The Thirteenth Sacrifice (27 page)

She bent down and helped him to stand.

“I think I need to go to a hospital,” he said in a weak voice.

“A luxury we can’t afford. Now, do you have any family nearby?”

“No.”

“Okay, new plan.”

Half an hour later they were in a motel room a couple of miles from his house.

“This is the plan?” he asked as he sat down on the bed, grunting in pain.

“For now. I can’t risk moving you any farther.”

“They’re going to know I’m not dead.”

“Of course. If we’re lucky they’ll think you got the message and cleared out completely.”

“And if we’re not lucky?”

“They will find you, and next time they won’t fail to kill you.”

“You’re a very cheery person—you know that?”

“I don’t have time to sugarcoat this for you,” she snapped. “I’m going to go out and get some food. You don’t leave this room until I say it’s okay. They could have spies everywhere.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“But my museum—”

“Won’t matter at all to you if you’re dead,” she interrupted. “Now, if you’ll promise to be a good boy, I’ll take a look at your ribs.”

“Fine,” he said with a grimace.

Looking into his eyes, though, she knew she couldn’t trust him to stay put. Ed had once told her that it was impossible to keep someone alive when they so badly wanted to die. Anthony didn’t have a death wish, but neither was he capable of sitting and doing nothing. There was nothing she could do about that, though.

An hour later, after getting Anthony’s ribs started on the mend and bringing in a supply of food that he could easily store and eat in the motel room, she returned to her hotel. Her own body was protesting everything that it had been put through and she was having a hard time pushing forward. The nausea she had been holding at bay since the coven meeting had become overwhelming.

Once she got upstairs and into her bathroom, she sank to her knees in front of the toilet and threw up all the blood she had drunk. The smell made her even sicker and it was a good half hour before she stumbled to her feet, shaking and spent. She dumped her clothes unceremoniously in a pile on the floor with her cloak and athame, then fell headlong into bed.

She reached for her phone and put Karen’s number in it before she forgot it. Moments later she was asleep.

Blood everywhere. And someone was hurt. Someone was dead. And there was blood on her dress.

“Make no mistake, that’s how we deal with traitors.”

Samantha sat straight up, screaming, then fell back onto her pillows and sobbed quietly. More nightmares. More half memories. She needed to be able to remember, no matter how much it hurt. It had to be better than this living hell of twisting shadows.

She sat up and took several calming breaths before closing her eyes and willing herself to remember.

In her mind she again saw the corridor lined with doors. The door marked 5 was still open and she could see her younger self lingering just inside the doorway. She gave her a small wave, grateful for her help, fearful for her too. She knew, though, that the little girl had
taught her all she could. Samantha set her eyes on the door marked with a 6.

She hesitated as she reached it, wondering what she would find. She forced herself to turn the doorknob. The door swung open slowly on hinges that creaked like the sound of fingernails scraping a chalkboard. A solemn little girl with large, round eyes stared back at her. Her six-year-old self was wearing a white dress with a touch of lace at the neck and sleeves. There were drops of red smeared into the fabric and Samantha swallowed hard as she recognized them as blood.

“What have they done to you?” she whispered.

The little girl looked down at the blood and made a soft whimpering sound. “It’s not mine,” she said at last in a very small voice.

Samantha didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to know. “Whose is it?”

“Miss Kimberly’s.”

“What happened to Miss Kimberly?”

The little girl stared at her solemnly. “You don’t remember?”

“No,” Samantha admitted.

A look of relief flashed over the little girl’s face. “Good!” she said before stepping backward into shadow.

“No, wait!” Samantha called. “Don’t go. I—I have to know.”

“You don’t want to know,” the little girl warned her.

From behind Samantha the youngest girl said in a voice that trembled, “I liked Miss Kimberly.”

