HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (15 page)

“
Who is she?”
Angelique finally asked toward the end of summer.

Nisroc sat reading a
leather bound volume, his legs stretched out before him. They had
just had dinner served to them on trays. Angelique now picked at the
last of the little honey-cooked eyes of carrots on her plate.

Nisroc closed the
book and placed it in his lap. “She’s no one.”

“
She’s
someone. You’ve gone missing too often for her to be like the
others.”

“
There have
been no others.” He shrugged, unwilling to share more
information with Angelique.

“
Well, now
there is one and you know what will happen. She’ll grow old and
die.”

Nisroc looked up
from where he’d been contemplating the quality of the leather
on the book in his lap. “I know.”

“
You think you
can feel love, is that it?”

“
I think I
can.”

Angelique knocked
the tray of food to the floor and rose straight into the air, her
little feet dangling free. Her face was twisted with anger and
revulsion. It was as ugly as some kind of strange, alien bug.

“
Oh,
Angelique,” Nisroc said. “These displays are beneath
you.” He sighed and looked away from her dangling body.

She was instantly
across the distance between them, snatching the book from his lap.
She threw it across the room where it hit the wall. She slapped
Nisroc’s face and the sound was like a shot in the quiet room.
“Don’t be impertinent.”

He showed no
emotion. As his cheek reddened, he stared steadily into Angelique’s
eyes. “So will you kill me now?”

“
I could!”
She dropped to the floor in front of him, placing her hands on her
hips.

“
You could.”
He nodded, still holding her gaze.

“
Why are you
trying me?”

Nisroc took a few
beats to answer. His voice was cold and solemn. “I spent two
thousand years longer in the outer darkness than you did, Angelique.
I’m not saying I want to go back, but…”

“
But what?”

“
But it holds
little threat over me. If I have no freedom of will at all on this
planet, then I prefer you dispatch me now and bring down someone
else. I won’t live as your puppet.”

Angelique stepped
back in surprise. It was as if a tiger had refused to obey and
instead loped off to chase a rabbit. It was as if a cowed dog
decided to snap at her hand.

“
You’d
rather…”

He said, “I’d
rather give up this life with you than live it as I have all this
time. Yes, I’d rather.”

Perplexed at this
turn of affairs, Angelique frowned. Her mind was in such turmoil she
could not think straight. She studied Nisroc’s face. His gaze
never wavered and there was no fear in his eyes.

Nisroc rose, pushing
her back out of the way. “You must surely have tired of having
a slave companion by now,” he said.

“
I…”

“
I may not be
your equal, Angelique, but I am an individual with free will. You’ve
taken that from me in return for this earthly existence, but I did
meet a woman who I spend time with, and if you want me to give her
up, then I give you up, too. I give up this barren reality. It has
become really no different from the empty void you brought me from.”

He turned his head
and stretched out his neck as if to offer it to her. She could
dispatch him with one blow despite her childlike size. He would not
fight this angel, but he would break her mastery over him if it was
the last thing he did.

When she did not
move to strike him a death blow, he relaxed and returned his gaze to
her. “If I stay, I’ll not be questioned,” he said.
“You must leave me alone.”

Angelique spit to
the side and stalked away. “Do whatever you want, I don’t
care. Have your woman, who cares. She’ll die one day and that
will be that.”

He knew that she did
care, and deeply, but now was not the time she would do anything
about it.

And, of course, she
was right. Mary Bartoni Harper would die. One day she would succumb
and he hated the very idea. She was human, frightfully human, and
she would age while he would not. Eventually he would lose her to
death, as nature intended, as the creator decreed.

While Angelique
still had her back to him, Nisroc left the room and the house, taking
the streetcar through the cool night, his mind focused on the woman
who he was obsessed with. His Mary.

His love.

CHAPTER 17

LOVE AND REMORSE

How he came to know
love was beyond all understanding. As a fallen angel he thought he
had been not only separated from his creator, but from the grace that
allowed love to exist.

He began to question
what sort of being he was. Angelique thought he was merely enamored
of a human female on a purely physical level. What she did not know,
could hardly even comprehend, was how his attraction to Mary had
changed and was as real and human in scope as any man felt who had
loved any woman.

He could not, of
course--or yet--tell Mary the complicated tale of his life. She knew
about Angelique and thought the child Nisroc’s own. She
thought him a widower. She thought him a normal man.

She would have to
know the truth, but not for a while. When gray tinged her hair, when
wrinkles stole her beauty, when muscles deteriorated, when desire
evaporated, when the days moved close to the end of life--she would
look on him, a young man, and know he was unnatural.

Until she had
questions, he was determined to live a life with her that was as
close to human as possible. Why cause her pain or confusion until he
had to?

Now as he walked
from the steetcar stop to her house, he straightened his tie and shot
his cuffs from the sleeves of his navy blue jacket, ran a hand
through his unruly hair, and put a smile on his face. He might not
feel as settled as he looked, but he knew the pretense would pass a
cursory examination.

“
Nick!”
she cried when she opened the door to him. He had not told her the
name Angelique knew him by, his angel name. He had shortened it to
Nick.

