Break the Night

by Stuart, Anne

  He turned to Lizzie. “Aren’t you going to start in with me? Ask me where the vacuum cleaner’s kept?” He flicked the light switch, and nothing happened. “Cancel that. Guess you’re going to have to make do with a broom, at least until I see what I can do about the electricity. Maybe I can haul a few buckets of water for you to start scrubbing.”

  He couldn’t get even a trace of response from her. “I don’t care,” she said, turning her back on him, wandering into the shadowed hallway.

  He watched her go, tight with frustration. Sexual frustration, pure and simple, the obvious aftermath of having been sheathed in the glorious milking tightness of her body and then pulling free, refusing himself the release she’d offered. And emotional frustration. Lizzie had been angry, funny, mocking and charming. The emotions that had churned through her had brought him back to life. To watch her shut down was almost more painful than death.

  She disappeared into the darkness, and he gave in to a momentary panic, one that faded once he considered it. The only monsters haunting this old house were the ghosts of his childhood, this lifetime, not a past one. The sooner he saw about fixing up some electricity, the better off they would be. For a house in the middle of the sun-washed desert, it was a dark, gloomy old building, and he wanted to fill it with as much light as he could.

  In the end, it was simple. Someone, maybe Damien himself, had thrown the main breaker when they’d left. When he switched it back, a faint hum filled the house as the refrigerator chugged back into fretful life.

  He’d stopped at a local convenience store on his way into town, grabbing the necessities of life while Lizzie slept on—if, indeed, she’d been sleeping at all. He thrust the bag into the refrigerator, hoping the ancient coils would put out enough coolness to keep the beer and eggs cold, and then he went in search of Lizzie.

  She was sitting in the middle of the front parlor. When he’d been growing up most of his friends had had living rooms, family rooms, rec rooms, dens. His mother had had a parlor.

  The furniture was old, valuable and miserably uncomfortable. Even beneath the film of dust Damien could see the highly polished wood floor, and antimacassars adorned each stiffly padded chair. Lizzie was standing in front of the huge fireplace that had never once held a fire, not even at Christmas, and her expression was far, far away.

  “Want to clean?” he asked, goading her. As a matter of fact, he rather liked seeing his mother’s spotless house in decline.

  “No,” she said, her voice distant, not looking at him. “You must be tired.” She sounded no more than casually interested, and he remembered the way her voice had sounded just a few short hours ago, when she’d told him she was in love with him.

  He wanted to hear that voice again. That passion. He wanted to bring her to life again, and him with it. She was too much like death already, with her pale face and her eerie stillness. As if she’d already given up, when he’d just begun to fight.

  He wanted to cross the room, pull her into his arms and kiss her. He clenched his fists, forcing himself to stay put. “Yeah,” he said. “While you were dreaming your way from Los Angeles to the desert, I was watching our tail.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  He believed her. “Then you must be tired, too. Where do you want to sleep?”

  “Alone.”

  It shouldn’t bother him, that flat, emotionless word. But it did. “I meant, did you want to sleep upstairs in one of the bedrooms, or down here on the sofa?”

  “I don’t care,” she said, her voice lifeless.

  He wanted to slap her. He wanted to do something to bring her back to vibrant, seething anger. The kind of anger he was feeling, right now, at the waste of another woman’s fragile life. And for his own culpability. “Go find yourself a bed, then,” he said, shuttering his own feelings. “I’ll see what I can do to make this place habitable, at least for the next few days.”

  She managed a look of mild derision—a good sign, he thought. If she could summon forth that much feeling, there was hope for her. But then she turned and drifted away, like some damned ghost, and he heard the creaking of the stairs as she climbed upward.

  He wanted to run to the bottom of the stairs, to call up to her and tell her not to use his mother’s bedroom, but he kept still. It was a foolish thought on his part. His mother was long gone. Her repressed, dark nature would no longer inhabit that gloomy room. It wouldn’t reach out and catch Lizzie in its dark tendrils.

