This Place is Death (A Curse Keepers Secret) (5 page)

Manteo was quiet for so long, Ananias was sure he would not answer. Finally, he said, “There might be something. But it is dangerous.”

“We’re already lost. How much more dangerous could it be?”

“This could potentially involve future generations.”

Ananias’s jaw clenched. “There will be no future generations for us if we don’t do something.”

Manteo’s eye glittered in the moonlight with something that looked like madness. “You know not what you speak of, Ananias.”

Ananias was tired of people telling him what he didn’t know. “Can you stop this from happening or not?”

“I do not know, my friend. I can only try.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“Now you ask.” Manteo’s mouth lifted into a quirk of a smile. “Where do our people get power?”

“How would I know?” Ananias rubbed his head. “That thing you said gave everything a soul. The Manitou.”

Manteo shook his head. “No, not the Manitou.” He paused, as if weighing his words. “In war, my people get their power from the gods.”

“How can that knowledge help us?”

“Can you not see past the nose on your face, Ananias?”

“
What does that mean
?”

“It means you are standing next to the answer.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Manteo had been missing from the village for the entire day. The colony had noticed his absence and decreed him a coward and a traitor. Ananias knew the truth—Manteo was preparing for the ceremony he planned to perform later that night. The ceremony to steal the Roanoke tribe’s power by binding their spirits behind the gates of hell. What the native planned to do was far more dangerous than running away or staring down death at the end of a spear point, but Manteo had sworn him to secrecy.

Elinor nursed the baby as Ananias sat on the bed next to her, his arm wrapped around her back. He’d spent the day begging her to take the baby and go to Manteo’s people, but she refused to consider it, and truth be told, Ananias couldn’t bear for her to leave. What if she and the baby were kidnapped or murdered on the way? Or worse.

He couldn’t entertain the thought of Ellie or the baby dying or being tortured. Each time his mind strayed there, his heart strangled and his lungs refused to fill. He forced his chest to expand, his fingers digging into the small of his wife’s back. He’d kill them himself before he allowed anything vile to happen to his small family.

She looked up at him with tired eyes. “We will be fine, Ananias. You shall see.”

He’d always loved her optimism, and he definitely needed it now. “Ellie, I swear upon my life that I will do everything in my power to save you and Virginia.”

Elinor lifted her hand to his cheek, her thumb stroking the coarse stubble. “I know you will. That’s who you are, my husband. That’s why I love you.” Her eyelids fluttered in her attempt to stay awake. She looked down at the child cooing at her breast, forcing her eyes to widen.

Ananias lifted the baby from her arms. “Let me take her. You need sleep.”

She kissed him, smiling against his lips. “You are much too good to me. If anything happens…”

He kissed her back to stop her words. “I love you, Elinor. I’ve loved you since the moment I first saw you, remember? When your bonnet flew off your head, and I retrieved it from the street.”

“I seem to recall there was much more teasing involved than you remember. And you still had an eye for that witch Mary Ann.” Laughing softly, she pushed on his chest, letting her fingers linger there. His hand covered hers, pressing her palm over his heart. Virginia reached up and joined her hand with theirs.

A lump filled his throat and he coughed to clear it. “There is only you, Elinor. Forever and always, only you and Virginia.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes and her chin quivered. “We shall be with each other until the end of eternity, Ananias, no matter what happens.”

A tear slid down her cheek, and he kissed it, the saltiness lingering on his tongue. “Get some rest, my love. I will take care of the babe until she falls asleep.”

Elinor nodded and lay down, burrowing under the blankets.

Ananias sat on his stool, holding Virginia on his lap. She looked up at him with laughing eyes. He softly sang her a song that his mother had sung to him, a lively tune that did nothing to cure his melancholy. He chided himself to have more faith. If anyone could save them, it was Manteo. There was still hope.

Virginia finally fell asleep in his arms, and he gently laid her in the cradle. He spent the next several minutes watching the two most precious things in the world to him, telling himself that when he returned, they could all live without fear. He only needed to trust. God had not sent him a solution only to snatch everything away.

Manteo had told him to arrive around midnight, so Ananias knew he had to leave soon. The November evening was colder than usual. After bundling in an extra layer of clothes, Ananias reached for the door and realized he’d almost left without his cup. Manteo had stressed the importance of bringing a vessel large enough to drink from during the ceremony. He’d insisted they must each have a container that belonged exclusively to their people. Ananias grabbed a pewter cup off the table, stuffing it into his coat pocket. It left an uncomfortable lump, but it was better than walking through the village with the cup in his hand, particularly given how suspicious everyone was of late.

The cold air stung his nose and throat. This weather was more like what he was used to in England. Surely a land full of such violent extremes couldn’t be a place of God, only confirming that Manteo was right. The Indians’ ground
was
the gate to hell. When this ordeal was over, Ananias was taking his wife and child far from this place of evil.

“Good eve, Ananias,” one of the men called when Ananias walked through the village one last time, ensuring as best he could that it was safe to leave his family.

