Ashes and Bones

by Dana Cameron

I stared at the image awhile, wondering what to do. I had just decided to call California, try to wring some information out of someone at the dojo when I noticed that the IM screen showed that Brian had logged off from work some time ago. He’d be home soon. Not soon enough to quell my suddenly jangling nerves.

  The icon suddenly went on; Brian was downstairs. I was never so grateful for his lead-footed driving.

  You home? I typed.

  Yep, came back the reply.

  Long day?

  NTB. Not too bad.

  K, brd, I typed. Okay, be right down.

  TTYL.

  I frowned. Why would he write talk to you later and not ccos, “caution, cats on stairs,” as he usually did?

  I typed, k. Then I thought about it and typed: Dinner-E1’sP? Evil one’s pizza for dinner?

  A long wait, then, whatever.

  Now that was just plain wrong. Brian would never defer to me about pizza, especially not when it came to the evil, addictive sauce that Mario’s Pizza was famous for. I sat for a moment, wondering whether Brian was really okay, whether he wasn’t more burnt out than I thought.

  Something was up.

  The lights went out.

  Damn Artie. I’d asked him to take care of the problem where the printer surged when the fridge did…Wasn’t that problem with the electricity supposed to be taken care of before today?

  “Brian?” I called out from my desk.

  There was no answer. I felt the all too familiar rush of adrenaline and prayed that it was just one more innocent situation that would be explained away in a moment…

  A soft, rhythmic noise from downstairs…more a vibration than a noise…

  “Brian?” I said, much more softly, and heard my voice crack.

  Nothing.

  I looked outside. His pickup wasn’t in the driveway. Through the open window, too high to be an exit, I could hear the muffled pounding. I picked up my phone. No dial tone, no nothing.

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. A softer noise, barely a noise, much closer…I recognized it was Minnie, almost invisible, a shadow in the mottled dark of the house. She was inching toward the door and stairs slowly, tail not even twitching, hesitating the way she does when she’s stalking or unsure of something.

  I had to get downstairs. If something was up—I could either get my cell or hit the panic button on the alarm. I wasn’t going down there unarmed. I thought for a moment, wishing I hadn’t moved the tools down to the barn, then grabbed a dumbbell that I kept by my desk. Not perfect, not a lot of range, but a lot of wallop.

  I scooped the cat up, went down the stairs softly, and glanced in the bedroom. A great lump was in the center of the white bedspread: Quasi was taking a last nap before trying to escape outside for the night. I dumped Minnie in there, shut the door on them both.

  My cell phone was charging downstairs by the back door.

  The rhythmic pounding continued downstairs, louder than when I was in my office. It stopped for a moment, then started up again, farther off.

  I was at the bottom of the stairs now, avoiding the ones that I knew creaked the most. Then I saw the quick sweep of a flashlight beam, heard quiet footsteps.

  Right. Out the front door, and no detours, Em—

  The sound of a flashlight clicking off. The footsteps had stopped, too.

  I thought I heard heavy breathing, as if whoever it was had run a quick race. Perhaps it was anticipation.

  My heart stopped dead. I wasn’t sure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, when it came again, after a pause, as if someone had swallowed.

  I went to the front door, unlocked it, and tugged, quietly. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled harder, I could feel that I’d slid the deadbolt back, but the door still stayed shut. I yanked with all my might, but it was wrong, wrong…the door never stuck like this. I pulled. Why wouldn’t it open—

  And then there was the voice.

  “Emma? Is that you?”

  It was him.

  “I’ve been waiting.”

  It was Tony Markham.

  Chapter 18

  I SWALLOWED, TRIED TO KEEP MY KNEES FROM BUCKLING, and I leaned against the doorknob for support. In the dark, it was too easy to believe that I was asleep. Having so nearly convinced myself that the nightmare was actually over, to have it unfolding in front of me now was almost too much to take.

  “Four years, I’ve been waiting. It’s time.”

