To Charm a Killer (Hollystone Mysteries Book 1)
Page 30
“You’ll judge me.”
“I want to understand you.” Estrada dropped to one knee. “What happened to Gerry after that?”
“We all went our separate ways two years later, except for him. They kept him. He was their golden boy.” Bastian squatted in the grass and gazed at him with sad eyes. Years of neglect and abuse followed by years of torture. It was hard not to pity him. “When I saw him at the hospital where I worked, I couldn’t believe he’d had the balls to become a priest. He didn’t know me.” He crouched silently for several seconds deep in thought. “Christ, that’s when it started.”
“What started?”
Grasping the back of his skull, he cried out. “My head hurts.”
“Sit down, man.” Estrada gestured to what remained of an old stone wall. “It’s probably just pressure. Stress.”
Collapsing on the stones, Bastian dropped his head in his hands and moaned.
“Is that when you started to hurt the women? When you saw Gerry again?”
Bastian nodded his head. Tears slipped down his cheeks.
Estrada drew closer, then flinched and steadied himself. The butt end of a hunting knife protruded from a leather sheath at the top of Bastian’s right boot. Talk him down. Get that knife.
“He triggered you, man. You get triggered. There are people that can help you through this.”
“Yeah, right. Help me right into lockup.” Of course, he was right. The best Bastian could expect was a long stretch in a psychiatric hospital once the cops heard this story.
“But there are people who care about you. Maggie, and her mother…and me.”
“You only care about that woman.”
“Listen man. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be standing out here in the friggin dead of night, freezing my friggin ass off, talking to you. I’d have kicked your friggin head in by now.”
That provoked a smile. “I saw you out here kissing—”
“So, we kissed. Relax man. I just met her.” In his periphery, Estrada spied a slight figure crossing the field about thirty paces to Bastian’s left. Primrose. He needed to end this ragged conversation before she could reach them. Of course, he could kick his friggin head in. He was quick and skilled, a street fighter, who knew his way around knives. But Bastian had been victimized enough, and there was still that bond.
“It’s weird,” Estrada went on, a plan formulating in his mind. “The first time I saw you—when you opened the Taylor’s door, I saw your turquoise eyes, and I was so attracted, Sensara got jealous.” He smiled seductively and Bastian grinned shyly. “You are the best lover I ever had. No one has ever made me feel like that.”
“I know.”
“You must feel this.” He gestured to the invisible bond between them.
Staring wide-eyed, Bastian nodded. “It’s agony being apart.”
Stepping forward, Estrada crouched on one knee before Bastian and touched the hand above the boot. “I think there might be a way through this for us, now I know you…now I understand. I think we could—”
“Be together?” Incredulous, Bastian shivered.
Edging closer, Estrada brushed his cheek with his other hand. “There’s no one here to stop us. We can do anything we want.”
Bastian jumped up and moved away. “I don’t believe you, man. You’ll turn me in and they’ll lock me up. I’ve worked in that place. I wouldn’t survive—”
“Don’t think like that.” Estrada stood and took off his leather jacket, while Bastian stared. He tossed it aside, then unbuttoned his shirt, “Trust me, man. Kiss me again like you did that first time. I dream about that kiss. Don’t you?” He popped open the clasp on his jeans. Still staring, Bastian stepped toward him.
Over his left shoulder, he saw Primrose, mere steps away. Somehow he had to get that knife before—
“I want you. You know I do,” said Bastian. He edged closer, then grasped Estrada’s shoulder. “But, magician, you’re all tricks—”
And then, as Primrose slipped into the shadows between them, time slowed to an unearthly crawl. Bastian was still clutching him, as the soft leather of her jacket brushed his bare chest. Gazing down, he saw the violet trees that encircled the top of her head, heard the low thunk of the knife as it pierced her heart, felt her shudder and pitch forward with a low gasp, and slowly collapse. Catching her in his arms, he stared at the wooden handle protruding just below her rib cage, blood oozing with every heartbeat.
