Fade to Midnight

by Shannon McKenna

  Edie froze solid with disgust, at the thought of being naked in front of that pair. It took the bruising force of Des's gun, prodding beneath her chin to get her moving. High-tops, first. The muddy laces were impossible to undo, so she just wrenched them off. She peeled off jeans, shirt, and that was it. Her underwear was long gone. Abandoned in Aaro's cabin, along with her life, her heart, her hopes. Her future.

  Ava and Des stared at her body, horribly interested in it.

  "Dessie," Ava said softly. "Look at those tits. Lovely, hmm?"

  Des cleared his throat, his face flushed. "We don't have time to--"

  "To do anything about your erection? Awww. So sad."

  "Put on the fucking dress, Edie," Des rapped out harshly. "Now."

  Ava tossed it to her, and Edie stared down at her filthy, scratched hands holding the delicate fabric. Leaving smudges, mud, bloodstains.

  She unzipped it, and struggled for a few minutes before managing to fasten the zipper up the side. It was tight. She'd been a few pounds thinner back when her mother had gotten her this dress.

  Memories floated back. This dress. Her parents thirtieth wedding anniversary dinner. A black tie affair. Two hundred guests. She'd done something that made her mother furious. Some ill-timed, prophetic blurt, to some extremely important guy. A politician, maybe. It seemed so trivial, now. Her mind was racing around like a headless chicken, trying to flee the reality of her immediate future. Still a mystery. But not really. Not so much. Some variation on pain, horror, and then death.

  "Pretty as a princess," Ava said softly. "Now. Out the door. Move."

  "Aren't you going to crown her?" Des asked.

  "I'll wait til we get to Ronnie's room," Ava said. "If she's a dud, I don't want to have to move the body. Saves on mess."

  Des wound his hand into Edie's hair and yanked her head back as he prodded her with the gun. The lights in the corridor made her eyes water as she stumbled, barefoot over the carpet runner. She saw the frame of Ronnie's door. Des let her head drop, shoved her through.

  A thin sound escaped her when she saw Ronnie, gagged and tied to her four-poster. Her eyes met Edie's, wide with terrified entreaty.

  Edie's heart thudded. Sickening hammer blows. The big box that held the rest of Ronnie's firecrackers sat next to the bed, with puffs of red tissue paper sticking out.

  "Behold, your murder weapon." Ava Cheung held out the gleaming letter opener, nestled in another silk scarf. "You'll stab everyone to death, but you won't know about me being here, because I came here after you left last night. I'll be the one witness, hiding behind a curtain. Terrified for my life." Ava was purring with satisfaction. "Des will be gone before the cops come. The security shift will find you dead, and me, catatonic with shock. I'm not quite sure how you'll kill yourself yet. But I'm taking suggestions, if anything juicy occurs to you."

  Edie looked into Ava's glittering eyes. The question rose up from deep within her, from beyond even fear. "You don't even know me," she said. "Why do you hate me so much?"

  Ava lifted the syringe. "Because you are what you are," she said. "You have what you have. And still, you dare to feel sorry for your self."

  Reactions fought inside her. Indignation. The hot desire to defend her right to be miserable, too. And then, the clear, almost crystalline realization of how strange, how stupid, how silly it all was.

  "I regret that," she said quietly. And strangely, she meant it.

  For what it was worth. She knew that it would change nothing.

  "Don't be," Ava hissed. "I don't need your regret. I need...this."

  Ava stabbed the needle in.

  CHAPTER 39

  Bruno drove, which was good, because Kev would have driven them right off the road. Fortunately, the highway was empty at this hour. Sean had been on the phone nonstop with the guy named Nick up in the San Juans who was following Davy's signal on the satellite map. The signal was still moving, but they were a good twenty-five minutes behind it, and they weren't gaining. Marr's Jag only had two people in it, and did a hundred and ten without breaking a sweat.

  The fat dead guy's Mercedes G-Class had a powerful engine, but it was carrying five big men, and Bruno wasn't getting more than ninety.

  Bruno's eyes and nose were still streaming, but he just wiped them on his sleeve and drove grimly on.

  "Hey," Sean announced to the vehicle at large. "He's turning off onto Highway 26. Must be heading back to the Parrish place."

