Dark Homecoming (31 page)

G
agging, covering her mouth, hoping she wouldn't puke, Liz made her way around the stinking, rotting corpses. Her only thought now was to get out. She'd rather deal with the hurricane than with Paul Delacorte.

She shined her phone ahead of her to give her light. She was disoriented. Was this the way she had come? She had no choice in direction, however, as the hideous debris from the fallen attic had barred off one part of the passage. Liz moved as quickly as she could. She had to find the exit!

It all seemed a terrible nightmare. Could it all really be happening? Where was Nicki? Where were the others? Whose corpses had she seen? What had Paul Delacorte been doing in the house?

Escape seemed futile. Liz saw no exit. She was trapped in here—trapped inside the walls!

“No,” she whispered to herself, even as she heard the wind outside and the terrible scrape of wood being blown from the house. “I'll find a way out.”

She would need to see more clearly if she was ever to find a seam in the wall indicating an exit. She moved her phone closer to direct the light. As she did so, she noticed that she had a couple bars of reception—she realized in a burst of joy that she could make a call. She hit Nicki's number. It rang and rang until Nicki's voice mail picked up. Liz didn't have time to wait. She hit END and then searched desperately among her recent calls. There was one number she was looking for. Only one number could help her now . . .

She found it. She tapped on it. She heard the first ring as the call went through.

“Please, please,” she whispered.

But then the sound became scrambled, and she looked down at her phone. Reception was once again lost.

A loud scrape above her—and Liz looked up to see a whole section of the ceiling peel away and then fly off into the sky. Dark gray skies were revealed and rain poured in on her. Liz felt as if she might be sucked out into the hurricane. She scurried down the passage to a place where some ceiling remained.

As she did so, she spotted a new reason to hope.

A ladder, going down. Whether it was the ladder she'd come up here on, she wasn't sure. Where it led to, she didn't know either. But she knew she had to get off the second floor.

Except—

—someone else was already coming up the ladder.

Hands suddenly emerged from the opening on the floor. In instants there also appeared the head and shoulders of Paul Delacorte.

“There you are, you bitch,” he growled. “So you'll go into it wide awake. We tried to spare you some of it by putting you to sleep. But so much for that.”

He pulled himself through the opening and stood facing Liz. He grinned.

“But first,” he said, “I'm going to finish what I started before.”

“No,” Liz whimpered.

She could fight, she could push and kick and scratch and bite. But there was no way she could overpower him now. He was right on her, and there was nowhere to run.

“Come on, baby, you might as well enjoy it,” Delacorte said. “It's going to be your last time.”

His sweaty paws were on her cheeks.

“Nooo,” Liz cried.

There was a bang. There were so many noises around her as the wind ripped away parts of the house that at first Liz didn't distinguish the sound as being any different. But when Delacorte suddenly groaned and heaved in front of her, his hands dropping from her cheeks, she realized her attacker had been shot in the back. Blood came pouring from Delacorte's mouth and he collapsed like a melting snowman in front of her, dead at her feet.

Liz looked up. Standing at the ladder was Roger, who held a smoking pistol in his hands.

“Roger!” Liz cried in joy.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Liz looked down at the crumpled body of Paul Delacorte. “He was insane,” she managed to say.

“He deserved to die,” Roger told her, approaching her, taking her hand and leading her away.

“We've got to get out of here,” Liz said.

“Yes, my darling, we have a greater destiny than this.”

She didn't really understand his words, but it didn't matter. Roger was helping her around the debris and toward the ladder that led downstairs. “I thought we could hide out in the study,” Liz was saying. “Or perhaps the basement . . . somewhere that the winds can't get to us . . . the storm can't last much longer.” She thought of something. “We've got to find Nicki! Hopefully she's found a safe place.”

Roger said nothing. But he guided her past the ladder that led through the opening to the first floor.

“We've got to go
down
, Roger!” Liz shouted, the winds picking up again and howling through the holes in the ceiling. “It's not safe up here.”