Samantha licked her lips, trying to still the pounding of her heart. And then she remembered. She
had
liked Miss Kimberly. A large, jovial woman in her fifties. She always gave Samantha a treat after a coven meeting. Rainbow sherbet. Sometimes Miss Kimberly babysat
her and would play games with her. And at Halloween she helped Samantha carve pumpkins. How had she forgotten her?

“Tell me,” Samantha pleaded. “What happened to Miss Kimberly?”

“Miss Abigail… got mad at her.”

“And?”

“You don’t want to remember.”

“But I have to.”

“You don’t want to remember!”

But she
did
remember.

She was standing in a circle with the rest of the coven, her mother to her right. She glanced up at her and wished they could go home. She was tired. Miss Abigail was finishing a ritual and she looked very pleased with it.

“Next week we’re going to do something amazing,” Miss Abigail said. “Once we have made the ultimate sacrifice we will have the power to do whatever we want and no one will be able to stop us.”

“We can’t.” The voice was Miss Kimberly’s.

Everyone turned to stare at Miss Kimberly and Samantha was very afraid for her.

“Why not?” Miss Abigail said, her voice full of fury.

“Because it’s wrong—that’s why. Look at us. How did we get here? Do any of us even remember? Fifteen years ago we were all just looking for a place where we could be ourselves, where we could use our powers, share our knowledge. And now, what? What is it we’re trying to accomplish? We’ve sacrificed animals to gain more power. I didn’t think it was right, but I went along. But what have we used that power for? Not to help mankind, but for our own selfish gain.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining when you moved into your mansion last year.”

“You’re right. I didn’t. But I should have. I didn’t let myself think about how I got it, the people who were hurt so that I could have what I wanted. But now, you’re talking about sacrificing a human… a human! No amount of power, no amount of things or respect or anything is worth that.” Miss Kimberly turned in a circle, speaking to all who were present. “Remember how we used to be? Before we decided to follow Abigail?” She began pointing to people in the room. “You just wanted the strength to help cure your mother’s cancer and now you want immortality. You wanted the self-confidence to get a promotion and now you won’t stop until everyone in the world looks up to you. You wanted people to fall in love with your music so that you might share your gift with the world and now you don’t care about the music or the message but just how many people worship you and how much money you make.”

Then Miss Kimberly turned and stared up at Samantha’s mother. “And you
—
”

Her mother raised her hand. “Silence! I know who I was and I promise you that I will never go back.”

Suddenly Miss Kimberly grabbed her throat, struggling to speak. Her eyes bulged out. Samantha whimpered and tried to move to her, but her mother gripped her hand tight.

“Yes, we have grown, changed, and it is right that we do so,” Miss Abigail said. “These powers are ours and we ourselves are gods. It is time we were treated as such.”

And then she stabbed Miss Kimberly in the heart. The woman fell and Samantha wanted to scream but no sound would come out.

“Make no mistake, that’s how we deal with traitors,” Miss Abigail said. She reached down and retrieved her athame. She held it up before her face and then licked the blood on the blade. She shivered. “We have our first sacrifice and it is more powerful than we ever dreamed!”

“You see?” her mother asked, staring down at her. Her voice was stern, angry. She grabbed Samantha’s chin and forced her head back around. Miss Kimberly lay on the floor, not moving. “That’s what happens to witches who disobey.”

“No!” Samantha screamed and slid to the floor. Her six-year-old self wrapped her arms around her and they held each other and cried.

In the morning when she woke she could still taste blood from the ritual the night before. She spent nearly ten minutes brushing her teeth and gargling before she felt like she could leave her room.

Downstairs in the lobby of the hotel people were milling about and there was a long line at reception. Samantha lingered for a few minutes listening to visitors and locals alike talking.

Every year in early October Salem hosted a Halloween parade to kick off the season. Normally thousands of people would turn out for it, which was nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who would descend on the city for Halloween itself. It was the day before the parade and already the town was getting crowded as more and more people arrived from other states and even other countries.

Everyone she heard was saying a record-breaking number would attend this year’s parade. Hotels for thirty miles around were filling up.

