She would determine that herself.
Bertie fell into a flat-out run, and Tarquin, as if sensing their predicament, loped alongside him, his gait growing longer and longer until he broke free and became the first of the three of them to cross the drawbridge.
Bertie was the second, and as his fine leather-soled shoes encountered the thick wooden boards, he looked overhead, praying that he didn’t see shadows forming in the sky above. Skidding to a halt by the gear and cable system that would raise the planks, he was relieved to find Byron shooting across the moat at a dead run.
Together, he and the other archangel placed hands on the massive crank and threw their weight into a pumping rhythm as Tarquin splayed his massive forepaws and scrummed down, growling deep in his chest in warning as he backed up inside to allow the drawbridge to raise.
Devina had yet to arrive. If she had, her presence would have been sensed.
But Bertie knew she would come—and likely, soon. She and Nigel were required to meet on a regular basis with the Maker, and they were not allowed to forgo the sessions. If they did not attend? They were penalized.
The instant Nigel didn’t appear at the scheduled time?
That canny demon would suspect something dire had happened, and it was in her nature to investigate the cause. And if she infiltrated the grounds? The manse was the only safe place to be—and even then, it had never truly been tested.
As the planks found home, locking in up top, Bertie went to one side, and Byron went to the other and together, they completed the final step: Tremendous forged iron bars thick as a torso slid across into deeply carved compartments in the twelve-foot-thick walls, hitting home with a resonant, echoing thud.
He couldn’t remember the last time these precautions had been taken.
Collapsing back against the cool stone, all Bertie could think about were his dear friends—his family, indeed—stuck on the far side.
“God save them,” he whispered.
Tarquin whimpered and nudged his hand. As he stroked that regal head, he said, “Darling one, we shall be safe herein.”
At least until Devina tried to enter. Then? He did not know.
With a wave of despair, he looked over at Byron … and watched as the archangel slowly drew off his rose-colored glasses. His hands were trembling so badly, he dropped them.
Landing on the stone floor, the lenses shattered into countless pieces.
Chapter Twenty-eight
As Sissy stared up at Jim from her crouch by the bathtub, his face was drawn and pale. And that answered her question, didn’t it.
She turned back to the porcelain expanse and felt her stomach burn. “It must have happened here, then.”
God, her voice sounded funny to her own ears.
It seemed so weird to think that something as traumatic as her own death could be lost in her head, the experience hidden like that furniture back at the old house, obscured even as the contours filled out the draping cloth of her amnesia—because she sensed she had been in here, in this loft, in this marble-floored room … in this tub.
But that was all she got.
Letting her weight fall back, she sat on her butt, drawing her knees up to her chest. Surely something would come forward if she stayed here long enough. Some image, the memory of a sound, a smell, a sensation … and that would unlock the door.
Or burn the sheets, as it were.
But all she got … was that fire in her gut. On the other hand, why wouldn’t she be getting pissed off again.
“Looks like you’re going to have to tell me anyway,” she said. “The show part of this isn’t working.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
When Jim didn’t say anything further, she looked up. He was no longer standing. Instead, he was against the wall by the door, sliding down slowly until he, too, was sitting on the hard marble. As he draped his arms on his knees and rubbed his face, she was struck by how visibly upset he was.
Under any other circumstances, she would have backed off. Especially in her old life. “Tell me.”
There was a long pause before he replied. “I don’t know how she brought you here. I don’t know whether she stuffed you in a trunk or tied your arms and legs and threw you in the back of a van. I don’t know if she had you in a trance, or drugged you, or incapacitated you in some way I can only guess at.” Jim swallowed hard. “I know that you were sacrificed because you were a virgin, and it was to protect her mirror. I know that I found you here … and you were gone—”
Jim’s voice broke at that point.
He cleared his throat, like he intended to go on. But nothing came out when he opened his mouth.
With a rough hand, he scrubbed his jaw.
Still nothing.
His inability to speak reached her on some deep level. This was a tough man, a hard man, and she knew without being told that he did not waste time with emotional stuff. And yet here he was…
As he blinked hard, Sissy was drawn out of her own drama. Reaching out, she put her hand on his forearm. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. You were—”
“I should have gotten here sooner—”
“—not to blame for this—”
“—could have saved—”
“Stop it,” she barked. “Listen to me. Not your fault. Not at all.”
