Coven

Sentinel was around.” Then she took her Diet Coke from the machine’s mouth and went back down the hall.

Wade followed her, like a puppy. She was working in one of the 400 level bio labs, at a counter full of books, snapshots, and unidentifiable kits, containing brushes, and bottles. Something like a tensor lamp with a carrying handle arched up on its stem. An odd blue light bulb filled its head. What was all this stuff?

She turned and frowned. “You’re still here?”

And that’s when Wade got his look at her face. Officer Prentiss’ beauty glared at him like a bright light, and it was not in any way akin to the brainwashing, socio high fashion beauty that he, as well as the rest of the Western world, had been taught to glorify. This was far more complex than high cheekbones, eye makeup, and vulpine sneers. Too many elements poured into its enigma. Stark yet deeply fluid. Hard yet soft. Cool blue yet fringed with sweetness, which hid searing heat. She was a car crash of contradiction reassembled—like the women in the dream? Her eyes were fine etched, liquid gray.

She thumped down on a stool, paying him no mind. She seemed tired before the spread of notepads, diagrams, and clutter.

“Hey, what’s this?” Wade asked, and picked up a tiny bottle.

“It’s osmium tetroxide, and it’s poisonous. Don’t touch it.”

He picked up the thing that looked like a tensor lamp. “What’s this thing?”

“An ultraviolet spotter. Don’t touch it.”

He picked up a fat book. “This the new Clancy?”

“Not quite. Put it down. And please leave.”

Next he picked up some Polaroids. “What’re… Hey—”

She snatched them away.

“Those looked like pictures of bloodstains.”

“It’s called fall, Mr. St. John, and it’s not your concern.”

“Please, call me Wade.”

Lydia Prentiss slumped. “Mr. St. John, I have a lot of work to do here. I haven’t slept in a day, and what I need less than anything in the world right now is a con man rich kid punk standing over my shoulder—”

“I’m not a con man,” Wade informed her.

“—so I’ll try to say this as politely as possible. Go away! Get out! I’m busy!”

“All right already,” Wade said. “See you later.”

“Hopefully not.”

Is it my imagination, or does this girl hate my guts? Women simply did not treat him like this. He turned at the door, raised a finger. “How would you like me to do you a big favor?”

“I wouldn’t,” she said.

“I know this great little Italian place just out of town.”

The sheer incredulity of this premise caused Lydia Prentiss to glare. “You expect me to go out with you?”

“Yeah. What do you say?”

“I’d sooner drink my own urine,” she replied.

I guess that means no, Wade thought. But no was not an answer he was accustomed to taking. “I’m Wade St. John, the Wade St. John. I’m offering you a rare privilege. Girls stand in line to go out with me. I’m the best known person on this campus.”

“No force on earth could make me be seen in public with the likes of you,” Lydia Prentiss clarified.

Wade visibly winced. He’d met friendlier junkyard dogs. “Is there any reason in particular why you’re shitting all over me?”

And what he saw in her eyes just then—her cool, pretty, luminous gray eyes—was a wide open furnace of disdain. Disgust flattened her words to monotone when she said, “You’re nothing but a spoiled rotten rich brat full of family money and bullshit joyriding through life on a silver platter. You’re the bottom of the barrel, St. John. I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last living thing on this planet.”

Wade left. The toilets would be better company than this. You win some, you lose some, he thought, but this is ridiculous.

It was possibly the first time in his life that Wade St. John had actually had his feelings hurt.

—

CHAPTER 12

—WAKE, bid the voice.

Tom’s eyes opened.

IT’S TIME.

Tom sat up, then stood. He stretched and grinned.

“Master,” he whispered.

He knew everything at once—things no one else knew, wondrous, miraculous things. The knowledge was a gift, like his new destiny.

“Destiny,” he whispered.

He felt a surge of life reaching out from his brain. There was a big bump on his head, but it didn’t hurt. In the mirror he examined his reflection and saw the tiny bruise on his throat, like a bite mark.

“Thanks, Master,” Tom McGuire said aloud to his room. He threw his head back and laughed, blushing a great and overwhelming joy. And there was more.

There was a black dot on the wall.

It was beautiful somehow. It was like art. A pendant hung around his neck, he discovered. It, too, was black and equally beautiful. He touched its warm cruciform shape and shivered.

I can do anything, he thought.

He started with the small stuff. He crimped coins with his fingers. He bent a pair of scissors in half, crushed a metal file drawer like an accordion. Concentrating, he punched a hole into the center of his desk, then he picked up his History 202 text, History of a Free People, and tore it in half.

At once the Supremate’s voice was in his head, like a chord:

—OURS IS A SACRED MISSION, MANIFOLD IN DESIGN, HOLY IN PURPOSE. WE NEED YOU TO DO WHAT WE CANNOT.

“I am your servant forever,” Tom said to the air.

—I GIVE YOU STRENGTH, WISDOM, ETERNAL LIFE.

Tom couldn’t resist. “Your wish is my command.”

The Supremate’s voice steepened in silence. —JOIN US NOW IN A GREAT DESTINY. YOU WILL BE WORSHIPED SOMEDAY.

The word slipped around his head, fine as brandy in a snifter. Worshiped, he thought. Like a…god.

“I will do anything…”

—WORK STEADFAST AND ALONE IN THE DAY, AND WITH MY DAUGHTERS AT NIGHT. THEY WILL GUIDE YOU INTO THE REALM OF AN IDEAL THAT KNOWS NO FLAW.

Tom could only nod now, bliss choking out his words.

—TOGETHER, TOM, WE WILL MAKE HISTORY.

««—»»

Lydia Prentiss jerked out of sleep, not terrified but shaking from some monumental despair. She grimaced at the clock: 6 P.M.

Gradually stabs of her dreams re formed. She’d dreamed of dead, bloated animals. She’d dreamed of anthracene headaches, fingerprint tape, and blurred vision from too much UV light. She’d dreamed she found