Ritual Sins (3 page)

But her mother had already left New York for the cloistered solitude of Santa Dolores, refusing all communication with her only child. And for good reason. The trust fund, set up by Stella’s third husband, had already been stripped of everything Stella, as trustee, had access to. Stella’s Park Avenue condominium, with its fortune in artwork and antique furnishings, had been sold, and even the few good pieces she’d given Rachel over the years were missing from Rachel’s apartment.

Her healthy rage had carried her along for a number of months while she tried to recoup her shattered finances, searched for another high-paying, soulless job, and contemplated revenge on her uncaring mother.

The late night phone call from Santa Dolores had changed everything. The words, the voice, still echoed in Rachel’s head when she least wanted them to. “Your mother has taken her final journey,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Catherine had murmured over the phone. “Blessings, my child.”

Rachel had slammed down the phone, standing alone in her empty apartment, shivering slightly
in the chill night air. “Blessings, my ass,” she said aloud. And then she began to cry.

As far as Rachel could remember, it was the last time she’d cried. She cried so seldom in this life that she could remember each and every rare, painful occasion. She had cried over her mother’s final, irrevocable loss. By the time she heard about the disposition of her mother’s substantial estate, including the pilfered trust fund, she’d gone far beyond tears to a blinding fury.

That fury still sustained her. But it required fuel, and she couldn’t remember when she last ate. It was close to six, the appointed hour when dinner would be served, and Rachel was feeling weak enough to eat anything, up to and including fried rats. Except that Luke Bardell’s little cult were vegetarians. In a few days fried rat might start to look tasty.

She wasn’t expecting the soft knock on the door. She moved the chair and opened it, half expecting her nemesis to make a reappearance, but the person standing there was a far cry from Luke Bardell’s unsettling, lethal presence.

She looked like the kind of mother Rachel had always secretly dreamed of. Plump and gray-haired, with kindly eyes and a sweet expression on her elderly face, the woman exuded warmth and concern. The kind of thing Rachel knew she should automatically distrust.

But anger seemed to be taking too much of her energy. She looked at the sweet old lady and felt a treacherous, sentimental longing.

“I’m Catherine Biddle,” the old woman said in a soft, gentle voice. “We spoke the night your mother died. My dear, I’m so very sorry I wasn’t able to give you more comfort at that sad time.”

Rachel tried to summon forth her caustic tongue, but her efforts were mild. “I wasn’t in the mood for comfort at that point,” she said.

“And you aren’t yet, are you?” Catherine said wisely. “Never mind, my dear. All things in their due course. I was hoping you might join me for dinner.”

“Here?” She knew she sounded doubtful.

“Where else would we go? All the answers we need are here with Luke’s People. We all share our meals—Santa Dolores is communal living at its purest. But if you care to join us at our table we would welcome you most happily.”

“Everyone eats together?” she asked warily. Despite the fact that her mysterious ally would be there, she wasn’t in the mood to confront all the happy campers of the Foundation of Being en masse. Particularly their leader.

“From the newest follower to Luke himself.”

“I’m not a follower,” she said sharply.

“Of course not, dear,” Catherine said comfortably. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were. But
you’ve come to learn our ways, haven’t you? To see how your mother’s generous bequest is helping others less fortunate? You’ve come with an open mind and a willingness to partake of the peace and tranquility only Luke’s way can offer?”

The very thought filled her with horror. But Catherine Biddle looked so sweet and hopeful, so trusting, that something kept Rachel from being blisteringly frank.

“I’ve come to learn,” she said with complete honesty. And she would learn everything she could. Of course, she intended to use her newfound knowledge to strip the Foundation of her mother’s money as well as anything else she might manage to get away with. And to see Luke Bardell in hell if she could manage it.

“Of course you have,” Catherine said approvingly. “And learn you shall. And all the Grandfathers will be glad to help.”

“I don’t want to get anywhere near the Grandfathers,” Rachel said, following her into the hall. “I spend as little time as I can with old men in suits.”

