by Nancy Bush
All he had to do was cruise around for the brown Chrysler and she would be his.
“You shot her,” Gemma gasped.
The detective lay unconscious on the floor, still breathing, but unevenly.
Ani looked stunned herself. “I didn’t think I could do it. But she had a gun.”
“You shot her!” Gemma repeated.
“It’s all right. It’s a .22. Just a little hole. She’ll be fine.”
Ani didn’t sound sure, and in a wild moment Gemma dropped the poker with a clatter and jumped her. “Where’s Will?” she shrieked. “Where’s Will? Did you shoot him, too?”
Ani wasn’t ready for Gemma’s assault. The gun flew from her hand, skittered across the floor. She grabbed Gemma’s hair and Gemma grabbed hers right back. They flung together as one against a wall. A picture turned crazily, the edge of the frame hitting Gemma just above the eye.
Then they were on the ground, rolling, huffing, screaming. Gemma had never fought anyone in her life but she was furious. She wanted to strangle her. Shake the truth from her. Kill her.
Ani kicked and thrashed and tried to throw a leg over her. Gemma parried with a knee to Ani’s gut. She heard a satisfying, “Ooof!” but then Ani’s hand was at her throat, squeezing till she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get a thread of air.
“Stop,” the detective’s voice rasped.
Surprised, Ani’s grip loosened and Gemma rolled away. Her hand encountered the gun. She scrambled for it as Ani jumped on her again, knocking her flat on her back. But Gemma had the gun. She held it between them as Ani straddled her, pushed it to Ani’s gut.
“Don’t…” Ani said.
They stared at each other, breathing heavily. A trickle of blood ran down Gemma’s face from the wound at her hair-line. Ani stared at her twin. Stared and stared. Slowly she raised her hands in surrender then rose to her feet.
Gemma’s finger was on the trigger. Her hand was shaking like she had the palsy. This woman had killed Edward Letton and Spencer Bereth and God knew how many others. Had let Gemma nearly take the blame for it, whether by accident or design. She was a murderess. Her heart as cold as a snake’s.
Yet…
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pull the trigger. She couldn’t.
As Ani walked out the door Gemma reached for her cell phone, dialed 911, then knelt beside the woman on the floor whose eyes were open and full of pain. She kept her gaze away from the spreading pool of maroon blood.
Will, sweating, worked his thumb down under the rope. He contorted his arm and got a loop nearly over his finger.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”
And suddenly the hand slipped through as if it had been greased. Hurriedly, he yanked at the other rope, taking twice as much time freeing himself as he should. He was swearing like a truck driver. How long? How long?
An hour. Tops. Since she left. Maybe an hour and ten.
He yanked on a shirt and jacket, grabbed his keys and ran through a bitterly cold evening to his Jeep.
Ani climbed in the Chrysler, lost in memory and emotion and now a feeling of sheer discombobulation. Her mother—their mother—had given them up because they were the devil’s seed, joined at the hip, touched by Satan. The doctor had muttered this story aloud when Ani was very young.
She wanted to lay her head down on a feather pillow and sleep for a millennium. Her mind raced uncomfortably. She didn’t want to think back. Didn’t want to remember. She was half-furious with Gemma that she’d forced her to.
The doctor had surgically separated them. Ani could vaguely remember the scent of some noxious odor. Ether, maybe. She could see the green mask and his eyes. And heard someone screaming. Gemma. Or maybe herself.
Recovery. And the sense of loss. No Gemma, she realized now.
And after all this time they’d been reunited but it was too late. Too late.
She was barely away from Quarry, headed west, toward the coast, though she shouldn’t. They knew her there. They knew her in Seaside and even more so in Deception Bay. She hadn’t been back to the small town where she was born since she’d killed the doctor. She hadn’t wanted any foster homes. She’d wanted freedom.
She felt something on her face and reached up. Wetness. Dragging her hand away, she expected to find blood. She’d been hurt.
