Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night by Craig Schaefer

Author:Craig Schaefer [Schaefer, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944806088
Publisher: Demimonde Books
Published: 2018-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

Act II

Time after Time

Interlude

Carolyn Saunders sat placidly at the interview table, the stark light of the interrogation room casting long shadows across her weathered face. She folded her cuffed hands on the table.

“I hope you’re starting to understand how everything that happened was basically your fault,” she said. “‘You’ in the general, collective sense of the word.”

Her interrogator, sitting across from her, wrinkled his hooked nose like he smelled something rotten. “Explain.”

“Let’s see. For starters, you people created an occult drug, this ‘ink’ garbage, and flooded the nation with it before you really had any idea what it did. You still don’t know.”

“We know more than you think.”

“If that was true,” Carolyn said, “Dr. Cross and her team would have known what they were walking into. Instead, you had one Network cell acting as a distribution hub, another serving as a middleman between the hub and the street dealers—oh, and that cell was into kidnapping and ritual sacrifice on the side, not the most low profile of hobbies—and getting ready to murder their way into a better job.”

Her interrogator cracked a rare smile. “Scottie Pierce’s assumptions were quite correct. We say it’s forbidden, but we do rather like it when our outer-circle teams test each other’s strength. The fastest way to rise in the ranks of the Network is over the broken bodies of your former superiors. It shows initiative.”

“And with all that trouble brewing, the logical, brilliant, certainly not-at-all-a-raving-lunatic Savannah Cross was coming to town and armed for bear hunting. Well, coming to Jersey City, but we both know how that ended up. Badly.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Carolyn rapped her knuckles on the stainless-steel table. “Ah, but you don’t know all the nasty little details. If you did, I wouldn’t be here.”

“We’re more interested in what happened after,” the interrogator told her. “You’re the one who insists on telling the whole story from the very beginning.”

“Because you have to understand. You have to know who Marie and Nessa were, before you can understand what they became. Why they did the…things they did. This is the story of their initiation.” Carolyn’s cuffs rattled as she raised her hands, holding up three fingers. “A quote, from a piece I’m fond of: ‘Spiritual initiations vary from culture to culture, but throughout the ages they have always been marked by three essential elements. Beyond ritual, beyond liturgy, a true initiation always involves pain, fear, and blood.’”

The interrogator mulled that over and gave her an easy nod.

“True enough, I suppose. One of your books?”

“No. ‘Reflections on Global Initiatory Practices,’ by Professor Vanessa Roth. It was the last paper she ever published. And it was true for both of them, each facing their own crucible. A fallen would-be knight, mired in misery and grief after her failure to save Baby Blue…oh, Marie Reinhart knew all about pain. She’d known about pain her entire life, since the night her parents were taken from her. And now she was learning how to turn it into a weapon.”

The interrogator tilted his head.

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