Dark Homecoming (33 page)

E
verything was blackness, but she could hear voices coming from somewhere far away. “Can you hear us?” a man was asking. “Can you tell us your name?”

Maria opened her eyes. She was in some sort of vehicle, it seemed. An ambulance. Medical equipment. Oxygen tanks.

“What happened?” she mumbled. “How did I get here?”

In her mind, she saw Luis and Marisol . . . playing in the bright sunlight.
They will be okay . . . I did the right thing.

But what exactly had she done? Maria couldn't remember. . .

“You were thrown pretty bad by the storm.” The man whose face hovered above her had kind eyes and a soft voice. “Luckily we were right down the street.”

Maria realized the man was wearing camouflage. The National Guard.

The storm. The hurricane.

Oh, sweet Jesus . . .

The ceremony. The blood.

She was running to get help . . .

Maria panicked as the memories came flooding back to her. She tried to sit up. The man in the National Guard uniform gently restrained her.

“You've got to send help,” Maria told him. “Huntington House. There are people hurt there.”

“Okay, we'll add them to the list,” the Guardsman told her. “There are lots of people hurt all over town.”

“But you don't understand. They'll kill her. They might already have done so.”

“There, there, ma'am, just lie still and try to relax.” He motioned over to a colleague. “I think she could use a sedative.”

Maria sat up. “No, you must listen! It's a ceremony—a coven of witches!”

The Guardsman just looked at her oddly.

Maria thought of something. “Please! You must get me Detective Foley! I must tell Detective Foley what is going on in that house!”

I
t was something out of a fever-induced nightmare: Liz stood in a hurricane-devastated room being restrained on either side by two men, one of them a business associate of her husband's, the other a young man who had been very polite to her during every previous encounter. All the while Mrs. Hoffman, her nemesis ever since coming to this house, sliced open her forearm and collected her blood in a goblet.

Which she then gave to David's supposedly dead first wife to drink.

The absurdity of it all was not lost on Liz, even in her terror.

“This can't be happening,” she shouted, not believing what her eyes were showing her.

Dominique was alive! She had been living in the walls, in a secret room within the house, all this time. She was the deformed, bloated woman who had attacked her. Except now, as she sat there drinking her goblet of blood, Dominique looked different than she had the previous times Liz had seen her: she was looking less monstrous. Her hair was lustrous and dark again, much as it was in the portrait. Her face was less bloated. Her eyes were still protruding and her face still seemed broken, but the blood was reviving her, restoring her, under the black magic that had been practiced in this room.

Nicki's blood had started the process, Liz realized sadly, refusing to look over at the dead body of her friend. No, the process had begun before that, she realized: Audra had been killed for her blood, and likely those two friends of hers who had gone missing, whom Detective Foley had asked her about, had been killed for the reason, too. Those were the bodies she had seen, Liz realized. Unfortunate young women slaughtered to keep Dominique alive.

That was as much as Liz's brain would permit her to reason: just how Dominique had survived the accident on the boat, and whether David knew any of this, and whether Jamison's or Rita's murders fit this pattern, she had no idea. She had no time to think about any of that as the fear suddenly set in, threatening to choke her as it surged up from her gut, once the shock and denial of her terrible situation began to fade.

Liz's eyes darted over to her brother-in-law. He was involved with this coven, as Mrs. Hoffman had called it. He'd been a follower of Dominique's. How much did he know about the deaths of those women? He sat there now on a chair in the circle, his head in his hands. Naomi Collins, the artist whose weird paintings had so unnerved Liz, stood over him pointing a gun—but how easily Roger had accepted Liz's fate, how easily he had allowed her to be taken away.

No,
Liz thought to herself.
I wouldn't have done the same. I would have fought back, even if it meant I was killed in the process.

In that moment, Liz realized something about herself. Even as she was held against her will and was growing weaker as more and more of her blood spilled out onto the floor, she understood she was a fighter, and she'd always been a fighter. So many times she had doubted her own strength; so many times she had felt helpless. Yet she was stronger than she ever gave herself credit for being. She was a fighter.

And she wasn't done fighting yet.

Mrs. Hoffman was back in front of her, brandishing that knife.

“Where shall I make the next cut?” she asked. “That pretty little face?”

Liz's arms were restrained by the two men on either side of her.

But her legs were free.

With one swift move, Liz smashed her left knee into Mrs. Hoffman, right in the cunt. Mrs. Hoffman howled and dropped the knife.

In that same instant, Liz yanked herself free from the two surprised men.

“Seize her!” Mrs. Hoffman commanded.

The men made a move to pounce at her as Mrs. Merriwell and Mrs. Delacorte rushed forward as well. Liz knew she would quickly be surrounded, and Naomi Collins could easily fire a bullet her way.

