“Slapped you like the bitch that you are,” Mika said. She grinned.
Carmen lunged at her. She seized Mika by the fabric of her cat suit and drove her against the refrigerator. She rammed punches into Mika—one-two-three slugs to the body.
“Get off me, bitch.” Mika grabbed Carmen’s hair and savagely yanked her head back. Carmen yelped. Mika drove her knee into Carmen’s stomach.
“Uuuhh.” The air blew out of Carmen’s lungs. It took all of her fortitude to keep from passing out.
Carmen swung a wild fist at Mika. Mika blocked the punch and shoved Carmen across the kitchen. The edge of the counter stabbed Carmen’s back. She winced. Panting.
This psycho bitch was strong. Inhumanly strong. She couldn’t fight her.
She glanced at the doorway, wondering if she could make it out of the kitchen.
Mika tracked her gaze. “You’re not running away, bitch.”
She came at Carmen again.
Grabbing the handle of a skillet—the nearest thing at hand—Carmen heaved it in a wide arc.
The skillet boinged off the side of Mika’s head almost comically, as if they were a couple of battling cartoon characters.
But it didn’t slow her. Driving forward, she smacked Carmen in the face. The pop of open hand against soft flesh was like a firecracker.
Carmen’s legs sagged. Her face was on fire; blood dripped from her lips.
Gathering all her remaining strength, she rushed Mika. Mika pushed her away as if she were a child. She smacked her again.
Woozy with pain, Carmen fell onto the floor.
“Bitch.” Mika kicked her in the ribs with her pointy-toed boot. It felt like a spike.
Gagging on her screams, Carmen pulled herself into a ball. Wished she could curl up so tightly that she would vanish. She couldn’t win this fight—it was hopeless.
Mika roughly turned her over. She sat on Carmen’s stomach, her knees pinning Carmen’s arms to the floor.
“Bitch.” She slapped Carmen again.
Carmen’s head drooped sideways. Blackness tugged at her.
“Stop,” Carmen said weakly. “Please . . . you win.”
Mika shook her head. Maniacal glee shone in her eyes.
She burrowed her hands underneath Carmen’s blouse, slipped them under the cups of her bra. She grasped Carmen’s nipples and twisted.
Carmen cried out. Tears washed down her cheeks, mingled with the blood running from her mouth.
Mika laughed. Twisted again.
“How’s it feel, bitch? Was trying to take my man worth it, bitch? Was it?”
Another brutal twist.
“Was it worth it, bitch? Answer me!”
Carmen was weeping. But she formed a glob of saliva and spat in Mika’s face.
“Damn right it was worth it. And I’d do it again!”
Spit dripping from her nose, Mika gritted her teeth. She extended her hand.
The knife spun through the air like a boomerang and landed in her grasp.
Chapter 52
The Rolls Royce’s open trunk mesmerized Andrew. Someone terrifying familiar awaited him in there. He trudged toward it like a sleepwalker, oblivious to his father and Carmen and everything else around him, as if the trunk was the glowing end of a long, narrow tunnel.
At the bumper, he froze.
Inside, Mika’s three cats sat on a dead body.
Eric’s body.
Bundled in a blue house robe, Eric lay inside, his tall, lanky body twisted to fit the dimensions of the trunk. Blood dampened the robe’s collar; his throat was slit from one side to the other, as if someone had drawn a bloody grin across his flesh.
His lolling head was turned so that that his dead eyes bore into Andrew. Accusingly, it seemed.
It’s your fault this happened to me, bro. I warned you about that crazy female.
The cats glowered at Andrew, as if confirming the guilty charge.
As though from a great distance, Andrew heard himself scream.
Raymond fled across the big backyard, heading toward the dock.
Walter pursued him. He was an old guy, but he was supernaturally fleet-footed. He gained steadily on Raymond.
Not gonna be able to outrun this bastard.
