Divine Evil

by Nora Roberts

  She wished she'd thought to stick a couple of cans of Coke in the pack. As soon as she found some little hick town, she would buy some, and more Marlboros. Glancing at her watches, she saw that it was just past noon. The school cafeteria would be crowded and noisy now. She wondered what the other kids would think when they found out she'd hitched all the way to Florida. Man, they'd be green. It was probably the coolest thing she'd ever done. They'd really pay attention then. Everyone would pay attention.

  She dozed awhile and woke cramped and groggy. After swinging on her pack, she tromped back to the edge of the road and cocked her thumb.

  Christ, she was dying of thirst. Crumbs from the cupcakes seemed to be lodged like pebbles in her throat. And she wanted another smoke. Her spirits lifted a bit when she hiked past a sign.

  EMMITSBORO 8 MILES

  Sounded like Hicksboro, but as long as they sold Coke Classic and Marlboros, it was fine by her.

  She was delighted when, in less than ten minutes, a pickup slowed and pulled over. Earrings and bracelets jangling, she trotted to the passenger door. The guy inside looked like a farmer. He had big hands with thick fingers and wore a baseball-style cap with some feed-and-grain store advertised over the bill. The truck smelled pleasantly of hay and animals.

  “Thanks, mister.” She hopped into the cab of the truck. “Where you heading?” “South,” she told him. “Florida.”

  “Long trip.” His gaze skimmed her backpack before he pulled out on the road again. “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Well.” “Going to visit relatives?”

  “No. Just going.” She shot him a defiant look, but he smiled.

  “Yeah, I know how that is. I can take you as far as Seventy, but I got to make a stop first.”

  “Hey, that's cool.” Pleased with herself, Carly settled back.

  Deep in the woods, deep into the night, the cold, clear note of a bell sounded. As the moon rode high in a black sky, the circle of thirteen chanted. They sang a song of death.

  The altar writhed and strained. Her vision was blurred because they'd taken away her glasses and given her some kind of injection when they'd tied her up. Her mind seemed to be floating up and down. But deep inside it, there was an ice-cold fear.

  She knew she was naked, that her arms and legs were spread wide and tied down. But she didn't know where she was, and her groggy mind couldn't pin down how she had gotten there.

  The man in the truck, she thought, straining. He'd picked her up. He'd been a farmer. Hadn't he? They'd stopped by his farm. She was almost sure of that. Then he'd turned on her. She'd fought him, but he'd been strong, awfully strong. Then he'd hit her with something.

  The rest was all a blur. Being tied up in a dark place. How long had she been there? An hour, a day? Men coming, talking in whispers. Then the prick of a needle in her arm.

  She was outside again. She could see the moon and the stars. She could smell smoke. It rolled in her head, as did the silver ring of the bell. And the chanting. She couldn't make out the words, foreign maybe. They didn't make sense.

  She wept a little, wanting her mother.

  She turned her head and saw the black-clad figures. They had animal heads, like something out of a horror movie. Or a dream. It was a dream, she promised herself as her eyes heated with tears. She'd wake up. Her mother would come in and wake her for school any minute, and all of this would go away.

  It had to be a dream. She knew there were no such things as creatures with men's bodies and animals′ heads. Monsters only existed in movies and stuff, the kind she and Sharie Murray rented for the VCR when they had a sleep-over.

  The thing with the goat's head put a silver cup between her breasts. In her drugged state she wondered how it could be that she could actually feel the cold metal against her flesh. Did you feel things when you were dreaming?

  He lifted his arms high, and his voice boomed inside her head. He placed a black candle between her thighs.

  She began to cry hard now, afraid she wasn't dreaming. Yet everything was shifting in and out of focus, and the sounds seemed to come from very far away. There were shouts and wails and keening, much too human a sound to come from those horrible animal heads.

  He tipped the cup over, pouring the liquid in it down her body. It smelled like blood. She whimpered. He was touching her, drawing signs on her body with the red liquid. She could see his eyes gleam in the goat's head as he began to do things to her with his all too human hands, things her mother had warned her would happen if she hitched rides and teased boys.

  Even through her fear, she felt shame, a hot, liquid sensation in her belly.

  Then they were naked, the men beneath the cloaks and the heads of goats and wolves and lizards.

  Even before the first one crouched above her, his penis hard and ready, she knew she would be raped. At the first thrust, she screamed. And the sound echoed, mocking and hollow, through the trees.

  They sucked at her blood-spattered breasts, making horrible grunting sounds as they lapped and suckled. She gagged and struggled weakly as her mouth was savagely raped. Growling and keening, they pinched and nipped and pumped.

  They were wild, all of them, dancing and capering and groaning as each one took his turn with her. Heartless, heedless, even as her screams turned to sobs and sobs to mindless mewling.

  She went under, to some deep, secret place where she could hide from all the pain and all the fear. Hiding there, she never saw the knife.

