“Don’t use your strength. You need obscurity.”
“Then tell me what the hell I need to do,” I snapped at her. Her eyes widened and she took a step back, her feet actually making a scuffling sound on the stones. I was sorry she was dead, but also irritated she continued to not help me with her cryptic messages and gobbledy-gook.
“Telekinesis. It’s possible for you to unlock the doors.” Her look, combined with her crossed arms, communicated ire.
Of course, she was right, and I felt like an idiot. Muttering an apology, I turned away from her and placed both hands on the cold surface of the door. I could feel her hovering behind me, concern emanating from her, as well as a draft. Ghosts will be ghosts.
I pictured the locks as I knew them. Hook and eye at the top. I put a hand in the general area I knew it to be and closed my eyes, visualizing it tightly fitted on the other side. Then I saw the hook slide up and out of the eye, and swing against the wall. I could feel that I’d succeeded strictly through my psychic sense. With a quiet whoop of joy, and if I’m going to be honest, cockiness, I made quick work of the other four locks.
“Go in slowly. They’re in the ritual room.” I felt the barest brush of her icy fingers when she touched my arm.
I nodded, lifting the door handle and pushing it open, wary of creaks and squeaks. The torches flickered gaily from the walls, casting shadows on the goddesses as they watched over the Temple with smiles plastered across their faces. Their simple, inanimate lives were a source of immediate jealousy. I slid through the crack in the door and let it shut softly behind me.
The lighting may have been familiar and comforting, but the atmosphere inside was not. The air felt dirty and used. The crackle of electricity, a feeling like the magick my parents raise in ritual, floated on the air, but instead of the light and happiness of Dane and Theresa, it felt dark.
Anya was nowhere to be found. Briefly wondering if I’d locked her outside, I reminded myself she could walk through walls, and I was an idiot. I stole across the Temple to my right, around the goddesses, and straight to the wall, making my way towards the jasmine incense and the flicker of light coming from the open door. I trailed my fingers along the stones, felt the history and age in them, and bumped across logs that felt like the World War and women’s lib.
Drawing near to the open doorway, I took a breath and held it, peeking around the corner. I was met with a very ritualistic scene, reminiscent of all the holidays I’d ever celebrated with Theresa and Dane. A good sized fire, burning steadily in the large brassiere, was the only source of light, leaving the four corners of the room in darkness. Jordan stood at the edge of the fire, tossing handfuls of something into the hearth, soft words of another language floating on the air. A black robe was draped over his body, the hood pushed back on his shoulders.
I caught sight of Melissa and the breath came out of me with an audible whoosh. She hung limply from a wide, wooden pole, her hands pulled painfully behind her. Her chin rested on a chest that was slowly rising and falling, her hair, so like Macy’s, covered her face so that I couldn’t see her eyes.
Considering my options, I wondered if Brett had gotten my message. It’d sure be nice for the Calvary to ride. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was ten thirty. Not too long to get the bastard hog tied and close up for the Hunt.
When I glanced up, Jordan was standing before my best friend, a club the likes of which hadn’t seen day since caveman years, hefted above his head, and one hand pressed to her forehead, the chants still flowing from his lips.
“Melissa!” I screamed, darting through the doorway without a second thought for anything but her well-being. Startled, Jordan brought the wood down, grazing the side of Melissa’s head and leaving a gash down her temple that began to ooze blood. I tackled his huge body as he turned to face me, the club flying across the room and hitting the wall with a dull thud. Anger fueling my already heightened powers, I gripped each side of his head by his long hair and slammed it into the floor. His eyes fluttered and closed.
I straddled his chest a couple moments more, my own chest heaving as I waited to see if he’d awaken. “Huh. That was easy.” I made to get to my feet, my only goal to get Melissa off that damn pole, and stars burst in my vision, crumpling me to the floor and into nothingness.
Chapter 21
My eyes opened on Melissa, curled into a ball on the floor at my feet. With relief, I noticed that the shallow cut beside her eye had stopped dripping and was not as bad as I’d originally thought. She was still down for the count.
