The Mephisto Club

by Tess Gerritsen

  Three upside-down crosses.

  Gasping, she stumbled backward and fled from the bathroom. Panic sent her tearing down the hall, bare feet skidding across the wet floor as she sprinted toward the nearest door. It was Maura’s bedroom.

  “Wake up!” she whispered. “You have to wake up!” She shook the sleeping woman so hard that the headboard rattled, the springs protested. Maura merely sighed, but did not stir.

  What’s wrong with you? Why can’t I wake you?

  Something creaked in the hallway. Lily’s head snapped around toward the door. She felt her heart thudding hard enough to crack ribs as she crossed back to the doorway. There she stood listening, trying to hear through the banging of her own heart.

  Nothing.

  She eased her head around the doorjamb and peered into the hall. It was empty.

  Wake the others. They have to know he’s in the house!

  She slipped into the hall and scurried barefoot toward the room she thought must be Jane’s. She reached for the knob and gave a soft sob of frustration when she found it was locked. Should I pound on the door to wake her? Do I dare make any noise? Then she heard the whine of a dog, the faint tapping of claws moving across the great room downstairs. She eased toward the stairway. Gazing over the banister, she almost laughed in relief.

  Downstairs, a fire was burning in the hearth. Seated on the couch, facing the flames, was Edwina Felway.

  As Lily scurried down the steps, the two Dobermans glanced up, and one of them gave a warning growl. Lily froze at the bottom of the stairs.

  “There, there, Balan,” said Edwina. “What’s got you upset now?”

  “Edwina!” Lily whispered.

  Edwina turned to look at her. “Oh. You’re awake. I was just about to add some more logs.”

  Lily glanced at the fire, which was already roaring, the flames leaping, consuming a precariously tall pile of wood. “Listen to me,” whispered Lily, moving a step forward, halting again as one of the dogs rose to its feet, fangs bared. “He’s inside the house! We have to wake everyone!”

  Edwina calmly picked up two logs and tossed them onto the already raging fire, stoking the inferno. “I noticed that you hardly touched your wine tonight, Lily.”

  “Dominic’s here!”

  “You could have slept through the whole thing, along with everyone else. But this works out so much better. Having you awake.”

  “What?”

  The dog gave another growl, and Lily stared down at teeth gleaming orange in the flame’s glow. The dogs, she thought suddenly. They hadn’t barked, not once tonight. An intruder had slipped into the house. He’d tracked wet shoe prints across the floor. And the dogs gave no warning.

  Because they know him.

  As Edwina turned to face her, Lily darted forward and snatched the poker from the hearth. “You led him here,” she said as she backed away, poker brandished in defense. “You told him.”

  “Oh, I didn’t have to. He was already here on the mountain, waiting for us.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Dominic will come out in his own good time.”

  “Goddamn you,” Lily cried as her grip tightened around the poker. “Where is he hiding?”

  She saw the attack too late. She heard the growl, the clatter of claws across wood, and she glanced sideways as twin streaks of black flew at her. The impact sent her crashing to the floor and the poker fell from her hands with a loud thud. Jaws closed around her arm. She screamed as teeth ripped into flesh.

  “Balan! Bakou! Release.”

  It was not Edwina’s voice that issued the command, but another: the voice of Lily’s nightmares. The dogs released her and backed away, leaving her stunned and bleeding. She tried to push herself up, but her left hand was floppy and useless, the tendons torn by powerful jaws. With a groan, she rolled onto her side and saw her own blood pooling on the floor. And beyond that pool of blood, she saw the shoes of a man walking toward her. Her breathing now coming in sobs, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. He halted by the fireplace and stood backlit by the flames, like a dark figure emerging from the inferno. He gazed down at her.

  “Somehow, you always manage to do it, Lily,” he said. “You’re always the one causing me trouble.”

  She scrabbled backward in retreat, but her shoulders bumped up against a chair and she could move no farther. Frozen in place, she stared up at Dominic, at the man he had become. He still had the same golden hair, the same striking blue eyes. But he had grown taller, his shoulders broader, and the once-angelic face had acquired sharp, cruel angles.