“Good eve, Michael.” Ananias had drawn the evening patrol, but he’d traded with Michael for a predawn turn, hoping his task with Manteo would be complete by then. He continued toward Manteo’s dwelling, then headed for the trees.

Slipping out of the camp had been entirely too easy. If Ananias could get out without any notice, how many savages could get in? If Manteo’s plan didn’t succeed, they would all be killed.

His plan would work. It had to.

He saw the glow of torches before he saw Manteo. The closer he came, the harder it was to breathe. Fear froze his feet, and he stayed at the edge of the twenty-foot circle of torches Manteo had spaced around the tree. The earth was scorched in intricate patterns. A small fire burned in the center, a clay pitcher and a wooden bowl next to it. Manteo squatted within the circle, on the opposite side of the fire.

“Did you bring your vessel?” he asked without looking up.

“Aye.” Ananias pulled it from his pocket and took a step forward.

“Do not enter!”

Ananias froze, partially relieved. The air around the circle felt thick and heavy, and each breath was a struggle.

Manteo chanted and stood, turning to face Ananias. He wore the clothing of his people, soft leather boots and a cloth around his waist. His chest was bare with a freshly inked mark on his skin over his heart, a tattoo comprised of squares, circles, and squiggly lines.

Manteo motioned for Ananias to enter the circle. The moment he was completely inside, the outside world hushed and the temperature warmed, as though the circle existed on a different level of reality. Sulfur burned his nose and coated his tongue. Terror filled him.

Manteo’s claims were true. The two men were standing at the edge of hell.

What madness had he agreed to?

Taking the cup, Manteo placed it next to the wooden bowl. He motioned for Ananias to take off his shirt. Ananias complied, slipping off his coat and two layers of upper garments. He waited for the shock of cold as he tossed his shirts to the ground, but it never came. Sweat beaded on his head. It really was warmer in the circle. Almost as hot as a summer day.

There was witchcraft here.

Ananias cleared his throat, trying to swallow his fear. “What are you doing, Manteo?”

“As I already explained, the Roanoke receive power from their gods. If we bind their gods behind this gate, we will cripple them.”

“Not that part.” Ananias’s eyes searched Manteo’s. “Why are you conducting the ceremony at all? Why would you do something so grave for my people?”

His face hardened. “The Roanoke are not friends to the Croatan. This will help my people too.”

Ananias nodded, his frayed nerves slightly soothed. Manteo’s motives were more understandable if his own people stood to gain.

“If I do this correctly, I will also seal the gate to Popogusso, and the vision I had will not come to pass, which is yet another reason to conduct the ceremony.”

Somehow, Ananias had forgotten about the graver threat in light of the more imminent one. What if Manteo’s ceremony was the catalyst that let all the demons loose instead?

Manteo clasped Ananias’s shoulder. “This will work. You must trust me.”

Ananias’s breath pushed past his partially open lips. His friend had just as much to lose as he did. “I trust you with my life.”

Manteo nodded, but he didn’t look happy. “From this moment forward, you must not speak. I will perform the ceremony in the ancient tongue.”

“Aye.”

Manteo chanted as he painted a mark similar to his own on Ananias’s chest. They were nearly identical, only Manteo had a primitive four-pointed-star-shaped mark in the center of his, and Ananias’s contained a lightning bolt.

As the ink coated his skin, power bloomed inside Ananias’s chest. Terrified, he prayed that the power came from God Almighty and not from the evil that lay behind the invisible gate.

Manteo chanted for hours. Ananias’s eyelids had drooped many times in the night until he noticed the sky begin to brighten in the east. If the ceremony continued to move so slowly, Ananias would miss his patrol shift. What would the other colonists think then?

The savage poured liquid from the clay pitcher into each of the vessels, picking up a rope and lifting it over his head with his left hand. Manteo clasped Ananias’s forearm, and he returned the gesture, in the form of a handshake. When Manteo bound their arms together with the rope, Ananias helped him secure the knot.

Manteo lifted a knife over his head, chanting. Then he flipped his palm open, and Ananias did the same, staying still as Manteo pricked the center of their palms with the point of the knife. Manteo collected blood from Ananias’s wound on the knife blade, and then smeared it into his own wound. His eyes rolled back into his head and he moaned, sending a shiver of fear down Ananias’s spine. The movement caught Manteo’s attention, and he scraped his own blood on the tip of the knife, mixing it with the wound on Ananias’s hand.

Ananias gasped as power rushed through his veins.

Manteo cut the rope, then set down the knife and picked up the pewter cup, motioning for Ananias to pick up the bowl. Together they drank the bitter tea. The moment the liquid touched his tongue, Ananias’s hair stood on end, his body stinging as though he’d been struck by lightning. A blinding light burst from the tree trunk, and he squinted as the overpowering stench of decay and metal coated his nose. A chorus of inhuman moans filled the night air.

Forcing his eyelids open he froze, horror washing through him.

Ananias was standing at the gates of hell.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE