Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(79)

A loud slap sounded, and I lost sight of her as my head swung way too far to the side. Apparently, she didn’t get the violence-is-never-the-answer memo. The world tilted and I struggled to stay upright.

“You think we don’t know how to handle your kind? We’ve been doing it for years, sweetheart. Decades. It’s why we were put on Earth. To smite the work of the devil. To erase the abominations to God. To cleanse the Earth of your kind.”

“That shouldn’t take long. There’s only one of me.”

“Is that right?” Mr. Foster asked. I could see him more clearly now. His short brown hair wasn’t as groomed as it had been at the diner and he had a layer of scruff on his jaw. But he was still an incestuous wiener. “Well, then, this should be easy.”

“Why did you … why are you hurting your own son?”

Mr. Foster knelt before me. “You know perfectly well he’s not our son. It was only a matter of time.”

“We tried to do a good deed,” Mrs. Foster said.

As she spoke, the Diviners clapped and shouted an occasional “Hallelujah!” or “Praise be!”

“We took him in,” she continued. “Raised him. Nurtured and cared for him. He was so full of light when he was a baby, but even light can be corrupted. As you are well aware.” She tsked and walked back to Shawn. “Even the brightest of lights can be swayed. He went to you. He turned to you, a corrupted soul, to investigate us, the Divine. He knew the consequences.”

Somehow I doubted that. “He had nothing to do with my investigation.”

She whirled around and glared. “He turned to you and your evil husband.”

They knew about Reyes? “Dude, you are so much eviler than the man who’s going to snap your necks like kindling.” That came out wrong.

A surge of whispers erupted but then quieted just as quickly. “Please, Mrs. Farrow,” Mr. Foster said. “Or do you still go by Davidson like so many of the unclean in this world?”

I didn’t see the connection.

“Practically planning ahead for adultery and divorce.”

“When you put it that way.” Freaking psychos. “In my own defense, Mrs. Foster kept her maiden name as well.” I snorted until the inevitable slap put a stop to that nonsense. “Fine. Oh, my God. What?”

“Shawn’s fate was sealed the moment he sought your counsel,” he said.

Mrs. Foster walked back to us as I tried to get a better look at Shawn. Was he still alive? I couldn’t tell. I closed my eyes again and tried to summon Reyes. Angel. Osh. Anyone. The drugs were blocking me. It had happened before.

“He must be returned to the earth,” she said. “He must learn from his mistakes and be allowed to grow again.”

“You’re going to replant him?”

“And you as well.”

“Can I come back as an azalea?”

“But out of the darkness, brothers and sisters,” Mr. Foster said, his voice booming now, “comes the light.”

They shouted and clapped. A couple even fell to their knees with hands raised.

Don’t get me wrong. I was all for religion. Whatever helped you get up in the morning. And a higher power, like the one Christians referred to as the God Jehovah, was definitely real. It was religion being turned into an excuse to torture and maim and kill that I had a problem with.

Mrs. Foster raised her hands as well. “And the answer we’ve prayed for night and day has finally arrived.” She smiled down at me. “When Shawn went to you, a weak, corrupted slut—”

“Slut?”

“—we knew what we had to do.”

“I think slut is a tad strong.”

“See, you aren’t just any corrupted. You are his corrupted. His concubine. The Dark One’s. The demon from hell.”

“Promiscuous, maybe.”

She kneeled again. “We were never after you.”

“Wanton.”

“We were after the abomination,” Mr. Foster said, quite proud of himself. “We’ve been tracking him since he got out of prison. We just had no way of getting to him until now.”

When their meaning finally sank in, I focused on the crazy kids in front of me. If they thought to lure Reyes here the same way they lured me, they’d have another thing coming. Oh, they’d get him here, but he would not be in such a cooperative mood.

Whereas, I was all about cooperation. I also shared well in school.

“It’s true,” Mrs. Foster said. “If you hadn’t come to our offices, we probably never would have known about the connection between you and The Dark One.”

I fell forward in my attempt to see Shawn again. The ground kept toppling over. Thank God my hands weren’t tied. I’d be eating dirt about now.

“We figured you were onto us,” Mr. Foster continued. “That was why you showed up. But apparently we were wrong. Shawn, in his weakened state, sought you out.”

“That’s not why I went to your offices.”

“Oh?”

“Not at all. I was thinking about becoming the leader of a fanatical cult and wanted some pointers.”

Another crack echoed off the walls and, as my head whipped around, I noted the expressions of excitement on all those present. If anyone were there against his or her will, as was known to happen in cultish situations, I certainly wasn’t picking up on it.