  “Twelve years ago,” he said, “you killed me. Now I’m going to return the favor.”

  “You have to watch her,” said Edwina. “She’s quick.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that, Mother?”

  Lily’s gaze snapped to Edwina, then back to Dominic. The same height. The same eyes.

  Dominic saw her look of shock and said, “Who else would a fifteen-year-old boy turn to when he’s in trouble? When he’s climbed out of a flooded car with nothing but the clothes on his back? I had to stay dead and out of sight, or you would have turned the police on me. You took away all my options, Lily. Except one.”

  His mother.

  “It was months before my letter reached her. Didn’t I always say she’d come for me? And your parents never believed it.”

  Edwina reached out to caress her son’s face. “But you knew I would.

  He smiled. “You always keep your promises.”

  “I kept this one, too, didn’t I? I delivered her. You just needed to be patient and finish your training.”

  Lily stared at Edwina. “But you’re with the Mephisto Foundation.”

  “And I knew how to use them,” said Edwina. “I knew just how to entice them into the game. You think this is all about you, Lily, but it’s really about them. About the damage they’ve done to us over the years. We’re going to bring them down.” She looked at the fire. “We’ll need more wood. I’ll go out and get some.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Dominic. “This building’s as dry as a tinderbox. All it takes is a spark to set it off.”

  Lily shook her head. “You’re killing them all…”

  “That’s always been the idea,” said Edwina. “They’ll sleep right through it.”

  “Not nearly as much fun as killing Joyce O’Donnell,” said Dominic. “But at least you’re awake to enjoy it, Lily.” He picked up the poker and shoved the tip deep into the flames. “Convenient thing about fire. How completely it consumes flesh, leaving nothing but charred bone. No one will ever know what your death was really like, because they’ll never see the cuts. The sear marks. They’ll think you simply perished like the others, in your sleep. An unlucky accident, which only my mother will manage to survive. They’ll never know that you screamed for hours before you died.” He pulled the poker from the fire.

  Lily stumbled to her feet, blood streaming down her hand. She lunged toward the door, but before she could reach it, the two Dobermans darted in front of her. She froze, staring at their bared teeth.

  Hands closed around her arms as Edwina dragged Lily backward, toward the fireplace. Shrieking, Lily whirled around and flailed out blindly. She felt the satisfaction of her fist thudding into Edwina’s cheek.

  It was the dogs that again brought her down, both of them hurling themselves at her back, sending her sprawling.

  “Release!” Dominic ordered.

  The dogs backed off. Edwina, clutching her bruised face, aimed a punishing kick at Lily’s ribs, and Lily rolled away, in too much agony even to draw a breath. Through a haze of pain, she saw Dominic’s shoes move closer. She felt Edwina grasp her wrists and pin them against the floor. She looked up, into Dominic’s face, into eyes that reflected the fire’s glow like burning coals.

  “Welcome to Hell,” he said. In his hand was the hot poker.

  Lily twisted, screaming, as she tried to wrench free, but Edwina’s grasp was t
oo powerful. As Dominic lowered the poker, she turned away, cheek pressed to the floor, eyes closed against the pain to come.

  The explosion sprayed warmth across her face. She heard Edwina give a gasp, heard the poker thud to the floor. And suddenly Lily’s hands were free.

  She opened her eyes to see the two Dobermans sprinting across the room toward Jane Rizzoli. Jane raised her weapon and fired again. One of the dogs dropped, but the other was already in the air, flying like a black rocket. Jane got off one last shot, just as the dog slammed into her. Her gun tumbled and slid away as they both went down, Jane grappling at the wounded Doberman.

  “No,” Edwina moaned. She was on her knees beside her fallen son, cradling his face, stroking back his hair. “You can’t die! You’re the chosen.”

  Lily struggled to sit up, and the room tilted around her. By the glow of the ravenous flames, she saw Edwina rise like an avenging angel to her feet. She saw the woman reach down and pick up Jane’s fallen gun.

