Momentarily stunned by a sudden, heart-sinking realization, Lily could only shake her head no. It wasn"t his voice that had clued her in-the voice was perfect, the voice was Lyssy-but rather the casualness of the afterthought, the utter lack of compa.s.sion, even humanity, that told her what she"d rather not have known.
"Great. Let"s get him out of the open before somebody else comes bopping a-What"re you looking at me like that for? I only did what had to be done, what you were too chicken to...Hey, what the...?"
She had tried to keep the fear from showing in her eyes; it was her feet that betrayed her, taking a backward baby step, then another.
"It"s only me, Lyssy. Just Lyssy-no reason to be scared."
Still shaking her head-no, no, no-she retreated across the clearing, her eyes wide and her heart pounding. He limped after her, swinging his artificial leg out wide for more speed. She fumbled for the pistol sticking out of the waistband of her jeans-and dropped it onto the carpet of fallen needles at the edge of the firebreak.
9.
Pender tried to avoid gunning the Barracuda"s engine while they were still in town-the low-pitched rumbling had a tendency to set off car alarms. But the "Cuda was in her element once they hit the highway, and so was Pender, leaning back like a low-rider, one hand on the wheel and the other on the stick, his Hush Puppies tap-dancing gracefully on the pedals.
Soon sheer cliffs rose to the left, and fell away so sharply to the right that driving down Highway 1 was like driving along the edge of the world. The only distinction between the dense blackness of the Pacific Ocean below and the velvety blackness of the sky above was that there weren"t any stars in the ocean.
"I once came down here with a friend who was a CalTrans engineer," Irene shouted to Pender, over the shriek of the engine and the rush of the wind. "When I asked him why they hadn"t installed guardrails on some of these curves, he said it would only make the drivers overconfident."
Pender cranked up his window and signaled for Irene to do the same. With the windows closed, the ambient noise inside the car dropped so suddenly and profoundly that it felt to Irene as if they had driven into the eye of a hurricane-the "Cuda was that tight. "Speaking of overconfidence," he said, "we ought to get some ground rules established."
"What sort of ground rules?"
"To begin with, once we get there, if I look things over and decide it"s too risky to go ahead, that"s it, we"re out of there."
"Mmm-hmm?" said Irene, noncommittally.
"And if I do decide this thing has a chance, you have to let me call the shots. If I say stay behind me, you stay behind me. If I say wait here, you wait there. And above all, once we"re in earshot, you can"t say anything unless I give you the green light. If this goes south, having Maxwell believe I"m alone could be-" Your best shot at getting out of there alive, he was about to say, but changed his mind for fear she"d dismiss it as too melodramatic. "Could be the only advantage we have."
"That sounds reasonable enough," Irene said, and if technically her reply fell short of a promise, it was only because she understood, as a highly trained mental health professional (don"t try this at home, kids), that in the absence of power, pa.s.sive-aggressiveness could be a viable life strategy. "But I still think you"re exaggerating the danger. Which could be dangerous in itself-we already know Lyssy"s only a threat when he feels threatened."
And Max is only a threat when he"s breathing, thought Pender, downshifting into a reverse-banked curve. Better to be overcautious with Lyssy than undercautious with Max. Or, since they share the same brain, why not put a couple rounds through it and let G.o.d sort them out?
When they reached the bridge over Little Bear Creek, the smooth hum of tires on concrete changed to a noisy, metallic chattering on the steel-reinforced grid. "Okay, start slowing down," said Irene; from the urgency in her voice she might have been talking Pender through landing a crippled jetliner on a too-short runway. "Better put on your left turn signal...slower, slower...get ready to turn at the other end...now! Here!"
"Hang on, Sloopy!" said Pender, downshifting and cutting the steering wheel to the left, then accelerating hard, sending the Barracuda darting across the northbound lane of the highway. He jammed on the brakes as a three-railed wooden gate suddenly materialized in the headlights; the "Cuda came to a shuddering stop with its front b.u.mper only inches from a PRIVATE ROAD, NO ADMITTANCE sign nailed to the top rail of the gate and dotted with reflective disks.