“I'm taking you on another route to safety,” he explained. “It's where Nicki is.”

Liz didn't understand, but she clutched Roger's hand tightly and allowed him to lead her down the corridor. At last they stopped.

“Here it is,” he said.

He dropped Liz's hand and pressed both palms against the wall. Liz heard a scraping sound, and then a panel in the wall slid back. She recognized the closet in the room where she had been attacked. Beyond the closet came the flickering of candlelight.

But Liz wouldn't move. “We have to go downstairs!” she insisted to Roger. “The attic has been ripped off and a whole chunk of the second floor is exposed to the hurricane! It's only a matter of time before this part of the house gets blown away as well!”

“It's safer to go through this way,” Roger said, stepping into the passage and offering his hand. “The other way was destroyed.”

Liz looked at him, unsure.

Roger smiled. “Trust me, Liz.”

She took his hand.

V
ariola, seated on the floor, as far away as possible from the terrible ceremony that was taking place, spied Mrs. Martinez out of the corner of her eye, dithering by the door.

Variola knew it was over. She had lost. The ceremony was draining her of her power, sucking her very life force from her body. Mrs. Hoffman had indeed learned her lessons well. She had mastered the arts that Variola had taught her, so much so that Variola was now powerless against her. Hoffman's power came directly from Variola; she was siphoning it off, bit by bit. The weaker Variola became, the stronger Hoffman grew.

But there was one tiny hope.

Mrs. Martinez.

“Go,” Variola whispered, and she prayed to Papa Ghede that her whisper would bounce across the room and resound in Mrs. Martinez's ear.

The look Mrs. Martinez suddenly shot her told her that her prayers were answered.

Variola knew how horrified Mrs. Martinez was by all of this. How sorry she was that she'd ever gotten involved in such madness. It had started out innocently enough: Mrs. Martinez had been fascinated by Variola's tales of magic in the islands, and gradually she had come to believe that such magic might help her family prosper. She had become an avid pupil, assisting Variola in teaching Dominique and Mrs. Hoffman all the arcane arts. And, lo and behold, her daughter Teresa suddenly was promoted at work. Her two beloved grandchildren started getting all A's in school. Mrs. Martinez credited the vodou gods. She was glad to keep assisting Variola in her ceremonies with Dominique and Hoffman, and eventually their little coven grew. It had been harmless in the beginning. Spells to keep them young. Rituals to enhance prosperity. Love potions for Mrs. Delacorte to prevent her husband from straying.

Mrs. Martinez had never expected bloodshed.

Variola fixed the older woman with her big black eyes from across the room. “Go,” she whispered again. She could slip out now. No one was looking. They were all focused on the bleeding ceremony. Variola turned her eyes back to the repulsive sight. That poor girl, Nicki, who had come to this house on an errand of mercy, was hanging from the light fixture on the ceiling, her blood draining into goblets that were held by the two men. At least Nicki hadn't suffered. Hoffman had slit her throat effortlessly, and once the girl was dead, the soulless housekeeper had had her strung up, then sliced her body in various other places, producing a flow of blood like wine from a cask.

“Go,” Variola whispered a third time, her eyes returning to Mrs. Martinez.

The older woman hesitated just a second, then slipped out the door. No one noticed her leave. A small smile crossed Variola's face.

“Drink, my love,” Mrs. Hoffman was saying to the formerly naked woman, who was now wrapped in a gray robe and seated in a chair. Hoffman held a goblet of Nicki's blood up to the woman's lips. “Keep drinking, my darling.”

The woman was responding. Variola couldn't deny that. Her eyes were becoming clearer. She had stopped trembling. She was coming back to life.

Hoffman's magic was potent. She had learned well. Variola had to give her that.

But magic used for evil, for one's own selfish rewards, never came to good. At this rate, however, with her strength draining nearly as fast as Nicki's blood, Variola doubted she would live to see Hoffman's ignominy.

