Blood Sins

operative, was the only one of us who possessed an ability that could be channeled and used as a weapon. She used it defensively.'

'And it hurt Samuel,' DeMarco said. 'Badly. Shook his confidence and weakened him. And did something else to him. When he came back here I didn't know what had happened, at first. I was so deep undercover that my check-ins were infrequent. All I knew was that he claimed to have had a transformative experience, that he'd walked through the wilderness, through the desert, like Moses.'

'Seriously?' Sawyer asked.

'Oh, he was quite serious. And he had been changed. None of us knew how much until the rebellion that had been simmering in his flock while he was gone boiled over when he returned. One follower, a man named Frank Metcalf, had taken advantage of Samuel's absence over those many weeks to make his case as a better leader. More than a few were willing to follow him. Until Samuel came back. Changed. And literally put the fear of God into them.'

'Is that when he killed all the animals?' Sawyer asked.

DeMarco looked at him, no expression at all on his face. 'He killed more than the animals, Chief. He also killed Frank Metcalf. He killed him without so much as laying a finger on him.'

'How?' Sawyer demanded.

'Lightning. He channeled lightning. I saw it with my own eyes.'

Chapter Fourteen

RUBY CAMPBELL had lived with her secret for such a long time that it seemed to her there had never been anything else. That she had never just been a little girl who ran and played and complained about her lessons or her chores.

It hardly seemed possible to her now that such a simple life had once been hers.

Was it ever like that? Or do I just wish it had been? Her head ached all the time now, because she had to concentrate so much, had to think so hard about the way she needed things to be. How she needed other people to see. What she needed them to see. Even after sending Lexie away to be safe with Tessa Gray, Ruby knew she couldn't let down her guard.

Father had noticed her. He was watching her.

And she knew now what he could do. What he had done.

Brooke

There was a numb place where Brooke had been. A dark spot in Ruby's memory of what had happened to her friend. She thought it was probably because she simply couldn't bear to remember it just yet.

Not all of it, at least.

But Brooke was gone. She was gone, and Ruby hadn't even been able to tell their friends about it yet.

And on top of suffering her own grief alone and in silence, Ruby was more terrified than she'd ever been in her life. Terrified that Father might know her secret. All her secrets.

He hadn't said anything about Lexie, hadn't appeared to notice, but that didn't reassure Ruby. Because the really, really scary part of her secret wasn't that she could make things look like other things or even seem to disappear. The really scary part was that she saw what was there. Even what was really underneath people's skin.

And now she had seen what was underneath Father's skin.

'Ruby?'

The little girl braced herself. She looked up from her afternoon lessons to see her mother standing in the doorway of the little den they'd turned into a schoolroom.

'Yes, Mama?' She tried hard to see her mama's face as it had been, once. Before the church. Before Father. Before last October.

'Father wants to have a Ritual before supper.'

A chill crawled up and down Ruby's back, and she wondered if she'd ever feel warm again.

'So you'll need to finish your lessons and go take a shower. I've laid out your robe for you, and I'll do your hair. Hurry up, now.'

'Yes, Mama.' She saw beneath the pleasant, pretty features to the cold, hard shell that lurked under the surface, the shell that was blackened, as though scorched, and contained only an emptiness so vast Ruby didn't have words for it. All she knew was that her mother no longer lived there.

Her mother, she knew now, had been gone for a long time.

'Hurry up,' Emma Campbell repeated.

Ruby nodded but said, 'Mama? Do Ido I have to be naked under the robe? Like last time?'

'Ruby, you know it's part of the Ritual.' Emma Campbell smiled. 'You're at the Youth Level. Even more, you're one of the Chosen. It's a great honor, and your father and I are so proud of you.'

'Yes, Mama.' Ruby didn't try to argue, didn't try to protest. It was useless. And it was dangerous.

'Use the special soap I bought for you when you shower. So you'll smell nice for the Ritual.'

Ruby's stomach lurched, a reaction she tried to hide as she reached for normal, everyday things. Reassuring things. 'I will. Is Daddy coming home in time for supper?'

'No, I'm afraid not. He called earlier to say the sales conference is going on longer than he expected, and he'll probably be gone a few more days. But he's signed up a dozen more accounts. I think they may make him Salesman of the Month after this trip.'

Ruby looked down at her hand, watching the pencil she held wobble slightly before she regained her fierce control. Looking at the half-circle wound made by her own teeth hours before, a wound she was hiding from everyone. In a very soft voice, she said, 'Mama? When did Daddy become a salesman?'

'Oh, Ruby, don't ask silly questions when you know the answers as well as I do. Your daddy's always been a salesman. Now, hurry up and finish your work.'

'Yes, Mama.' Ruby dared not look up until she was certain Emma Campbell had returned to the kitchen and her endless baking. And when she did look up, she didn't cry, even though her eyes stung and there was an aching lump in her throat.

Because her daddy had always been a mechanic.

And she was never going to see him again.

* * * *

'That was when Reese called me,' Bishop said. 'That was when we started putting the pieces together.'

'Lightning?' Sawyer cast about for something reasonable to say when presented with the fantastic. 'That doesn't sound like any kind of psychic ability I've ever heard of.'

'It's about energy.' Bishop's tone was remote, the scar standing out whitely against the tanned skin of his cheek. 'From what little we've been able to find out, Samuel was struck by lightning when he was a teenager. Not only did he survive, but he came out of the experience profoundly changed.'

DeMarco said, 'He was already preaching his version of the Bible, not because he'd found God but because he'd found a way to make money. And a way to make people listen to him and respect him. After the lightning he was, as Bishop says, changed. He must have been a latent or even active psychic before then; we have no way to be sure. After that experience, he was very obviously psychic, clairvoyant, and precognitive.'

'Miracles,' Hollis murmured. 'There will always be followers of people who claim to know the secrets of the universe.'

'And people who claim to be touched by God,' DeMarco said. 'I don't know if he believed that when the lightning struck, but eventually, over time, he certainly came to believe it. After that, the only laws he obeyed were the ones God supposedly gave him, and those were remarkably flexible. I don't know much about his journey before he settled here, but I think it's safe to say he discovered a long time ago how easy it was to kill.'

The sick feeling in Sawyer's stomach intensified. 'Those bodies in the river. Others that washed farther