Dark Rites Read online

  The witches, they are real...

  A series of bizarre assaults is mystifying Boston police: an unknown attacker is viciously beating random strangers and leaving a note quoting an old warning about witchcraft. History professor Alex Maple was one of the victims, and now he’s gone missing. Vickie Preston is certain that someone has taken her friend for malicious purposes. She’s having blood-drenched visions that seem to be staining her waking life, and the escalating attacks suggest that a dangerous cult is at work behind the scenes—a cult so powerful that its members would rather die than be apprehended.

  Vickie is grateful to have Special Agent Griffin Pryce and the FBI’s elite Krewe of Hunters on her side. She and Griffin are finding their way in an increasingly passionate relationship, and Griffin is desperately trying to keep her safe and the two of them sane amid the disturbing investigation. The search for Alex will take them deep into the wilderness of Massachusetts on the trail of a serial killer, and it will take everything they have to survive the ancient evil that awakens and threatens not just the man they’re striving to save but their very souls.

  Praise for New York Times bestselling author

  Heather Graham

  “Intricate, fast-paced, and intense, this riveting thriller blends romance and suspense in perfect combination and keeps readers guessing and the tension taut until the very end.”

  —Library Journal on Flawless

  “Graham is a master at world building and her latest is a thrilling, dark, and deadly tale of romantic suspense.”

  —Booklist, starred review, on Haunted Destiny

  “A riveting mystery...interesting history, [and a] sweet romance with a second chance at love.”

  —Fresh Fiction on Darkest Journey

  “Graham is the queen of romantic suspense, and her latest is proof that she deserves the title. What makes this story more fun than most is the relationship between Kieran Finnegan, who wants nothing more than family harmony and a functioning restaurant, and FBI agent Craig Fraiser, who wants justice. Sparks fly, and it’s electric.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Flawless

  “The Krewe is back! Graham excels at weaving history, finding the proper balance between past and present and keeping a story fresh and authentic, with Haunted Destiny being no exception. The chaos and camaraderie of the characters are captured with vivid detail, and the identity of the killer will keep you guessing until the very end.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Haunted Destiny

  “Graham stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An incredible storyteller.”

  —Los Angeles Daily News

  Also by HEATHER GRAHAM

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  DARKEST JOURNEY

  DEADLY FATE

  HAUNTED DESTINY

  FLAWLESS

  THE HIDDEN

  THE FORGOTTEN

  THE SILENCED

  THE DEAD PLAY ON

  THE BETRAYED

  THE HEXED

  THE CURSED

  WAKING THE DEAD

  THE NIGHT IS FOREVER

  THE NIGHT IS ALIVE

  THE NIGHT IS WATCHING

  LET THE DEAD SLEEP

  THE UNINVITED

  THE UNSPOKEN

  THE UNHOLY

  THE UNSEEN

  AN ANGEL FOR CHRISTMAS

  THE EVIL INSIDE

  SACRED EVIL

  HEART OF EVIL

  PHANTOM EVIL

  NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES

  THE KEEPERS

  GHOST MOON

  GHOST NIGHT

  GHOST SHADOW

  NIGHT OF THE WOLVES

  HOME IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  DUST TO DUST

  NIGHTWALKER

  DEADLY GIFT

  DEADLY HARVEST

  DEADLY NIGHT

  THE DEATH DEALER

  THE LAST NOEL

  THE SÉANCE

  BLOOD RED

  THE DEAD ROOM

  KISS OF DARKNESS

  THE VISION

  THE ISLAND

  GHOST WALK

  KILLING KELLY

  THE PRESENCE

  DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  PICTURE ME DEAD

  HAUNTED

  HURRICANE BAY

  A SEASON OF MIRACLES

  NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

  NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

  EYES OF FIRE

  SLOW BURN

  NIGHT HEAT

  * * * * *

  Look for Heather Graham’s next novel

  WICKED DEEDS

  available soon from MIRA Books.

  HEATHER

  GRAHAM

  Dark Rites

  In memory of two men from Massachusetts.

  My uncle George Law.

  An amazing in-law I would have been proud to have

  as a blood relative, as close and giving and supportive

  as any family could be. Kind, generous, wonderful.

  A true hero in his strength and kindness.

  And my dear friend Dennis Cummins.

  Musician, bandmate, Lizzie Borden house protector,

  Biography Channel Andrew to my Abby and Chynna Skye’s

  Lizzie, amazing friend who quietly made every occasion

  together one that made me smile.