“I believe she has been bled dry,” one of the men announced, turning away from Nicki's wasted corpse.

“But she needs more!” Hoffman commanded. “She is coming back to us! She is waking up, but she needs more! And it must be given to her tonight, when the power of nature is still surrounding us, gifting us with life!”

“The blood has stopped flowing,” the man told her.

“Cut the body down,” Mrs. Hoffman snarled. The man did as he was ordered. Nicki's body fell to the floor, a bony heap.

Suddenly, a sound from the other side of the room. They all turned.

Roger Huntington stepped out of the closet, leading Liz behind him.

M
aria Martinez rushed down the stairs and through the kitchen. But where could she go? Who could she tell of the horrors being committed upstairs? Outside the hurricane raged. Several of the palm trees were down, crushed against the windows of the first floor. Sheets of rain slammed against the glass like a barrage of stones.

How could she go out there? How could she get help?

Maria picked up the phone in the kitchen. Of course it was out. Her own cell phone had lost reception some time ago.

She could go to the garage and get her car. She would drive through the rain. It was the only way. She hurried out through the sunroom.

But then she remembered the other cars in the garage. She had been there when Mrs. Hoffman had directed the guests where to park. Maria had objected that they were blocking her in, but Mrs. Hoffman had dismissed her concerns. “You'll be the last to leave,” she had said. “There will be a lot to clean up after we're done.”

Another palm tree came down, smashing through a window in the sunroom. Rain and wind and broken glass whipped inside. Mud was splattered all over the furniture.

A lot to clean up. That was for sure.

No matter what, no matter the dangers outside, Maria knew she had to get out of this house. The danger inside was worse. Mrs. Hoffman would soon realize she was gone. And she would be angry. Very angry. And with her sudden acquisition of power from Variola, what might she be capable of doing to Maria to exact punishment?

She had never expected it all to become so terrible. It had started as a lark—as something fun. Then it had become something Maria had hoped would help her family, whom she wanted so desperately to find the success she'd never had for herself. But it all changed the day of the accident. The day the Coast Guard came to the house and told them Mrs. Huntington had been washed out to sea.

“You don't believe it, do you?” Mrs. Hoffman had asked Maria later that night. “You don't believe that Dominique is dead, do you?”

“What else can I believe?” Maria had asked.

Mrs. Hoffman had taken her to a secret room in the attic and showed her.

There was Dominque's body. Bruised, battered, bloody. But breathing.

How very much Hoffman wanted to believe she could restore Dominique to life. How wild had been her dream! And that creature on the second floor—that shambling, deformed creature drinking a dead girl's blood—was the product of that wild dream.

Maria should have gone to the police after Audra was killed. She had suspected just where the poor girl's blood had gone. But Mrs. Hoffman had threatened her. “What magic has done for your family,” she warned, “can also be undone, and worse.”

“It was all a lie,” Maria said out loud, her hands in her hair, not knowing what to do. “Teresa got that promotion all on her own, because she was a good worker. Marisol and Luis earned those grades through their own hard work. Magic had nothing to do with it.”

If that was so, then she had nothing to fear from Mrs. Hoffman.

Except that knife she held in her hands.

Maria had been horrified by how easily Mrs. Hoffman had used it to slice that girl's throat, as if it was something she did every day.

Dear God . . .

Had Mrs. Hoffman killed the others? Had she murdered Audra, and Jamison, and Rita?

Was Mr. Huntington innocent after all?

And what about poor, dear Thad? Something had happened to Thad. His car was still in the garage but he had disappeared somewhere in the house.

More blood on Mrs. Hoffman's hands?

Maria knew she had to get out of the house. Whether it was Mrs. Hoffman's magic or her knife, there was more danger within these walls than outside in the streets. She would push her way through the rain and the wind. She would find someone, a neighbor, anyone. Grabbing a rain slicker in the coatroom off the kitchen, Maria Martinez slipped it on and took a deep breath. Opening the back door, she stepped out into the storm.