  Chapter 3

  THE GALLERY WAS PACKED. An hour after the opening of Clare's show, people streamed through the lofty, three-storied space. Not just people, Clare thought as she sipped champagne, but People. Those capital P sorts who would expand Angie's heart to the size of Kansas. Representatives from the business world, the art world, the theater, the literati, the glitterati. From Madonna to the mayor, they came to look, to comment, and apparently to buy.

  Reporters schmoozed their way through, gulping canapès and French bubbly. That old standby, Entertainment Tonight, had sent a crew who even now were doing a stand-up in front of Clare's three-foot iron-and-bronze work titled Return of Power. Controversial, they called it, because of the blatant sexuality and overt feminism in its image of three women, naked and armed with lance, bow, and pike, circled around a kneeling man.

  For Clare, it was simply a symbol of her own feelings after her divorce, when she had yearned for a weapon to strike back and had found none.

  Representatives from Museums and Art were discussing a small copper work, spouting words like “esoteric” and “stratified.”

  As successes went, you couldn't get much higher.

  Then why was she so depressed?

  Oh, she did her part, smiling and chatting until she thought her face would crack like flawed marble. She'd even worn the dress Angie had chosen for her. A sleek and glittery black number that plunged to a deep, wide vee in the back and had a skirt so tight that she had to walk like one of those poor Chinese women when feet binding had been in fashion. She'd worn her hair very straight and added some chunky copper jewelry she had designed herself, on a whim.

  She knew the image was arty and sexy, but at the moment she didn't feel either.

  She felt, Clare realized, small town and dazzled. Dorothy would have felt the same way, she was sure, when her farmhouse dropped down into the middle of Munchkinland. And like Dorothy, she was plagued by a deep and terrible longing to go home. All the way home.

  Clare struggled to shake the feeling off, sipping champagne and reminding herself this was the realization of a lifelong dream. She'd worked hard for it, just as Angie and Jean-Paul had worked hard to create an atmosphere where art would be appreciated-and purchased for great quantities of money.

  The gallery itself was elegant, a perfect backdrop for art and for the beautiful people who came there. It was done in stark whites, with a floating staircase that led to a second floor, then a third. Everything was open and curved and fluid. From the high ceiling above dripped two modernistic crystal chan
deliers. Each of her pieces was care fully spotlighted. Around them hovered people in diamonds or designer denim.

  The rooms were choked with expensive scents, each one layered over the others until they merged into one exclusive fragrance. Wealth.

  “Clare, my dear.” Tina Yongers, an art critic Clare knew and loathed, weaved her way over. She was a tiny sprite of a woman with wispy blond hair and sharp green eyes. Though past fifty, surgical nips and tucks kept her hovering deceptively at fortysomething.

  She was wearing a misty floral caftan that reached her ankles. The opulent scent of Poison surrounded her. An appropriate scent, Clare thought, since Tina's reviews were often deadly. She could, with the lifting of one platinum brow, squash an artistic ego like a beetle. It was no secret that she did so, habitually, for the lively sense of power it gave her.

  She brushed a kiss through the air over Clare's cheek, then fervently gripped her forearms.

  “You've outdone yourself, haven't you?”

  Clare smiled and called herself a cynical hypocrite.

  “Have I?”

  “Don't be modest-it's boring. It's obvious to everyone here that you're going to be the artist of the nineties. The woman artist.” She tossed her head and gave a tinkling laugh for the benefit of the film crew. “I'm pleased to say that I was one of the first to recognize it, at your first show.”

  And for the glowing review she had expected countless favors, invitations, and free rides. It was business. Clare could almost hear Angie's voice in her ear. We all play the game.

  “I appreciate your support, Tina.”

  “No need. I only support the best. If the work is inferior, I'm the first to say so.” She smiled, showing off small, kitten teeth. “Like poor Craig's show last month. Miserable stuff, incredibly dreary, not a soupcon of originality. But this…” She tipped a ringed hand toward a sculpture in white marble. It was the head of a wolf, thrown back in mid-howl, fangs sharp and gleaming. Its shoulders, the mere hint of them, were undoubtedly human. “This is powerful.”

  Clare glanced at the piece. It was one of her nightmare works, inspired by her own frightening dreams. Abruptly chilled, she turned her back on it. Play the game, she ordered herself, then gulped down the rest of her wine before setting the glass aside.

  For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why the wine and the compliments were making her tense. “Thanks, Tina. Angie will breathe a lot easier when I pass your opinions along.”

  “Oh, I'll relay them myself, never fear.” She tapped a finger on Clare's wrist. “I'd like to speak to you, at a less chaotic time, about addressing my art group.”

  “Of course,” she said, though she hated public speaking even more than she hated interviews. “Give me a call.” Maybe I can have my number changed first.

  “Be sure that I will. Congratulations, Clare.”

  Clare took a step back, intending to slip off to Angie's private office for a moment of solitude. She bumped solidly into someone behind her.

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” she began as she turned. “It's so close in-Blair!” With her first genuine emotion of the evening, she threw her arms around him. “You came! I was afraid you wouldn't make it.”

