Quinn took a sharp right into a gravel lane hidden by an overgrown hedgerow that almost swallowed the entrance. Alexa frowned at the scruffy entry. She would have imagined stone columns or even an outrageous pair of lions from Quinn. Instead, she flinched, half expecting the briars to scratch the Mercedes as they drove through. But the opening proved just wide enough for the car to pass unscathed.
The lane wound a serpentine route through acres of wild meadows thick with tangled weeds. Alexa identified Joe Pye Weed, sumac, thistles, and even a patch of deadly nightshade as they passed. For a moment, she imagined that the gnarled and ragged fields were closing in on the car like the menacing hedge of thorns in that Disney movie. She shook her head to clear the disturbing image. She was getting as bad as her mother, applying Disney cartoons to real life.
“Didn’t you say a farmer rented some of your fields? None of this looks cultivated.”
“I like my privacy, so the only fields I rent out are at the far end of the farm. I’ve got thirty acres in total.” Quinn’s tone was clipped, as if he resented Alexa’s prying. When she glanced at the professor, he returned her gaze with an inscrutable expression. Uneasy about the strange vibe she was getting from Quinn, Alexa wondered again if meeting him had been a mistake.
After five minutes or more of driving through the desolate fields, Alexa finally glimpsed a roof surrounded by a thicket of dense trees. She recoiled when they reached the house. No pristine limestone farmhouse here. Instead, the house looked like a Victorian gone to seed. A jumble of dormers and columns competed for attention with a round turret topped by a pointed roof. The gingerbread trim must have been beautiful once. Now, it was so stained and discolored that Alexa could barely make out the ornate details against the peeling gray walls.
She could never have imagined the always-impeccable Quinn Hutton living in a dump like this. The small barn in the rear actually looked in better shape than the house.
With surprise, Alexa noticed an exquisitely carved wooden house on a pole toward the back of the small, scraggly yard. A larger version of the little structure on Quinn’s office desk. What had he called it? A spirit house? It astonished Alexa to see this spirit house filled with candles and food. Apparently, Quinn wanted to keep the spirits of this dismal old farmhouse happy. The man continued to be a puzzle.
When Quinn cut the motor, he turned to Alexa with an enigmatic expression. “If you’ll just wait for a minute, I’ll run in for my jacket.” Leaving Alexa perplexed by his sudden air of excitement, Quinn bounded out of the car and headed toward the house.
This whole trip was getting weirder and weirder. Alexa found herself wishing that she’d just insisted on sticking with the original plan of a drink in town.
Making its descent toward sunset, the sun plunged behind the tall thicket of mature trees, leaving the courtyard murky with shadow. But the stifling heat refused to yield to the deepening shade. In the dim light, the dilapidated Victorian loomed like a haunted house.
Alexa jumped at the unexpected chirp of her cell phone. She wiped a hand across her damp brow before plucking the phone from her pocketbook, happy for a distraction from her gloomy thoughts.
Melissa had texted: “Jim’s working. Come over?”
Alexa texted back. “No. Out with Quinn. At his house now. Creepy place.”
“Ditch him. Hang out with me.”
“Not tonight.” Alexa typed. As she hit send, a flock of huge black birds broke from the trees and flew low over the car. Startled, Alexa shrieked and dropped her cell phone into a slot between the seat and the console.
“Shit.” She scrunched her body around in the tight seat to fish for the cell phone with her right hand. As Alexa bent over, she caught sight of a jacket lying on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
“What the hell? Quinn already had a jacket.” With a sense of foreboding, Alexa knew that this situation had morphed from weird to frightening. Alarm bells pealed in her mind. She had to get out of here. Now.
Quinn had left the keys in the ignition. She whispered under her breath, “Fuck it. I’m going to drive this beast out of here.”
But the gearshift prevented her from easily sliding into the driver’s seat. Sneaking a surreptitious glance at the house, Alexa eased open the car door and slipped out. She had taken a single step toward the front of the car when a hand gripped her shoulder from behind. Alexa froze, her heart pounding.
