Dance with the Devil Read Online Free PDF

of the berm. This situation was trying her optimism as badly as the descent down the other side of the valley had. Perhaps this was another omen, a warning to turn back, go home, find another job in a more conventional atmosphere.
        “The people who did that thing-the people who tortured and hung that cat are not sane, Katherine.”
        “I realize that,” she said.
        “Well, you should have gotten away from there as soon as you realized what had taken place.”
        “Someone had to bury the cat,” she insisted.
        “What if one of them-one of these Satanists had come back?”
        “I thought, once they'd used a place, they wouldn't be too open about returning to it. I didn't think those kind of people would show themselves in public, in daylight. They can't be proud of it, after all.”
        He nodded, still handling the wheel expertly as the Land Rover crawled laboriously along the snowy track toward the dark, towering mass of Owlsden above. “Perhaps that's true,” he said. “Especially considering the public outcry that goes up every time someone uncovers a trace of these Satanic goings on in Roxburgh.”
        “You mean that people around here find this sort of thing regularly?” she asked, her attention finally diverted from the road altogether, for the first time.
        “Not every day, mind you.”
        “But often.”
        “Yes. Every month or so for the last year, year and a half. Sometimes the ceremonies are done in dilapidated buildings, sometimes in open forest clearings. I imagine more are performed and go unnoticed than those we find clue to.”
        “It's hard to believe,” Katherine said.
        Terrifying her by the gesture and drawing her attention back to the danger of the storm and the road, he raised a hand from the wheel and waved it to indicate the craggy mountains, the great forests, the thickly grown and yet somehow barren landscape. “Considering this place, this land, it wouldn't seem so strange to me.”
        “Please use both hands to drive,” she said.
        He laughed. “We're nearly three-fourths of the way up now, and you've not come close to death yet.”
        “Close enough,” Katherine said.
        The windshield wipers thumped faster as he turned them up, hollow and heavy like the rapid beat of a panicked animal's heart as it escapes the hunter's line of sight Ice had formed in the corners of the windshield shortly after they left the cafe and now began to send tentative crystal fingers toward the center. He also turned up the blast from the heater, melting the hazy barrier that had started to form on the glass.
        To get her mind off the road again, and because she was curious, she asked, “Hasn't anything been done to find out who these-these devil worshipers are?”
        “Oh, in a town as small as Roxburgh, there has been a lot of spying on each other, neighbor watching neighbor.”
        “Nothing more?”
        “What would you do?” he asked.
        “The police-”
        “Have no jurisdiction. Aside from the fact that they kill someone's pet now and again-usually a cat- they don't break any laws. Christianity is the preferred religion in the area, but not codified by law.”
        “Well, then,” she said, “even with neighbor spying on neighbor, someone ought to have aroused suspicion.”
        “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “Besides, it's equally likely that the Satanists are from another town. Within a thirty mile radius, there are a dozen villages ranging anywhere from five hundred to a thousand in population. It could be someone from one of those, leaving their hometown to perform the rituals and thus keep the heat off their own neck of the woods.”
        “I see.”
        “Are you frightened by the notion of devil worshipers?” Harrison asked, a touch of humor in his voice.
        “Not really,” she said.
        “You should be.”
        “Oh?”
        The Rover shuddered as