And then he began to weep.
Oh … my God, she thought. It was the last thing she expected.
And it was not like a girl would. Not with some high-pitched hysteria. He wept soundlessly, those huge shoulders quaking, his breath ragged, his face hidden behind his palms as if he didn’t want her or anybody to see him like this.
“You were gone…”
Sissy crab-walked over to sit beside him, but then didn’t know what to say … do. “It’s not your fault,” she told him again roughly.
“I was too late … You were already gone. Jesus Christ, you were … gone. And the truth is, ever since I found you, every time I close my eyes, every time I try to sleep, the image of you hanging over this goddamn, motherfucking tub tortures me.”
Sissy reached out and pulled him to her. It was an asinine thing to do—he was twice her size, and anything but a boy. Except he fell against her sure as a rootless tree, landing in a sprawl that pushed her closer to the tub.
Cradling him in her arms, she felt rather than heard his sobs, and strangely, offering him comfort eased her. It made her seem … strong, and that was critical in the midst of this scene of her greatest powerlessness.
And she wasn’t sure she needed to know any further details. She had been hoping that information would lead to some kind of understanding, even if it was painful. It did not, though. She was here where her death had taken place, and had some broad brushstrokes about the event—mainly Jim’s reaction—and she wasn’t any more grounded.
The only thing she felt was that anger deep inside her. Even as she embraced Jim, and honestly felt commiseration for his suffering, that fury burned.
Jim shifted his position, wrapping his arms around her, holding her in return.
Closing her eyes, Sissy tried to reach a place of peace. Or … resignation. Or … something.
She could not. But it was strange … being close to Jim like this?
Now, that was not weird. At all.
In fact, she became acutely aware of his body, his heft, his masculine scent. And that did bring something else out in her. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was better than the anger, that was for sure.
A torturous slide show was playing in Jim’s brain.
Well, not a show as in a series of images. There were only two. One of Sissy. The other of his mother.
One was in this bathroom. The other in a farmhouse kitchen. Both were heavily tinted in the color red, in the former case, in the tub, and in the latter, all over a linoleum floor.
He was not an emotional guy. Never had been—well, not since he’d been thirteen.
The event that had spawned that second slide, namely him finding his mother half dead and near-totally desecrated on their kitchen floor, had zipped him up but good. And he’d assumed that was a permanent thing … being here, though, reliving his part in Sissy’s passing, feeling the horror and the rage at the waste of it all, along with his impotence as he tried and failed to save her … it cracked open his vault, busting through the layers of not-going-there-ever, splintering the wall he’d built up.
“Who?” Sissy said.
Jim pulled back and swiped his palms over his wet face. “What?”
“You said a name.”
“Nah.”
She nodded, her eyes locking on his. “Who was she?” When he didn’t answer, she reached up and put her soft hand on his cheek. “Who did you lose? Other than me, who did you not get there in time for?”
“This isn’t about my past—”
“Actually, I think it is. I always used to believe things happened for a reason. Maybe we came here … for you.” As he started to shake his head, she cut him off. “This didn’t get me what I was looking for. I don’t feel any better. So at least … maybe we can help you.”
Jim frowned. His mother’s death had in fact been the first of the uglies in his life, the starting gun of his race to what he’d become in XOps. If that murder hadn’t happened, would he have ended up in a different place?
Yes, he thought. Without that, he would have been a farmer out there in the Midwest, working the land, using his hands.
It was totally foreign to speak of it all, but for some reason, the words came and could not be denied. “We lived out on the plains. My mom and me. Alone. It was a small farm, surrounded by huge farms. So when these men broke into the house and … hurt her … nobody heard her scream. I came home and found her in the kitchen, she didn’t have much time left. So much blood, the blood everywhere … God …” A choking sensation made it nearly impossible to go on, but somehow, he had to. “She told me to run—she whispered it. They were upstairs, taking what little we had. I wanted to stay with her, but she made me go. I ran out to the truck—I didn’t have a license, I was too young, but I knew how to drive. I got in and floored the gas—I can remember looking in the rearview mirror and seeing the dust boiling up behind me on the road. Later, I came back. After all the police stuff was taken care of, I buried her myself, dug the hole in the pasture by the ridge. There was no one else to mourn her.”