A bicycle lock secured the gate to the gatepost. Irene got out and felt around between the sign and the rail for the key that was usually wedged there. But not tonight; she spread her hands wide, squinting into the glare of the headlights. "They must have taken it with them," she called to Pender.
"Either that, or you were dead wrong about them coming here." Pender yanked the emergency brake and left the car juddering in neutral while he climbed out and examined the lock, then rocked the gate back and forth, testing its strength. "We might be able to force it."
"I"m not sure it would worth the trouble," Irene told him. "It"s only a mile from here to the cabin, maybe a mile and a half. If we don"t want them to hear us coming, we"d be better off leaving the car here and hiking in anyway."
Pender thought it over, shrugged. "I"m game if you are," he said. "Of course, you might have to carry me the last half-mile or so."
When he returned from jockeying the "Cuda to the side of the driveway and locking it up, Irene had pulled her black knit watch-cap over her damp, fair hair and was tucking in the stray ends. In her dark clothes and high-tops, she reminded Pender of a kid dressed up as a night commando for Halloween-all she lacked was eye-black and a toy Uzi.
Pender too had dressed for a night march before leaving Pacific Grove, trading in his plaid shorts for a pair of big-a.s.s corduroys, his logan green Hush Puppies for the black pair he wore on formal occasions, and donning a black Members Only windbreaker he"d bought in 1985 over his gaudy Hawaiian shirt and calfskin shoulder holster; a stiff new baseball cap, black with a Green Iguana logo, covered his expansive scalp.
Before leaving, he ducked under the fence and walked down the dirt road a few yards, then ejected the clip from the Colt Mama Rose had given him, and made sure the chamber was clear before dry-firing to test the trigger pull. He held the gun two-handed, arms extended, elbows slightly bent. The hickory grip was smooth against his palms, but not slippery. He squeezed the trigger-pyeww! went his lips. He squeezed it twice more-pyeww! pyeww!
The pull was far too light-in the old days Pender had used a thirteen-pound trigger in lieu of a safety. So he"d have to keep his finger off the trigger until he was ready to fire, he reminded himself, as he reinserted the clip and slipped the Colt back into the too-snug holster, which had been custom-fitted both for his old SIG-Sauer and his old figure. When he looked up, Irene was watching him over the fence and shaking her head with tolerant affection.
"Pow, pow?" she said.
"Think of it as a visualization," he told her-Pender had only been in California a few months, but he was already starting to learn the lingo.
10.
Most people think of patience as a virtue. He has the patience of Job, they say, the patience of a saint. But then, most people were fools. It never occurred to them that Hitler was patient, too. Or Ted Bundy-no one was more patient than Ted Bundy stalking a coed.
Except possibly for himself, thought Max. After his failed coup in the attic yesterday, he had retreated into co-consciousness, waiting for Lyssy to fall asleep. It had taken a little longer than Max had planned-nearly thirty hours-but what were thirty hours to a man who"d sat out nearly three years of double incarceration, self-imprisoned in an imprisoned body?
The first thing he"d realized upon opening his eyes was that he was alone in bed-the girl was gone. Then, scrambling around for his leg and clothes, he realized that she"d taken the .38 with her. Quickly he"d retrieved the other gun, the longer-barreled black automatic, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise when he peered through the shutters next to the front door and saw Lily talking to a little Mexican-looking guy.
Because when the man turned to leave, Max had to take his shot from where he stood, some twenty, twenty-five yards away-a difficult enough shot with the longer-barreled nine millimeter, and probably impossible with the snubnosed revolver.
Now he stooped to s.n.a.t.c.h up the .38 she had dropped. "Naughty, naughty," he said in his own voice, stuffing the gun into his back pocket with a piratical grin. "Like the man said, either we hang together, or..."
He raised his hand over his head and a few inches to the side, holding on to the rope of an imaginary noose, then c.o.c.ked his head and made a terrible gurgling sound deep in his throat. "Well, you get the idea."
