The Furies Read online

  THE FURIES

  Also by Mark Alpert

  Final Theory

  The Omega Theory

  Extinction

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  THE FURIES. Copyright © 2014 by Mark Alpert. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (TK)

  ISBN: 978-1-250-02135-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-250-02277-6 (e-book)

  First Edition: April 2014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my in-laws, By and Laura West, who introduced me to the mysteries of northern Michigan

  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  —Arthur C. Clarke

  PROLOGUE

  Essex, England

  September 1645

  Dressed only in her nightgown, Goodwife Elizabeth Fury hid behind a haystack in the midnight darkness. Inside her cottage, just a stone’s throw away, the men from the village of Manningtree were torturing her husband. His screams echoed across the farm’s pasture.

  “Please, sirs! I speak the truth! I—”

  Arthur let out a shriek, high and hideous. Elizabeth couldn’t see what the villagers were doing to him inside the cottage, but she’d glimpsed the knives in their hands a minute ago when the men came marching down the road. As her husband howled in pain, she tightened her hold on Lily, their daughter. The four-year-old buried her face between her mother’s breasts.

  Arthur’s howls subsided. There was a long, dreadful silence, and then one of the villagers in the cottage shouted, “Where is she?”

  Elizabeth recognized the voice. It belonged to Manningtree’s blacksmith, Tom Bellamy, a man she’d known for twenty years. She’d never heard him raise his voice before, but now he was bellowing at the top of his lungs. “By God, tell us where thy wretched woman is!”

  “I speak the truth! I know not—”

  “Lying cur! Where is she hiding?”

  Arthur screamed. The sound was as sharp and horrible as a knife, and it tore into Elizabeth’s soul. He’d been a good husband to her, loving and loyal. Although she knew she couldn’t save him, she couldn’t abandon him, either. She peeked around the edge of the haystack and saw shafts of light pouring out of the smashed doorway of their cottage. The villagers inside held torches. Arthur, a lifelong insomniac, had been awake and smoking his pipe outside the cottage when the torches had appeared on the horizon, approaching their farm. He’d ordered Elizabeth to carry Lily to safety while he tried to appease their neighbors.

  Then, as Arthur’s screams faded, she heard other voices coming from the cottage.

  “He won’t last long. He’s bleeding like a pig.”

  “A fitting end for him. He was just as wicked as her.”

  “But how will we find the witch? Her satyr can’t tell us now.”

  “She won’t get far.” Bellamy’s voice drowned out the others. “You two, go to the barn and look for her there.”

  A moment later a pair of villagers rushed out of the cottage, each carrying a torch. Elizabeth ducked behind the haystack, but she’d already recognized the two men in the firelight: Simon Pearson, Manningtree’s carpenter, and Guy Harris, the baker. Now she knew why the villagers had come. A wave of illness had swept through Manningtree that summer. Pearson’s son and Harris’s daughter had died of fever. Bellamy had lost all three of his children. The men were convinced that someone had used black magic against them, and they’d focused their anger on Elizabeth, who’d been a target of suspicion ever since she and her sisters came to the county of Essex twenty years ago.

  She sat in the dirt, very still, while Pearson and Harris tromped toward the barn. The haystack was less than thirty feet away from the barn door. Elizabeth’s plan was to wait for the men to go inside, then sneak through the darkness to the woods on the other side of the pasture. But as the footsteps grew louder Lily squirmed in her mother’s arms and whimpered.

  The footsteps stopped. Elizabeth clapped her palm over her daughter’s mouth, but Lily kept squirming.

  “Did you hear that?” It was Pearson’s voice, low and gruff.

  “It came from the barn,” Harris whispered.

  “Nay, it was outside. The witch is somewhere over there.”

  She heard a soft tentative step, crushing the loose bits of hay scattered across the dirt. Then another step. Pearson was coming closer. Elizabeth tensed her leg muscles, ready to sprint from the haystack to the shelter of the woods, but she knew it was hopeless. Even if she were alone, she couldn’t outrun Pearson. With a squirming four-year-old in her arms, she had no chance at all. She heard a third step, then a fourth and a fifth, each a little louder. He was just a few yards away. At any moment he would see her. In agony, Elizabeth closed her eyes. Her lips moved soundlessly, mouthing a prayer.

  Oh, Mother of Creation! Help me in my time of need!

  Then she heard a different sound, a high-pitched bleating. One of the lambs in the barn had woken up. The noise awakened several other lambs, and they began to bleat, too.

  “She’s in the barn, cuz!” Harris whispered.

  “Nay, the witch is—”

  “I’m going inside. You can do what you will.”

  She heard footsteps again, but now the men were moving away. First Harris strode toward the barn, and after a couple of seconds Pearson followed. Elizabeth waited until the barn door creaked open and the men went inside, which triggered another chorus of bleating. Then she crept away from the haystack and ran barefoot across the pasture.

  Clutching her daughter to her chest, she dashed to the far end of the farm and dove into the woods. She felt a burst of relief as she passed the first line of trees, but she kept on running. She hurtled over roots and stones and puddles, sobbing as she ran. She was thinking of Arthur. The poor man had sacrificed everything for her.

