“Gee, I wonder why?” she asked with a smirk. “It’s been so quiet around here.”
“Guess who the call was from.”
“The governor, declaring a state of emergency.”
“Guess again.”
She smirked. “FEMA, asking what they can do for us.”
“Nope. Liz Huntington.”
“Did she leave a message?”
Joe shook his head. “I suspect she got cut off. There was enough reception for the call to come through, but then it got dropped.”
“Maybe she has information about her husband.”
“So she called to tell me about it in the middle of a hurricane?”
“Does seem odd. But maybe it was very important.”
Joe was staring at Liz’s number in the list of missed calls on his phone. “I tried calling back, but I can’t get through,” he said.
“Maybe it was a pocket dial,” Aggie suggested, “as she was hurrying down to the storm cellar.”
“Possibly,” Joe said.
But he knew it wasn’t. He had a hunch. And his hunches invariably were right.
He’d learned that the hardest way possible many years ago.
He kept staring at the phone.
“Soon as this thing is over,” he said, more to himself than to Aggie, “I’m going over there.”
75
“I mean it, Hoffman,” Roger said. “I have no compunction against shooting you through the heart. The cops would call it justified, after they see what you have done here.”
On the floor, Variola was barely able to lift her head. Yes, she thought. Shoot her! Kill her! Then the power will flow back to Variola.
Mrs. Hoffman only smiled. “Such a foolish man,” she said. “You always were.”
Variola watched. Suddenly Roger let out a scream of pain and dropped the gun, as if it had suddenly become scalding hot in his hand. Of course it was hot: Variola recognized again how well Hoffman had learned her lessons.
“Take the gun,” Hoffman ordered Naomi Collins, who obeyed swiftly. She aimed it at Roger, who was rubbing his burned hand. Not so long ago, Naomi had been the toast of Roger’s gallery. Now she might be his death.
“It’s your choice, Roger,” Hoffman said. “You can either rejoin our coven and herald the return of Dominique as our supreme leader, or you can die right here.”
Variola watched as Liz grabbed Roger’s arm. “They’re all mad! Can’t you see that?”
Roger shrugged her off. “Very well, Hoffman. You’ve won. Let the games begin.”
“Give her to us,” Hoffman said.
No, Variola thought.
Roger shoved Liz forward. “Sorry, darling. Nothing personal. You’d do the same to me if you had the barrel of a gun pointed at you and a coven of angry witches ready to take off your head.”
Liz screamed. Mr. Clayton grabbed her by her left arm, Karl by her right. They pulled her toward Mrs. Hoffman, passing Variola on the floor as they did so. Liz looked down and saw the dead body next to Variola was that of her friend.
“Nicki!” she shrieked. “Oh, Nicki, what did they do to you?”
“The same that we shall do to you now, my dear,” Mrs. Hoffman said. She held a bloodstained knife in front of Liz’s face.
I’ve got to stop this, Variola thought. I’ve got to summon the strength . . .
“Where is Martinez?” Mrs. Hoffman suddenly barked. “Where has she gone?”
They all looked around. “I didn’t see her leave,” Naomi said, still holding the gun at Roger.
“The despicable coward,” Hoffman grunted. “If she thinks she can survive out there in this storm, she’s wrong.”
Even as she spoke, the wind stopped. The furious, incessant howling and moaning of the storm ended, and its cessation—the eerie sudden silence—was even more startling than any of the noise it had made. They all looked up. The air was still. Outside the broken windows, the sun was even breaking through the dark gray clouds.
“The storm is over,” Mrs. Merriwell said.
“No,” Mrs. Hoffman replied, her eyes dancing in the plastic mask of her face. “We are in the eye of the storm! This is the moment of greatest power. We should have known. This, finally, is the opportunity we have been waiting for.”
A deathly stillness settled over the room, broken only by Liz’s terrified sobs.
“Prepare the ceremony,” Mrs. Hoffman announced. “We don’t have much time. Who knows how long the eye will last. And if Martinez returns, she may bring company back with her.”