  The room spun even more crazily as Lily staggered to her feet. The whirl of images refused to remain still. The flames. Edwina. The spreading pool of Dominic’s blood, glistening in the firelight.

  And the poker.

  The dog gave a last convulsive twitch and Jane shoved it aside. The carcass, tongue lolling, flopped onto the floor. Only then did Jane focus on Edwina standing over her, on the weapon gleaming in Edwina’s hands.

  “It all ends here. Tonight,” said Edwina. “You. And Mephisto.” Edwina raised the gun, the muscles of her arm pulling taut as she squeezed the grip. Her attention was fixed so completely on Jane that she did not see her own death hurtling toward her head.

  The poker slammed into Edwina’s skull, and Lily felt the crack of crushing bone, transmitted straight to her hand through wrought iron. Edwina dropped to the floor without uttering a sound. Lily lost her grip, and the falling poker clanged as it hit wood. She stared down at what she had just done. At Edwina’s head, the skull caved in. At the blood, flowing like a black river. And suddenly the room darkened, and her legs wobbled out from beneath her. She slid to the floor, landing on her rump. She dropped her head in her lap and could feel nothing: no pain, no sensation at all in her limbs. She was floating disembodied on the edge of blackness.

  “Lily.” Jane touched her shoulder. “Lily, you’re bleeding. Let me see your arm.”

  She gasped in a breath. The room brightened. Slowly she raised her head and focused on Jane’s face. “I killed her,” she murmured.

  “Just don’t look at her, okay? Come on, let’s move you to the couch.” Jane reached down to help Lily to her feet. She froze, her fingers suddenly taut around Lily’s arm.

  Lily heard the whispers, too, and her blood turned to ice in her veins. She stared at Dominic and saw that his eyes were open and aware. His lips moved, the words so soft she could barely hear what he was saying.

  “Not…not…”

  Jane bent over him to listen. Lily did not dare move any closer, fearful that Dominic would suddenly spring up at her, like a cobra. They could kill him again and again, but he’d always come back. He’d never die.

  Evil never does.

  The fire glowed in the reflecting pool of spreading blood, as though the flames themselves were seeping across the floor, an expanding inferno with Dominic at its source.

  Again his lips moved. “We’re not…”

  “Say it,” said Jane. “Tell me.”

  “We are not…the only…ones.”

  “What?” Jane knelt down, grabbed Dominic by the shoulders, and shook him hard. “Who else is there?”

  A last breath rushed out of Dominic’s lungs. Slowly his jaw sagged open, and the lines of his face smoothed like melting wax. Jane released the body and straightened. Then she looked at Lily. “What did he mean by that?”

  Lily stared at Dominic’s unfocused eyes, at a face now slack and lifeless. “He just told us,” she said, “that it’s not over yet.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  A snowplow scraped its way up the mountain road, the rumble of its engine echoing up from the valley. Standing on the lodge’s snow-covered deck, Jane looked down over the railing to catch a view of the road below. She watched the plow’s steady progress as it wound its way toward them, scraping a path through fresh-fallen powder. Inhaling a breath of cold and cleansing air, she lifted her face to the sun, trying to clear the last wisps of fog from her brain. Once the road was clear, a whole host of official vehicles would be arriving on the mountain: the state police, the medical examiner, the crime-scene unit. She had to be fully alert and ready for their questions.

  Even though she didn’t have all the answers.

  She stomped the snow off her boots, slid open the glass door, and stepped back into the lodge.

  The other survivors were seated around the kitchen table. Although it was warmer in the great room where the fire was burning, none of them wanted to move from the kitchen. None of them wanted to be in the same room with the corpses.

  Maura finished rebandaging Lily’s arm. “There’s damage to your flexor tendons. I think you’re going to need surgery. At the very least, antibiotics.” She looked at Jane. “When the road’s clear, the first thing we need to do is get her to a hospital.”

  “It won’t be too much longer,” said Jane. “The plow’s halfway up the mountain.” She sat down and looked at Lily. “You realize the police will have questions for you. A lot of them.”