  She didn’t stop running until she reached the top of Clary’s Hill. She dropped to her knees on the hilltop and let go of Lily, laying her down at the foot of an oak tree. The girl was quiet now and breathing deeply, as if she were asleep, but her eyes were wide open. She seemed to understand what was happening. Lily was a precocious girl, the wisest four-year-old Elizabeth had ever known. She’d probably remember this night for the rest of her life.

  Rising to her feet, Elizabeth turned eastward. Clary’s Hill was the highest point in the area, and from its top she could see her farm, more than a mile away. She spotted three torches near the barn and another three moving across the pasture. The villagers were still looking for her. Then she turned north and saw a much larger fire in the distance, an inferno the size of a house. It rose from the cottage where her sister Margaret lived with her husband and children. And to the southwest another giant blaze climbed toward the night sky, on the farm where her cousin Grace had started her own family.

  Elizabeth was dry-eyed as she stared at the flames. It was all her fault. She should’ve seen the danger coming. She and her family should’ve left this place years ago, as soon as the villagers started gossiping about them. But this wasn’t the time for second-guessing. The first thing to do was find out if anyone else had survived. Long ago she’d told her sisters and cousins that if they came under attack and had to leave their homes, they should meet at an appointed spot near the town of Colchester, about seven miles to the southwest. That’s where she would go now. If she and Lily made steady progress across the countryside, they’d reach the meeting place by dawn.

  Before they set off, though, she had to retrieve her Treasure. Squinting, Elizabeth searched the ground near the base of the oak until she spotted a big gray stone shaped l
ike a turtle. She slid her fingers under the stone and heaved it aside, then began digging in the cool, dry soil. Lily propped herself on her elbows to watch. The girl’s eyes shone in the light of the crescent moon, which had just cleared the eastern horizon.

  “Mama,” she whispered. “Where are we going?”

  Elizabeth kept digging. She fixed her attention on the ground. “We’re going on a journey, child. A long journey to a faraway place.”

  “Why do we have to leave?”

  The question made Elizabeth’s eyes sting. She shut them tight. She wasn’t going to cry now. “Because our neighbors don’t like us. They know we’re different, and it frightens them.”

  “They shouldn’t be frightened. We wouldn’t do anything bad.”

  The child was so calm. So calm and so beautiful. Elizabeth shook her head as she scooped out another handful of dirt. Lily had enough goodness in her to save the world. “That’s true, dearest. We would never hurt them. But they can’t see that. They have too much fear in their hearts.”

  “Will it be better in the faraway place? Will the people there like us?”

  “We’re going to the wilderness. There won’t be anyone else there. We can live in peace.”

  “What about Papa? Will he come with us?”

  Elizabeth opened her eyes and stared at her daughter. The girl’s face was full of sorrow. Lily already knew the answer to her question. She’d heard her father screaming.

  “Nay, child. Thy father is dead. Remember him always, for he loved thee well.”

  The girl nodded. Then she fell silent. Elizabeth waited, ready to console her, but Lily simply stared at the rising moon.

  Elizabeth turned back to the hole she was digging. Soon her fingernails scraped the lid of the iron box that was buried there. After another minute she unearthed the box and opened its rusty latches. Inside were a dozen gold sovereigns, enough to buy new clothes and cover the expenses of the journey. But Elizabeth’s Treasure wasn’t the pile of gold coins. It was the leather-bound manuscript lying beneath them.

  She opened the book and was relieved to see that the pages hadn’t been damaged by dampness or insects. The parchment was velvety and covered with runes. The language was so ancient that no one spoke it aloud anymore, not even Elizabeth or her sisters. But they still used it to record their secrets. They wrote their dreams for the future in the runes of the past, which marched across the parchment like footprints.

  Satisfied, Elizabeth closed the book, latched the box, and hefted it under her arm. Then she stood up and stretched her other arm toward Lily. “Come, child. Let’s start walking.”

  The girl took her mother’s hand. They headed southwest toward Colchester, but their ultimate goal was the port of Southampton. There they would book passage on one of the ships sailing for America.

  PART I

  THE PARAMOUR

  ONE

  New York City

  September 2014

  She was smart and sexy and beautiful, but all that didn’t matter. John Rogers fell for her because of what she said about God.

  He met her in a bar on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, near the New York University campus. He was slumped on a stool at the end of the bar when she came into the place, laughing as she stepped through the doorway. Her laughter, that’s the first thing he noticed. It was high and sweet, a chord of delight. He looked up from his half-empty glass of Budweiser and saw a petite redhead, most likely in her midtwenties, wearing a short spangly skirt and a low-cut blouse.

  Two brawny young men stood on either side of her. Both were much taller than her and more casually dressed, in jeans and sneakers and T-shirts. She walked between them, her arms linked with theirs and her face turned toward the young man on her right. He was the one who’d just made her laugh.

  The trio halted a few feet past the door and took a moment to scan the room. It was early in the evening, a little before seven, so the place was pretty empty. Only one of the tables was occupied, and John was the only person sitting at the bar. After several seconds of indecision the redhead and her companions chose a table about fifteen feet away from him. The girl sat in the chair closest to the bar and crossed her legs. They were nice legs, tanned and muscular.