“No,” he gasped. Placing her gently in the grass, he began to pull it slowly from her broken body.
“Stop,” said Bastian. “Leave it in. Press on it.”
“Oh yeah, you’d like that.”
“The wound will hemorrhage. You gotta trust me.”
“Trust you?” Eyes clouded, he could barely see. He extracted the knife and flung it, then swiped at the tears with the back of his bloody hand. Blood everywhere. Her blood. Gushing from the wound. His ears were ringing. When had Bastian taken the knife from his boot? Why hadn’t he seen it?
Primrose. Why did you step between us?
The blood. He had to stop the blood. Ripping off his shirt, he balled it up and pressed it against the wound. It ran deep into her heart and lungs. Blood dripped from her lips, as her eyes rolled back in her head. “Don’t die on me,” he murmured, but even as the words left his lips, he knew. She was dying.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—” Glancing up, he saw Bastian standing over them as pale and still as a ghost, shocked by what he had done.
“No, you meant to kill me, you crazy fucker.” Estrada yowled, and picking up the still bloody knife, hefted its weight in his hand. The veins and sinews in his wrists stood out like ropes as his hackles flared.
Bastian bolted, but Estrada sprang to his feet and leapt, flung his left arm around the man’s shoulders and threw him to the ground. Wedging his body between his thighs, Estrada caught his face beneath his forearm, and played the razor sharp blade along his throat. Blood beads appeared against the pale flesh.
“Do it.” Bastian’s voice was insistent. “Please.” He was crying, wanted to die.
For a moment, Estrada pressed and blood spurted from beneath the skin, and then, an echo sang from somewhere in his brain. When you take a man’s life, you end up dragging his corpse around with you.
Tossing the knife aside, he yanked Bastian to his feet, and shoved him hard. He glanced at Primrose lying in the blood-soaked grass, and muttered, “No more corpses. No more demons.”
“Sorcerer, hold me.”
Hearing her whispered plea, he knelt beside her and cupped her head in his hands. He stroked her cheek and kissed her lips; his face and hands slick with her blood. Then, staring into the pale shadows of her eyes, he watched her fade from his life.
Off somewhere in the darkness, he heard a muffled cry and the obscure thump of flesh hitting rock, and then all was silent. Glancing back, he saw Bastian’s crumpled body several feet away in the long grass by the edge of the stone wall. “Karma,” he muttered. That, at least, would keep him quiet until the police came and took him away.
He gathered Primrose in his arms and was just about to rise when—
“Look,” she wheezed, entranced by something beyond him. “They’ve come for me.” Her voice was raspy, her lungs filling. “I love them so. I’ve waited for them my whole life.”
Turning, he saw them, hundreds of them, a great host of luminous beings, pale and silvery in the moonlight, tall, and madly glorious.
“But, I’ve been waiting for you. Please don’t leave me now.”
≈
When Estrada did not return, Maggie tied gauze around her burns and limped outside. Alarmed by voices in the distance, she forgot the pain in her ankle and raced through the field. She stopped dead when she saw them.
Faeries. Just as they had been at Carrowmore, standing together, one luminous shadow like a sparkling cloud of alien mist, and Primrose among them, dressed in a fine woven gown.
She staggered fo
rward, then tripped and gaped at the carnage beneath her feet: one man laid face down by the stone wall to her left; and Primrose, blood everywhere and staring wide-eyed, and Estrada sprawled over her, half-naked, with his face buried in her neck.
When her legs gave way, Maggie fell to the ground. Reaching out, she touched the slowly pulsing vein beneath his jaw.
Primrose was gone but he was still alive.
“Estrada?” she whispered and shoved him gently. Then hugging them both, she wept. He raised his grieving eyes for just a moment, and then passed out. “Estrada.” She prodded and shook him, tried to wake him. But it was no use. Turning him on his back, she laid her ear against his bare breast. He had a faint but steady heartbeat and no obvious wounds, though he was covered in blood. He must be in shock.
