Stephanie reflected upon all of the activity surrounding the events of the coming evening. The majority of the Home Coven was already at the farm. Several were out at MacKay Hill, prepping the site for the Appeasement Ceremony. They had dug out a shallow basin in the top of the mound. The freshly exposed dirt would allow blood to quickly seep into the ground. Visqueen plastic sheeting was laid around the basin’s perimeter in case of splatter. The last thing that needed to be detectable on any of the surrounding blades of grass was evidence of a crime having been committed. Especially a bloody one.

Brendan and David were downstairs in the dining room going over how to make sure that any and all evidence would be removed from the property.

Chief Connor, Dean McClain, and Brook Shaw were out on the other side of the town on some out-of-the-way stretch of rural road. Somehow arrangements had been made to capture the MacAlpin girl there and cart her back to the farmhouse property.

Stephanie stood in the third floor spare bedroom, a cold glass of lemonade in her right hand. The especially-warm evening had prompted her to call down to David and request a glass. It was always warmer upstairs in the old house, especially on the third floor where there was no air conditioning. She could feel the perspiration rising to the surface of her skin. She tilted the glass back, drained the last of its tart contents, and set it down on an old dresser of drawers.

It would be here, in this room, that the MacAlpin girl would be dressed. Stephanie laid the white dress down on the bed, the hem just inches off the floor. Whoever she is, she is going to look beautiful in it, she thought.

She felt again a sensation in the pit of her stomach that she had been playing off as just-so-much nervous energy. She wanted to be done with the ceremony.

But why?

Why wasn’t she anticipating it instead? For nearly thirty years she had given herself to this. It was to be the beginning of everything she had hoped for. Power, purpose, and fulfillment.

Maybe it was the channeling of the Hag about which she was having such misgivings. No pleasurable thought there, to be sure. But she had survived it once, and she would survive it this time, too. Besides if Brendan required it…

Trophy! Whore!

Why could she not rid herself of those words?!

Because you’re being used, and you know it. She had to admit that to herself. But it had always been her role. All of them had a purpose. This was her purpose. Right?

“You were everything that I wanted to be.” Tara’s voice echoed in her mind; echoes from their dinner together at Dekkers.

“…the One you call enemy. He wants you as his daughter.”

“Stop it!” Stephanie hissed, just above a whisper. “Just shut up!” She threw her hands up to the sides of her head as if to create a barrier of protection for her mind.

“God, the Father, Stephanie. The Creator of the Universe.”

Anger cycled through Stephanie; the gnawing replaced with an urge to lash out. She marched down one flight of stairs and into her bedroom. Walking over to her vanity, she angrily snatched up her cell phone and quickly walked down the last flight of stairs. Reaching the landing, she took care not to slam into the screen door as she exited the house. She didn’t want to alert Brendan to her current emotional state.

Standing on the porch she looked to her left and out to MacKay Hill. Tiki torches were lit around its circumference. It looked mystical. But she cared little about that for the moment. She walked down the three porch steps and turned right to go around the house and head back toward the garage. There she would be afforded some privacy.

She had Tara’s home phone number. Though she had doubted it would ever get used, she had still taken the time to program the number into her cell phone. Finding the number, she selected it and pressed “send”.

JENNA RAN TO grab the ringing phone on the closest end table in the living room. She looked at the caller ID. Just a number, no name.

“Hello?”

There was silence.

“Hello?” she asked again.

“Is Tara Lawton available?”

“Yes, one moment, please. Mom? For you.” Jenna walked the phone over to her mom.

“Hello?”

“You do not know me, Tara! Don’t ever assume that you do! Those lies about your God…! You were trying to get into my head. Weren’t you?”

“Stephanie?”

That got everyone’s attention.

“Just watch yourself, missy. And just leave me the hell alone!”

The call went dead. Tara sat stunned, slowly lowering the phone from her ear. She could hardly process what had just happened.

A perplexed look overtook her facial features. “That was Stephanie.”

“What did she want?” asked Brent.

“Just to chew me out, it would seem. She said something about what I had said to her at the restaurant. She ranted about God being lies and that I was trying to get into her head.”

Karen’s voice came up out of her computer. “She’s lashing out, Tara. She’s lashing out the same way that you did. Remember? On our backpacking trip? You wanted everything that I had said to you about God and salvation to be lies, and you made sure I knew it.”