What was bad was the fact I now had her place of honor, backed against the pole with my arms tightly bound behind me, the plaster of my cast digging in to my good arm. My legs were equally tight to the wood. Fighting against the coarse rope around my wrists, I discovered the aches and pains of my shoulder joints where the weight of my body pulled against them. The back of my head felt tender and my vision swam like it had when I’d fallen from a horse and gotten a concussion at ten years old.
The fire had grown in size, more logs piled into the brassiere until the heat filled the room like another entity against me. The room flickered eerily around me so that I couldn’t tell what was fire-light and what was moving in the darkness. I blew an errant lock of hair from my face and struggled to focus.
With a start, I locked eyes on Katherine. She gave me her bright smile, the edges of her eyes crinkling where her brown bob hung down both sides of her face, a little wild, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. She was wearing another one of the bright colored skirt suits I’d seen her in every morning when I stopped at headquarters to get my car, but she wasn’t wearing make-up.
“Katherine? What are you doing here? Can you call Edward?” I jerked my head to indicate Jordan lying prone on the floor where I had left him. “He’s been killing off the guards. Can you untie me?” I realized I was babbling because I already knew she wasn’t there to help me. It was in her cold, cold eyes as they looked me up and down.
“Poor Vale. If only you’d come a little later, I wouldn’t have had to tie you up and use you instead.” She tsk-tsked, shaking her head. Bringing both her hands around, I saw the heavy club Jordan had lost hanging from her hand like it weighed nothing. Her grin took on a more sinister note. “I’d rather have you, anyway. Talking to ghosts has never been a priority.”
I struggled to stand up straighter, my brain working overtime to come up with some way out of the situation. In the movies, they always keep the bad guy talking. It was worth a try. Gesturing to Jordan with my head—a bad idea that made me queasy—I asked, “What part do you play in his scheme?”
Her laughter was like tinkling bells, echoing off the walls. “Oh, Vale, don’t make me laugh! Jordan? Have a scheme?” She he-he-he’d a moment more, wiping at nonexistent tears from the corners of her eyes. Taking a breath, she swung the club like a pendulum before her. “He’s nothing but a pawn. The man likes to hurt people, and I can keep the blood off my hands. He heard you and Melissa chatting at a bar about the missing girls and got nervous…luckily, I’m very persuasive.”
“What do you get out of murdering innocent women?” The heat from the flames was more intense by the minute, and sweat was tracing lines down my skin, burning my eyes. Either that or my adrenaline was pumping me into overheating.
“Power,” she whispered, barely audible over the blaze of the fire. “A rush.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m done with rambles and riddles,” I told her tiredly, cringing away from the heat unsuccessfully. If I’d a foot free, I’d kick her in the face just on principle.
“Old fashioned magic,” she said, patting the palm of one hand with the club. She turned and began to pace before me. “My daddy was a witch, you know. Very powerful. He raised me to practice the arts, to want the power. To need the power. He killed the first one, you know. An obscure little Italiano bitch back in the eighties.”
Geez, the woman was an adrenaline junkie. “You just want the rush
? Why don’t you go jump off a bridge.”
Stepping lightly across the uneven floor in the bright red high heels that clashed with her lime green suit, she came to stand beside me. “It’s not the rush of killing, Vale. It’s the magic involved that takes your special, wecial powers”—she jabbed a long nailed finger into my temple and I winced—“and puts them inside me.” With a maniacal smile, she put the same finger to her head.
And the light dawns.
“You’re harvesting super powers for yourself?” I said, disgusted. “God, that’s sad. The universe didn’t give you any because you’re a nutcase, so you decide to take them for yourself.”