  Kev felt a sick horror clutch his innards. "He's taking her to Ava," he said dully. "Like a dog taking a dead rabbit to its master."

  The others exchanged looks. "Hey, come on," Sean encouraged. "It might not be that bad. The Parrish house is a fortress, full of security and domestic staff, and her family. He can't possibly--"

  "Ava Cheung has been in that house for six hours," Kev said. "She has an X-Cog crown. They could all be dead by now. Easily. Do you know what someone with a fucking crown can do?"

  Sean stared at him coldly for a second. "Yeah, brother," he said. "I remember what a crown can do. I almost murdered my wife with a blow torch the last time I wore one. So watch your fucking tone of voice."

  Kev muttered an apology, remembering oblique references to Sean's own adventures with Osterman and X-Cog. One of the many stories that there was no time to tell. Who knew if there ever would be.

  Minutes ticked by as Bruno coaxed speed out of the Mercedes. Sean's phone rang again. He listened. "Marr's car has turned off 26. It's going south on Cedar," he said. "Six minutes to the Parrish house."

  And they still had so far to go. "Goddamnit, Bruno!" Kev roared. "Can't you kick some more speed out of this thing?"

  The motor roared as they sped through the pale gray dawn.

  The sting. Like a spider bite. Edie's mind freewheeled as the cold numbness spread, and in its wake, a tension that pulled her tighter and tighter. Every muscle was contracted, tearing at all the others, stretched to the screaming limit. She was arched, grimacing. She'd snap if she made a move. Her bones would break, her tendons pop. Her lungs struggled to expand. Oh, God. Air. Please.

  Ava came closer, bracing her against the wall as she attached a device to Edie's head. Sticking the dangling metal sensors against her skull. The frantic need for air built and built. She was smothering.

  The room was going dark. Blessed unconsciousness.

  "Need to breathe?" Ava asked. "Want some help?"

  The woman slammed into her mind, and Edie reeled under the onslaught. Like corrosive gas. No way to block it out.

  Ava expanded Edie's lungs for her. Her chest jerked and shuddered. The air hurt, forced into her tense, locked lungs.

  Kev had told her how the X-Cog crown worked. But she'd had no idea. She felt death around her. A wasteland of foul, poisonous hatred. The pressure in her eyes, in her brain. Her heart, laboring frantically.

  Des lunged for the window. "Car, outside the wall," he said.

  Ava looked startled. "It's too early for the new security shift."

  "I'll go take a look." A gun appeared in Des's hand. "Can you handle this alone? Remember what happened today. Don't get cocky."

  "Are you kidding?" Ava tittered. "She's no McCloud. She's just a poor little dumb rich girl. I'll just diddle around with her for a while, get a feel for her. Be quick, Dessie. I wouldn't want you to miss the show."

  Des chuckled. "No way." He disappeared out the door.

  Ava leaned closer to Edie's face. Her laughter echoed, strangely metallic, in Edie's ears. Ava's eyes were white rimmed, like a mad horse. Splotches of makeup on her sallow skin.

  Something cold and hard touched Edie's palm. Her fingers closed around it. The letter opener. Her rigid arm rose up, stabbed violently down. Yes, that's a good girl...walk over here now...that's good...

  That mocking voice was getting farther away, her ears roared, her heart galloped. She tasted blood. Her body convulsed--

  She took a step forward. Another. And another, more smoothly.

  She floa
ted back from herself, watching it like a movie. Reflecting with detached irony, what a shame it was that she hadn't realized the true wealth she'd had. Not until it was being torn away.

  She'd had Ronnie. Kev. She'd seen beautiful things. She'd spent so much time in that timeless, blissful place where she went when she made art. Drawing, painting. Utterly happy and at peace. That was wealth. She only saw it now, when it was all being destroyed.

  The way this woman had been destroyed.

  With that insight, her inner eye opened up. Lights, going on every where. She didn't want it to, she hadn't asked it to. She didn't want to see what was behind that woman's tormented eyes.

  But she saw it anyway. With an awful sense of recognition, as if she were looking in the mirror. Rage, shame, self-hate. Crushing her.

  Grief. She dragged in air, willed it away, fighting for breath--

  Ava's eyes widened. They realized at the same instant that Ava had not initiated that breath.