But she wasn't captured quite yet.

“You will not touch her!” came a voice. Liz spun around to see Variola, struggling to her feet, seeming to summon every last drop of strength she had in the effort. “All of you, who have defiled the teachings of vodou,
will not touch her
.” She turned her eyes—once so magnificent, now so sunken and dim, in Liz's direction. “Go, girl. Go as fast as you can. This is the last Variola can do for you.”

Whatever magic Variola had invoked prevented any of Liz's adversaries from moving. As long as Variola stood—trembling, with great will—she was safe. Anger burned in Mrs. Hoffman's eyes as Liz was able to hurry across the room unobstructed toward the door, gripping her forearm tightly with her other hand to stanch the bleeding as best she could. She could feel her head spinning from the loss of blood. She prayed she wouldn't faint.

She wasn't the only one growing weak.

Just as Liz neared the door, Variola collapsed. She had used up the last of her strength, and she crumpled lifelessly to the floor, her body dissolving, as if she had been made of sand.

The second Variola disappeared, Liz saw movement return to the other people in the room. They broke free of their invisible chains. Now the door was out of reach. She would have to get past Naomi with the gun if she went that way. So there was only one route left to Liz for escape.

The secret passageway through the closet.

Liz made a beeline for it.

“Bring her back!” Hoffman shouted. “We need her blood before the eye moves on!”

But Liz was already several steps ahead of them. Through the open panel she ran, taking a few precious seconds to turn around and slide the panel back into place. Then she tore off her blouse and tied it tightly around her forearm to stanch the bleeding. That would hold for a little while. But not for long, she knew.

She turned and ran.

But Liz had another plan.

With the storm temporarily abated, she would go out onto the roof through the hole the winds had ripped open in the attic. She knew she was taking a risk: she'd have to find a way down from the roof, and she'd need to pray that the hurricane didn't start up again until she was safely on the ground. But the roof, as precarious as it was, was less of a risk, Liz believed, than going downstairs and finding herself cornered by her pursuers on the first floor.

As she ran down the passage she could hear them banging on the panel, struggling to slide it open. Liz could hear Mrs. Hoffman ordering some of them downstairs in case Liz went that route, while instructing the others to follow her into the passage. “Half of you go this way, half of you go that way! Hurry! Hurry!”

Liz ran.

Outside, the winds were gathering again.

“T
he storm will be back soon,” Aggie cautioned as Joe pulled on his raincoat and headed out of the station. “I'm not sure you can get there and back in time.”

“I've got to go,” he said. “I've got to find out why Liz called me.”

“And if turns out it was just a pocket dial and you're stuck out there in the worst hurricane Florida has seen in a decade?”

“I'm sure they've got a cozy, well-appointed safe room at Huntington House,” he quipped.

Aggie shook her head. “I'm coming with you.”

“But the storm—”

“We're partners, aren't we? We're both investigating this case.”

Joe smiled. “Then let's get going.”

They stepped out into the parking lot. The sky was a bright blue-green: pretty, but ominous, too. Joe didn't think he'd ever seen it that color. The afternoon was unnervingly quiet now after all the noise and furor of the past couple of hours. With the coming of the eye, a hush seemed to have dropped over the city, which sat motionless, holding its breath, waiting for the next assault. The only sounds Joe heard as he and Aggie walked to the car were the faraway drones of house and car alarms that had been set off by the winds. Joe glanced up into one of the few palm trees still standing on the street. Its fronds had begun to move slightly again. He knew Caroline wasn't through with them. She was getting ready for her comeback.

“Get your badge out in case we're stopped by the National Guard,” Joe told Aggie as they both hopped into the car. “Murder investigations don't take a break, we'll tell them.”

“Not even for hurricanes,” Aggie replied.

Joe started the car. But before he'd had a chance to back out, his phone, clipped to his belt, buzzed.

“Joe Foley,” he answered.

“Joe, it's Tim Duncan over in dispatch. We have a call in from one of the National Guard mobile hospitals for you.”

“Who from?”

“Not sure. A patient. Hold on, I'll patch you through.”

Joe looked over at Aggie. “Some patient in one of the Guard hospitals wants to talk with me.”

“Detective Foley?” a voice crackled in his ear.

“This is Joe Foley.”

“This is Captain Alvarez of the National Guard. I have a patient here, a Mrs. Maria Martinez, who insists she speak to you. She's refusing any treatment until she does. She says it's about a case you're working on.”

“Yes, please, let me speak with her.” Joe switched the phone to speaker so that Aggie could hear.

“I should tell you,” Alvarez added, “that what she's saying doesn't make a lot of sense. She suffered some trauma after getting tossed pretty hard by the hurricane.”

“Whatever she has to say,” Joe said, “I'm eager to hear.”

