The Skull Ring (18 page)

Julia twisted, evading that horrible, insistent heat. She reached her left hand to grab at his hair, but the man wore a covering of some kind.

A HOOD.

The man's breath was hot on her ear, rasping in a ragged rhythm. His lips trailed wetly across her neck. A shiver of disgust raced up her spine.

The man pressed her closer to the bed. Her knees bumped against the mattress. She braced her legs as he grabbed for the waist of her skirt.

When his hand was occupied, she attacked. She bent her neck down and suddenly drove the back of her head into his face. Due to his height, she only managed to hit his chin, but the blow gave off a satisfying crack.

The man groaned and his grip eased slightly. Julia took the opportunity to spin, nearly breaking free. Then the arm was around her, crushing more cruelly than before.

As they shifted, Julia saw their reflections in the dresser mirror. Her own pale, frightened face glared back through her tears, the black glove gagging her.

Behind her grappled the man in the hood. It was the gray hood of a jogging pullover, not a hood from her dreams. He wasn't one of the bad people from the past.

Just a miserable, pathetic, run-of-the-mill Creep.

Maybe that’s your answer, God.

Julia relaxed her legs, letting him hold her full weight for a moment. Then she snapped upright and tried to squirm away. He held her firmly, though, and used the momentum to flop her onto the bed.

He pulled his hand from her mouth, but before she could draw in enough air to scream, he cupped his other hand over her lips. He rolled her onto her side, pinning her between his knees.

Julia flailed her legs as he sat on her thighs, his elbow digging into her chest. She could smell him, sweat and a raw animal scent, and beneath that, a faint, familiar, sweet aroma.

She looked at his face, but saw only the bright glint of eyes through the hood's opening. He wore some sort of ski mask beneath the hood.

Her free fist pounded his back. She may as well have been punching a sack of mud.

The Creep hissed under his breath, a harsh, evil sound. "Bitch!"

He wrenched her shoulder until she was flat on her back, his palm crushing her lips. The elbow on her chest pressed harder, and Julia thought her ribs would crack. Then the pressure eased and the arm moved away and Julia heard the sound of a zipper.

She wedged her knee toward his crotch. No good. She couldn't even turn her head away. All she could do was close her eyes, run for the long darkness inside.

Surrender.

Just like always.

The Creep forced her dress up, exposing her panties.

Gloved fingers tugged at the elastic.

No. Surrender isn’t an option this time.

She wriggled, grappling for the edge of the mattress, the headboard, even a pillow. His odor came again, the offal of his lurid excitement. Pungent sweat and–

And cologne.

Jovan Musk.

The brand she’d bought him for Christmas.

Mitchell?

She glanced at the gap of skin between glove and sleeve and saw the Rolex.

Oh my God, it's MITCHELL.

Mitchell, who could have his pick of smartly dressed, curvaceous beauties, who could go down to his country club in Colliersville and have a woman undressing within the hour. Mitchell, who could afford the highest class of call girl if he wanted to get his rocks off.

Mitchell.

A Creep.

Mitchell must have seen the recognition dawning on her face. She couldn't disguise the horror, no matter how deeply she fled into the inner darkness. And her anger fueled her, allowed her to twist beneath him, get one knee planted, and simultaneously drive up and away from him.

He bellowed in rage as she slipped from his grasp, her blouse ripping and a button popping free. The slack gained by the torn cloth allowed her to reach the nightstand and grab the neck of the heavy wooden lamp.

Betrayed.

Always goddamned betrayed.

What had she ever done to deserve betrayal?

Easy. She’d opened the door and let someone into her heart. Trust was a sucker’s game.

But her heart was cold now, and so was her nerve.

She slammed the lamp against him, the awkward swing knocking the lampshade against his head and swiping back his hood. The blow stunned him more than hurt him, but Julia seized the opening and spun to her feet, the lamp raised like a club.

You’re throwing a curveball but I’m knocking this bastard out of the park.

This seemed like the absurd but logical conclusion to their eight-year relationship. The final swing in the bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. And the game was over.

Not from blushing, fumbling first kiss to cold, uncaring abandonment. Rather, the end would be a farewell of malice, a last touch that left scars.

A good-bye that bled.

Mitchell shoved himself to the far side of the bed, perhaps recalling the power of her tennis stroke, or maybe just considering how a bruised face might look in the courtroom next week. She stared into those specks of light that marked his eyes.

Julia worked her jaw sideways, scraping her tongue against her teeth to remove the bitter taste of leather.

"Why?" she asked, not allowing the lamp to dip an inch though it quivered in her anger.

He batted the gray hood back and jerked the ski mask off his head. His always-perfect hair now stood like a shock of dark cornstalks in a field. He rubbed his face in his hands.

"Is that all you ever wanted, you bastard?" she said.

A tremor ran through Mitchell's muscular shoulders, and she was afraid he was going to renew his attack. Julia thumped the base of the lamp against the mattress, her force punctuating the pain she was ready to deliver. The wood was heavy enough to break bone. She grinned at the thought, and perhaps that scared Mitchell more than the weapon.

When he finally spoke, it was as if he were addressing someone outside the room, some all-hearing ear, though his words were cat quick and mouse quiet. "I just . . . I can't afford to lose you."

Julia made no attempt to cover herself. "You’d rather keep me broken?”

"I'm sorry," Mitchell said, keeping his gaze on his feet. "After yesterday . . . "

Julia glanced at the floor. The contents of her purse had spilled across the carpet. The wooden box was plainly visible, the carving of the pentagram delivering a hundred and ten volts to the chest.

The skull ring.

