Wicked Love

by Michelle Dare

  Without another word Gabriel and the manservant left the bedroom, both of them armed with the antique rifles.

  She scowled, her fear burning away. Like hell she was staying behind. Angry that he would treat her like a child, Jane raced over to the fireplace and grabbed the iron poker. Then she dashed out of the bedroom. Though Gabriel and the manservant were out of sight, she could still hear their footsteps.

  Following the sound she ran up the stairs, took a left into a narrow corridor, then up another flight of stone stairs. Finally, she got to the top of the stair and ran through the open door that led to one of Wintergarten’s towers.

  Though the snowfall had slowed considerably, there was snow on the tower floor and the wind was still blowing furiously.

  Gabriel and the manservant were already there, glancing around in shock.

  “There’s no one here,” Gabriel said between breaths. “How the hell is that possible? Even if the killer left the tower, we would have seen him on our way up here. It’s like he just disappeared.”

  Jane walked towards him across the snow-covered floor, stopping suddenly when the sound of her footsteps changed. One of the stones sounded hollow beneath her feet. She kicked some of the snow away and discovered an iron loop beneath. The loop looked like a latch of some sort.

  Gabriel turned to look at her. He glared. “What are you doing? Are you trying to get killed? I told you to stay put.”

  “You’re not in charge of me,” she snapped.

  He walked up to her, the expression on his face hard and unyielding. “I mean it, Jane. This is dangerous. With Timothy dead, we’re running out of theories. This is even more dangerous than we realized.”

  “I know that.” There was no time to argue. If the killer got away, none of them was safe. She refused to live her life in so much fear that she couldn’t move. Couldn’t move or breathe, like she was trapped the way she had been all these years. Her father’s crime had trapped her for years. An awful, horrible situation had tormented her all these years, and she was done being helpless. She pointed down at the stone she was standing on. “What if this is how the killer escaped?”

  Gabriel looked down. “What the hell? Mr. Ernst, do you know what that is?”

  “It must be one of the secret entrances in the castle,” the manservant replied. “Though some of the previous servants mentioned such a thing, I had never found one. Perhaps because I do not frequent the castle towers.”

  Jane moved back and tugged at the latch, the stone giving a grinding squeak. “It’s moving.”

  “The killer knew about the secret entrance.” Gabriel frowned and took the iron loop from her, pulling with all his strength until the stone slide back to reveal a flight of winding stairs that led into darkness.

  “I’m going with you,” she said firmly.

  He cursed underneath his breath and then gave a curt nod. “Fine. But you have to get behind me if you plan on going down there.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly.

  The manservant produced a flashlight and handed it over to Gabriel. “You may use this.”

  “Thanks.” Gabriel switched on the flashlight and climbed down to start his descent.

  Wordlessly Jane followed him, making sure she stepped carefully down each step while the manservant walked behind them.

  As they moved, Jane noticed several doors that led away from the stairs. Probably more secret entrances. No doubt that was how the killer had been able to move through the castle undetected. She felt sick just thinking about how easy it must have been for the murderer to trap his victims.

  The sound of footsteps up ahead caught her attention. “Gabriel—”

  “I heard. He’s not going to get away this time,” Gabriel said, rushing after the sound.

  She raced down the stairs, keeping her eyes on the beam of light illuminating the path. Suddenly, far up ahead, she caught sight of a black coat as the figure turned a corner.

  Jane didn’t need to point that out. Gabriel was already several feet ahead of her, running after the figure so fast she knew she was going to lose him soon.

  Her side was aching and she struggled to breathe. With a final burst of speed she increased her pace, catching up to Gabriel as he rushed out of an open side entrance that led outside.

  He glanced around. “There’s nobody here. But he came through this entrance. I know he did.”

  Following him out onto the snow, she paused to take a deep breath. He was right. There was nobody out here. Only an expanse of pure white snow. And a pair of blankets on the ground. Her stomach lurched at the sight of the blankets. The two bodies they had decided to place in the snow for safekeeping were still outside. All alone.

