Death Before Facebook

thought.
So what if we have to sacrifice a few virgins
?
    “Nor do I demand sacrifice,” they said.
    Ha! What about the youth of Lacedaemon
?
    There was another phrase he liked: “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.”
    Again he thought,
Sign me up
, but given the spooky tone of the ritual, he couldn’t help wondering what on Earth the phrase was supposed to mean. Were these women some sort of modern maenads, as likely to tear strong men apart as light a candle or two in the moonlight? Kit looked the part.
    A little scenario came to him: What if Geoff’s death wasn’t quite as cut-and-dry as it looked? What if he’d been killed somewhere else and taken to his patio, the ladder placed just so…
    Or maybe the ritual had been there in the first place.
    Exactly how it might escalate to death he’d worry about later, but a less pleasant thought hit him now—maybe these women really were dangerous when full of religious fervor or whatever you called this.
    If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time…
    A sobering thought but no way in hell was he budging. In all his years as a reporter, he’d never seen anything like this damn thing.
    They finished the speech: “For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.”
    But who the hell are you?
he wondered, as people had, he realized, since “the beginning” the speech mentioned.
    The end of desire. Sure. If only it were that easy.
    Neetsie seemed to have another announcement to make.
    This Neetsie certainly wasn’t the one he knew. She was much more poised, sure, more confident.
    More adult.
    He found himself a little in awe of her, a circumstance he couldn’t have imagined before tonight.
    She spoke to the moon. “You who are with us always even when you are not; Moonmother! Shining One; dark one; large one; small one; pregnant one; barren one; crescent and circle. You who are as we are—maiden, mother, crone—though now at your height. Diana, Luna, Cybele, Aradia; Ishtar, Astarte; Inanna. Come to us tonight! Come to us!
    “Be here now!”
    Obviously following some sort of script the others shouted: “Be here now!”
    Neetsie lit a black candle and picked up a green one. She spoke to it: “And you, Lord Cernunnos. Homed one; leaper, lover, brother and son. Virile one, keeper of the animals, join us as well.” She lit the candle.
    “Be here now!”
    “Be here now!” the women chanted, and it was all Pearce could do not to shout the words with them. Though what it was they were calling, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
    If it has horns, it probably has little cloven hooves as well.
    Neetsie spoke again, this time to the group, having apparently finished her colloquy with heavenly bodies and demons. “Women of the Cauldron of Cerridwen! Tonight we will speak with one as old as the pyramids. Wiser than all the pharaohs and all the gods; more terrible than an earthquake. Sekhmet the Lady of the Fifth Way! Those who work with Sekhmet mention indescribable delights and unspeakable horrors. So is it with our lady.”
    Mixing things up, aren’t they? Cerridwen was Celtic, I think, and the pyramids are Egyptian. And how the hell does Our Lady fit in?
    He was trying to think sophisticated thoughts, striving to muster up his usual cynical attitude, but he couldn’t stop a crop of goose bumps.
    “Priestess Brianna, come forward.”
    That proved to be Kit, who had rejoined the group, and now came to the center again. “Priestess Brianna, are you ready to receive the Lady of the Bloodbath?”
    “I am.”
    “Are you ready to receive the Giver of Ecstasies?”
    “I am.”
    “So mote it be.”
    The answer came: “So mote it be.”
    Once again, Neetsie spoke to the moon: “Lady Diana [she pronounced it “Deeonna”], it is your night; it is your moment And so we beg your indulgence to call into our priestess your counterpart of the daytime hours, another Shining One, a lady of the sun.”
    Pearce half expected the moon to bellow out “So mote it be!”
    “Cover us,” commanded Neetsie.
    Suby stepped forward, picked up a silvery scarf from the altar, and draped it over both women’s heads. It looked as if, inside, Neetsie held Kit by the shoulders.
    “Mother of the gods!” she shouted. “Come into our priestess. One Who Was Before the Gods Were! Flaming One! Lady of the Scarlet-Colored Garment! Awakener! Lady of Enchantments! Sekhmet of the Knives! Satisfier of Desires!