“I never let anyone drive this car,” Quinn stated in a matter of fact tone. Before Alexa could reply, he clamped a red cloth over her nose and mouth. She gagged and felt her legs buckling, then nothing . . .
Chapter Forty-six
WHEN ALEXA REGAINED consciousness, she thought she could be dreaming. Her head felt thick and slow. The soft wool of a Persian rug cushioned her cheek. Its deep maroon tones reminded her of the one in Grandma Williams’ old living room. The wall in front of her, fuzzy at first, came into focus as rough-cut lumber.
Wake up, Alexa, a voice in her mind commanded. When she tried to sit, a sharp pain bit into both wrists. The pain cleared her head, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she wasn’t dreaming. This was real.
“Welcome back. I’m sorry for the brief trip to dreamland, but I was fairly certain that my charms alone wouldn’t lure you into my temple.” Quinn’s voice came from somewhere behind Alexa.
As he spoke, she scoped out her situation, trying to control mounting panic. Her hands were bound in front of her with a rope that looped around a metal ring set low in the wall. Although the thick ropes chafed her wrists, Quinn had left some play in the length of cord between her hands. About three feet of rope separated her hands from the wall. Carefully this time, she rolled into a sitting position and shuffled backward until her back could rest against the boards.
“That’s better. Would you like a drink?”
Alexa nodded; her mouth felt like dry cotton. Quinn brought a bottle of water and held it to her mouth for a few sips. “If you need to use the ladies’ room, just let me know. Of course, I’ll have to accompany you.”
Alexa shuddered at the thought.
“What’s going on, Quinn?” Although Alexa was frightened, she thought she could reason with Quinn and escape this predicament. Alexa couldn’t figure out what the man was up to.
Was he lashing out in reaction to his father’s arrest? Was he holding her for ransom?
The professor ignored Alexa’s question and returned to the center of the room. Alexa continued to study her surroundings. She was certain that this was the small barn she’d seen when they arrived at Quinn’s house.
The high ceilings were the same rough-cut lumber as the wall behind her. The air carried the faint smell of dry hay and pigeon poop—the same as Nana’s barn. The cavernous space felt much cooler than outside.
When Alexa turned her attention to Quinn and the space where he stood, she rocked with a surge of icy terror. Ornately embroidered indigo fabric covered all three walls. She’d seen the cloth in catalogs, on pillows made by the Hmong and other hill tribes of Southeast Asia. But that fabric was crazy expensive and there were more yards here than she could count.
On the far wall of the shadowy room, there was an area that looked like an altar. In place of a crucifix or a Buddha, a six-foot shape that looked vaguely female stood atop a long, low pedestal. The form’s arms were stretched at a slight angle from its sides, the inside honeycombed with small compartments. Most were filled with decorated wooden boxes.
In front of the altar, Quinn, still clad in black, hunched over a high table draped in blood red silk. Candles burned at the foot of the altar. But the main light supply came from an elaborate crystal chandelier suspended above the table.
Alexa took in this bizarre scene with mounting dread. A glacial weight drove the air from her lungs. Gasping, she reeled: Quinn planned to kill her. Horror pinned her to the wall. She felt helpless to resist its giddy embrace. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. But then Alexa pushed back, refusing to succumb
to obliterating fear.
She subdued the rising terror with a silent chant: Panic means death, panic means death, panic means death . . .
Quinn broke his long silence to answer the question she’d posed earlier. “I’ve chosen you, Alexa, to help me complete my tribute to the Nang Ton Pho. You should be honored. See these reliquaries? The relic you’re going to provide is arguably the most important piece among all the sacrifices.”
Fighting to keep her breath steady, she chanced a reply. Quinn seemed calm, but she strived for a noncommittal tone that wouldn’t agitate him. Her voice was hoarse. “Relics? Reliquary? Quinn, I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well, you see,” Quinn took on a condescending tone. “A reliquary is a box used in certain religions to house the body parts or relics of important religious figures. For example, the Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma houses hair of the Buddha. Every cathedral and second-rate monastery in France and Italy boasts the relic of some saint.”
