The Depths of the Hollow (Mercy Falls Mythos Book 2) Read online

  For this is going to hurt like hell.”

  -Sarah McLachlan

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE COVEN OF HECATE

  The grounds were vast, a palatial dwelling in every sense, with Greek columns inside and out; a long rectangular pool in a courtyard bordered by all manner of flora under a high sheer canopy; a lengthy dining hall showcasing a rich, dark mahogany table surrounded by ornate iron scroll-work seats with Italian leather padding; walls with original paintings and replicas varying in worth from several thousand well into the hundreds of thousands; eight bedrooms containing king-sized beds, with gold and silver posts; a living area with various seating arrangements including antique rococo chairs, a roaring fireplace, and a large circular “pleasure” bed with layers of the finest sheets for entertaining guests and indulging in whatever they fancied.

  In every room there were statues of Gods and Goddesses, from Hermes and Venus, to Dionysus and Apollo. The worship room, known interchangeably as the Altar Room, was dedicated solely to one Goddess, the Goddess Hecate. Her form, rising to a height of ten feet and made of solid white marble, in front of and above the altar, was depicted with three bodies, representing the kingdoms of the earth, sea, and sky. She was known to influence all three elements, alternately seen as good or evil, often misread in Greek mythology, and commonly described as misunderstood. It was this dichotomy that appealed to the coven. It spoke to the duality of man. On the one hand she was seen as a protector. Shepherds and sailors relied on her influence to give them fertile crops, or safe passage to shore. She could summon storms at will, or call upon fair skies. On the other hand she was seen as a deity of the underworld, haunting graveyards, beckoning the spirits of the dead; a practitioner of witchcraft and black magic; a “Moon Goddess” that could conjure up dreams, or nightmares.

  It is in this Altar Room, under this statue, that we find Anastasios Drakos, looking down on the child Alicia, in her simple basket of leaves, twigs, and bamboo, placed upon the black marble altar for the Goddess Hecate to contemplate, the pews of this sinister chapel empty now, the blood red candles to either side of the altar unlit, the inverted pentacle at the foot of the altar, black under the white and grey granite floor, unadorned.

  “Tonight child, tonight you shall sacrifice yourself for the coven.” It was July 27th, 3:17 pm. The full moon would rise this night, achieving its peak at midnight. It was then that the girl would become tribute to Hecate.

  k

  She walked over to where Jason knelt by the pool. Sophia was coming up from behind him, and he hadn’t noticed her yet. He held something in his hands. As she progressed slowly toward him she stopped, seeing the blood. Jason Korba had somehow found and captured a rabbit, a white rabbit, though its fur was now blackened by some sort of pestilence she couldn’t imagine, boils and sores covering its body. Jason’s hands were soaked with its blood. The animal’s head was twisted at an odd angle, hanging limp. He had made the creature suffer for as long as possible, and when it could no longer feel pain, he snapped its neck. The look of terror in the animal’s eyes and expression spoke to the level of cruelty he’d inflicted upon it. Sophia Papadaki sidled up next to him, sitting next to where he knelt, massaging his shoulders. He jumped, startled.

  “Easy boy, it’s only your tutor. When will you be

  done with childish playthings? We are meant for so much more. Come, throw that nasty thing away.”A sudden, unpleasant thought struck her. “It isn’t contagious, is it?”

  “No,” Jason said, his black eyes vacant, speaking in a monotone, still looking down at the rabbit, “I can localize it to any living thing I like.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful? Nevertheless, I suggest you burn it in the fireplace. Let’s get it away from the pool and places it could contaminate.” Sophia shook her head disappointedly. “Such power and you squander it on insignificant beings such as this.”

  After discarding and burning the animal’s corpse she walked him over to the pleasure bed, placing his hands on her breasts. “I’ll show you there are more worthy playthings.”

  k

  Much of Nico’s life was spent brutalizing others. He’d spent eight years in prison for the rape, torture, and murder of a foreign exchange student from America, while he still lived in Greece. If the victim had been from Greece, or the trial had been in the states he might have gotten a more severe punishment, but it was in Athens. And there were many more victims they didn’t know about.

  His abilities manifested young, when he was only twelve. He had a way of influencing people, putting them under a spell in a sense, getting them to do what he wanted. It made it easy to lure victims this way, but once the rape began it broke the spell. There was no way around that. Like all witches he had a main talent, but this was not his only power. The other skills had to be honed and developed. Some involved reciting words or chanting, but dependent upon the strength of the witch, and their advancement in a particular skill set, even that would become unnecessary.

  Now Nico Stavros was bored, masturbating to a porn mag in his bedroom. Despite the abundance of entertaining things to do here, his appetites could not be sated. The Coven had spent years acquiring this sprawling estate, through witchcraft and trickery. It was amazing how little they had had to use their powers. Humanity was so gullible and easily mislead. Even the satisfaction of knowing that could not appease his base nature. He wanted to fuck and kill. That was all he desired. All he needed. That was where he derived his true power. To placate his urges would require him leaving the estate, and finding a victim, which would in turn threaten to expose the coven, and this night, of all nights especially, Drakos would not stand for that.

  k

  Helena Zabat picked up the basket. The baby calmed. She’d been crying for nearly an hour, driving everyone insane. She simply needed to be fed; and possibly changed. It was apparent that none of the members of the coven knew the first thing about caring for a child. Having once had a child of her own, now grown, she knew very well. Her boy had become a man who no longer needed his mother. While this newborn reminded her of a time when things were simple and innocent, they were no longer so. Helena would care for her up until the sacrifice. She would not let her past control the present. All things would be made clear once it was done.

