by Nora Roberts
The light was fading fast.
“How much farther, Annie?”
“It’s up ahead some. I didn’t have my supper,” she reminded him.
“Soon. You can eat soon.”
She sighed and turned, as instinctively as a deer or rabbit, taking a path overgrown with summer brush.
“Gotta watch out for them sticky bushes. They reach right out and grab you.” Her eyes darted right and left as she searched the lengthening shadows. “Like monsters.”
“I won’t let them hurt you.” He put an arm around her waist, both for support and to hurry her along.
Comforted, she trudged ahead. “Are you going to marry Clare?”
“Yes.” Please God. “Yes, I am.”
“She’s pretty. When she smiles, she has nice white teeth. Her daddy did, too. She looks like her daddy. He gave me roses. But he’s dead now.” Her lungs were starting to trouble her so that she wheezed when she walked, like a worn-out engine. “The monsters didn’t get him.”
“No.”
“He fell out the window, after those men went up and yelled at him.”
He looked down but didn’t slacken pace. “What men?”
“Was that another time? I disremember. He left the light on in the attic.”
“What men, Annie?”
“Oh, the sheriff and the young deputy. They went up and then came out again. And he was dead.”
He swiped sweat from his brow. “Which young deputy? Bud?”
“No, t’other one. Maybe they went up to buy a house. Mr. Kimball, he used to sell houses.”
“Yes.” His skin turned icy beneath the sweat. “Annie, we have to hurry.”
Bud stood in the shelter of the trees and stared. He knew it was real, but his mind continued to reject it. Alice’s father? How could it be? His friend and partner, Mick?
But he was seeing it with his own eyes. They were standing in a circle, their backs to him. He couldn’t see what they were facing, and was afraid to try to move closer. It was best to wait and watch. That’s what the sheriff would have him do.
He wiped a hand across his mouth as the chanting began.
It was like the dream. Clare closed her eyes and drifted between past and present. The smoke, the voices, the men. It was all the same.
She was in the bushes, hiding, watching herself. This time she would be able to run away.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the seamless black sky, crowned by a floating crescent moon. The longest day was over.
She saw the glint of a sword and braced. But it wasn’t her time. Atherton was calling the Four Princes of Hell. She wished they would come, if there were such things, and devour him for his arrogance.
She turned her head away, unable to look, refusing to listen. She thought of Cam and the years they wouldn’t share, the children they wouldn’t make. He loved her, and now they would never have the chance to see if love was enough. To make it be enough.
He would find them. Stop them. She was sure of it, or she would have gone mad. But it would be too late for her. Too late to talk to her mother again, to make up for the coolness and distance she’d put between them. Too late to tell the people who mattered that her father had made mistakes, had taken wrong turns, but hadn’t been a thief or a murderer.
There was so much she’d wanted to do. So much left to see and touch. But she would die like this for one man’s ego and others’ blind cruelty.
The rage built up in her. They had stripped her naked, of clothes, of dignity, of hope. And of life. Her hands balled into fists. Her body arched as she screamed.
Bud’s hand went to the butt of his gun and stuck there, trembling.
Cam’s head reared up, and the fear that shot through his veins was hot and pulsing. “Stay here.” He shook off Annie’s clinging hands. “Stay here. Don’t move.” He had his weapon out as he raced through the trees.
Atherton raised his knife toward the sky. He’d wanted her to scream. He’d yearned for it, sweated, the way a man yearns and sweats for sexual release. It had infuriated him when she’d lain still, like a doll already broken. Now she writhed on the altar, skin gleaming with sweat, eyes full of fear and anger.
And the power filled him.
“I am annihilation,” he cried out. “I am vengeance. I call upon the Master to fill me with His wrath so that I might slash with keen delight His victim. Her agony will sustain itself.”
The words buzzed in Ernie’s ears. He could barely hear them, could no longer understand them. The others swayed around him, captivated. Hungry for what was to come. It wasn’t hunger that crawled through Ernie’s gut, but a sickness.
It was supposed to make him feel good, he reminded himself. It was supposed to make him belong.
But he saw her, struggling, terrified. Screaming and screaming as Sarah Hewitt had screamed. It made him ill with pity. How could he belong if he felt such things? How could he be one of them when what they were about to do revolted him? Frightened him.
She shouldn’t have to die.
His fault. His fault.
Her eyes met his once, pleading. In them, he saw his last hope for salvation. With a cry that was both pain and triumph, he lurched forward as Atherton brought the knife down.
