Chris’s lips were closed so tightly they’d all but disappeared. The gun, David noticed, was tapping against his thigh.
The room grew colder, as if the walls were leeching the heat from the air.
“Tell me how it happened,” Jessica said.
Katherine strode over and spoke through clenched teeth. “Shut up. Shut up and don’t speak to my husband again.”
“Uhhhhh,” a voice moaned. It was Mike Jr., who writhed on the bed as if in pain.
“What’s wrong with him?” David asked.
The moaning crescendoed; Mike Jr.’s head began to thrash.
“Make it stop,” Jessica said.
“You better tell me what the hell’s happening,” Harkless said to Mayor Warner, but the mayor merely twitched the gun in her direction.
“He’s communicating with my grandson,” the mayor said.
Harkless’s eyebrows went up. “He?”
Mike Jr.’s chest rose, an anguished keening issuing from his mouth.
“Dammit,” David said, pushing to his feet. “Do something for him.”
“We are,” the mayor said, the gun coming to rest on David’s face. “Now sit down before I use this.”
Mike Jr. thrashed his head from side to side, his teeth bared, a choked gurgle sounding in his throat.
“You’ll kill him!” David shouted. He glanced wildly about the room until his eyes came to rest on Michael Shelby. “He’s your son, for Christ’s sakes. Help him!”
Eyes on Shelby, the mayor nodded. “Deal with Mr. Caine.”
Michael Shelby stared blankly at his father-in-law a moment, then looked at David. A diseased smile spread on his face. Shelby raised the gun.
“Not here,” the mayor said, nodding toward the southern window. “Do it over there.”
“You’re going to kill him?” Katherine asked.
Honey gave her an incredulous look. “What’d you think we were here to do? Have an ice cream social?”
Shelby strode toward David, gun extended. “On your feet. I’ve been yearning to do this since the day we met.”
But Katherine was casting pleading looks about the room. She went to her husband. “It was supposed to be about convincing him.”
Chris barely glanced at his wife. “After he disappears, this place will supply you with all the vacations you want, all the plastic surgeries.”
David expected Katherine to be affronted, but she barely seemed to hear her husband. She took a step toward Shelby. “You can’t—”
Chris seized her by the arm and yanked her toward him.
“By the window,” Shelby told David.
David took a step in that direction.
Jessica rose. “Can I tell him something?”
“Sit,” the mayor ordered.
But Shelby was grinning coldly. “Sure. Tell him something.”
Jessica moved close to David, stared up at him. He felt the eyes of everyone in the room on them, but it was Jessica from whom he couldn’t look away.
She whispered, “Save Ivy and Mike Jr.”
“Well, ain’t that sweet,” Honey said.
Shelby’s grin had evaporated. “My kids don’t need saving. They’re part of something momentous.”
Jessica looked up and said, “The trapdoor is moving.”
As they turned that way, Jessica reached back, something in her hand now. Shelby was just glancing in her direction when she jabbed the Oriental hair needle. The tapered point punctured Shelby’s left eye and sank in. The gun exploded, and Jessica cried out, twisted, and Michael Shelby dropped to his knees, runnels of blood slopping down his cheek.
David reached for Jessica, distinguished a dark patch on her side, but he also spotted the gun beside Shelby’s motionless body. He knew this was their only chance. He lunged for the gun, cried out when another shot exploded and pain lanced his left forearm. Instinctively, he jerked the arm back, covered the bloody wound, and the mayor, who must’ve been the one who’d shot him, kicked out at him and sent him sprawling on his side. Without pause, the mayor swept his foot at the gun and sent it skittering under Ivy’s bed.
Harkless clambered toward the bed to retrieve the gun, but Chris hurried over, shoved his gun against the side of her head. Harkless froze, a frustrated grimace contorting her face.
“Katherine, dear,” the mayor said. “Would you kindly retrieve my dead, shiftless son-in-law’s pistol for me?”
