“So you really are pregnant?” I mumbled, now even more concerned.
She nodded and turned her cold glare back on him. “God, how could I not see what a cold-hearted beast you are?”
Liam began to pace the chapel slowly with his head in his hands, whispering words to himself. Unfortunately he was blocking the exit.
He turned to Leslie as if something snapped inside.
“No!” I ran at him before he could kick Leslie but he turned on me instead, pushing me so hard my head hit the floor as I fell. He followed me to the floor and I began fighting like a trapped animal, using every drop of strength. “Let me go!”
He pinned me to the ground, dodging the blows of my fists, the sharp jabs of my knees as I tried to kick him in the groin. He straddled my body, locking my legs in place.
My guts twisted. He wrapped his hands around my neck. Like a drowning person, I began struggling again, kicking and flinging my body as hard as I could.
Blackness was rushing in at the edges of my vision. Leslie jumped on his back and he let go, trying to knock her off. My vision came back, but her screams paralyzed me like a fly in a spider’s web. I wanted to get up, to help, but the world was spinning around me like a carnival ride. A heavy weight was pressing on my eyelids, and the weariness was sinking in.
The noise must have roused Cullen. He staggered up the stairs behind us and took a step forward. Then another. Every step looked like he was wading through cement. Leslie was now screaming curses at Liam, who was laughing as he pinned her body.
One more step, I silently pleaded with Cullen. He was almost there. Liam had his back to Cullen; he was concentrating on Leslie. He probably thought Cullen was already dead. Liam had his arm back, ready to plunge the dagger into Leslie’s belly; she lay on the floor, a crumpled heap, no longer screaming—no longer moving at all.
“Ye stupid bitch,” Liam was saying. “I should have ripped out yer insides earlier when I caught ye snoopin’.”
My eyes were silently pleading with Cullen to move faster. Liam must have noticed and turned to look just as Cullen got close enough to swing the heavy lit torch over his head. Liam moved—taking some of the force out of the blow—but the torch caught him on the left side of his face. He cried out, grabbing at his burnt flesh. So much for the art of surprise. He rolled off Leslie, dropping the dagger and, at the same time, Cullen lunged at him, throwing the torch aside as they began to exchange blows once again. The torch hit the Celtic design and it went up in flames—as if the grooves in the design held kerosene.
I skittered forward quickly, scrabbling for the dagger where Liam had dropped it next to Leslie, who was softly moaning and gripping her stomach. Cullen’s eyes caught mine for a second and I knew he was hurt badly. He wouldn’t last much longer. No sooner had I thought it then Liam landed a final blow, knocking Cullen over a pew.
From outside the chapel, a vehicle sounded, tires crunching over gravel. A door slammed and muffled voices sounded, providing a moment’s distraction and allowing Liam to steal the dagger, grab me, and throw me over his shoulder.
He headed for his office, throwing open a closet door with the hand that held the dagger. Behind it was a narrow staircase. He bent to get inside and roughly squeezed me through, pulling the door shut behind him before running with me up the stairs. My gaze moved to the long beam running above the chapel auditorium; we were in some sort of attic, but it wasn’t enclosed. The floor ended not far away and I could see down below. I thought I might be sick.
He set me down at the top of the stairs and dragged me by the hand to the window. I cooperated, seeing all the police cars as they flew up the drive. Then he pulled me toward the center of the room. He was heaving now, out of breath, and I wondered if this was my chance.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to walk across this beam.”
“No. Oh, God no!” I bolted away from him. My legs tangled in my robe and I fell face first on the wooden floor. “Dear God! I’m afraid of heights!” My fall had broken his grip and I scuttled like a crab toward the stairs.
“Well, I’m sorry but there’s a door to a tunnel over there that lets out in the woods. Now I can carry ye and risk both of us fallin’ or ye can cooperate.”
