"Like I said-nothing I can see." I grabbed the wine bottle, figuring I"d better quit while I was ahead. "Now, if you"ll excuse me, I"m going to bed."
She smiled, and this time her lips didn"t tremble at all. "You slept this afternoon. You"re not tired now. Not at all."
"I"m not?"
"No, you"re not." She paused. "But you are going to bed."
Circe was right. I wasn"t tired. Not at all.
We f.u.c.ked in her bedroom. The room itself was a bit of a surprise. Leather was in short supply, and the dusty cat o" nine tails on the wall seemed more of a joke than anything else. If there were chains, I didn"t see them.
And if I didn"t see them, I figured they weren"t there at all. Circe Whistler wasn"t the kind of woman who closeted her desires. Open your eyes, open your senses, and you couldn"t avoid them. Her desires were everywhere: wrapped in an excess of satin and crushed velvet bedding-violet and lavender and black-and stoppered in bottles along with heady oils of sandalwood and neroli and a dozen scents I didn"t recognize.
Blankets and sheets were drawn back. Bottles were unstoppered. Oils beaded on our bodies, beaded with our sweat and the liquor of s.e.x, a wild mix that brought our flesh alive in startling and unexpected ways.
No matter what we did, I couldn"t escape the room. Like the rest of the house, Circe"s father had left his mark here, too. Spiked wrought-iron fixtures dominated, from the lamps to the bedposts. Even Circe"s bed had once belonged to Diabolos Whistler himself.
The devil"s own bed. At least that was what Whistler believed. I couldn"t imagine the things the dead man had done in it, and the things that had gone through his head while he"d done them. Filling women with his seed while he waited for a birth that could only come from his own death.
I wondered what kinds of questions he asked himself in the darkest hours, in the quiet that came after those women were fast asleep.
Belief or denial...faith or delusion...none of it mattered anymore.
I"d answered Diabolos Whistler"s questions with my knife.
The old man was dead. He hadn"t come back. Not in spirit, and not in flesh.
So much for metaphysics. I concentrated on Circe. She guided me, swallowed me, sucked me in with two sets of lips, two mouths wet and pink and as seductive as heroin. Whistler"s daughter was young and strong. Through the long night we rode riptides of pa.s.sion and anger and l.u.s.t and need, driving to the rhythm of two dark hearts.
I worked her as hard as she worked me. I drank her, and I kissed her silken white neck, and I rolled her on her knees and made reins of her long dark hair. I nipped at the demon faces leering on her belly and licked the tentacled monster on her back with a hungry tongue, daring the soulless demiG.o.d to come alive.
Candles burned against the darkness. Black wax spilled over wrought iron candlesticks and pooled and grew hard, and red wax droplets covered the hard ebony pools.
Black candles that burned now, and the ghosts of red candles that had burned in the past.
I didn"t want to, but I saw them all.
I didn"t want to, but I saw everything.
And more. The dusty cat o" nine tails mounted on the wall gleamed with fresh blood. For now the dead were here.
They came to watch us, Diabolos Whistler"s women, ghosts with memories of nights uncounted in this room and this house. A misplaced flower child with a lashed daisy on her cheek and horror in her eyes screamed warnings at us. A much younger girl with kohled eyes sat clutching herself in a corner, wearing nothing but a torn black T-shirt and cigarette burns on her white thighs. And then there was the blonde chained between the bedposts at the foot of the bed, begging to join us.
No chains restrained her. Not anymore, but she couldn"t realize that. She was dead, underground in a box somewhere if she was lucky, and she would never touch living flesh again. But she begged for a touch or a kiss, and only Circe"s living moans and pleas could eclipse those of the dead woman.
One night I might join the dead. One night I might be here, in this room, as insubstantial as a sigh that comes in the darkest hours.
But not tonight. Tonight I was alive, and all I wanted was Circe-blood pounding through her veins, heart thundering, breaths coming hard and fast. She didn"t see the shackled blonde at the foot of the bed. She didn"t see the ghosts that had been condemned to this room by a tryst with her father. And I didn"t want to see them. All I wanted was the two of us, purging those raw emotions that drew us to Circe"s bed. All I wanted was to gather her in tides of black velvet that would take us deeper and deeper to a dark, empty place where we could be alone when the blackest hour closed around us.