She crawled across the field on hands and knees, and tried to push over the body of the other man, but it was caught in the stones, wedged sideways. Then, with only half his face visible, she recognized him. Bastian? It wasn’t possible. Yet, taking in the bloody scrape across his cheek and the vacant blue eye, she knew it was. It looked as if he’d only fallen against the rocks, yet there was no pulse. And then she saw the blood pooling beneath his neck and the handle of a knife wedged beneath.
“Bastian! I don’t understand.”
17: That Tears Shall Drown the Wind
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM, GRAN? Why won’t he wake up?” Maggie was still weeping, had been for hours, alternating between vicious storms where grief poured out in torrents, and dry silent rage when she wished she were dead.
Primrose was gone, her bloody body taken to the morgue. And Bastian…poor Bastian. What was he doing in that field? She just could not accept that he had stabbed Primrose with a knife and tried to run off, as the police suspected. Estrada was still unconscious.
“He’s off with them,” said her grandmother. “I saw it once before, a long time ago, when I was still a young woman. My friend, Kathleen—it happened the night before her wedding.”
“A bride,” murmured Maggie. She clutched the tattered copy of The Celtic Twilight, he’d given her as if it was a talisman.
“Aye, but she came back within the week. Poor girl couldn’t remember a thing that happened, but knew where she’d been. ‘I’ve been off with the Good People,’ she said.” She rubbed Maggie’s back. “They seem to take the ones that are most filled with love: children and brides and lovers.”
“Primrose took him. I saw her standing with them, shining like an angel. He looked up at me, and he was so sad, and then—oh god, what are we going to do?”
She looked around Primrose’s cottage. Estrada was laid out on the kitchen table like a corpse. After he’d been photographed by police and examined by the doctor, they’d allowed Maggie and her grandmother to wash and dress him. They’d put a pillow beneath his head and covered him with a blanket. “Shouldn’t he be in the hospital? When my dad was like this, they kept him in intensive care. He needed special treatment and—”
“Oh Maggie, the doctor said he was fine right here for the moment. His heart, his breathing, everything’s perfect.”
“Everything’s not perfect. What was he? Some kind of faerie doctor?”
“Ah, pet. Your friend is having a good long sleep. You know, the old folks said that people sometimes stayed like this for weeks or even years.”
“Years? Oh Gran, he can’t stay like this for years.” Another frantic burst of tears overtook her and settled at length into pathetic sobs. “This is all my fault. I wanted to be in the coven. Bastian worked for us. Father Grace was our priest. My father died looking for me. Estrada came here to protect me, and Primrose—”
“Maggie. Stop. You cannot take this all on yourself.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.”
“But you must. Don’t you see? If you never forgive yourself, they’ll have died for nothing.” Gran opened her arms and hugged Maggie to her breast. “Oh dear, what are we going to do? It’s almost suppertime and the boys are about to land on my doorstep. I have so much to do.”
“I know. Dylan and Sylvia are coming too. You go. I’ll stay here with him.”
“Please don’t fret, pet. The one thing I know for sure is that Estrada is not alone.”
≈
“Come,” laughed Primrose, taking his hand. “Come, dance, Sorcerer.”
And he ran behind her into their midst and grasped the proffered hand of a beautiful blond man, while she clutched the other, and they danced the circle dance, hundreds of them, jigging around and around to the beat of the bodhrán, barefoot in the grass, snaking in and out with the whistling flutes, and then all raising their arms and rushing to meet in the centre, as the energy coursed through the air like lightning and sizzled through his soul.
Wrenching him away into the murmuring trees, a mist rose around them, and she danced as she had that day on Shop Street, her hands and eyes telling a story of fierce enduring love. Then fetching a doeskin bag from the crook of the tree, she squeezed sweet mulled wine into his mouth and laughing he swallowed, feeling like Dionysus, the lord of his own oak grove. Taking his face between her tiny hands, she kissed him on the mouth and his head filled with the sound of harps as he envisioned a host of angels. She stripped away the woven cloth around his waist, stopping all thoughts but one. Then holding back his hands with her own, she fell to her knees, and when she took him in her warm mouth, he gasped with the sudden pleasure of it all, arching his back against the tree as if it were the first time he’d ever felt such a thing.