  He glanced around him. The dust didn’t trouble him, but the musty smell did. He wasn’t sure if the hot, thick air of the Santa Ana winds was much of an improvement, but at least it lessened his claustrophobia and gave the old house something it had never experienced before. In the past, when the Santa Anas had blown, his mother had shut all the windows, pulled all the shades and sat alone in the suffocating darkness.

  Water would be a nice option, too. He would have to prime the pump. That was something he hadn’t done for more than fifteen years, but he imagined it was like riding a bicycle—once you got the knack of it, you never forgot. When he got the water heater up and running, the house aired out and enough firewood stacked to combat the chilly night air, then he, too, might consider taking a nap. Sleeping away the bright, useless hours of daylight. So that he’d be ready once more to do battle with the night.

  The pump was more stubborn than he remembered, and it was well into the afternoon when he finally got the water pressure at a stable rate, a pile of very dry wood by the fireplace and a cold beer in his hand. He’d decided against tequila—he would need all his wits about him. There was nothing between Lizzie and certain, gruesome death but his own poor efforts, and he couldn’t afford to have anything clouding those efforts—no matter how much he longed to just turn everything off.

  The gloomy house had darkened in the afternoon, and the sky was growing dark, roiling with clouds. Damien didn’t make the mistake of thinking there might be a storm. It seldom rained in the desert. It certainly wasn’t about to start now.

  He would have thought the heat and sun would be a relief after what seemed like a decade of rain. Instead, the bright desert sun had been its own oppression, mocking the dark night of terror that life had become.

  He was getting fanciful, he thought, climbing that long flight of stairs, the half-empty can of beer in his hand, automatically avoiding the fourth step that always creaked to inform his listening mother that he was sneaking in late. Lizzie would probably be lying in her dark room, in the middle of her big, dark bed. He didn’t want her in there, but he would let her be. She needed whatever rest she could find.

  He couldn’t resist checking in on her. He peered inside the open door of his mother’s bedroom at the top of the stairs. The maroon velvet curtains were drawn, the muddy brown quilt unwrinkled on top of the bed. The tarnished silver brush and mirror lay on the doily-covered dresser, untouched, next to the picture of a stiff, unhappy-looking couple. His parents had looked miserable even on their wedding day. If his father hadn’t been killed in a car accident, he probably would have abandoned them.

  He moved over to the curtains, pulling them, flooding the room with light, staring at the wasted remains of his mother’s cold, unhappy life. He’d never been able to make up for the loss of his father and brother. She’d always found him wanting, always expected more than he was able to give, and finally he’d stopped trying, content simply to escape.

  Until she’d died, alone, unhappy, just as she’d lived her life. And for the first time he felt no guilt.

  She’d chosen her way, closing herself off from life, from her only surviving son, shutting herself away when things grew too much for her. It had always been her choice, and she had paid for it with the empty years of her life.

  And then he’d ended up making the same damned choice. He’d become just like her during the past year, locked in a derelict ap
artment that wasn’t that far removed from his mother’s spotless mausoleum, in spirit if not in neatness. The truth of that revelation scorched his soul.

  He shook himself. It was past time to be hating her, past time to be hating himself. If he was going to keep Lizzie alive, then he was going to have to reenter life fully, not hide away, afraid of what he might find out. He was going to have to face life, face death.

  And so was Lizzie.

  She wasn’t in his brother’s room, that spotless, soulless little guest room that looked as if no one had ever grown up there, lived there. She wasn’t in the sewing room, on that narrow cot where his mother had spent many a night when his father was still alive.

  She was in his room. Lying in his narrow boy’s bed, with the Princeton blanket thrown over her, her red hair spread out over the pillows that had once held his adolescent fantasies.

  Her choice of rooms hadn’t been accidental. His track trophies were on one shelf, his journalism awards on another. There was a poster of some California actress in a bikini, the object of his adolescent sexual fantasies, and James Dean glowering down from another wall, teenage angst personified. Damien looked around him and suddenly felt more alive than he had in years.

