DANCE WITH THE DEVIL

By

JC Grey

© copyright September 2005, JC Grey

Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright September 2005

ISBN 1-58608-590-5

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

PROLOGUE

Deep in the forest she stood, naked as the day of her birth twenty-nine years before. Her skin gleamed with the luster of pearl and her hair hung in a rippling curtain of dark red down her long back.

A small, Spartan altar constructed from a gnarled tree stump draped in a white cloth stood to the side where three tall ivory candles flickered in the light breeze. Two small glasses held water and salt, and a silver sword lay amid herbs and leaves. Next to them lay a distinctive metallic five-pointed star.

Mother Goddess, hear my cry

As I stand beneath your sky

Of darkest velvet, stars aglow

Above the earth and dark below

She stood, arms spread wide as if to embrace infinity, before reaching for the small sword, her athame. Walking in a clockwise direction, she painstakingly cast a circle on the leaf-strewn ground, its circumference as close to nine feet as she could manage within the boundary of the trees. Four candles marked north, south, east and west, representing the elements--earth, fire, air and water.

Returning the athame to the altar, she stood in the center of the circle, looked for the moon but it was hidden behind cloud. Instead, she closed her eyes, trying to hold the glowing orb in her mind, connect with it and tap into its power.

I cast a circle with the ritual blade

Standing in this sacred glade

By light of flame, I call to thee

O wise and powerful deity

There comes a dark, forbidding force

I know not from where it finds its source

A shadow lies across the land

That wishes ill on those who stand

Strong against it in your name

As I stand now beside the flame

That burns for all that’s good and right

In the ebony of night

O guide me, Goddess, be my light

Give me the strength to win the fight

And if I fail, protect the meek

The innocents who lie asleep

Unaware of that which lurks and crawls

Beyond the safety of doors and walls

In their midst, in street and park

When sun has given way to dark

Protect all your creatures, I beg of thee

Help and guide them silently

Through the dark, back to the light

By your wise and all-knowing sight

Weary from her intense concentration, she drooped, her hands falling limply to her sides. She breathed deeply for several moments before straightening her shoulders. It wasn’t quite finished until she thanked the Goddess.

Imbue me with your power and grace

O one who guides all time and space

My thanks for listening to my plea

I ever more your servant be

Clouds drifted, allowing the moon’s pearly glow to splinter eerily through the trees as the sylph-like figure scoured a line across her circle to break it. Slinging a long silvery robe around her shoulders, she blew out the candles, collected her sacred pieces in the cloth from the woodland altar. She raised her face briefly to the night sky and then she was away, slipping through the trees, as would a wraith. Silently. Stealthily. A footstep, a rustle of leaves. And then she was gone.

CHAPTER 1

Max Larkham-Jones took his foot off the accelerator and he scowled through the windscreen up at the house on the hill.

Other-worldly. That was the expression that came to mind. Freaky was another.

Sprawling and turreted, it perched precariously on the edge of the cliff, like it was about to hurtle off into space at any moment. The kind of house that inspired fairy tales of the creepy kind. He’d certainly never seen anything like it in Australia before.

Prime real estate, though, especially if you believed in the three essentials of property investment being location, location, location. Which he did. It was why, at the age of thirty-six, he owned an architect designed penthouse in Sydney’s blue-ribbon eastern suburbs with a panoramic harbor view, plus a holiday cottage in the hills outside a Queensland holiday resort and lucrative interests in property development around the country.

He was wealthy, urbane, squired elegant blondes to glamorous events and appeared regularly in the Sunday social pages. He was a highly trained surgeon, for God’s sake. Success was his middle name. So what the hell was he doing in godforsaken World’s End?

Hell! Apart from the house on the hill, it was an aptly-named dump. A collection of ramshackle fishing and holiday cottages tumbled down the main street. Paint-peeled weatherboard attached to windswept gardens, they clustered together like seagulls lined up on a blustery beach.

No wonder this town couldn’t attract a doctor. Supposedly, there hadn’t been one for close on three years. What had the guy said when Max interviewed for the position? Something about World’s End being a ‘special’ challenge. When Max had what exactly that meant, the guy had just shrugged and said that the locals had some funny ideas about healthcare; ideas that had more to do with old wives’ tales than medical science.