Mitchell's voice rose, the quick mood shift catching Julia by surprise. "Why did you have to go out there? Why the hell can't you just forget it all? You're
mine
, Julia. You belong to me, not the past and those damned hooded people."

He lifted his face. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. But Julia felt no sympathy, only a shudder of revulsion that she had ever let this pathetic specimen of the male gender hold and kiss her. To think that she had nearly married this creature and spent a life with him.

"I'll never be yours," Julia said, surprised by the chilly strength of her words. "Do you want to know why?"

Mitchell looked like his own evil twin, hair wild, fly open, eyes red. Or was this the
real
Mitchell Austin? The one that hid inside the power suits and lurked behind the smug mask of self-righteousness, a control freak who couldn't even control himself?

His lips moved like those of a hooked fish gasping on a riverbank. Finally, he managed to answer. "Why not?"

"Because there's no
room
inside your house, Mitchell."

His mouth fell open. He didn't speak, but his eyes said, "What the hell?"

Julia got to her feet, pulled her blouse closed and smoothed down her skirt. "You've got your house stuffed so full of yourself, there's no room for anyone else. And I'm not going to live in anybody's basement."

Except my own. In that place where bones are buried. But that has nothing to do with this jerk.

Mitchell backed away as if she were the Creep. He zipped himself and tried to gather his slick judicial composure. "Listen, you're not to going to press charges, are you? I've got a lot of friends in the D.A.'s office. You'll be smeared until you won't even be able to recognize yourself in the mirror."

Julia pictured herself filing a report, talking to the police. Sure, she had physical evidence of an assault. Bruises, torn clothing, maybe some DNA evidence under her fingernails. But assault cases where the rapist was engaged to the victim, where the pair had a long sexual history together, were practically impossible to prosecute.

Her word against his.

Mitchell looked her fully in the eyes and gave a smile that would chill a cobra's blood.

Because they both knew the truth. Julia's behavioral disorder would end up on trial, not Mitchell. He could afford the best in criminal defense, and in the end, Mitchell would walk out of the courtroom laughing while Julia dripped into a black puddle of miserable self-loathing. The defense would have its psychological "experts" prod and poke her brain until she finally convinced herself that the attack was her fault, that she'd staged the whole thing because everybody knew that crazy people did crazy things.

Of course. What jury would convict an upstanding, respectable citizen solely on the wild accusations of a person known to be unstable? She could picture the defense attorney now, giving a sermon during closing arguments, the High Church of Reason against the damned and doomed who had the temerity to be less than perfect, those oddities who "saw psychologists," who "received therapy," who "had been diagnosed."

Oh, yes. She would be crucified, her own fears used as the nails, her own frail attempts at recovery serving as the wood.

And Mitchell would be not only her Judas and her Pilate, he would also be the Roman soldier with the hammer.

She brushed past him, stooped, and gathered the box and her purse. "Get the hell out," she said, dead inside.

"If it weren't for the money, I'd have been out of here years ago," he said, cocky again, untouchable.

"The money?" she asked his retreating back.

“We could have done it the easy way,” he said, brushing his hair back into place. “Now it’s going to get messy.”

The door to the hotel room closed with a whisper, but the door to the house in her head closed with a great groaning of hinges, the rattling of chains, the rusty screams of deadbolts being driven forever home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The sun was sinking when Julia reached Elkwood. The mountain ridges glowed with autumn, as if capped by molten gold. The sienna and ochre of the changing leaves covered the slopes, the darker greens of balsam and spruce dotted the higher elevations. Shadows filled the long valley where the Amadahee River ran through the center of town, carrying its rich September smells of salamanders and mud.

By the time Julia had turned her Subaru up the hill toward Buckeye Creek Road, the anxiety that had nearly consumed her on the flight home was all but forgotten. The tall trees comforted her, and she was relieved to see again the pastures with their leaning locust poles and rusted barbed wire, the farmhouses set well away from the road, the cows attacking the grass with dull persistence. Here and there the tips of granite slabs protruded through the soil like great rocket ships preparing to blast into the heavens.

Though she had only lived in Elkwood for four months, this place had become home. When she'd first moved, it had been a desperate escape. Mitchell had simultaneously driven her away while demanding that she stay in Memphis. Dr. Danner had suggested this mountain town as a nice place to meet the future, and the referral to Dr. Forrest had been like a shipwreck victim pushed by waves onto the saving shore of an island.

Now the future was clearer even though the past was stranger and scarier than ever.

Now her future didn't revolve around Mitchell and the caged security he had offered. Funny that he had turned out to be more unstable than she. Tomorrow she would return his two-carat diamond via registered mail. The memory of the assault was buried inside, waiting, a nest of snakes. She didn't dare deal with it alone. The breakdown would have to wait for the chair in Dr. Forrest's office.

Julia hadn't yet decided when to tell Dr. Forrest about the skull ring. Perhaps next week. Right now, she had plenty enough memories and emotions to sort out. The immediate past left the freshest bruises. The healing would have to begin from the outside in.

Mrs. Covington's house was dark as Julia drove past, the windows like slate. The apartments stood quiet across the road, spears of light cutting between drawn curtains. The Subaru's headlights swept over Julia's house as she pulled up, and she felt a rush of ownership. Despite its disreputable history, she felt comfort behind its walls. She decided she would talk to George Webster about purchasing it.

The door was solid, the windows cold and empty. Behind that door were her computer, her clothes, her books, Mr. Ned the stuffed turtle. She thought of the baseball cards Walter had given her, left spread across the coffee table, and smiled. Such a small kindness became magnified by the comparative horror of her visit to Memphis.