Liam was broad shouldered and I knew he was strong from watching him fight, but to carry me all the way across that beam without falling... My heart was racing. Faster and faster. Think, Sophia, think!
He tucked the dagger into his belt, picked me up off the floor, and threw me back over his shoulder.
“I’ll walk,” I yelled. The room was spinning. My vertigo had gotten worse when he lifted me again.
“I don’t trust ye,” he said, grabbing some rope.
“Join the club,” I muttered back as he bound us together at the waist.
He pushed me in front of him and we began to walk across.
The cops rushed in.
“Up here!” I yelled two steps out.
I attempted to stop but he grabbed me, pulling the dagger from his belt. The sharp edge of the blade pricked my throat and I instinctively struggled against him, knocking us both off balance. We fell on either side of the beam. The rope was the only thing preventing us from plummeting to our deaths. I was pretty sure the fall would kill me and, if it didn’t, that I wouldn’t want to survive anyway with all the damage it might do. I heard a clink and looked down. I could see both Cullen and Leslie lying still below. Just over from them, the dagger had landed blade up, caught in one of the very large grooves at the center of the design, almost as if it was made for it. He’d dropped the dagger and we were directly over top of the design. It looked as though a giant fiery snake was licking at the dagger. Panic seized me. I reached my arms up. I was closer to the beam than Liam was. If I could just pull myself up…
The rope tied at my waist moved with me and Liam fell farther down. He began to flail.
“Pull me up!” he shouted.
The cops burst into the attic just as he began screaming. He swung his body, trying to reach my leg. All the motion was freaking me out and I felt the rope around my waist give a little.
I looked down and realized the knot that held him to me was coming loose every time he tugged.
“Stop moving!” I screamed in panic.
If the rope let go, he would fall for sure and I would be held by my own strength. I’d never been very good at the monkey bars and this wooden beam was even harder to hang on to.
Garda Connelly was now on his hands and knees, trying to get to me.
I looked down past Liam noticing for the first time the unusual scriptive lettering that ran around the image. It niggled at the back of my mind. I hadn’t noticed it there last time because it was written in such a way that it could only be seen from high above, or maybe it was because of the fire, some sort of chemical reaction that made it darken.
“Be sosa der hamin atashi taze,” I read out loud. It was the phrase that had been carved into the original gemstone. The one I’d tried earlier to use on him.
Liam looked up at me and opened his mouth, as if he meant to say something, but the wail of sirens drowned him out. Then he swung his body hard as if trying to tug me down with him, but he loosed the knot just as Garda Connelly secured me with his own rope.
“Liam!” I screamed, watching him fall.
He grinned and I was reminded of Nico as we’d fallen once before. I thought, with a distant horror, that maybe he would survive. Maybe this man was invincible. He crashed to the floor and blood flowed around him, seeping in and around the snake. His clothes caught fire and acrid smoke swirled up to burn my nostrils. I had to look away.
His own obsession will be his undoing. Sever the tie that binds and whoever is bad should burn in this glowing fire. Sandra, the psychic had said these words to me. All this time I’d thought I had to say the words while he was holding the jewel. I imagined the magic from the sapphire sucking him up into a swirling vortex, but it was all a matter of interpretation
. Psychics warned people of that all the time. Perhaps what she had envisioned was this moment. Either way, you sure burn now, I thought, and it was your own undoing. Wasn’t it?
Chapter Sixty
No More Mommy Issues
The sun shone bright in the sky as I sat atop the steps, looking out over the grounds. The buildings looked peaceful in August’s afternoon light—if only I could forget I was outside a hospital awaiting news of Cullen.
A few steps below, Da was pacing back and forth, his footsteps loud and thumping. “Please quit pacing,” I begged. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry, dear,” he said, quickly tucking his hands in his pockets. “I feel like we’ve been out here forever.”
The doctors had asked us to remain in the waiting room while they operated, but that had been hours ago.
“We should go back inside,” Da said. “Maybe he’s out now.”