“The last doctor they had died three years ago, and since then, they’ve pretty much been at the mercy of whatever the snake-oil salesmen choose to tell them,” Max had been told. “But Mr. Roth is determined to change that--or at least he’s determined that you’ll change it.” The man’s lips had pulled into a cheerless smile, before his rather dead-looking eyes met Max’s again. “He wants you, Dr Larkham-Jones. He made that perfectly clear.”

“And why me, particularly?” Max had asked. “My main experience is in hospital emergency, as you know. I was a locum GP way back after I first qualified, but that was more than a decade ago.”

The interviewer had waved a hand, as if dismissing Max’s question. “Mr. Roth said he met you once. He said he liked your ambition. Anyway, Mr. Roth always has his reasons.”

Max wanted to know more, particularly where and when he’d met Roth, and why he’d need a man of ambition for a small-town medical practice, but the interviewer quickly moved onto the remuneration package, assuring Max that he’d be well compensated for his move out of the city. The interview was wrapped up with the promise that a formal offer would be forwarded that afternoon, but just as Max was heading out the door, the interviewer had said, “Mr. Roth helps people who help him, Doctor. Just a word of advice if you decide to take the job. Remember who you work for and don’t let us down. Mr. Roth makes a formidable enemy.”

It had sounded so menacing that Max had come to a dead stop in the doorway and turned to ask exactly what he meant. But the man had already had the phone to his ear, so Max had left, wondering if he’d imagined his unease. But he’d met enough wealth eccentrics in the past--and the underlings who carried out their wishes--to know that enough money could make anyone think they ruled the world. Roth probably just had an inflated sense of his own importance.

Max shrugged off his thoughts. He’d meet Roth soon enough and push for answers to his questions. His letter of offer had indicated that Max would be meeting with Roth on arrival, but he guy must live out of town. He hadn’t seen anywhere so far that looked like the home of a tycoon; even the house on the hill wasn’t the kind of lavish, luxurious palace that usually appealed to billionaires.

He’d driven three times up and down the main street and explored two blocks back from the quay and he still counted just one market, a rough-looking bar, a corner store, a couple of take-out joints and a tiny garage with two forlorn gas pumps. Not even one set of traffic lights.

He pushed the long, sensitive fingers of his left hand through his short gray-flecked black hair, wondering if this was his punishment. To serve his sentence in the town that time forgot.

Max watched a blowsy-looking woman open the front door of her cottage, still wearing her dressing gown at nine-thirty in the morning. She offered a curious smile as she went to inspect the contents of her mailbox, lifting a hand in greeting. She was sort of looking in his direction but Max had never seen her before in his life so he ignored her and just carried on driving.

At least he’d bought enough supplies from Sydney to keep him reasonably comfortable for a few weeks. There was good coffee in the pantry, fine cheeses in the fridge and when he ran out he would simply drive until he found a decent deli where he could stock up again. That was if he lasted here beyond a week--something he seriously doubted, although he had signed a contract that committed him to one full year as the general practitioner for World’s End. He had to admit the fact that his signature was on that contract was making him more than a little uncomfortable.

At least the house he was renting was one of the few decent places in the township. A couple of artists had built it as a retreat before deciding they’d distanced themselves a little too far from civilization and hustled back to Sydney at top speed. Right at the moment he could see their point.

The house was timber. Not large but with soaring ceilings that gave the place the feel of a modern-day cathedral. The kitchen was minimal, the bathroom, spacious--which for a big man of six-one was a godsend--and the furniture was both contemporary and comfortable. Masculine. Uncluttered. A long veranda wound its way around the house and just this morning he’d found himself sitting out on it watching birds flap and flutter among the native trees. It had been kind of peaceful, although the moment he found himself enjoying their antics, he’d stopped. In his mind, watching backyard birds was only one very short step away from spending weekends scrambling through undergrowth with binoculars flapping from his neck. Max Larkham-Jones just didn’t do that kind of thing.

Having a yard was pretty cool, though. His professional and social life had always been so busy he’d always selected apartments, at least as an adult. He’d lived in a house till he was fifteen and his mother had died, and it had had a yard of sorts. Scrubby grass littered with paper bags, cigarette stubs, candy bar packaging. Anything the wind blew in and deposited there. Not his parents’ fault it was a dump. They hadn’t had time for anything much except working their fingers to the marrow. Then his mother died, an old woman at forty-two, and the old man had taken to the drink. One day he wandered off and just never made his way home again.

