Blood Sins (25 page)

That was when she would stop being Ruby Campbell and become just an empty shell with a pretend person inside.

"I believe I'll put your hair up this time, Ruby. You look so pretty when your hair is up."

She braced herself and looked steadily at the reflection of Emma Campbell's face. The face that her mother had worn and that the pretend person wore now. The face that was so familiar, and yet so alien.

This isn't my mother. Not anymore.

"Y
ou can't read him because he has a shield?" Sawyer asked.

DeMarco shrugged. "Maybe. Though I've come to think of it more like a black hole. He draws energy in, constantly. It seemed a fairly minor characteristic at first, possibly an interesting variation on a shield, negative energy, but over time it's grown stronger, to the point that if you're within ten or twelve feet of him it's an actual physical sensation of being pulled toward him."

Hollis muttered, "Bet his congregation calls that charisma." "They call it part of his divine gift," DeMarco said calmly. "And either he's hardwired for it or else he has amazing concentration and focus, because while he's pulling energy in, nothing of himself escapes. Nothing of his personality. None of his thoughts or emotions. Even when he's . . . stimulating female members of his flock in order to feed off their energy, he still reads as a null field. As if there's no person, no mind, no soul there."

"How is that even possible?"

"I don't know."

Sawyer said, "But you do know that's one thing Samuel is doing? Feeding off those women?"

"I believe he's been doing that for a long time. But it wasn't so obvious at first, and I doubt he was pulling much of their energy then. I think he was doing more giving than taking, at least in the beginning, with the members of his congregation, whether that was building their trust or somehow making them . . . dependent on him. Maybe even addicted to him.

"I spent a lot of time trying to understand how he was able to control them so thoroughly. There were none of the typical signs or methods of a cult leader brainwashing his followers. And yet those followers were devoted to him, and way beyond any normal sort of devotion. That was obvious. That was why I was sent in twenty-six months ago."

Bishop said, "As a group, they had become even more isolated, more reclusive. We try to learn from history, Chief, and from our mistakes. We needed to know what was going on inside the church."

"To avoid another Waco. Another Jonestown."

"Exactly. But since cults
are,
by nature, isolationist and highly suspicious of outsiders, the only way to really know what goes on inside is to get someone inside. Not an easy thing to do, especially with a paranoid leader already warning his congregation about enemies everywhere and a looming apocalypse."

Sawyer looked back at DeMarco. "So how did you get in?" "The same way most of his followers did. I hung around church shelters and halfway houses in Asheville for weeks, obviously one of the castoffs of society, homeless and unemployed. I was a loner, bitter, openly . . . disenchanted with our government, and though I didn't have property to tempt the church, I made sure what I had to offer Samuel was visible to all."

"Which was?"

"My army jacket, bearing the kind of service patches and insignia you don't find in pawnshops. I'm ex-military. We had a hunch Samuel might be interested in building himself an army."

"And?"

"And he was."

Sawyer said, "An army? He's building an army up there?"

DeMarco shook his head. "Not the way you think. Not the way we expected. There are a few handguns in the Compound, a few shotguns. Nothing more than that. He's convinced his followers--most of them--that they won't need weapons to defeat their enemies. Not man-made weapons, at any rate. His followers are his army, and he's been building that army carefully for at least the last few years."

Sawyer thought about that and decided it needed to sink in a bit more before he tried to do something with that particular puzzle piece. "But you were still valuable to him. Your nonpsychic skills were valuable." He realized suddenly that he had no idea what psychic skills DeMarco could boast, and the realization made him acutely uncomfortable.

"He had no one with any experience to run his security. Until recently, it hadn't been a concern, but by the time I was recruited, he was growing more and more security-conscious."

"Paranoid."

DeMarco nodded. "I gather he felt he'd been making enemies, but whether he had already focused on the SCU then, I have no way of knowing."

Hollis glanced at Bishop, then said, "We're pretty sure he was focused on at least one of us as long as eighteen months ago."