  A sound, a foot edging along the uneven boards of the hallway near the back door. I knew where he was.

  There was no light now. Did he know where I was? He seemed to be moving this way…had moved into the dining room.

  “You have to understand, it’s over now.”

  A chill swept over me. It was like the years were stripped away and I was back on the Point—the cold, the voice that swept away every bit of my strength.

  I pushed—willed—myself away from the door and edged into the kitchen, over to the counter, as quietly as I could. I was barefoot, and could feel the grit on the floor, but made almost no noise. The voice was still coming from the dining room. That meant that he could either come through the living room or back out the other dining room door into the kitchen. I looked over to the back door, a mile away, my only hope. A small pool of light came in from the outside, the street light at the end of the driveway, illuminating the wedge under the door. Two, three wedges. Maybe more.

  I’d never get them all out before he got to me.

  The cellar door was blocked with Artie’s tools and boxes. I’d never get through it all in time, not without giving myself away.

  “It’s time for an accounting.”

  I felt a wave of dizziness and nausea wash over me but, somehow, that helped. Fighting off illness reminded me that I had some control over myself still, I wasn’t done yet. I stepped another foot closer to the counter. Another step closer to the block full of expensive German knives I gave Brian last Christmas…

  I set the dumbbell down and slid out the biggest carving knife I could, the faint thrill of metal on metal barely reached my ears. Rejected the serrated one, despite the fact it would make a wound that was difficult to heal. I wanted all the edge, and all the distance I could get, to keep between us…

  I had the knife. I would step back toward the front hall and the living room, and I would wait behind the wall. And when Tony Markham got close enough I would slash it down and across his face. Even if I didn’t get an eye, the blood and pain would be enough to distract him, and if I was very lucky, I would get a second chance and go this time for the throat, digging in, slashing out as hard, as raggedly as I could…

  “‘You’re thinking of something my dear, and that makes you forget to talk,’” came the voice again, Alice’s Duchess. “Here’s the deal, Emma. My dear Emma. You’re a clever girl, you’re planning what you’re going to do. You’re resourceful and you’re tough. And you’re fucked to a fare-thee-well. I’ve been planning this for a very long time. You don’t have any time left.”

  I stepped backward, one step, two, and then heard a shuffle—he was moving. Which way, the kitchen or the dining room? A bump and an exhalation; he was definitely midway through the dining room now, had knocked into the boxes that were there. It’s my dining room, of course you can’t dine in it. All the stuff for the kitchen was in there.

  I was by the doorway, stumbled a little, got behind the wall, waited. My heart was pounding, my hands were so sweaty I could barely tell I was holding the knife. My hand brushed the wall and my trembling fingers skipped off it. I tried to compose myself, find that ready stance, but it felt like a sham. All my training, and I couldn’t pull it together.

  “You’re still thinking too much. It’s a problem for you. You should have acted long before this. As a result it’s too late. You’re done for.”

  He’s just trying to freak me out, I thought, even as I knew he was echoing my own thoughts. He’ll come by here, he’s going that way around, and I’ll get him, I’
ll end this, I swear…My breathing grew heavier and heavier as I readied myself…

  I am going to end this. Another minute, and it will be over, I can wait a minute, stand here calm and quiet for a minute and then ten seconds more and it will be over and he will be done, and I am going to end this now.

  Just saying it gave me resolve.

  Wait patiently, I told myself, another moment, keep breathing…

  And suddenly, he was there, but on the right hand side of me. He’d come around back through the dining room and the kitchen to the hall and it all went to hell right then.

  I screamed, stepped forward, swung out, slashing. I was off balance, I’d been ready to go to the other side, but I caught something…

  A grunt. And then I felt the knife ripped out of my hand, heard it clatter to the floor, skitter away from me. What—

  “—the fuck?” At nearly the same time, something hard caught me upside the head; I saw stars, couldn’t figure out where I was. Falling. I hit the ground, almost broke my fall, but only then feeling the pain in my ear, my jaw.

