Wolf Angel, Mark Hobson [best free ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗

a waste of humanity, a drain on the world, and on you. In time you’ll come to thank us for what we did.”

Pieter wanted to throw up. He also wanted to grip her by the neck and squeeze the life out of her.

“It was an accident, he drowned,” Pieter whispered hoarsely.

“Perhaps you need to hear the truth.” Lotte pointed across to one of the robed figures – one of her followers, Pieter now realized – and beckoned them forward. “Tell him.”

He turned his head and watched as one of those making up the circle stepped forward and removed their carved demon mask. His heart sank as he looked across at the familiar face.

Famke, now bright-eyed, her features fully alert and showing none of the haggard and washed out signs of someone dependent on alcohol, now with her hair clean and shining. Pretty and elegant Famke. Not Famke the drunk.

Christ, how could they have fooled him so easily, so totally?

He had known her for years, had seen her sink to the same level of human misery as his dad. Watched her drink herself into oblivion, smelt the booze on her breath, on her clothes, seen her lying in her own vomit. But all a ruse. All an act, tricking his dad and using him and destroying him, all just a deception to set Pieter up.

“Go on Famke,” urged Lotte, “explain to Pieter here how easy it was.”

Famke turned her gaze onto Pieter and now her eyes blazed with madness, a crazy zeal that seemed to leap from her body in waves, and her lip curled up in an ugly snarl.

“That idiot, that smelly old man, that pitiful, weeping, pathetic cretin! He gave me the perfect opportunity to do what I needed to do. ‘Let’s go fishing’ he said. ‘We can take the boat out, catch something for supper. It will be romantic’. Ha! I even tried to stop him, to talk him out of it, I don’t know why, but I did. But you know what your father was like, once he got an idea in his head there was no changing his mind. So I gave in, let him have it his way, on the condition that he be careful and not fall in.”

Bart, standing beside his sister, tittered quietly.

“So out we went, right into the middle of the river, two old drunks in charge of a leaky old boat at midnight. All I had to do was keep the drinks flowing, and your father, oh how he kept on drinking and drinking into the night. I was literally pouring it down his scrawny neck. And we sang, it was an hilarious sight, there we were staggering about on the deck, singing our hearts out and dancing away like two rock-a-billy old farts. Your father showing off as usual, jigging about near the side, and, oh dear, there was silly old me stumbling and tripping into him, and there he was flapping his arms about in a panic, but still laughing his head off, so I gave him another little push and dearie me, over the side he went.”

There was a total stillness in the room now, everybody hypnotized by Famke’s words, and Pieter squeezed his eyes tight, his lips trembling with emotion.

“There was such a splash, I felt sure somebody on shore would have heard, especially when he popped up like a floaty old turd and started screaming his little head off. He was crying, shouting for me to help, so I joined in, bawling away just like him, ‘help me Famke!’ I copied him, ‘help me, I’m drowning!!’ You should have seen the look on his face when he heard me. But the best part, Oh you’ll laugh when you hear this, the best bit was when he managed to splash his way back to the boat and grabbed a hold of the side, scrabbling away to get a good grip, so what did sweet little Famke do? It was just too tempting, I couldn’t help myself I’m afraid, with those little wiggly piggly fingers right in front of my feet, and I – oh, this was so naughty of me – I trod on them, and they went pop under my shoes, and he yelped like a pup and so I scrunched on his fingers even harder, until he slipped back and under the surface, floating down into the dark with his mouth open and filling with dirty, smelly water.”

Famke paused for dramatic effect, looking directly at Pieter who had opened his eyes again.

“I watched him go down,” she whispered, with a ridiculous tear in her eye, “his white splotchy face looking right back at me, until he was gone.”

She sighed heavily, then shrugged her shoulders.

Bart gave a girly little snicker again.

Then quietness that was so taut Pieter could feel the vibrating of the very air.

“Why?” he asked in a hushed voice. He gazed at Famke, and turned back to Lotte, searching for her eyes through the goat-skull’s sockets. “Why? What are you hoping to achieve? You’re all stark raving mad, but why are you doing all of this?”

“Power.” Lotte’s voice rang hollow around the room. “To gain the ultimate knowledge. To seek a path to a lower plane of existence. Death to bring a new form of life.”

She moved about, walking back and forth, but with her gaze always on him.

“We don’t pursue sacrifice for joy or fun. We gain no pleasure in the shedding of blood. A means to an end, that is why we do the terrible things we do. It’s been tried before. Aleister Crowley, the Grand Master of The Golden Dawn, he tried in Paris in 1914, but he failed. Then it was tried again during the war and also in Finland during the 1970’s, but again this met with failure. But we,” she swept her arm across the circle of people, “we have finally achieved what others were unable to. We have opened the way to enlightenment. We have raised life