  Edie's arm dropped. The knife fell to the carpet. Terrified joy warred with disbelief. Ava was screaming at her. Edie felt drops of hot spittle hitting her face. A thin thread of blood trickled out of Ava's nose.

  Edie tried to move. Her euphoria was quickly deflated. She was still immobilized. Pulled so tight, her body was about to snap. But her will to move was out of Ava's reach, as long as that inner eye stayed open. The part of her mind that Osterman had stimulated, or eliminated, or whatever the hell he'd done...had created a blind spot.

  The only catch was that in this state, she was connected to everyone. The barriers were gone. That was why she knew things about people when she drew them. She didn't want to know Ava, to fuse with Ava, but she had no choice. She was one with Ava's torment. She saw it all, felt it, owned it. She'd have screamed, if she could. This made the X-Cog rictus seem like nothing. This was pure, burning hell on earth.

  Ava was wailing, screeching. Blood streamed from her nose. Mascara dripped. Mouth stretched wide. Hitting Edie's face, swatting, punching. She knocked her back against the wall.

  Ava's mind was shaking apart, and Edie's along with her. A screaming hurricane inside them both, destroying everything.

  Edie drew in another shuddering breath...and embraced the storm. Getting bigger, softer, wider. Expanding. Like ripples spreading, until the disturbance was just a small, frantic movement in one part of her consciousness. She regarded it while the rest of her expanded into a serene vastness. She could just keep going. Expand into infinite space.

  Maybe she'd even find Kev out there. The thought made her heart clutch with hopeful joy...

  And she saw Ronnie, far below her. Curled up like a little, huddled comma on the bed. All alone, terrified. In hell.

  Ronnie. She couldn't float away. Ronnie needed her. Kev would have to wait. Grief cut deep, again. She had to leave this peace now, and claw her way back down into that hellhole of violence and fear.

  Thwack, thwack. The pain came back into focus. A fronthand whack, then a backhand one. Hard, jaw rattling slaps. "Goddamn you! Goddamn you!" Ava shrieked. "Don't you dare die, bitch!"

  Oh, I wish, Edie thought, almost wistfully.

  A spate of gunfire thundered below.

  No one had challenged them at the gate, which turned Kev's stomach with fear. His brothers and Miles yelled at him, wait, stop, hang on, but he crawled up onto the top of the Mercedes G-Class, catching the top of the wall, scrambling up. A brief moment to take stock of the ominously dark, quiet house, and he leaped, thudding onto soft grass. He pushed through some rosebushes. Thuds sounded behind him. The rest of them crept up behind him, cat silent and wary.

  The front door was unlocked. It swung silently open to his gentle push. They stared at the long body of the man who lay there, face down, a pool of blood forming under his face on the gleaming marble floor.

  Kev slid inside, sidling by the wall. Miles and Sean drifted like shadows toward the wing that opened off to the right. Bruno gestured silently in the direction of the stairway. Kev slunk through the arch to the left, Davy following him.

  A bizarre tableau. Three people, gagged, tied to chairs, all in a row. Staring, their purple faces mad with terror. But still alive.

  Kev recognized the older one as he darted closer. The aunt from the hospital. The cousin. The butthead doctor. He plucked away the gag from the older woman's mouth, which appeared to be a filmy lace bra, and yanked a wad of cloth from her mouth, which proved to be a pair of matching thong panties. "Where's Edie?" he demanded.

  The woman coughed, hacked, and began to scream.

  "Oh, shit," Kev muttered, and shoved the panties back into the woman's mouth. "Not now, lady."

  Davy crouched behind the old woman's chair, sawing through her cuffs. The younger one's rolling eyes and terror sweat didn't bode well for time-sensitive information gathering, so he left her for Davy's tender mercies too, and tried the older guy. He got to work on the gag. Pink tap pants. A matching satin bra. "Where's Edie?" he demanded.

  The man coughed, sobbed. "She...she...ah...Des Marr--"

  "I know about Des Marr. Tell me where Edie is!" he roared.

  "Drop your gun, Kev." A familiar soft, hateful voice from behind him. "And you, too, whoever the fuck you are. I never did learn to tell you McCloud assholes apart. You all look alike to me."

  Kev spun. Bruno's reddened eyes stared up at him from a hammer-lock against Marr's chest, in mute apology. His chest jerked, trying to get air. Marr's gun was shoved up under his chin.

