Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(79)

Still she said nothing.

“How to begin?” He gave a nervous laugh. This girl made him feel like a teenager again. “I don’t know how you did it, exactly, but your coming here is…a sign. It is without doubt a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

He looked at her beautiful, oddly impassive face. He sensed this woman was even deeper than he had believed. So much the better.

“This, Constance, is our chamber of worship.”

“Our chamber.”

“Yes. Our chamber. And this is our altar.”

“May I ask what religion?”

“You may. We practice the oldest surviving religion on earth. The original religion. As you’ve no doubt guessed, we are witches.” He observed her face closely, but could not quite interpret the look that briefly crossed her face. “Real witches. Our worship goes back twenty thousand years.”

“And those women you’ve brutalized?”

“Not brutalized. Not at all. Please, give me a chance to explain before you judge. Constance, I’m sure you must realize that your coming here—and my arrival at the same time—is not an accident. Nor is it an accident that Carole failed to poison you with that chai tea of hers. She’s a jealous woman—but we’re off the subject.”

Constance did not reply.

“From the very beginning, I saw that you were one of those exceptional people you spoke of back at the Inn. Do you recall that conversation?”

“Very well.”

“I knew then that you could be one of us. We haven’t taken a new member into our family in two hundred years. It takes a very special person to understand who we are. You’re that person. There’s a rebellion in you, a yearning for freedom. I see in you the desire to live by your own rules.”

“Indeed.”

Gavin was amazed at how easy this was, how natural it felt. “And there’s a darkness in you.”

“Darkness?”

This was more than encouraging. “Yes, but a good kind of darkness. The darkness that brings light.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a witch. My parents were witches, my grandparents, going back half a dozen generations in Exmouth, and before that Oldham, the New Salem Marsh Colony, Salem, the British Isles, and so forth into the mists of time. I was born into this tradition just as naturally as Christians are born into their faith. Our practices may seem a little startling to an outsider, but so would a church service to someone who knew nothing of Christianity. I hasten to add that we’re not in opposition to Christianity. We believe in live and let live. We aren’t cruel people. For example, we never would have participated in that horrible mass murder of women and children on board that ship. That was done by so-called Christians.”

Gavin paused, looking at her with curiosity, trying to peer into her mind. “Look at the beauty of this chamber, the ancient things in here, the sense of history and purpose. The corridors leading here, I know, can be off-putting—the blood and the smell and the rest. But you see, Constance, our Sabbat ceremony is free of euphemism. It involves real blood and real flesh in real sacrifice. And, I might add…real sensuality.”

Again, her face betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

He reached out to take her hand, and she allowed it. Her hand was cold and clammy, but he pressed it anyway.

“I don’t want to force our beliefs on you. But let me tell you a little of our history and origin. I’m sure you know much of the story already: for seeking his freedom, Lucifer and his followers were cast out of heaven. But not into hell. They ended up right here on earth—and we are the Maleficarum, their spiritual descendants. Lucifer, the rebel angel, gives us the freedom to be and do what we wish.”

“And you wish to convert me to these beliefs.”

Gavin laughed, blushing despite himself. “You didn’t end up here, this night of all nights, by accident. You and I were guided here by forces greater than ourselves; forces we ignore at our peril.”

“What kind of forces?”

“Earlier tonight, two members of our community were supposed to have conducted a rare and extremely important sacrifice. However, it didn’t go as planned.”

“What kind of sacrifice, exactly?”

“We worship Lucifer, but we breed a mortal devil as the focus of our worship. He’s part demon, part human. His name is Morax and he has lived here, in these tunnels, for many years. He is a symbol, a spiritual gateway, a…a medium to help us communicate with the unseen world. But now, we’re in troublous times. Your friend Pendergast discovered and defiled our ancient settlement, removing important artifacts. That was a shock to the Daemonium, to our protectors. And Carole tells me you figured out that the witches’ colony didn’t die out as everyone believed, but instead moved south. Here, as a matter of fact. As a result, our community has been thrown into its worst crisis since 1692. Secrecy is the only way we can survive. We’ve always perpetuated the idea that the witches, the real witches, who fled Salem died out centuries ago. But with all that’s happened in Exmouth recently—the killings and the subsequent attention—our coven was in danger of being exposed. Worse, the blasphemous use of the sacred Tybane Inscriptions by the Dunwoodys, trying to cover their murderous family history, surely angered the Daemonium. This forced us to do what we’ve only had to do a few times in the past: sacrifice our living demon to appease the powers of darkness. The last time we sacrificed our demon was during the hurricane of 1938. As a result, we were without doubt saved from extinction. And so just yesterday the coven leadership decided that we once again had to sacrifice our demon, Morax, to Lucifer in order to gain his intercession; to keep our worship a secret. It was supposed to happen earlier this evening—on the first night of the full moon.”