  He was human. He’d made mistakes, horrible mistakes. But he would survive. He could even do what he could to right those wrongs. Starting with the woman lying asleep in his teenage bed. He’d spent hundreds of nights lying in that same bed, wishing he had a woman with him. Now, finally, his fantasies were being fulfilled. And not by just any woman. Not by the California blonde and her perfect, silicone-enhanced endowments. But by a real woman. One who’d somehow managed to get closer to him than he’d ever allowed anyone to get. One he’d somehow managed to care about.

  He wasn’t going to get on that bed with her. He would have given ten years off his life to do it, but he wouldn’t give ten years off hers, and it could mean just that. His instincts told him that the Ripper was nowhere around—that they’d lost him for the time being. But how long that respite would last, or whether he could even trust his instincts, was anybody’s guess.

  He sank down on the floor, leaning against the wall, taking another long sip of his beer. He stretched his legs out in front of him, watching her as she slept, watching over her. At least, for now, she was safe. It was the most he could ask.

  IT WAS COLD AND dark when Lizzie awoke. She was lying huddled beneath a scratchy wool blanket, in what had to be Damien’s bedroom, and for a moment she didn’t move. She hated this house. Hated the dust and the gloom and the smell of wasted lives. Hated the antique furniture and the tiny-flowered wallpaper, all in muddy shades of brown. She hated the feeling of hopelessness that permeated the place. How in God’s name had Damien survived such a gloomy upbringing?

  He was with her, she knew it with an instinctive sense of comfort, though he hadn’t joined her on the narrow bed. It was just as well. She had a thin casing of ice around her—if he touched her with his warm, deft hands, that ice would crack, and the pain would be too much to bear. She was better off this way. Safe, inviolate.

  She sat up slowly, quietly. In the darkness she could see Damien leaning against the wall, sound asleep, his long dark hair fallen in his face. He didn’t look much older than the boy who’d grown up in this room, and she wondered what he’d been like back then, when life was pure and clean and simple.

  Except that life could never have been pure and clean and simple in a dark, haunted house like this one. It was no wonder he kept away, no wonder he called it his mother’s house, never his own. She would have felt the same way.

  She slid out of bed, on the opposite side from him, and moved quietly out of the room. She didn’t want to come close to him. He was too tempting, too heartbreaking. Besides, there was something she had to do, and she suspected he might try to stop her.

  The house was bitterly cold, and it was a shock after the thick dry heat of the day. She’d never spent much time in the desert, and with good reason. She wanted mountains and sunlight and clean, fresh air. This place was almost as bad as the postindustrial drizzle of Los Angeles.

  In the best of times, she was a practical woman. This was far from the best of times, but she was able to do what she had to with calm efficiency, her brain on automatic pilot, as she checked the damper, opened it. No birds or animals had made their nests in Mrs. Damien’s cold, gloomy house. Even they had felt unwelcome.

  Damien had done his part—the wood and kindling lay stacked next to the huge fireplace. She laid the fire with calm efficiency, using newspapers that were more than ten years old, and she watched the flames as if hypnotized.

  Fires were supposed to be so comforting, so romantic. She felt the heat of the blaze, and it chilled her to her soul. She waited until the blaze had caught, biting into the old, dry logs, and then she reached for the first mask.

  There were seventeen of them. She sat back on her knees and watched, dry-eyed, patient, as each one caught fire in turn, the papier-mâché igniting, the yarn and cloth sizzling and melting, the clay cracking, the plastic jewels falling off into the coals, the faces dissolving. Seventeen of them, monsters and clowns, divas and grande dames, children and grandparents and dragons and dogs. Seventeen masks that the Ripper would never use.