Clare felt the body fall over hers. She smelled the blood. But there was no pain. She saw Atherton stumble back. Groaning, Ernie slid from her and crumpled on the ground.
Snarling in fury, Atherton raised the knife again. Two shots rang out. One caught him in the arm, the other full in the chest.
“Don’t move.” Cam held his weapon firm, but his finger trembled on the trigger. “I’ll send every fucking one of you to hell.”
“Sheriff—it’s Bud.” Bud stepped forward, arms shaking. “I followed the kid. I saw—Christ, Cam, I killed a man.”
“It’s easier the second time.” He fired into the air as one of the men turned to run. “Take another step, and I’ll show my deputy here just how much easier it is. On your faces, all of you. Hands behind your heads. Bud, the first one of them that moves, kill him.”
Bud didn’t believe it would be easier the second time. Not for a minute. But he nodded. “Yes, sir, Sheriff.”
Cam was with Clare in three strides, touching her face, her hair. “Oh, God, Slim, I thought I’d lost you.”
“I know. Your face.” In reflex she tried to reach out to him but was held down by the rope. “It’s bleeding.”
“Briars.” He pulled out his pocket knife to cut the rope. He couldn’t break down, not yet. All he wanted was to hold her, to bury his face in her hair and hold her.
“Take it easy,” he told her and stripped off his shirt. “Put this on.” His hand trembled as it stroked over her skin. “I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I can.”
“I’m okay. I’m okay now. Ernie. He saved my life.” And his blood was wet on her skin. “Is he dead?”
He bent down, checked for a pulse, then tore the ripped robe aside. “No, he’s alive. He took most of it in the shoulder.”
“Cam, if he hadn’t jumped over me …”
“He’s going to be all right. Bud, let’s get these bastards tied up.”
“One of them’s Mick,” he murmured, shamed that he was fighting tears.
“Yeah. I know.” He tossed over the rope that had been used on Clare. “Let’s get it done, then you take Clare back and call the state boys. Bring them here.”
“I want to stay with you.” She closed a hand around his arm. “I need to stay with you. Please.”
“Okay. Just go sit down.”
“Not here.” She looked away from the altar. “There’s more rope over there.” Where they had stripped her. “I’ll help you tie them.” Her eyes lifted, glittered. “I want to.”
* * *
Unmasked, bound, they looked pitiful. That was all Clare could think as she knelt beside Ernie, holding his hand and waiting for Bud to get back with the state police and an ambulance.
“I can’t beli
eve Annie brought you here.”
“She was terrific. She’ll be getting quite a charge from riding with Bud with the siren going.” He glanced down at Ernie. “How’s he doing?”
“I think I stopped the bleeding. He’s going to need help, but he’s going to be okay. I mean really okay.”
“I hope you’re right.” He reached down to brush his fingers over her hair. Just to touch. “Clare, I have to check the other one.”
She nodded. “It’s Atherton,” she said flatly. “He started it all.”
“Tonight, it’s finished.” He walked around the altar. Atherton lay facedown. Without pity, Cam turned him over. The chest wound was mortal; he didn’t doubt it. But breath still hissed out of the opening of the mask. When he heard Clare behind him, he rose quickly and turned to shield her from the body.
“Don’t protect me, Cam.”
“You’re not as strong as you think you are.” He lifted one of her hands and touched the bandaged wrist. “They hurt you.”
“Yes.” She thought of what she had learned, of how his father had died. “They hurt us all. Not anymore.”
“Do you think it’s over?” The question rasped obscenely through the mask of the Goat of Mendes. “You’ve done nothing. You’ve stopped nothing. If not you, your children. If not them, their children. You didn’t get the head. You never will.” Fingers curled like claws, he made a grab for Clare, then fell back with a rattling laugh and died.
“He was evil,” Clare whispered. “Not crazy, not ill, just evil. I didn’t know that could be.”
“He can’t touch us.” He drew her back, then closed her tightly in his arms.
“No, he can’t.” She heard the sirens echo in the distance. “Bud was quick.”
Cam pulled her back just to look at her face. “There’s so much I have to tell you. So much I have to say. Once I start I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. It’s going to have to wait until we’re done with this.”
She closed her hand over his. Behind them, the fire was going out. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
Two weeks later, wearing mourning black, Min Atherton boarded a train going west. No one came to see her off, and she was glad of it. They thought she was slinking out of town, shamed by her husband, shocked by his actions.
She would never be shamed or shocked by her James.
As she maneuvered herself and her one huge bag back to her compartment, she blinked away tears. Her dear, dear James. Someday, somehow, she would find a way to avenge him.
