by Stuart, Anne
“I have Courtland’s key.” His voice sounded ancient, sepulchral. “I was looking for you, Lizzie. So are the police. There’s been another murder.”
“I know,” she said in a dull voice. “We saw her . . . or what was left of her. We were just at the apartment . . .”
“We left my place two hours ago, Lizzie,” Damien said, moving past her and starting to take the masks down from the wall. She had a wicker basket, filled with artfully arranged branches and pine cones. He dumped them on the floor and began to place the masks inside.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It was only a few minutes.”
“You were in shock, Lizzie,” Damien said. “It’s after one in the morning.”
Lizzie ignored the unacceptable, turning to Hickory. “Why were you looking for me, Hickory?” she asked.
“I was looking for both of you. I have two reasons.”
Damien had the child mask in his hands, and his touch was gentle, absently caressing, as he stared at the old man. “Why?”
“Time has run out. You don’t want the answers now, but I can’t count on being around to give them to you later.”
“Bullshit,” Damien said, wrapping that particular mask in a soft afghan before reaching for another.
“Tell us, Hickory,” Lizzie pleaded, throwing an admonishing glare over her shoulder at the stubborn Damien.
Hickory moved across the room in a shuffle. He looked old, and weary beyond death. “I know what you fear, young man,” he said to Damien, and Damien halted in his packing, a distrustful expression on his face.
“You’ve been talking to Lizzie’s flaky friend Courtland,” he said accusingly.
“No,” Hickory said, and his voice held an ageless sorrow that sent chills through Lizzie. “Though I taught her everything she knows. But I know what she knows. I know about your past life, Damien. And I know about your present karma.”
“And you’re going to enlighten me,” Damien drawled. “What are you going to want in return?”
“That you take care of Lizzie. Keep her safe. There’s been too much death,” Hickory said, in a voice that sounded like a funeral march.
“I’m already doing that. Okay, old man. Tell me my karma.” He folded his arms across his chest, looking skeptical.
“You were a reporter in your most recent past life. A man named James Killian, who worked for a tabloid, a man who let the woman he loved die because he was too intent on getting a story. You’ve been paying for that ever since.”
“You and Courtland must have cooked that one up between you,” he drawled.
“Stop it, Damien,” Lizzie said sharply. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t recognize what he’s saying.”
Damien scowled at her. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll humor you. So I let Mary Kelly die instead of saving her. It was a mistake. Morally reprehensible, but not a crime.”
“You drowned yourself a couple of years later, when you couldn’t drink yourself to death fast enough,” Hickory said, and there wasn’t a trace of censure in his voice. “That’s why you didn’t come back for such a long time. Suicides don’t reincarnate right away.”
“Oh, spare me,” Damien snarled.
“But you did come back. You came back to expiate the sins of your past life. But what did you do? You stood by and watched another woman die, and did nothing about it.”
All of Damien’s false boredom vanished. “Shut up, old man,” he said furiously.
“But that still doesn’t make you the Ripper,” Hickory continued, unmoved. “That’s why you’re here. To stop him this time. To save Mary Kelly. You’ve almost failed, and you’re paying the price for it. You see what he does, but not in time to stop him. The only way you can turn off those bloody visions is to kill the Ripper.”
Damien was no longer making any pretense at skepticism. “Damn you,” he said. “Mary Kelly’s dead. It’s too late.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Hickory said. “Are you so blinded by the Ripper that you can’t see what’s in front of your eyes? She’s not Long Liz Stride. Lizzie isn’t the reincarnation of some cheerful old drunk—life isn’t that simple. She’s Mary. And this time you have to save her.”
“No,” Lizzie said, in a horrified voice. “I’m not.”
Hickory’s lined old face was infinitely sorrowful. “I can’t change it, Lizzie. Only Damien can.”
“How the hell can I fight what I don’t understand?” Damien said, the cynicism vanishing for a moment, leaving only pain and despair.
“Only you have the power. You’re not fighting a man. You’re fighting an entity, a source of evil, one that takes over a man’s body to do his work. You have to kill him, Damien. Kill the man he possesses. If you fail, he’ll escape in this lifetime, and he’ll come back in other lives to kill again. He’s come so many times before, because you weren’t there to stop him. You can’t fail this time. You can’t let her die.”
Damien hoisted the basket overflowing with masks and started toward them, and his dark face had once more closed down into blank planes of disbelief. “Come on, Lizzie. Let’s get the hell out of here. And if I were you, old man, I’d take your fantasies back to your buddy Courtland, and the two of you can have a wonderful time together laughing about your scam.”
“I expect I’ll be seeing her shortly,” Hickory said, and there was something in his voice that stopped Lizzie from starting after Damien.
“Why did you come here, Hickory? You said you had two reasons?”
“Little Flame,” Hickory said, in a slow, sad voice, “it wasn’t just anyone they found in the elevator at Damien’s building. Courtland never came home.”