But his cleverness was wasted on the girl. Quivering, she backed away, fists clenched at her sides, tears welling in her big doe eyes. Suddenly, instinctually, he loathed her for her weakness and uncertainty, for the aura of victimhood she had gathered around her like a cloak.
Even worse, from a strictly practical standpoint, she was all but useless to him in this particular incarnation. He didn"t need another victim-there were plenty of victims out there-but rather an ally. Lilith, he thought, I need Lilith.
He decided to take a try at it, arranging his features in a deadly scowl and advancing on the retreating girl. "Where is she?" he demanded.
"I-I don"t know what you mean." Still backing away, her hands spread helplessly.
"Then you"d better figure it out pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n quick, before I reach down your f.u.c.king throat and pull your lungs out through that lying mouth. Now where is she?"
"Who-where is who?" Her back fetched up against a giant, uncaring redwood.
"Lilith. I want Lilith. Come on dowwwn, Lilith!" Chanting now as he closed the ground between them, dragging his right leg behind him like the original Mummy, until his face was only inches from hers. "Get me Lilith or I will f.u.c.king kill you," he said evenly, his voice coldly menacing, not at all heated. "Get me Lilith or you will f.u.c.king die."
CHAPTER TEN.
1.
The road to La Guarida curved downward to the canyon floor, then turned due east, narrowing to a rutted dirt track that ran alongside and a few yards above the south bank of Little Bear Creek. The going was easy enough at first, but when the redwood canopy closed in overhead, Irene rediscovered two things she"d forgotten about the wilderness at night: how bright and numerous were the stars, and how utterly dark it was in their absence.
For the next three-quarters of a mile or so, she and Pender allowed themselves the luxury of flashlights. Walking single file between the ruts, shielding the beams with their palms, they could hear the creek chuckling and murmuring below them to their left; to their right loomed the south wall of the canyon.
"Pen?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you think we"re doing the right thing?"
Pender was in the lead; he moved to his right and let Irene catch up. "You"re probably too young to remember the Davy Crockett craze." With Irene walking the hump and Pender in the rut, their heads were almost level.
"Before my time. I"ve heard about it, though."
"It was huge. When I was around ten, myself and every kid I knew, we"d have killed for a c.o.o.nskin cap." Pender dropped into line behind her and unzipped his windbreaker.
"Anyway, this one time, I remember I"m lying on the living room rug watching Walt Disney on our old Sylvania Halo Light, it"s the episode where Davy tells his friend Georgie that his motto has always been Be sure you"re right, then go ahead. And my father, he"s an ex-jarhead, Semper Fi to the max, he"s sitting behind me in the armchair we always called Daddy"s chair, smoking his Camels and drinking his Genny-that"s Genesee beer-and I hear him grumbling, "n.o.body was ever surer he was right than Ol" One-Ball"-which was the only way he ever referred to Hitler."
"Smart man, your father," said Irene, smiling to herself-she was trying to envision Pender as a ten-year-old, but the only picture that came up for her was a fat bald kid in a c.o.o.nskin cap.
As the canyon widened, the creek curved away to the northeast, while the road continued to hug the canyon wall for another quarter of a mile before branching off. Irene stopped when they reached the fork, holding up her hand like a scout on point. They switched off their flashlights.
"The cabin"s that way," Irene whispered, pointing toward the wide, gra.s.sy lane sloping downward to their left, descending through the trees toward the faintly audible murmur of the creek.
"How far?" Pender whispered breathlessly, bent over like a winded football player with his hands resting on his knees; little points of colored light, the kind you see when you rub your closed eyes, were swimming in the blackness.
"Maybe a hundred yards to the clearing, then another, I don"t know, fifty, sixty feet to the house?"
Pender gestured toward the other, narrower fork. "Where does that lead?"
"All the way up to the ridge-on a clear day, you can practically see j.a.pan."
"But is there a way to get back out to the highway?"
"From the ridge? Only by jumping off the cliff-it"s several hundred feet straight down. Other than that, this road is the only way in or out."