But it wasn’t blood. It was tears.
Disturbed, she pulled over at the next pull-out. She left the car running, its lights on, and simply lay her arms over the steering wheel, pressing her forehead into it, squeezing her eyes closed. She had to think, and thinking felt impossible. She hoped to hell she hadn’t seriously injured that woman detective. That wasn’t part of her plan.
Rap, rap.
She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of someone tapping on her window. Her heart leapt. A cop?
But she thought the face behind the glass looked familiar. Rolling down the window, she asked, “Bart? What are you doing here?”
A meaty fist slammed into her face and she saw stars.
“I am the wolf,” he growled.
Ani felt herself being dragged from the car. She saw the waiting truck. Ezekiel’s truck? She wanted to ask him why he had his brother’s vehicle but couldn’t form the words.
A gale of wintry wind off the back of the mountains smacked her in the face, clearing her head. He had her by her feet, pulling her hard as sticks and rocks crawled under her jacket and scratched her skin.
Then his face was suddenly in front of hers. Nose to nose. Crazy, hate-filled eyes.
“You killed him!” he roared, nearly deafening her.
She prayed for traffic. Any car. If she could keep him from getting her in his truck someone would eventually come. Someone would see.
As if reading her thoughts, he threw her over his shoulder. She kicked and flailed and he tossed her as if she were a rag doll into the back of the truck, then grabbed her flailing wrists and lashed them together with electrical cord. That caught her attention just long enough for Bart to finish the job and slam the GemTop shut. It was dark, cold, and rank. She sniffed. There was fir and pine but something else. Something human.
Ani scrambled to the back of the GemTop as he threw the truck in gear and lurched forward. Her forehead smacked into metal. The impact, on top of the crushing blow from his fist, sent her down to the bed of the truck. Feebly she tried to twist her wrists against the electrical cords. She saw the depth of Bart’s feelings now. She’d strangled EZ with the lamp’s cord. She’d fooled the authorities but not EZ’s brother. Bart wanted payback. She’d just never felt him mentally capable enough to harbor such resentment. Her mistake. And now she was paying for it.
She tried to reach for the latch to open the back of the truck. She couldn’t find it. If she could just get it down. If she could just open it up.
But they were barreling fast. The movement banged her head up and down. She knew she was going to get sick and she turned her head and retched.
Where was he taking her?
Will drove up the drive to Gemma’s, heedless of water-filled potholes and the waving arms of Scotch broom. He heard branches scrape his paint job. He saw only a mental image of Gemma and her sister.
If he was too late…if it was his fault for getting caught…for not escaping soon enough…for losing his cell phone…
“God, help me,” he bit out through clenched teeth.
He stood on the brakes and slid the Jeep to a shuddering halt. A moment later he heard sirens. Approaching sirens. He waited a half-second then bolted for the front door. Those sirens were coming here. For Gemma!
He practically slammed the door off its hinges, barreling through. To his shock he saw Gemma on the floor, kneeling beside a prone Barbara Gillette, holding a pillow beneath Barb’s head. Gemma looked his way and Barb’s eyes swiveled dully.
“Will!” Gemma cried. Tears sprang to her eyes at the sight of him.
“Your sister did this?” he demanded.
“Ani.”
Barb’s eyes had closed. White and red lights and the wail of the siren overcame everything. Will touched Barb’s forehead and her mouth twitched. He then looked at Gemma whose white face pronounced her worry.
The EMTs bustled inside. In quick order they lifted Barb onto a gurney and carried her to their van. “It’s just my shoulder,” she said weakly.
“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Will told her.
She didn’t seem to hear.
“We’ll take good care of her,” a familiar male voice told him as his partner slammed the van’s doors.
Will looked up and met Billy Mendes’s eyes. He nodded. Mendes jumped into the driver’s side and they headed down the lane, sirens woo-wooing, lights strobing. Will and Gemma stood in relative silence until the ambulance was well away.
“She found you,” Gemma said. “She went to your house?”
