Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (211 page)

Didn’t these people have lives?

Or was this a command performance?

In the dark, she pulled on the chain around her neck, lifting it upward so that the vial was now on the outside of her sweater. It was still partially hidden by her jacket, but when the houselights went up, she planned to talk to a few people and see if anyone commented or noticed. The play went on, with only minimal flubbing of lines, and the guy in front of her who reeked of musk and weed started to snore. His head was bent forward and the woman next to him jabbed him in the side.

He snorted himself awake, sounding like a ripsaw, and the woman shushed him but good.

Kristi sat on the edge of her seat. Nervously she waited, and when at last the play was over and the cast had come out for a group bow, she was ready. As the applause died down and the lights went up, she stepped around the snorer and caught up with O as she filed out.

“You’re O, right?” Kristi said, as if she’d just seen her that second. “I think we have a class together.”

O rolled one bored eye at her. “Which one?”

“Maybe Shakespeare…or…Grotto’s vampire class.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe.”

“I’m looking for a study partner.”

“I’m not.”

“Do you know anyone who is?”

O turned to face Kristi as they reached the doorway to the anteroom. “Do I look like a fuckin’ counselor?” she demanded. Then her gaze landed on the vial at Kristi’s neck. “What the hell are you doing?” she said, blanching. “Hide that thing.”

“Why?”

“Why?” O repeated. Her eyes narrowed. “You are part of…” At that moment Father Mathias began heading their way and O widened her eyes in silent appeal.

Kristi quickly tucked the vial under her shirt again.

“Enjoy tonight’s performance?” the priest asked.

“Immensely,” O said, though it was an obvious act.

“Good, good!”

“Father Mathias, congratulations!” Natalie Croft made her way through the crowd. She was beaming at the priest. “Job well done,” she said, though Kristi disagreed. No one in the cast of tonight’s performance was going to make any Academy Award thank you speeches anytime soon, or probably in Dr. Croft’s lifetime.

“
Everyman
is my favorite of all the morality plays, though I’m looking forward to exploring others as well as the mysteries and miracles. I hope you return. Oh, and for those of you who want another viewing, we’ll be adding another performance tomorrow night. Thank you.”

Father Mathias exited the back of the theater as the houselights went up and everyone began picking up their belongings. O was out the door in a flash and Kristi tried to follow her, but got caught in the crush and held up retrieving her cell phone, which was, as promised, ready and waiting for her. She handed another attendant, a girl who had played Knowledge in the play, her claim ticket and was given her phone without any eye contact. Kristi then made her way out the door and into the night, hoping for a glimpse of O. But the girl was gone. As were the others she’d recognized in the audience.

Great,
she thought, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder. All the girls who had been abducted had attended Father Mathias’s plays, so she’d hoped she’d find some connection, but she was at a loss. Standing in the dark, buffeted by the cold wind, she watched as other attendees left the theater, some heading to the parking lot, others toward the heart of campus. The professors who had shown up had all left, beelining out of the theater as if they couldn’t escape fast enough.

The few stragglers who’d stopped to talk or smoke or just hang out weren’t people she knew. So what about the people in the play? Didn’t she suspect they might all somehow be connected?

Face it,
she thought, discouraged,
you should leave being a detective to your father.

On the way back to her car, she walked past Wagner House. Dark, angular and looming, it looked even more forbidding at night, with only the faintest of light coming from the windows. She checked the gate again, and of course it was locked. Then she noticed a flicker, just the tiniest bit of light, coming from a basement window.

Was she imagining it?

When she looked again, the glimmer of light was gone.

Had it been a reflection? A figment of her imagination?

Flash!

She saw another bluish light through the dirty glass. It too disappeared quickly.

Storage area, my ass,
she thought. Who would be sorting through old crates at night? And why had Father Mathias been down there the other day? He really hadn’t explained himself, except to say that he’d seen evidence of rats, but maybe that was just an excuse to make her stay away. Well, it damned well wasn’t working. She’d been beaten and chained, dealt with snarling, vicious dogs, demented psychos, lost her mother and her biological father, and nearly died. A few rats were nothing.