“Okay, hang on.”

A couple of seconds passed. Joe and Aggie exchanged quizzical looks.

“Detective Foley?”

“Yes, this is Detective Foley.”

The woman on the other end of the phone burst into tears. “This is Maria Martinez,” she said. “I just hope I'm not too late.”

L
iz made her way down the passageway, which reeked of the smell of death. She knew those corpses were in here somewhere. At least now, with all the damage left by the storm, there was some light let in from the outside to guide her: she had no idea where her phone was. Liz just needed to find a place where the damage was so severe that she could step out onto the roof.

She had to hurry. She could hear footsteps behind her now. At least some of them had come into the passageway after her.

A few feet down the corridor she spotted another corpse. Paul Delacorte, his dead eyes still open and staring at her. “Scum,” she spit as she stepped over the body.

Up ahead, the light was greater. That was because the entire wall on the right side was gone, along with a huge chunk of the ceiling. Stepping through the debris into the light, Liz realized that she was leaving the secret passageway and returning into the main house. As she glanced around, she saw something else: she was stepping into her own room.

The place was soaked with water and strewn with plaster and broken glass, but her bed, along an interior wall, was just as she had left it not so many hours earlier. Her bureau remained remarkably untouched, with bottles of perfume still standing upright. But only a few feet away the entire exterior wall was gone, exposing a sheer drop down into the gardens. Liz saw with some shock that they were now nothing more than brown, glistening pools of mud.

Only then did Liz spot Nicki's suitcase. Her heart broke. Her friend—who had come down here to support her. Liz thought she might dissolve into a blubbering mass of tears right there on the spot.

I've got to stay strong
, she told herself.
They'll be in here after me at any minute. I've got to find a way down to the ground.

Her plan to escape via the roof hadn't panned out. There'd been no way to get out there that Liz had found. Maybe she would have found some way if she'd gone in the opposite direction. But the only route out of the passage that she'd found had been through the broken wall that led into her own room. For a second Liz imagined Dominique moving through that passage in the weeks previous.

Liz glanced down through the broken wall at the remains of the gardens. The drop was too high for her to jump. She'd surely kill herself, or break her leg, leaving her helpless against Hoffman and her minions, who would quickly descend upon her. Liz studied the broken beams and plaster. Was there a way she could shinny herself down? If she had time, she might have tied bedsheets together to form a makeshift rope to lower herself to the ground. But she didn't have time. She could hear them coming for her now. They were running behind the walls. She had been a fool to try to go out this way. She should have risked going downstairs.

She looked again out the window. The only way was to jump . . . she'd rather take the leap and hope for the best than be snatched back by those monsters. Maybe the mud would cushion her fall.

But it was too late. A hand gripped her shoulder.

“Jumping would be a terrible mistake.” It was Roger. “Accidents like that could severely mar your pretty face.” He turned her around to face him and cupped her chin in his hand. “Look at what happened to Dominique when she fell off that boat and got caught in its rotors.”

“Don't touch me,” Liz said, pulling away from him and standing precariously on the edge, poised to jump. She noticed Roger was alone; Naomi Collins had let him go; and none of the others had followed him in here. Still, he was as bad as all the rest of them. “I'd rather break my neck than die at the hands of you lunatics,” she said.

“But you see, darling, that's why I'm here,” Roger said. “They agreed to let me reason with you. You can become part of us.”

“You're lying to me. Not that I'd ever join your loathsome little group, but you're talking bullshit. No way would Hoffman allow me to live. If I live, Dominique doesn't come back.”

Roger leaned in conspiratorially. “After Hoffman ran off, we all decided that we didn't need her. Variola was right. We'll do things our way. We've learned plenty. Hoffman isn't the only one who can call up a spell. We'll overthrow Hoffman. It was my plan all along, and it can still come true.”

Behind him, Liz spotted movement. The door to her room was opening slowly, carefully, as if to not make a sound. Liz's first impulse was to cry out, but something made her hold her tongue. She gave no indication of what she saw to Roger.

“I was always very reluctant about this idea of bringing Dominique back,” he was saying. “I went along with Hoffman only begrudgingly. But she had certain things on me, and so she made me do things. You know how she can be.”

“What did she make you do?”

“I had to kill those poor girls for their blood. I wasn't happy about it, darling. Don't think badly of me.”

“Audra . . . Rita . . . you killed them . . .”

“No, darling, just Audra's friends. And then some tramp I picked up at a bar. It was Dominique who killed Audra. She was angry about her affair with David. That was how we learned that the blood is the life. Dominique tasted Audra's blood, and we saw the effect it had on her. Ever since Variola had reclaimed her body from the sea and breathed some measure of life back into it, she'd been a mindless zombie. After she made a meal of Audra's blood . . . well, some understanding returned to her eyes. Some intelligence flickered there. That's why it was decided that we needed to find more blood for her.”