  The power she possessed to make things grow worked on everything but their powers. She could only affect things with substance- trees, animals, inanimate objects... She could make currency larger, but she could not multiply it. She’d tried. Although her powers proved useful, like the others, Helena wanted power without limits.

  Berenice Simonides had a much more deadly

  power- she could manipulate energy. This meant that any form of energy- electrical, mechanical, thermal, chemical, nuclear, gravitational, kinetic, sound energy- could be bent to her will. This made her a very powerful and dangerous witch, which was why she was the high priestess, and not Sophia, although Drakos favored her. Sophia’s signature skill was to move objects, which would make her a telekinetic in most circles, but the difference between people with heightened abilities and witches was that they could do other things considered supernatural, or beyond the realm of explainable science. While throwing objects around was handy, especially if you had a lance, or some other form of projectile, it wasn’t always the most feasible solution. Now energy was always handy and always usable, and telekinesis was only one form of energy in itself. To be able to control all the energies, now that was power.

  Anastasios Drakos, their Priest, or Lord, possibly did not have the most useful talent- to animate the dead, but he supplemented that with many other acquired skills he’d picked up through a decade and a half of dedicated study.

  It was while thinking of their powers, and how much greater they could become that Helena fed Alicia the bottle of formula. No one remembered the child’s name. They knew of the parents from the birth announcement in the paper. Such pride. Helena could no longer be proud of the son who abandoned her. When Alicia smiled
at her she looked away.

  k

  When she returned the baby to Drakos she wore a look of disgust on her face. This made Anastasios smile. Good, she had not fallen for the child after all. It was clean, newly fed and calm. All was well, and the time of sacrifice was nigh.

  “You’ve done splendid Helena. Please fetch the

  others to help prepare the feast. You may retire for the time being. I’ll call you when we are ready.”

  Helena did a small bow and curtsy. “Yes Lord.”

  k

  “I found some more information on this Helena Zabat,” Faraday said. Michael listened intently on the phone. “She was estranged from her son Nestor, who’s now twenty-one. He was in with the wrong crowd, got heavily into drugs, rebelled against his mother. We’re not sure if we can track him down yet, but he appears to be somewhere in California, last seen in San Francisco. I’ve got men in contact with the local law enforcement there, although I doubt he knows where his mother is staying, but perhaps he can shed some light.

  “We found some interesting stuff from the Salem locals as well. People remember her as slightly eccentric, wearing scarves and heavy clothing in the summer. She was rumored to be in some underground witch cult, but I couldn’t get much out of them on that. They either didn’t know enough or were too afraid to say.”

  “Are you saying my daughter was kidnapped by witches?” Michael asked reluctantly.

  “One of several possible scenarios,” Dave Faraday agreed, “or a group of people who believe themselves to be witches. It really amounts to the same if they intend her harm.”

  “So you do believe she is still alive?”

  Detective Faraday paused in his response. “If she is it’s probably not for long. We’re pursuing every lead. I’m going to do everything I can to get your daughter back to you safely.”

  “All right,” Michael said. The detective could hear the hope dwindling in his voice. “I appreciate your

  thoroughness.”

  “We have a photo of Zabat. It’s probably ten years old, but someone should recognize her. I’m going to post that shit all over town if I have to. Don’t lose faith Mr. Williams.”

  That night, however, the detective would be other-wise occupied by events involving two murders at the Supra-Mart; and more killing via the beast responsible on the two subsequent nights. The sheriff was on a two week vacation, but by the end of this week David Faraday would be praying for his return.

  k

  While busied with preparing the feast for after the sacrifice Drakos leaves the Altar Room. When he returns at 10:33 p.m. the child is gone. Although momentarily concerned he does not immediately worry. He checks with Helena to see if she has taken the child. She has not. It is then he hears the wails and knows.

  There is one other room hidden in the Coven’s mansion, inside the basement. It is known as The Dungeon, used as a torture room. Where every other room in the house is extravagant, flamboyant, and decadent, the small square room that is The Dungeon is stripped down to its essence- gray peeling walls with rusted manacles built into them, a heavy wooden chair, and a table containing rope, chains, and instruments whose only purpose is to inflict pain.

  When Anastasios Drakos storms into this room and finds Nico Stavros with blood on his hands, his pants down, and the baby girl dead on the table in a pool of blood, brutalized, his fury knows no bounds.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!” Drakos screams.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Nico pleads, falling to his knees, holding his arms up to ward the coming blows.

  Drakos grabs a steel rod and breaks both his hands.

  Nico shrieks.

  “Imbecile! Stupid useless cretin!”