  “What has happened?” the manservant asked as he joined them out on the snow. “Where has he gone?”

  “He just disappeared,” Gabriel replied, his jaw clenching. “Damn it. How the hell did he just vanish like that?”

  “There are probably more secret entrances and tunnels than we realize,” Jane gasped out as she clutched her side. “We should go back inside before we freeze.”

  The sound of a cell phone ringing made her pause. She grabbed her phone from her pocket and shook her head. “That isn’t my phone.”

  “Not mine, either,” Gabriel said.

  “I do not have my phone with me,” the manservant said, looking bewildered.

  “Then it has to be…” Jane glanced down at the wrapped bodies and shuddered. Not from the cold, but from a sinking dread. “One of the bodies still has their phone on them.”

  “Probably Heidi’s” Gabriel said.

  “We’ll have to get it. Could be her family.” She was reluctant to go anywhere near the bodies, but she gathered her courage with a deep breath. Then she leaned down to start to pulling the blanket away from poor Heidi’s body.

  The ringing continued and Jane saw the glow of a cell phone in one of Heidi’s pockets. With shaking hands, she retrieved the phone. As she tried to answer Jane felt a cold hand grab her ankle, and with a scream she dropped the cell phone.

  “Jane, I’m getting you out of here.” Gabriel reached out and grabbed her hand tightly. He pulled her, but the hand refused to let her go.

  Shrieking, Jane kicked out at the hand until it released her. Jumping backward to get away, she saw Heidi sit up slowly, as if she was a corpse come back to life.

  The manservant’s mouth fell open. “What in the name of—”

  “Idiots!” Heidi shouted. “All of you be silent!”

  Jane thought she was going to faint. “How are you alive? How? What is happening?”

  “Did you answer the phone?” Heidi demanded as she looked up at them.

  “No. I dropped it before I could,” Jane said, going numb with cold and disbelief. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Night’s Bane,” Heidi said flatly. “Heard of it?”

  Jane’s legs began to shake. “No.”

  “It’s a plant found in the nearby woods. Ingest enough and it will make you look dead when you are not. Ingest too much and you really will be dead.” Heidi laughed, her cheeks turning rosy.

  Gabriel pointed his gun at Heidi. “I don’t hurt women, but you’re going to need to start talking or the bullets are going to fly.”

  Heidi looked at the gun, her lip curling in distaste. “You Americans and your guns. Very well. I will talk. But first…” She reached over to pull the blanket from Otto’s body and wrenched the dagger from his chest, making the most hideous squelching sound as she yanked it free.

  Before anyone could move to stop her Heidi was on her feet, sidestepping the gun to grab Jane by the hair.

  Jane struggled to get free in spite of the pain. “Get away from me!”

  “Let her go,” Gabriel ordered, taking a step towards them.

  Heidi seized Jane’s hair firmly, pressing the already bloody knife against her neck.

  Gabriel didn’t lower the gun. “You’re not going to hurt her.”

  “I�
��m going to take her inside,” Heidi said, her voice syrupy sweet. “I will give you and Emmerich a head start so that you may run away.”

  “You’re letting me and Emmerich go?” Gabriel’s green eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because I am kind and generous,” Heidi replied in a childlike voice. “We can all play a little game together. Hide and seek. If you hide well enough, Gabriel, maybe I won’t find you. That way you’ll have a chance to live.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Gabriel said.

  “I’m very kindly giving you a head start and you’re not taking it? Your allegiance to Jane is most nauseating,” Heidi said. “Run along now and you might live, gentlemen.”

  “Do as she says, Gabriel!” Jane cried out. “Run. You and Mr. Ernst can still get away from here.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Gabriel said through gritted teeth.

  “Enough of this,” Heidi said as she dragged Jane back through the entrance.

  Desperate to think up some kind of escape plan, Jane wracked her brain for the answer. For the way out of this nightmare.

  Heidi held the blade against her throat, shoving her towards one of the side doors Jane had spotted earlier. Quickly Heidi opened one of the doors, revealing the back of a tapestry. She shifted the fabric, dragging Jane out into the great hall.