Skirting the building, she tested the back gate and found it locked as well.
Screw it.
She was going inside. Climbing the wrought iron fence was a simple matter and she knew there were no cameras. Hadn’t Georgia Clovis admitted as much?

Though the fence itself was comprised of black wrought iron spikes, the top of the gate was decorated in scrollwork. Kristi pulled herself to the top of it and vaulted over, landing in a crouch on the inside brick walk. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t noticed, she hurried up the steps of the porch and tried the back door.

Locked solid.

Damn
. She’d never had any luck with the credit card trick that seemed to work so effectively in the movies, and she had nothing with which to pick a lock.

So now what?

A window?

She tried all of the windows on the porch but they didn’t budge, nor could she reach any from the ground. Maybe she could somehow squeeze through a basement window? She walked around the huge Gothic house, but not one window she reached, nor the front door, would budge. Unless she came back with a crowbar, she was effectively locked out.

And the flickering lights she’d seen?

Flashlights?

Candles?

Penlights?

The illumination had disappeared. The basement was now dark as a tomb.

Disappointed, Kristi climbed back over the gate and walked to her car. As she did, she felt those unseen eyes watching her every move. A bit of wind stirred, causing the wet leaves on the ground to lift and brittle branches of live oak to rattle.

As she reached her car she thought she heard a voice…a soft voice, the barest of whispers quietly crying.

She stopped short.

“Help me,” it called.

Kristi spun, searching the shadows. “Is someone there?” she responded, looking across the parking lot to the house. She strained to listen but heard nothing over the sough of the wind.

All in your head,
she told herself, but she waited again, listening, skin prickling, feeling as if her every move were being scrutinized. Measured. Second-guessed.

“Is anyone there?” she tried again, rotating slowly, her heart hammering in dread, her fingers unzipping her purse and closing over her canister of mace. “Hello?”

Nothing.

Just the drip of rain from the downspouts as the chapel bells began to peel the hours. Goose bumps rose on her skin and she glanced up to the roof of Wagner House. Was someone in an upper window staring down at her? A dark figure in the shadows, or was she truly imagining it all? She half expected some deranged creatures with bloody fangs to swoop down on her. The vial at her neck felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

“Get over yourself,” she admonished once she was in the car. She reached for her phone, turned it on, and listened to two messages. One from Jay insisting she call him, the other from her dad, who tried his best to sound like he was just checking in, but there was an underlying gravity to his voice that couldn’t be missed. “…so call me when you can,” he said as he signed off.

“Will do, Dad,” she said, putting the car into gear and glancing once more toward Wagner House.

Vlad watched from the bell tower of the church chapel. Kristi Bentz was becoming a big problem.

Elizabeth was right.

It was time to leave, before they got caught. There were other hunting grounds, but they would take some time to establish, so it would be necessary to sacrifice more than one tonight and again tomorrow. Then they would stop for a while. Make the blood last.

The taillights of the Honda faded in the distance and he licked his lips at the thought of Kristi Bentz and her long, supple neck. He imagined sinking his teeth into her as well as doing all sorts of things to her body.

So Elizabeth wanted to watch.

Who better to start with than the girl who was trying so desperately to unmask them? Wouldn’t there be sweet irony in Elizabeth viewing it all?

Yes, he decided, there was a poetry, a symmetry to it.

As if the taking of Kristi Bentz’s life had been preordained.

But he was getting ahead of himself.

First, there were others to attend to. Beautiful girls who had already pledged their souls.

Tonight, one would be taken.

Tomorrow, if all went as planned, there would be two.

Their images came to mind and he felt a hot lust run through him. He imagined their surrender.

But first, tonight, one was waiting….

Ariel was groggy, couldn’t lift her head, and she was cold, so damned cold. The room was dark, but somehow familiar, as if she’d dreamed it. And she was naked as she lay upon a couch of some kind, the pile soft against her bare skin.