Katherine glanced dumbly at the mayor. Honey looked at her twitching husband like he was an unexciting zoo exhibit. Templeton watched Harkless and Chris, looking like he might make a move to intervene. The Shelby children lay on their backs, immobile, barely even breathing.
“Katherine?” the mayor repeated, an edge to his voice.
Her trance broke, and Katherine scurried to the bed, beneath which the gun had disappeared. She lowered to her knees, reached toward the gap between the blankets and the hardwood floor.
Honey’s face tightened. “Wait—”
But she didn’t have time to say more.
Something had seized Katherine’s forearms. David watched, horrified, as the leering thing slithered out from beneath the bed, the scorched, bloody fingers already piercing Katherine’s flesh. She tried to pull away, her mouth open in a soundless scream, but the leering thing held on, the mottled fingernails digging troughs in her flesh. She drew back from the creature, but its pupilless eyes opened wider. Its denuded jaws spread in ghastly hunger. Katherine finally found her voice, but it was silenced as the leering thing’s razor-like teeth sank into her throat, and her blood sprayed out either side of the creature’s face. Katherine’s eyes rolled as the leering thing shook her in its champing teeth and blurred her head like a Rottweiler’s chew toy.
Chris watched his wife die, his expression unchanging.
Something beyond the leering thing drew David’s attention: Charlie Templeton had lunged toward the bed and was scooping up Ivy Shelby.
The mayor bellowed, “Put her down! Put her down, damn you!” But the mayor didn’t fire his weapon, nor did Chris. Yet.
Templeton spun with Ivy toward the closed door, and David had time to think Don’t turn your back before the mayor did shoot, and a gout of blood splashed from Templeton’s back and spattered the wall.
Templeton gasped but didn’t stop. He only reached awkwardly for the doorknob. He got through. The mayor followed. David heard a door slam, a lock click, someone hammering on wood. Templeton, David realized, had locked himself and Ivy inside the bedroom across the hall.
How long until the mayor starts shooting through the door? David wondered.
Chris and Harkless were staring one another down, the sheriff’s expression grim in the semidarkness of the long bedroom.
“Oh, fuck this,” Harkless said and rose.
“You stupid—” Chris started, and then Harkless was surging forward.
Chris would have killed her, David was absolutely certain of it, had Harkless not been so fast. Chris’s gun went off, but the shot was wild. The sheriff hit Chris in the midsection like a linebacker taking down a quarterback. Chris jackknifed, stumbled back, pawed at Harkless, but she kept driving him backward until their feet tangled and they went sprawling into the alcove of the northern dormer. There was a thud – Chris’s head on the floor – and then Harkless was rising and aiming a brutal kick at Chris’s face.
As Harkless reached down and took possession of Chris’s gun, David became aware of his own wound. His forearm throbbed, the momentary numbness giving way to pain. Ahead of him the leering thing had Katherine’s corpse pinioned to the floor, was feeding on her larynx, the blood frothing over its red-black face, the gobbets of meat and tissue splattering on the down-hanging ivory coverlets.
David crawled toward Jessica, saw her eyes were squeezed tight in pain.
“Can you hear me
?” he whispered.
Her eyes still closed, Jessica nodded.
“Can I—” he said, reaching for her side, but he froze, his stomach lurching.
The leering thing had left off Katherine’s corpse, was staring at him.
No, he amended. Not at him. At the blood on his forearm.
The creature sprung. David shot an arm up, his good arm, but the creature battened onto it, snarling and tearing. With a cry, David twisted, and the leering thing, which weighed little despite its ferocity, went tumbling into the blackened fireplace. On impulse David seized a poker from the implement holder. The leering thing darted at him again, and he just had time to bring the poker up, interpose it between himself and those lethal teeth. The black iron tip of the poker sank into the throat of the creature and pierced through the back of its neck. But it kept coming, champing and growling. The thing’s claws had sunk into his shoulders; it hauled itself nearer, the poker sliding through its throat. But how, David wondered crazily, did you slay a ghost, if that’s what this was?
