The devils touch, p.16
The Devil's Touch, page 16
As he drove, Sam wondered how Desiree could be so unconcerned. How she could not somehow sense … something strange going on in the town. And then all that was swept from his mind. He could not remember what he had been thinking of.
Then he remembered it was a Sunday and he asked, "Are you a Catholic, Desiree?"
"I am nothing," she replied. "Agnostic, if anything. My—parents," she seemed to stumble over that word, "do not attend church, so therefore I was not brought up in one."
"My father was a minister."
"So you attend church regularly."
"I'm afraid not, Desiree. I know I should, but I fell out of the habit."
"And you and Nydia have been married—"
"For three years." He didn't tell her they had performed the wedding ceremony themselves. "A very good marriage, I think."
She put a soft hand on his forearm. Her perfume drifted to him. "I would like for us to be friends, Sam. Close friends. I think you are the type of person a woman could talk with. And I'd like very much to meet Nydia."
"I believe you two would get along just great." About like a cobra and a mongoose, taking in her present mood. "I'll ask her to come over and chat with you. Maybe then we could all get together and chat."
Reality returned in a hot rush. What in the hell am I thinking of? Sam again shook his head, but he could not clear his head.
"That would be very nice," she replied. Was that a note of insincerity in her voice? Sam's head seemed a bit clearer now, as they drove further into the countryside.
"Where is Nydia this morning?" Desiree asked.
"I don't know," Sam replied honestly. "She left me a note saying she was going for a drive. She does that occasionally," he lied.
Why am I defending her with lies? he thought. Guilty conscience, maybe?
Then he could not remember why he had a guilty conscience.
"Umm," was Desiree's reply to that.
Sam's eyes picked up movement on the side of the road just up ahead. He slowed down. They were on the highway that linked with the county road to the ski lodge.
It had been two men, Sam was certain of that. But when he got to the point where he had watched them jump into the woods, they were no where in sight.
A highway marker sat in the middle of the road, blocking it from shoulder to shoulder. "Road Closed" the sign read. Sam pulled over and stopped.
"Why is this road closed?" Desiree asked.
"1 don't know. I thought I saw some men up here just a second ago, but they're gone." He got out of the truck and walked up to the sign. Desiree followed him. The road was sealed tight. No way for any type of vehicle to enter or leave on this section of highway.
Sam's mind cleared enough for logic to prevail. This is a county road, he thought. Until the lodge opens when the snow comes, there wouldn't be much traffic on this road, so its closing wouldn't inconvenience a great many people. But it was a way out that had been blocked. But in his present mental state, it was difficult for him to bring to mind the full scope of the situation and why it was important for this road to remain open.
He turned and bumped into Desiree. She stumbled and grabbed at his arm for support. For a long, soft moment she was pressing against him, both of them obviously enjoying the encounter, and wishing to retain it for as long as possible.
Sam looked down into pale gray eyes set in a heart-shaped face. Very smooth, unblemished skin, very soft-looking lips. It was a moment that was inevitable, considering the moment and the mood.
Their lips met in a kiss that both wanted.
For a young lady that avoided men because they all had only one thing on their mind, she responded with a passion that took Sam by surprise.
She could feel his maleness pressing against her, and Sam could feel the heat from her pressing against him. He moved against her and she responded, moving her hips, grinding them hard against him. His hand slipped down to her buttocks, caressing the softness.
Her tongue probed his mouth and her hands softly crawled over him, gripping the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders.
"Well, now," a voice from the road ditch broke them breathlessly apart. "Ain't this cute?"
Sam jerked away from Desiree and was conscious of her hot breath on his face. She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling from the heat of the moment past. Three men stood between the timber and the road. One standing in the ditch, two just behind him, on the downward slope facing the road. Sam knew their faces but not their names. He did recognize the types, however. Every community has them: borderline thugs; almost outlaws; always standing on the ragged edge of lawlessness, ready to do anything evil and ugly and nasty.
"Getting your hands full of young stuff, huh, Balon?" one of them asked with a lewd grin.
"Get in the truck," Sam whispered to Desiree. "Go on, do it."
She slipped away and walked quickly to the truck, a strange look in her eyes. Sam said nothing to the men until Desiree was safely inside the cab. Only then did he turn to the trio of men.
Sam was approaching his twenty-fifth birthday, a senior at Nelson College. But from age seventeen to twenty-one, Sam had been a member of the U.S. Army's elite Rangers. The Rangers, founded in 1756, is one of, if not the oldest unit in the history of America. And not much is made public about them. Especially a tiny, very select group within them, made up of men from all services. Sam had been part of that unit.