  "Drop it," Marr said. "Now. Or his head explodes."

  Kev's gun dropped. Davy's thudded down soon after.

  "You bastards were supposed to be dead." Marr sounded piqued.

  "Yeah, well," Kev muttered. "We're funny that way."

  "Take a look at my gun, Kev," Marr said. "Recognize it?"

  Kev took a look. It was a SIG 220, like the one he'd taken with him yesterday, to go to Helix. "That's my gun?"

  "Registered to you. Covered with your prints. Inside and out." Marr sounded complacent. "I'm wearing a latex glove, of course. Edie will hold it when she blows her brains out, after killing all of you. And you still take the fall. From the grave."

  In the silence that followed, they heard the whining of police sirens. Alarm flashed in Des's eyes. He looked at Kev, at the weeping women huddled on the floor, the doctor curled into the fetal position.

  "I don't think you have time for that scenario," Kev said slowly. "I think there are too many people to kill, Marr. And too little time."

  "Oh, yeah?" Marr laughed, harshly. "You think?" He yanked Bruno's head back. The gun barrel whipped around to point at Kev.

  Kev dove to the side. Bruno convulsed, like a huge fish flopping--

  Four guns thundered, all at once. Des jittered, suspended against the wall. He slid down, his face a pulpy red mess, and thudded on top of Bruno, sagging forward. The screaming from the ladies got louder. The doctor joined lustily in. Bruno crawled from under Marr's corpse, spattered with blood, looking pale and shaken.

  Miles and Sean rose up from their positions crouched at the door, but Kev raced past without looking or hearing.

  Edie.

  More gunshots rocked the house. Ava looked almost frightened. Edie could smell the stench of the other woman's fear sweat.

  "OK," Ava panted. "We have to do things a little differently now. See this? Watch." She grabbed an orange candle from Ronnie's shelf, and grabbed the book of matches beside it. She lit it.

  She leaned close to Edie, holding the lit candle close enough to Edie's face so that the burning sensation became uncomfortable, then painful. Awful pain. But she could not flinch. She was frozen stiff.

  "I'd like to do to your face what Gordon did to your boyfriend's," Ava said. "But I guess I really should do Ronnie's. After all, she's the one you're jealous of, right? Daddy's little favorite?" She lifted the candle. "I'll make a deal with you. You stop blocking me...and I'll have you slit her throat, nice and quick. It'll be all over in twenty seconds. If you don't
stop blocking me, I will burn her face for a long, long time, while you watch. And then, I slit her throat. You decide."

  "Edie?" A voice shouted from downstairs.

  Kev. Oh, dear God, that was Kev's voice. He wasn't dead!

  Excitement, disbelief, shattered her detachment, her mind-mode wavered, and Ava's control slammed into her again. Ava laughed triumphantly, and forced Edie's arms to raise, her hands to flex. She placed the burning candle in one of Edie's shaking hands, the knife in the other. "Now we're talking," she said. "Party-time, Edie. Walk."

  And she did, toes clenching on the thick carpet. Her mind raced. She was paralyzed. The only way to move or walk at all was to have Ava move her. And so...and so. She padded toward Ronnie's bed. Focused on the candle flame in the foreground, Ronnie's flailing body in the background.

  Eyes wide, Ronnie watched her big sister lurching toward her like the living dead, with a blade and an open flame.

  All Edie could do was hope that the trajectory Ava chose would take her right over to the box by Ronnie's bed. And time it just right, or else the candle would ignite the bedclothes.

  Closer...closer. Knife in her right hand. Candle in her left. One more step, but she needed lead time. She concentrated...

  ...and sank deeper within herself. Softening. Drawing back, letting that inner eye open. Let it take in everything. Accept everything.

  She stopped. The knife fell from her slack hand. The candle clung a moment to the sweat on her palms, but then it fell, too.

  It thudded into the box, with its protruding clusters of crumpled red, orange, and yellow tissue paper. The paper caught fire.

  Ava let out a shriek of rage, and launched a front kick that caught Edie in the head, and knocked her off her feet. She sprawled full length.

  Ava yanked the box closer, batting at the flames. A Roman candle went off, spitting a fountain of sparks into her face.

  Ava screamed, tumbling backward as the fireworks all went off.