Alexa tried to force the words through her dry mouth, “Yes, I’m familiar with reliquaries. I saw the crown of thorns at Notre Dame in Paris.”
“One of many relics related to Jesus; wood from the cross, his shroud, even his foreskin. If you put together all the Jesus relics scattered around the world, you’d end up with a reconstructed Jesus as big as Godzilla. A Jeszilla, if you will.” Quinn emitted an urbane chuckle, clearly pleased with his little bon mot.
“The suspect provenance of many reliquaries aside, it pleases me that you are familiar with the concept. You are here because I respect your intellect. The long history of relics shows their powerful force. Even if the relic’s connection to Buddha or Saint Whoever is dubious, the offering and worship of the object instills it with real power.”
Alexa couldn’t decide which was more terrifying. The suggestion that part of her body was going to end up in one of those ornate boxes or that Quinn’s conversational tone was no different from when they’d chatted over a meal.
When Alexa failed to respond, Quinn continued. “But I see you are still a bit confused, so perhaps I should start at the beginning. You see, our lives became intertwined before we were even born, you and I. You’re aware that your mother and my father were traveling companions to the Woodstock Festival?”
Alexa nodded, actually interested in what he had to say.
“Your mother was a nosey parker at Woodstock, who stumbled into some private business my father and Jack were into. But, I imagine that for her, Woodstock was all about the typical sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Quinn sniffed in disdain.
“For my dad, Woodstock provided the opportunity to blossom and accept his own special power. In a crowd of stoned hippies, cut off from all the social norms that had stifled him for so many years, Dad and his best friend, Jack, had the chance to experiment with something they’d only talked about. Well, I suppose they had done a bit of practice on small animals and such. But, they picked a girl, a child really, to rape and kill. It was the first time that they truly unleashed their power.” Quinn smiled in admiration.
Repelled, Alexa knew he meant Willow, her mother’s young friend.
“For both of them, the rush of that powerful act became a springboard for more. Dad told me that every year he and Jack would go somewhere away from Newport, usually one of the beach towns, and pick other girls to kill. He said it was easy. By the seventies, girls had a lot more freedom. Many left home to become hippies and live in communes or make their way in the big city. Hitchhiking was common.
“After college, Dad and Jack turned their hobby into a business. They figured, hell, if they were having so much fun with these young girls, there must be other men out there who’d like to have their own fun. Or women—they had to change with the times and welcome equal opportunity.
“Of course, they found that most clients seemed to prefer just the sex and not the killing. What visionaries. With just some seed money from the family fortune, my dad and Jack managed to expand their little business into a worldwide operation in a little over a decade. Just like the Rockefellers or one of the transnational oil companies.”
Quinn looked to Alexa as if she should be impressed. “It certainly was a complex operation,” she managed, her throat tight with fear and revulsion.
“But you’ll be wondering what my role in all of this was. It’s quite an absorbing tale.” Quinn looked at Alexa with a self-satisfied smile. “My mother died when I was ten. Her death brought Dad and me much closer. By that time, Jack had moved here to set up the Children of Light facility. So, Dad took me under his wing to teach me about the power. Everyone was a lot more security-conscious by then, telling their daughters not to talk to strangers and all that. But, since I was a kid, older girls had no qualms about talking to me . . . or following me to see a puppy.” Quinn’s voice grew nostalgic.
“Of course, I was too young at first for the sex part. But Dad let me watch and we experimented with different ways to take the power.” Quinn sniggered like a little boy. “Later I got to do the sex thing. Sometimes we’d do it together. I’ve never felt closer to my father than in those times.” Quinn sat on a leather stool near the high table, clearly enjoying his reminiscence.
It was all Alexa could do to keep from throwing up as this maniac, this guy she had willingly kissed, described his childhood apprenticeship in rape and murder.
“Then the time came for me to go to college and graduate school. So, Dad and I ‘would go no more a-roving,’ as Lord Byron might say. After college, I wanted to see a bit of the world so I got a job in Paris. Actually, two jobs. As you know, I taught school, but I also helped out with Children of Light business, shepherding some of our young charges throughout Europe, doing recruitment in orphanages in some of the larger European cities.