"He let us find those photographs with his pet monster," Bishop said. "In fact, I believe he made sure we'd find them. He wanted us to know he'd been watching. Following. My bet is that the reason there were only pictures of you was because he wanted us to wonder just exactly what we
are
wondering. Was he tracking you as a potential victim or because you're SCU?"

"And it could be either," she agreed. "Considering where I wound up."

"Which is?" Sawyer asked.

"Let's just say that I got to meet the pet monster up close and personal." Before anyone could comment, she frowned at DeMarco. "Does Samuel leave the Compound often? Because I had the sense he was pretty reclusive up there."

"He is now. Has been since last fall. Before then he'd go off for a few days or a week now and then, with an especially long trip occasionally. Last summer he was gone the better part of six weeks, even though he came back here several times over that stretch. It was usual for him to come back with a new recruit or two and say he'd been a guest preacher at this church or that revival. We'd no reason to suspect he was doing anything else."

"He wasn't followed when he left here?"

"No. My instructions were to infiltrate the cult and do as much as I could to make myself indispensable to Samuel and his operations. That meant staying here and keeping things running whenever he left."

"And fomenting a little rebellion?" Hollis suggested.

"I didn't discourage it. In hindsight, I should have." He wasn't apologetic or regretful, merely matter-of-fact.

She nodded.

Sawyer said to DeMarco, "I gather you're responsible for the electronic security up at the Compound?"

"Samuel wanted some state-of-the-art gadgets installed, and I know a bit about that sort of thing. I also have contacts. Military contacts. He liked that."

Hollis said, "Which is all well and good, but how did you manage to convince him you're a believer? Unless you are?" She was looking steadily at him, clearly bothered by that point. "You won't see it," DeMarco told her.

"See what?"

"My aura."

When her blue eyes narrowed, sharpened, it was Quentin who said, "Give it up, Hollis, before you get a headache. Or have a stroke. Reese has a double shield."

"I've never heard of anything like that before," Hollis said, clearly dubious.

"I'm unique," DeMarco drawled.

Half under his breath, Sawyer said, "Jesus, I'm the one getting the headache."

Quentin offered him a faint smile. "Information overload? Well, the main thing you need to understand is that Reese, like Tessa, doesn't read as psychic, but he has an uncanny ability to create a . . . persona that
is
readable when he allows it to be."

"Convenient," Hollis remarked.

"Useful," Quentin corrected. "Any psychic who manages to get through his primary shield isn't likely to look for a secondary one, especially when they discover that manufactured persona--in this case, the bitter ex-military guy entirely willing to kill for, or possibly die for, a charismatic pseudoreligious leader."

T
HE "ROBE" WAS
actually more like a dress--or a nightgown. It was long, so thin it was nearly transparent, and sleeveless. It was white.

"The color of purity," Emma Campbell said softly as she stood back and smiled at Ruby.

Ruby shivered, wondering again if she would ever feel warm. "I can wear your cloak to the church, can't I, Mama? It's getting colder outside."

"I suppose so. But you be sure to take it off once you're inside."

"Yes, Mama." Ruby was grateful for the warmth of the ankle-length stark black cloak and even more grateful that it covered the thin robe, but despite that she always felt uneasy wearing it. She didn't know for sure, but something told her that her mama had been wearing the cloak when she finally just . . . went away.

Smiling, Emma Campbell said, "You do as Ruth tells you, just like before. And do as Father tells you, of course. I'm so proud of you. Your daddy and I are both so proud of you."

The painful lump rose in Ruby's throat again, so she merely nodded and tried not to think about her daddy. Or about her mama. Instead, she walked through the house and to the front door beside the shell named Emma Campbell.

"Be good. Remember."

"Yes, Mama." She went out into the chilly afternoon, walking steadily toward the church, concentrating hard on making her protective shell so strong even Father wouldn't be able to touch her through it.

Not the real her, at least.

And she didn't look back because she knew Emma Campbell had already returned to her sewing room.