The creature jolted, and David jerked his head around to find Harkless bearing down on the leering thing, her gun extended. Harkless fired again, and the leering thing howled.
David shoved the leering thing away, staggered to his feet, and grasped its ravaged body by the hips. Thoughts swirled in his head as he lifted the abhorrent creature: this was once a woman, likely a very young woman, who’d been victimized by Judson Alexander; but the shrieking, charred thing in his grip no longer understood anything save hunger…and serving its master. Although the poker had impaled the creature’s throat and Harkless had shot it twice, the creature still twisted and fought with indefatigable energy. Even now, as David strode toward the window, the creature was reaching back for him, clawing at his arms, yearning for his blood. David pivoted and hurled the creature through the window. When he turned, he saw Harkless lifting Mike Jr. from the bed.
He cast a glance toward Jessica, who lay on her side, moving very little.
A gunshot from the hallway. David glanced at Harkless.
“Shooting through the door,” Harkless said in a hushed voice. “Charlie won’t be able to keep the mayor out for long.”
David glanced at Mike Jr. “Should we….”
Harkless took a steadying breath. “Keep the kid safe.”
David nodded, took Mike Jr. by the hand, and moved against the wall where he could observe Harkless.
Harkless stepped into the doorway, gun extended.
“Mayor Warner!” she shouted.
David watched Harkless’s fierce eyes widen. “Well, shit,” she said. And then she was firing, her body braced low and the gun raised. David heard the mayor cry out, a clattering thud, then Harkless lowered the gun, looking nothing but overtired.
David said to Mike Jr. “Wait here.” He came around the corner and peered over Harkless’s shoulder at the sagging corpse of Mayor Warner. Harkless’s aim had been true. There were three ragged blooms pumping cherry-red blood from the vicinity of the mayor’s heart. The bare-chested man looked more obscene than ever lying there in a heap, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The mingled odors of gunsmoke and fresh excrement filled the landing.
“One less pedophile,” Harkless said. She stepped across the hall. “Open up, Charlie. We got him.”
No answer.
Harkless glanced at David, frowning, and reached for the knob, which hung loose and dented in its splintered housing. She nudged the door, which swung inward.
Revealing what lay just inside the bedroom. Charlie Templeton was sprawled on his chest with little Ivy sitting astride his back. The child’s fingernails were digging at a wound in his back, more than eight inches in diameter. The raw crater was ruby-colored and glistening with blood and vertebrae. David could only make out the edges of the wound because Ivy’s face was buried in its center. He became aware of the slurping sounds as Ivy feasted on Templeton’s viscera.
“Oh my holy God,” Harkless said.
Ivy paused, her shoulder blades like tiny harrows inside the formal gown. Then she looked up from the gory hole from which she’d been feeding and grinned at them.
Chapter Forty-One
“No,” Harkless whimpered. “Please, no.”
Ivy’s grin widened, her anemic little face rimed with blood and bits of cartilage. The front of her white dress was stained a deep burgundy, the blood having soaked through the silken material to her skin.
“What did you do, child?” Harkless said, a question David judged unnecessary. What the hell does it look like? he wanted to ask. She’s feasting on the man who tried to save her.
“Where’s my sister?” a voice asked. He turned and saw Mike Jr. staring past him toward Ivy and Templeton, and before David could move to block Mike Jr.’s view, the boy’s face crumpled, and he began shaking his head.
“Sheriff,” David said, “please get Mike Jr. out of here.”
Harkless seemed transfixed by the sight of Ivy’s blood-smeared face, but murmured, “Okay.”
Harkless turned away from the nightmarish tableau and took Mike Jr. by the hand. Mike Jr. allowed himself to be led down the stairs, but he kept casting glances back at David. “Aren’t you coming?” the boy asked.
“I’ve got to get someone,” David said.
“But you’ll come?” Mike Jr. said.
Soft laughter from across the hallway.
Ivy, David thought. Jesus.