Sam, even before the combat at Falcon House, was not a stranger to blood and killing. He had been assigned three kills during his tenure with a small force of men—and a few women—known as Dog Teams, unknown even to the most active military personnel, and had completed each mission. He was a skilled member of the martial arts community, and could kick as high as a ballet dancer—but with a much more lethal effect.
Right now, Sam was wondering how the man knew his name. And more importantly, why. "You figure that's any of your business, pus-gut?" Sam asked, some clarity returning to him, the adrenalin overriding the murkiness in his brain.
The spokesman for the trio, a man who looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, flushed at Sam's challenging and insulting question. He was a burly man, with thick arms, padded with muscles, heavy shoulders, and a barrel chest. He also had a beer belly hanging over his belt buckle. He said, "You just about a smart-ass, ain't you, punk?"
Autumn colors were beginning to paint the land. The timber behind the men shone in spots like burnished copper. Birches dotted the timber, and the needles of the tamaracks were drooping downward. Small junipers, red cedars, maple and beech were in abundance. Stalks of goldenrod stood in the open spaces. It was the beginning of a beautiful season near the park.
"I've been known to speak my mind," Sam replied. There was no backup in the young man. He had proved himself, to himself, too many times to be in the least bit timid.
The man balled his hands into fists.
"Not yet, Mack," the man to his right said. "Not yet. "It isn't time."
The burly man relaxed. He grinned at Sam. His teeth were yellow, with several missing, leaving black gaps in his mouth. "O.K., boy," he said. "You can go pat your young pussy some more. You're off the hook—for awhile."
The trio wheeled about and quickly disappeared into the timber. They moved swiftly and silently among the brush, and Sam knew they were all expert woodsmen. He tucked that thought back into his mind for storage.
Sam walked back to his truck, backed up and turned around, heading back to town.
"What in the world was that all about?" Desiree asked. "Those men frightened me."
Sam glanced at her. She did indeed appear to be frightened. Her face was pale.
"I don't know, Desiree," he replied, the clouds once more gathering in his mind, slowing reason. "Local roughnecks, I guess. Looking for a laugh at someone else's expense. You find them all over the country. Down in our Southern states, law-abiding people call them trash. I'm not so certain that isn't an apt description of them."
She slowly nodded her head in agreement. "What did they mean: 'You're off the hook—for awhile?' What's going on in this town, Sam?"
Sam fought to clear his head, and succeeded for a moment. He could not for the life of him recall how he came to be with Desiree. He remembered kissing her, holding her, but could not understand why he did those things. He could remember nothing about Janet. He shook his head.
"Are you all right, Sam?"
"I don't know," he replied honestly. "I wish I knew."
"Turn here," the dark voice whispered in Nydia's brain. "It's all right. You are doing the correct thing, and you know it."
"Yes," she muttered.
She turned down the street where Jon Le Moyne lived. Something … odd seemed to be in possession of her mental and physical functions. Or at least that part of her she inherited from her mother. Any doubts as to the wrongfulness of what she was doing were blown away, leaving her mind under the lightless throes of the evil that clung invisibly about her.
She slowed when she saw Jon sitting on the front steps of his house. She pulled over to the curb and cut the engine. It was very quiet in this part of town. She could see no one. But they were watching her from the shaded windows of homes. She looked at Jon. He was a very handsome young man.
As if by magic—which it was, of the darker type—Nydia viewed the clear picture of Sam and Desiree leaping into her mind, and the old rage became fresh, stronger than ever before.
"Go to him," the voice whispered.
Still Nydia hesitated, the good within her battling the evil.
Jon sat on the porch, looking at the woman he had erotically shared so many nights and dreams with. Soon he would be touching her skin, gently cupping the breasts he had passionately kissed in his fevered imagination. He would be feeling her hands on him. The coven leader had told him last night Nydia would be coming to him. Jon had not thought that possible, but did not question the Leader.
Now she was here.
Nydia's hands gripped the steering wheel as more powerful, darker forces entered her mind, the forces bringing with them the actual scenes of Sam and Desiree standing by the road, embracing, kissing, touching, grinding against each other. She watched as Sam's hand slipped down the young woman's waist to caress her buttocks.
"You bastard!" she hissed.
And Evil defeated Good once more.
The vision faded. Nydia got out of the car and walked up toward the boy. He stood up and opened the screen door to the porch. She hesitated for only a few seconds, then stepped inside the door. The door closed behind her.
"No!" the voice spoke like thunder. "We interfered once before. This time they must combat the Dark One by themselves."
The ageless warrior of warriors looked at his God.
"They are mortals fighting forces they cannot understand or reckon with."
"They understand!" the voice roared, echoing throughout the firmament. "They have only to open the pages of their Bible and read it! It is all there for them to learn."
