Only, this whale was dead and barbecued.
He thought then of the passage from the Bible he had seen on Millie’s desk just before he left for the airport. She had left a blue satin bookmark just under the verse, “Be sure your sins will find you out.” It was Numbers 32:23. Had that been Millie’s chiding, or actual canonical admonition? Had his sins finally been found out and was he going to pay for them now?
Alex discovered a carcass burned to charcoal on the stairs leading down to the vaults beneath the church. Beyond the first body he could make out the charred head and entrails of a jackass. There was also a pair of blackened human legs tossed to one side. There was no proof that this vile work belonged to Saint Germain, but Alex was absolutely certain that it did. Apparently, in the years since he had seen his foe, the man’s evil and insanity had grown exponentially. And the fact that he was demonstrating his powers so blatantly likely meant that he finally felt strong enough to take on anyone who objected to his work. For everyone’s sake, Alex hoped this wasn’t true.
Alex turned abruptly, feeling sick and more than a bit touched by supernatural dread. There was nothing to learn from these artifacts, he told himself, and the odor was making him ill. He left the ruins of the burned-out church and climbed back in his jeep without a backward glance.
Shadows gathered in the folds of the red land he traveled, earth wracked into canyons long ago by earthquakes and glaciers. He chose a dirt path at random, having no definite plan but wanting merely to get away from the reek of evil that filled his head. Still, he wasn’t surprised when he shook off his reverie a short time later and found himself on the road to Cuatros Cienegas. The name on the sign made him shiver—part with anticipation and part with dread. This was his goal. A part of him had known it all along.
He liked to believe in free will but had the feeling that in this case his destination was preordained. Whether he was ready to face his past or not, Fate had finally caught up with him and arranged a rematch. First had come the insane impulse to write about his encounter with Saint Germain, then the pieces in the newspaper about monsters raised by storms, and now this psychic temblor that insisted he head for Cuatros Cienegas. He was being led.
But by what or by whom?
Feeling a strange tingling in his skin, Alex headed for what he was certain was his date with destiny. He stopped at the first town and made a reservation at the best hotel in the area. He remembered the name from when he’d read the second story about monsters in Mexico. It was a small hostelry called Hotel Ybarra. This town had also been mentioned in the papers a few months back as being a place where ancient vampires had dwelled, but this related phenomenon hadn’t been anything more than a curiosity until he visited Lara Vieja and smelled a new kind of evil. Vampires and Saint Germain—a marriage made in hell.
But if this meeting was meant to be, then…Alex shrugged. One could not argue against Fate. And he wasn’t afraid of dying anymore. Or, to be more precise, he was more afraid of living as he had been than facing whatever the Reaper had arranged for him.
He did not turn on his headlights as he drove, preferring to enjoy the night. The roads were mostly deserted, so he made good time. This was excellent, because he was aware of a growing sense of urgency that he be in Cuatros Cienegas the next day in order to avert some calamity.
Alex arrived well before dawn and was somewhat surprised to find the hotel alive with activity. Most small towns outside the tourist areas were not nocturnal, though it made a kind of sense for people to be out at night given the heat of the day.
There were a few foreigners at the hotel when he checked in, but also some local toughs drinking in the cantina. They were scar-carrying members of some deadly serious knife and gun club, or else every one of them had had a nearly fatal encounter with a thresher at some time in his life. There was no sign of drug use in them, though, not even marijuana, which was unusual and probably unfortunate. If it wasn’t the drug trade keeping them here, Alex wondered, then what were they doing in this sleepy town? Were they drawn to some subliminal evil? Alex had tried looking in their minds but could hear nothing but white noise. Their auras were an unhealthy shade of gray he associated with ghosts and people near death. This made him wonder if they were Saint Germain’s creatures.
Alex stayed awake in his room until sunrise and then closed his eyes on the world. He slept the day through, dreaming of a giant eagle that fought off a flock of screaming crows when they attacked him. The crows might perhaps have won, but a second eagle surrounded by green light appeared, and together they drove the scavengers away. Alex rose at sunset, feeling calmed by this omen, refreshed from the deep sleep and prepared to face anything.
Not sure who was coming, but having a strong presentiment that someone important was indeed drawing near, he took a seat at the back of the cantina and waited for Fate to unfold her plan: He just hoped that she was in a pleasant mood and ready to fight on the side of the angels. Otherwise, given the general hints of vampires and ghouls and who knew what other kinds of living dead that had been heaved up from the bowels of this damned earth, there could be literal hell to pay. For both Alex and whoever was coming to help him.