You know what’s happening.

You suspected this, didn’t you?

Why were you so desperate for friends?

Dazed, she sensed a change in the atmosphere and knew she wasn’t alone. She was on a stage of some kind, it seemed, a raised platform, and she felt as if dozens of eyes were watching her, though she saw no one.

She tried to say something, but her mouth wouldn’t form words, her vocal cords seemed paralyzed, just as her body was. Fear screamed through her and she tried like hell to move, to roll off the couch, to do anything.

She’d only wanted friends, had gone out for a few drinks, ordered the “Blood Martini,” which had seemed fine…at first, and she hadn’t really bought into the whole thing, but she’d been intrigued and her newfound friends had assured her the “drinking of the blood” was all part of the ritual, all part of the fun, all part of this whole funky vampire craze.

But now she was sick with fear and the rising mist that slowly seeped through the floor gave her the creeps.

What was going on?

Where was she?

How had she gotten here, in this dark, cavernlike room?

Who, dear God, who were the people she felt watching her, their eyes caressing her?

Men?

Women?

Both?

Oh, Lord, what were they going to do to her?

She heard a footstep and tried to twist her neck, but failed.

Another footstep.

Her blood ran cold through her veins.

Help me,
she silently prayed.
Please God, help me.

Frantically she tried to see who was approaching. One person or more?

“Sister Ariel,” a male voice intoned.

Sister?
Why would he call her that? She did remember foggily some mention of an initiation rite…that must be what this was. But why did she have to be naked and God, oh, God, why couldn’t she move?

She recognized his voice, didn’t she?

“Sister Ariel comes to us willingly.”

Who is “us”? And no, no I didn’t come willingly.

More steady footsteps, and though he was at her back, though she couldn’t see him, she felt his presence. He touched the spot behind her ear and she wanted to recoil, but couldn’t. There was something dangerous and frightening, but also seductive, in his touch.

His finger grazed the back of her neck and a thrill slid through her even though she was revolted. Her heart was pounding loudly inside her head and a red glow had turned the stage, if that’s what it was, to a dark scarlet mist.

It crossed her mind that she might be dreaming, or tripping out on some drug, but deep in her heart she knew this was real. He touched her intimately, leaning closer, breathing across her skin, brushing a nipple with one hand.

Her body responded though she willed it not to. She still could not see him, could not twist to stare into his face. “Sister Ariel joins us willingly tonight to make the final, ultimate sacrifice.”

No…this can’t be right.
Ariel struggled inwardly, but her body wouldn’t, couldn’t, move.

“Our sister. A virgin.”

For the love of God, what was this? She wasn’t a virgin…. This was nuts, just plain crazy.

She struggled wildly, not one muscle moving, and felt his hand begin to stroke her. “Now, Sister Ariel, it’s time,” he said, bending close, so close that his hot breath slid over the bare skin of her neck and she felt herself tingle. With anticipation? Or terror?

No! No, no, no!

His lips brushed against her skin.

“You know who I am,” he whispered, and she did. Oh, Lord, she knew who he was and there had been times when she’d fantasized about him. But not like this…not with…with an audience. Not when fear and seduction were mixed, when she was unable to move, to speak.

There was just the hint of a smile in his voice when he said, “Don’t be afraid.”

But she was. Oh, God, she was afraid.

He bent his head to her and she felt a white hot prick, like a needle into her neck. Her heart fluttered wildly. She tried to cry out but only a moan left her lips.

His mouth held fast to her.

The blood began to flow, even and warm.

Oh, yes. She was afraid.

She was paralyzed, consumed, stricken with fear.

God, help me….

CHAPTER 24

K
risti decided to stop at her apartment for a change of clothes. Once again, it seemed as if nothing inside had been disturbed. Maybe they’d scared the voyeur off. “Good riddance,” she said to the empty room as Houdini, who had been perched on top of the bookcase, dropped down and looked as if he wanted to do figure eights between her ankles. He wanted to trust her but hadn’t quite made that leap of faith yet.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised him, then headed out the door and drove to Jay’s aunt’s mess of a cottage.