When he gazed down again, expecting to see her tattooed skull beneath his belly, his breath caught to see the blond man in her place, his hands clenching his hips and his eyes wild with desire. Losing control, he reached down to catch the long soft hair in his fingertips, but it was her small pointed ears he felt, and he laughed. Then catching her by the arms, he lifted her with long silken kisses, and sinking to the earth together, he filled her, while harps filled his head.
This was joy as he had never known it. Hours later, it seemed, when he could hold back no longer, he cried out and burst inside her. Then together they laid on their backs in the damp grass, counting the stars that filled the blue velvet sky, until she laughed and said, “Come. Come, dance, Sorcerer.”
And he followed her into their midst and they circled through again and again.
≈
As the sound of bagpipes filled the small stone church, Maggie felt a pain in her chest so intense she could barely breathe. She was sure her heart was breaking. Sobbing, she leaned against the wooden pew and watched Dylan march up the aisle in Highland regalia with “Amazing Grace” flying from his breath and fingers. His eyes were glazed with tears. At the front of the church he stopped and took a seat beside Dr. Black. The way he held his pipes in his lap with his head bowed, she knew that he was sobbing too.
Gran and the professor had strewn the wooden coffin with greenery from the surrounding countryside. They’d even brought herbs and dried primroses and scattered them. The lights were out and the entire church lit only by candles. Hundreds of flames flickered off the priest’s adornments as he wafted incense through the air. Then joining with the others, Maggie chanted, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.” And she thought of Primrose dancing on Shop Street in her shimmering green gown—the goddess Danu, pagan mother of the tribes—and for the first time in days, she smiled through her tears with the realization: Primrose had joined her ancestors in becoming fully fey.
≈
“Are you flying back to Vancouver with Dr. Black tomorrow, Dylan?” Seated on the stone steps under the northern archway of the old Augustinian abbey, though rain pelted down around them in the dusk, Maggie felt oddly tranquil.
“No. I’ll stay with Estrada a while longer; at least, until his mate arrives.”
“His mate?”
“Michael Stryker. I’ve never met the man, but I’ve heard stories. He’s legendary. Sensara loathes him. She cal
led him though, and told him what happened.”
“But, she’s not coming herself.”
“No. She’s broke in two. Loves him, you know, but hearing that he’d fallen for Primrose so soon after…” His voice drifted off, and she wondered if he was also broken in two. “But, that’s just Estrada’s way. Everyone loves him and he loves them back. He’s a free spirit. Never been any different. That’s why it’s so hard to see him stuck like this.”
“My gran says he’s just away with the faeries and he’ll come back.”
“Well, if she’s right, he’ll not be suffering. That’s something he’s always wanted, and if you believe the stories, Faerie is just one wild party.”
“He’d like that.” Thinking back suddenly to Samhain and that night at Buntzen Lake, Maggie whispered, “Dylan, do you remember Hecate’s prophecy?”
“How could I not?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird how it all came true?”
“You know where that word comes from, don’t you?” She shook her head. “Wyrd is an Old English word that means having the power to control fate or destiny.”
“But who had the power?”
“We did. We set this in motion when we spun that charm.”
“So nothing could stop it. Four people were destined to die?” She was mortified that they were all connected to her: Bastian, Father Grace, Primrose, and John.
Dylan shrugged. “Seems so.”
She glanced at the marks on her hands. “I got burned like she said, and if Estrada’s with the faeries, he’s the one who gained his heart’s desire.”
“And Jeremy Jones was deceived by lust.”
“Oh, I forgot that part. What happened?”
“He went out with a stranger who asked questions about us. I suppose it was that fella who looked after your dad, Bastian Stone, the one that…” His voice drifted off.
“Really?” Maggie was shocked to hear this news. She still could not believe that Bastian had done all of those terrible things.