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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

“Hear it lie,” he said, as if she were not really there. “The hag could scarce walk.”

“What?” said Abigail. “A woman who can fly? A woman who can reduce you, Reverend—Chosen though you may be—to writhing in agony on your bed? Until it’s time to do something that you really want to do, like rise up and convince people that she’s the cause of all their problems.”

“Satan is the cause of all of their problems,” replied Bargest quietly. “And Satan wears many guises. And the most deadly of his guises is that of the Anti-Christ, the False Shepherd who leads men astray with arguments that sound like reason. So don’t chop logic with me, Mrs. Adams. These my children are the tried and true remnant of the People, Gideon’s faithful Three Hundred, who remain true to the Lord’s testing when all the rest have fallen away. They know the Voice of the Lord, and they will not fall away, though you show them all the Kingdoms of the Earth.”

He turned to the men. “Satan her master has forsaken the witch,” he told them. “Yet as long as her body remains, Satan can return to her, and she will not cease to vex us, until I am dead, or she is destroyed. And when I am dead—when I am no longer able to stand between her and you with the shield of pure faith—then she will come for the rest of you. Believe this.” His deep, quiet voice filled the room with its power, and such was the force of his personality that Abigail thought, Now I can understand, how Prophets stood up to Kings . . .

“Believe it?” retorted Abigail. “The way that poor mad murderer Orion Hazlitt believed it, when you told him an innocent woman was Jezebel, only because she owned land that you want? It is you who played King Ahab, sir, not the other way about.”

“The whore was not innocent,” said Bargest quietly. “None is innocent, who raises her hand against the children of the Lord. Even as the witch Malvern”—here he raised his voice—“has lifted the Devil’s red and dripping hand to smite me down!”

“Rebecca Malvern has been barely conscious for weeks! Since when—?”

“The Devil dwells in the flesh of a witch!” thundered Bargest, and flung up his hands as if calling down the power of God from the heavens. “He never sleeps! Nor will he ever, until the Righteous lie dead in their blood! Find the woman and kill her.” His blazing eyes, the sweep of his arm, took in all his followers, and ended with one long, bony finger pointing at Abigail. “This one as well. She is the Daughter of Eve, apt to the hand of the Devil . . .”