“Móraí said she’d come and get us.” I too wanted to rush back inside and demand to see Cullen. The tension of anticipating the outcome of his follow up surgery was almost more painful than my bumps and bruises.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m just a little dizzy,” I said and peeked one eye open at a time. Better, if only a little blurry now. Da hovered over me.
“Maybe I should call one of the nurses?”
“No, I’m okay. The doctor said it might happen. I’m still recovering from the drugs,” I whispered, running my hands over the sore spot on my neck. “I miss Leslie. I wish she’d hurry up. You said she was just going back to the hotel to change, right?”
I looked up when he didn’t answer. Deep shadows clung to his face.
I realized my stupidity. He missed Lucille far more, I was sure, and she wasn’t returning.
“Da, I’m sorry. That was insensitive.” I reached for my water bottle and drained it to ease my throat of the tears that burned there.
He cleared his throat and resumed his pacing.
“The lass said she might lay down for an hour. She sat by yer bed for two days. I’m sure she’s just fallen into a deep sleep.”
“Da, maybe we should talk about what happened.”
“It’s all my fault,” he uttered, choking as he said it. “Oh, Lucille.” He barely got her name out before breaking into sobs. My heart went out to him. They had always been so in love. I jumped to my feet and descended the stairs to where he stood, head in hands.
Wrapping my arms around him, I did my best to comfort him. One of Lucille’s ribs had punctured her lung and the paramedics hadn’t gotten to her in time. She’d died almost instantly.
He pulled away from me and sat on the bottom step. “I should have recognized how sick Liam was… Just like his bloody mother.”
My memories were chaotic, filled with violence and fear. I recalled the way Liam had raged, distraught and bitter over his past.
“What about Liam’s mother? How did he get that way?”
We talked for an hour straight and he bared his soul. For Da, meeting Lucille was the end to a fifteen-year nightmare. Legally insane, Eleanor, Liam’s mother, had used every possible kind of emotional abuse tactic in the book to stay married to Da. He repeated over and over that he wasn’t the kind of man to give up but after all of the lies, blackmail, and suicide attempts, he’d been at the end of his rope. That was when he met and fell in love with Lucille. By that time Eleanor was living in a mental institution. Six months later, she took care of the problem and succeeded in one of her many suicide attempts, freeing Da to marry.
“I just never realized how it affected Liam,” Da confessed, tears lining his eyes.
“Did you get him counseling?” Da looked down, ashamed, and shook his head. “I should have. Lucille always wanted to. She said he wasn’t right, but I just thought the boys were jealous of each other.”
I couldn’t help but think of the angry, yet sad, photo I’d seen on the wall. Da must have been blind not to have noticed, but I didn’t say that. He looked like a broken man.
“I didn’t know anything was amiss until he was chucked from the Garda. There were complaints about his brutality. Liam was always rough, even with Cullen, but I thought that was normal. I was a rough young lad once, too. Then some lass accused him of stalkin’ and rapin’ her. That was the last straw. I couldn’t allow them to put my son in jail. I spoke to the girl and her family and they withdrew the complaint as long as we got him help. I pulled some strings and got him into the institution. We smothered the rumors and no one ever knew the truth. Call me an old fool, but maybe I wanted to believe it was all a misunderstandin’ and when he came out two years later, he was a man of faith. He even treated Lucille nice, calling her Ma, which he’d never done before.”
“What did Cullen think of Liam being in there?”
“Cullen didn’t know until a couple of years ago. We told him Liam was studyin’ abroad, as we told everyone.”
“Didn’t you visit him?”
He cast his eyes back down. “Only once or twice. He refused to see Lucille and that angered me somethin’ fierce.” He raised his eyes to the sky. “Pride goeth before destruction.” He looked back at me. “The doctor at the Institution thought it better if I didn’t agitate him, so I stayed away. We knew how he was, though; Móraí visited him regularly.”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy they’d ignored and the man they’d dumped into a hospital. No wonder he’d been bitter.