  John sipped his beer and watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her long fiery hair draped her shoulders and ran down her back. She had long eyelashes, too, and big green eyes. She tilted her chin up when the waitress came to their table to take their orders, and when she smiled at the other woman John felt an ache in his chest, a pang of longing and regret. She was so pretty it hurt to look at her.

  But he kept looking anyway. He had the feeling he’d seen her before, although he couldn’t imagine where or when. He wasn’t a New Yorker. He’d lived his whole life in Philadelphia. He’d arrived in Manhattan that morning and spent the day in an NYU conference center where they held a job fair for unemployed social workers. Which turned out to be a bust, unfortunately. Jobs were just as scarce in New York as they were in Pennsylvania. John didn’t have a master’s degree in social work or any of the other qualifications that employers were looking for. All he had was a bachelor’s degree from the Community College of Philadelphia and a résumé that listed a few off-the-books construction jobs and some part-time work at his local church. Now he felt like an idiot for coming to New York, but he was too tired and depressed to start the long drive back to Philly. So he’d headed for the nearest bar. He had less than twenty dollars left in his wallet, so there was no danger of getting too drunk to drive.

  He took another sip of beer, a small one, trying to make it last. Over the next half hour the bar filled up. Most of the customers appeared to be NYU students—gangly boys with odd patches of facial hair and manic girls in tank tops and cutoff shorts. Some of the girls were good-looking but John couldn’t take them seriously. They were silly, privileged kids who knew nothing about the real world, who wouldn’t last a single day in the part of Philly where he grew up. Also, they were barely old enough to drink, and John was a divorced thirty-three-year-old. They belonged to a different generation. Maybe even a different species.

  But he didn’t feel that way about the redhead. Although she wasn’t much older than the NYU girls, she seemed more sensible, less naïve. Holding a glass of white wine, she spoke in a low voice to her companions, who smiled and nodded. The two young men looked alike—both had square jaws and strong cheekbones and auburn crew cuts—and it occurred to John that they might be her brothers. Although he couldn’t overhear what they were saying, the three of them seemed very much at ease with one another. The only incongruous thing was the redhead’s choice of clothes, the short glittery skirt and the revealing blouse. It seemed a little too sexy for a family get-together.

  Then he realized why she looked familiar. He’d seen her just a few hours before, at the job fair for social workers. They’d both stood at the edge of a crowd that had gathered around a man handing out applications for jobs at the Children’s Aid Society. The demand was so great, he ran out of applications; John didn’t get one, and neither did the redhead. Looking more resigned than disappointed, the girl had sighed, “Oh well,” to no one in particular and then headed for the other end of the conference center. She’d worn a gray pantsuit at the time, a sober, businesslike outfit that was the polar opposite of what she wore now. That’s why John didn’t recognize her when she walked into the bar. She must’ve changed clothes sometime in the past couple of hours.

  He stared at her for a few extra seconds, wondering what her story was. Then she turned his way and caught him staring at her, and after a moment she smiled. Now she recognized him. She was probably remembering the same scene at the conference center. She raised her wineglass and waved hello.

  It wasn’t much, just a friendly gesture, but it triggered a burst of adrenaline in John’s gut. He sat a little straighter on his bar stool. Luckily, he was wearing his best suit and it wasn’t too rumpled. He smiled back at her and raised his own glass, which was
almost empty.

  She said something to the two men at her table. Then she rose to her feet and came toward him. He felt another burst of adrenaline, stronger this time. She was so damn gorgeous. Way out of his league, to tell the truth. John wasn’t successful or fashionable. He was just a bruiser from North Philly who’d wasted his youth on the streets and washed out of the army and whose greatest accomplishment in life had been simply staying out of jail. The only thing he had going for him was his size—he was a big guy, six foot three, and still in pretty good shape. His ex-wife used to say he looked like Derek Jeter of the Yankees, and on John’s good days he could see the resemblance when he looked in the mirror. Like Jeter, he had a white mom and a black dad, and his own skin color was exactly in-between. But Jeter was a happy guy, always smiling when John saw him on television, even when he struck out. John didn’t have as much to be happy about.

  The redhead stopped three feet away from him, behind the neighboring bar stool. He noticed she’d brought her wineglass with her, which was a good sign. She cocked her head and gave him a mock-suspicious look. “So was your luck any better than mine?” she asked. “Did you get any interviews?”

  He liked her directness. This was a girl who got right to the point. He shook his head. “None whatsoever. It was a complete waste of time.”

  “I’m starting to think I picked the wrong profession. I should’ve listened to my mother and gone to dental school.” She smiled again, revealing her perfectly white teeth. Then she held out her hand. “My name’s Ariel.”

  Interesting name. Half-rising from his stool, he grasped her hand, which was slender and warm. “I’m John,” he said. “John Rogers. Nice to meet you.” He pointed at the bar stool next to his. “Would you like a seat?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at her table. Her companions were ordering another round of drinks from the waitress and flirting with her. Ariel rolled her eyes and turned back to him. “Sure, why not. My friends are busy.”