  He pounds his face with his fists before he grabs a butcher knife and stabs him in the gut. Nico still wriggles. “Fucking idiot!” Drakos takes a hammer and cracks his ribs, then pounds it into the side of his head.

  “You’ve ruined the sacrifice, you mindless brute!” The hammer gets stuck in his head, caving it in and pushing his eyeball out on one side. Infuriated, Drakos kicks him in the side multiple times, although it is clear that Stavros is most certainly dead. He hangs him to the wall by the manacles, the hammer still stuck in his head.

  Helena is wakened from her nap, Sophia and Jason’s coitus interrupted, Berenice’s study disturbed, and they all rush down to see what the screaming is all about.

  “You see! You see this!” he shouts at them. Anastasios Drakos has provided them the lesson, chained to the wall in a pose of crucifixion. As if to drive home the point, he stabs the butcher knife into Nico’s side as one would a spear; a quick underhanded jab, further spilling his blood, until it could flow no more.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PRISONERS

  The streets were empty, and Ben didn’t know where he was, or what he was. He only knew that he should retreat from the swirling lights and loud blaring noise. Running in a crouch like a dog he leapt over the fence leading into the woods, his wooly foot tapping the fence once, making it vibrate and ring like a subdued cymbal crash.

  It was only when he wore himself out, tearing into and feeding off whatever animals he might find along the way, that he lay down to rest in the tall grass. He awoke in the morning, naked again, not to the sound of nature, but the sound of police officers talking around him, staring down at him.

  “There he is,” one said. They dragged him up, handcuffed him, and read him his rights. With the blood on his hands and body once more he could only have been more thankful if they’d got to him sooner. He understood his rights and didn’t resist arrest.

  

  While one man was being led into a cage, another man was leaving one. Thomas Killian, a long lean muscular Irishman, with dark red locks that hung in sweaty tangles over his forehead, only partially covering the hole where one of his eyes once was, reached through the bars for the keys hanging on the peg hook on the wall and let himself out.

  In human form he could reach them. In beast form he could not. His arms would be too large and could not fit well through the bars. He made it a habit of placing the keys just barely within reach of his hand if he stretched it between the bars all the way up to his shoulder. The werewolf could only maybe get his arm out up to his elbow, if that. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t remember much when he was the other creature. He wasn’t certain if it would even know of keys or what to do with them, but it was better to be safe. Tom had made the mistake of being out too late on the first night of the full moon, and didn’t get back to his cell in time. He paid for it with the loss of his eye two nights ago. While he found most wounds healed rapidly, he could not regenerate. He was not going to get his eye back.

  He had become a werewolf nearly three years ago when one of the wild beasts caught him unawares while he roamed the Irish countryside. He learned of his condition after he’d killed most of his family. Only his sister Emily survived. Tom Killian fled to America before they could figure it out. He left his sister a note:

  I cannot escape what I am, but by leaving you I may at least spare you the same fate that has befallen the rest of our family. Please be well.

  Love,

  Tom

  He strode over from his cell naked, to the stereo and turned it down, then to the bed where his clothes lay, placing the black eye patch over his missing eye. He’d built the cage when he first moved into the modest flat, a one story building that housed his entire living quarters, on a dead end street far apart from most of his neighbor’s houses. On the nights of the full moon he’d remove his clothes, turn up the loudest music he could find to drown out the beast, and lock himself in the cage. It was an unpleasant, but necessary ritual, one that left him feeling odd the rest of the day. Each time he became the beast, he felt as if he lost a part of himself. The missing time, the lapses in consciousness; it was like being abducted, experimented on, and not knowing what was being done to you. Except he was the person doing, but he could never remember what. Besides the loss of his ey
e, which was more than enough, he knew something had happened that night. He didn’t know if he killed someone, but he knew there had definitely been some kind of struggle. There had been blood in his mouth, on his teeth, and under his nails. At least, waking up in the cage he knew he hadn’t hurt or killed anyone today. It was little solace for all the victims before, but it was all he could do. As before, he wondered if it wasn’t just better if he killed himself. It was hard enough living with the fact he’d murdered his mother, father, and older brother. To think of all the people he might still kill. He’d been engaged, had a girlfriend pregnant with their child. He would have had another family, but he didn’t deserve one. He couldn’t risk them too. He left his fiancée a similar note to the one he’d left his sister.

  Putting suicide on the back burner once again, he made himself breakfast to make up for the ravenous hunger he was sure he must have felt all night. He didn’t believe the beast ever slept, or at least not until its final hours before becoming a man again. Thomas always felt exhausted when he woke up following a transformation. After breakfast he went to bed for a few hours before he left for his job at the steel plant.

  

  “Yes, I agree, they should definitely be fired,” Faraday told the sheriff on the phone. “Yes,” he nodded.

  It was afternoon now. The sun from the windows

  outside his cell cast sharp rays between the bars, throwing half his body into bright light and half into shadow. Ben watched the detective from his cell. When he was done with the call Faraday turned to him. “You’ll be glad to know that the two idiots who opened your jail cell will be losing their jobs.”