Clarey Lambert’s voice rang out. But it was no longer the weak and rasping voice that outsiders heard. Now her voice rang with the pure clarity of a young woman in her prime. “Are all my children gathered?”
“We are here,” the children answered in a single voice.
Clarey turned, facing the altar, and dropped her arms to her sides. Slowly, she began lighting the candles, each of which illuminated a doll. The dolls had been made by hand, and each of the faces was different. And yet they had a certain sameness about them, just as did the children who now stood gazing raptly. The eyes of the dolls glittered brightly in the shimmering light.
Clarey Lambert stood silently before the altar for a few moments, then turned to face the gathering of children.
“He is with us,” she spoke, her words rolling from her lips in the measured cadence of a chant.
“He comes to bless us,” the children replied in a single voice.
The black-garbed figure of the Dark Man emerged from the trees, stood silent before the altar for a moment, then turned to face the assemblage outside.
The Dark Man’s face, like his body, was shrouded in black, but in the glimmering light of the fire, his eyes glowed brightly from two holes in the hood that concealed his features.
The Dark Man gazed out at the children, his eyes finally fixing on Michael and Kelly.
“My children return,” he said, his voice carrying in the hushed darkness. Striding away from the altar, he crossed the clearing, his eyes never leaving the faces of Michael and Kelly.
Neither of them moved, neither of them shrank away. Rather, they stood as if carved from stone, gazing steadily at the black-shrouded face. The Dark Man stopped a few feet from them. He held out his arms.
“Come,” he said. “I have missed you.”
Taking their hands in his, the Dark Man led them to the altar. “You have a gift to give,” he said, his words resonating in the silence that had fallen over the clearing. “Why have you withheld it?”
Unbidden, words rose in the throats of Michael and Kelly.
“We were lost,” they said. “Now we have come home again.”
Laying a hand on each of their shoulders, he turned them around to face him. He began speaking again, his voice dropping so that only they could hear, taking on a new rhythm, soft and soothing, a rhythm that reached inside their minds and put them gently into a hypnotic sleep. At last, when he saw that their last vestiges of will had been surrendered, he directed them to lie on the ground before the altar.
He approached Michael first.
From the folds of his robe he took a large syringe. As Michael unbuttoned his shirt and laid his chest bare, the Dark Man gazed down at the tiny, almost invisible scar that had been on his chest since the night he was born. He smiled with satisfaction, then shifted his attention to Michael’s glazed eyes. “Are you afraid?” he asked.
“No.”
“Will you feel pain?”
“No.”
“Do you give your gift freely?”
“I do.”
Slowly, the Dark Man lowered the needle, sinking it deep into Michael’s chest. He paused, then slowly began drawing the plunger upward.
From somewhere within Michael’s body a single drop of murky fluid seeped into the syringe’s chamber.
When he was finished, he moved to Kelly, unbuttoned her shirt, laid her chest bare and repeated the ritual. At last he stood before the altar and held the needles high.
“Youth,” he intoned. “Youth, freely given.”
Laying the syringes on the altar and covering them with a cloth, the Dark Man turned back to face the children who watched in silence from beyond the glowing fire. “Rise,” he commanded. “Rise, and join your brothers and sisters.”
Kelly and Michael rose up from the ground, recovering their bare chests, and silently returned to the semicircle.
• • •
Jonas Cox stood next to Loretta Jagger, his arm draped around her shoulders as she cradled the baby against her breast. In silence he’d watched the ceremony in which Kelly Anderson and Michael Sheffield presented their gift to the Dark Man, knowing that when it was over, it would be his turn.
His and Loretta’s.
But their gift, he knew, was far more valuable to the Dark Man than that of Kelly and Michael.
The Dark Man valued babies more highly than anything else.
And though Jonas and Loretta had not yet produced a child of their own to give to the Dark Man, they had been honored in being allowed to present the baby in Loretta’s arms to him.
In fact, they might even be allowed to keep this baby and raise it in their own house, the house he and Loretta had moved into last year after his grandfather had died.
He and Loretta weren’t married yet, but that would come. As soon as Loretta was pregnant, there would be a special ceremony here on the island, in front of the altar of the Circle, and the Dark Man would marry them.
But not until Loretta was pregnant, for the Dark Man never allowed his children to marry until they had proved their faith in him by making him a baby.
Making him a baby, and presenting it to him the night after its birth.
That, Jonas knew, was why George Coulton had been released from the Circle. Even now, Jonas didn’t think of George as having died, for Jonas, like all the Dark Man’s children, believed that George had been born in the darkness of death, and that only by serving the Dark Man, and obeying him, could life finally be given to him.
For the baby in Loretta’s arms, the long journey toward life was about to begin. Tonight the baby would be inducted into the Circle, and the Dark Man himself would take him, nurturing him for the first months of his life. Then the baby would be given to one of the Women of the Circle, who would raise him in the knowledge that he was different from children beyond the Circle.
Someday, if his obedience was perfect — as perfect as Jonas’s had always been — and if he fathered new children for the Dark Man — as Jonas intended to do — Jonas would be released from the Circle.
He would join the others.
Jonas knew who some of them were. Important men, men who didn’t live like swamp rats. And when it was time, and if he was worthy, he, too, would benefit from the Circle’s gift.
But if he wasn’t worthy, if he disobeyed the Dark Man …
An image of George Coulton flashed into his mind, but evaporated almost instantly.
His thoughts were interrupted as he heard the Dark Man speak his name.
With Loretta at his side, he stepped out of the semicircle around the fire and moved toward the altar where the Dark Man waited.
Jonas Cox took the baby from Loretta Jagger and placed it into the Dark Man’s waiting arms.
The Dark Man turned to face the altar, holding the baby high. “Jonas Cox and Loretta Jagger offer this child. Do you accept him?”
The voices of the children again spoke as one. “We do.”
The Dark Man placed the baby on the altar, unwrapping the blanket in which it was wrapped. It lay in the light of the candles, naked, reaching out with its tiny hands, its eyes blinking in the flickering glow.
Again the Dark Man reached beneath his cloak, and when his hand was once more revealed to the watching children, it held an ornately carved instrument, its handle worked from ivory, from which protruded a glistening needle.
The Dark Man held the device high, poised it over the infant’s breast, then began to bring it downward. There was a long silence as he held the needle still, but then he plunged it suddenly downward.
The child uttered a scream as the point passed through its skin, then pierced its sternum to sink deep within its chest.
But as the needle found its mark, the baby’s scream died away, a sigh drifting up from its throat when the Dark Man’s dagger entered into the core of its being.