The revelation shook Tara to her core. “I’m sorry, everybody. I’ve got to go pray.”

“Yes, you do, dear friend. Be her hero,” replied Karen.

Tara got up from her chair and was about to walk away when she heard Karen’s voice again.

“Tara will you face your laptop’s camera toward the whiteboard for me?”

Tara took care of that immediately. Looking to Brent, she said, “You know where I’ll be.”

She headed for the stairs.

“Say some prayers for us, too,” he called after her.

Brent looked at his watch, then spoke to the room. “Okay, gang, we’ve got just over three hours to find a very good reason to call in the state troopers. Let’s find it. We can do this!”

9:00 P.M.

NIGHT WAS DESCENDING upon the rural outskirts of Pittston. Jim Connor watched the blinking red and amber lights above the intersection; Donna McNeill’s lights were red. Dean McClain’s were amber.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

He stood in the middle of the road, facing the direction from which David’s sister would be arriving.

Twins. He wondered if David would sense something the moment that his sister perished. He made a mental note to ask him someday.

The Pittston police chief heard Brook race her car’s engine behind him. She was ready for another dry run. He looked down the street to his left and saw Dean finish backing his truck into position. He flashed his headlights indicating that he was ready for another go.

The International F4900 dump truck was used quite a bit on Dean’s farm, which was about twenty-five miles to the east in Mantua Corners. It featured a 250 horsepower diesel engine and could get up to speed pretty quickly for something its size. It sported a short and shallow bucket which made it light on the back end, but the front was near the size of a standard all-purpose dump truck and would put a hurtin’ on any car that ended up in its path.

Dean had called a local repair center about his truck earlier in the day, complaining about a hydraulic leak below the bucket. The owner of the place told him he could bring it in and leave it in their parking lot to have it looked at some time during the day on Thursday; a valid reason to be driving these back roads late on a Wednesday night. If asked about getting back home, he would have been intending to call a cab to complete the return trip.

Connor gave a wave above his head, signaling the vehicles to approach the intersection again. Dean would be approaching without headlights on. The derelict store on the corner would allow ample reason for not having ‘had time’ to stop his truck as the car strayed into the intersection without having stopped for his ‘right of way.’ Unfortunately, the store was also the reason that the timing hadn’t been quite right yet.

They didn’t matter too much, these practice runs. After all, one could never predict the reaction of Donna McNeill when the impossible happened. Would she hit her brakes? Forget about them as a result of her own fear and pain?

They were banking on the latter. She shouldn’t be able to make any rational decisions once the remote transmitter in his pocket was pressed. This was going to prove to be one very interesting display.

The chief backtracked out of the road to watch the two vehicles approach.

They’d get this right. They still had three and a half hours to do so.

He was glad he’d had the forethought to bring a sandwich and a cold beer.

10:04 P.M.

THE TORCHLIGHT AROUND the mound made Aileen’s hair shimmer and her eyes sparkle. She was beautiful, indeed. Brendan walked up to her and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

She received it stoically.

“How goes it out here, my love?”

“Everything is ready, Brendan. We await your bidding.”

Her emotional distance was uncharacteristic. But, then, she certainly had to have been preparing herself for another visit by Cailleach. During her first encounter with the goddess, she’d had the advantage of not knowing how brutal the experience was going to be.

“Very good. It’s all coming together just as we planned.”

“Just as you had planned,” she countered.

“Indeed.” Good, she’s still walking ten steps behind.

“Is there anything further that you require of me?”

He thought for a moment. “A kiss.”

She walked up to him, placed both hands on his cheeks and drew him into a prolonged kiss that stirred a longing within him. When she released him, she stepped back and put a smile on her face.

“I’m going to head back into the house,” she told him. “I’d like to rest before things get … intense.”

He momentarily closed his eyes and gave her a single nod, granting her permission. She walked away.

If I hold such sway in a person’s life now, Brendan began to wonder, what will it be like after the gods bless me with even greater influence?

He knew that he needed to get back into the house, as well. The one thing that was keeping him patient during these hours of waiting was translating the stones. So many more to go, but the culture he was learning about was incredibly vibrant and rich.

Brendan realized at that moment that he was a man who held the world in his hands. The secrets of a lost civilization were coming known, hundreds of people would turn into thousands who looked at him as their benevolent leader, and soon, very soon, he would be endowed with such power that no one would stand in the way of him getting what he wanted.

He was, indeed, a man with a future.