knew, was far more valuable to the Dark Man than that of Kelly and Michael.
The Dark Man valued babies more highly than anything else.
And though Jonas and Loretta had not yet produced a child of their own to give to the Dark Man, they had been honored in being allowed to present the baby in Loretta’s arms to him.
In fact, they might even be allowed to keep this baby and raise it in their own house, the house he and Loretta had moved into last year after his grandfather had died.
He and Loretta weren’t married yet, but that would come. As soon as Loretta was pregnant, there would be a special ceremony here on the island, in front of the altar of the Circle, and the Dark Man would marry them.
But not until Loretta was pregnant, for the Dark Man never allowed his children to marry until they had proved their faith in him by making him a baby.
Making him a baby, and presenting it to him the night after its birth.
That, Jonas knew, was why George Coulton had been released from the Circle. Even now, Jonas didn’t think of George as having died, for Jonas, like all the Dark Man’s children, believed that George had been born in the darkness of death, and that only by serving the Dark Man, and obeying him, could life finally be given to him.
For the baby in Loretta’s arms, the long journey toward life was about to begin. Tonight the baby would be inducted into the Circle, and the Dark Man himself would take him, nurturing him for the first months of his life. Then the baby would be given to one of the Women of the Circle, who would raise him in the knowledge that he was different from children beyond the Circle.
Someday, if his obedience was perfect—as perfect as Jonas’s had always been—and if he fathered new children for the Dark Man—as Jonas intended to do—Jonas would be released from the Circle.
He would join the others.
Jonas knew who some of them were. Important men, men who didn’t live like swamp rats. And when it was time, and if he was worthy, he, too, would benefit from the Circle’s gift.
But if he wasn’t worthy, if he disobeyed the Dark Man …
An image of George Coulton flashed into his mind, but evaporated almost instantly.
His thoughts were interrupted as he heard the Dark Man speak his name.
With Loretta at his side, he stepped out of the semicircle around the fire and moved toward the altar where the Dark Man waited.
Jonas Cox took the baby from Loretta Jagger and placed it into the Dark Man’s waiting arms.
The Dark Man turned to face the altar, holding the baby high. “Jonas Cox and Loretta Jagger offer this child. Do you accept him?”
The voices of the children again spoke as one. “We do.”
The Dark Man placed the baby on the altar, unwrapping the blanket in which it was wrapped. It lay in the light of the candles, naked, reaching out with its tiny hands, its eyes blinking in the flickering glow.
Again the Dark Man reached beneath his cloak, and when his hand was once more revealed to the watching children, it held an ornately carved instrument, its handle worked from ivory, from which protruded a glistening needle.
The Dark Man held the device high, poised it over the infant’s breast, then began to bring it downward. There was a long silence as he held the needle still, but then he plunged it suddenly downward.
The child uttered a scream as the point passed through its skin, then pierced its sternum to sink deep within its chest.
But as the needle found its mark, the baby’s scream died away, a sigh drifting up from its throat when the Dark Man’s dagger entered into the core of its being.
Though its body remained unharmed, the baby’s spirit began to die, impaled on the tip of the Dark Man’s weapon.
As the child’s sigh died away, the Dark Man unscrewed the ivory handle, leaving the needle in place.
When he was finished, he held the baby high. “Behold your brother,” he said to the gathered children. “Care for him, as I have cared for you.”
The ceremony was over.
In her room in the clinic, Amelie Coulton woke up screaming. In her dreams, she had just seen her baby.
And her baby was not dead.
It was in pain, and it needed her.
10
“I just wish I knew what to do,” Mary Anderson told Ted the next morning. She was standing in