  “I don’t like you with knives, Emma!”

  I heard the words, that voice, distantly, it was like the ocean was roaring inside my head. I felt the step coming toward me and I rolled away. Tried to kick, and only succeeded in entangling his foot with mine as he tried to stomp on me. I shoved a little harder, felt him stumble back. I struggled to my feet, moving away.

  The voice hadn’t stopped. “—you wanted to use a knife before, Billy’s knife, at the Point, and it was a cheap little trick, and it didn’t work, you never had a chance.”

  The hall stand…I’d backed into the stand, that meant that the umbrellas were right behind me. I grabbed the biggest thing there. Oscar’s walking stick.

  I stepped in, jabbed as hard as I could at a little lower than my own shoulder height, what might have been Tony’s sternum, the widest part, the biggest target. He grabbed at the stick, I wrenched it away, followed him as he moved into the living room. I swung at his head. The stick got caught in the standing lamp behind the chair, and that’s when the gun went off.

  I screamed at the noise, flinched convulsively, let go of the stick, but felt nothing. Not yet. The flashlight came on then, blinding me.

  “You look very stupid, standing there, holding your hands up like that. You should know, better than anyone.”

  His voice was different then, different from the way it had been a second ago. What was it?

  I had to keep him talking. I licked my lips, raised my hand against the light. “I should know—?”

  “You should know better…I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Still blinking at the powerful beam, I tried to follow his voice. “I find that hard to believe.” There was a noise, on the flashlight, and I realized that he was wearing the chainsaw glove that Brian had had in the barn with the other safety equipment. It had deflected my knife.

  “Of course not. You’re more than unusually dense, at times, and that’s why you don’t understand. I’m trying to teach you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m trying to teach you your limits.”

  I said nothing. The flashlight wavered, briefly, and I heard the glove hit the floor. Though my eyes were adjusting to the room that was indirectly lit by the flashlight, they didn’t refocus fast enough to catch a glimpse of Tony. His voice was the way it was before…what was it? Something about the knife…His voice was stronger than it had been before…Tony was in my house…

  “I’m going to take the very best care of you, Emma. You’re going to be well and fit and sane for as long as I can manage it, because that way you will learn.” He sounded so confident, so strong.

  The rest of the room resolved itself now, and I could orient myself. It was like staring into the sun, though, with the flashlight in my face, but I knew the gun was still there. Too far away for me to do anything, maybe too far away for him to nail that first shot.

  “No, we’re going to get the lights back on. Then we’re going to sit down and have a glass of wine.”

  “Huh?” I had a better sense of where he was now, and I tried not to look headlong into the light, trying to see what I could in its penumbra.

  He continued patiently. “Then we’re going to call my friend outside the house.”

  “There’s no one out there,” I said instantly, a force of habit. Damn it, Emma, shut up and think! The knife, the knife…what is it about the knife that made him different?

  “No, I assure you there is. Please, do as I say. Clasp your hands in front of you. Back up, three steps only. Turn your head to the side—no more than that! And you should see him. The big blond fellow out there is working for me.”

  I couldn’t see much. But I could see a very large form, a man, waiting by the side of the porch.

  He seemed as big as a house. It looked like he might be the size of a Temple.

  “Step back this way again, please. Keep your hands in front of you, where I can see them.”

  “We call your friend,” I said. “And you don’t shoot me.” I tried to imply that I still failed to see anything so bad about this.

  “We don’t call him yet,” Tony said. “You are amazingly stupid sometimes.”

  And there was that change in his voice again…he was frustrated. The knife…I had almost had the chance to use one on him that night at the Point. My kitchen knife reminded him…and now it reminded me.

  That was something…something I could use. “When do we call him, Tony?”