But the dead came, more of them now, came closer, the dead who could endure pains born long ago that were never tempered by time, they came clawing at us through night and velvet and satin. So hungry, driven by urges they couldn"t understand or forget, trying to grasp the life that pounded and surged within us, fumbling with fingers that could not touch us and kissing with lips we could not feel. For their lips were now dust, and their fingers were shorn of flesh, and they were now the most desperate of lovers, driven by the empty impotence of the grave.
I told myself that I was alive and they were dead.
We were not the same. Not at all.
I almost believed it. I closed my eyes. I would not see them. I pulled the blankets close. I would not feel them. I would only feel Circe.
And I would only hear Circe. Not the lies she spoke across a dinner table, but her stripped moans and naked gasps of pleasure.
And the savage drumbeat of her heart.
5.
In the light of morning, the hungry ghosts were gone. So was Circe.
But I was not alone. The little girl sat on the edge of Whistler"s bed, twisting a long strand of blonde hair around one finger.
She sighed dramatically. "I thought you"d never wake up."
"Then you were wrong." I smiled. "Some privacy, okay?" She giggled and covered her eyes while I dressed. "All clear," I said, giving her a wink as I opened the bedroom window. The sea breeze was cool and crisp and clean, and I liked the way it felt on my face.
"Are you surprised to see me?" she asked.
"To tell the truth, I thought I might never see you again. I"m glad I was wrong about that."
A smile blossomed on her face. "You"re really glad I came?"
"Sure."
"Good. I thought you might be mad...about yesterday, I mean. I got pretty scared. I don"t like the bottle house, and when that lady showed up-" Her lower lip trembled. "Well, that lady scared me. The way she talked about ghosts. I hid, but I heard what she said to you. I didn"t think she was very nice, and when she said she was taking you to the Whistler Estate...."
"It"s okay, sweetheart. Whatever it is, you can tell me about it."
"She scared me, is all. I was worried about you. I thought maybe I could help if something was wrong."
"You"re very brave," I said. "But I"m fine. Everything is okay."
"You"re sure?"
"Sure I"m sure-"
I bit off the sentence before I could finish it. Suddenly, I wasn"t sure about anything at all. Outside, a troubling sound scratched the silence. The squawk of a police radio.
In a second I was at the window. Before another second ticked off, I saw everything I needed to see. Near the porte-cochere that hooded the main entrance to Circe"s mansion stood two sheriff s deputies wearing s.h.i.t-brown uniforms. One of them swore under his breath as he turned down the volume control on his handpack radio. The other drew a pistol, his gaze roving from window to window.
I was lucky. The deputy didn"t spot me. He slapped his partner with a dirty look and together they disappeared under the porte-cochere, heading for the front door.
I had to get out of there. I turned and nearly stepped through the little girl. She looked up at me, startled blue eyes in a face that was a handful of nothing.
"What"s wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," I lied. "Everything"s okay. But you have to leave, and you have to do it now."
"But why?"
"Just trust me," I said. I couldn"t give her another answer. There wasn"t any time.
I wasn"t armed. I glanced around the room. The dusty cat o" nine tails hanging on the wall wasn"t going to do me much good. My K-bar was in the guest bedroom. I had to get it. Fast.
I started down the hall. The little girl trailed me. She was talking too loud, and I had to remind myself that no one could hear her but me. Still, I needed to concentrate. I had to hear the cops. I had to know what they were doing.
I told her to be quiet. I said it too fast and too hard and too loud. She started to cry. Gooseflesh p.r.i.c.kled my skin as her little hand pa.s.sed through mine, but she couldn"t stop me now. Nothing would stop me now. I had to keep moving. I needed that knife.
Two steps and I"d be in the guest room.
Below, I heard the front door swing open.
The sound of the sea and whispers.
And then another sound stopped me cold.
A held breath burned in my lungs. I stood just inside the bedroom doorway. The sound was everywhere.
The little girl didn"t hear it. Not yet. I turned. I had to stop her before she entered the room. But there was no stopping her. She was a ghost.