  “Not make my sister's glitzy party?”

  “It's an art showing.”

  “Yeah.” He let his gaze skim the room. “Says who?”

  “Thank God you're here.” She grabbed his arm. “Come with me. And whatever you do, don't look back.”

  “Hey,” he said when she'd dragged him outside, “the champagne's in there.”

  “I'll buy you a case.” Ignoring the limo at her disposal, she hustled him down the street. Four blocks away, she walked into a deli, drawing in the scents of corned beef, pickles, and garlic.

  “Thank you, God,” Clare murmured and rushed over to the counter to stare at the display of potato salad, pickled eggs, smoked sturgeon, and blintzes.

  Ten minutes later, they were sitting at a scarred linoleum table eating thick slabs of pumpernickel stuffed with layers of pastrami and Swiss.

  “I bought a new suit and hopped a shuttle to sit in a deli and eat kosher pickles and cold meat?”

  “We'll go back if you want,” Clare said with her mouth full. “I had to get out for a minute.”

  “It's your show,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah. But is my sculpture on display, or am I?”

  “Okay, kid.” Leaning back in his chair, he crunched on a potato chip. “What gives?”

  She was silent a moment, working it through. She hadn't realized just how much she'd needed to escape until she saw Blair, standing there, so real and solid, amid all the glitter and paste.

  He was only slightly taller than she. His hair had darkened with age to a deep, reddish blond, and he combed it straight back from his face. He put many women in mind of a young Robert Redford, a fact that constantly embarrassed him. He'd never been conceited about his looks. Blair understood the frustration many beautiful women felt when they were categorized as brainless sex objects.

  He had, despite the fact that he looked naive, pretty, and five years younger than his age, managed to claw his way up the journalism ladder. He was a political reporter for the Washington Post.

  He was, Clare knew, sensible, logical, and earthbound, the direct opposite of her own personality. But there was no one with whom she felt more comfortable sharing her innermost thoughts.

  “How's Mom?”

  Blair sipped at his cream soda. He knew his twin would circle around whatever problem she had until she felt ready to dive into it. “She's good. I got a postcard the other day from Madrid. Didn't you get one?”

  “Yeah.” Clare nibbled at her sandwich. “She and Jerry seem to be having the time of their lives.”

  “Honeymoons are supposed to be fun.” He leaned forward, touched her hand. “She needs Jerry, Clare. She loves him and deserves some happiness.”

  “I know. I know.” Impatient with herself, she pushed the plate aside and reached for a cigarette. Her appetite seemed to vacillate as quickly as her moods these days. “In my head I do. She worked hard after Daddy-after he died, to keep the family together, to keep the business from going under. And to keep herself sane, I guess. I know all that,” she repeated, rubbing at her temple. “I know.”

  “But?”

  She shook her head. “Jerry's a good guy. I like him, really. He's funny and he's sharp, and he's obviously crazy about Mom. It's not as if we're kids, wondering whether he's trying to take Daddy's place.”

  “But?”

  “I keep feeling like he's taking Daddy's place.” She laughed and drew deeply on the cigarette. “That's not really it, or not all of it. Christ, Blair, it just seems like we're so scattered now, so separate. Mom off in Europe for weeks on her honeymoon, you in D.C., me here. I keep thinking of the way it was before we lost Dad.” “That was a long time ago.”

  “I know. Jesus, I know.” With her free hand she began to ball and unball her napkin. She wasn't certain she had the words. It was often easier to express emotions with steel and solder. “It's only that-well, even after… when it was only the three of us …” She shut her eyes a moment. “It was tough, the shock of the accident, then all that business about kickbacks and collusion and under-the-table deals for the shopping center. One minute we're a nice happy family, and the next Dad is dead and we're in the middle of a scandal. But we held on so tight, maybe too tight, then boom, we're scattered.”

  “I'm only a phone call away, Clare. An hour by plane.”

  “Yeah. I don't know what it is, Blair. Everything was going along just dandy. My work's great. I love what I'm doing-I love my life. And then … I had the dream again.”

  “Oh.” He took her hand again, holding it this time. “I'm sorry. Want to talk about it?”

  “The dream?” In jerky motions she tapped the cigarette out in a gaudy metal ashtray. She had never talked about the details, not even with him. Only the fear of it. “No, it's the same. Pretty awful when it's ha
ppening, but then it fades. Only this time, I haven't been able to get back into the groove. I've been working, but my heart doesn't seem to be in it, and it shows. I keep thinking about Dad, and the house, and, Christ, Mrs. Negley's little black poodle. French toast at Martha's Diner after church on Sunday.” She took a deep breath. “Blair, I think I want to go home.”

  “Home? To Emmitsboro?”

  “Yes. Look, I know you told me you were in the middle of interviewing new tenants for the house, but you could hold off. Mom wouldn't care.”

  “No, of course she wouldn't.” He saw her strain, felt it in the restless movements of her hand in his. “Clare, it's a long way from New York to Emmitsboro. I'm not talking about miles.”