Raymond hadn’t been in a fistfight since he was a teenager. It had been a bench-clearing brawl at a high school football game. He’d given a kid a black eye and had only wound up with swollen knuckles.
But that had been decades ago. He didn’t feel optimistic about his chances in a fight with the giant, strong caretaker.
Ahead, the boat bobbed in the water.
There was no way he’d have time to get in the boat and start it—he didn’t even know how in the hell to start a boat—before the caretaker caught him.
Walter’s footfalls clapped behind him. Closing in.
He prayed that the old guy couldn’t swim or was afraid of water. If not, he was done.
Remembering Andrew’s comment about the water’s shallow depth near the banks, Raymond ran to the end of the dock and leaped into the lake.
Eric’s dead. Mika killed him. To get to me.
Like a blow to the cranium, shock had dulled Andrew’s thoughts. He gripped the edges of the trunk. Head lowered, he stared at a body that surely could not be real. This body was like a figure in a wax museum. A perfect replica of Eric Patton. But not real.
The cats had scattered when he had screamed.
This can’t be happening.
But Eric hadn’t blinked once. His chest hadn’t risen or fallen. His mouth hadn’t opened to form words in his achingly familiar voice.
Andrew’s thoughts were as disordered as leaves in a windstorm. Didn’t know whether to believe Eric was dead or not, whether the corpse in front of him was real or not.
Before he knew what he was doing, he was running back to the house. Alternately crying and cursing. Finger on the trigger of the .38.
He fired at the patio door, destroying the lock. He flung the door open.
Inside, another vision out of a nightmare awaited him.
Mika was crouched above Carmen, on the floor. She had a knife.
The knife was buried in Carmen’s throat.
No, no, no.
Mika turned. “Andrew, darling!”
Andrew didn’t hesitate. He shot her.
The bullet tore into Mika’s shoulder. The impact knocked her off Carmen’s body and sent her rolling across the floor.
He hurried to Carmen.
The blade jutted from her throat. God, it was buried so deep in there. Blood pumped from the wound, drowned the edges of the knife.
He was afraid to pull it out. Had the insane, frightening thought that yanking out the knife would be like unplugging her from life support, and he would lose her forever.
Carmen’s clouded gaze found him. She smiled weakly. Blood leaked from her lips.
“Sorr y . . . Drew . . .”
He held her hand. “You’re not going to die, baby. No, no, you’re not gonna die. Not like this.”
More blood streamed from the wound, ran down her neck in fat rivulets.
He grabbed his cell phone.
They needed help. An ambulance. They could fix this. Someone could.
As he fumbled to push buttons on the phone, Carmen gently grasped his hand, guided it to the knife handle.
“Take . . . it out,” she whispered.
“Can’t do that,” he said. “No, baby, I can’t do that, I’m calling for help, we’re going to take care of everything, okay, just hang on, all right? Hang on.”
She blinked, slowly. Her hold on his hand loosened.
“Can’t die, you can’t, you’ve gotta hang on, please, baby, just hang on!”
The light in her eyes dimmed, sputtered.
“Just hang on, baby!”
Her light went out.
She was dead.
No.
Keening wordlessly, he cradled her body and rocked back and forth, as if the movement could
nudge her back to life. He buried his face against hers. Her warm blood smeared his cheeks, blended with his tears. Sobs shook him.
“Stop crying, Andrew. That bitch isn’t worth it.”
Mika was on her feet, loathing twisting her face. Her shoulder wound had healed.
Blinded by tears, he groped for his gun.
A boot stomped on his fingers. He yelped in surprise and pain. Looked up.
Like an evil giant, Walter towered above him.
“My apologies for this, sir,” he said, and clouted Andrew upside the head with a blunt object.
When Andrew swam back into consciousness, Mika and Walter stood above him in the kitchen, talking.
“His father escaped,” Walter said to Mika, with the deference of a child addressing an elder. “He jumped into the lake. You understand how water frightens me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Andrew scarcely knows the man. Let him go.”