CHAPTER SIX
Every one of us is responsible for our faults and infirmities…but none have the right to shirk onto the back of a third person the burden of their personal faults, or the consequences of their misfortune…Before ever the child was conceived, I was aware of these objections. They were carefully weighed, and my conclusion may be stated thusly: for the sake of my child I shall have the strength to acknowledge everything and see that it turns out for the best. It was a result of an action of mine that this being who does not yet exist, who has been condemned in advance, was set in train. This child who is on his way, though not yet born, is already in the sad position of being refused social recognition. Children of adultery can be acknowledged by neither father nor mother. This one, therefore, is doubly branded by adultery. What will be his position with the mother’s state of health—she may die at any time—and a father, already old who, by asking another fifteen years of life, might seem to be making an excessive request? By the time the child is fourteen, he may find himself stranded in a hostile world. If she is a girl, she will be on the streets, selling herself for ten francs at a time. If a boy, he will play the part of Antony or Larcenaire. In that case, better to destroy a life, better to never create it. But it would anger me to make such a decision because of social pressure. It would do violence to all my feelings of justice…Monsieur is impotent—too bad for him. Madame has been weak—too bad for her. But let no one dare say “So much the worse for the being who owes his life to that impotence and weakness.”…Madame risked divorce by her husband. I risked being shot or run through with a sword, and that is a risk I am perfectly prepared to take for this child.
—Letter from Dumas père to his daughter Marie
Oh! This is Théâtre-Francais. It is certainly one of the circles of Hell which Dante overlooked, where God has seen fit to confine dramatic authors who have the curious idea of making a deal less money in the theatre than they could have done in other employment.
—Letter from Alexandre Dumas
“So, details please. What’s he really like? Is he a perv or something?” Ashley asked, her gray eyes squinted against the smoke in the tavern.
The hotel might have been nice at one time, but the cantina’s decor was a step beyond disheveled. It hadn’t actually passed into being disreputable, though; it was still barely clean enough to take advantage of the area’s new cash crop, touristas. Harmony Nix had known better than to expect luxury, but the hotel’s decorating motif could be best summed up as Aztecan Sparse—which was extremely practical in this case. There was no point in putting the maids through the trouble of chasing the giant cockroaches around a lot of plush furniture.
“No, he wasn’t a perv.” Harmony was tired of thinking about what had led her down to Mexico, but Ashley wasn’t going to let the dead relationsh
ip go without one more autopsy.
“He must have been,” Ashley objected. “I can’t picture anything else making you split like this. I mean, he was so cute. And everyone was saying that he wanted to marry you. That had to be better than exile in Mexico.” Ashley looked around with a small sneer.
Harmony was thinking much the same thing, but had to flinch at her friend saying it aloud. There was a reason that their fellow countrymen were called ugly Americans.
Ashley and Harmony had booked themselves into the Hotel Ybarra because it was near Cuatros Cienegas, a nature reserve that had sounded charming in the brochure put out by Ashley’s new environmental tour-guide friend, but which was proving to be rather less than the five-star—or even three-star—experience she’d been hoping for. Harmony saw this as a salutary lesson on the evils of letting others plan her…vacations. Yeah, vacation. That sounded better than retreat. Ashley seemed to believe that Harmony was here to write a story for the newsletter. Harmony didn’t correct this impression. Misdirection had become a way of life for her. The organization she worked for was full of ardent, dedicated environmentalists, but the front office that put out the newsletter and engaged in other innocuous public activities was a petri dish for gossip. Gossip could get her in a lot of legal trouble.
“He’s not a pervert. Far from it. He’s actually a corporate-climber complete with hammer, ax, and pitons—and a pile of colleagues’ metaphorical bodies he’s scrambled over to reach the top. Beau knows exactly how to keep his steel-toed designer boots on the neck of the common man,” Harmony answered, surrendering to Ashley’s pestering and feeling free to speak her mind since she was now hundreds of miles away from Beaumont Davidson and the miasma he had cast over her psyche. The tequila shooters were helping her sense of well-being, too. However, far from being therapeutic and restoring her tranquillity, the more she talked about Beau, the more indignant she became.
“You know the type, bursting with the conviction that they are always right and therefore the ends can justify any means—and a brain shrink-wrapped in macho claptrap that prevents any new ideas from getting in. Bad enough to know he’s like that on the job, but it didn’t end there. For him, the women’s movement never happened. He was expecting me to retire to a little cottage with a picket fence where he planned on keeping me impregnated until I had produced enough Beau Juniors to field a hockey team.” And she had almost fallen for it.
Even as she spoke, half of her mind was on the dark man in the corner. Harmony hadn’t noticed him at first because he was just one more shadow in a room full of murky places that she didn’t want to peer into. But as she had started speaking, he had leaned forward as though to better hear her conversation, and the candlelight had painted his fascinating face with wavering light.
Of course, he couldn’t hear her from where he was sitting. The room was too loud. But she liked looking at him anyway and pretending that he was listening to her. This man was different. He almost had bedroom eyes—those sleepy lids that promised that any woman who went to bed with him would end up likewise exhausted. Harmony didn’t buy it, though. No, the more she looked at him, nursing a Dos Equis with a bit of lime, the more certain she became that this wasn’t a man looking for a quickie vacation fling with the first available blonde. Those dark, dark irises—or perhaps they were his pupils, dilated by shadows or drugs of some sort—were far too intent on his surroundings. This man might wear a slight, seductive smile as he looked over the bar, but he had more than sexual fun and games on his mind. She was a bit psychic that way.
That only made him more intriguing.
And maybe dangerous. Stupid, stupid—to be interested in someone like this, but that had always been her favorite flavor of man.
