1 Chapter 1

1

Dellview, CO

Early fall

“I’d rather you just sit this one out, Robbie,” Daniel said. “It’s only a routine sabbat. I can conduct it without an assistant. Besides, you’ve fallen behind on your chores. Our altar is dusty, and look at the tarnish on the athame. You ought to be ashamed!”

Dropping to his knees, Rob cringed. For a few seconds he was back in that dark, dismal place, the one where he could do no right, where he knew he was unloved, worthless and would never be anything more. Almost reflexively, he shrank before he remembered. No, a blow would not follow. Daniel loves me and would never abuse me the way Aaron Cantwell did. Cruelty and brutality should have been his stepfather’s middle names. No, it was all right now. He just had to shape up and do better.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It’s been—well, there never seems like enough time to do everything. I read all those books you selected, and I’m working on my notebook—I mean my personal book of days. I’m trying to learn, trying really hard. I guess I’m just slow and dull.”

Daniel ruffled his hair. “You’re progressing. Just keep giving it your best and try to remember everything I tell you. You know why you came here, why you became Wiccan. This is where you belong and, as my disciple, in time you will be made whole.”

With a swish of his flowing purple robe, the self-proclaimed Arch Mage stalked from the room. Rob rose from his crouched position and set to work cleaning the altar in the back parlor of the old Victorian house he shared with his mentor and lover. After every speck of dust was whisked away, he squared his shoulders, trying to fight off the weight of his unending errors and failings.

The athame was indeed dull. He found some silver polish and began to buff the slender blade. While he worked, he recited a prayerful invocation to the Goddess. After he finished the formal words, he added an unspoken plea of his own. Please, Lady, make me better, stronger, faster, worthy…

* * * *

Samhain was almost here. That date marked the middle of the growing hours of darkness, the start of the dreaded winter with its virtual Christmas tree laden with bitter, burning memories. Rob felt his seasonal depression closing around him. He’d joined a Wiccan coven a few months ago in hopes the pagan group wouldn’t mark the holiday season so he could lock those dismal times into a sealed box in the back of his mind. True, even though Christmas wasn’t a part of the Wiccan observances, much to his dismay, he discovered the midwinter solstice and Yule celebrations carried many of the same traditional trappings. How much the Christians had accepted!

Daniel allowed Rob to take a small part in the elaborate Samhain ceremony but his mind wandered for an instant, recalling Halloween in his old life. He made a mistake. Two words of the short passage he had memorized to recite became scrambled. He spoke them out of sequence, stumbled and went back to get them right.

Although Daniel didn’t interrupt the proceedings to chastise him, Rob knew what would come later. In a haze of dread and disappointment in himself, he staggered through the rest of the ritual.

As they drove home from the ceremony, Daniel didn’t say a word. Rob huddled in the passenger seat, closing his eyes like he used to. It was a game: if he couldn’t see anyone, they surely couldn’t see him. With his stepfather, it never had worked, though.

Once they were home, Daniel tossed his cape onto a chair and turned to Rob. “I think it’s time you met the dragon again, don’t you? Muffing that passage was such a stupid mistake. Who knows what the consequences may be? Surely the Deities, especially the Goddess, are offended, and they have every right to take revenge. If you surrender in sacrifice to the dragon, perhaps that will atone.”

Rob dropped to his knees even before Daniel finished speaking. “Aye, aye, master, I should meet the dragon.” He’d already shut his eyes again but he heard Daniel rustling around the room and began to wonder what he might suffer this time.

Meeting the dragon seemed to be a kind of code word or euphemism for punishment, for pain and degradation that he must suffer when he erred badly. Sometimes it ended in sex, which he both dreaded and anticipated.

The first thing he had to do was strip. He didn’t even wait for the order but stood just long enough to pull off his shirt and then unfasten his trousers, dropping and stepping out of them right after he toed off both shoes. Nude, he again sank to his knees.