“What will we do if she brings the police?” Mrs. Merriwell asked, distraught. “We all have reputations in this town, you know . . .”
“Silence, you old cow. Dominique will take care of everything once she is brought back to her full power.” Hoffman clapped her hands. “Bring the goblets!”
Once again she waved the knife in front of Liz, who stood before her restrained between Mr. Clayton and Karl, struggling and crying.
“You will provide the life to bring Dominique back. How fitting that is. You thought you could replace her. But in fact, you will be the means of her restoration.”
She placed the tip of the knife against Liz’s throat. Liz stopped struggling and stood stiffly in terror.
“Not for you the mercy I showed your friend,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “Not for you a single clean cut across the throat. For you, death will come by a thousand cuts, as they say. You will bleed for Dominique, and you will watch as your blood restores her.”
I must stop this, Variola thought again, but she was so weak she could no longer even move the fingers on her hand.
Mrs. Hoffman giggled like a teenager. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first day you arrived,” she said.
She swung the knife and sliced into Liz’s forearm. Liz let out a yelp.
“The goblets!” she cried.
The blood flowed freely.
And Dominique drank.
76
Everything was blackness, but she could hear voices coming from somewhere far away. “Can you hear us?” a man was asking. “Can you tell us your name?”
Maria opened her eyes. She was in some sort of vehicle, it seemed. An ambulance. Medical equipment. Oxygen tanks.
“What happened?” she mumbled. “How did I get here?”
In her mind, she saw Luis and Marisol . . . playing in the bright sunlight. They will be okay . . . I did the right thing.
But what exactly had she done? Maria couldn’t remember. . .
“You were thrown pretty bad by the storm.” The man whose face hovered above her had kind eyes and a soft voice. “Luckily we were right down the street.”
Maria realized the man was wearing camouflage. The National Guard.
The storm. The hurricane.
Oh, sweet Jesus . . .
The ceremony. The blood.
She was running to get help . . .
Maria panicked as the memories came flooding back to her. She tried to sit up. The man in the National Guard uniform gently restrained her.
“You’ve got to send help,” Maria told him. “Huntington House. There are people hurt there.”
“Okay, we’ll add them to the list,” the Guardsman told her. “There are lots of people hurt all over town.”
“But you don’t understand. They’ll kill her. They might already have done so.”
“There, there, ma’am, just lie still and try to relax.” He motioned over to a colleague. “I think she could use a sedative.”
Maria sat up. “No, you must listen! It’s a ceremony—a coven of witches!”
The Guardsman just looked at her oddly.
Maria thought of something. “Please! You must get me Detective Foley! I must tell Detective Foley what is going on in that house!”
77
It was something out of a fever-induced nightmare: Liz stood in a hurricane-devastated room being restrained on either side by two men, one of them a business associate of her husband’s, the other a
young man who had been very polite to her during every previous encounter. All the while Mrs. Hoffman, her nemesis ever since coming to this house, sliced open her forearm and collected her blood in a goblet.
Which she then gave to David’s supposedly dead first wife to drink.
The absurdity of it all was not lost on Liz, even in her terror.
“This can’t be happening,” she shouted, not believing what her eyes were showing her.
Dominique was alive! She had been living in the walls, in a secret room within the house, all this time. She was the deformed, bloated woman who had attacked her. Except now, as she sat there drinking her goblet of blood, Dominique looked different than she had the previous times Liz had seen her: she was looking less monstrous. Her hair was lustrous and dark again, much as it was in the portrait. Her face was less bloated. Her eyes were still protruding and her face still seemed broken, but the blood was reviving her, restoring her, under the black magic that had been practiced in this room.
Nicki’s blood had started the process, Liz realized sadly, refusing to look over at the dead body of her friend. No, the process had begun before that, she realized: Audra had been killed for her blood, and likely those two friends of hers who had gone missing, whom Detective Foley had asked her about, had been killed for the reason, too. Those were the bodies she had seen, Liz realized. Unfortunate young women slaughtered to keep Dominique alive.