The doors of the hospital opened and a tired-looking Móraí came out to face us. She had deep circles under her eyes, and it was only when she moved forward that I noticed she looked happy.
Da looked up, his expression confused. “Well…?”
I stood motionless, staring up at her. My throat felt tight, almost too tight to speak.
“He’s in recovery,” she whispered, tears welling. I dropped my head to my hands and began to cry, releasing all the tension.
Chapter Sixty-One
Bury the Past
The sky was dark and cloudy, filling the horizon with gray bleakness that mirrored my own feelings. Funerals were meant to honor the dead, so it didn’t seem right to hold Liam’s and Lucille’s together, but that’s what the family wanted. As much as Liam was a disappointment, everyone felt a little guilty and a little responsible for how things turned out.
Cullen was deemed well enough to attend the funeral, but he’d needed to pop a few more pain pills to get through the service. Lucille and Liam were being buried in the graveyard outside the chapel. Móraí owned the property as well as the building. This now made sense to me, since I’d never really seen or heard Liam speak of holding service there. This seemed a justice as well as an injustice to those murdered and buried alongside him. I assumed there were probably more bodies than any of us knew about. The police had only begun to piece things together and Ann Switzer, Penelope, and Lucille were only the tip of the iceberg.
We’d walked away a little; the funeral had been restricted to immediate family. I leaned sideways and put my head on Cullen’s shoulder. He’d been quiet since we left the hospital. The cut on his head looked nasty and the skin around both eyes was now a yellowish green. In addition to the internal swelling in his head from the beating and the knife wound, whatever Liam had given his brother to drug him at the house had nearly poisoned him. I closed my eyes, pretending everything was all right.
“Cullen,” I said at last, very softly. “I am so sorry for your mother and Liam’s death. It seems like you’re angry with me and I don’t blame you, but I wish you’d just yell at me and let it out. The silence is worse.”
I stared down as he took my hand, squeezing it in his own.
“I’m not mad at ye, Aeval.”
I stole a sideways glance at Móraí, who was standing over Liam’s grave. Every now and then she looked over at us and I wondered if she was listening.
“I’m mad at myself for bein’ so blind, for not protecti
ng ye, or Ma, or the girls.”
“Oh, Cullen. How could you have known? I don’t blame you and I know your mother wouldn’t either.”
“Ma was an angel, bless her soul but that doesn’t change a thing. It’s my fault she was there. I called her on the way back from Dundrum. I was after rememberin’ why Switzer sounded familiar. Liam dated a girl by that name before he was committed.” Cullen looked down guiltily. “And I did know. That’s the thing, Aeval.” He shivered. “That night you confronted me about the letter in the office. When you mentioned the institution, my gut told me it was Liam. And when Penelope messaged me, I should have gone straight to Liam’s instead of the hospital. I wasted hours drivin’ up there to speak to Liam’s doctor.” He paused abruptly. “I should have gone to Ma and the Gardai straight away but I was afraid of him gettin’ into trouble. His relationship with Da was strained and by the time I rang Garda Connelly, it was too late. Gad, I was so naive. It would have made the difference for poor Penelope. I was just too frightened to see the truth.” He glanced up at his Da standing over Lucille’s casket. “But now ye know.” He sounded wistful. “And ye have every reason to hate me.”
I turned on him, exasperated. “I don’t hate you, Cullen,” I said. “I love you more than ever. I can’t blame you. I should have told you about Nick’s letter the moment I got back. I should have trusted my instincts that you were no killer. If I had just told you, then Penelope never would have come to dinner and taken that letter from me. Her death is just as much my fault, if not more. And maybe, just maybe, if we had talked more about the dreams—about the book and the Purple Delhi Sapphire, the time travel and your brother's crazy past—maybe if we had been honest with each other, then none of this would have happened.”
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