by Stuart, Anne
He didn’t dare. There were demons, monsters surrounding them, a soul-devouring killer who could lay claim to them both if Damien forgot his mission. He wasn’t sure where that killer came from. From the rain-dark alleyways. From across the centuries. Or from inside his own twisted soul.
He sank a little deeper into sleep, the steady sound of her breathing irrationally soothing. He was back to a time when he’d had all the answers, back when nothing had mattered but the next story, the next award, the things that money could buy. Back when life had been simple and serenely hollow. Back before he’d lost his soul.
She didn’t scream. He stared, helpless with fascination, as the flames licked upward, igniting her clothes, her long black hair, the haze of heat seeming to make her waver and melt in front of him. The flames spread to the now-empty gasoline can, and she was a human torch in the night, and she didn’t scream.
He was the one who screamed. A harsh, rending sound, swallowed up in the night by the sound of police sirens and the noise of the crowd. He could have reached her, could have stopped the woman in her mad act of political defiance, and instead he’d waited a moment too long, for the sake of a story, a byline, one more prize, one more notch on his gun. He’d waited too long.
He could still smell it. Gasoline and burning flesh, melting hair and clothes and the plastic from her cheap shoes. It would stay with him forever, haunting him. The smell.
And the guilt.
THE SKY WAS RED overhead. He didn’t like to leave Venice. He was angry about that, and he would make her pay for it. He hadn’t been in any hurry to finish with her. He’d been enjoying himself, enjoying the fear and panic that had spread through the city. Once he finished with her, his task would be complete, and he wasn’t quite ready to stop.
But she might leave. Sooner or later he would find her, sooner or later she would have to come back to Los Angeles, but he wasn’t sure he could wait. Things needed a certain orderliness, a certain attention to detail. If she left, if there were no more masks, then he would have to stop, his goal incomplete. He couldn’t let that happen again.
It turned out to be a simple enough matter to find them. Enough people were watching for them, and the reporter’s license plate number was well-known. It was on the police scanners—they’d stopped at a small motel in outside of San Bernardino. Depending on the traffic, it wouldn’t be more than a two-hour drive from Venice.
He wasn’t quite sure what he would do once he got there. He had a mask in the back of his car; the knives were cleaned and sharpened. He would have to get her alone.
He didn’t want to touch Damien. Not in this lifetime. Not in the previous one. Letting him live, and remember, was reward enough. It was the reporter’s destiny, just as Lizzie Stride was his, a second chance to make things right after so many decades, so many lifetimes.
No one would look twice at him. He was very ordinary today, middle-aged, middling height, an unremarkable face. He looked like a thousand other men in their cheap suits, heading home to a house in the suburbs. With only a brief stop on the way, not for a drink, not for hurried sex in the car with a twenty-five-dollar hooker. For death.
He pulled up outside the motel, waiting in the shadows across the street. He could be infinitely patient. Sooner or later one of them would emerge, and she would be unprotected. And he could finish what he’d started more than a hundred years ago.
He wondered what they were doing in there. He could imagine. Lewd, disgusting things, limbs entwined, mouths panting. Filth. It was no wonder the lights stayed off, even as the day darkened around him. If he moved closer, near the window, what kinds of sounds would he hear?
He gripped the steering wheel, his hands slippery with sweat, as his own breathing grew rapid and shallow. It was good. It was very good. The others, all the others, were soiled. He’d been unable to bring himself to touch Elizabeth Stride, no matter what his destiny proclaimed, because she was living a pure life. That purity protected her no longer.
He’d almost begun to wonder if she was different from the others. Better. He should have known. Women were diseased, creatures of filth, put on this earth, from the beginning of time, to destroy man. And now it seemed that Elizabeth Stride, despite her soft voice and warm eyes, was no exception.
It was early evening when the white-painted door to room 13 opened. He held his breath, waiting. He’d hoped it would be Damien, leaving him the hotel room, so that he could take his time. But it was Elizabeth Stride, her red whore’s hair hanging down her back, darting out into the rain.
She didn’t look as if she’d spent the past few hours fornicating, but he couldn’t let that deter him. The time was now, made for him, and he didn’t dare hesitate. Reaching behind him, he picked up his leather briefcase in one well-manicured hand. The knives inside clanked together and then were silent as he started down the rain-wet streets, after his destiny.
LIZZIE WAS ABSOLUTELY starving. When she awoke in the darkened motel room, she was dizzy, disoriented and ravenous, and it took her a moment to get her bearings.
Damien slept on, slumped down in the chair, exhausted, not moving when she tiptoed around him to use the bathroom. The thin bedspread had slipped down around him, and she was tempted to pull it back up, tuck it around his long, angular body. She was smart enough not to. This time, after several hours of deep sleep, he might wake and touch her. He might take, in drowsiness, what he wouldn’t want when he was wide-awake, and she shouldn’t want him at all. As long as she could fight it, she could stay reasonably safe.
There had to be a place to eat nearby—a convenience store, maybe even a fast-food restaurant, within walking distance. She would have sold her soul for a Big Mac.
