The chief grinned. “I reckon he’ll let me out of here, go where the action is. It’ll be a lot like your story. I’ll convince everyone I’m a good guy, and when I can, I’ll have some fun.”
Rick frowned, something ill-defined trawling through the depths of his brain.
Without warning, Anderson reached up, yanked a glass sconce off the wall, and hurled it at Rick, who’d been so transfixed he was barely able to dive out of the way. The sconce shattered on the altar, spitting shards of glass all over the hardwood floor.
Recklessness, Rick thought as he pushed to his feet. He remembered the night he’d begun Garden of Snakes. The sound of the chainsaw. The image of the maniacal cop heaving the buzzing machine into the air, plunging his recruit into a deranged form of Russian roulette.
Yes. Recklessness was Anderson’s defining characteristic.
His flaw.
“You know,” Anderson said, patting the gun on his hip, “I could just shoot your sorry ass.”
Rick stepped onto the altar, making sure his stockinged feet didn’t tread on any shards. “You’d never do that. There’d be no sport in it.”
Anderson nodded. “I suppose you’re right. No point in taking the easy way.”
Anderson darted at him. So abrupt was the huge man’s charge that Rick froze. When the chief was almost upon him, he ducked, felt the huge man’s tailwind sweep over him. Anderson crashed into the lectern, the solid wood fracturing into a dozen pieces. Rick glanced about, spotted a promising shard of glass, and retrieved it. Anderson was pushing to his feet when Rick rushed at him. The chief looked up in time to see Rick pumping the shard at his face. Anderson jerked his head aside, but not swiftly enough. The razor-sharp glass sheared off his earlobe and carved an inch-deep trough in his neck.
Anderson roared, clamped a hand over his spraying ear. Rick reared back to slash Anderson again, but the chief struck him a bone-crunching blow to the ribs. The punch lifted him off his feet, but the sight of the chief’s blood had given him hope.
He tore at the chief with a vicious backhand, the jagged glass ripping open his shirt at the chest, a dark tide of blood darkening the beige material. Anderson bared his teeth, a growl sounding deep in his throat, and thrust a lightning uppercut at Rick’s jaw.
The blow sent him a foot in the air, and when he landed he felt the bite of glass and splintered wood.
Rick lay on his back, his consciousness flickering. He’d constructed Anderson too well. The chief was relentless. Bent on inflicting violence.
And now Rick realized what his subconscious had been trying to tell him. Without a gun, without an army behind him, he couldn’t mount an effective attack.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t win.
“You did good with that glass, boy,” Anderson said. He fingered his mangled ear, inspected the bright red blood. “Good thing I’m not the piercing type, huh?”
“You’re a waste,” Rick said.
“That’s not very civil, Ricky.” The chief stalked toward him. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“You’re like my stepdad,” Rick said, pushing onto his knees. “You can’t create anything. You can only—” he winced at the shooting pain in his side, “—can only tear down.”
Anderson tilted his head, ten feet away now. “You think I’m like that cocksucker? You haven’t got a clue.”
“I’d be angry too if I were like you,” Rick said, casting a quick glance to his left. What he needed was within reach.
“Like me?”
“Someone’s stooge,” Rick explained. “Unable to think on his own.”
Anderson’s lips drew back. “You…little…fucker.”
Now, Rick thought. Now.
Anderson leapt at him. Rick’s fingers closed on the lectern fragment, the tapered spike eighteen inches long. Anderson descended just as Rick thrust the spike up, plunged it into Anderson’s chest. As the chief came down, Rick shifted just enough to avoid being impaled by the opposite end.
He scrambled around, saw the chief flop onto his back and gape down at the wooden spike protruding from his chest. Though Rick yearned to leave now, to save Lucy, his rational side told him to damn well not leave Anderson’s fate to chance. After all, a creature like this.… Who knew if he could really be killed? He had to be sure.
