Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil Love and Hope Read online

  Blinking, Adam stared at the cage, not fully understanding why the children were there, and for a moment he thought they were dead. They were heaped on top of each other, arms and legs askew.

  But then, one of the children moved, and Adam realized that they were asleep. And he had no doubt that Darci had used her mind to put the children asleep.

  A few more steps took Adam past the children, and as he stepped around the wall, he saw three people lying on the floor, two men and a woman. Each of them wore long, dark robes. And each of them had a pool of blood at the base of one nostril—just as Adam had on the day Darci blasted him with her power.

  To his left was a stone altar—and when Adam looked at it, he remembered what had happened to him so long ago. He remembered the altar, the woman, and the knife—and the red-hot end of the branding iron coming toward him.

  Adam had to stand still for a moment to overcome the hideous memory, then he took a step forward.

  Around the edge of the altar he saw a woman’s head, with her artificially blackened hair spread across the stone floor. Her face was turned away from him, but Adam knew who she was: She was Sally the waitress, the one who’d waited for him to bring Darci to her.

  As Adam took another step forward, he could see about two-thirds of her body, and part of her face. Except for a tiny trickle of blood from one nostril, he could see no injury on her, but her body lay lifeless.

  As he took another step, his heart was racing. Where was Darci? Was she alive? The woman at his feet was clutching the knife, the one that he’d stolen from behind the iron bars. Adam realized that he had brought that knife back to her.

  Now he was only one step away from her spread-out robes. Another step and he’d be able to see what was behind the altar.

  Adam stepped across the dead woman. Behind the altar was Darci’s pale body. Kneeling, tenderly, gently, Adam picked up Darci’s body and cradled her to him. He couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.

  It was Taylor who grabbed Darci’s arm and found a pulse. “I think she’s still alive,” he said, “but we need to get her to a hospital immediately.”

  Michael said that he would carry Darci, since Adam was in no shape to carry anyone, but Adam wouldn’t release her. At the door, he saw Putnam looking at Darci with lovesick eyes. A short time ago, Adam had wanted to hurt this young man for all that he’d done to Darci, but now he could see the love in Putnam’s eyes. And he could see that the young man knew he’d lost the woman he loved.

  When Putnam turned away, Adam said, “Where are you going?”

  “To find Jerlene,” he said.

  It had been a moment of indecision for Adam. He didn’t want to leave Darci, but he knew he owed a great deal to both Putnam and Jerlene. With reluctance, Adam slipped Darci into his cousin’s arms, picked up a rifle, and followed Putnam. When he heard someone behind him, he turned, ready to shoot, but it was Taylor and Boadicea, rifles on their shoulders.

  Adam started to tell them to stay with Darci, but he didn’t. If nothing else, it was Boadicea who knew the tunnels. Adam motioned to Putnam to tell him to let Boadicea lead, then the four of them crouched down and began to run.

  With the woman who had led the coven dead, there was mass chaos all around them, as her followers fled for their lives—but they took time to loot the many rooms in the tunnels as they ran.

  After an hour of fruitless searching, Putnam leaned back against a wall and there were tears in his eyes. “She’s dead. I know she’s dead. What kind of Putnam am I if I can’t protect my own?” he said.

  “You don’t own—” Adam began, but when he looked at Putnam’s face, he didn’t have the heart to go on. Taylor was standing under a torch and had pulled the mirror out of his backpack. As Boadicea had warned him, the mirror was being uncooperative and, no matter how many ways he asked, he was not being shown Jerlene’s whereabouts.

  Adam turned to Putnam. “Why does Darci say that she owes you seven million dollars?” he asked softly.

  “Oh,” Putnam said, looking down at the floor. There were remnants of the mass desertion everywhere around them. A half-open box of paper cups was against one wall, a broken table against the other. “I told her that if she’d marry me I’d forgive all the debts of everyone in Putnam.” He looked up at Adam. “You know, mortgages, car loans, that sort of thing.”

  Adam narrowed his eyes at the young man. “But you’re going to forgive the debts anyway, even though Darci isn’t going to marry you, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But there ain’t nobody else like Darci. I’ll never find—”

  “Oh!” Taylor said, looking at the mirror. “That’s not true. You’ll marry quite soon and I. . . .” He looked up atAdam. “Since the church in this vision is filled with what look to be your relatives, I think Putnam marries someone in your family.”

  At that Adam grimaced and Putnam grinned. “Can I call you ‘Dad’?” Putnam asked.

  “You do and you won’t live very long,” Adam said. “Now get moving.”

  An hour later, they found Jerlene—and her beauty was startling—so heavily drugged that, later, the doctor said it was amazing that she was still alive.

  “All them diet pills,” Putnam said. “Her body’s so used to drugs that it can fight off anything.”

  When Jerlene recovered, she told how she’d talked to the witch enough that she’d given herself time to empty her coat pockets of the prescription diet pills, break the capsules apart, and gather about a tablespoonful of the powder. While pretending to make an incantation over her daughter, she’d put the powder in Darci’s mouth. The stimulant had revived Darci enough that she was able to use her power to stop the witch and her four followers. There’d been four of them against Darci, but she’d won. She’d used her True Persuasion, her great and wondrous gift from God, to kill them. Later, autopsies showed that all four of them had died of massive cerebral hemorrhages.

  It had taken Adam, Darci, Taylor, and Boadicea a long time to recover from what they’d been through. Darci had been in a comalike state for nearly a week. The doctor had said in wonder, “You’re not going to believe this, but she’s asleep. Could she be that exhausted?”

  “Yes,” Adam answered, looking at Darci sleeping peacefully in the hospital bed. He’d filled the room with yellow roses, and he’d sat by her, holding her hand, for all the days that she slept. The few times that he’d seen her use her power had exhausted her, so he couldn’t imagine what it had taken from her body to kill four people.

  While Adam waited for her to wake up, he had her hair that he’d secretly saved from when he’d cut it from the gate put into a little gold locket that he carried with him always.

  The first time she awoke, she’d smiled at him, tried to sit up, but the exertion had been too much for her, so she went back to sleep. The next morning, the sun came through the big windows in the pretty hospital room that Adam had procured for her, and Darci opened her eyes to see Adam, Taylor, Boadicea, Putnam, and her mother standing there watching her.

  Darci blinked at her mother, then clutched Adam’s hand tightly.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “She came to help.”

  Darci turned to Adam with eyes filled with disbelief.

  “Weird kid,” Jerlene said, then left the room.

  An hour later Putnam asked Adam to come into the corridor, where he said that Jerlene wanted to go home.

  “What does she want?” Adam asked.

  Putnam looked confused. “To go home,” he repeated.

  “No, I mean, is there something in the world that she’d like to have? Something that I could give her?”

  Putnam smiled. “Between you and me, I think Jerlene would like to be a movie star.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Adam said, smiling at Putnam. “And is there anything you want?”

  “Naw, I got money. Lots of it. I wanted. . . .”He trailed off and glanced toward the door to Darci’s room. “He said . . . I mean, Darci’s dad said th