Andrew’s head ached where the caretaker had struck him. A moan slipped out of him.
“He’s awake!” Mika said, her eyes brightening. Smiling, she knelt beside him. “Hello there, darling.” Tenderly, she touched his head.
He jerked away from her touch. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“We’re going to go home now, Andrew.” Her face had drawn into a stern expression. “No more running, no more hiding. It’s over.”
“Not going anywhere with your crazy ass.”
Rising, she nodded at Walter.
“Hold still, sir,” Walter said in his gravelly baritone. He knelt beside Andrew and placed his gigantic hands on Andrew’s arms, pinning them to the floor.
“Let go of me!” Andrew squirmed to break free, but the old guy’s hands were like iron clamps.
Walter grinned at him, showing a mouthful of big, white teeth. Teeth like a horse, his mother would have said. He easily held Andrew down.
Mika opened a small, black leather carrying case. She removed a syringe.
“This will relax you during our drive home,” she said. She punctured the crook of his arm with the needle and injected a silvery fluid into his bloodstream.
Andrew spat curses at her.
“We’ll be home soon, baby.” She caressed his face.
As the sedative took over, he sank into darkness.
As Raymond had hoped, the caretaker didn’t follow him into the water. After he jumped into the lake, feet-first, he waded several yards away from the shore, until the waves came up to his chest, to put a safe distance between himself and his pursuer.
Walter stood stock-still on the edge of the dock. He regarded the water fearfully.
In the backyard, at the rear of the Rolls Royce, Andrew screamed—a sound not of physical pain, but of soul-wrenching grief.
What the hell had his boy seen?
Maybe it was something that he didn’t want to know.
Andrew ran to the house, shattered the patio door with a gunshot, and burst inside.
Another shot rang from the kitchen.
Spiders of anxiety crawled across Raymond’s neck.
What was going on in there?
Walter’s gaze went from the house, then back to Raymond—and then he shrugged and stalked toward the house.
Raymond stayed in the water.
He wanted to help Andrew and Carmen, but he didn’t know what he could do to aid them against these monsters. Something—intuition, maybe—cautioned him to keep his distance from the main action. Although he wondered if he were just being a coward.
Several minutes later, Mika strutted outside. He marveled at how beautiful and youthful she looked. He had last seen this woman thirty years ago, and for how she appeared, it might as well have been yesterday.
Mika didn’t look toward the water. She waited beside the car while Walter carried two people out of the house, limp bodies slung like garbage bags over his broad shoulders: Andrew, and Carmen.
Raymond’s blood turned colder than the water around him.
She couldn’t have killed Andrew. She was in love with him. Right?
But he wasn’t as optimistic about Carmen’s fate.
Walter put Carmen in the trunk; he placed Andrew in the backseat. Mika climbed in the back, too, and Walter shut the door behind her.
The sedan sped out of the yard, spitting leaves and grit in the air, and disappeared around the corner of the house. The echo of the rumbling engine faded.
They could be going to only one destination: Mourning Hill.
He had been left behind. They knew he was hiding in the lake. Probably, they figured he was too insignificant to bother with any more.
They’d underestimated him. Dismissed him as a non-factor.
But this was the event of which he’d been dreaming for the past few weeks. The nightmare had been a message; it also had been prophetic.
It was time to save his son.
Chapter 53
As the night extended its hold over the world, Raymond frantically moved around the lake house.
In a bedroom, he found clothes in Andrew’s suitcase. He changed out of his damp gear and slipped on jeans, a T-shirt, and low-cut Adidas. Fortunately, he and Andrew wore the same sizes.
Next, he searched for a suitable weapon. He found numerous knives in the kitchen, but disregarded them. He wanted something more lethal than an ordinary piece of cutlery. A gun would be ideal.
He didn’t find any firearms, but in the storage shed, he discovered a heavy-duty wood axe, nearly three feet long from the bottom of the handle to the tip of the head. The broad, wedge-shaped blade gleamed, evidence of a recent sharpening. This would do just fine.