That was as much as Liz’s brain would permit her to reason: just how Dominique had survived the accident on the boat, and whether David knew any of this, and whether Jamison’s or Rita’s murders fit this pattern, she had no idea. She had no time to think about any of that as the fear suddenly set in, threatening to choke her as it surged up from her gut, once the shock and denial of her terrible situation began to fade.
They’re going to kill me.
They are going to bleed me dry!
Mrs. Hoffman will kill me. And the others will let her.
Including Roger.
Liz’s eyes darted over to her brother-in-law. He was involved with this coven, as Mrs. Hoffman had called it. He’d been a follower of Dominique’s. How much did he know about the deaths of those women? He sat there now on a chair in the circle, his head in his hands. Naomi Collins, the artist whose weird paintings had so unnerved Liz, stood over him pointing a gun—but how easily Roger had accepted Liz’s fate, how easily he had allowed her to be taken away.
Sorry, darling. Nothing personal. You’d do the same to me if you had the barrel of a gun pointed at you and a coven of angry witches ready to take off your head.
No, Liz thought to herself. I wouldn’t have done the same. I would have fought back, even if it meant I was killed in the process.
In that moment, Liz realized something about herself. Even as she was held against her will and was growing weaker as more and more of her blood spilled out onto the floor, she understood she was a fighter, and she’d always been a fighter. So many times she had doubted her own strength; so many times she had felt helpless. Yet she was stronger than she ever gave herself credit for being. She was a fighter.
And she wasn’t done fighting yet.
Mrs. Hoffman was back in front of her, brandishing that knife.
“Where shall I make the next cut?” she asked. “That pretty little face?”
Liz’s arms were restrained by the two men on either side of her.
But her legs were free.
They think I’m just a scared little girl. That’s why they haven’t taken more precautions.
They’ve underestimated me.
With one swift move, Liz smashed her left knee into Mrs. Hoffman, right in the cunt. Mrs. Hoffman howled and dropped the knife.
In that same instant, Liz yanked herself free from the two surprised men.
“Seize her!” Mrs. Hoffman commanded.
The men made a move to pounce at her as Mrs. Merriwell and Mrs. Delacorte rushed forward as well. Liz knew she would quickly be surrounded, and Naomi Collins could easily fire a bullet her way.
But she wasn’t captured quite yet.
“You will not touch her!” came a voice. Liz spun around to see Variola, struggling to her feet, seeming to summon every last drop of strength she had in the effort. “All of you, who have defiled the teachings of vodou, will not touch her.” She turned her eyes—once so magnificent, now so sunken and dim, in Liz’s direction. “Go, girl. Go as fast as you can. This is the last Variola can do for you.”
Whatever magic Variola had invoked prevented any of Liz’s adversaries from moving. As long as Variola stood—trembling, with great will—she was safe. Anger burned in Mrs. Hoffman’s eyes as Liz was able to hurry across the room unobstructed toward the door, gripping her forearm tightly with her other hand to stanch the bleeding as best she could. She could feel her head spinning from the loss of blood. She prayed she wouldn’t faint.
She wasn’t the only one growing weak.
Just as Liz neared the door, Variola collapsed. She had used up the last of her strength, and she crumpled lifelessly to the floor, her body dissolving, as if she had been made of sand.
The second Variola disappeared, Liz saw movement return to the other people in the room. They broke free of their invisible chains. Now the door was out of reach. She would have to get past Naomi with the gun if she went that way. So there was only one route left to Liz for escape.
The secret passageway through the closet.
Liz made a beeline for it.
“Bring her back!” Hoffman shouted. “We need her blood before the eye moves on!”
But Liz was already several steps ahead of them. Through the open panel she ran, taking a few precious seconds to turn around and slide the panel back into place. Then she tore off her blouse and tied it tightly around her forearm to stanch the bleeding. That would hold for a little while. But not for long, she knew.