It seemed like a dream now to Max; in an awful way his mother’s death had been the real beginning of his life, a release from poverty. Maybe because he’d been exposed to sickness and death from such an early age, he’d been able to remain unmoved by it during his career. He had that rare ability sought by every medical professional, to give his all without getting involved. Few managed it, but to him it was just how he was. He saw patients as challenges, as problems to be fixed. And whether he succeeded or failed--and he had a great track record--he simply moved on to the next challenge when he was finished.

Until Chloe Cook.

Max pulled the four-wheel-drive through the open gate of his rental house, turned off the engine and sat staring blindly ahead, hands still gripping the wheel.

Nearly two months ago. A Thursday. A day like any other. A fourteen-hour day. Too much coffee. Too little rest. And a little girl who’d fought and lost.

He could still see it, clear as though he was in the room. The little body covered with a sheet as he called the time of death.

“Three-forty-eight.”

A nurse had flicked a switch and followed the rest of the medical team out. Another day, another death. She’d paused at the door and looked back at him, a tall somber figure with head bowed over the bed.

“Doctor, are you all right?” she had asked, more bemused than concerned.

He’d looked up, obsidian eyes shadowed, and nodded briefly before turning his attention back to the small lifeless figure on the hospital bed. “Thanks, Julie, give me a minute would you?” he’d muttered.

He’d stayed there for nearly two hours, grieving silently. And then he’d walked out of the room, out of the hospital and he hadn’t gone back.

Christ! He ran a hand over his suddenly sweaty face. Was it a breakdown? A mid-life crisis? Some sort of extended anxiety attack?

He didn’t know. After two months, he still didn’t know what had happened. Just that he’d had to leave. Get away. He suddenly hadn’t been able to breathe. The hospital, his apartment, his relationship with well-connected, sexually available Melina, even Sydney itself, had suddenly seemed claustrophobic, smothering.

The day after Chloe Cook’s death, he’d used the excuse of flu to stay away from the hospital but after a week he’d admitted in a terse conversation to a hospital administrator that he wasn’t planning to return. Ever. He didn’t even know if he would practice medicine again.

A few days later he’d had a visit from his sometime squash partner, Flynn Carmichael, who’d taken one look at Max, winced and swore, assuming he’d been on some sort of bender. Flynn had arrived as Melina was leaving, short blonde hair immaculate, her sharp heels clicking on the wooden floors.

“See if you have any more luck with him,” she said carelessly to Flynn over her shoulder as she opened the front door and left for the last time. “He’s throwing away his career and I can’t make him see sense.”

Nor had Flynn but at least he’d tried to understand, which was tough when Max hadn’t even been able to explain his reasons for wanting to dump his successful and rewarding life straight down the toilet. Flynn had cajoled, persuaded and argued endlessly that mankind needed Max’s surgical skills, but even he had finally shrugged in exasperation and left Max to wallow in his torpor.

The letter from Daemon Roth had come out of the blue the following day, inviting him to apply for the position in World’s End. First Max had laughed at the thought of taking on a quiet country medical practice. Then, even in the black hole of his depression, he’d been intrigued, especially when he saw the spidery signature at the bottom of the letter. He’d heard of Roth, of course. Who hadn’t heard of the mega-millionaire who’d emerged from nowhere three years ago to build a fortune in property development, construction and related fields?

Why Roth was involved in filling a medical position in some one-horse town was a mystery, although the guy was into all sorts of development, residential apartment blocks, shopping centers, car parks. Why not medical centers?

For reasons Max still could not fathom, and without doing any more research than pulling out a map of the state to check exactly where World’s End was, Max had found himself signing the letter of offer the day after that odd interview. He’d admitted to himself it hadn’t been a well-considered decision--it was certainly not one likely to benefit his long-term career--but, he’d felt almost compelled to take the position.

During the process of renting out his city apartment and packing up the car with his personal things, he’d wondered countless times what the hell he was doing. He’d justified his actions with the thoughts of the handsome salary Roth was paying, and the fact he was only committed for a year. But the big appeal, he knew, was that it gave him the opportunity get away, and that was enough for now.

