She was invoking no demons, for their price was one she still was unwilling to pay, but the elementals, the spirits of the trees and air and fire and water, demanded less.
She concentrated, knowing how tricky this would be. She would have to remain in control, thinking in that ancient, simple language, but conversing in English. She didn’t know if she could do it, but she had to try.
Maria was looking out to sea, trying not to think about their dilemma, and didn’t notice Angelique drop to one knee and bow her head. Unab sequabab ciemi, she chanted. “Spirits of nature come.”
And they came, and flowed within her, and she felt the power. It was a tangible thing, an invisible substance that flowed from her hand and reached out and touched Maria.
The former nun heard the chant and turned and frowned, and said, “Huh? What?” Then the power was within her. There was some resistance, but the chanting girl broke through in a moment.
“Mother be girl,” Angelique tried, knowing it wasn’t right and trying to do better. She groped for the right words in the right order, and found them.
“Me be mother of Maria,” she said solemnly. “Maria is child of mother. Have no mother but me.” She quickly realized that the message did not have to be perfect; the thoughts actually carried through the—magic?
Maria stood there, transfixed, as if in a deep hypnotic trance.
“Maria love mother. Worship mother. Mother god of Maria. Maria no fool mother. Maria no question mother. Maria love no but mother. Maria speak mother of mother.’’
“You are my mother, my god, my only love,” the woman repeated in a flat tone. “I will never lie to you or question you.”
“Maria belong mother. Maria do what mother say. Maria no think past, no think now. Maria is obey mother, no happy but obey mother. No fear but mother. Maria wake.”
The woman seemed to snap out of it, blinked a few times, then looked at Angelique. The smile on her face at that was indescribable, and she gave a squeal of joy and prostrated herself and began to kiss Angelique’s feet.
The old Angelique would have been repulsed by it and overcome with guilt, but this new Angelique felt a rush of power and a feeling of extreme satisfaction. Her whole body seemed to get a charge out of it, but she knew that the power was quite limited, and what she had to do.
“Stop, my daughter, and kneel before me,” she commanded, pushing Angelique to the fore but not letting go of the primitive other completely.
“I obey, my mother, my goddess, my lover and protector.” That surprised the neophyte witch. She hadn’t put any of that in there, had she? Or did the subject take it from there? “Do you know how to sail a boat, child?” She felt language coming more easily as her power surged.
“Oh, yes, mother! Not a sailboat, but ones with motors.”
“And are there such boats in the village?”
“There are but two now, my mother, which can run.”
“And do you know where they are?”
Maria nodded. “They are in a small shed near the fishing pier. But they are guarded by two men with guns.”
She suspected as much. “And do these boats need keys?”
“Yes, my mother. One of the guards has them.”
“And the essence—the gasoline. Is it there, too?”
“They are used by the security people, my mother. They are always kept ready to go.”
“Very well, then. You will at some time today get a pen and a small piece of paper and bring it with you. Now, you will do as I say exactly. When I dismiss you, you will forget all this, forget that anything of this sort took place. You will not remember. But at two this morning you will remember, and you will do as I say…”
She didn’t often come into the village, even in the dead of night, but only because there was nothing there for her There was a strict curfew in effect, and professional-looking toughs with nasty-looking sidearms saw to it that it was enforced. There was revelry in the meadow with the Dark Man presiding, so she knew she had at least a little time.
There was a clock atop one of the village’s Tudor structures. Greg had pointed it out to her, noting it was always inevitably ten minutes slow, but it gave her the edge she needed to keep appointments.
The patrols didn’t bother her, although she hoped Maria was up to bypassing them. She looked at them, swaggering arrogantly, and thought how easy it would be for her to kill them.
There was a small office in the back of the boat shed, and two men sat in it playing cards. She watched, and waited, until she saw one of them say something to the other and the other glanced at his watch. She crept up close, invisible in the darkness, bare feet silent in the sand.
“Time to go check ’em,” one man said, sounding very bored. It was clear that he thought it a waste of time, but orders were orders and these days you could get creamed for disobeying those orders.
The man came out, went down the small stairs to the sand, walked over to the padlocked door, then took out a keyring, selected a key, and unlocked it. He opened it and went inside. She checked and saw that the other man was still inside, peeking at the absent man’s cards, then moved swiftly and silently to the door and peered inside. The man had turned on a bare bulb and now was looking at the boats.
She moved like an animal, incredibly swift and powerful. The act was instinctive yet professional, and so swift that later on she could not remember what she did or how she did it, but the man fell to the floor, turned, confused, and before he could do or say anything, let alone go for his gun, his throat was torn out.
She drank of his blood and dedicated the kill to the moon goddess, absorbing much of his life force as she did so. The force was heady and strong within her, yet she did not linger. There was another to take care of, and she felt a tingling excitement, even an eagerness for the kill.
She heard a door open in back of the shed, and a man called, “Hey, Jerry? What’s the problem?”
Receiving no answer, he grew suddenly cautious and suspicious, and drew his pistol. Quietly, he crept up to the half-open door to the boat shed, and, pistol raised, he put his back to the door, then with a single motion turned and pointed the gun inward, ready to fire.
Somehow, in one motion, the pistol was kicked from his hand and at the same instant a bloody stone spear pierced and ripped out his throat. He looked incredibly confused, then fell backwards, dead before his body hit the ground. She dragged him in, removed the spear, and used it to smash the light bulb. She performed the ritual, dedicating the kill to the spirits of the water through whose domain she still had to travel.
These were proper kills, not sacrifices, but still the power she had absorbed from their dying life forces was tremendous. Her mind worked on several levels, but it was basically a thinking version of the type of women who’d killed Jureau. She was Angelique, and she knew she was Angelique, yet nothing that she had done seemed unusual to her or in any way troubled her conscience. It was natural. Good and evil, God and the devil, didn’t enter into it. These men were of the tribe of the Dark Man, who was the enemy of her tribe and her people. To kill an enemy was an honorable thing; to kill one of your own was evil.