“Ah, Paris, the City of Light. You’ve been, of course? Why yes, you mentioned Notre Dame.” Quinn slid off the stool to pick up a long, curved knife and began to sharpen the blade with a whetstone. The light from the chandelier cast his distended silhouette on one wall: an enormous monster with a huge bulge at his crotch, smiling as he honed a giant machete.
Alexa tore her gaze from the terrifying shadow image and managed to nod in response. Nauseous, she recoiled at the thought of Quinn raping her. How could she have spent time with this man and not realized his depravity?
“Paris is where I came into my own. It was a wonderful environment to hone my power. So many chic women. I found that my own taste runs toward a slightly more experienced, sophisticated woman—one with a bit of je ne sais quois. But, eventually, I began to feel that something was missing.
“One night, I ran into a wiry, white-haired man in a rather seedy bar on the edge of the 18th Arrondissement. Almost immediately, we recognized our shared predilections . . . that we were fellow seekers of that certain power. Emile Delon was his name—although I suspect he wore names like a loose overcoat that he shrugged off when things became too hot.
“Emile helped me understand what was missing: Dad’s approach to the power was crude and uncontrolled, lacking in higher meaning. The old man had found meaning by turning his power to the service of Lord Buddha and the spirits.”
As Quinn’s soliloquy continued, Alexa sank into a torpor. Whatever he’d used to knock her out combined with the aftermath of the subsequent adrenaline rush had drained her completely. Even this new absurdity—murder in service to one of the world’s most peaceful religions—couldn’t rouse more than a passing moment of incredulity. She tried to sit up a little straighter, but the ring in the wall was too low and the rope too short. She hadn’t noticed Quinn lighting incense, but now a heavy exotic scent, like myrrh, filled the enclosed room. Alexa’s stomach roiled at a fetid undertone in the cloying odor.
Apparently, Alexa’s lack of enthusiasm didn’t bother Quinn, who continued his narrative with great animation.
“Emile had spent some time in the Golden Triangle, where he came across a village that practiced a unique form of Buddhism. Some of the ancient Tantric texts
from Tibet talk about the use of human sacrifice. Emile had studied those ancient texts for many years. Then he stumbled into a place that actually practiced human sacrifice. Like many of the Shan, this village’s Buddhism included healthy dose of animism; they also believed in Nats.”
Quinn’s tone turned pedantic again, as if he were in his classroom. “Nats are spirits, usually of people who met a violent death. They can be found in trees, in water.
“Instead of some of the traditional gifts, like tobacco or liquor, this village’s Guardian Nat demanded young women in sacrifice. So the thread of Tantrism and animism fused into a ritual built on sacrificial death. After visiting this village, Emile channeled his pursuit of the power into honoring both Buddha and the Nats with new female sacrifices.
“The whole idea electrified me.” Quinn flashed a boyish smile at Alexa. “I found a new posting in Thailand almost immediately. Of course, I could continue to perform duties for the family business since Thailand was a major branch of the operation.” Quinn finished honing the curved knife and turned to sharpening an ornate saw.
Alexa slipped deeper into a protective daze. Although she heard every single one of Quinn’s vile words, it was like sitting in a room with the television volume turned low. Quinn’s loathsome chatter hissed and crackled with static.
“After a few fruitless trips to the jungles of the Golden Triangle, I finally tracked down Emile’s village. The head woman welcomed me and invited me to spend a few months there, studying and participating in their rituals. What a wonderful sense of belonging I had that summer. I felt like I was part of something much bigger than myself. As an honored guest, I got my pick of women to sacrifice at each full moon, and I could choose how.
“I went a little wild with the freedom. I used an elephant to crush my first sacrifice. Although it was exciting to see what applied pressure can do to the human body, the end result was quite messy. I feared that I had offended the Nat. So I studied the use of Shan weaponry.” He nodded toward the curved knife, a dreamy smile flitting over his face. “I find the personal interaction suits me better.
Dead of Summer Page 28