Rick cast about, discovered another fragment from the shattered lectern, this piece not as long as the first, but every bit as sharp. He crawled closer to Anderson, raised the spike, and that’s when the chief started laughing.
Rick’s hand froze a foot above Anderson’s face.
Because the chief’s face was changing.
Gone was the oversized jaw and the prowlike forehead. Gone was the enlarged lump of nose and the salt-and-pepper hair.
In their place were Rick’s features.
Rick stared down at himself.
“Now he sees!” the being who was no longer Anderson crowed. “It took him a while, but now, by God, he understands!”
It can’t be, Rick thought.
The bleeding figure reached up, seized him by the shirtfront. “I’m part of you, Forrester. You really think you can kill me off without harming your own sorry ass?”
And now Rick sensed the ache in his torso, the pulse in his left ear. He glanced down at his chest, expecting to see spreading blood, but thus far there was only the pain. And the dread that the chief had defeated him after all.
“You’re not me,” Rick said, knocking the hand away. He leaned over. “You’re not me!”
The figure grew still, the voice dwindling to a whisper. “You’re right, Ricky. Look.”
Fingers trembling, Rick reached down, removed the figure’s sunglasses.
Opened his mouth in a voiceless scream.
The figure’s eyes were swirling darknesses. As Rick watched in horror, the figure reached up, hooked the bottoms of its eyelids, and pulled them down, revealing more darkness, a face that wasn’t a face, a shadowy, swirling mass of onyx that began to glimmer, and then to form into something hideous, a visage too fiendish to be called human.
“I claimed your mother,” the creature rasped. “She screamed and screamed.”
Rick tried to pull away, but the creature caught him by the throat with one hand, peeled off its skin with the other, the head entirely black now, the darkness continuing at the throat and torso. “I’ll claim you after I take your bitch.”
Rick took hold of the hand that gripped his throat, but the fingers only tightened, the black vulpine face leering at him. “You’re going to hell,” the figure growled. “We’ll all burn together.”
Rick’s fingers closed on a shard of glass, but before he could slash at the creature’s satanic face, the dark form thrust out its arms, slamming Rick backward. He pushed onto his elbows in time to see Raymond Eddy rise, turn.
Raymond grinned. “I told you I’d come for you.”
Rick watched in numb shock as Raymond darted away, his body blurring, and disappeared into the wall.
Straight toward the tower.
Chapter Seventeen
“Down to the end!” Wilson called, his eyes gleaming in the lurid candle glow.
“I leave it to you, Miss Still,” Wells said. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is now within reach. You can be famous, can have more money than you’ve ever dreamed. What will you decide?”
Lucy looked into Wells’s black eyes. “How long have you lived?” she whispered.
“You’ve killed for this moment, Lucy,” Wells reminded her. “All you have to do now is choose.”
She glanced at Will, read the terror in his face. Looked back at Wells. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
Wells opened his mouth. “Let me? My dear, the only question is which one of you will condemn the other first.”
“We won’t do that,” she said. “Right, Will?
”
“Hell no,” he answered.
But something in his tone gave her pause. Had he lacked conviction, or was it the turmoil of the moment that had rendered his voice so listless? She gazed into his eyes and wondered, Will you sell me out, Will? Will you let me die so you can win?
“You’re right to doubt, Miss Still. Poets talk of love, loyalty. But self-preservation is the most basic human urge.”
Her lips thinned. “For the heartless, maybe.”
“An eight-year-old girl,” Wells mused. “Unblemished, untainted. Possessed of an unconditional regard for her baby sister.”
“I was jealous of her,” Lucy said. “I wanted the attention. But that doesn’t mean I wanted Molly to die.”
“Lies,” Wilson said.
Tears filled her eyes. “Part of me died that day too.”
Wells nodded. “The part of you that shared your parents’ attention. The part of you that had to compete for their love.”
“No.”
“Leave her alone,” Will said.