LIZZIE SAT NEXT to him in the car, her face white as death, her hands clenched in her lap. She hadn’t spoken a word since Hickory had told her it was Courtland in the elevator. She’d gone out to the car ahead of Damien, sat passively as he fastened the lap belt around her and closed the door. He’d taken off into the night like a bat out of hell, not giving a damn if the police, the National Guard or the president himself wanted to find them.
He knew where he was taking her, and he would have told her if she’d been able to ask. But she’d closed down tighter than she had before, shutting out everything, locked in her own private hell, and he could only hope she found some comfort there. He’d lost any chance of comfort long ago.
Damn that old man! Damn his eerie words. Lizzie had already been spooked enough; she hadn’t needed to hear that it was her best friend who’d been butchered, slaughtered because she’d come to help them.
And she didn’t need to hear that her own fanciful role in all this was far more complex than anyone could have imagined. Was she the reincarnation of Liz Stride or Mary Kelly? Or some weird, deadly combination of the two?
And what the hell stupid kind of question was that for him to be considering? He didn’t believe in reincarnation. He didn’t believe in a damned thing except staying alive for as long as he possibly could. And, even more important, keeping Lizzie alive.
So maybe it made kind of weird sense. He’d let her die once before, and then he’d gone and done the same thing again, letting another woman die while he searched for a story, a sound bite. Maybe he needed to save Lizzie, whoever she was, to expiate his sins.
And maybe he was getting just as crazy as Hickory, just as crazy as the Ripper himself. All he knew was that when he’d looked into the elevator it had been something he’d already seen, far too many times before.
The farther he drove from the L.A. city limits, the clearer the weather was. He was heading southeast, into the desert, looking for dry air and sunshine. With his luck, he would simply find more Santa Ana winds.
The Ripper had found them in San Bernardino. Would he find them in the desert?
He hadn’t been back there in so damned long. Back to th
e small desert town near Joshua Tree where he’d grown up with an elderly, embittered mother. His father had died in a car crash not long after he was born; his much-older brother had died in the first Gulf War and Damien and his mother had lived together in that huge old Victorian house on the outskirts of town, alone, secluded.
He’d escaped as often as he could, involving himself in any kind of extracurricular activity he could find at the local high school. He’d never been particularly social, but his need to escape had overpowered his isolationist tendencies. He had thrown himself into track and baseball, the school paper and the debating society, anything that would keep him away from that house and the bitter old woman who lived there.
She wasn’t there anymore. She’d developed Alzheimer’s disease when he was in journalism school, and he’d put her in a nursing home when he could no longer find people to stay with her. She’d died alone, when he was overseas on a story, and by the time he’d returned to the desert town she was already buried, next to his father and brother. He could only hope she was happy at last.
He’d closed up the old house, thinking he would fix it up sooner or later, maybe sell it. But all he’d done was forget about it, hoping it might fall into the desert so that he would never have to think about it again.
But he suspected that it hadn’t fallen apart. Suspected that the earthquakes had left it alone, that the rains and high winds had spared it. It would still be there, bleak, forlorn, inviolate, a living testament to his mother’s lonely spirit. And his own.
No one would find them there. They could camp out for a few days, just until things settled down. The people of southern California were out for blood, and Adamson would have to find the Ripper sooner or later. He would just damned well have to do without Damien’s help, and without using Lizzie as a decoy.
He glanced behind him into the small back compartment of the Austin-Healey. The wicker basket of masks had toppled over, and the mask of the child was lying there, unwrapped.
It shook him. The moment he’d seen it, that mask had shaken him to the core. He’d looked at that mask, with all its innocence, pain and vulnerability, and fallen in love. Not with the child, but with the stubborn, beautiful woman who’d made it, who’d worn that face in her childhood.
He’d known that face, and the vulnerable soul it exposed. Known her and loved her in this life. And in the past.
She seemed to be asleep, amazingly enough. He could hear the steadiness of her breathing, but her fists were still clenched, and even as she slept he could see that she was strung out with tension. She’d been through too much, and he wished to God there was some way he could spare her. He was doing the best he could, taking her to the one place he could think of where no one could find them.
But even that wasn’t enough. Sooner or later the Ripper would find them. And if Hickory was right, sooner or later he himself would have to expiate his sin. Or watch Lizzie die.
Chapter Thirteen
HE’D LOST HER. Lost them both. How could it have happened, when he’d been so close, so very close, to finishing it? The woman had been a nice touch—she’d known him when she looked into his eyes, known who and what he was. She’d had time to scream, just once, before he’d cut her throat. But her eyes had kept staring at him as he used his knife, until he couldn’t stand it any longer, and when he’d finished with her he’d put the mask over what had once been her face.
He was running out of time. He must have just missed them in the old building, and by the time he reached her apartment, they had already been and gone. He stumbled on her front step, crashing through the door, only to find the wall empty. There were no more masks.
He stood, desperate, bereft, and then someone moved. A figure detached itself from the far wall, and the old man moved into the light.