It's needlework for her. And sewing for Amy's mom. Theresa's mom does quilts. Brooke's mom has all those jigsaw puzzles . . . I know it all means something. Maybe he gives them things to do. So they don't have time to think.

So they don't want to think.

Maybe he found out what they like to do best and let them keep that.

Only that.

Ruby walked steadily to the church, seeing the other girls waiting on the steps for her. Seeing, with a catch inside, that Father had already replaced Brooke, as easily as though she had never existed.

Mara. Little Mara, only eleven, and visibly nervous at this, her first Ritual. And unlike the other two, she was wearing a long sweater over her robe.

Amy and Theresa, both thirteen, wore only the thin robes despite the cold.

They felt grown up in the robes, Ruby knew. They felt grown up, and special, and important to Father.

They felt Chosen.

"Hurry up, Ruby," Amy called out to her impatiently.

"I'm coming," Ruby responded, hearing the bright sparkle in her own voice, the sound of eagerness that was every bit as fake as the smile that curved her lips. She began to climb the steps to join her friends.

But she didn't hurry.

"S
ure that's just a persona?" Hollis muttered. "Because the way I hear it, people who stay undercover for too long can get really . . . lost in their role-playing."

DeMarco glanced at her, then looked at Sawyer. "That ability plus a few other characteristics make me an ideal candidate for undercover work. As Bishop discovered a few years ago."

"So you're SCU?"

It was Bishop who replied. "He's not FBI. But we realized early on that having operatives . . . off the books would be helpful if not necessary in some situations."

"I thought that's why you helped found Haven," Tessa said, speaking up finally. She looked at Bishop. "As a civilian offshoot of the SCU," she added.

"A sister organization," Bishop said. "But Haven was set up primarily to provide short-term support, with operatives called in for specific, usually brief periods of time, to assist in criminal investigations. Most lead perfectly ordinary, normal lives the majority of the time, with their Haven work more like a series of temp jobs than anything else."

"True enough," Tessa agreed. "On my last assignment, I didn't even have to unpack. And in my normal life, I design Web sites. Easy to set my own hours, work from home or on the road with a laptop, and take time 'off' whenever I need to. Tailor-made for someone with a whole other life."

Bishop nodded. "It's different for those of us inside the FBI, and not just because it's a full-time job. Being an SCU agent means we're employees of the federal government all the time, with laws, rules, and regulations we're duty-bound to uphold."

"Which can sometimes present problems," Quentin murmured. "For some of us."

Sawyer wondered if he was talking about himself but didn't ask. On his long list of questions, that one seemed relatively unimportant.

Bishop didn't comment on Quentin's aside but continued, "It became obvious that we needed operatives able to bridge the gap between cop and civilian. Operatives trained in both law enforcement and military tactics, with strong investigative instincts and abilities--and with some kind of psychic edge. People capable of going undercover, possibly long term, with little or no backup, and not necessarily with government sanction."

Hollis let out an odd little sound and said, "You do like to walk the edge, don't you?"

"I have to sometimes. Whether I like it or not." Bishop shrugged. "Reese, like a number of our civilian operatives, is a licensed private investigator--and his military background is legit."

"And I like working alone," DeMarco said.

"What about your normal life?" Hollis asked.

"Don't really have one."

Hollis looked curious, but before she could ask the obvious question, Tessa lost patience with the lot of them.

"Ruby," she said in the tone of one who was not going to be ignored. "That little girl is in trouble."

"Ruby isn't in immediate danger," DeMarco told her.

"But you know she
is
in danger?"

He looked at her, those pale blue eyes not warming at all. "They're all in danger. Samuel's Prophecy, remember?"

"Armageddon." Quentin's voice was wry. "All the best prophecies seem to predict Armageddon."

"Yes," DeMarco said. "But the difference is that Samuel, unlike all the prophets of the past, might actually have a shot at seeing his vision, his Prophecy, come true. Even if he has to light the conflagration with his own hands. Or his own mind." "You don't mean literally?" Sawyer said. "That he could create--with his mind--destruction on a scale that could be even loosely termed apocalyptic?"