Liz glanced over at the door, careful that Roger did not notice. A small hand was coming around from the other side of the door

“And I didn't kill Rita either,” Roger went on. “I don't want you thinking I did.”

“Who did kill her then?”

Roger smirked. “You still fretting over David? Forget him, Liz. He's a loser. How easily he was manipulated by all of us. Dominique had him under a spell for months, and during the time she's been indisposed, Mrs. Hoffman took care of it.”

“You're all mad. You're all sick!”

“They are, darling. Not me. I got into this to be a successful art dealer, not a murderer. I refused to do any more of Hoffman's dirty work after those first two girls, and only under great pressure did I agree to bring her poor Lana.” He smiled wistfully. “I didn't even get to fuck her first. Oh, boy, when she found out I was a Huntington, she thought she'd hit the jackpot. I told her to meet me upstairs in that last room on the left. I wanted time for a little quickie with her before I slit her throat and drained her blood, but Hoffman was very insistent that Dominique was getting too difficult to control. Her body had grown stronger. She kept escaping from her room. We saw her that day, didn't we, darling, in the sculpture garden? But her mind remained as weak as ever. She needed another transfusion. So . . .”

The hand grabbed on to the door and pushed it slowly, silently, into the room.

“I know I sound awful, darling,” Roger said. “But once we're married, I won't play around anymore. I promise.”

“Married.” Liz spit the word out like poison on her tongue.

But Roger's eyes were far away and filled with madness. “Once Dominique promised she would marry me, too. She would divorce David and marry me. That was our plan. But no!” His face went dark. “How she taunted me! She knew I loved her! She knew that I wanted her to be with me forever. But still she taunted me with other men. She was always flirting. Always taking lovers . . .”

Liz could see the rage roiling in Roger's eyes.

“David always got everything he wanted,” he seethed. “Everything! The best grades, the best positions on athletic teams, the leading parts in the school plays. I was always just in the background. All the teachers liked David and hated me. He even got the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife! But I wanted her! She and I could have been so powerful together.”

“Her coven made you rich,” Liz said calmly.

“I still have a deal with Papa Ghede,” Roger replied, his eyes twinkling.

“Variola always said that deals made with Papa Ghede for selfish reasons will backfire.”

Roger snorted. “Variola was a weak-minded fool! She never realized what greatness she could have achieved through her abilities.”

Behind them, the hand was followed by an arm, and then a bloated, twisted face. Liz saw it was Dominique.

She suppressed an urge to cry out as the once-beautiful woman slipped into the room. Dominique's eyes were sparkling, but her face remained twisted and broken. She was not looking at Liz, however; her gaze was trained on Roger. Instinctively Liz sensed it was in her best interests not to warn Roger of Dominique's presence. At this particular moment, who was to say who was Liz's greater foe?

“We will destroy them,” Roger was telling her. “Come back with me now. They will all fall behind me when I give the word. Naomi, Karl, the Merriwells, the Claytons, Mrs. Delacorte . . . they are
my
friends, not hers. That's why they let me go. They hate Hoffman, too. They will gather around us and we will destroy Hoffman once and for all.”

“And Dominique?” Liz asked, as the woman with the wild eyes slowly and silently made her way across the room. “What will you do about her?”

Roger laughed. “I killed her once before. I'll kill her again.”

“You—?”

“That's what Mrs. Hoffman had on me, darling.” He smiled almost comically. “You see, it was I who was on the boat with Dominique, not David.”

“But . . . the captain said he saw David . . .”

Roger gave her that dazzling grin of his. “We look an awful lot alike, my brother and I. You've said so yourself. Captain Hogarth saw me from up on the bridge, and just for a fleeting second. It was only natural he'd think I was David.” He laughed. “And convenient, too. Once this is all over, my love, we'll pin Dominique's death on David, too, when he's tried for the murder of Rita.”

Behind him, Dominique suddenly revealed the knife she'd been concealing in the folds of her robe. Liz couldn't muffle her horror any longer and let out a gasp. Roger turned around, but it was too late. Dominique lifted the knife over her head before bringing it down savagely, stabbing Roger in the back.

He let out a cry and staggered off to the side. Liz backed away from him, her hands covering her mouth, watching as one more unspeakable terror unfolded in front of her eyes. Dominique yanked the bloody knife out of Roger's back. It made a horrible suction sound. Roger tried to speak, to say something to Liz, but he couldn't form any words. A little sound burbled from his throat, and then he collapsed to the floor. Dominique, almost gleefully, leapt upon him. Her knife went in and out of him over and over again, blood spraying everywhere.

Liz turned. She knew she'd be the madwoman's next target. The only choice left for her now was to jump.