Jay was just getting out of his truck when she pulled into the cracked drive, and Bruno was already marking every bit of shrubbery on the way to the front door. Jay grabbed her and kissed her hard enough to make her mind spin.

“Miss me?” she asked when he finally released her and she could catch her breath.

“A little.”

“A lot,” she teased.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” he said seriously, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and shepherding them both around a dripping gutter as they made their way onto the front porch.

Once inside, they checked the taped feed from her apartment but there was nothing other than the cat coming and going.

“You think he’s ever going to show?”

“In time,” Jay said grimly.

Kristi changed into her pajamas, carefully removing the vial from around her neck, feeling faintly guilty about not telling Jay she’d worn it. When she returned to the living room, Jay was building a fire from wood scraps. Eager flames snapped and popped, the scent of wood smoke permeated the rooms, and Jay then cracked a bottle of red wine. They drank out of paper cups and sat propped up against worn furniture covered with sheetrock dust. “Home sweet home.” An ironic twinkle sparked in his eyes.

“I saw Hiram at the play tonight,” she said, staring into her cup. “It was all I could do not to go up to him and accuse him of being a pervert.”

“He would just deny it.”

“I know, but if not him, then he gave my key to someone. Or maybe Irene did.”

“Yeah, like the cable guy or phone repairman, or a plumber. We don’t know who this guy is.”

“It hasn’t been that long since I changed the locks.”

“We’ll get him,” Jay predicted. “Just be patient.”

“You mean,
more
patient.”

He smiled but didn’t argue. A damned good idea. Kristi knew that patience wasn’t her long suit, but lately, what little patience she possessed had been stretched thin. It seemed as if she were forever waiting, biding her time, hoping for a break.

“You know, I can’t stay here while you’re in New Orleans,” Kristi said. “I have to go back to my apartment.”

Jay vehemently shook his head. “How would that make you feel, knowing his camera’s still there? That he could come for it at any time? It’s not safe. Don’t worry, I’ll drive back after I get off work. Commute.”

“After ten-hour days?”

“It’s not that far.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“We’re talking four nights a week.”

“I can take care of myself,” she assured him, growing slightly testy. It was one thing to have him be concerned for her safety, quite another to have him try to bully himself into her life. Overprotect her. She’d been down that road.

“I’m coming back and that’s that, but I do have to go to the crime lab,” he admitted, then proceeded to tell her about everything he’d learned from Sonny Crawley before she could offer further protest.

Kristi listened, flabbergasted, as he spelled out what he knew from the discovery of the female arm and hand in the gator’s belly, to the search of the swamp where the reptile had been found. She didn’t interrupt when he explained how the police were trying to ID the person to whom the arm had belonged, and that he’d asked his friend in the department to search through DMV and criminal records.

“—so they’re looking for more evidence, more bodies,” Jay wrapped up as he took a long swallow from his cup. “It turns out that one of the detectives, Portia Laurent, has suspected all along that the girls who are missing from All Saints were abducted. They just didn’t have any evidence to prove it.”

“But now they might,” Kristi said. She was still processing and almost missed it when he changed directions and asked her about the morality play. Slightly distracted, she told him about the events of her night, carefully skirting any mention of the vial because she knew he would demand it back, and she had every intention of wearing it to her meeting with Dr. Grotto the next day.

She finished with her less than productive snooping around Wagner House and her belief that she’d heard someone call for help.

“I’m not crazy about you meeting Dr. Vampire,” he said, pouring them each a little more wine. “And don’t go back to your apartment again.”

Kristi ignored that. “What’s Grotto gonna do to me? I’ll be at his office in the English Department.”

Jay’s eyes had turned dark as he stared into the fire. “But he’s involved in the girls’ disappearances; I can feel it. You seeing him, it just doesn’t feel right.” He rubbed his chin and shook his head. “And what about whoever was crying ‘help me’ outside Wagner House?”

