Kay Hooper - Blood Sins

"We have no way of knowing for certain, but as far as we've been able to determine, among the known missing and murder victims only Sarah was psychic. If he found out who and what she was, then chances are he's even stronger than we believed. Which means he's even more deadly than we believed. "

Officially, the children of the Church of the Everlasting Sin were home-schooled. Unofficially, they were often involved in church-supervised activities throughout the day. And like the adults who had chosen this refuge from the world, the children had a unique inner life that outsiders would have found odd.

Some of the adult church members would have found it odd as well. And not a little alarming.

Because not all of the children believed.

And some of them were afraid.

"Do you think Wendy got away?" Brooke kept her voice low, audible only to the small group at the playground's covered picnic table. The group was busily collecting numerous toys left by some of the younger children now being shepherded toward the church.

"I think so." Ruby's voice was equally low. She held open a cloth bag so that Cody could pile in all the alphabet blocks.

As he did so, he said, "Yeah, but I don't think Sarah made it."

Ruby and Brooke exchanged looks, and then both stared at the dark, solemn-eyed boy.

Replying to their silent question, he said simply, "I don't feel her anymore."

"Are you sure?" Hunter was the fourth member of the little group and the accepted leader, despite being the youngest at eleven. "Just because we haven't seen her doesn't mean she's gone. I mean really gone. She has a shell. We've all felt it."

"I don't even feel that now. Do you?" Cody said.

Hunter frowned, concentrating on collecting all the small plastic pieces of a miniature dairy farm. "No. But I thought it might just be me. Because I hardly feel anything at all."

Blinking back tears, Brooke said, "I was going to ask Sarah if she could get me out next."

Ruby said, "We aren't supposed to know she got anybody out, Brooke. We aren't supposed to know she was here to snoop around."

"I didn't tell anybody. I wouldn't have."

Cody muttered, "Just because you don't tell doesn't mean somebody doesn't know ."

"I was careful. I'm always careful. But it's getting harder and harder. I can't stay here anymore, I just can't. My aunt Judy lives in Texas, and she doesn't like the church. I know she'd let me live with her."

"What about your mom and dad?" Hunter asked.

"What about them?" Brooke fixed her gaze on the crayons she was gathering into a plastic container. "They believe in the church. They believe in Father. They're never going to leave here."

After a moment, Cody said, "My mom isn't so sure anymore. She's beginning to be afraid."

"Does she know you feel that?" Ruby asked him.

"No. She pretends everything is just the same."

"Don't tell her," Hunter warned. "We can't tell any of our parents. Not what we know, and not what we feel. We have to keep hiding it. Because we all know what'll happen if we don't."

"Then what do we do?" Cody spoke more quickly, his gaze on the two adult church members coming toward them.

"We keep our mouths shut."

"Until?"

"Until we figure out something better."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, Cody. But I do know we're safer doing nothing until we figure out what to do."

Ruby said, "That's easy for you. You two aren't girls."

"No," Brooke agreed, also aware of the approach of two of their keepers. "It's different for us. Once the Ceremonies begin. Once Father notices we're growing up." Her last few words were whispered, "Once Father starts watching us____________________"

Tessa hadn't known Sarah very well; Haven was a growing organization whose members were spread out all over the country, most living quiet, seemingly normal livesat least until they were called into serviceand many of them had never even met one another. But not knowing a fallen comrade, she had discovered, did nothing to lessen the feeling of loss.

One of their own was gone.

That knowledge was too painful to think about unless Tessa could make something meaningful of it. And right now that was all but impossible for her, especially when she was going into the same situation that had cost Sarah her life.

Hollis said, "Your shield is stronger than Sarah's."

"You're a telepath now?"

"No. You wouldn't be human if you weren't thinking about it."

Tessa didn't want to think about it. Instead, she thought about the young church member Bambi's expression of adoration, and that of others she had met. She said slowly, "They don't seem to be afraid of him. His followers."

Hollis didn't push it. "Well, not the ones he sends out in public, anyway." She shook her head. "Given the typical profile of a cult leader, there's often some kind of sexual domination and control, but we aren't sure about that with Samuel. For one thing, the church has existed long enough that I would have expected him to have offspring by more than one woman if he was using sex. But as far as we can determine, he's childless."

"Sterile, maybe?"

"Maybe. Or maybe he genuinely sees himself as a more traditional prophet in the sense of being a holy man, above the needs of the flesh. He's a bit older, somewhere in his mid-forties, and they do call him Father, after all."

A cold memory stirred in Tessa. "Didn't Jim Jones's followers call him Father?"

"Yes, as I recall. It's the rule rather than an exception for a cult leader to portray himself as a patriarchal or messianic head of his church. An absolute power structure with a single figure at the top."

"I think some of the younger church members I've talked to so far would respond strongly to that idea of a protective father image. But the older ones? The ones closer to his own age? How does he hold them? How does he convince them to follow him?"

"More questions we don't have answers for. And we need them. If we have any hope of stopping Samuel, we need information."

"I know." Tessa drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I know."

It was that sense of urgency rather than any confidence on her part that finally sent Tessa, later on that Wednesday afternoon, several miles outside the very small town of Grace to a nice if deceptively ordinary wrought-iron gate at the end of a short lane off the area's main two-lane highway.

There was what appeared to be a small farmhouse to the left and just inside the surprisingly pretty brick and wrought-iron fencing. Tessa had only a moment or two to wonder if the clearly very sturdy and certainly very expensive fence ran around the entire two-hundred-acre Compound, before she saw a tall man in jeans and a flannel shirt come out of the house and approach the other side of the gate.

The two sides of the gate opened inward as he neared them, giving Tessa an unsettling feeling that wasn't lessened a bit by his casual air or by the fact that he addressed her by name as soon as she put the car window downand she had never met him before in her life.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Gray. Come for a visit?"

Tessa managed to avoid even a glance at the plain gold band on her left hand, its weight still an unfamiliar, slightly uncomfortable sensation. "Yes. Ruth said" She broke off when he nodded.

"Of course. She'll be waiting for you at the Square. Just continue along the drive all the way to the end. And welcome."

"Thank you." Tessa hoped he couldn't see that her fingers were white-knuckled with tension on the steering wheel as she drove through the gates and followed the long asphalt drive that disappeared into a dense-looking forest.

She glanced into the rearview mirror in time to see the big gates slowly closing behind her, and her feeling of being trapped owed nothing to any sense except the very primitive one of self-preservation.