Divine Evil

with masks, Ernie thought, and was pleased. He shook his head at the cup with drugged wine.
    “I don't need that. I took the oath.”
    After a moment Crampton nodded and sipped from the cup himself. “I prefer a heightened awareness.” He offered the cup to Mick. “It will ease that twinge. That chest wound's healing well enough, but it's deep.”
    “Damn tentanus shot was almost as bad.” Mick shared the drug. “The others are waiting. It's nearly time.”
    Bud stayed crouched until they had disappeared into the trees. He wasn't sure what he had seen. He didn't want to believe what he had seen. He glanced back toward the road, knowing how long it would take him to go back and try to contact Cam again. Even if he succeeded, he would lose them.
    He crawled out of the gully and followed.
    They'd taken her clothes. Clare was beyond embarrassment. She hadn't been drugged. Atherton had told her, privately, that he wanted her fully aware of everything that happened. She could scream and beg and plead. It would only excite the others.
    She'd fought when they dragged her to the altar. Though her arms and legs were stiff and weak from disuse, she'd struggled wildly, almost as horrified to see the familiar faces surrounding her as to recognize what was happening.
    Less Gladhill and Bob Meese tied down her arms, Skunk Haggerty and George Howard her legs. She recognized a local farmer, the manager of the bank, two members of the town council. They all stood quietly and waited.
    She managed to twist her wrist so that her fingers gripped Bob's.
    “You can't do this. He's going to kill me. Bob, you can't let it happen. I've known you all my life.”
    He pulled away and said nothing.
    They were not to speak to her. Not to think of her as a woman, as a person they knew. She was an offering. Nothing more.
    Each, in his turn, took up his mask. And became her nightmare.
    She didn't scream. There was no one to hear, no one to care. She didn't cry. So many tears had been shed already that she was empty. She imagined that when they plunged the knife into her, they would find no blood. Only dust.
    The candles were placed around her, then lighted. In the pit, the fire was ignited, and fed. Shimmers of heat danced on the air. She watched it all, eerily, detached. Whatever hope she had clung to through the days and nights she had spent in the dark was snuffed out.
    Or so she thought, until she saw Ernie.
    The tears she hadn't thought she had now sprang to her eyes. She struggled again, and the ropes scraped harmlessly against her bandages.
    “Ernie, for God's sake. Please.”
    He looked at her. He'd thought he would feel lust, a raw and needy fire inside the pit of his belly. She was naked, as he'd once imagined her. Her body was slender and white, just as it had been when he'd caught glimpses of her through her bedroom window.
    But it wasn't lust, and he couldn't bear to analyze the emotion that crawled through him. He turned away and chose the mask of an eagle. Tonight, he would fly.
    However immature her mind, Annie's body was old. She couldn't go quickly, no matter how Cam urged, pleaded, and supported. Fear added to the weight of her legs so that she dragged her feet.
    The light was fading fast.
    “How much farther, Annie?”
    “It's up ahead some. I didn't have my supper,” she reminded him.
    “Soon. You can eat soon.”
    She sighed and turned, as instinctively as a deer or rabbit, taking a path overgrown with summer brush.
    “Gotta watch out for them sticky bushes. They reach right out and grab you.” Her eyes darted right and left as she searched the lengthening shadows. “Like monsters.”
    “I won't let them hurt you.” He put an arm around her waist, both for support and to hurry her along.
    Comforted, she trudged ahead. “Are you going to marry Clare?”
    “Yes.” Please God. “Yes, I am.”
    “She's pretty. When she smiles, she has nice white teeth. Her daddy did, too. She looks like her daddy. He gave me roses. But he's dead now.” Her lungs were starting to trouble her so that she wheezed when she walked, like a worn-out engine. “The monsters didn't get him.”
    “No.”
    “He fell out the window, after those men went up and yelled at him.”
    He looked down but didn't slacken pace. “What men?”
    “Was that another time? I disremember. He left the light on in the attic.”
    “What men, Annie?”
    “Oh, the sheriff and the young deputy. They went up and then came out again. And he was