“She knew where I lived.”
“You thought she was me.” Will’s dark eyes gazed deeply into Gemma’s and she added, “She said you made love to each other.”
Will’s jaw worked. “I made love to you,” he rasped.
Gemma nodded, tried not to care. She turned away but he caught her close and held her. She felt the sob that racked her body and she tried to hold it in but couldn’t. She simply cried and let him hold her.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” she said on a sniff. “I told you so.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know it wasn’t you,” he whispered. “I knew something was wrong, but—”
“No, don’t. You couldn’t have known.”
“How did Barb get here?”
Gemma sighed and gave him a blow-by-blow of the events since Ani had left him and come to Gemma’s. “She just came in the door and Ani shot her,” Gemma finished, her voice hiccuping a bit.
“Do you know where Ani was going? What she was doing?”
“She said she thought she was falling in love with you. Maybe she went back to your place to be with you.”
“Maybe.” Reluctantly he released her from his embrace. “I’ve gotta get to the hospital.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He should have argued with her, he supposed, but he didn’t know where Ani was and he didn’t trust Gemma to be safe without him. With a nod, he led the way through the blustery night to his waiting, mud-splattered Cherokee.
Wolf thumped and bumped down the access road to the quarry. He was determined to get there before Ani could free herself from the back of the truck. And each time the wheels flew over some rock or limb he hoped that it caused her pain. He listened hard to hear if she cried or yelped or pleaded but apart from the sound of her body tossing around, she’d been eerily silent.
Witch.
At the base of the quarry he yanked the vehicle to a halt, jamming on the brake for maximum recoil. Her body slammed against the cab and Wolf smiled with satisfaction. But when he threw open the GemTop she was suddenly on him, clawing with hands lashed together. One fingernail hooked onto his eye and scraped.
Blinded, furious, he crushed her shoulders with his big hands and yanked her out, throwing her down like so much trash. She was kicking. Wouldn’t quit. He saw her slim, jean-clad legs and narrow hips and threw himself on her. He would take her here. Fuck her like the whore she was. And then burn her at the stake.
Like he’d done to the mother-witch.
Feeling him upon her she suddenly went limp, her arms over her head. He gazed into her eyes, expecting fear. Instead he saw a glimmering seduction and it surprised and revolted him.
Then her arms came down together and pain exploded in his head. She had a rock and she was beating him. He wrested the rock from her and slammed it against her temple. She went instantly still.
Briefly he worried he’d killed her but when he leaned down, he caught the sounds of her shallow breathing.
After a moment he got up and began adding more limbs to the pyre. Dry ones that he’d pilfered from a woodpile under a shed roof of a home along the highway before he’d found Ani. Easily stolen. Needed to make his pyre grow to over ten feet. Everything was coming together beautifully. As if it had been planned by something bigger than himself. God, maybe.
He was on the right path.
Feeling self-satisfied, he grabbed up the witch-girl’s body from where he’d flung it, wrinkling his nose at the stench. He lashed the body to the pyre with wire that he wrapped around the whole circumference for stabilization.
Then he added more and more wood while the whore who’d killed his brother lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. He thought about taking her right then but somewhere a voice entered his head.
“You’ve done good, Bart,” it said. “Witches have to be burned. You had to kill the mother-witch and now you have to kill Ani. She deserves to die for what she did to me. Burn her, Bartholomew. Burn her. Then I’ll have peace.”
The wolf grabbed up armloads of branches, his strength renewed as he feverishly added to the pyre.
The ER waiting room was empty this night. Too early for the Saturday night accidents. Will paced outside the doors to the examining rooms where they were working on Barb. Gemma stood by the windows, staring into the parking lot where lights shined on the painted surfaces of vehicles and left fuzzy pools of illumination on the asphalt.