She tumbled through my arms, and through me, and into the room. And what she saw there was a raw vision of h.e.l.l, and what she heard was the tireless buzzing of a hundred flies.
The walls of the guest room were papered with b.l.o.o.d.y tattoos. Torn ridges of blue scale. h.e.l.lish smiles eclipsed by crawling carrion insects. The faces of children and demons I might have recognized had they not been wet with bright red gouts of blood that had dripped like clotted jam until they dried to an enamel gleam.
Circe Whistler lay on the bed in a tangle of black satin sheets, her corpse crawling with flies.
Dead. Gutted. Skinned from head to toe.
Red everywhere, except for her cold blue eyes.
My K-bar knife was planted in her heart.
I saw a flash of movement in the far corner of the room. Something was huddled in the shadows. Something shorn of skin, a tattered mess that opened its cold blue eyes and screamed.
It was Circe"s ghost. It had to be. She rose from the corner, her eyes twin beacons of pain, and I could smell hate on her like a perfume born of murder and blood and the rot of an early grave.
The ghost didn"t come for me. She didn"t even look at me. It was as if she knew that I was powerless to stop her. Instead she staggered toward the little girl.
The child was paralyzed with fright. She stared up at that cleaved face, unable to look away from icy blue pools nestled beneath b.l.o.o.d.y brows. I yelled at the girl, begged her to run, but she couldn"t move at all. She couldn"t even look at me and I tried to s.n.a.t.c.h her away from the thing but I couldn"t even touch her, there was never a way I could touch her, and soon the mutilated shade closed its ravaged arms around the little girl and they joined in a midnight wail and together they were gone.
Silence filled the room, or it should have.
But it didn"t. I was holding my breath, shutting everything out just as I had the night before in Circe"s bed.
I couldn"t afford to do that now.
There were sounds and I had to hear them. My own ragged breathing. Circling flies cutting buzzsaw melodies. And the deputies were coming. They must have heard me warn the little girl, and now I heard them climbing the twisted wrought iron staircase.
I s.n.a.t.c.hed the K-bar from between the corpse"s ribs.
On the landing, booted footfalls m.u.f.fled by carpet. I heard every step. They were close. Two men trying to be quiet who didn"t know how to be quiet at all: "We should be using those d.a.m.n Dobermans."
"Uh-uh. Dogs wouldn"t know us from him."
"Maybe. But this stinks."
"So let"s get it done."
More footsteps. I took a deep breath and held it, the stink of death burning in my lungs.
No one was going to smell that stink on me.
I clutched the knife. The room had two doors: one that opened onto the hallway and another that led to a bathroom with no other exit. There was a window on the other side of the bed, but I wasn"t going through it. A twenty-foot drop to a brick driveway didn"t seem like an option, and I wasn"t going to get shot in the back while I jumped, or while running for the security fence that separated the property from the shadow-choked treeline beyond.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
I heard the smooth sound of automatic slides as both men chambered sh.e.l.ls.
They had guns, and I had a knife.
And there was only one way out.
I gripped the K-bar and stepped into the hallway.
Both pistols were aimed in my face. The deputies stood shoulder to shoulder. The one on the left yelled, "Drop it!"
His partner didn"t waste that much time. He pulled the trigger. The bullet sang past my ear like a steel fly as I moved in on him, slicing the inside of his right forearm to the bone. He dropped his pistol and before it hit the carpet the K-bar had pierced his Kevlar vest and his rib cage, gouging a trench in his heart.
He dropped the same way his gun had. His partner watched him fall, but that was a mistake. He should have been watching me because I had not stopped moving. My arm came up and the pommel of the knife caught his square jaw and I followed through with my elbow. There was a wicked crack as his jaw splintered and then he was off-balance and I waded in, tumbling him over the railing.
His brown eyes stared up at me in shock as he slammed against the hardwood floor below.
"Sweet Jesus," he moaned, slurring the words through his shattered jaw. He tried to get up, still muttering like he was down on his knees in church, but his brain tripped a circuit and cut him off soon enough.
My heart thundered in my chest. Adrenaline was burning me down. Flies buzzed around my head. I stared down at the deputy I"d stabbed. He was dead. Not even bleeding anymore. But he"d spilled more than enough blood. Or I had spilled it for him.