Douglas Preston - Crimson Shore

Gavin watched Constance carefully. As he hoped, she was calmly taking it all in with those intense violet eyes, without hysteria or perturbation. He felt a swell of confidence that what was happening here was, in a way, ordained. This was one remarkable woman.

He smiled. “Welcome.”

“Welcome to what?” she asked in an even voice.

“Before I go into that, may I ask how you got here?”

No answer.

“Let me guess, then: you’re here because you figured out the abandoned witches’ colony had not vanished, but moved to this spot. And you came to investigate. Am I right?”

She did not react. God, it was hard to read her face, beyond those strangely quiet but intense eyes.

“And now you’ve arrived at all this.” He spread his hands. “It must be very confusing.”

Still she said nothing.

“How to begin?” He gave a nervous laugh. This girl made him feel like a teenager again. “I don’t know how you did it, exactly, but your coming here is... a sign. It is without doubt a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

He looked at her beautiful, oddly impassive face. He sensed this woman was even deeper than he had believed. So much the better.

“This, Constance, is our chamber of worship.”

“Our chamber.”

“Yes. Our chamber. And this is our altar.”

“May I ask what religion?”

“You may. We practice the oldest surviving religion on earth. The original religion. As you’ve no doubt guessed, we are witches.” He observed her face closely, but could not quite interpret the look that briefly crossed her face. “Real witches. Our worship goes back twenty thousand years.”

“And those women you’ve brutalized?”

“Not brutalized. Not at all. Please, give me a chance to explain before you judge. Constance, I’m sure you must realize that your coming here — and my arrival at the same time — is not an accident. Nor is it an accident that Carole failed to poison you with that chai tea of hers. She’s a jealous woman — but we’re off the subject.”

Constance did not reply.

“From the very beginning, I saw that you were one of those exceptional people you spoke of back at the Inn. Do you recall that conversation?”

“Very well.”

“I knew then that you could be one of us. We haven’t taken a new member into our family in two hundred years. It takes a very special person to understand who we are. You’re that person. There’s a rebellion in you, a yearning for freedom. I see in you the desire to live by your own rules.”

“Indeed.”

Gavin was amazed at how easy this was, how natural it felt. “And there’s a darkness in you.”

“Darkness?”

This was more than encouraging. “Yes, but a good kind of darkness. The darkness that brings light.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a witch. My parents were witches, my grandparents, going back half a dozen generations in Exmouth, and before that Oldham, the New Salem Marsh Colony, Salem, the British Isles, and so forth into the mists of time. I was born into this tradition just as naturally as Christians are born into their faith. Our practices may seem a little startling to an outsider, but so would a church service to someone who knew nothing of Christianity. I hasten to add that we’re not in opposition to Christianity. We believe in live and let live. We aren’t cruel people. For example, we never would have participated in that horrible mass murder of women and children on board that ship. That was done by so-called Christians.”

Gavin paused, looking at her with curiosity, trying to peer into her mind. “Look at the beauty of this chamber, the ancient things in here, the sense of history and purpose. The corridors leading here, I know, can be off-putting — the blood and the smell and the rest. But you see, Constance, our Sabbat ceremony is free of euphemism. It involves real blood and real flesh in real sacrifice. And, I might add... real sensuality.”

Again, her face betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

He reached out to take her hand, and she allowed it. Her hand was cold and clammy, but he pressed it anyway.

“I don’t want to force our beliefs on you. But let me tell you a little of our history and origin. I’m sure you know much of the story already: for seeking his freedom, Lucifer and his followers were cast out of heaven. But not into hell. They ended up right here on earth — and we are the Maleficarum , their spiritual descendants. Lucifer, the rebel angel, gives us the freedom to be and do what we wish.”

“And you wish to convert me to these beliefs.”

Gavin laughed, blushing despite himself. “You didn’t end up here, this night of all nights, by accident. You and I were guided here by forces greater than ourselves; forces we ignore at our peril.”

“What kind of forces?”

“Earlier tonight, two members of our community were supposed to have conducted a rare and extremely important sacrifice. However, it didn’t go as planned.”

“What kind of sacrifice, exactly?”

“We worship Lucifer, but we breed a mortal devil as the focus of our worship. He’s part demon, part human. His name is Morax and he has lived here, in these tunnels, for many years. He is a symbol, a spiritual gateway, a... a medium to help us communicate with the unseen world. But now, we’re in troublous times. Your friend Pendergast discovered and defiled our ancient settlement, removing important artifacts. That was a shock to the Daemonium, to our protectors. And Carole tells me you figured out that the witches’ colony didn’t die out as everyone believed, but instead moved south. Here, as a matter of fact. As a result, our community has been thrown into its worst crisis since 1692. Secrecy is the only way we can survive. We’ve always perpetuated the idea that the witches, the real witches, who fled Salem died out centuries ago. But with all that’s happened in Exmouth recently — the killings and the subsequent attention — our coven was in danger of being exposed. Worse, the blasphemous use of the sacred Tybane Inscriptions by the Dunwoodys, trying to cover their murderous family history, surely angered the Daemonium. This forced us to do what we’ve only had to do a few times in the past: sacrifice our living demon to appease the powers of darkness. The last time we sacrificed our demon was during the hurricane of 1938. As a result, we were without doubt saved from extinction. And so just yesterday the coven leadership decided that we once again had to sacrifice our demon, Morax, to Lucifer in order to gain his intercession; to keep our worship a secret. It was supposed to happen earlier this evening — on the first night of the full moon.”

“And it didn’t go as planned?”

“Not yet . The demon escaped before the ritual could be completed. Nevertheless, he must be sacrificed. That’s why I’m here — to finish the job my brethren failed to do. Morax is in Exmouth now, free for the first time in his life, satisfying his bloodlust. But he will come back here when he’s sated. It’s the only home he knows. And when he does, I’ll be ready.”

“And after you sacrifice him? What then?”

“Lucifer works in mysterious ways. We’ll be protected — I don’t know how precisely. And we will eventually breed another demon from the same genetic line.” He nodded toward the archway that led to the women’s cell. “Those two, a mother and a daughter, are in fact our breeders. They carry the gene, which came to us with whalers from the South Pacific back in the eighteenth century, when a family of remote islanders joined our order. A certain defect was common among these islanders — some were born with a tail. These were true tails, Constance, not vestigial tails: caudal appendages with fully formed vertebrae, an extension of the coccyx. When my ancestors saw the women of this family give birth to such a creature — well, you can imagine their excitement. This was Morax, reborn — Morax in the flesh, just as he had been described and depicted in the ancient texts. It was a gift to us from Lucifer. And it immediately became a central element of our worship ceremony. And so it, and its descendants, have remained to this day.” He nodded out the archway again. “The mother bred the current Morax; the daughter will breed the next one.”