She wasn’t going to drive. He’d put the keys in his jeans pocket, and there was no way she was going to go fumbling around in his pants. If worse came to worst, maybe the motel office had a candy vending machine.
It was still raining when she stepped outside. They’d slept the day away; night had fallen, and she had the eerie sense that someone was watching her. Absurd, of course, the result of months of terror. The Venice Ripper stayed in Venice. He wouldn’t be someplace as mundane as San Bernardino.
She started down the sidewalk, feeling the rain soak through her shirt. She paused at the corner, looking over her shoulder, but there were only a couple of people in sight. A bland middle-aged businessman type and a teenager. Neither of them looked like a serial killer—and both were intent on their own concerns. Dismissing them, she crossed the street, heading toward the busy intersection.
DAMIEN WOKE WITH a start. The room was pitch-dark; from outside he could hear the beat of the rain, the whine of traffic. He knew without looking that he was alone in the room. That Lizzie was outside somewhere, alone. With the Ripper nearby.
With a roar of frustration, he surged out of the chair, tossing the bedspread unseen on the floor as he leapt for the door. There was no sign of her in the parking lot, no sign of anyone. His heart was pounding in pure, instinctive panic. The Ripper was near; he was very near. And he was after Lizzie.
Damien paused for a second, trying to guess which direction she had gone, when he heard the cry. A small noise, almost a sigh. But he knew that sound, deep in his soul. It was the sound of death.
“Lizzie,” he howled, racing across the parking lot in mindless panic, his feet skidding on the rain-slick pavement. He was blind with terror, unwilling to believe that it could have happened so fast, in one moment of inattention, that the Ripper could have gotten her, taken her, killed her.
He barreled into her before he realized what he was doing. She was coming around the corner, her arms wrapped around a paper bag, and he knocked against the woman, sending the bag flying. He almost pushed her out of the way before he realized it was Lizzie, in one piece, staring up at him.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he dem
anded, his voice harsh in the steady rain. “You could have been killed!”
She was looking pale, shocked by his fury. “He doesn’t have any idea where we are.”
“He knows!” Damien shot back. “He knows everything! And he’s here, you idiot. He could have killed you!”
“You nearly scared me to death!” she snapped, bending down to gather the scattered contents of her bag. “I’m in more danger from you than any serial killer.”
“God damn it!” He hauled her upright, fury fighting with the panic that had suffused his body. She simply stared up at him, her face wet with rain, and then it was too late. He pulled her into his arms, shoving her against the brick wall behind her and kissed her, pressing his body against hers to hold her.
Her reaction was immediate, shocking, right. She slid her arms around his waist, her hands clutching the back of his shirt, clinging to him like he was her only hope, and she kissed him back. She tasted of rain and fresh coffee; she tasted of love and hope and despair. He kissed her mouth, her nose, her eyelids; he kissed her throat as he threaded his fingers through her long, thick hair. Kissed her as he’d wanted to do for so very, very long. He wanted to rip open her shirt, to suckle her breasts; he wanted to drag her into the shadows and strip the clothes off her, to plunge his cock into her, hard and hot and heavy, taking her, possessing her, claiming her, until nothing remained, not him, not her, just sex, raw and hungry and life-affirming. Before he lost his only chance, as he had lost it so long before.
She moaned—it was a little sound of longing and despair—and he wondered briefly if he was hurting her.
And he didn’t care. To be alive was to hurt, and for now she was alive, he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
He slid his hands down to cover her breasts, and they were full and hot against him, the peaks hard in the sultry rain, hard with desire. He wanted to put his mouth against them, and he yanked at the shirt, hearing the buttons pop and not giving a damn. No one could see them in the shadows, and even if they could, he no longer cared. His need for her wiped out his common sense, his judgment. All that mattered was that she was here, the rain-drenched warmth of her skin beneath his mouth, the swell of her breasts, the scent of her perfume, the sound of her choking little sighs. He wondered what kind of noise she would make when . . .
The sound was a nightmare, slicing through his passion-drunk haze. A police siren, screaming through the night, and then blue lights spearing the darkness. He jerked himself away from her, and he had the momentary sanity to realize that she released him reluctantly.
He stood a few feet back from her, trying to regulate his breathing, knowing there was nothing he could do to control the furious arousal of the rest of his body. If he touched her again, he would take her right there, in the alleyway, in the rain, with a murdered woman nearby and a killer on the loose. Nothing on earth would stop him.
She was leaning against the brick wall, staring at him, her eyes wide with shock. There was blood on her lip, and her shirt was open where he’d begun to rip it off her. She was wearing a lacy bra, one that fastened in the front. That detail burned itself into his brain.
“They must have found her,” he said in a harsh voice.
“Found who?” She didn’t sound any cooler.
He shook his head. “He’s killed again. Nearby. I thought it was you.”
“How do you know? It could be a burglary, a car accident . . .”
“I know,” he said bleakly. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We don’t want Adamson showing up. He might find our presence in the area a bit too coincidental.”