Sissy exhaled slowly, as if an echo of all his pain had gone through her chest, too.
“I can’t imagine being out in the world alone,” she said. “You must have been Chillie’s age—when having a paper route is a stretch of responsibility. What did you do? Where did you go after…”
“The military.”
“They don’t take people that young, do they?”
He was not about to tell her that he’d been recruited into XOps because of the way he’d slaughtered the three men who’d killed his mother. Those murders had been so violent, they’d hit the national press—but he’d never been caught.
XOps had put it together, though. And they had come looking for him.
Sissy pushed her hair back. “You must have had a couple of years on your own.”
“Well, eventually, they accepted me.” After he’d been properly screened for sociopathic tendencies—and found to have enough to qualify him. And then he’d gotten through a form of “basic training” that was so brutal, people had been known not just to quit, but keel over dead from it.
“You and I have a lot in common,” Sissy murmured. “Hell takes a lot of forms, doesn’t it.”
“You’re too young to know that.”
“Not young anymore.”
He was beginning to really believe that.
“Do you want the rest of the story,” he said gruffly. “Yours, that is.”
“Yes.”
Jim felt like he was sinking into quicksand again as he chose his words. They might as well finish this, though. “Devina came while we were here. My boys had to knock me out by force—they knew if they’d let me stay, I would have fought her and probably lost. It was early times for me—shit, it feels like a million years ago. But I did return. By then? She’d cleaned the place out. Everything was gone, even you.” He rubbed his eyes like they hurt. “We found you later.”
“Where?”
“The quarry.”
Sissy frowned. “The one out by—”
“Yeah.”
“Dear Lord …” she whispered. “My poor parents. My sister. My grandparents.”
Her hand went to her stomach and she made an expression like she was nauseated. Couldn’t blame her.
After a moment, she said, “When you were little, and you got punished … did you ever picture yourself at your own funeral? Because I did—I used to imagine that my mom and dad were in tears, regretting every ‘meanie’ they’d ever done to me. That was such a wrong thing for me to do.”
Bertie fell into a flat-out run, and Tarquin, as if sensing their predicament, loped alongside him, his gait growing longer and longer until he broke free and became the first of the three of them to cross the drawbridge.
Bertie was the second, and as his fine leather-soled shoes encountered the thick wooden boards, he looked overhead, praying that he didn’t see shadows forming in the sky above. Skidding to a halt by the gear and cable system that would raise the planks, he was relieved to find Byron shooting across the moat at a dead run.
Together, he and the other archangel placed hands on the massive crank and threw their weight into a pumping rhythm as Tarquin splayed his massive forepaws and scrummed down, growling deep in his chest in warning as he backed up inside to allow the drawbridge to raise.
Devina had yet to arrive. If she had, her presence would have been sensed.
But Bertie knew she would come—and likely, soon. She and Nigel were required to meet on a regular basis with the Maker, and they were not allowed to forgo the sessions. If they did not attend? They were penalized.
The instant Nigel didn’t appear at the scheduled time?
That canny demon would suspect something dire had happened, and it was in her nature to investigate the cause. And if she infiltrated the grounds? The manse was the only safe place to be—and even then, it had never truly been tested.
As the planks found home, locking in up top, Bertie went to one side, and Byron went to the other and together, they completed the final step: Tremendous forged iron bars thick as a torso slid across into deeply carved compartments in the twelve-foot-thick walls, hitting home with a resonant, echoing thud.
He couldn’t remember the last time these precautions had been taken.
Collapsing back against the cool stone, all Bertie could think about were his dear friends—his family, indeed—stuck on the far side.
“God save them,” he whispered.
Tarquin whimpered and nudged his hand. As he stroked that regal head, he said, “Darling one, we shall be safe herein.”
At least until Devina tried to enter. Then? He did not know.
With a wave of despair, he looked over at Byron … and watched as the archangel slowly drew off his rose-colored glasses. His hands were trembling so badly, he dropped them.
Landing on the stone floor, the lenses shattered into countless pieces.
Chapter Twenty-eight
As Sissy stared up at Jim from her crouch by the bathtub, his face was drawn and pale. And that answered her question, didn’t it.