“Beau said that? About the kids? That’s so…so retro.”
“Yes.” Well, he hadn’t exactly said it, but she had known what he wanted. She had these moments when she absolutely knew what some people were thinking, and this had been one of them. “I don’t even know if I want kids. For sure I don’t want half a dozen. Sheesh—that’s a lot of emotional mouths to feed.”
She was half speaking to the dark stranger, though he couldn’t hear her. As a rule, she no longer confided in anyone, hardly even herself. The only place she felt free anymore to tell even a veiled version of the truth was in her novel. And now to this shadowy man in the corner of the cantina.
“Wow. That would totally wreck your body. Think of the stretch marks! I’d have split too. That’s too bad about Beau, though. The man is going places and he was good-looking for a rich guy.” Ashley sighed. Too bad, she said, but Ashley didn’t look particularly compassionate. Harmony knew her friend would in all likelihood try to arrange to meet with Beau when they got back.
But what had she expected? Ashley was very selfcentered and not someone that Harmony actually liked. They’d ended up traveling companions because everyone else she knew in the movement had a regular job and couldn’t run off with only two hours’ notice. And because Harmony had been too afraid to run off to Mexico alone in a fifteen-year-old Honda Accord with almost two hundred thousand miles on it. The Honda was loyal, but it had an aging engine that was fussy. There was only one mechanic who could work on it—thanks to the many experimental “green” devices that had been grafted onto the original engine—and that was a six-foot, seven-inch schizo named George, who periodically went off his meds and then left town to follow his voices that said it was his destiny to destroy the Great Satan who was residing most recently at the Alameda Naval Station. He’d gone from shipyard to jail to mental hospital in quick order. Just like all the other times. He’d always come back to work eventually, but not on any predictable schedule, and this time he’d been gone for weeks. Harmony couldn’t wait any longer. So, though she got great gas mileage and emitted few toxins while doing it, she couldn’t drive over forty miles per hour, and broke down at least once a month while waiting for the medication to clear George’s brain of demons. It wasn’t the way she wanted to travel in a foreign country.
She could have rented a car, but if she used her real name that would leave the kind of trail that Beau—or actually Beau’s security chief—could follow. She had a fake I.D. and passport, and could have used them to rent a car, but she was holding these papers in reserve for the day when she might really and truly have to disappear. Though she didn’t like to think about it, she knew that it could happen in her line of work. So she had chosen Ashley and her new Jeep Cherokee as the lesser of evils.
“Yes. It disappointed me too. We weren’t compatible, though—in any way. He was in missionary position on Wednesday nights at eight o’clock, in bed, with the lights off.” That wasn’t one hundred percent true—but maybe ninety-eight percent, which was close enough for this kind of conversation, which dealt more in emotional truth than actual statistics. Harmony didn’t add that the sex with Beaumont in any position had become awful once she had fought through his psychic barriers and made a clear mental connection with him. The man had turned out to be an emotional vampire, able to suck the fun out of anything by making what she did—or what he thought she did, writing for an environmental magazine—sound trivial. His every act was deliberate, calculated, and competitive, and sex turned out to be no different. So intent on his own pleasure was he once he slipped between the sheets that she would have suspected him of thinking of female nude mud-wrestling to hurry things along. But that would be far too vulgar a sport for him. More likely it was golf, and he was thinking that every thrust needed to be a hole in one. In any event, golf or mud-wrestling bimbos, it hadn’t had anything to do with her or what she thought, felt, or did. To him, she was a pretty accessory that could breed, little more.
“Bo-o-oring. And I thought he was so romantic, always sending you flowers and stuff. The guys in the office would laugh about how clever you were to seduce him. Not everyone will put out for the cause like we do, you know.” Ashley was serious.
Harmony didn’t flinch, but she made a note to be su
re and punch the noses of the gossips at headquarters who were telling people she was an environmental whore, though that was more or less what they were supposed to think. Few people in her organization knew who she really was and how vigorous her participation in illegal activities was. To keep too many questions from being asked about her, she had been assigned the role of bimbo spy, a honey-pot who checked things out for a small environmental newspaper by hanging out in bars that catered to developers and other land-rapers, and then called in the big guns if anything was actually going on. No one knew that she actually was the heavy gun.
Her involvement with Beau wasn’t job-related, though—at least not officially. That was hard to explain, however, because most of her work friends would be contemptuous of any confession that she had found this man in the enemy camp appealing because of his self-confidence, and that the exercise of his power was a kind of aphrodisiac. She had, though. Beau was a bad boy in a nice suit. Like many strong women, Harmony was looking for a man that shared and maybe even surpassed her strength and focus. Too bad that when she found one, he turned out to be a predictable jerk.
“I’d rather have good sex than good flowers.” Though the flowers and other presents had been nice. And Beau had really liked her. At least as much as he liked his car and house, though perhaps not quite as much as his stock portfolio. As wealthy workaholics went, that made him almost romantic, even if seeing him in full work mode had eventually felt more like she was tagging along on a drive-by shooting than a date. Ruthless was one thing; heartless was another. Beau, she could now admit, was both.
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