  It wasn’t until her hands reached for the final mask that some of her icy composure began to crack. The room was pitch-dark now, except for the macabre, dancing flames of the funeral pyre, but the heat barely penetrated the bitterly cold room. The last mask had been wrapped in an afghan and tissue paper, handled with loving care. She stared down at the childish Lizzie, and the pain began to seep back.

  “Don’t do it, Lizzie,” Damien said. His voice was calm, low, soothing, and yet urgent. She hadn’t heard him descend those stairs, hadn’t known he’d been watching.

  She didn’t turn to look at him. Her face was wet now, and she wasn’t sure if it was sweat from the chilly fire, or tears. She didn’t want to know. “I have to. You know it as well as I do,” she said, but her fingers tightened on the mask, unable to make the final move.

  And then he was beside her, kneeling on the floor, and his hands were on the mask, as well, so that it lay between them. “Don’t, Lizzie. We’ll keep this one safe. We’ll keep you safe. Don’t burn it.”

  He tugged, and she let it go, watching as he set it back in the basket. And then he leaned over and put his mouth against hers in a kiss of such gentle passion that the ice around her heart began to shatter. She reached up to his shoulders, to cling to him, as she felt longing suffuse her, a need so powerful it went beyond passion. It was a need for life itself, a need to taste, to know him, the man who called to her over the years, over the lifetimes. “I love you, Killian,” she said. And then she froze, pulling back in utter horror, as she realized what name she’d called him.

  Killian. The man from a century ago. The man who had let Mary Kelly and Lizzie Stride die. The man she’d loved so many years before.

  And she’d known it was him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  DAMIEN SURGED TO his feet, reaching down and hauling her up with him, and there was no gentleness in his touch. “You’re getting out of here,” he said roughly.

  “What are you talking about?” Lizzie tried to pull away, to pull her cocoon back around her, but the noise and confusion were battering her, and she couldn’t hide.

  “You’re not safe with me and you know it! I’m taking you back to Adamson. I can make him put you under protective custody. I can get a headline in the Chronicle so fast he won’t dare make any more excuses.”

  “No!” She jerked out of his grip. “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone. No one can keep me safe, not if the Ripper’s determined to get me. The only one I stand a chance with is you.”

  He shook his head violently, rejecting her plea. “Don’t you understand, Lizzie? I’m afraid of what mig
ht happen to you if I’m the one. Women have died because of me so many times. So damned many times. I can’t let you be one of them.”

  “Damien . . .”

  He moved on her again, close but not touching her. “Don’t you see it happening to you? You’re shutting off, just like I did, just like my mother did. You’ll sit in this house and wait for death, and I’ll be off somewhere, trying to stop him and failing. Either that, or I’ll be here, and I’ll be him.”

  “You’re not the Ripper!” she cried, the sound torn out of her, shattering the last of her defenses. She reached up and caught his shoulders, wanting to shake some sense into him, but he was too big, too strong. “Don’t you think I’d know?”

  He didn’t move. “Lizzie,” he said wearily, “all those women trusted him. All those women thought they knew, too. They thought they were safe, and they weren’t. No one’s safe. I’m taking you out of here.” He caught her wrist, but she slid around, inside his arms, coming up tight against him, and all her apathy had vanished, leaving fury, panic and determination.

  “You’re not taking me anywhere,” she said, putting her arms around his waist, holding him. And then she reached up, caught his face with her hands and kissed him, her mouth open against his.

  He tried to fight it; she could feel the tension in his body as he fought both his own need and hers. But she was inexorable, despite her fear. She held him tightly against her body, kissing his unresponsive mouth, and then, suddenly, he came alive, slanting his lips across hers, pushing his tongue into her mouth as he pulled her into his arms, and she could feel him, hard against her, hard and needing.

  She slid her hands between their bodies, found his shirt and ripped it open. His own hands were already under her loose T-shirt, cupping her breasts and then he pulled the shirt over her head, sending it sailing across the room, and he pushed her back in his arms, his mouth was on her breast, hot, suckling, sending shivers of desire down into her belly.