On the day he left Sydney, he had simply opened the map to the page that showed World’s End as a tiny dot, right on the edge of a small peninsula that stuck out untidily into the Tasman Sea. He had pointed the car in the right direction and driven. Five hours later, he was here.

Thumping his fist gently against the steering wheel, he put a lid on his thoughts and heaved himself out of the car. Now he had a backyard, maybe he should get a dog. A lab or retriever. Something companionable, easygoing. It was just a maybe at this stage. He’d think about it. After all, he wasn’t even sure how long he’d be staying here.

Christ, at the moment he barely knew his own name. It was an odd experience for him, who’d pretty much always known what he wanted from life and how he was going to get it. Now, all he knew was that he was having some sort of life-changing epiphany in a shit-hole town that was almost as far from Sydney as it was possible to get without leaving the state.

He hadn’t even yet visited the medical center where he would be based. He’d driven past on his way to the house, but felt if he walked inside the place, it would be too late to back out. As it was, right now, if he stuffed his unpacked bags back in the car, he could drive straight back to Sydney, tell the hospital he’d had a brain explosion, beg for forgiveness and forget he’d ever known that World’s End existed.

Except he couldn’t. Didn’t want to go back. Or, right at the moment, forwards.

Christ! He needed to do something. Needed to take the first steps towards acknowledging that this was his place--the house and the town--for a while at least.

He unlocked the front door and walked through, smelling the wood and the fresh scent of lavender polish. At least he thought it was lavender but he wasn’t much up on garden stuff, but he’d always liked the fragrant flowers on their slender stems.

He caught himself midway through his musings on lavender. Flowers! Bloody hell. He was losing it big time. The only thing he’d ever had to do with flowers was a quick call to that exclusive place in Double Bay. What was it called? Blooms. Something like that. Yeah, a quick call, and they would have an arrangement of whatever was ‘in’ at that particular time to his lady of the moment within a couple of hours. He made the call, paid the bill. He wasn’t the sort of guy who knew about flowers. The only time he could remember personally chosen them was when he’d been fifteen. He grimaced. He’d saved some money from his paper round and bought that sad-looking bunch from the supermarket for Mother’s Day. It was all he could afford. He’d waited for her to come home from work. Waited and waited. Until a social worker arrived to tell him the news that she wouldn’t be coming home that night or any other. And he hadn’t picked out a bouquet since.

Grimly, he pushed the morbid thought aside and made his way out onto the balcony. New place. New start. He was going to give it a shot, he thought, as the sleek cell phone in the back pocket of his jeans buzzed impatiently.

He flipped it open. “Larkham-Jones.”

“Ah, good,” said the smooth, cultured voice at the other end, before Max had even had a chance to speak. “You’re here.”

“Yeah,” Max started.

“Be here at six-thirty tomorrow. I need to explain the way things are.” He reeled off an address and before Max would respond, the line was dead.

“Jerk,” Max muttered as he folded the phone away and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. He had met plenty like Roth both professionally and personally. Thought a healthy bank balance gave them the right to give orders, shift the little people in their life around like the ivory pieces on a chessboard. If Max were forced to admit it, he would have to agree that he’d run his life much the same way himself. Fitting everyone around his hospital schedule. Friends, women, he made it clear to them that his work had come a strong-finishing first and that if they wanted time with him, they had to play it his way.

Still, at least he would finally be meeting with Roth, and when he did, Max planned to grill him about exactly what interest a multimillionaire developer had in the town. If Roth had a reason for wanting him here, beyond World’s End’s need for a medical doctor, Max wanted to know it. And there was also the question of when and where they’d supposedly met before. It would be an interesting meeting.

In the meantime, he’d unpack and get a fire started in the wide grate of the living room. The blustery conditions were likely to see the temperature dropping dramatically once the weak sun had fled the sky, and a good strong blaze would make the place seem more cozy. And he would unpack. Scatter around a few books and stack the CDs and DVDs next to the smart-looking entertainment system he’d seen. Then he’d pour a glass of the reliable Burgundy he had brought with him, take a chance on ordering from the Chinese takeaway in the town, hope he didn’t die of food poisoning and settle down in front of the fire for an evening of solitude. Perhaps things would look brighter in the morning.