She hauled back and slapped me, her face contorted with rage. The sting of her palm was nothing compared to the nausea that rose from the base of my skull. “Shut up.” The anger disappeared as fast as it came, and she sighed, stroking my hair where it hung over my breasts. “Don’t make me lose my temper. I try very hard to maintain happiness. Edward likes it that way.” At the mention of his name, she smiled dreamily, making circles on the ground with the club like it was a flower in the dirt, her other hand suspiciously lingering on my chest. It was creepy.
Help us all, she was in love with our gay boss. It just couldn’t get any better.
“Now,” she quipped, slapping the club to her palm once more and giving me another cheery smile. “I’ve already drugged you. Muscle relaxers, mmm,” she giggled. “They help so much to keep you mutants from fighting back. I have to start the spell again since you stopped Jordan before he finished with the blonde. Stay there now.”
As she sauntered away, teetering on those ridiculous heels, I dropped my head back to the pole gingerly and sighed. I could feel the drugs in my system, like some psychological switch had been flicked when she’d told me about them. My vision was trying to not fade to black, and my body was melting against the wood behind me. I didn’t even have the energy to try and fight the rope.
I had nothing left to do, but pray. I prayed for Brett to show up and save us. I prayed for someone to break in, intent on destruction of property and the pilfering of any worthy goods, and bungle the ritual by default. I prayed for Edward to make an unannounced visit, or any number of deus ex machina situations.
“Goddess, please,” I whispered into the fire, the heat on my face almost unbearable in its intensity. I thought of Theresa and Dane’s unflagging belief in the Goddess, and my dreams of Cerridwen. “Please, guide me. Please—”
Are you ready for that now? A musical voice broke through my prayers, sounding inside my head like a megaphone. I jerked, banging the tender spot at the back of my skull into the pole, and groaned.
“What?” I choked, looking over at Katherine where she was sprinkling what I could see now as herbs into the fire. She was chanting, not paying a bit of attention to me.
You know I love you.
I knew She did. I knew She was speaking to me, and I trembled in awe. Or fear. I nodded.
I’ve given you the power you need to defeat her. Think about it. Watching the woman who would be my murderer come towards me, unshakable intent on her face, I racked my mind. She’s given me the power? My powers? I thought of the muscle relaxers. No speed, no strength. What did that leave me? Telekinesis. Stroke of genius! My eyes darted around the room for something to lift, but nothing was available except two prone bodies on the floor. No furniture, no weapons.
But I could try and stop the club. In the instant she placed her sweaty hand on my forehead, pressing my head against the beam, I knew what else I could do. The grin that crossed my face caused her to falter in her Latin and eye me warily, the club hefting in her other hand. Catching her eye, I reached out with the part of me that could fly bottles of lotion across rooms and unlock doors from the outside, and caught the club on its downswing. Shock crossed her features, but it was nothing compared to the look that came next.
I let go of the control I constantly held over my skin, and the orgasm slipped neatly into her hand, immediately replacing her shock with pleasure. Like the kiss of electricity, her hand was glued to my forehead where I felt the power hefting from me. I turned up the heat, pushing harder than I ever had, letting it flow into her body. Her eyes rolled up into her head and her knees crumpled, dropping her writhing to the floor on a moan. Like a light extinguished, the writhing stopped, and she was silent.
My chest heaved under the effort. I could tell she was dead, her body motionless and her face pale, eyes unseeing. I had no idea the orgasm in my touch was that strong, but I wasn’t going to question a good thing.
“Well,” I said into the flames, blinking as more sweat burned its way into my eyes. I glanced over at Jordan, still sleeping peacefully with a small circle of blood under his head, and Melissa, her breath shallow but moving in and out much to my relief.
A bang from the great room reverberated around me, and I glanced at the doorway. Brett skidded to a stop, gun in hand and a wild look in his dark, dark eyes as they took in the scene. What a sight, eh? “Goddess, Vale!” he grunted, and strode across the room to me, yanking at my bonds so that they ripped off me. His manliness turned me on, and I wrote it off as the aftereffects of giving Katherine her last moment of satisfaction.