Excellent, thought Pender-not having a back door to cover greatly simplified the mission and improved their prospects. And more good news: he was starting to get his second wind. "Wait for me here," he told Irene. "I want to scope out the cabin-I"ll be back in a couple of minutes."
"Forget it, I"m coming with you."
"Laak f.u.c.k!" That was a little Caribbean-ism Pender had picked up on St. Luke. "Remember, you agreed to let me call the shots."
"Actually, I believe all I said was that it sounded reasonable-that"s not the same as agreeing."
Pender glared down at her. "Of all the G.o.dd.a.m.n childish stunts," he whispered fiercely. "This is not a game here, Irene-I"m not going to debate with you."
"Good choice," said Irene. "Come on, let"s get going before the moon comes up."
2.
Lily covered her face. Clawlike hands closed around her wrists, tugging them down to her sides. Her mind flashed back to earlier, in bed, she and Lyssy getting to know each other"s bodies, Lyssy showing her how tightly his scarred hands could grip, how weak they were when it came to letting go.
But worse than the welling fear, worse than the pain in her wrists, was the sickening realization that that Lyssy was gone. This dry husk of a voice trying to bully her into switching alters (as if it were something over which she had any control, something she wouldn"t have done in a heartbeat, if only she had the power) was not her Lyssy"s voice, any more than these soulless eyes glinting with false merriment were those of the man with whom she"d made love earlier. They reminded her more of her father"s eyes, dead and gla.s.sy as he whisk-whisk-whisked his closed fist up and down his p.e.n.i.s, getting hard, getting ready to hurt her.
Thinking of her father triggered that old familiar sadness that usually presaged an alter switch-perhaps if Max had had the sense to back away and let her drift, it might have happened. Instead he tightened his grip on her wrists, brought his face up to hers.
"This is your last chance," he hissed. She felt his breath warm and damp against her skin, and knew what she had to do: whatever Lilith would have done. Fearless Lilith. Fearless, foulmouthed, hot-tempered, biker-tough Lilith. She loosed a quick inward-directed prayer-Lilith, if you"re there, for G.o.d"s sake help me out here-then squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and forced herself to meet his eyes.
"Actually," she said, "it"s your last chance."
A startled laugh. "For what?"
"To get your f.u.c.king hands off me before I knee your b.a.l.l.s up into your throat." The words came with surprising ease; their effect astonished them both.
"Well, I"ll be blowed," said Max, releasing her wrists, leaning even closer, peering into her eyes. "Lilith?"
"No, it"s Princess f.u.c.king Di," she snapped. "Now would you mind backing off a tad, amigo?-your breath smells like you"ve been gargling raw sewage."
Any doubts Max may have had concerning Lilith"s ident.i.ty had been largely put to rest by the time they"d finished dragging the corpse into the underbrush. She hadn"t winced when Max ordered her to take one of Fano"s legs while he took the other, nor flinched at the way the lolling head went b.u.mping over the rough ground-timid Lily could never have managed all that without breaking character.
Lily, meanwhile, had been steadily growing in confidence. If I can get through this, she told herself as she helped him cover her murdered friend with fallen redwood boughs, I can get through anything. Indeed, by the time the grisly task had been completed, there was no remaining effort, and very little volition, in her adoption of Lilith"s personna-the longer she played the role, the more it felt like a channeling rather than an impersonation.
And afterward, sitting on the bottom step of the porch brushing damp earth and redwood needles from her bare feet, she made sure that he noticed her glancing around the clearing as though she"d never been here before-which she wouldn"t have, not as Lilith, because in their system there"d never been any co-consciousness or memory-sharing among alters. "Who was that, anyway?" she asked him casually, nodding toward the edge of the clearing where they"d left the body.
"Just some Mexican in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Sure looks that way." She forced a shrug. "Whose place is this-yours?"
"No, it"s yours. The DeVries family retreat. Come on, let"s go inside."
She felt his eyes boring into her from behind as she preceded him into the dark cabin. You"ve never been here before, she reminded herself, and made a point of feeling around the wall next to the door. "Where"s the light switch?"
"There isn"t one-there"s no electricity."