  “That door was there the whole time,” Jane said in shock, staring at the tapestry as Gabriel appeared.

  “Let her go,” Gabriel said. “Take me instead.”

  Heidi laughed loudly before throwing the blade at Gabriel.

  He jerked back, slamming the knife away with the rifle, sending the blade clattering to the floor. “Now you have no choice but to let her go.”

  Heidi laughed again and wrenched one of the medieval axes from off the wall. “You were saying, Gabriel?”

  “This is insane, Heidi,” he said. “Release her.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do!” Heidi shrieked, waving the ax over her head. The sharp blade glinted in the light of the great hall, the shiny metal a promise of pain and death. “This castle is mine now. The second I get rid of Jane, I’ll win.”

  “That’s why you killed Otto,” Jane forced out as tears pricked the back of her eyes. “To win the castle.”

  “Poor, stupid Otto,” Heidi said in a sing-song voice. “He had no idea that I was Friedrich’s when I first started working here. None of them did. Not even Friedrich himself.”

  Jane started struggling to get free again. “Is that why you decided to work here? For revenge?”

  “I never knew who my father was,” Heidi said, yanking so hard at Jane’s hair that Jane cried out in pain. “My mother wouldn’t tell me. Every time I asked she came up with some story. That he was a soldier. A diplomat. Her university boyfriend. All lies!”

  “Let’s strike a deal here, Heidi,” Gabriel said. “Let’s come up with the best way to keep Jane safe. You can have the castle. It’s yours.”

  “We won’t fight you on it,” Jane said in agreement. As much as she had dreamed of the castle, it wasn’t worth dying for. And it wasn’t worth losing Gabriel either.

  “Liars!” Heidi shouted. “All of you are liars. Just like my mother. She lied for years until I found my birth certificate. Found the truth. I didn’t belong in some shitty little hovel in Geneva. I was a nobleman’s daughter. Me!”

  “Heidi, please put the ax down,” Jane begged.

  “I’m a nobleman’s daughter. You don’t get to order me around,” Heidi snapped. “But did my father want me? No. The old fool. All those years he was sending my mother money to keep her quiet. Not enough to get us out of that horrid little apartment. Only enough to eat. Daddy didn’t want his rich friends knowing he had a love child with some tourist he met so long ago. Well I’ll show you, Daddy. I’ll show you.”

  Jane shoved herself off Heidi with all her might, wrenching free of the deranged young woman’s grip.

  “Where do you think you’re going, you bitch?” Heidi swung the ax, the blade singing as Jane jumped away just in time.

  “The castle is yours,” Jane forced out. “I’ll sign away my rights to it. I swear.”

  “More lies!” Heidi let out a loud shriek that seemed to shake the entire castle. “I worked my way into the castle. Nobody knew that the meek little maid was a von Westen. Everyone ordering me about when they should have been bowing down to me. I did everything. I even read to Daddy when he got sick. But he couldn’t even see that I was his daughter. I looked just like him and he couldn’t see.”

  Jane’s heart froze in her chest. “What the… You killed Friedrich, didn’t you?”

  “I smothered him with a pillow a few months ago,” Heidi admitted as she took a menacing step towards Jane. “He was dying already. I did him a favor and put him out of his misery. I told him who I was right before he died. You should have seen the look on his wrinkled old face.” Heidi laughed, the sound echoing through the hall.

  Jane stumbled backwards, desperate to get away from Heidi and the ax in her hands.

  Her gaze shifted for a moment and she saw Gabriel lift his gun to point it at Heidi. It was clear that he was trying to find a way to take a clean shot without getting Jane hurt.

  Swallowing hard, Jane realized that she had to keep Heidi talking. That was the only way to keep her distracted long enough for Gabriel to stop her. “So you’ve been planning this for months?”

  “For years. I was hired as a maid so that I could get closer to my father. But then I thought I wanted more than that. I wanted this castle, and so I decided I was going to kill him to get it,” Heidi said with a cruel smile. “But then stupid Otto brought out Daddy’s stupid will. Some strangers were going to get this castle before me. How is that fair?”