She turned and ran.
They’ll think that I’ve taken the ladder and gone down to the first floor. They’ll go looking for me there.
But Liz had another plan.
With the storm temporarily abated, she would go out onto the roof through the hole the winds had ripped open in the attic. She knew she was taking a risk: she’d have to find a way down from the roof, and she’d need to pray that the hurricane didn’t start up again until she was safely on the ground. But the roof, as precarious as it was, was less of a risk, Liz believed, than going downstairs and finding herself cornered by her pursuers on the first floor.
As she ran down the passage she could hear them banging on the panel, struggling to slide it open. Liz could hear Mrs. Hoffman ordering some of them downstairs in case Liz went that route, while instructing the others to follow her into the passage. “Half of you go this way, half of you go that way! Hurry! Hurry!”
Liz ran.
Outside, the winds were gathering again.
78
“The storm will be back soon,” Aggie cautioned as Joe pulled on his raincoat and headed out of the station. “I’m not sure you can get there and back in time.”
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to find out why Liz called me.”
“And if turns out it was just a pocket dial and you’re stuck out there in the worst hurricane Florida has seen in a decade?”
“I’m sure they’ve got a cozy, well-appointed safe room at Huntington House,” he quipped.
Aggie shook her head. “I’m coming with you.”
“But the storm—”
“We’re partners, aren’t we? We’re both investigating this case.”
Joe smiled. “Then let’s get going.”
They stepped out into the parking lot. The sky was a bright blue-green: pretty, but ominous, too. Joe didn’t think he’d ever seen it that color. The afternoon was unnervingly quiet now after all the noise and furor of the past couple of hours. With the coming of the eye, a hush seemed to have dropped over the city, which sat motionless, holding its breath, waiting for the next assault. The
only sounds Joe heard as he and Aggie walked to the car were the faraway drones of house and car alarms that had been set off by the winds. Joe glanced up into one of the few palm trees still standing on the street. Its fronds had begun to move slightly again. He knew Caroline wasn’t through with them. She was getting ready for her comeback.
“Get your badge out in case we’re stopped by the National Guard,” Joe told Aggie as they both hopped into the car. “Murder investigations don’t take a break, we’ll tell them.”
“Not even for hurricanes,” Aggie replied.
Joe started the car. But before he’d had a chance to back out, his phone, clipped to his belt, buzzed.
“Joe Foley,” he answered.
“Joe, it’s Tim Duncan over in dispatch. We have a call in from one of the National Guard mobile hospitals for you.”
“Who from?”
“Not sure. A patient. Hold on, I’ll patch you through.”
Joe looked over at Aggie. “Some patient in one of the Guard hospitals wants to talk with me.”
“Detective Foley?” a voice crackled in his ear.
“This is Joe Foley.”
“This is Captain Alvarez of the National Guard. I have a patient here, a Mrs. Maria Martinez, who insists she speak to you. She’s refusing any treatment until she does. She says it’s about a case you’re working on.”
“Yes, please, let me speak with her.” Joe switched the phone to speaker so that Aggie could hear.
“I should tell you,” Alvarez added, “that what she’s saying doesn’t make a lot of sense. She suffered some trauma after getting tossed pretty hard by the hurricane.”
“Whatever she has to say,” Joe said, “I’m eager to hear.”
“Okay, hang on.”
A couple of seconds passed. Joe and Aggie exchanged quizzical looks.
“Detective Foley?”
“Yes, this is Detective Foley.”
The woman on the other end of the phone burst into tears. “This is Maria Martinez,” she said. “I just hope I’m not too late.”
79
Liz made her way down the passageway, which reeked of the smell of death. She knew those corpses were in here somewhere. At least now, with all the damage left by the storm, there was some light let in from the outside to guide her: she had no idea where her phone was. Liz just needed to find a place where the damage was so severe that she could step out onto the roof.
Dark Homecoming Page 32
