Heather Graham - Dark Rites

“Ambulance, med techs! He took something,” Griffin shouted.

The man stared up at Griffin with wild eyes—terrified eyes.

Maybe he’d never really imagined what dying might be like.

But he was defiant.

“Long live Satan!” he choked out.

Then he twitched again, and again—and went still.

Barnes hunkered down by Griffin and the young man. “He’s gone. What a fool. He must have taken a suicide capsule!”

“He wanted me to shoot him,” Griffin said, shaking his head. What a waste of life.

“Anyway, it’s over. People in Boston will be safer,” Barnes said. “You caught the guy, Griffin. Bastard killed himself. Sad as anything, but it’s over at least.”

“Ah, hell, Barnes, come on!” Griffin said. He liked Barnes, didn’t mind working with the detective, and they had a pretty good rapport. But Barnes was way off base with this one.

“It’s not over,” Griffin said quietly. “Why do you think he killed himself? They’ve got some kind of a pact. There’s a cult working here.”

“Well, yeah, obviously, this kid is some kind of Satanist. But, Griffin, you were right on top of this one. And we’re looking at one man. One man who smashed the skull of a young woman—and ran. This has been too hard for us because the attacks have been so random. But it’s got to have been the act of one crazy man. All he had to do was find someone alone on a dark street, strike fast, leave his message and run. It just took one person, Griffin.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t know if it’s been the same one person. I’m telling you, Barnes, we’ve got a real problem here. The violence isn’t going to stop.”

“Griffin, you’re concerned because you thought you’d be heading back to Virginia by now. You chose to stay because of the attack on Alex Maple—Vickie’s friend,” Barnes told him.

It was true; after the Undertaker case, he’d planned on going back to Krewe headquarters in northern Virginia.

But it wasn’t just that Alex had been involved.

The writing on the victims had been disturbing. His instincts told him there was more to it.

“I wish I felt like celebrating, Barnes. I’m sorry. I’m worried. I’m afraid that we have a Charles Manson, David Koresh or Jim Jones–type active here. I believe you’ve got someone out there who has been preaching witchcraft or paganism or—from what we’ve seen—the rise of Satan. If that’s true, you’ve got a group of people running around assaulting random but easy targets—and this won’t be the last attack.”

* * *

“He’s never stood me up—I’m worried,” Vickie Preston said to her longtime friend, Roxanne Greeley, looking at her phone again as she did so.

She’d been looking forward to the evening; she had become good friends with Alex Maple. She really liked him. He was boyish and enthusiastic, smart as a whip—and it was wonderful to know someone who loved history as much as she did. Alex was a professor; Vickie wrote guidebooks, and she was known for making the history within those books readable and relatable. She’d called on Alex for help in the recent Undertaker case and they’d quickly become good friends. And Alex had a great time talking to Griffin, as well. Ever since she and Griffin had come together during the horror and solving of the recent murders in the city, Vickie couldn’t imagine having friends who didn’t get along with Griffin. She was very much in love with him. As far as he and Alex went, they had similar taste in music and sports—Alex might be quite the intellectual, but he loved the Patriots. While others might scoff at the home team’s arrogance, in Alex’s mind they deserved to be a bit arrogant.

Griffin had gone to dinner with old friends, members of his unit who were passing through Boston on their way to their home a bit north, in Salem; Vickie hadn’t gone with him only because she’d already made plans with Alex this evening, and she’d invited Roxanne—she had it all set up. She already regretted the fact that she’d made previous plans. She really wanted to get to know Griffin’s friends—Devin Lyle and Craig Rockwell. Craig was known as Rocky, she had learned, and he’d grown up in Peabody, Massachusetts, while Devin had grown up in Salem. Now they were a married couple, and though Devin was still a children’s book author, she had also gone through the academy and become part of the Krewe of Hunters unit down in Virginia.

But Vickie had never ditched one friend for another, or ignored a promise of a dinner date with one person to go out with someone else. She had thought of switching dates with Alex. That hadn’t worked, however, because she hadn’t been able to reach him.

And she couldn’t just not show up—Alex had been so excited. He’d made what he thought was a pretty amazing discovery about something that had to do with Massachusetts. He was enjoying lording it over her—though he said he couldn’t wait to tell her about it.

Even though their friendship was pretty new, Vickie felt she knew Alex. He was often crazy busy, and still, like her, if he’d made a date, he’d be there. He didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would simply forget a friend, under any circumstance. Not that unexpected things didn’t happen, but he did have a cell phone, and he should have called.

Naturally, Roxanne was aware that Vickie had been entertaining ulterior motives in insisting that she come with them to dinner at the café.

They were both great people, and Vickie wanted them to get together. She wasn’t matchmaking; if they happened to like each other, that would be great. If not, it was just a dinner with friends.

Vickie’s pretense to have Roxanne join them at dinner was that she was worried; Alex had taken quite a beating when he’d gone down. Vickie had said that she was afraid that she’d be ridiculously emotional, embarrassing everyone, if they were alone.

Dumb excuse, yes. And Roxanne had finally accused her point-blank of trying to set her up.

“You are playing matchmaker,” Roxanne said. “Never a good thing.”

“No, not usually a good thing,” Vickie had corrected.

But Roxanne had laughed. “Let’s do it. My last affair fell apart quickly enough. Hot and heavy—and over in the two seconds we realized I love a good art show and he loves watching sports in his boxers and guzzling beer. I mean, lots of guys do that, but not twenty-four hours a day or every single second out of work! I don’t seem to choose well—maybe you choosing for me will be the right thing. How could meeting this guy be anything worse than what happened before?”

Roxanne had been—for a brief time—growing heavily involved with an old boyfriend of Vickie’s, but in the rising intensity of the case just solved, she’d not only been seriously injured, but forced to rethink where she wanted to be in a relationship.

And yes, Vickie wanted to set her up with Alex.

But now, of course, the guy wasn’t there.

Vickie dialed his number again. No answer.

“Maybe he knew I was coming,” Roxanne said. “That could scare a guy away.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vickie said. “You’re beautiful.” Her friend was beautiful: blonde, trim, with a great smile. She just didn’t have luck with men. Vickie continued. “I know he wants to see me. I’ve been working on all kinds of things having to do with his assault. I was tracing that rhyme that was left written on his chest—and now, the same rhyme that was left on the other victims of this attacker, as well.”

“Of course you have,” Roxanne murmured. She was a visual artist, filled with all kinds of insight and art appreciation, but she was nowhere near as fond of history as either Vickie or Alex.

“Bear with me,” Vickie said. “That saying that was written on him—it goes back—way back. I don’t believe there were really any kind of Satanists running around when the whole thing started. I found reference to a man named Ezekiel Martin, who had studied to be a Puritan minister. He was never ordained, but he practiced his own brand of religion and managed to take a slew of people with him west into the woods to form a new colony and sect—one that he ruled through preaching a different higher power—that, apparently, being Satan.