"They don't have the time."
"How much time does it take to read, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me!'"
The warrior gripped his sword. He turned to leave.
"I forbid your leaving the firmament."
A smile played across the mighty warrior's lips. His beard moved as he spoke. "What would You have done with me, then? Banishment?"
"You would not be the first," the warrior was reminded. "But banishment was your choice of punishment, not mine."
"You will consider the problem?"
"Don't I always?"
"Sometimes for eons." The warrior's reply was dry as the pits of hell are hot.
"Michael, old warrior friend, not everything can be solved by the sword."
"Would You prefer the jawbone of an ass?"
The returning sigh was as thunder rolling across the heavens. "Sometimes I wonder why I continue to tolerate such impudence."
"Because absolute power corrupts!" the warrior said with a laugh that roared and rumbled like a hurricane.
He could not suppress the chuckle. "Leave me for a time; I will consider your request.'
"I knew You would."
And the heavens were silent.
FIVE
Sam cleared his head for a time—something cleared it—and drove past his house, intending to take Desiree in to meet Nydia. But his wife's car was still gone. For a reason the young man could not fathom, that irritated him, rubbed his ability to reason down to raw nerve ends. He ground his teeth together and silently swore. He was conscious of Desiree looking at him, a curious look in her eyes.
The young woman proved her astuteness when she said, "Sam, if you and your wife are having troubles of some sort, being with me is the last thing you need at this time."
Sam went on the defensive—with a little unknown help. "What I do, Desiree, is my business. Besides, there are—certain things you don't know; no way you could know about them. Perhaps this is the time to—" He went blank. He could not remember what he was about to say. He blinked, then met her gaze. "What was I just saying?"
She returned the blink and added a smile. "It was nothing, Sam. Don't worry about it."
"O.K. Let's drive a bit more."
"I am with you, Sam."
They began circling the town, the anger steadily growing in Sam. She just dumped the boy and took off, he thought. She knew where I was going; I told her that last night after going to bed. But she chooses not to tell me a goddamn thing. Hell with her.
"Perhaps she is with her lover," a voice whispered in Sam's brain.
Yeah, Sam thought. Maybe.
"Perhaps she is searching for the ultimate orgasm. Didn't she once tell you that she liked a teeny bit of pain mixed in with her pleasures?"
Did Nydia say that? Sam pondered. Yeah, I guess she did. But he couldn't remember when.
"Jon Le Moyne would certainly give her just a teeny bit of pain with the pleasure."
The voice faded.
There was that name again. It was coming up with too much frequency not to have some truth behind it.
He looked to his right at an intersection and stomped on the brakes so hard the rear tires sang against the pavement.
"Sam!" Desiree protested. "What is it? What's wrong?" She fell back against the seat.
Sam expelled a long breath. He looked at Desiree. "I guess the stories are true after all. That just about confirms it in my mind. That's my wife's car parked right over there, on the left side of the street."
"All right. So she's visiting a friend. What is so wrong about that?"
"That friend is a high school student. A junior, I think." How did I know that? "A boy. But a young boy so well-equipped in the manhood department a lot of * women in this community would give anything to bed him down—so the stories go. I've heard stories, rumors, gossip, about my wife and Jon Le Moyne. Lot of stories." But he could not recall the source of a single story. That thought quickly left him. It was replaced just as quickly by hot anger and a feeling for revenge. His time with Janet was something that had been, for the time, blocked from him.
"Well," Desiree said. "I see. She must be quite brazen to park her car in front of her lover's house in broad daylight. My people are a bit more discreet than that. Perhaps she doesn't care if you find them out, oui?"
Sam opened his mouth to tell her that perhaps Nydia was under the control of the Devil, but that was wiped from his mind before it could transmit to his tongue.
Sam said, "Well if she doesn't care, then I damn sure don't. Can you blame me for that?"
"A quelque chose malheur est bon," Desiree said with a smile and a mischievous sparkle in her gray eyes.
"I used to speak fair French, but not anymore. What did you say?"
"That it was an ill wind that blows no good. For somebody," she added in English.
"Yes," Sam replied, returning the smile. A thought came to him. By God, he'd show Nydia. "Fox Estate must be beautiful. I've heard a lot about it. Would you show it to me?"
Enchanté, Sam."
They had gathered at Monty and Viv Draper's home. Noah Crisp, Father Le Moyne, Byron Price, Joe Bennett, Mille LaMeade, and her friend, Ginny. They were joined by the minister of the Baptist church, Richard Hasseling, and John Morton of the Episcopal church. John Morton's wife was at home, and Hasseling was a young bachelor.
