Dance with the Devil

CHAPTER 18

The fire continued to burn, though it did not leap quite so high or sputter nearly as bright as before, providing a properly eerie, flickering orange-yellow illumination for the final act of this unconventional drama. In its soft glow, the cultists stood with their hands at their sides, their faces slack, shoulders stooped forward as if they were weighted down with burdens that no one but themselves could see. They were physically exhausted from the long dance, emotionally exhausted by the frenzy that had so completely possessed them, and mentally disconcerted by the abrupt termination of the ritual which they had intellectually anticipated would reach a satisfying conclusion. Not a one of them made a move toward Alex where he stood directly behind Michael with a two-barrel shotgun slung across his arm and his finger on the trigger. It was not so much that they were afraid of him or of the gun, but more as if they did not even believe he was there. They had not caught up with the present, not mentally and emotionally, and they were still several minutes in the past, living through the colored flames, the heat that poured from the bonfire, the chants, the dance, the wolf…

The wolf.

Katherine looked quickly around, stepped to the right to peer beyond the flames, but she could not see the wolf anywhere. Had it really been there in the first place, she wondered, or had it been nothing more than a figment of her imagination, generated by her fatigue?

“Are you all right, Katherine?” Alex asked.

She nodded.

Apparently, Alex did not see the slight movement of her head, for he asked the same question again, his voice much more strained than it had been the first time. “Katherine, are you feeling all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

She knew that she should walk over there and stand beside Alex, but she did not have the energy right now. Besides, she was depressed at the prospect of having nowhere else to turn except to the pessimistic, always-brooding Boland boy. What had happened to the world these last few days? What had happened to the happy people she had always found wherever she went?

“You weren't asked here,” Michael said, slowly turning to face Alex who stood only a couple of feet away from him.

“Was she?” Alex asked, indicating Katherine with an abrupt nod of his head.

“Yes.”

“In full knowledge of what was going to happen here?” Alex asked, clearly disbelieving.

“In full knowledge,” Michael said. He turned to face Katherine and smiled. His eyes were bright blue again, his face in an easy pose, his smile broad and winning. But in his eyes still, no longer shielded from her, was that fanatic gleam. “Isn't that so, Katherine? Didn't you come here to join the family?”

“No,” she said.

“Katherine, you knew all along that—”

“You're lying, Michael,” Katherine said.

He took a step towards her.

“Stop right there,” Alex said.

Michael stopped.

When Katherine spoke again, her voice sounded faint, very distant and weary, almost as if it were someone else's voice issuing from her throat. “I know that you're lying, and Alex knows it. It can't do you any good now.”

“I am not lying!” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with care, clearly on the brink of complete insanity. His plans had been brought down around his shoulders, his schemes demolished in one penultimate moment, and he could not cope.

“Yes,” Katherine said gently, as if she were talking to a child. “Yes, Michael, you are.”

His face suddenly twisted into the ugly lines that she had seen earlier in the evening, during the ceremony. He turned to look at Alex and then began to shout at him. Unexpectedly, he tossed the Satanic bible into Alex's face and simultaneously dived forward.

“Alex, look out!” Katherine shouted, too late to warn him.

Alex went down as Harrison twisted his legs out from under him, struck the ground hard, his head bouncing on the needle-carpeted, snow-sifted turf. The shotgun angled crazily upwards as it went off the second time; the shot pellets tore through the low branches with a crackling noise like crumpled cellophane, and a shower of pine needles fell down on the grappling men.

Katherine looked around the bonfire at the other cultists, wondering how long it would take them to realize that they could rush the struggling pair, separate them and quickly subdue Alex. He would not have a chance against nearly a dozen of them. For the moment, however, the cultists seemed mesmerized by the battle between the two men, their arms still limp at their sides, their faces oddly colored by the dwindling fire, their breaths beginning to make smoke rings on the swiftly chilling winter air.

She looked around for a club, an unburned log or something pointed that would do as a weapon, but she could not see anything that might help her.

Alex had rolled, carrying himself atop Michael Harrison, and was trying to get his hands around the larger man's throat. Harrison's neck scarf, however, was a perfect shield against strangulation. In a moment, Harrison had turned the tables again, kicking up, throwing Alex sideways and coming down hard atop him again.

