“There will be no other men for me!” she said, staring up at him. Her voice was breathy, so sensual. He cursed himself again. Oh, well, they needed money, and she was going to work. He couldn’t have taken advantage of this moment no matter what. That was the bad part of being the Father. He had made the rules—he had to remember that his whole religion could come crashing down if he changed them because he couldn’t control his own libido.

“Go, my child. Tomorrow night, you and I will seek to understand the truth to be found on Earth; and we will give one another strength, and share all that is our essence!” He kissed her on the forehead. What rot!But, damn, it worked so well. He stepped back quickly; she made him tremble, and he couldn’t have her knowing that he was just another average guy so hot for her body he could just about melt on the spot.

“Go now. We’ll have tomorrow.”

“Yes!” she whispered. “Tomorrow.”

He nodded; he let her turn and leave the cemetery first, watching her and swallowing down the urge to run after her. She’d given him the worst boner in history. Had to get that down a bit, too.

He followed a minute later, locking the gate, and headed for the mansion, still in discomfort. Ah, well, he had just indoctrinated Angie Sewell last night, meaning she was now available. She wasn’t as drop-dead gorgeous as Adriana, but she’d do.

When he got there, he was surprised to see members of his flock on the floor in front of the television, so enrapt in what they were watching that they hadn’t even heard him enter.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He looked around. He saw Lena, Sue, Sara, Jeanine, and Lila, his first girls—who were actually beginning to bore him—and Tom, Brian, and Joe. Joe, ironically, had once shoved him into his locker at school. Joe was now his most ardent follower.

He didn’t see Angie. “Where is Angie?” he asked.

They didn’t hear him.

“Hey!” He had learned how to just about roar the word with total authority.

They all turned to him, en masse, all those eyes, dazed and staring up at him. There was real fear in the looks they all gave him.

“She’s—she’s—” Sue stuttered out, pointing at the television.

“Dead!” Lila croaked.

Austin frowned and stared at the screen. A young anchorwoman was standing in front of the gates to one of the old town cemeteries. He could see the rise of an I-10 ramp behind her. “Police have arrived on the scene of this brutal and gruesome murder, discovered by high school students who had broken into the cemetery on a dare. They found the mutilated, decapitated, and dismembered body parts of a young woman in the center of one of the paths through the famous ‘city of the dead’ just thirty minutes ago, and it appears that the most seasoned of our detectives has been stunned and dismayed by the ferocity and violence of the crime. I can’t get a statement from anyone close to the crime; no one has left the cemetery yet. Oh! I see the private investigator—DeFeo Montville! Montville specializes in occult cases. They’ve called him in on this, obviously. DeFeo Montville seems to have an ear to the ground and hears the beat of this city in the night. He is just now exiting the gates. I’m going to try to have a word with him.”

She turned, and the display on the television seemed to jostle as her cameraman tried to follow her.

“Mr. Montville! Can you give us any information?”

Montville was probably just what a private dick should be—and not the used-up-over-the-hill-pudgy-old-bastard image set in the minds of many. Montville was tall and well muscled. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on his body. He had yellow-gold eyes that seemed to home in on the woman, and his expression was one of irritation and disbelief.

He spoke curtly. “A young woman was murdered. And it’s appalling that someone in the media took a picture and let it out to the newspapers so that it can be viewed by anyone with Internet access. The victim surely has family, and to let that picture be shown is an outrage.”

“But, Detective Montville, we need information for our viewers—”

“Here’s the information. Stay home, or stay in a crowd. There’s a murderer on the loose.”

“Do you suspect that this might be the work of a cult—such as the Brotherhood?”

Austin couldn’t stop himself in time. He gasped out loud. It didn’t matter. Everyone in the room gasped. Any remaining spasm of desire that might have lingered in him disappeared as his penis went as limp as overcooked pasta.

“We’ll be looking into all possibilities; the killer will be found. Now excuse me.” He pushed past the woman and headed out down to the street, presumably to his car.

The anchorwoman started talking again, but Austin didn’t hear her. The others—his flock, his adoring flock—turned to stare at him with horror in their eyes.

Sue and Lena inched closer together. Brian and Joe took a step back from him. They all stared at him with wide eyes and blank expressions. It was one thing to drink pig’s blood and have orgies, it was quite another to be accused of murder.

Austin desperately tried to pull his wits about him. They were all ready to bolt.

“I’ll prove that we were not responsible for this.” He lifted his hand. “We are all about pleasure, not pain. There is no need to worry.” He turned to exit with a grand determination, but he could hear them whispering behind his back.

“Oh, my God! He is Satan!” Sue said, her words barely audible.

“Then—then we need to run, get the hell out!” Joe said.

“He’ll kill us if we run,” Brian gulped out.

“He’ll kill us if we stay!” Lila whimpered.

Shaking his head in disgust, Austin walked on out. DeFeo Montville would be coming for him. Montville might tell the police to check up on anyone else themselves, but Montville would be coming for him personally. Austin knew that he’d be questioned for the murder. DeFeo might not know that the dead girl had been with him, but the man was quick to put two and two together, and he’d suspect Austin no matter what.

Officers would be going to the house; they would probably round up his group. He didn’t want to be taken by just any officers. He had to talk to Montville first, convince him that he was innocent.

A lethal injection was not part of his life plan.

Montville would not look for him at the mansion because he’d know that Austin was too smart to just sit there and wait to be picked up.

No, there was one place Montville would wait for him. At the tomb.

DEFEO, IN ALLhis days, had never seen anything as savagely carried out as the murder of the poor girl discovered in the cemetery. Of course, the medical pathologist from the coroner’s office had barely had time to give them a preliminary report, but it appeared—because of the amount of blood—that she had been chopped up while alive, and maybe . . . half consumed. Perhaps—it did seem that large chunks of blood, flesh, and bone might be missing in the jigsaw of the body parts. She hadn’t been dead more than an hour or so before the students had stumbled upon her.

Maybe they had a sick modern-day Jack the Ripper on their hands, this time a killer who kept fleshy body parts and bone and later mailed them to the head of a vigilance committee.

He had a feeling kids wouldn’t be playing around in cemeteries after dark anymore.

The girl’s trunk, head, and body parts had been laid out on one of the main central paths between the tombs, almost as if they were part of a guide map to different gravel trails and interments.

Her head had lain in the center of a path. Eyes still open. She had been decapitated, and then her arms and legs had been severed from the body. The whole of the body had been loosely brought back together so that the pieces were there—minus chunks, DeFeo was certain!—gathered back together again so that just a foot or so lay between her torso, her head, and each limb. The crime scene unit was still busy, but he and others had searched, and there had been no sign of a murder implement—or the tools that would have been necessary for hacking up a human body. The killer had taken them with him. Along with pieces of the body.