When the ropes loosened, I tried to hold myself up, but my knees couldn’t handle it. I fell for just a moment, but was caught by two strong arms, cradling me to his chest. “I’m drugged,” I told him matter of factly, my poor, abused head lolling into him. “Why don’t you put me down, tie up jackass over there, and make a few phone calls?”
Without a question or demand for explanation, he placed me gently on the ground and grabbed the rope.
Chapter 22
I cradled Melissa’s cold hand in both of mine, putting it to my cheek and remembering only a week before when she’d done the same as I lie in a hospital bed. I was just in an accident; in her case, she was in a coma.
Brett came through the door with two sterile, Styrofoam cups of hospital tea. The coffee wasn’t even passable for digestion, thick as cough syrup with a taste like dirt. I extracted just one hand from Melissa and took my cup, watching my boyfriend as he settled into the chair across from me. We stared at each other over Melissa, looking small and fragile in the white blankets of the bed.
“She’ll wake up,” I told him.
“I know.”
Edward came back in the room, his face pinched with worry, Melissa’s Uncle Remus trailing behind him in a quiet stupor of polite British dismay. I’d watched the grown man cry for hours, and I could believe he had nothing left inside to spill. I would cry later, in my room, in the arms of a good man. A dependable man, who may not have been on time to save us, but had been there after I saved myself.
“The police have finished questioning Jordan,” Edward stated quietly, easing his gray-suited body into another chair at the foot of the bed, while Remus flitted about in front of Brett, straightening his niece’s covers and brushing his fingers through her hair. He was a regal man of the same caliber as Edward, dark hair graying at the temples, and long fingers perfectly manicured. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought them brothers.
“I wasn’t aware he’d finally woken up,” I answered, fiddling with the little silver band on Melissa’s middle finger, engraved with a crescent moon.
Rubbing both hands up and down his face, Edward nodded. “He’s admitted to the murders and corroborated everything Katherine told you.” He shook his head, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I just can’t believe it. She came with excellent references. She graduated Oxford, for heaven’s sake!”
“The thirst for power has brought down stronger men,” Brett soothed him, resting against the back of his seat with one ankle propped up on his other knee. “She fell in with the wrong forces.”
“Oh, and preliminary reports point to heart failure being the cause of death for Miss Porte.” Edward gazed at me with amusement. “An orgasm, my goodness.”
“I’ve heard of people with hea
rt conditions who’ve experienced heart failure by orgasm.” Brett hid a wry smile behind one hand, his eyes twinkling at me. “Seems like a good way to go, yeah?”
*********
I stood at the bright blue door of my apartment, listening to Hunter’s toenails click impatiently on the hardwood just on the other side. In two weeks time, I’d had a break in, a near cat death experience, my own near death experience, made two friends, and a boyfriend, and added an animal to my crazy life. How the days, they do change us.
The lock clicked around my key and I walked inside, dropping to my knees to wrap my arms around the wiggling puppy that waited for me. Addie even let go of her haughtiness and rubbed against my side, purring so loud it made my organs vibrate.
"Are you hungry?” I asked them, heading for the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten in over twenty four hours, my last meal being the crap, fake chicken and veggies I’d forced down on the plane. My plan was to eat everything in the place before Brett came over with dinner. Then I’d eat whatever he brought.
Addie was munching happily on her treat of freshwater salmon in gut juices, Hunter on his kibbles, and I on a tuna fish sandwich with banana peppers when the front door opened and Brett bustled in with some take out bags, tossing back the hood of his rain spotted coat. “Starting to rain.”
“Fits,” I answered, shrugging as I took another bite the size of my cat’s head. Brett dropped the food to the counter and enveloped me in his arms, tuna sandwich and all. I munched happily, letting his scent surround me, and I felt more comfortable and calm than I had all day.
“You okay?”
I nodded, swallowing my food and thinking of Melissa in her hospital bed without tuna sandwiches. Clutching the remains, I burst into heavy sobs and sank to the floor, letting Brett rock me.
Chapter 23
The Temple Page 17