Wells ignored him. “The creek wasn’t deep, my dear. You could have easily saved her.”
“I would’ve died too,” Lucy said, but her words were half-lost in a sob.
“A risk you weren’t willing to take,” Wells agreed. “Then or now.”
She smeared the tears away. “I won’t let Will die.”
Wells said, “You are about to behold something incredible, Miss Still. Something my champion storytellers have witnessed through the ages. A century ago in a Boston mansion. Half a millennium ago, within a remote Scottish castle. In ancient—”
“You’re a parasite,” she whispered.
“I’m alive,” he corrected. “I am rich and famous and possessed of a power beyond comprehension. I am eternal, Miss Still.”
“No,” she said.
“Hold her, Wilson.”
Wilson swung her around, pinned her arms to her sides.
Wells stalked toward Will.
“I don’t want to die,” Will said.
Wells smiled. “You’ve decided Miss Still will die in your place?”
Will stared up at Wells, breath heaving. Then, his face seemed to clear. “You lose, Mr. Wells.”
Wells’s smile vanished. “You think I need a winner to survive, Mr. Church? It’s merely my sporting nature that honors the agreement.”
Will rolled sideways in an attempt to gain his feet, but the bonds around his wrists and ankles foiled him.
Wells straddled him, pinned him to the floor. “Look at me, Mr. Church.”
Lucy began to thrash against Wilson.
Wells reached out, covered Will’s mouth and nose. Will whimpered against Wells’s hand. Lucy watched in sick horror as Will’s legs began to scissor.
Behind her, Wilson let out a pleased sigh. Lucy bucked against him to free herself.
The tower began to pulse with strands of light. They started in the walls, the domed tower, and snaked their way across the floor toward Wells and his victim. From her vantage point she could just glimpse Will’s face, but it was more than enough. The bulging eyes, the reddened skin. The muffled cries.
She became aware of the noise then, a deep, metronomic throb that accompanied the light pulses, the sound so deep and powerful the floor underfoot vibrated.
The pulsing light crept nearer to Wells with each beat, until the incandescence reached his shoes, throbbed up his legs, swam over his torso, and his entire body was flashing in time with the keep.
Will’s eyelids began to flutter, his body gripped in a paroxysm of anguish.
“Let him go!” Lucy shouted. She jerked against Wilson, clawed at his arms, but he would not relinquish his grip.
Will’s cries weakened, and then his spasms ceased altogether.
Soon, the lights and the sound were gone, and Wells was rising from Will’s dead body.
Wells now looked no more than twenty-five years old. His body was corded with muscle.
He strode toward her, a Greek god made flesh. Within his white shirt, his muscles bulged. “Transcendence is a myth, Lucy. You believe your actions are noble. But all you’ve done is select a different manner of suicide.”
She glanced at Will, hoping he would rise again.
But his body was motionless.
She was alone.
No! she thought. You’re not dead yet.
She strained against Wilson, but he refused to let go.
Wells smiled at Wilson. “Ten victims this time.” He laughed softly. “I wonder how Amanda will enjoy making love to my teenage self.”
“Where is she?” Lucy asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Wilson muttered, but something had caught in Lucy’s mind. Some important scrap of memory.…
“She disapproves of this,” Lucy said.
Wells shrugged. “She’s inexperienced. In time, she’ll appreciate my renewal.”
Lucy probed her mind for recollections of the tale. Imagined the woman in ‘Incident on a Paris Rooftop’. She said, “The character in your story.… Amanda would never have sanctioned this sort of ritual.”
Wells made a scoffing sound. “Ritual? My dear, this is the glorious culmination of scrupulous planning. The game has never gone this swimmingly before. In the past, mistakes were made, the unfolding of events far too messy.”
“Not this time,” Wilson said.
Wells smiled warmly, reached over Lucy to grasp Wilson’s shoulder. “But not this time. The Seer was not only one of my greatest novels. He’s proven an invaluable resource.”
