"Your vision of God offers you nothing but frustration and privation," Dan said. "Knowing no better, you accepted that distortion of reality. But you are no longer an uneducated child, sheltered by a limited view of creation. You have seen magics, great and small. You have seen the spirits moving through the air. How can you just be a bystander? How it must gall you to be unable to partake in the wonders!"
"It is as it must be," Rinaldi said. Janice thought his voice held less of the obstinate conviction with which he had started. Dan had said Rinaldi was an intelligent man; perhaps he was beginning to see Dan's wisdom. Janice found herself hoping that he would.
"Must be?" Dan questioned. "Very little must be to a man who has the strength to seize opportunity. You can see that if you just look around you. My companions have partaken of my table, and they are whole. They are better than whole; they are stronger than they were before they joined me. Your gift lets you see that, doesn't it?"
Rinaldi hung his head and said nothing.
"Look at them!"
Rinaldi's head snapped up at the command. He stared at the feasters with eyes as bleak as winter.
Dan sat back, smiled with satisfaction. "Yes, you can see that their auras are stronger for partaking of my feast. You can be stronger, too. Strong enough to burst the bonds that tie you and touch the face of magic. You want to feel the magic, don't you?" In a very small voice Rinaldi said, "Yes." "Then join us," Dan said, leaning forward to offer the platter for the third time. "It's not hard. Partake. Take the power of another into yourself. Make yourself strong."
Rinaldi's nostrils distended. He began breathing hard, as if he was exerting himself physically. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. His eyes devoured the meat on the platter.
"Come, Pietro. You can't deny me. I'm only trying to help you fulfill your destiny."
Rinaldi locked his fingers together, elbows resting on the table and lowered his forehead to his hands. He was shaking. Dan snorted and passed the platter to Janice. She took a portion for her plate and passed it on. She felt sorry for Rinaldi. Why was it so hard for him to accept a place among them? How could he not want what Dan offered him?
The platter completed its course and the feasters began their meal. From behind the barrier of his folded hands, Rinaldi watched them. His eyes grew wilder.
At last he shouted, "Don't you all realize what you are eating?"
Silence descended on the table. Dan smiled at Janice and she smiled back. "Prey," she mouthed silently to her lover. Dan's smile grew wider. Glover cleared his throat and spoke.
"Oh, yes. We are quite aware. We partake of the ritual portion. It is necessary for the completion of the ritual. We purify the impure and return them to the holy cycle of the earth. Through us they are cleansed and, through them, we are strengthened."
"God save you! You're eating human flesh!" Rinaldi seemed verging on the edge of hysteria. "Give up your sin! Fight off the evil influence of this creature!"
"We partake of a ritual sacrament," Ashton responded calmly.
"And here I thought the Church had become more broad-minded about alternate religions," said another druid.
"We do this for the good of the land," added a third.
Rinaldi tried to get up, but Dan gestured and an invisible hand threw the priest back into his seat.
"It is impolite to leave the table before the meal is finished," Dan admonished him.
"Let me go! I reject you!"
"I am patient, Pietro," Dan said, unruffled by Rinaldi's outburst. I'll give you another chance."
"I will die first."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I am persuasive as well as patient. I'm sure you will come around to my point of view. Soon or late, everyone gets hungry."
"I've got a line on the priest," Jenny's synthesized voice announced from the telecom.
Hart considered telling her decker to put her time into higher priority searches, but data was data and Jenny, like any good decker, collected whatever was lying around. Hart knew she should be thankful to be relying on Jenny again, instead of the more technically brilliant, but emotionally unstable, Dodger; but the stress under which she was operating was disturbing her usual crisp grasp of the situation.
"What's the word, Jenny?"
"A street runner posted an FYI on the local shadownet after seeing a magically assisted snatch outside St. Basil's in South London. Dated the op just after noon yesterday. Victim matches the priest's description."
"Could still be a thousand people."
"A thousand people don't attract the attention of other people, two of whom match descriptions with your druids,"
"You got any more details?"
"Negatively. Spotter didn't want to get involved. Beat feet soon as he twigged to the op. Said catching fireballs wasn't his style."
"Smart."
There was a pause, then Jenny said in a tentative voice, "I thought we were, too, boss."
"You got a problem, Jenny?"
"Negatively, boss," she responded quickly. "You pay the bills and I run the Matrix. What could be better? I just think this one's running a little close to overheat, and you're awful close to the fire."
"Just do your job, girl. I'll be all right."
"Hope so. Just don't want to see the boss getting hurt for no good reason."
Hart didn't like the idea of getting hurt, for any reason. Jenny's fears weren't groundless. There were too many factions scrambling around. The sooner things were settled, the better.
"Did you get the meres lined up?"
"Prepaid bond locked them down, but if they're as good as they claim, we don't have enough in the account to pay the completion fee. Logistics ate a lot of the budget."
"Don't worry, they'll take enough casualties. Feed me the rendezvous data."
The telecom beeped, signaling a datafeed on the second line. Hart split the screen and reviewed the details. They were satisfactory.
"Time to go to work, Jenny."
"I'm gone, boss." Jenny's voice faded out in simulated doppler echoes.
Word of Father Rinaldi's fate finally reached them, and it was not good. In attempting to contact the investigative team his order had sent to the British Isles, the priest had run afoul of agents of the Hidden Circle and been captured. Sam had no doubt that the priest would be one of the victims at the renegade druids' next filthy ritual.
Rinaldi's capture complicated things, and Sam didn't need any more complications. Everything was too confused as it was. He stared at the opened packet that Dodger had brought.
Weighting down the curl of the paper was a pistol holster wrapped up in its belt. The smooth black leather encased his Narcoject Lethe, the same pistol that Dodger had given him and that Hart had taken away after she shot him. The other end of the wrappings was held down by a fossil tooth. "Some kind of Late Cretaceous dinosaur,'' the paleontologist had said when Sam had taken it to the museum open house. Sam thought he had a better idea of its origin but he had been wounded and delirious that night in the badlands when he had broken it free from its sandstone entombment. Whatever it had been, it had become a power fetish for him when he drilled a hole to take a ritually knotted cord so that he could wear it around his neck. Folded neatly between the gun and the tooth was the fringed kevlar-lined leather jacket that Sally had given him after his first solo shadowrun.