He didn’t hold any misconceptions about what he had to do. Someone would likely end up dead before the night ended. The blood that stained the kitchen floor was proof of the high stakes for which they were playing.
Calling the police wasn’t an option. What was he going to do—tell the cops that a hundred-something-year-old woman who looked twenty-five and possessed extrasensory powers was taking his son to her haunted mansion? Sure, that would guarantee their assistance—hauling him to the local psychiatric hospital, that is.
Giving the authorities a more reasonable story—maybe saying that Andrew had been abducted—while it would likely secure the police’s involvement, wasn’t a much better option. What were the cops going to do when they faced Mika? Shoot her? It would never work. Conventional tactics bound the police.
But not him.
This was not a matter to be settled by ordinary thinking, commonplace methods. Which meant involving other people would be a waste of time. This was his responsibility. He had to go at it alone.
But in fact, he really wasn’t sure what he was going to do. All he was certain of was that he needed to get to Mourning Hill. By the time he arrived, he hoped that a plan presented itself.
Carrying the axe over his shoulder and his briefcase in his hand, like some weird lumber-chopping executive, he hastened to his Ford.
The driver’s side door sprang open.
He paused.
A coolness that couldn’t be attributed to the evening breeze danced around him.
“Sammy?” he said. “You with me, son?”
A cold sensation, not unpleasant, folded over his hand. Ghostly fingers gently pried the briefcase out of his grasp and carried it inside the truck, placing it on the passenger seat.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
He wasn’t alone after all.
Chapter 54
After a deep sleep rife with disturbing dreams, Andrew awoke. He lay on his back on soft, burnished leather seats. Groggy, he tried to figure out where he was.
He was inside a car. The fragrance of jasmine hung in the air.
His breath snagged in his chest as comprehension came over him.
Mika’s beatific face floated into his line of sight. She cradled his head in her lap.
Looking down at him, she smiled. “Hi, baby.”
He opened his mouth to scr
eam. But he couldn’t draw enough breath to do so. Bolting upright, he gasped, hyper ventilating like an asthmatic child.
Mike was unconcerned. “We’re home, darling. At last! I can hardly wait to give you a tour of our estate.”
He finally found his voice. “Get the hell away from me!” He scrambled to the other side of the car and grabbed the door handle, not knowing or caring whether the sedan was moving. He shoved the door open and rolled outside, onto the damp earth.
The Rolls Royce was parked at the end of a long, winding gravel driveway. Mourning Hill stood before him on the crest of a mound, wide roof framed by tattered clouds and a bone-white moon. The dreary mansion, its massive columns wreathed in Spanish moss, was every bit as forbidding as he remembered from his first time there.
This had to be the worst nightmare he’d ever had in his life. Someone had to wake him up before he lost his mind.
The sedan’s trunk yawned open. Fear made his legs watery, but he dragged himself to the rear of the vehicle, and peered inside.
The trunk was empty. There were no traces of blood or hair or clothing—nothing to indicate the terrible cargo that had been stored in there the last time he’d looked. The trunk was as clean as it probably had been on the day the car rolled out of the dealership parking lot.
He thought of Eric and Carmen. Dead. Gone forever.
Crippling grief buckled through him. He sagged against the bumper, hugging himself tightly.
“Walter has taken care of them,” Mika said, coming around the car’s flank. She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about such nasty things, baby. We’re home now. Let me hold you.” She stepped closer, arms spread to embrace him.
He knocked her hands away and backpedaled, squishing through mud. “I’m getting out of here.”
“That isn’t possible. You can’t leave. Ever.”
“Bullshit.” He sprinted along the driveway, away from the house.
“I’ll be waiting for you on the veranda, baby.” She laughed, and began to sing happily, a song about lovers reunited.
He ignored her maddening singing and concentrated on running down the narrow lane.
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