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A spark of light appeared, and I realized that one of them was holding a lighted match. He threw it down on the ground in front of him, and I braced myself for chaos as they lit the cemetery on fire. But in the darkness, I hadn't been able to see the large stack of wood in the center of the crowd. It burst into flames, illuminating the large pyre shaped bonfire they'd constructed. The flames flickered against their white robes as they began to sway in unison, starting the Latin chant once again.
"Praise to the Demon. May death be delivered unto him. We lay our lives before our master. We are thy servants." There was a bunch of other mumbo-jumbo they chanted after that, but it was more of the same old bullshit.
Someone's hand squeezed mine, and I realized Stellan had slipped our hands together. His skin was a bit pale as he watched the scene in front of us. I made a mental note that on my birthday, I should make us go through a haunted house, just to see Stellan tortured a bit.
"Stop looking at me with that crazy smile,” snarked Stellan as he glanced over at me.
"What smile?" I responded innocently. He rolled his eyes.
"I'll just prepare myself for the inevitable torture you have in store for me."
"And you’ll love every second of it," I responded.
He rolled his eyes again, but he pressed a kiss against my lips that had Cain growling under his breath. The chanting stopped again, and then the crowd parted and I saw the worshippers hauling a struggling body towards the fire.
They tossed the form on the ground, and I watched as the person struggled to get out of the ropes that bound their hands and feet. They were facing away from us, so I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was definitely not an animal.
This crowd really had guts. Although the cemetery was abandoned, the FBI still stopped by from time to time to see if there were any new bodies that had been deposited. At one time, there had been cameras stationed around the cemetery in an attempt to catch the Demon, but I knew that his followers had destroyed them so often that the FBI had finally given up on placing them around here.
"Do they follow the same rules as the Demon when it comes to their kills?" Stellan asked.
I squinted, still trying to make out if I recognized anything about the person.
"Oh, I imagine that this sect accepts far pettier sins than what would satisfy the Demon. Maybe they looked at one of them wrong in the office. Or they stole their lunch bag out of the company refrigerator. I'm not sure that this crowd is coming across actual evil in their everyday lives that much, except for themselves," I amended. "It would certainly be helpful if they just started killing each other off."
One of the worshippers bent over with a long serrated knife, slicing at the rope that bound the person's hands and ankles. After the task was done, he stepped back into the crowd.
The sacrifice laid there for a second, obviously confused by the fact their ropes had been cut, and then they jumped up. They turned towards where we were hiding, and I could finally tell that it was a young man, with longer, raggedy hair. Judging by the way his clothes were shredded, he was a runaway, or someone who had been living in the streets for some time. Either that or he'd been kept in one of their basements for a couple of months.
The man stared around the crowd, fear etched into his features. "Let me go!" he screamed in a choked voice. "You freaks will pay for this."
Cain shook his head in disgust, because unless you had something to back up your words, you probably shouldn't call a large group of angry psychos "freaks."
Another robed figure stepped forward, pulling open an honest-to-goodness scroll. Maybe they were also part of a historical literacy book club and decided to combine their hobbies, because I'd never seen the Demon using a scroll before.
"You, Dylan Hansen, have been sentenced to death for your sins," he read from the scroll. He was using one of those voice distorter machines, and his voice came out robotic and low pitched. It definitely added to the whole scary cult member vibe he was going for.
"What sins?" the younger man scoffed.
"We know about the girl," the other man purred through the voice machine.
"What girl? My girlfriend? Look, you can talk to her about it. She liked it," he pleaded.
This guy was a poor liar. Whoever the girl was, his girlfriend or not, I could tell just from listening to him that she haddefinitelynot liked whatever he'd done to her. I guess they’d at least stayed with the Demon’s script and gotten a sacrifice with some sins under his belt.
"I'm assuming you’re not keen to save this one?" drawled Stellan.
"You’ve come so far," Cain said mockingly, patting Stellan on the cheek.
Stellan’s face was murderous, but he didn't respond with the punch to the face he was obviously dying to level at Cain.
"Oh," I said as the chanting started again and the crowd began to walk as one towards the sacrifice. They'd been situated in a large circle, with the fire in the middle, but with every step they took, the space for the man to move got smaller. A trickle of anticipation surged through me as I thought about what was to come next.
The man had two choices. He could try to throw himself into the crowd and attempt to battle his way out—a move not likely to succeed. Or he could throw himself into the fire, and end himself that way so he wasn’t at the mercy of the crowd of crazies approaching him.
He chose the first option. When his ankles were licking at the bonfire, he suddenly surged forward, kicking and biting and clawing as he attempted to push through the crowd.
It was a testament to the human will to live that he made it about three rows in before the crowd overtook him.