“But your wife…does she approve of this?”
Wells rolled his eyes. “What do I care of her approval? I made her. I gave her life.”
“You enslaved her,” Lucy said. “In the story, Amanda yearns to be free.”
Wilson’s voice was tight. “Mr. Wells, don’t listen to this—”
“I know what Miss Still is trying to do.” Wells glanced at Lucy, a crafty gleam in his eyes. “You want to see where Amanda’s loyalties reside. Will she choose her husband, or will she side with a stranger?” Wells nodded. “Come, Amanda.”
Out of the darkness stepped Amanda Wells, and to Lucy she’d never appeared more lovely or fanatical.
“I’ll never betray Roderick,” Amanda said.
“You’re brainwashed,” Lucy answered.
“I love. Passionately, unselfishly. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“The woman in the story would never allow herself to be subjugated.”
Amanda uttered a breathless laugh. “My dear. How many of us remain the people we were?”
Lucy glanced at Will’s lifeless body. Remembered his wiseass grin. His self-deprecating humor. “I’m not.”
Amanda lowered her nose at Lucy. “You’re not what?”
“The same,” Lucy said. She turned to Wells, nodded toward Amanda. “You can manipulate this poor creature—” a nod at Wilson, “—or this mindless automaton.”
Wilson took a step toward her.
“But you can’t control everyone,” she said. “Will…me…Rick.”
As if in answer, a muffled boom sounded from below.
“Ah,” Wells said. “Your prince.”
He’s alive! she thought. She’d wanted to believe it, but after Will’s death, any hope she’d clung to had faded.
“He’s supposed to be dead,” Wilson murmured, his eyes darting about.
Lucy studied the servant’s perplexed face. “You didn’t foresee this, did you? That’s why you’re angry. You can’t see the future.”
“He’s supposed to be dead!” Wilson shouted.
But Wells only smiled. “We come to it,” he said. “The end of the fairy tale.”
Another boom. Rick attempting to stave in the entrance to the tower?
> “You’ll have to kill us both,” Lucy said. “Rick won’t sacrifice me any more than I’ll sacrifice him.”
The booming sounded again.
Wells grinned. “My dear, you don’t remember Miss Jackson’s story. It wasn’t the king that the peasant girl most feared, but rather the king’s chief executioner.”
Wilson started forward.
“Wait,” Wells said. “I hate to deprive you of the pleasure, Wilson, but I must.”
Wilson stopped, a look of exquisite frustration twisting his face.
A cracking sound from below. Rick breaking through?
“It is time, Miss Still.” Wells turned toward the darkest region of the tower and nodded. “I command not only my characters, but the ghosts that haunt my writers as well.”
The shadow hurtled at Lucy.
Chapter Eighteen
Rick swung the axe again, and this time the steel head broke through. Shards of wood clattered on the floor beyond, and Rick shoved his hand through the hole he’d made, the jagged splinters harrowing his wrist. He ground his teeth, his fingers probing for the lock. He found it, twisted it. He shouldered open the door, rushed up the steps, wishing he hadn’t needed the detour to the workshop, but without the axe, he’d never have broken through the heavy door.
How long had Raymond been in the tower? Had Wells killed Lucy even before Raymond arrived?
Rick didn’t know, but he raced up the steps, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, the mystifying aches in his chest and his ear. Had he truly injured himself when he attacked John Anderson? Was the character that much a part of him?
He hustled around the steps, rose higher and higher, and when he reached the keep he was stunned to find the door standing open.
Rick burst into the tower and beheld a scene that made his blood freeze.
Raymond Eddy stood clutching Lucy, who thrashed in his arms. A rumbling bass throb accompanied a continual pulse of light, which began at Raymond’s face and spread outward along the floor, the walls, illuminating the entire keep. Most of the light, however, seemed to flow toward Wells, who stood near the stained-glass windows, his black eyes gleaming, an expression of sexual hunger on his face.
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