Ed had been right about the people flocking to Salem to protest the death of witches or just to revel in the spectacle. She hadn’t heard anything yet from him and she couldn’t help but worry about when and where the most recent victim was going to turn up.

When it seemed that there was nothing new to hear in the hotel, she left. Essex Street was crowded with people and she found herself starting to feel a little claustrophobic after having seen it mostly empty for a few days.

Tourists were cramming into any shop that even looked like it sold anything remotely related to witches. People were wearing handmade T-shirts that had
NO BURNING
logos on them. She also saw a handful of T-shirts sporting witches’ hats or brooms with a circle and line through them.

So both camps were represented by the crowd, those in favor of witches and those against. She shook her head. It seemed so bizarre. When she was a kid, tourists had enjoyed pretending they believed in witches, but no one really had.

And if they had, they certainly wouldn’t have come out in favor of them. The times were changing and it made her feel that much more out of control. She noticed several people holding signs with antiviolence slogans outside Anthony’s museum. So the crazy woman attacking the mannequins hadn’t gone unnoticed. The museum itself was dark and closed.

She felt a brief surge of guilt for not having checked back in with Anthony, but quickly suppressed it. Distance was better for both of them. The more contact she had with him, the greater the chance that the witches would find him.

She still felt unsteady from the night before. She kept experiencing weird power fluctuations, and she wasn’t
sure whether it was because last night had been the first time in years that she had participated in something like that or if it was because of the blood. Someone brushed past her and then yelped when he got an electric shock.

Finally she turned onto the street where Red’s was and then came to a sudden halt. Several hundred people were outside the building, waiting to get in. She stared in amazement at the throng before retracing her steps. She stopped in a cute bakery where she had to stand in line for only fifteen minutes to get a bagel with cream cheese.

She ate it while she walked back toward her hotel. When she reached the entrance she walked past it and continued on to the grassy area next to it. Salem Common was one of the few places that didn’t seem to be teeming with people.

She found a bench and sat down. Then she called Karen.

“Hello?” The other witch really didn’t sound well.

“It’s Samantha. I need to talk to you. Can you meet me in half an hour at Salem Common?”

“Um… yeah, I think so.”

“Good. I’ll see you here.”

She settled in to wait, trying not to overthink the coming conversation. She had decided to confront Karen, get her to see the truth of what was happening and encourage her to get out. Maybe they could even use her as a witness if it came to that. Regardless, the Wiccan had no business being involved in everything that was happening.

I can save her,
Samantha thought.
I have to.

Almost half an hour later there was a ripple in the air around her and she swiveled her head, looking for the other woman. Karen was slouching down the street, her
head down, hands in her pockets. Something wasn’t right.

Karen was weaving slightly as she walked. A man passed her and she bumped against him. A child ran by her and nearly tripped her.

Then Karen stopped in front of Samantha, her eyes still on the ground.

“Karen?” Samantha asked softly, every nerve alert.

Karen looked up and Samantha recoiled as she saw her hollow eyes glowing with an unnatural light.

Is she possessed?
she thought. What else could explain the witch’s physical transformation?

“What’s wrong?” Samantha asked.

Karen dropped her eyes again. “It’s nothing,” she whispered after a moment.

Samantha reached out and touched her arm, then jerked her hand back as something like an electrical shock hit her. Heat flashed up her arm and a moment later anger and fear flashed through her too.

“What did you do to me?” Samantha demanded, jumping to her feet.
I’m going to kill her for whatever that was.

She blinked at the ferocity of her reaction.

Karen hunched her shoulders but didn’t say anything.

“Answer me!” She wanted desperately to reach out and shake her, slap her—something—but she was afraid to touch her again.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Karen said with a gasp.

Before Samantha could say anything, a high-pitched scream shattered the air around them. She spun and saw the child who had run into Karen on the ground, shrieking and pointing to a nearby tree with skeletal branches.
On one of the branches someone had hung a wind sock with the image of a witch.