She turned back to the porcelain expanse and felt her stomach burn. “It must have happened here, then.”
God, her voice sounded funny to her own ears.
It seemed so weird to think that something as traumatic as her own death could be lost in her head, the experience hidden like that furniture back at the old house, obscured even as the contours filled out the draping cloth of her amnesia—because she sensed she had been in here, in this loft, in this marble-floored room … in this tub.
But that was all she got.
Letting her weight fall back, she sat on her butt, drawing her knees up to her chest. Surely something would come forward if she stayed here long enough. Some image, the memory of a sound, a smell, a sensation … and that would unlock the door.
Or burn the sheets, as it were.
But all she got … was that fire in her gut. On the other hand, why wouldn’t she be getting pissed off again.
“Looks like you’re going to have to tell me anyway,” she said. “The show part of this isn’t working.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
When Jim didn’t say anything further, she looked up. He was no longer standing. Instead, he was against the wall by the door, sliding down slowly until he, too, was sitting on the hard marble. As he draped his arms on his knees and rubbed his face, she was struck by how visibly upset he was.
Under any other circumstances, she would have backed off. Especially in her old life. “Tell me.”
There was a long pause before he replied. “I don’t know how she brought you here. I don’t know whether she stuffed you in a trunk or tied your arms and legs and threw you in the back of a van. I don’t know if she had you in a trance, or drugged you, or incapacitated you in some way I can only guess at.” Jim swallowed hard. “I know that you were sacrificed because you were a virgin, and it was to protect her mirror. I know that I found you here … and you were gone—”
Jim’s voice broke at that point.
He cleared his throat, like he intended to go on. But nothing came out when he opened his mouth.
With a rough hand, he scrubbed his jaw.
Still nothing.
His inability to speak reached her on some deep level. This was a tough man, a hard man, and she knew without being told that he did not waste time with emotional stuff. And yet here he was…
As he blinked hard, Sissy was drawn out of her own drama. Reaching out, she put her hand on his forearm. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. You were—”
“I should have gotten here sooner—”
“—not to blame for this—”
“—could have saved—”
“Stop it,” she barked. “Listen to me. Not your fault. Not at all.”
And then he began to weep.
Oh … my God, she thought. It was the last thing she expected.
And it was not like a girl would. Not with some high-pitched hysteria. He wept soundlessly, those huge shoulders quaking, his breath ragged, his face hidden behind his palms as if he didn’t want her or anybody to see him like this.
“You were gone…”
Sissy crab-walked over to sit beside him, but then didn’t know what to say … do. “It’s not your fault,” she told him again roughly.
“I was too late … You were already gone. Jesus Christ, you were … gone. And the truth is, ever since I found you, every time I close my eyes, every time I try to sleep, the image of you hanging over this goddamn, motherfucking tub tortures me.”
Sissy reached out and pulled him to her. It was an asinine thing to do—he was twice her size, and anything but a boy. Except he fell against her sure as a rootless tree, landing in a sprawl that pushed her closer to the tub.
Cradling him in her arms, she felt rather than heard his sobs, and strangely, offering him comfort eased her. It made her seem … strong, and that was critical in the midst of this scene of her greatest powerlessness.
And she wasn’t sure she needed to know any further details. She had been hoping that information would lead to some kind of understanding, even if it was painful. It did not, though. She was here where her death had taken place, and had some broad brushstrokes about the event—mainly Jim’s reaction—and she wasn’t any more grounded.
The only thing she felt was that anger deep inside her. Even as she embraced Jim, and honestly felt commiseration for his suffering, that fury burned.
Jim shifted his position, wrapping his arms around her, holding her in return.
Closing her eyes, Sissy tried to reach a place of peace. Or … resignation. Or … something.
She could not. But it was strange … being close to Jim like this?
Now, that was not weird. At all.
In fact, she became acutely aware of his body, his heft, his masculine scent. And that did bring something else out in her. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was better than the anger, that was for sure.
A torturous slide show was playing in Jim’s brain.
Well, not a show as in a series of images. There were only two. One of Sissy. The other of his mother.
One was in this bathroom. The other in a farmhouse kitchen. Both were heavily tinted in the color red, in the former case, in the tub, and in the latter, all over a linoleum floor.
