The Seekers, page 26
All six of them carried knives.
Joe winced, wondering at his own power to defeat so many. Most of the time, such people were cowards.
He didn’t see Dallas among them. Did that mean they didn’t have him? If they had managed an escape into the woods quickly enough, Dallas wouldn’t know where they were. Angela would guess, after what she had discovered and what Joe had asked, but...
Could they get here quickly enough?
At least one of the caterers was among the hooded figures—someone who had laced the energy bars. The caterers were all cult members, he was suddenly sure. And so was sweet, bubbly, annoyingly perky Serena Nelson. He’d recognized her voice the moment she’d spoken.
Who else was under the hoods?
Spencer Atkins?
Joe moved farther back into the trees, keeping his eyes on the hooded figures. His heel hit something, and he nearly tripped. He hunkered down for a closer look.
Spencer Atkins was not among the hooded figures. He was here, on the ground, his blood seeping into the dirt.
* * *
Something inside Keri fought the obvious with a fierce resolve.
She wasn’t going to die.
Well, she most probably was. Unless there was a miracle very soon. But she refused to give up hope.
They had taken a dozen twists and turns through the trees. Even if Dallas had called in every trooper in Pennsylvania, she would be dead before they could find their way to this clearing. That, of course, was why no one had stumbled upon this, the real sacrifice place, throughout the years.
Had this awful thing been continuous? Or had these people found their own lives so dreary and horrible that they had discovered a history of this cult and recreated it for the twenty-first century?
Did it matter?
Somehow she still had the knife she’d picked up. A knife from the cheese tray, while these people were carrying blades that would have done the frontiersman Jim Bowie proud.
One of the hooded figures touched her arm. “Faster.”
She smiled. “Serena Nelson. Wow. I thought of you as an absolute airhead, but seriously, never quite this stupid.”
“I’m stupid? You’re the one who is going to die.”
The figure who had run ahead stood naked before the altar. She turned, and Keri recognized Barbara Chrome.
“Stop speaking!” Barbara yelled. “The chant needs to begin. You dishonor our lord!”
Serena shoved Keri hard in the ribs, and they crossed the clearing to Barbara’s side.
“Now!” Serena told her. “Lie down on the table.”
“I don’t see a table.”
“The altar,” someone else hissed.
“You guys really have a seventeen-year-old girl calling the shots?” Keri demanded.
She was pushed forward onto their makeshift altar. It had been made of gravestones, she realized. And it was surrounded by...
Skulls. Human skulls.
“She’s not calling the shots,” a male voice snapped. Keri fought hard to recognize the voice.
Barbara began singing and chanting, but the man interrupted again, heedless of ceremonial rites.
“Where the hell is the cop? Where is Joe Dunhill?”
“There, tied to the tree,” someone else said.
“Like hell! There’s no one tied to the tree! Dammit, he’s out there. You assholes! You let him go, you said that he was secure and knocked out, damnation!”
Joe! They’d had Joe... But they didn’t have him now.
“He’s gone,” someone else said. “We need to do this and get the hell out of here.”
“We can’t! He knows who I am!” Serena cried. “We have to find him.”
“Find him?” someone else demanded. “In these trees, we never will. Oh no, Serena—you’re going to have to pay the price.”
“Like hell!” Serena said. “If I go down, you’re all going down! Find him.”
The tallest of them, the man who’d noticed Joe was missing, walked up to Serena.
“Find him!” she demanded, shoving at him.
Keri realized it was Pete Wright—which meant that Eileen must also be one of the figures. So, that was their cult. Serena, Pete and Eileen, and the damned caterers.
“We will not go down!” Pete roared at her.
He slammed his knife into Serena’s chest, fast and with great force. She barely got out a whimper before she slipped to the ground.
Keri nearly screamed, stunned, forced to awareness that killing meant nothing to them. “Now!” Pete shouted. “Continue!”
Barbara laughed delightedly and began her sing-song chant once again.
“Get her on that altar,” Pete demanded.
“I can get on it myself,” Keri said. She crawled up, reaching in her pocket, thankful she was still clothed when Barbara, continuing the proceedings, was naked.
As were the others, she found out. The instant she was atop the altar, they shed their cloaks and hoods and stepped around the altar, their only accessory their knives.
Five of them now, with Serena lying dead, were ready to come at her...
And she would die of the dozens of vicious stab wounds that would soon descend upon her.
* * *
There was no choice—he had to act now or never.
It helped that they had killed Serena; Joe had been trained that the right thing to do was to bring a perpetrator to justice. He was not judge or jury.
But in this instance, he needed more of them completely incapacitated.
He picked up the massive rock he’d found by Spencer, the one that been used to bash in the man’s skull. Had he been one of them? Had he gone against the group?
That didn’t matter right now. What mattered was getting to Keri.
He slipped back through the trees as quietly as he could. He hefted the rock, weighing it mentally, praying that his aim would be true.
Barbara was dancing away, sing-chanting, ready to slice into Keri with the first cut.