  “It isn’t fair,” Jane said, her voice shaking.

  “Otto started making all these phone calls to other heirs,” Heidi spat out. “He invited you and Gabriel’s client. I decided I was going have to get rid of everyone in the way of me getting my castle. But only you were coming here, Jane. So I had to be incredibly careful how I got rid of everyone. Otto needed to go, of course. I was starting to suspect he knew who I was, and I couldn’t let that secret get out until the time was right. First I had to die so none of you would see me coming.”

  “You faked your own death. Fell down the stairs—”

  “I didn’t fall,” Heidi said with a roll of her eyes as she took another swing with the ax.

  Jane screamed, scrambling out of the way as the blade snagged the fabric of her coat. “You didn’t?”

  “I just took a dose of the Night’s Bane, dropped the bowl of stew, and lay down on the floor,” Heidi responded, rolling her eyes again. “Stupid Berta fell for it. You all did. Thank you for taking my body outside, by the way. It made it so easy to hide from you while I went through the secret passages in the castle.”

  “Where is Berta?” Jane asked desperately. “You took her, didn’t you?”

  “I came into the kitchen to strangle her but she started babbling about a password. Babbling that Otto had secrets that could destroy me on his mobile phone and only she knew the password,” Heidi said. “She was probably lying to save her own skin, but I had to be sure. So I tied her up and dragged her down to the catacombs to scare the password out of her. Buried her in one of the unused tombs.”

  Jane gasped in horrified realization. “The claw marks—”

  “I heard you and Gabriel coming down into the crypt so I had to drag Berta out of the coffin and hide her,” Heidi said, cutting her off. “She still wouldn’t give me the password, but I could kill the rest of you while I waited. Stupid, arrogant, greedy Timothy was next. He wanted the castle, too, I could tell. So he had to go. That leaves the other servants, but they’re old and frail and useless, so I’ll deal with them last.”

  “You cannot seriously think you’ll get away with this,” Jane said angrily.

  “I will. Because I’ll kill you all and then frame Gabriel’s client.” Heidi grinned,
the lines of her cherubic face turning hard. “All I’ll have to do is pretend there was a massacre here. Say that Gabriel’s client paid him to kill everyone and I’ll look like the sole survivor. Then, at last, Wintergarten will be mine.”

  “You were going to frame Gabriel?” Jane asked in disgust.

  “Someone had to take the blame. I chose the strongest man in the castle.” Heidi lifted the ax high over her head, forcing Jane to run away.

  “Come back here,” Heidi shrieked, racing after her.

  It was then that Jane forced herself to trip and fall, landing painfully on the hard stone. “Now Gabriel, now!” she cried.

  A shot rang out.

  11

  Smoke billowed from the rifle in Gabriel’s hands. Heidi screamed and suddenly reached down to clutch her arm, the ax falling to the floor with a metallic clang.

  The bullet had struck home. Never in his life would he have imagined he’d shoot at a woman, but there was no way he could let Jane get hurt. No way in hell.

  Jane rushed up from the floor, running over to him to fling her arms around his shoulders. “Gabriel. Oh, Gabriel.”

  Though he sensed her distress and her relief, he didn’t know what to say to her. All he knew was that he never wanted to let her go. Ever.

  Suddenly, the castle doors opened and several uniformed police officers burst into the great hall. Emmerich, the manservant, rushed in with them.

  An officer started shouting at Gabriel in German, and though his grasp of the language was limited he made sure to toss the rifle aside and hold his hands up. The manservant pointed to Heidi, speaking rapidly in German to some of the other officers. Several police officers moved over to her, getting to work healing her wounded arm.

  The officer who had shouted gave a salute and walked up to Gabriel. “I am Officer Schmitt. You are the American guests?”

  “We are,” Gabriel said.

  “Good day to you,” the officer said. “We apologize for our late arrival. The weather made our movement impossible. Are there any others who require medical assistance?”

  “Berta, the cook, is missing,” Gabriel answered. “Heidi abducted her, so she’s probably somewhere in the castle.”