Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(81)
And, despite the loose-fitting gowns of the women, they all looked pregnant. Yes, even Grace looked pregnant, though not many months along.
Kate glanced at Grant’s profile. Eyes wide, he looked stunned, but he was angry, too. She reached for his arm, but he scrambled up to more level ground and started shouting. “You’re trespassing, Monson. Sorry to interrupt the séance or party, but those candles could light this foliage on fire. I’m going to ask you to leave my land now or else I’ll have you arrested!”
The sounds halted. Bright Star looked as if he’d been shaken awake or slapped out of a trance. Could this man—all these people—be on drugs? Before Grace and the two other women who had been dancing around him could turn away, Kate glimpsed gold stars on their chests. Bright Star had lied. He always lied, so how deep was he into enslaving these people?
He came forward, walking unsteadily. For once, he was dressed all in black, more like his people. “Ah,” he said, his voice still holding its singsong quality. “I see you have the woman with you, Mr. Mason. Everyone—” he turned to call behind him “—guard your flames. And you two,” he said, turning back to Grant and Kate, “guard yourselves from evil. You never know when you will join the lost pagan dead. What a good lesson to see the goats like the Adena separated under the soil from the sheep like my flock.”
“That’s a good way to describe your people,” Kate said. “Sheep. Maybe sheep to the slaughter if they stay with you.”
“Always the wayward woman. But I will prepare a kingdom for mine own.”
“On the old grounds of the lunatic asylum, you mean,” Kate countered. “That sounds like your sort of Eden.”
“Back to the bus, back home!” Bright Star called out. People rose and began to file quietly down off the mound, near where Kate and Grant had climbed up. He turned again to them, leveling a look of pure menace at each of them.
“I see you have a weapon of war, of destruction in your hands, Mr. Mason, owner of this place of pagan imprisonment. And you, woman, always the soul of a heathen. Death can come like a thief in the night, so beware you don’t join the heathen dead—both of you.”
When he stalked off, tears streamed down Kate’s face, but she wasn’t crying. She was hysterical with laughter and disbelief. “Back to the bus?” she spit out. “All that pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo to those poor robots—sheep—then back to the bus? And he sees himself as their Messiah. Jesus talked about separating the ungodly goats from his precious sheep. But then, back to the bus...”
Grant put the rifle down, gave her a little shake and pulled her into his arms. “You’re losing it,” he told her. “But I don’t want to lose you. Kate, we’re both punch-drunk from exhaustion—too much of everything.”
She locked her arms around his back, pulling him tight to her. “But he’s so unreal, so ridiculous, isn’t he? I feel like Alice in Wonderland and I’m going to wake up soon.”
“It’s a nightmare, not a dream. And talk about curses—he’s it. Come on. I’ll watch the mound from inside the house, and tomorrow’s another day. We both need some rest.”
She hated letting him go. Despite the fact that, in a way, he was her worst enemy, he was also her love. They climbed carefully down from the mound, but Kate tugged him back just to take a look at the entry. She wanted to be sure Bright Star’s cult members hadn’t opened up the entry. No, it looked naked but still sealed. That was another reason she had to get inside to do a controlled, scientific dig. She could just see Monson’s maniacs—and that included her cousin Lee and poor, pregnant Grace—coming back here to defile the remains of ancient people’s lives. And hers and Grant’s.
*
It was a pretty crazy idea, Kate thought late the next morning on her way to Nadine’s house, but what if Bright Star was behind the tree thefts? He had members of his group who did manual labor of various kinds, including Lee. If he stored cut-up trees on his piece of property, he had guards watching for strangers day and night. They had some horses and other animals on their grounds. Perhaps he knew Grant would go out looking for Keith’s trees and that would leave the mound available for their—whatever rite that was she and Grant had witnessed last night.
Talk about nightmares! Last night, falling exhausted in bed while Grant kept watch out the picture window, she had dreamed Grant was dancing with her, watched by the Adena, and then he’d put a Beastmaster mask on his head and led her down, down into the dark depths of the mound.
Kate hit her fist on the steering wheel as she missed the turn to Nadine’s road up the mountain and had to turn into a driveway, back out and retrace her path. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d slept in this morning. Grant had been gone when she got up, so it was late morning already, and she didn’t feel fully awake. So much was upsetting her. Everything about the mound and precious Adena artifacts, the fact Grant said he didn’t have them and asked her not to talk to Brad about it. And especially what she’d checked online before she collapsed into exhausted sleep last night. The Toltec sculpted head Carson had cited as a possible link did bear some resemblance to the Adena shaman Paul had reproduced on the tree-trunk statue she hoped to buy from Nadine. Again, she’d promised Grant she wouldn’t try to take it with her today but would wait for tonight so he could help her load it in her trunk. She couldn’t wait to put its picture on her website, right next to the Beastmaster’s mask she’d made, though there were only general similarities between those two. So far, she had as good a claim to the Celts as Carson with his Toltec theory.