“I’ll put the boy in one of the cars and come back up,” Harkless said. She and Mike Jr. were nearing the bottom of the stairs.
“Drive to town,” David said. “Get him somewhere safe.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“We’ll be right behind you.”
Harkless didn’t answer, but she did lead Mike Jr. across the foyer and out the door.
As soon as they were gone, David turned toward Ivy, whose laughter was deepening, the voice as unnatural as the cannibalism.
“Shut up,” David said.
Ivy’s laugh grew louder, deeper.
“You’re not Ivy,” he said.
“The hell she ain’t,” came a voice from behind him.
He whirled and stared into the muzzle of a gun. Michael Shelby’s, he realized. The gun that had gone spinning under one of the beds.
With the gun extended, Honey smiled a slow, languid smile. “Forgot all about me, didn’t you?”
* * *
After bending to scoop up her dead father’s gun, Honey led David back into the long bedroom. While it was the last place he wanted to be, he was grateful to be shot of the sight of Ivy ripping and tearing at Templeton’s back.
A current of rage sizzled through him. Templeton had saved Ivy’s life, or had tried to. He’d taken a bullet for the girl, and though he might have died from the gunshot, he deserved better than to have his body defiled by a possessed child.
And Ivy was possessed. There was no other explanation. Whatever had happened the night she’d gone missing, all the goodness in her had been extracted and had been replaced by malice, by sadism, by an irrational allegiance to a being so fearsome not even death could vanquish him.
Chris had roused and was leaning groggily against the farthest bed. David barely spared Katherine’s body a glance, though he wondered what had become of the leering thing. Was it still alive, or were its powers limited to the house? And if it did still lurk outside, would it attack Harkless and Mike Jr.?
Ignoring Honey and Chris, David hurried over to where Jessica lay on her side, the puddle of blood beneath her having doubled in size. He knelt, got a hand under her head, and rolled her toward him. He placed a hand on her wound, applied pressure, and gritted his teeth.
Goddammit, he thought. Goddamn these fiends and their loyalty to a monster.
Honey said, “Don’t get all huffy. There’re other women.”
/>
David’s arms trembled. “You…vile excuse—”
“Save it,” Honey said lightly. “You wouldn’t have been man enough for me anyway.” A lascivious smile. “There’s only one who is.”
“She’s right, you know,” Chris said.
“You bastard,” David said. “This is your fault.”
Chris stepped around the edge of the bed. “At least you’re giving me credit for something. The whole time we’ve known each other, all you’ve done is marginalize me.”
“You’re a coward.”
Chris’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I killed her.”
It knocked David’s breath out.
Chris grinned nastily. “That’s right. I drove Anna here because she asked me to. She was suicidal – you’re not off the hook for that – and she had a bucket list. One item was spending the night in the Alexander House.”
David listened, and though he was intensely interested, he was even more desperate to get Jessica to a hospital. Had Harkless listened to him and taken Mike Jr. to safety, or was she even now sneaking up the stairs in an attempt to ambush Honey and Chris?
And what about Ivy? he wondered.
God. David couldn’t think about her. A vision of the girl licking the ragged fringe of Templeton’s wound arose, and he had to fight off a wave of nausea.
“Give me that gun,” Chris said to Honey.
She handed Chris her father’s gun and smiled at David. “Aren’t you gonna ask your buddy how he killed your old girlfriend?”
“I don’t care,” David said, but God help him, he did.
“You’ll enjoy the story,” Chris said. “You always did enjoy humiliating me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is!” Chris shouted and suddenly lashed out with the gun. It caught David on the side of the face and knocked him backward. Jessica’s head, released from David’s support, thudded smartly on the floor. David pushed up on his elbows and started to move toward Jessica, but Chris was there, the muzzle three inches from David’s nose.
Chris’s face was a rictus of loathing. “You’re a narcissist, Davey. You expect everyone to serve you, and when you’re done with them, you cast them aside.”
The Siren and the Specter Page 29