“I said I
thought
I heard it, but it could have been a cat mewing or…I don’t know, something else. The wind was blowing, it was raining, and I was maybe imagining things.”

“You’re not one to imagine things,” he pointed out, and she decided it was time to set him straight.

“What if I told you I could predict death by just looking at someone?”

“You have some psychic power I’m not aware of?”

“You could say that.”

He smiled lazily and stretched out in front of the fire, his head propped on one hand, his drink in the other, his gaze fastened on hers. “Lay it on me.”

And so she did, explaining about her dreams where her father died and the way she saw people in black and white before, she assumed, they were to die. When she was finished, she took another long swallow from her cup and noticed that his smile had faded.

“I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“There isn’t one,” Kristi assured him.

“You’re serious.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“But your father, and Lucretia and Ariel, they’re still alive.”

“Yes, I know, but there was the one woman on the bus.”

“An
elderly
woman.”

“I’m just telling you what’s going on. Whenever it happens, I feel cold inside. Like death is cutting through my soul,” she said, her voice lowering a bit, feeling more and more foolish as she tried to explain. “I know it sounds nuts. But it’s as if evil itself were looking through my eyes.”

“Kris—”

“I know, I know. I sound like a psycho myself, that I need years of therapy, but it didn’t happen until after the accident.”

“You told your father this?”

“As paranoid as he is about me? No way. I thought about confiding in his wife, Olivia, because she has, er,
had,
this psychic thing going on, but then she’d feel obliged to tell Dad, and so the only one I told was Ariel.” She sighed. “Who knows how many people she blabbed to.”

“No one will believe her. They’ll just think you’re loco.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Do you think I’m loco?”

Jay hesitated long enough to raise Kristi’s temper, but then he held up a hand and said, “I think something’s going on with you. This—phenomenon—the gray pallor vision—could be something physical.”

“A sight problem? A brain problem?”

He shrugged. “All I know is I really don’t think you should meet with Grotto. Or at least wait for me to go with you.”

Kristi would have liked to have an all-out argument about her “ability,” but maybe it was enough that she’d at least told him. For the moment anyway. She negated his suggestion about Grotto with, “That would blow everything.”

“I can be outside his office. Nearby. You have your phone on, put it on mute, so he doesn’t hear anything, and I’ll listen in. If anything goes wrong, you let me know, and I’ll burst through the door like John effin’ Rambo.”

“Okay,” she said. Fortunately she didn’t have to work. Flirty Francesca had agreed to take Kristi’s shift at the restaurant. “Wait at the library until you hear me talking to him, just so you know we’re in his office and he won’t see you, then once I’m inside, you can come into the English Department. Closer. Afterward we can go to the student union and talk, then to your class.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do we need a code word in case I get into trouble with Grotto?”

“How about ‘Help’ or ‘Jay, get the hell in here’!”

“Those’ll work,” she said, almost laughing. “I’m only mildly crazy, you know,” she added.

“I know.”

She looked into his handsome face and wondered what had taken her so long to get to this point. To trust him. Love him.

She almost told him about the vial, but decided she’d keep that bit of information to herself at least for one more night. Until she’d seen Grotto’s reaction.

Portia was putting on her coat, ready to call it a day, when Detective Crawley, reeking of cigarette smoke and in need of a shave, showed up at her cubicle. She’d never much liked the man, but couldn’t fault him on his skills as a detective. He was just a little rough around the edges, which seemed to work for him, at least on the job.

“You all get a call from Jay McKnight?” he asked. It was after five and Crawley was already wearing his rain jacket, a battered briefcase in one hand, a printout in the other.

“No.”

“He’s with the crime lab, teaches a night class at All Saints. A friend of mine from way back. I gave him your name.”

“Because?”

“He’s got an interest in those girls that went missing. Seems to think they’re more than just runaways, like you. Thought you might want to talk to him. Compare notes. He also asked me to look up some info on some of the teachers who work at the college.”

“What kind of info?”

