Ritual Sins Read Online Free Page A

casual bun at the back of her head. “You don’t trust us,” she said in a cheerful voice. “I don’t blame you, my dear. At your age I was just as easily hurt, just as suspicious. But we’ll win you over. I know that we will.” She threaded her arm through Rachel’s, and she was surprisingly strong beneath the loose-fitting shirt. “Come and be welcome,” she said, and pushed open the door.
    Catherine had been an inspired choice, Luke thought as he watched the two women. Everyoneturned to Catherine for warmth and mothering, and a young woman who’d had very little mothering in the first place would be an easy mark. All the more so because Catherine’s motives were pure. Her maternal instincts, stunted for years, were entirely natural, and Rachel Connery’s cynical mouth was already softening.
    Would he have as easy a time with her? He wondered if she would be likely to see him as a maternal figure. It was an entertaining notion. He usually managed to be all things to all the people in his flock—father, mother, child, and lover—all the while keeping his emotional distance. He might make a bet with Calvin, the one person here who really knew him, to see how long it would take him to subvert one angry young woman.
    He’d taken her mother, and he’d taken her money, all with the angelic innocence of a saint. He’d take Rachel as well.
    She hadn’t seen him yet, though he could tell she was trying to look. Catherine was taking her over to the Grandfathers’ table, and the others were eyeing her with distrust beneath their benevolent smiles. His followers were almost pathologically protective where he was concerned. They had no idea he had her well in hand.
    He was sitting in the midst of the penitents tonight, their soft yellow clothing blending with his white tunic. He always sat with the flock, eatinglittle, his presence a powerful stimulant. The penitents were almost trembling with excitement, unaware that all his attention was focused on the stubborn outsider.
    “Will I ever find true understanding, Luke?” Melissa Underwood, a skinny blonde with a sexual addiction problem, edged closer. She had spent the last year trying to turn her formidable sexual energy into some kind of search for peace, and he smiled at her benevolently. He wasn’t a man who wasted his energy on anything as capricious as a conscience, but if he ever had to face a judge again, in this world or the next, Melissa would be a point in his favor. Here she wasn’t courting death and disease, going through men and women at a voracious pace. At Santa Dolores she was living in quiet contemplation, paid for by her generous divorce settlement.
    Bobby Ray Shatney was another one. He sat cross-legged at the end of the table, staring at his hands. Not many people knew that Bobby Ray, at the tender age of thirteen, had gone on a killing spree that had wiped out his entire family, three neighbors, a UPS man, and a cocker spaniel. He had the clear-eyed innocence of a child, his murderous rages washed clean from his body for as long as he was protected from the society that asked too much of him.
    He looked up, catching Luke’s contemplativegaze, and smiled in drugged-out bliss. Besides, he was too tranked to hurt anyone, even if he was tempted.
    Things would be different when Luke left. When this all came crashing down, and Luke had no choice but to decamp, he’d be leaving Bobby Ray and a few other lost souls like him to wreak havoc on the world and the other innocents who filled Santa Dolores. There would be no one to drug them into complacency. No one to control them with their childish belief in messiahs and salvation.
    Luke Bardell knew what it was to kill. There wasn’t a day he spent on this earth when he didn’t remember the feel of the knife sliding past flesh and fat and muscle, sliding deep. The rich, black color of arterial blood, the rattle of death that came with shocking quickness. The smell of it.
    They said it got easier.