Then, to Joe’s amazement, Keri sat up, screaming something like an enraged she-wolf cry. She had a knife—a little knife.
She slammed it into Barbara’s breast, sending her back reeling and screaming. “No, no! I’m perfect, I’m beautiful...!”
“Asshole!” Pete shouted, reaching for Keri.
Joe threw his rock. Hard. He hit Pete dead center in the back of his skull; Pete went down without a whimper.
Keri leaped from the altar and grabbed up Pete’s knife just as Joe burst into the clearing, running with pure fury. He slashed as he tore into the circle, easily causing a dozen wounds against naked flesh.
“Your back to mine!” he shouted to Keri, and she understood, and both of them faced out as the cultists came at them.
Eileen wasn’t with them; she was sobbing on the ground, over Pete. Barbara was slumped against a tree, crying in pain and fury.
“Edge toward the path you came down,” Joe said.
“Got it.” Keri took a swipe at Rod, who was trying to rush her.
Facing Stan, Joe couldn’t see her, but her thrust must have been true. He heard Rod’s cry of pain.
“You’re going to die!” Rod screamed, and he was rushing again.
Joe spun around just in time, skewering him as Rod flew at them. Screaming and clutching his gut, Rod fell to the ground.
Joe spun again, hearing the whisk of air as Milly flew at him, knife raised high above her head.
Her mistake.
This group really didn’t know their knives. They could put a razor-sharp blade to a throat, and they could slice up a prone and dying victim. But they didn’t know real knife fighting.
Joe feinted and thrust his own weapon, catching Milly in the middle of her rib cage, his knife going deep. She howled and fell on top of her husband.
Only Stan, bleeding profusely, was still standing. He started toward Joe and lifted his blade, ready for the fight.
But then Stan dropped his weapon, just staring at Joe. Accepting defeat.
They were down. Barbara, teen-murderer, was slumped by a tree. Pete had been felled by the rock, and Eileen was holding him in her arms, sobbing. Serena lay a few feet away, killed by Pete.
Rod and Milly were down as well, while Stan just stood there, naked and bleeding.
Still, one of them might rise, and Joe edged Keri behind him and began to back away.
Lights suddenly burst through the trees.
“FBI!” Dallas shouted. “Throw down your weapons.”
Joe looked at Keri and shrugged, smiling slowly. “Dallas!” he called. “Keri and I are the only ones who have weapons now. We need some EMTs out here, pretty quickly.”
Dallas came striding into the clearing, looking from Joe and Keri to the scene before him—naked people, strewn about and bleeding. He stared at Joe again with astonishment.
“You did this single-handed?” Dallas asked. “Remind me never to get into a knife fight with you.”
“Not single-handed,” Joe said. He turned and smiled at Keri. “I had amazing backup.”
“Amazing,” Keri said, but then she fell into his arms. Passed out.
He looked up at Dallas, shaking his head.
“Pete killed Serena,” he said. “She disagreed with his plan of action once they saw that I’d escaped. Carl should be fine. He’s back there on that stretcher. If Pete is alive, he’s going to have a hell of a headache. Oh, and Spencer is back there in the trees. I don’t know if he was one of them or just a victim. And I don’t know if he’s alive. Bad head wound, lots of blood.”
Other law enforcement was sweeping into the clearing. Joe saw that Jackson and Angela had arrived, both of them quickly assessing their situation, shouting to other officers, and calling back for the EMTs to hurry out.
Keri was limp in his arms. Joe looked at Dallas. “I think I should get her back to the inn,” he said softly. “How is Belinda? Jamie? Brad?”
“Alive,” Dallas told him. “Fighting off the effects of tainted energy bars.”
“Thank God. How did you find us?”
Dallas turned to Angela. The delicate blonde in her navy pantsuit looked bizarrely out of place in the woods. Jackson towered beside her, his striking features catching the moving beams of the officers’ flashlights.
“Angela led us here,” Dallas said. “You two talked about the deep, dark woods today. Get out of here and get back to the inn. The others have come to. They’ll be there to meet you. We’ll discuss it all later.”
“I’ll go back with them,” Angela said. “I know the way.”
Joe carried Keri through the bodies on the ground. He didn’t look down; he couldn’t regret the violence.
Halfway along the path, Keri stirred and looked up into his eyes. She struggled against his hold, her eyes wide.
“Oh, my God, I passed out,” she said with horror.
“It’s all right,” he said, holding her tightly lest she fall.
She gaped, clinging to him with fresh fear as she saw Angela.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Angela said quickly. “Special Agent Angela Hawkins, Krewe of Hunters. You might have passed out, Miss Wolf, but you sure came to the fore when you were needed. You two survived a knife fight against pretty rough odds. I might have passed out after that, and I’ve been at this a long time now.”
Keri eased back in his arms again, smiling with relief.
“We are alive,” she whispered. And then she struggled in earnest. “I can walk,” she assured him. As he eased her down, she turned to Angela. “I’ve heard about you. I’m so glad to meet you. And so grateful that you came so quickly.”
“We should have been quicker,” Angela said. “We all suspected members of the Truth Seekers. But go figure. The caterers.”