Nunce had shown up, looking rather disheveled for him. He kept smoothing a hand over the back of his head, but it was his wrinkled shirt and cockeyed collar that told the story of his hasty dressing. Will wanted to continually ask the hospital staff if Barb was going to be all right, but Nunce had taken over that job, so he was relegated to pacing.
Finally an ER doctor came through the doors and glanced around, focusing on both Will and Nunce. “She’s in surgery,” he said without preamble. “Bullet went into her shoulder and didn’t exit. We’re taking it out.”
“She going to be all right?” Nunce asked.
“She’s stable and strong. Nothing vital was hit. You can see her tomorrow.” And then he stiff-armed his way back inside the closed doors.
“She’s going to be all right,” Will said, relieved.
Gemma, hearing the doctor’s report, came to his side. “I’m so glad,” she said on a hard swallow.
Nunce gave her a long look. He’d been told that Gemma’s twin sister had shot Barb, but he seemed to still be having trouble believing Gemma was innocent of all charges.
“I’m going to take Gemma home,” Will said. “Then I’m coming back to the hospital.”
Nunce nodded. “Nothing to do till morning, but don’t think either of us would sleep.”
“You got that right.”
Ani’s head was crashing like waves pounding onto a shore. She felt strangely weightless. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even open her eyes. With a tremendous effort, she lifted her lids to slits. It was dark. Night. Outdoors. And she was so uncomfortable.
Vaguely she realized she was strapped down. Onto something. She could smell damp wood and the stench of decay. Carefully, she moved her eyeballs to the right and she saw she was strapped onto a pile of wood. There was something there. Just to the right of her vision. A woman’s arm. Someone else.
Understanding ran through her like a cold stream. This wood was going to be burned. She and the other woman were going to be burned.
Urgently she struggled against her bonds but she was held down fast. Her hands were strapped to her sides. Her torso and legs fastened tight to the hard limbs that dug into her back. Her head was free but it didn’t help her.
She saw that electrical cord held her hands. A stretch of chicken wire covered her torso and legs. If she could get her hands free she might be able to wriggle out from underneath the wire. It was tight, but the branches behind her back, though hard, could be moved around a bit if she pressed on them with her body.
“There you are.”
Her eyes shot to the man in front of her. They were eyeball to eyeball. Ani strapped to the pile of w
ood; Bart standing in his boots.
“What are you doing, Bart?” she asked him, pretending ignorance. “What are you doing?”
“You killed my brother.”
“No.”
He got in her face, his eyes black in the shadows and screamed, “You killed him! You took him, whore! I followed you. I found you at the hospital!”
“What?”
“I waited for you but…” He turned away, as if a thought had just struck him. “There was another witch. I burned her.”
“I wasn’t at a hospital,” Ani said. She had to keep him talking. Had to. If he decided to touch a flame to this…pyre…she would be gone.
“Fucking liar!” he roared. “You followed that man. That unlucky man. And ran him off the road and you drove right into the ditch. I found you.”
“I didn’t drive in the ditch. I went to Carl’s. Traded cars.”
He jumped on her, wrapping his hands around her neck until tears came to her eyes. Her head pounded. She was concussed. She was certain he was going to kill her right now.
“You filled EZ’s head with all kinds of lies about how you were the same. Grew up near each other. Had bad experiences. He told me, and that’s when I knew you had to die. You weren’t the same. You’re a witch.”
“Like your mother,” Ani said. “Ezekiel told me about you.”
“You killed him!”
“He tried to rape me!” she spat. “So, I fought back. Strangled him to defend myself!”
The wolf threw himself away from her and screamed, slamming his hands over his ears. “Lies! Witch lies!”
Ani glanced at the other woman, wondering if she was listening, if she would help distract him. She pulled at her tethered hands.
And then she realized the other woman was dead.
Her heart filled with ice. This was going to be her funeral pyre.
Will turned the Cherokee into Gemma’s drive. They’d hardly said ten words to each other on the drive back. There was too much to process. Too many jigsaw pieces that needed to be turned around and turned around until they fit into the entire puzzle.