“Grandfather isn’t a particularly descriptive term for our group of leaders. Most of them are old, but they’re not all men.” Catherine appeared faintly amused. “The Grandfathers dress as everyone else does here. You can tell what people do by the color of their clothing. Newcomers wear green. The Grandfathers wear gray.”

Catherine’s tunic and pants were a pale dove-gray. “Oh,” Rachel said.

“We’re nothing to be afraid of, Rachel,” Catherine continued in her soft, friendly voice. “The Grandfathers are like everyone else here, using their life knowledge for the good of humanity. We’d really like to show you some of our ways.”

For some reason the cynical response that rose to Rachel’s lips stayed there, unspoken. She may have been fiercely resistant to Luke Bardell’s mesmerizing tactics, but Catherine’s maternal warmth was a more potent threat.

She compromised. “I expect it will all be very interesting,” she said carefully.

Rachel hadn’t been paying attention to her sparse surroundings as they walked. Catherine had stopped by a pair of thick, plain doors, and she looked up at Rachel, her gray hair coming askew from its casual bun at the back of her head. “You don’t trust us,” she said in a cheerful voice. “I don’t blame you, my dear. At your age I was just as easily hurt, just as suspicious. But we’ll win you over. I know that we will.” She threaded her arm through Rachel’s, and she was surprisingly strong beneath the loose-fitting shirt. “Come and be welcome,” she said, and pushed open the door.

Catherine had been an inspired choice, Luke thought as he watched the two women. Everyone
turned to Catherine for warmth and mothering, and a young woman who’d had very little mothering in the first place would be an easy mark. All the more so because Catherine’s motives were pure. Her maternal instincts, stunted for years, were entirely natural, and Rachel Connery’s cynical mouth was already softening.

Would he have as easy a time with her? He wondered if she would be likely to see him as a maternal figure. It was an entertaining notion. He usually managed to be all things to all the people in his flock—father, mother, child, and lover—all the while keeping his emotional distance. He might make a bet with Calvin, the one person here who really knew him, to see how long it would take him to subvert one angry young woman.

He’d taken her mother, and he’d taken her money, all with the angelic innocence of a saint. He’d take Rachel as well.

She hadn’t seen him yet, though he could tell she was trying to look. Catherine was taking her over to the Grandfathers’ table, and the others were eyeing her with distrust beneath their benevolent smiles. His followers were almost pathologically protective where he was concerned. They had no idea he had her well in hand.

He was sitting in the midst of the penitents tonight, their soft yellow clothing blending with his white tunic. He always sat with the flock, eating
little, his presence a powerful stimulant. The penitents were almost trembling with excitement, unaware that all his attention was focused on the stubborn outsider.

“Will I ever find true understanding, Luke?” Melissa Underwood, a skinny blonde with a sexual addiction problem, edged closer. She had spent the last year trying to turn her formidable sexual energy into some kind of search for peace, and he smiled at her benevolently. He wasn’t a man who wasted his energy on anything as capricious as a conscience, but if he ever had to face a judge again, in this world or the next, Melissa would be a point in his favor. Here she wasn’t courting death and disease, going through men and women at a voracious pace. At Santa Dolores she was living in quiet contemplation, paid for by her generous divorce settlement.

Bobby Ray Shatney was another one. He sat cross-legged at the end of the table, staring at his hands. Not many people knew that Bobby Ray, at the tender age of thirteen, had gone on a killing spree that had wiped out his entire family, three neighbors, a UPS man, and a cocker spaniel. He had the clear-eyed innocence of a child, his murderous rages washed clean from his body for as long as he was protected from the society that asked too much of him.

He looked up, catching Luke’s contemplative
gaze, and smiled in drugged-out bliss. Besides, he was too tranked to hurt anyone, even if he was tempted.

Things would be different when Luke left. When this all came crashing down, and Luke had no choice but to decamp, he’d be leaving Bobby Ray and a few other lost souls like him to wreak havoc on the world and the other innocents who filled Santa Dolores. There would be no one to drug them into complacency. No one to control them with their childish belief in messiahs and salvation.