  I loved them both, and it is true—

  the world is a poorer place now that they are gone.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Victoria (Vickie) Preston—historian and author

  Griffin Pryce—special agent with the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters

  Jackson Crow—field director, Krewe of Hunters

  Craig “Rocky” Rockwell—special agent with

  the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters

  Devin Lyle—children’s author and Krewe agent

  Dylan Ballantine—ghost of a seventeen-year-old boy

  who haunts Vickie

  Darlene Dutton—ghost of a nineteen-year-old girl

  Roxanne Greeley—Vickie’s best friend

  Alex Maple—history professor and Vickie’s friend

  Milton Hanson—professor

  Ron and Cathy Dearborn—local musicians

  Isaac Sherman—man whose wife went missing

  Law Enforcement

  David Barnes—detective with Boston PD

  Jim Tracy—sketch artist

  Wendell Harper—Massachusetts State Police

  Robert Merton—detective from Bristol, Rhode Island

  Cole Magruder—detective from Fall River, Massachusetts

  Charlie Oakley—retired detective in

  Fall River, Massachusetts

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from A Perfect Obsession by Heather Graham

  Pr
ologue

  Alex Maple wasn’t sure, as he first became aware of himself, if he was alive or dead.

  He was miserable; he knew that.

  Alive—he had to be alive to hurt in so many places.

  He hadn’t opened his eyes. Slowly, he tried to do so. At first, he thought about the Undertakers—the duo of kidnapping killers who had recently terrorized Boston. He was probably buried—deep in the earth, in a hole, in a Dumpster, in newly poured roadwork...

  No. When he opened his eyes, there was light.

  Too much light, maybe. Looking around, he realized that he wasn’t buried. The harsh light of a naked bulb filled the room where he lay.

  He tried to move; he sat up. He saw that he was on a gurney. The walls had once been painted that awful sickly green color that graced most of the country’s hospitals. Paint was peeling; dust and dirt covered the floors; spiderwebs were visible around the hanging lightbulb. There were several other gurneys in the large room—four or five of them. Scattered throughout and by the gurneys were tables, some made out of wood, some that appeared to be newer, made of stainless steel.

  There were tools on those tables. Knives, clamps, more—instruments that resembled those used by doctors years and years ago, some not so different now. He narrowed his eyes to study the one set.

  From the 1800s, so it seemed: bullet extractor, amputation knife, saw, cervical dilator, lithotome, scarficator and trephine, among others he couldn’t quite see.

  Surgical instruments—the trephine for creating gouges in the skull.

  And the strange shadowy color on some of the tables...

  Dried blood.

  He quickly turned to look at another table. Instruments for lobotomy, he thought—the controversial procedure invented by a Portuguese neurologist in the 1940s, known to create as many side effects as the initial mental problem, almost stripping the soul from a man.

  He tried to rise from the gurney.

  It was only then that he realized that he was shackled to it. One huge chain on his left ankle. Another on his right arm.

  His heart raced; he couldn’t breathe. It seemed that his vision blurred before him and the world started to go black.

  What the hell? What in God’s name had happened to him? Kidnapped, taken, was he going to be killed? Worse—tortured and killed.

  The fear was nearly overwhelming!

  He fought the sensation. Hard! He didn’t have any kind of training for this type of thing; he hadn’t even been a Boy Scout. But he was bright, and he wanted to survive.

  He was—not all that useful in such a situation!—a historian. He had to make do.

  Okay, that meant that, at the least, he was pretty darned sure he knew where he was. The Mariana Institute for the Mentally Unfit, opened circa 1840, closed down when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had approved the disincorporation of several valley towns in order to create the Quabbin, a reservoir of water for Boston, in the 1930s. The Mariana Institute remained on high ground, ground that was deeply forested, now inhabited and visited only by the wildlife that proliferated the area—bobcats, black bears, moose, red foxes, eagles, deer, weasels, coyotes and more.

  It was supposed that it existed no more.

  But Alex was in it!

  According to official records, it—like so many other buildings—had been razed circa 1936.

  But clearly it hadn’t been, and he only knew that it was still here because of an obscure reference he had recently found in a book of incredibly boring records. Reading between the lines, he realized that they’d run late with the demolition—a complaint by the man in charge chalked it up to the fact that the doctors had been trying to find new placements for the remaining patients. And no more crews had been sent out after the date that it had been recorded as demolished.

  The area was called “the accidental wilderness,” because no one had realized what a reserve they would create when they flooded the towns.

  He’d been so excited about what he’d discovered.

  He hadn’t been able to wait to...tell Vickie!

  The terrible thought filtered in: no one knew it was here. No one would know he was here!

  Of course, people hiked along trails that weren’t that far away. There was a visitor center, there were wildlife refuges...

  None of them near the site of the abandoned mental institute—which had just been left there as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dealt with matters far more serious than a derelict building that most people wanted to pretend had never existed. It wasn’t anywhere near any kind of an actual large city, with no real roads left to reach it. The wretched place—known for death and mayhem—was not even up for grabs to the many entrepreneurs who loved to create Halloween horror houses or museums out of such old institutes. Massachusetts had a solid grip on the area.