He was not an emotional guy. Never had been—well, not since he’d been thirteen.
The event that had spawned that second slide, namely him finding his mother half dead and near-totally desecrated on their kitchen floor, had zipped him up but good. And he’d assumed that was a permanent thing … being here, though, reliving his part in Sissy’s passing, feeling the horror and the rage at the waste of it all, along with his impotence as he tried and failed to save her … it cracked open his vault, busting through the layers of not-going-there-ever, splintering the wall he’d built up.
“Who?” Sissy said.
Jim pulled back and swiped his palms over his wet face. “What?”
“You said a name.”
“Nah.”
She nodded, her eyes locking on his. “Who was she?” When he didn’t answer, she reached up and put her soft hand on his cheek. “Who did you lose? Other than me, who did you not get there in time for?”
“This isn’t about my past—”
“Actually, I think it is. I always used to believe things happened for a reason. Maybe we came here … for you.” As he started to shake his head, she cut him off. “This didn’t get me what I was looking for. I don’t feel any better. So at least … maybe we can help you.”
Jim frowned. His mother’s death had in fact been the first of the uglies in his life, the starting gun of his race to what he’d become in XOps. If that murder hadn’t happened, would he have ended up in a different place?
Yes, he thought. Without that, he would have been a farmer out there in the Midwest, working the land, using his hands.
It was totally foreign to speak of it all, but for some reason, the words came and could not be denied. “We lived out on the plains. My mom and me. Alone. It was a small farm, surrounded by huge farms. So when these men broke into the house and … hurt her … nobody heard her scream. I came home and found her in the kitchen, she didn’t have much time left. So much blood, the blood everywhere … God …” A choking sensation made it nearly impossible to go on, but somehow, he had to. “She told me to run—she whispered it. They were upstairs, taking what little we had. I wanted to stay with her, but she made me go. I ran out to the truck—I didn’t have a license, I was too young, but I knew how to drive. I got in and floored the gas—I can remember looking in the rearview mirror and seeing the dust boiling up behind me on the road. Later, I came back. After all the police stuff was taken care of, I buried her myself, dug the hole in the pasture by the ridge. There was no one else to mourn her.”
Sissy exhaled slowly, as if an echo of all his pain had gone through her chest, too.
“I can’t imagine being out in the world alone,” she said. “You must have been Chillie’s age—when having a paper route is a stretch of responsibility. What did you do? Where did you go after…”
“The military.”
“They don’t take people that young, do they?”
He was not about to tell her that he’d been recruited into XOps because of the way he’d slaughtered the three men who’d killed his mother. Those murders had been so violent, they’d hit the national press—but he’d never been caught.
XOps had put it together, though. And they had come looking for him.
Sissy pushed her hair back. “You must have had a couple of years on your own.”
“Well, eventually, they accepted me.” After he’d been properly screened for sociopathic tendencies—and found to have enough to qualify him. And then he’d gotten through a form of “basic training” that was so brutal, people had been known not just to quit, but keel over dead from it.
“You and I have a lot in common,” Sissy murmured. “Hell takes a lot of forms, doesn’t it.”
“You’re too young to know that.”
“Not young anymore.”
He was beginning to really believe that.
“Do you want the rest of the story,” he said gruffly. “Yours, that is.”
“Yes.”
Jim felt like he was sinking into quicksand again as he chose his words. They might as well finish this, though. “Devina came while we were here. My boys had to knock me out by force—they knew if they’d let me stay, I would have fought her and probably lost. It was early times for me—shit, it feels like a million years ago. But I did return. By then? She’d cleaned the place out. Everything was gone, even you.” He rubbed his eyes like they hurt. “We found you later.”
“Where?”
“The quarry.”
Sissy frowned. “The one out by—”
“Yeah.”
“Dear Lord …” she whispered. “My poor parents. My sister. My grandparents.”
Her hand went to her stomach and she made an expression like she was nauseated. Couldn’t blame her.
After a moment, she said, “When you were little, and you got punished … did you ever picture yourself at your own funeral? Because I did—I used to imagine that my mom and dad were in tears, regretting every ‘meanie’ they’d ever done to me. That was such a wrong thing for me to do.”