“It’s a pity,” Joe said. “Their food was really good. They should have stuck with cooking.”
* * *
Puzzle pieces had come together—almost.
Back at the inn, Belinda and Jamie were seated in the tavern with Brad, drinking coffee and fighting the effects of the energy bars. They’d been heavily laced with a sleeping medicine. Captain Dickey returned, along with other officers.
There was mass confusion as paperwork began; Keri and Joe did their best to fill in what had happened, but they didn’t have all the answers.
Jackson headed to the hospital with the injured, and Serena, the only dead.
Stan, hurt the least, talked readily in order to plead himself the most innocent of the group.
Barbara had found the group on the dark web. Eileen and Pete had picked her up in New York City and brought her to Philadelphia while they’d waited for Carl to take over the inn and start his paranormal research. The tech department had ripped into her computer and discovered that she’d been communicating with them for months—giving them all the information they wanted, gaining their trust.
They had originally intended for Barbara to be their sacrifice, but she had quickly convinced them that she could float their entire enterprise with an account she’d set up under an assumed name—and because they’d quickly realized her homicidal potential. She was one of them.
The girl really belonged in a hospital. Her psychosis made her a danger to herself and, clearly, others. As she was taken away by the EMTs, she had screamed that she needed a plastic surgeon immediately.
While her involvement was new, the cult itself had been around for decades. Spencer Atkins had not been involved, but he had begun to suspect that something was going on near the inn. He’d hoped to find something to show Dallas and Joe and get them off his back as a potential suspect. Searching the woods, he’d come upon Pete—who had bashed him in the head.
Pete and Catrina had been the real murderers, Stan told them.
Julie Castro had been on the hunt for Barbara—and Barbara had not wanted to go back. So Catrina Billings had ordered Pete and Eileen to get rid of Julie’s partner, Ed. With a begging phone call from Barbara, they’d lured Julie out to the abandoned church, where the group had taken her by surprise, killed her and planted her body to be found in the basement.
That hadn’t set well with Pete, who considered himself the high priest of their group. Furious that Billings—who had been ready to hand Barbara over for the ransom money—had brought an FBI agent among them, he’d ordered the rest of them to take care of the detective.
From the beginning, they’d planned to kill Carl and Keri in a grand offering, truly dancing naked with the devil in the woods. They had believed that, by leaving Brad and the cops alive, they’d be able to slip back into their usual positions and watch with feigned dismay as the FBI and law enforcement searched and searched and found nothing.
Brad was horrified. He didn’t think that he could ever do another paranormal investigation.
“All that’s left is Mike and I,” he said. “Three of them, slipping around... Eileen, pretending such horror when she had helped bring down Julie Castro’s body... How could I have been so blind? They were with me on so many investigations, and when we were on breaks, they were driving out of New York to come here for their meetings...and whatever else they were doing while they were here.” He shook his head. “I know now that they were communicating with the living—not the dead! What goes on in that dark web...it’s terrifying. Still terrifying just to know!”
Carl was surprisingly calm. But then, he hadn’t come to until he was back at the inn, where, seeing Brad, Jamie and Belinda, he had refused medical attention himself. He wasn’t leaving people he considered to be his real friends.
“You’ll just be more famous than ever,” Brad told Carl.
“This isn’t a time to plan the future,” Carl replied. “We have to give ourselves time to think.”
It was daylight again before they finished with the paperwork and heard everything Jackson had to say after he returned from the hospital.
Keri said that she couldn’t stand feeling the way she did any longer. She and Joe were both covered in blood from the fight, and she wanted nothing more than to take a shower. Both Captain Dickey and Jackson apologized—yes, they would be allowed to shower right away.
Joe and Keri got into the shower together, but they were both so exhausted they wound up simply holding one another while the hot water washed over them, and after, they were asleep almost before they hit the bed.
That night, Joe slept deeply, peacefully, his arms wrapped around his Keri and for once, completely off guard duty. He’d never felt safer, now that Keri was safe.
When they awoke, it was no longer morning, but afternoon, and refreshed, they made love. And it felt perfect and easy, and the world seemed lighter and brighter. Every sensation seemed heightened even above the incredible way it had been before, each touch, each caress, ever more intimate. They were alive, and together.
Curled into one another and happy to let the others believe they were still asleep—or if not, they were welcome to believe whatever they chose—Joe and Keri talked about what was to come. There was never a suggestion that they wouldn’t meet the future together.
“Do you need to be in Richmond?” he asked her.
“No, but I promised the ghosts of Beatrice and Hank Bergen that I would write the truth. She tried to warn me, Joe. She tried to keep me from the basement, but it was too late. And we might not have found Detective Billings for days without them. How do so many people become so...horrid?” she asked. “I don’t need to be in Richmond, but I need access to things here.”
“That’s easy enough,” Joe told her.
“It is?”
“Carl owns everything in the museum now. He’ll pack it all up and get it to you. And you can do phone interviews, right?”
“Yes, I suppose. And...you’ll be in the academy?”