  “We call him when Brian comes home. My friend out there is very talented. He claims to have worked for the government at one point, but I think that’s a lie. Still, you never know. His talents are hard to come by—at least in conjunction with his remarkable ability and peculiar lack of conscience—and I can’t imagine anyone in a position to need them would be very picky about his other disquieting traits.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said, as deliberately insolent as I could manage. This was the test.

  “You’ll be laughing out the other side of your mouth in an hour, and for a long time after that!” There was that note again, the one that said that Tony didn’t believe he would be challenged. Couldn’t conceive it. It was when he felt least in control, that his voice changed. That control had very little to do with the gun. He had gone way off the deep end.

  “You might have…interrupted me, once, but that was a fluke, a situation that had to do more with your luck than my plan.” He caught himself, tried to settle down. “And still, for all of that I got away, and have been watching you ever since.”

  I couldn’t help myself: I shivered.

  He nodded then, faintly satisfied. “We’ll listen on the phone. I’ll be very interested to see what you’ll try to do to stop Brian’s screams.”

  I felt the world swimming in front of my eyes and felt my stomach clench.

  “What will you do, what won’t you do, eventually, to let Brian die? Imagine a place where that would be the very best you could offer him. I believe you’ll find the edge of your sanity and leap, to save him.”

  He let me think about it. God help me, I found myself imagining things unthinkable.

  “My friend is a thug, but he has a delicate subtlety when the conditions are right. It could be weeks. Months, even.”

  My mouth was so dry I could barely form the words. “What’s…why?”

  “You’re much more limited than you might think, and I’m going to show you that. You might have gotten inflated ideas about yourself, having interrupted me before—and it was no more than an interruption. No more than that, and if I’d taken a bit more time, tempered my enthusiasm for the project just a little, even that wouldn’t have happened.

  “Your mind, your will, your body. Not much at all. You’ve got luck, perhaps a kind of…cunning…that has a sort of virtue to it, so I won’t believe you easily. I’ll have to be very sure, know that you’re not just faking the knowledge to stop the lesson. I think I’ll be
able to tell when you’ve truly learned. And then we’ll be done. Then you’ll know that I’ve won.”

  “You’ve won already, Tony.” I didn’t know if I could convince him, but I had to try. “Brian and I…we’re having troubles. My friends are hurt, one close to death. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t concentrate—the people at the college think I’m losing my mind. I don’t know what more proof you want. You got away, with the gold. You avoided the international authorities. You came back, and still didn’t get caught, even after all you’ve done. And at every turn, you’ve bested me. I don’t know how better to let you know: You’ve truly won.”

  He spoke sadly. “Emma, there’s a difference between knowing something, and owning it. I need to believe that you’ve owned it. Then we’ll be done.”

  I felt myself burst into tears. It wasn’t hard; it wasn’t an act. But it was also good cover.

  He let me sob, watched the tears flow and my nose run and kept the gun on me with an understanding patience that worried me.

  This was about control, just like Temple had said back in California. So now I understood I had several choices, any one of which had to happen in the next two minutes or so.

  I could hope Brian wouldn’t come home, but that wasn’t likely. And it still didn’t get me out of this.

  I could hope that in a fight outside, Brian would win. Also unlikely, if what Tony said was true.

  Assuming that I couldn’t beat Tony, I could hope that Tony would screw up and kill me first. That would break his control, he wouldn’t have me to torment, and that was what this was all about.

  Unappealing as well, but it would have to do. I’d either beat Tony or make him kill me. And I had to do it soon.

  I tried to wipe my face on my shirt, and sank to one knee. My hands were still clasped in front of me, as he’d commanded, but now I raised them, as if pleading.

  “Don’t do this! You can’t do this! I’ll do whatever you want, I swear, only leave Brian out of it. I’ll leave with you, I’ll go anywhere, do anything, only don’t do this to me! Don’t hurt Brian!”

  “Sshh, shhh. It’s all right. This is going to happen, Emma. You should accept this. You’re going to learn from this.”