But so cool!” Griffin told her. “And it wasn’t like the postman walked in or anything—”

“It was worse! Those are your friends.”

“Who thought you were incredibly cool, beautiful, sexy, sensual...”

Vickie couldn’t help but burst into laughter; Griffin was trying so hard.

Rocky and Devin were gone; they had headed to Griffin’s apartment, where they’d stay for what was left of the night. But they’d all determined their course of action.

Rocky and Devin were on a week’s leave from work, heading up for a visit to the Salem area, which they did at least once every year. But it wasn’t necessary that they hurry. Jackson Crow, Krewe field director, had told Griffin to take whatever time he needed weeks ago, when Alex Maple had first been attacked.

They had time to devote to this. So they’d start looking for Alex as a team. They’d find as many people involved in Alex’s life as they could. And they’d keep looking into the saying that had been written on Alex’s chest.

And then finally, after making all their plans, for what remained of that night, Vickie and Griffin were alone together at last.

“Glorious, gorgeous, naked flesh and spiked heels,” Griffin said huskily, sliding his hands beneath the oversize T-shirt she’d chosen for bed. “Beyond sexy, beyond sensual.”

There was nothing like the feel of his hands on that naked flesh for her, Vickie knew.

“Forgive me!” he murmured.

His kiss, hot and deliciously wet, all along her naked flesh. T-shirt gone, panties shed, his mouth, his touch on the length of her...

“You’re forgiven,” she told him.

He rolled with her, straddling over her, looking down deeply into her eyes.

“Prove it!” he challenged.

And so, her lips on his then-naked flesh, she did.

It was very late when they finally slept.

Vickie assumed that she’d sleep well.

She didn’t.

She dreamed that she heard her name being called. There was a plea to the sound; it was desperate cry for help.

She got up in the middle of the night. It was very dark at first—there was just the bed with Griffin lying on the light patch of the white sheets, the darkness stretching before her.

She found her robe and slipped into it, seeing a vague form of light in front of her.

She was walking through a forest trail. The trees were rich and deep and beautiful. She could smell the lushness of the earth.

“Vickie...please...”

The sound was closer. She kept moving.

She could hear a rush of water. She was coming to something...a stream or a river.

She hurried through the trees, and she came to a clearing.