Luke Bardell knew what it was to kill. There wasn’t a day he spent on this earth when he didn’t remember the feel of the knife sliding past flesh and fat and muscle, sliding deep. The rich, black color of arterial blood, the rattle of death that came with shocking quickness. The smell of it.

They said it got easier. The more you killed, the more you wanted to repeat the act. Again and again. You could even grow to love it.

He didn’t want to find out. He preferred his nightmares, the haunting that never quite left him. It was his own penitence, and the people around him recognized it without words, strengthening his hold over them.

But he would have to do something about Bobby Ray Shatney and the others before he left.

Rachel was seated between Catherine and Alfred
Waterston, and the two of them were exerting their usual well-bred charm. Catherine came from mainline Philadelphia, one of the oldest families in the country. She carried herself with patrician good cheer, the last of a line of harmless dilettantes whose unspoken breeding instilled awe in most of his nouveau riche followers. Alfred was just as impressive, combining the stuffy bedside manner of a cancer specialist with the sharp-brained diligence of a financial wizard.

Rachel was succumbing to Catherine quite nicely, coming dangerously close to smiling. He suspected a smile would transform that pale, unhappy face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to discover just how much. A challenge was one thing. A weakness was another. Not that he counted much in this life as a weakness. A good steak, maybe. A plump, tender woman who asked him no questions and made no demands. And they weren’t weaknesses, merely some of the things he occasionally allowed himself. When no one was looking.

She turned in his direction, but he’d already looked away, guided by that preternatural instinct that had saved his ass on more than one occasion. He smiled benevolently at Bobby Ray, mentally calibrating the dose he’d need to keep him peaceful. Maybe just a simple overdose when the time came. Murder by remote control. He could do it if he had to.

The time was coming closer, and Luke knew it. Stella Connery had been a herald, and Luke had always been a man to pay attention to signs and omens.

Her daughter’s arrival was the beginning of the end. The end of the soft, cushy life he’d been living. And it wasn’t coming a minute too soon.

The Grandfathers wouldn’t like it. He didn’t make the mistake of underestimating them—at least Alfred would have noticed his restlessness. They’d be making contingency plans, to keep the Foundation going, to keep the money rolling in, keep the faith alive without their charismatic messiah.

He wondered what they had planned for him.

Evil was all around, in this large, peaceful room, full of gentle, passive people. Evil was an old enemy, a close companion.

Maybe it was time he introduced spoiled, angry Rachel Connery to its hungry grip as well.

Georgia Reginald closed her eyes, smiled, and slipped peacefully closer to death. It had been a long wait, it seemed, since she was first diagnosed with that particularly virulent form of cancer. Thank God she’d already been a follower. Luke had shown her the way, and when the doctors at the Foundation hospice had made their
devastating discovery she found she’d almost welcomed the news.

She’d never been in any pain, and she knew she could thank her newfound faith for that. She never would have guessed that cancer had invaded and spread throughout her seemingly healthy, sixty-year-old body. After all, there was no cancer on either side of her family, and she’d always prided herself on how well she took care of her health.

Ah, but fate had been a trickster, as Luke and his disciples had warned her. The cancer had come with no sign, no warning, as it had to so many of her friends. They’d done everything they could, the poison, slash and burn of cancer treatment, and nothing had helped. She was weak now, and ready to go, but she wanted to see Luke one last time.

They’d sent for him. If she could just hold out for a little while longer, she could look at him and dream that she was young again. That those eyes were looking only at her.

She wanted to be the one to tell him about the money. The Grandfathers knew, of course. Particularly Alfred, who’d overseen her care. He’d helped her make the arrangements, but she knew that Luke paid no attention to the financial aspects of the Foundation. His mind and soul were settled
on higher things—that was why he had the Grandfathers around. To take care of business.

Her estate would help take care of a lot of business, and it was the one thing that brought her joy.

There was a scraping sound, and she used the last of her energy to open her eyes. Luke stood there beside the bed, his face almost obscured by his long hair, and she wished she could reach out and stroke it, when no one was ever allowed to touch him. Surely he’d allow her that much.