  How the hell had he even gotten here?

  He couldn’t remember. He had just woken up and...

  Found himself shackled to a table.

  Think! he commanded himself. He was supposed to have a brilliant mind. He was one of the youngest professors of history at one of the finest institutes of learning in the United States. That was, of course, why he could figure out where he was.

  None of this helped in the least in explaining how he had gotten chained up in a supposedly nonexistent mental hospital!

  Remember! Remember where he had been, what he had been doing.

  For a moment, his past eluded him. So he went back to the beginning: he’d been born in Auburn, Massachusetts. He’d grown up on State Street. He’d always been a nerd, but thank God, it was okay; time and society—and The Big Bang Theory—had made nerds acceptable. He was a hair over six foot three, but his weight was a mere hundred and eighty-five—no matter what he ate! One of the biggest, toughest football players in the school had been his best friend. He hadn’t been stuffed into school lockers or had his head shoved into the toilet. He’d been treated like some kind of guru, really.

  And after high school, Harvard.

  Graduation. He’d dated Allie Trent; they’d been a good pair. But Allie had died, way too young, way too smart and lovely, to have been lost so sadly to the horrors of disease. That had been a few years back now. He’d gone on a dating website and had a few okay experiences, but nothing that had touched his heart. He indulged in a moment of regret, missing Allie again. His excursions with the opposite sex since had barely awakened his libido.

  Maybe he needed a wilder libido. Not something to worry about now! Focus.

  So...

  He worked at the college, he came home and he researched historical events and whatever else grabbed his fancy; he loved coffee shops and acoustic music and...

  Then he remembered. Three weeks ago, he’d been savagely attacked right in front of his apartment. Struck so violently on the head he’d spent days in the hospital. He’d never known what had hit him. Although he’d been somewhat involved in the Undertaker case, but that situation had been solved. His friend Vickie Preston and FBI Special Agent Griffin Pryce had come to see him in the hospital; they—and the police—were still looking for the attacker or attackers, but they’d discovered nothing so far. But there had been a note left on his battered body.

  Hell’s afire and Satan rules, the witches, they were real. The time has come, the rites to read, the flesh, ’twas born to heal. Yes, Satan is coming!

  The cops, he knew, had chalked it all up to some gang or even cult, acting out. Especially since he wasn’t the only one attacked; a young woman on Beacon Hill had been struck and left with the same note, as had an older man—one who had barely survived!—in Brookline.

  Boston had never been crime-free—not even during the days of the very harsh Puritan laws that had first ruled the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

  So far—in this rash of knock-’em-out-and-leave-�
��em-with-a-Satanic-warning attacks—no one had died. The police did what they could, but maybe they were busier with other murders than they were with the head-knockings by a would-be Crowley-esque cult.

  Vickie and her agent friend would be on it, though. He was certain!

  Alex had been left hurt but alive. And once he’d healed a bit, he’d looked up the rhyme that had been left on his chest. It wasn’t even original. It had first been used in the 1600s by a man named Ezekiel Martin, the bitter leader of a shunned Puritan group, and then again in the 1800s by a gang of thugs in Fall River; it had been used there again in the 1970s. But there were no known serious Satanic cults holding forth in Massachusetts now—not the kind who drew any attention.

  The cops had watched over him for a couple of weeks. In fact, he’d become pretty friendly with the cop assigned to watch him most days. But nothing else had happened. Nothing had been found. He’d gone about his daily routine.

  And the city budget hadn’t allowed for police protection for him.

  Then there were other victims of other crimes. And life went on.

  He’d accepted an invitation to a special art showing; he’d seen the newest superhero movie—he’d gone about life. He even went to see the duo playing at the coffee shop.

  That was it!

  The coffee shop by Faneuil Hall! He’d gone to sip a cappuccino and listen to a great musical set, a brother and sister with a pair of guitars, lead and bass. A pair of lovely out-of-time hippies, he thought, doing a delightful session of folk music.

  Professor Hanson had called him about the paper he would soon be publishing on relationships between the founding fathers. Milton Hanson was a friend—one who was helping him make his position at Harvard permanent. Since Alex had been attacked in the street, with centuries-old Satanic cult words written in bloodred marker on his chest, Professor Hanson had also been trying to help him with research in that direction. But that had little to do with the night...

  There had been the music. He loved music!

  Then there had been the girl.

  The girl! The waitress, who had waited on him even when he hadn’t really needed to be waited on. She’d been great.

  He tried to remember what she had looked like. About five-six, a brunette—a bubbly brunette. She worked for the coffee shop, or so he thought. He’d gotten a chair before his drink had been ready. He hadn’t stood at the end of the counter waiting. The girl had brought him his cappuccino. She’d been so cheerful and nice.