Blood Rites (32 page)

He knelt between her legs and ran his index finger down the pale scar his knife had left on her body. “Fear is a remarkable thing, Helen Wells. When people come face-to-face with their nightmares, there’s a certain thrill to them. Do you think so?“

Helen only watched him, her eyes locked with his eyes, refusing to look at his body or even the knife he still gripped.

He raised it suddenly, holding it in both hands, its point above her womb. “Talk to me, damn you!” She tensed, pulling at the bonds as he slashed downward, stopping when the point just broke her skin. “Talk.”

“Tell me what you want me to say. I’ll repeat word for word or perhaps you would like me to show you what I can do?” She replied without any trace of terror, her tone an odd blend of mockery and compliance.

He wanted to ask a dozen questions, to unravel the mystery of her death and hiding but he had hours to spend with her and the questions could wait. He decided he would even let her play with his mind a little, just to test her power. He felt her inside of him—how would he ever explain to Domie about that!—her mind rubbing against his nerves, more arousing than she would be if she were one of his ordinary girls and free to use trembling hands and lips to touch him. He’d wanted to savor the act, to take his time with her but no more. His hands, which had been unbuttoning his shirt, dropped to his pants. He climaxed with the zipper half down. “Damn you!” he bellowed, his fingers squeezing the inside of her thighs, his nails digging through her skin. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

The scent of her blood seemed to fill the room. He held up his red-tipped fingers, and as he looked at them, he thought of Maria Truzzi. Picking up the knife, he made four deep cuts on Helen’s chest, smearing the blood across her breasts before falling onto her.

Their coupling was long and bloody and before it was through, Helen had cried out more than once, her body convulsing, pushed beyond endurance, he thought. He sucked the wound until, with his hands buried in her hair, he dared to kiss her, not surprised when she responded. He stayed that way, rocking and rocking, the taste of blood in his mouth, too caught up in the pleasure she so carefully aroused to notice when she bit his lip and his blood mingled with her own.

Moving carefully through him, distracting him with passion, she began to drink.

And his victims exploded in her! She saw each of their faces at the last moments of their lives, their pain and fear as real as her own, devoured and savored by the monster who had destroyed them. As his mind opened completely to her, she understood him finally, fully. Her body responded with a revulsion that tensed her from wrists to ankles. In spite of his weight on her, she felt her body leave the floor as she pulled in one final desperate attempt to free herself and devour him.

He rolled off of her. “Later,” he said with a sardonic grin, too obsessed with her face to notice one of her feet carefully push a trapdoor back in place. The wood had begun to rot in the main floor. As she’d responded with what Russ misinterpreted as climax, she had worked one set of hinges loose, her last attempt nearly ripping the door out of its frame. She didn’t want Russ to notice it and wasn’t even certain it would be more than a hint of how she might escape since that door was linked to her weaker leg.

As Russ lay panting beside her, a brief, vivid memory came to her. She’d been about twelve or thirteen, doing her homework at the dining-room table while eavesdropping on the conversation between her uncle and her father. Dick had been assigned to the hunt for the torso murderer, the madman who left each victim without arms or legs or head. After weeks on the case, her uncle’s disgust was evident as he sat in her kitchen talking in a voice slurred by a few too many beers. “The investigators are trying to understand him. They’re working on a profile. The bastards! They think he’s sane because he hasn’t been caught. They think there’s some sort of link in the victims because he makes it look like there’s one. The truth is he’s smart and crazy and there is no motive. He just loves blood.”

Her father had responded in a voice too low for her to make out the words but she caught her uncle’s loud reply, “Catch him, hell. When they find him they should shoot him. That’s what you do with an animal, after all.”

Her uncle, not her lover, had prepared her best for Russ Lowell.

Animal.

She walked into his mind and stayed there, watching as he opened one of the trapdoors and lowered himself into the water, felt the welcome cold wash over her as it hit his body. When he returned, he soaked a towel in the river and began cleaning her off, then wiping her dry. He found a hairbrush in the car and, with her head on his bare knees, began combing out the tangles in her hair, taking care not to pull it and hurt her. When he’d finished, he arranged it over one shoulder, leaving the one with the cuts bare so, as he had done before, he could watch them heal.