“
Mary,”
he breathed, taking her into his arms and burying his face in her
fragrant neck. She smelled of spring violets, of mountain streams,
and rain clouds tumbling over mountaintops. Her flesh warmed him.
Her acceptance was all he felt he had ever needed. Even the women he
had loved in Caesar’s time had never moved him as much as did
his Mary.

True, she was not
entirely sane. She had periods of unbridled anger, usually turned
against herself. She often spoke of a world she inhabited that was
nothing like the real world. She spoke of conspiracies, of paranoid
scenarios, and feared the dark so much that there were always lights
on in her house all through the night. She had told him, “I
see his ghost,” meaning her dead husband’s shade. She
feared retaliation from beyond the veil of death no matter how he
tried to assure her those fears were unfounded.

Despite the
frailties of her mind, she was vulnerable, open, and real. She
displayed no pretenses, held no regrets, entertained no jealousies or
envies. She was as open as a book to him and what a fascinating,
complicated being she was.

She also loved him
with a fierceness that shook him to the core. He knew she would die
for him. She had made him her one and only god.

In the bedroom, Mary
undressed slowly, knowing he watched. She slipped the gray satin
dress from her shoulders and let it fall. He undid her corset for
her and when she removed it, her breasts jiggled loose, the nipples
stiffening. She slipped from the bloomers and, finally naked, walked
to him where he sat clothed on the bed. The line along her spine and
over her full buttocks was like an S-curve that made him want to
reach out and touch her, taste her…consume her.

“
I am not
beautiful,” she said.

It was her mantra.
“You are,” he said, taking her onto his lap.

“
But I love
you.”

“
And I you.”

She tucked her head
into the crook of his neck and sighed happily. “Oh, Nick, you
do love me, don’t you? You’re not lying? You’re
not sorry for me?”

He was sorry for
her, yes, but this was not something he would ever tell. “I
just love you,” he said. “You’re the most
majestic, thrilling, intelligent woman in the world.”

She giggled and he
smiled. She loved hyperbole. It was a sort of game between them.
How outrageous could their love be? How fantastic could they express
it?

After all, she was
not a sane human being, and he was no human being at all. They made
the perfect couple.

CHAPTER 18

THE BREAK WIDENS

In the 1930s
Angelique instituted human sacrifice in her voodoo rituals. She had
to. She needed bodies for her band of angels to inhabit. Her little
religious followers had always sacrificed animals, but remembering
how she solidified her power over the tribes in Haiti, Angelique knew
she must involve her people in the lowest crimes in order to spread
the guilt. Guilty people did not argue. Guilty people were as tied
to her as if there was an umbilical cord between them. They could
never again be entirely free.

“
Come with me
tonight to the bayou,” she said sweetly to Nisroc. These days
he liked to be called “Nick” and that was all right with
her. It was a more modern name. It fit him better for the times.

“
You know I
don’t care for those rituals,” he said. He was reading
again, ignoring her.

“
I insist.”

His gaze rose at the
tone of her voice. “You’re commanding me?”

“
I have
something to show you.”

He put down the
book. “All right. Let me change.”

They went into the
clammy night, holding hands. A stranger seeing them would think it
was a father going for an evening walk with his daughter. In reality
it was Angelique hauling him along the sidewalk to the garage where
they had a car.

“
I hate
driving,” he said.

“
It’s a
long way. We have to drive.”

After they had left
the city, the lights dimmed behind them and he could see the moon and
stars. “How far is it?”

“
Not far now.
Take that dirt road to the right up ahead.”

The road narrowed,
trees crowded in on each side, and the moonlight disappeared. They
came to a clearing where Nick stopped the car. He could smell the
fecund earth, the clean tangy scent of turpentine from the pine
trees, and beneath it all, the faint smell of stagnant water.

“
We’re
here.” Angelique stepped out of the car.

Nick saw a group of
people, a bonfire, and smoke spiraling into the night sky. He shut
off the car and went to join them. He cared very little for
Angelique’s voodoo nonsense and the strange dark people she
drew to her with it, but she had insisted so…

He was almost to the
bonfire before he saw her.

Mary.

He halted, rooted to
the spot. He gasped. Mary lay naked and spread-eagled on the bare
dirt, her legs and arms tied to stakes driven into the ground.
Mary’s eyes were wild and it was obvious what little sanity she
enjoyed had now been wiped away.

Nick found himself
rising from the ground. The people all stopped what they were doing
to stare. His anger was a palpable thing, a whirlwind, a flood, a
wall of fire reaching into the sky.

Below him Angelique
said, “Stop it.”

“
You let her
go or I’ll kill you,” he said, his voice frighteningly
controlled. The natives cowered and some covered their eyes.

At the booming sound
of his threat the group scattered, leaving Mary lying alone on the
ground.

“
You can’t
kill me,” she said with a laugh. “It’s only a
joke, Nick. A little trick. A surprise. I wasn’t going to
harm her.”

Suddenly Nick flung
his body down and forward, slamming the child to the earth. “You
bitch! You devil!”