BOOKSKENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Special thanks to Terry of Iron Station, North Carolina, for supplying the character name for Butterfinger, the cat in this book.
Prologue
St. Elizabeth’s campus
February 1989
Midnight…
Mother Mary, help me!
Oh, please…save me!
The girl rushed headlong through the maze and rising mist. She stumbled, her face grazed by a poking branch.
“Damn.” Clapping a hand to her cheek, she instantly felt the warmth of blood welling against her fingers. It spurred her onward. She kept running, moving, breathing hard. Her calf muscles ached, her lungs burned, and still the midnight rain washed over her, cold and cruel.
This is wrong. Oh, God, so wrong.
It shouldn’t be this way! Couldn’t!
Glancing over her shoulder, she listened hard, deafened by her own heartbeats. She wasn’t lost. She knew where she was. She knew the twists and turns that would take her to this maze’s center, and once there, she believed there was another exit—maybe two—though it had been so long since she’d seen them. She thought for an instant that she might be leading him to her own doom, to a trap of her own creation. She just had to keep moving, recalling twists and turns…
But it was so dark.
And he was getting closer. She could feel him. As if his breath was already brushing across her skin.
Fear clutched at her throat and she nearly slipped around a corner of shivering laurel. He knew about her and now was running her to ground.
How had he known? When she’d spent so many years—her entire life, it seemed—learning the truth herself!
Then, foolishly, she’d goaded him. Dared him. Brought to the maze by her own invitation as she’d hoped to learn more; to expose him. She’d believed she could turn the tables on him, avert the very doom she now faced. But things weren’t going as planned, she thought, her shoes slipping on the long grass. Somehow the hunter had become the hunted.
But how could he know about her…unless…unless he was one of them?
Oh, Jesus!
She heard something. A noise…a sibilant hiss…
The hairs on the back of her nape lifted.
What the hell was that?
She froze in place, hands up, as if to ward off danger, body quivering, poised on the balls of her feet, softly panting. He was here! Close! He’d already entered the maze. She could hear him now easily, as he was making no effort to disguise his approach.
Her heart knocked painfully against her ribs.
Was he alone? She thought he was alone. He should be alone. She’d set this up so he would be alone, but now she didn’t know.
Didn’t know anything.
That’s where the fear came in, because she always knew.
That was her gift.
And maybe her curse.
That’s why they hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her. That’s why she’d found out who they were, and who she was, even though they’d tried hard to keep her from learning.
For her own safety, they’d said.
And now…now she was beginning to understand what they’d meant.
Because of him.
She strained to listen, her heart quivering, her fear mounting. He was walking through the maze. Unhurried. Undeterred. Making all the right turns. Was there more than one set of footsteps? Someone else? She couldn’t be sure.
And she couldn’t stay where she was. She glanced upward over the tall hedge and saw, as the clouds shifted over the moon, a shaft of the palest light. It threw the bell tower of the church in stark, ominous relief, and near it, just to the south, the roof line of the convent.
She’d seen those landmarks a hundred times before.
Heart thudding, her bearings now intact, she slipped through the hedges. Stealthily. Edging onward, around a bench and a sharp angle, toward the center of the maze, toward the statue.
She’d always been slightly leery of the ghostly Madonna, but now she wanted to reach it with all her heart. Her need to find it was like a hunger, something she could almost cry out for if she dared on this dark, evil night.
Sanctuary.
Safety.
Or so she prayed. Her veins were filled with ice, freezing her so thoroughly it felt as if