“Is it?”
“Is it what?”
“Coincidental?”
He stared at her for a moment. She looked unnaturally calm, watching him; he might have imagined the fierce hunger of her response. “What are you asking?” His voice was hoarse.
“Did you kill her?”
He wanted to laugh. He knew that if he started he might not stop. “Stupid question,” he snarled, furious with her. “You’d be a fool to believe me.”
“Did you kill her?”
He thought of his deep, dream-filled sleep, his sudden awakening. He looked down at his hands. There was no blood, no sign of anything. He looked up at her, and the anger fell away. He was sick of lying, sick of being alone.
“I don’t know.”
He expected her to turn and run. He would have had to go after her if she did. He didn’t know the answers, but somewhere out in the darkness a killer lurked. He couldn’t risk having her find out the truth the hard way. If he was the Venice Ripper, at least she’d been safe so far. She would be much safer taking her chances with him.
“What do you mean by that?” Her face and voice were icy, but she seemed undisturbed by his answer.
“I mean I don’t remember,” he said, his voice flat. “I was asleep in the chair—maybe I had a blackout. I’ve told you—I wouldn’t rule anything out. Not even the possibility that I’m doing these things myself.”
She just stared at him for a long moment. And then she knelt down again, gathering up the discarded food and wrapping it up with the ripped paper bag. “Let’s go back,” she said, in a quiet voice.
“Back where?”
“To the motel room. You need to eat.”
She’d managed to shock him. “You trust me? Even when I’m not sure I trust myself?”
She looked at him, and then she managed a small, wary smile. “You didn’t kill anyone. I’ll stake my life on it.”
“You might be doing just that.”
She nodded. “I’ll take the chance.”
And there was nothing he could say to that, nothing at all. But he knew, to his despair, that if he didn’t kill her he just might end up loving her.
And he didn’t know which would be worse.
Chapter Six
LIZZIE HALF EXPECTED him to put up a fuss over her choice of food. She’d brought back fruit juice, trail mix and a packet of sunflower seeds. Damien ate it all, paying scant attention, his gaze riveted on the local television station. It didn’t take long for the news bulletin to pop up, and through the narrow blinds they could see the flash of media vans, the lights flooding the area.
“The Venice Ripper has apparently struck again, for the first time killing outside the neighborhood of Venice, California. A prostitute was found in an alleyway in San Bernardino, her throat cut, her body mutilated. According to an earlier report by former Los Angeles Chronicle reporter J. R. Damien, the bodies have all been found wearing masks made by a resident of Venice named Elizabeth Stride. The police have refused to comment, and no word has been given as to whether the most recent victim was also wearing a mask. We’re expecting an official statement in the near future.”
“Damn you,” Lizzie said wearily.
He ignored her, concentrating on the screen with his usual intensity. “He was looking for you,” he said.
“How did he know I was here?”
Damien shook his head. “You don’t think a murder in San Bernardino is a coincidence, do you?”
“No. I think . . .” Her voice trailed off as a heavy fist pounded on the door of the motel room.
“I bet it’s Adamson,” Damien said, shutting off the television.
He was right. “What the hell’s going on here?” the policeman demanded, charging into the room and slamming the door behind him. He stood there glowering at the two of them, and he looked sane and normal and endearingly real. Lizzie wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him.
She controlled the impulse, staying on the bed, her legs curled up underneath her. “How did you know where we were?” she asked.
“I’ve had someone tailing you—and Damien, for that matter—for days now. We can’t offer twenty-four-hour protection, but we can keep an eye o
n you. We figured you’d be safe here.” He snorted. “We should have known no one is safe.”
“Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction?” Damien said, eying him warily.
Adamson glared at him. “I’m on a task force—I can go wherever the Ripper is suspected of being. Pretty convenient that you two were nearby.”
“Not convenient at all,” Damien said. “He came after us. Who else knew we were here? The cops, obviously. Who else?”
“Probably anyone who has a scanner. Same way you got to the earlier murders, or so you said. Who knows who was watching you. Did you call anyone, let anyone know where to find you?”
“Do I look like an idiot?” Damien snapped.
Guilt swamped Lizzie. It had only been one small phone call, surely harmless. “I called someone,” she admitted, in a small voice.
Both men turned to stare at her. “Why the hell did you do that?” Damien demanded, and he might have been a completely different man from the one who’d caught her in the rain and kissed her with such desperation. Might have been, except that her mouth still felt bruised and tender, her stomach knotted in memory, and her breasts tingled, just from looking at him.
“I wanted to tell my friend Courtland where I was. She tends to worry about me.”
“With good reason,” Adamson said. He was looking old that night, his salt and pepper hair flyaway, his deep, basset-hound eyes mournful. “Better give me her name and address and I’ll have her checked out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Courtland wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Lizzie protested.
“Listen, Ms. Stride, we don’t have that many choices. Admittedly, it could have been someone from the department with access to police information, but I’m not about to believe that unless I’ve got ironclad proof. He must have found out some other way. And I damned well intend to find out how that happened.”