He knew that man. He was one of those who called themselves righteous, a sorcerer who could see too much, and he was staring at him as if he knew. As if he knew as much as that woman had known, just before he’d killed her.
He told himself not to panic. He hadn’t thought he needed to change. People who knew him were less likely to have their vision clouded, and while he planned to finish with Lizzie Stride tonight, he wanted it on his terms. He didn’t want to be forced into doing it clumsily.
The old man was looking at him with knowing eyes, and he had to remind himself that he had a perfectly logical explanation for being there. He had only the one mask left—it was all he needed for Long Liz Stride. He couldn’t afford to waste it on a nosy old man.
“What are you doing here?” the old man demanded in a fearless voice.
He ignored the question. “Where are they? Where did they go?”
He expected instant obedience. Instead, the old man’s face set in stubborn lines. “Not in this lifetime,” he said.
He moved closer. He’d washed the knife when he’d finished with the woman, and now it lay tucked up inside his sleeve, waiting to be used. He was going to have to; he knew it. He was going to have to take his first man. He might even find himself developing a taste for it.
“Tell me, old man,” he whispered, grabbing him by his seamed throat. “Before I cut your tongue out.”
Slowly Hickory shook his head, grim defiance in his pale eyes. And then there was nothing but amazement as the killer brought the knife up, into the old man’s belly, and twisted it.
IT WAS MIDMORNING when Damien started down the road to his mother’s abandoned house. Even twenty years ago no one else had lived out that far, and while civilization had begun to encroach on the desert community, the mobile homes had gone up on the other side of town, leaving the old Victorian house with no neighbors, no witnesses. He pulled up behind the building, then killed the engine. Lizzie slept on, oblivious, and he almost hated to wake her.
The ancient Austin-Healey hadn’t come equipped with air-conditioning, and the morning sun was baking down, turning the car into an oven. His mother’s house had no air-conditioning, either, though if he was lucky, he might find an old electric fan up in the attic. That is, if the electricity worked.
He paid the bills regularly, but in the past few months he’d tended to let practical matters slide. For all he knew, they could have turned the power off.
They would find out soon enough, and by nightfall they would need a heater more than they would need cooling now. This part of California was merciless this time of year—desperately hot beneath the bright sun, bitterly cold once the sun went down.
He reached out a hand and touched her face, sliding his fingers beneath her hair. She jerked awake, startled, and stared into his eyes in silent panic.
“We’re here,” he said gently.
“Where?”
It was the first word she’d spoken since they’d left her apartment, left Hickory, and her voice sounded distant, strained. “My mother’s house. It’s outside of Joshua Tree, far away from any form of civilization.”
She glanced around her, her green eyes flat and incurious. “I didn’t know you had a mother.”
“Most people do. Mine’s long dead. All my family’s gone.”
“Then the house is yours.”
He shrugged. At least she was making a marginal amount of sense. “I suppose so. Somehow, I think it’s always going to be my mother’s house.” He couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness out of his voice, but Lizzie didn’t seem to notice.
“How long are we staying?” she murmured, fumbling with the door handle with stiff, awkward fingers.
“As long as we need to.”
“Until the Ripper finds us?”
“He won’t find us. No one will. Even Adamson doesn’t know where we went. I shook off at least two unmarked cars that tried to tail us, and for the last two hours I haven’t seen anyone on the road.”
“But they’d know about this place.”
“No. It’s not listed in my name. I haven’t been here in over ten years. No one who knows me is even aware of its existence. We’ll be safe here. At least for a while.”
She just looked at him. There was no skepticism in her face, in her glorious green eyes. Just flat acceptance of an impossible fate. “All right,” she said, opening the door.
“Damn it, Lizzie, I won’t let him get you,” he said, running a hand through his wind-tangled hair.
Her smile was small, distant, and heartbreaking. “I don’t think you’re going to have any say in the matter. You heard Hickory. Our past lives are catching up with us. You have the sins of this lifetime and your last one to make up for. I don’t get to be just one of Jack the Ripper’s original victims—apparently I’m a combination of two of them. Nothing’s going to save me. You’re going to watch me die, Damien, and there won’t be a damned thing you can do about it.”
“Don’t say that!” he snapped, but she’d already climbed out of the car to stand in the barren, windswept backyard of the house he’d grown up in. She was tall, graceful, strong, with those long, wonderful legs of hers. She looked like a martyr going to the stake, and he wanted to take her strong shoulders in his hands and shake her.
He reached for the basket of masks and climbed out, walking past her up the rickety back stairs. The winds were blowing, hot and angry, swirling around the house, whipping up the dirt in the grassless yard. How many autumns had he spent in that house, trying to escape? And why in God’s name had he returned, looking for a haven in what had once been his prison?
The key worked easily enough, and the damp, unused smell of the house washed over them when he pushed the kitchen door open. It smelled of dust and dead air, of wasted lives and lost dreams. He dumped the basket on the kitchen table and headed for the window, shoving it open. The hot desert air burst into the kitchen with the force of the winds, bringing in the sand, stirring the grit that coated every surface.