After, as the sun on the dark warehouse roof warmed the building, he lay naked beside her, his head on her stomach, his hand on her breast, and slept.

His touch strengthened their growing bond and it occurred to her that she had not fully understood what Stephen had told her uncle a few short weeks ago. To give blood to Russ was useless until she completed the circle and drank from him. Now that she had, she sensed his weakness and saw a way to use it. Her plan would require courage and confidence, perhaps more than she possessed. Her ties to her human past were strong and she knew, in a way that Stephen could never comprehend, that the price of failure would be death.

But she had no other choices, not anymore. She wanted personal vengeance—not just for Hillary or for what Russ had done to her, but for all the women he had used and destroyed. Her rage lay curled, cold, and lethal in the center of her mind, waiting to be set loose. She welcomed it as she stared at Russ Lowell’s face and began planning how he would die.

And, heedless of her attention, Russ dreamed as he often did of Maria Truzzi and of all his victims, alive and waiting for his touch.

I

Men feared Dominic Carrera because he gave them reason to fear. They respected him because he made it unwise to do otherwise. And the temper he had cultivated since childhood had become legendary.

So he wasn’t surprised at how nervous Russ sounded when he phoned the restaurant precisely at eight that evening. Nor would Carrera admit that for the first time in years he didn’t know if he should be furious or thankful so he settled for being polite. He took the call in a private back room, a phone extending from the storage chest behind it. He had a bottle of cognac and two glasses on the table—one glass half-filled, the second for Toni who was expected in an hour. “You can talk here,” Carrera said. “Explain everything.”

“You got those reports?”

“Yeah. They came this morning. I read them.”

With the relief evident in his tone, Russ detailed how he’d planned the hit and how it had gone wrong. “I took the brat to trade for the father. I grabbed the other kid because I didn’t want the people from the cabin to go to the cops.”

“An eye for an eye,” Carrera commented dryly.

“You didn’t ask for the Wells kid,” Russ retorted, the speed of his reply revealing a trace of anger. “But while I was in the cabin, I found out that Stephen Austra and Helen Wells were living there.”

Last week Carrera wouldn’t have believed Russ. Now he merely asked, “You’re sure you’re not wrong?”

“I saw both of them when I was at that New York gallery with your father. I didn’t see Austra so I can’t be sure it’s him but I got a good look at the woman’s face when she came after me for her son. You never forget a face like that. She’s gone now . . . along with the girl that was staying with her. That should have been enough to send the people to the police but they never went. They were up there, hiding. I swear it. I tell you, something crazy’s going on.”

“Yeah, Halli’s head for one.” Then Carrera told him about the package, how they believed Halli had died, the Wells connection to the earlier murders, all of it.

As he talked, Carrera almost wished this line were tapped. If the FBI got this on tape, his lawyer could have it admitted as evidence of insanity. When he’d finished telling Russ what he knew, Russ upped the ante and described Patrick Austra’s physical and mental powers, concluding with an ominous warning, “When I first read the stuff I lifted from the house, I thought they were hiding out because they were communists or something. Now I think whatever’s going on is a hell of a lot stranger. If the father’s anything like the kid, you have to be careful, Domie. He’ll read your mind. He’ll try to control it.”

Carrera had to give Russ credit. This hadn’t been an easy story for Russ to tell, but so far as Carrera could discern, Russ hadn’t held back any of it. “You said you saw Austra in New York. What did he look like?” Carrera asked. When Russ responded with a description of the man Carrera had seen two nights earlier, Carrera was convinced he had seen Halli’s killer. “You know more about this than me, Russell. What do you think I should I do?” he asked.

“Play it safe. When Austra and Wells contact you, you decide on the bargain you want to make beforehand—Wells for his son, Austra’s kid for whatever you think he’s worth. If you meet with Austra face-to-face, don’t back down an inch from your position. No matter how right his suggestion seems at the time, don’t change your mind about anything until you’re sure he’s gone and you give yourself plenty of time to think about it. He can’t touch you as long as you don’t know where I am. If he tries anything, I’ll kill the kids. Be sure to tell him that. As for the trade . . .”