  Maura said, “It can wait until after she gets medical attention.”

  “Yes, of course. But Lily, you know you’re going to get asked about what happened here last night.”

  “Can’t you back up everything she says?” said Maura.

  “I didn’t see it all,” said Jane. “I slept through half of it.”

  “Thank God you didn’t finish your wine. Or we’d all be ashes today.”

  “I blame myself,” said Sansone. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep at all. That was my mistake, letting Edwina pour me a glass.”

  Jane frowned at Sansone. “You were planning to stay up all night?”

  “I thought someone should be awake. Just in case.”

  “Then you already suspected Edwina?”

  “No, I’m embarrassed to admit. You have to understand how careful we are when we bring in a new member. They come to us only through referrals, from people we know. And then we make inquiries, background checks. Edwina wasn’t the one I had doubts about.” He looked at Lily. “You were the one I didn’t trust.”

  “Why Lily?” asked Jane.

  “That night, when my garden window was forced open, you remember I told you that we always keep it locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means that someone unlatched it from the inside, someone who was in my house that night. I assumed it was Lily.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Maura. “If you’re that careful about who joins the foundation, how could you be so wrong about Edwina?”

  “That’s what Gottfried and I have to find out. How she infiltrated. How it was planned and executed. She didn’t just show up one day on our doorstep; she had assistance, from someone within Mephisto, someone who scrubbed away anything suspicious in her background check.”

  “It’s the last thing Dominic told us,” said Lily. “We’re not the only ones.”

  “I’m sure there are more.” Sansone looked at Jane. “Whether you realize it or not, Detective, we’re engaged in a war. It’s been going on for centuries, and last night was just one of the battles. The worst is coming.”

  Jane gave a shake of the head, a tired laugh. “I see we’re talking about those demons again.”

  “I believe in them,” Lily declared, her jaw squared in certainty. “I know they’re real.”

  They heard the scrape of the snowplow over pavement, the approaching rumble of a truck engine. At last the road was clear and they could leave this mountain; they could return to their lives. Maura, back to the arms of Daniel Brophy, who could bring her
either heartbreak or hope. Jane, back to the job of peacemaker between her battling mother and father.

  And I’m going home to Gabriel. He’s waiting for me.

  Jane rose and crossed to the window. Outside, sunshine sparkled on perfect snow. The skies were cloudless, and by now the road home would be plowed and sanded. It was a beautiful day to drive home. To hug her husband and kiss her baby. I can’t wait to see you both.

  “You still don’t believe me, do you, Detective?” said Sansone. “You don’t believe there’s a war going on.”

  Jane looked up at the sky and she smiled. “Today,” she said, “I choose not to.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Dark clouds hung low, and Lily could smell the tang of impending snow in the air as she stared up at the house where she had grown up. She did not see it as it was today, a derelict shell, the porch sagging, the clapboards weathered to gray. No, she saw it as it once was in summertime, with clematis flowering on the lattice and pots of red geraniums hanging from the eaves. She saw her brother Teddy come out of the house, heard the squeal and the slap of the screen door swinging shut behind him as he ran grinning down the porch steps. She saw her mother in the window, waving, as she called out, “Teddy, don’t be late for dinner!” And she saw her father, sunburned and whistling as he carried his hoe across the yard toward his beloved vegetable plot. She’d been happy here once. Those were the days she wanted to remember, the days she’d hold on to.

  Everything else, everything that has happened since, I will consign to the ashes.

  “Are you sure about this, Ms. Saul?” said the fire chief.

  His crew stood fully garbed in firefighting gear, waiting for the order. Farther down the hill, a small crowd from town had gathered to watch. But it was Anthony Sansone and Gottfried Baum whom she focused on. She trusted them, and now they stood with her, to witness the exorcism of her demons.

  She turned back to the house. The furniture had been removed and donated to local charities. Except for the straw bales that the firemen had stacked inside an upstairs bedroom, what stood there now was merely an empty husk.

  “Ms. Saul?” said the fire chief.