“Vehicle ownership, specifically he’s lookin’ for a dark van, if anyone who works at the college owns or has access to one. With Louisiana plates. Probably domestic and full sized, I think, not a mini. Claims someone was following Kristi Bentz. She’s a student there, and Rick Bentz of the New Orleans PD’s daughter.”

“What’s her involvement?”

“I think she’s playing amateur detective.”

“Just what we need,” she grumbled. “And how is McKnight involved?”

“He’s her professor. Friend.”

“More?”

“Probably.”

“Great,” she said, thinking the Bentz girl was more likely than not in the way.

“McKnight also wants background checks on some of the professors and staff who work at the college.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “He thinks one of his colleagues is involved?”

“I got the info from DMV, but thought you might want to work on the staff as I’ve got a few days off while my ex is in the hospital—knee replacement. I’ve got the boys. I’ll be back on Friday.” He handed her a sheet of paper with a list of names and another with five vehicles, potential matches. He gave her a quick rundown of what had happened to Jay and Kristi Bentz.

Portia couldn’t help the first tingle of excitement that ran through her blood. For over a year she’d sensed there was more going on than students at All Saints becoming runaways. Now, at least, someone seemed to agree with her.

“I’ll be checkin’ in with ya,” Crawley said, poking a finger at her nose. “And don’t screw it up, okay? I got a half-rack riding on this.”

“Do I get some of that?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Connect the dots and I’ll buy you a real drink. What do you drink? Cosmopolitan? Daiquiri?”

“Martini straight up. Three olives.”

“A woman after my own heart.”

“Just what I wanna hear,” she said, already taking off her coat and settling in for what was bound to be a long, but promising night.

Elizabeth rarely visited.

It was an unwritten rule: he would go to her. Always.

The last time she’d shown up in his private quarters was over a year earlier, but now she was pacing along the edge of the pool, light from the underwater fixture giving the water a bright aquamarine glow, the reflection casting shifting bluish shadows on her pale, flawless skin. Dressed in a long black coat and boots, she walked from one end of the room to the other.

Vlad finished doing his laps, refusing to interrupt his routine, even for her, then hoisted himself from the pool.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, naked and dripping, allowing the cool air to caress his skin. He’d hoped to spend some time in the freezer with Ariel and Karen Lee, aka Bodiluscious, after his workout, but obviously he would have to change his plans.

“We have to work faster,” Elizabeth said, glaring at him as if whatever was wrong was his fault. “We agreed to collect more and it has to be soon.”

“What happened?”

“Other than the arm being discovered?” she sneered. “I have sources in the police department. That was careless, Vlad. When you dispose of the…corpses, you need to take them
far
away. Out of the parish. Out of the state.” She whirled on him, her anger visible in the snap of her eyes, the flare of her nostrils. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with the damned Gulf of Mexico? They could be used to feed the sharks…never found. People fall off boats and are
never
located again.”

As if it were that easy to dispose of a body.

“The gator incident was unfortunate.”

“And stupid! What’re the chances of the rest of the body showing up? Or the other ones?” She was shaking and it was all he could do not to put his hands on her and try to calm her, but he knew from past experience that touching her now, while she was dressed, not in her murky bath, would infuriate her further.

“They can’t link the arm to us.”

She stared at him as if he were a cretin. “Do you even watch TV? What”—she made air quotes—“‘they’ can do is very sophisticated. Maybe not
CSI
sophisticated and certainly not so quickly, but sophisticated nonetheless. With enough time, oh, yes, they can link that damned limb to whichever girl it belonged to and eventually to us!” Scratching her long neck thoughtfully, Elizabeth, ever restless, kept up her pacing, then stopped short as she caught her reflection in one of the mirrors he’d placed in the room. Her fingers curled in on themselves until she realized what she was doing, that she might mar her skin with her scratching. Momentarily distracted, obsessed with her image, she also took in several deep breaths and made her face a calm mask once again. The lines of consternation and frustration between her brows and around the corners of her eyes smoothed, and the expression of seething fury disappeared.