“I can handle that,” Carrera interjected with some irritation. Russ’s advice had become so obvious it seemed like an insult.

“And hide those reports someplace where he’ll never find them.”

“I know what they’re worth, Russell.”

“Good.”

“And I won’t forget to take care of you either. I owe you that.”

“Thanks, Domie. And, Domie?“

“Yeah.”

“Those girls were nothing, no better than that B-girl Billy whacked over at Fran’s.”

“So I figured,” Carrera said wearily. “Give me two days, then call again. Same time.”

Carrera hung up the phone and turned off the ringer before locking it away in the closet. Voices from the restaurant’s lounge drifted through the closed door and he heard Toni’s among them. Nonetheless, Carrera sat alone, his hand cradling his glass as he considered how to deal with Russ Lowell.

Everyone thought it was so easy for him, like he was one of the vicious dogs played by actors like Cagny and Raft and he could snap his fingers and make somebody disappear and never feel any remorse. Yes, it was easy when it had to be. Revenge could even be enjoyable. Friends were different and Russ had not crossed him. But Carrera sensed something dark and ugly in Russ’s justification of what he had done, a rottenness that went far beyond Billy Gerard’s rage when the girl at Fran’s had given him the clap. He’d walked into Fran’s with a baseball bat and beat the girl to death. Everybody expected that kind of thing from Billy; he had that kind of temper. Russ didn’t. Maybe the most unsettling thing about all his murders was how balanced Russ had always seemed, how well he’d managed to hide the viciousness inside him.

Well, one thing was certain—Carrera wouldn’t desert Russ, especially not now. Tomorrow he’d talk to Volpe about everything he’d learned and make plans on how to protect Russ. Tonight he just wanted to forget.

Decision made, Carrera opened the door, motioned Toni inside, and locked it behind her. She wore a strapless white sundress that laced up the front. Her eyes were oval and slightly slanted, her tanned skin dark as her hair, and as she padded toward the table, he thought of tigers in the snow. She poured them each a drink, then sat on the edge of the table, her knees spread, her skirt hiked over them. Underneath the dress she probably wore nothing at all.

He took the glass she held out to him. “Do you remember anything more from the other night?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Every time I try, I get a headache and believe me, Domie, I’m out half a bottle of aspirin from all the trying. I think I got drugged or something.”

“Maybe a pale-skinned man, thin, with dark curly hair?”

She rested a hand on the side of his face, one long nail scratching behind his ear. “Hey, you sure you want me to get that headache now?” She accentuated the suggestion with that odd crooked smile that made him so crazy for her and tilted her head up, waiting to be kissed.

II

Russ expected to be gone for at least three hours. Helen knew this long before he left.

But though he could keep her from calling for help, he could not silence her mind. In her years of solitude, she had learned to lure deer from the woods, foxes from their dens. As for people, since her changing she’d had her choice of them. An end to this might be easy after all.

She started as soon as Russ had gone, her mind following her hearing in an expanding circle of awareness. A quick mental scan of the surroundings revealed few choices for rescuers. Much of the area hadn’t seen constant use since Prohibition and the buildings kept up since then had fallen into disrepair during the recession. The new docks closer to downtown had turned this region into an urban ghost town, abandoned and empty.

She sensed a pair of drunks sleeping off an early evening bottle in a storage shed on a nearby pier. Waking them would be difficult and she continued the search until, near the edge of her range, she found two children, hardly older than Alan, fishing off a concrete pier.

She sent them no more than a suggestion that they explore the old warehouses. The girl was intrigued by the sudden thought of adventure and began talking her little brother into it.

“Ma said we’re not supposed to go there,” the boy complained stubbornly, using his parent as a scapegoat for his fear.

“Well, she’ll never know.”

“Yeah, she will. She always knows.” The boy stared at the long evening shadows the buildings threw over the rubble heaped between them. Things lived beneath those heaps of rusted metal beams, things waiting with sharp claws for him to get too close.