Katherine took a step toward them, realized she would only get in Alex's way and hinder him.

She looked back at the cultists. They did not move, but how long would they refrain from taking part in it?

Michael struck Alex full in the face with his fist, reared back and struck again.

For a moment, it seemed as if Alex sagged into unconsciousness, but then he screeched inhumanly and heaved up, freed his hands which had been pinned under Harrison's weight, and tore at the man's scarf, found the ends of it and began to pull them in opposite directions.

Almost strangled, Michael Harrison yelped sickly and reared back, tearing loose of Alex's grip and rocking onto his feet. He turned, bent to the ground and came up with the unloaded shotgun, reversing it in his hands so that he held the end of the long barrel and could use the heavy stock as a club. As he raised it, preparatory to striking down at Alex's head, another shot slammed through the dense woods like a mallet against a block of iron — a rifle shot this time, not the louder boom of a shotgun.

Michael froze with the gun raised in the air and looked beyond Alex at the woods. Two other men had stepped out of hiding, training loaded weapons on him.

The first was Alton Harle.

The second was Leo Franks.

“That's enough,” Harle said to Michael. “Drop the gun to your side, please, without making any quick moves.”

Michael still held the gun, disbelieving.

“Drop it,” Franks said.

Finally, he did.

“You all right, Alex?”

Alex got to his feet, shook his head and wiped absentmindedly at the blood that trickled out of his nose. “Okay, I guess.”

“Better get the shotgun.”

“Right.” Michael made no move to harm him as he bent and picked it up, brushed the snow from it and slung it under his arm,

“And you better join us, Katherine,” Harle said.

Numb, Katherine walked across the clearing and stood next to Alex. She felt him put his arm around her waist to help support her, and she realized that she must look as exhausted as she felt. She leaned against him, looked up at him and smiled, though she could not be sure if the smile was more of a grimace than intended. She said, “Thank you.” In the face of all that he had just been through, most of it on her account, that seemed like a painfully inadequate response. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“We'll be in a warm house soon.”

“I'd like that.”

She realized that she would like it, even if it was Owlsden that they were returning to. Suddenly, the old mansion had become a haven from the world, no longer a place to be left behind at any cost. How could she ever have been so foolish as to flee it in the first place? Its walls offered a security that, at the moment, she could not imagine finding anywhere else in the world.

The cultists were still ranged around the almost depleted fire, in the same places where they had ceased their dance, like figures in a carved tableau. Slowly, the trance seemed to lift from them, weariness and anxiety settle in. They glanced at one another, shuffled their feet on the trampled snow and looked distinctly worried. Still, none of them appeared to have the slightest notion of rushing at the three men who were aligned against them. Either their Satanic religious fervor was not so strong as it had once seemed to be— or they were the sort who could not function as a group in the absence of a strong leader.

And their leader was no longer strong.

Michael had changed. When Katherine looked at him where he stood only a few feet away, she was shocked by the metamorphosis that had taken place in his face and in his carriage. His blue eyes only stared over her head now, glassy and faraway, as if they viewed another world than this one. His mouth was slightly open, his lips working even though he did not speak. He looked like a retarded child who could do nothing for himself, his hands at his sides, fingers slack, shoulders slumped forward. When faced with his final defeat, he had shattered.

“Michael?” she said.

He did not respond.

“Michael?”

“I don't think he hears you,” Alex said.

Michael, as if in confirmation of what Alex said, did not even blink his large, blue eyes.

“How awful,” Katherine said, looking away from him.

Alex made his arm tighter about her waist, as if giving her a bit of his own strength. “Let's hope that he hasn't gone completely over the edge. I'd like to hear him explain what he thought he was doing with this whole Satanic thing. I'd like to know why he killed Yuri.”

“We better be going,” Alton Harle suggested.

Alex nodded, then turned to the cultists. “We're going out of the woods, toward the ski run, cut directly across that. It's hardly snowing at all now; we've only got the wind to fight. We'll be back in Owlsden in fifteen or twenty minutes. You will all stay in a group, well ahead of us. I urge you, please, to behave yourselves all the way home.”