The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) Read Free Page A

is the people who use these plants to seek peace and revelation and guidance to a better life on whom you have declared your war, and so today I put this court on notice, I put these prosecutors on notice, I put the police who enforce these laws, all of them, on notice: We warned you a year ago that you faced a deadline to halt this persecution and these prosecutions, to leave us free in the peaceful enjoyment of our religion. We offeredyou a full year, free of reprisals, in which to reconsider your course of action. You have ignored that deadline, which expires today. Very well.
    “You have declared a war against us and our medical and religious freedom, thinking your war would be one-sided, that your victims would never fight back. But you have picked the wrong people on whom to make war. From today, you should expect no more mercy or quarter than you show to us. From this day, we are responding in the only way a free people can respond to such unrelieved and unrepentant attacks.…”
    Judge Crustio had his gavel up in the air. Two instincts were obviously at war, the conflict playing across his face. On the one hand, it was traditional to let the accused have his say, though few of the losers could do better than mutter a few words about how sorry they were. And he’d also been advised, in this case, that it might further be wise to let the convicted party “hang himself with his own words.” But he was also unaccustomed to tolerating any disrespect, and he certainly had no intention of letting his courtroom be turned into a pulpit to preach revolution.
    “… We have turned the other cheek for the last time,” Windsor Annesley continued. “Today, I respond to your declaration of war with a declaration of my own. You are at war with us? Then we are at war with you. A condition of war has existed, and will continue to exist, until you surrender without condition, or until every drug judge, including you, Judge Crustio, and every drug prosecutor, and every drug cop, is dead. So have I said it. So shall it be.”
    Angrily, Judge Fidelio Crustio brought down his gavel. Once, twice. He sneered until the side of his face actually started twitching. “Are you finished, young man?” He took a moment to regain control of his features, drew a breath. “Because you’re going to have a very, very long time to think about the despicable threats and absurd pronouncements you’ve made here today, in a place from which you’re going to find you have no ability whatsoever to commit any of theselow, skulking, reprehensible crimes with which you threaten our fine men and women of law enforcement.
    “Importing these deadly poisonous drugs and selling them to children, or in such quantities as to show reckless disregard of the near certainty they would fall into the hands of children, LSD and mescaline and other incredibly toxic and dangerous mind-warping substances which cause young people to stare into the sun until they go blind and to jump off tall buildings under the delusion that they can fly.
    “Well I’m here to tell you, young man, that this government and this society will not stand for such arrogant actions. We will not stand for it! You have the nerve to call your network of drug-smugglers a ‘church’! You will learn here today, and others will surely also soon learn, why we have conspiracy statutes to deal with such ‘churches’!
    “And as for you. You came from a fine family, now shamed by your willful and despicable actions, knowingly importing and peddling toxic and deadly addictive drugs. You cannot claim you were driven to these crimes by poverty or ignorance; you had a fine education and every advantage of a privileged upbringing, and how do you use them? Not to pay back your debt to this country, no! Instead, you use all those advantages to peddle poison, and then to heap insult on injury by calling your despicable drug-distribution conspiracy a ‘church’!
    “Well listen to me now, you