She settled on the wide seat, thumping her bag beside her before folding her hands on her generous lap for her last look at Maryland.
She would not come back. One day perhaps she would send someone, but she would not be back.
Still, she sighed a little. Leaving her house had been difficult. Most of her pretty things would be shipped, but it would not be the same. Not without James.
He’d been the perfect mate for her. So thirsty, so malleable, so anxious to pretend he was the power. She smiled to herself as she took out a fan to cool her heated flesh. Her eyes glittered. She hadn’t minded playing the woman behind the man. So satisfying to wield the power over them all without any of them—not even James really—understanding who had been in charge.
He’d been no more than a dabbler when she had taken him in, taken him over. Interested and angry, but with no clear idea of how to use that interest and anger for more.
She’d known. A woman knew. And men were only puppets, after all, to be led where a woman chose by sex, by blood, by the offer of power.
A pity he had become so bold and careless at the end. Sighing, she fanned herself more briskly. She had herself to blame, she supposed, for not stopping him. But it had been exciting to watch him spin out of control, to risk all for more. Almost as exciting as the night all those years ago when she had initiated him. She, the goddess of the Master, and James her servant.
It was she, of course, who had started it. She who had looked beyond the accepted and grabbed those dark promises with both hands. She who had ordered the first human sacrifice. And had watched, oh, and had watched from the shadows of trees as blood was spilled.
And she who had felt the power of that blood and craved more.
The Master had never granted her fondest wish—the wish for children—but He had given her substitutes. He had shown her greed, the most delicious of the deadly sins.
There would be other towns, she thought, as the train’s whistle shrilled. Other men. Other victims. Whores with fertile bellies. Oh, yes, there would always be more.
And who would look to her, the poor Widow Atherton, when their women disappeared?
Perhaps she would choose a young boy this time. A lost, angry boy like Ernie Butts—who had turned out to be such a disappointment to her. No, she would not search for another James but for a young boy, she thought comfortably. One she could mother and guide and train to worship both her and the Dark Lord.
As the train pulled slowly away from the station, she slipped a hand down her bodice, closed her fingers over the pentagram.
“Master,” she murmured. “We start again.”
GENUINE LIES
A Bantam Book
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Nora Roberts.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56759-8
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.
v3.1
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Genuine Lies
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Dedication
Somehow, using a combination of pride and terror, she managed to keep her head up and to choke back the nausea. It wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a dark fantasy she would shake off at dawn. Yet, dreamlike, everything was happening in slow motion. She was fighting to push her way through a thick curtain of water beyond which she could see the faces of the people all around her. Their eyes were hungry; their mouths opened and closed as if they would swallow her whole. Their voices ebbed and flowed like the pounding of waves on rock. Stronger, more insistent, was her heart’s jerky beat, a fierce tango inside her frozen body.
Keep moving, keep moving, her brain commanded her trembling legs as firm hands pushed her through the crowd and out onto the courthouse steps. The glare of sunlight made her eyes tear, so she fumbled for her sunglasses. They would think she was crying. She couldn’t allow them tha
t dip into her emotions. Silence was her only shield.
She stumbled and felt a moment of panic. She could not fall. If she fell, the reporters, the curious, would leap on her, snarling and snapping and tearing like wild dogs over a rabbit. She had to stand upright, to stand behind her silence for a few yards. Eve had taught her that much.
Give them your brains, girl, never your guts.
Eve. She wanted to scream. To throw her hands up over her face and scream and scream until all the rage, the fear, the grief, emptied out of her.
Shouted questions assaulted her. Microphones stabbed at her face like deadly little darts as the news crews busily tapped the finale of the arraignment for murder of Julia Summers.
“Bitch!” shouted someone whose voice was harsh with hate and tears. “Coldhearted bitch.”
She wanted to stop and scream back: How do you know what I am? How do you know what I feel?
But the door of the limo was open. She climbed in to be cocooned by cool air, shielded by tinted glass. The crowd surged forward, pressing against the barricades along the curb. Angry faces encircled her; vultures over a still-bleeding corpse. As the car glided away, she looked straight ahead, her hands fisted in her lap and her eyes mercifully dry.
She said nothing as her companion fixed her a drink. Two fingers of brandy. When she had taken the first sip, he spoke calmly, almost casually, in the voice she had come to love.
“Well, Julia, did you kill her?”
She was a legend. A product of time and talent and her own unrelenting ambition. Eve Benedict. Men thirty years her junior desired her. Women envied her. Studio heads courted her, knowing that in this day when movies were made by accountants, her name was solid gold. In a career that had spanned nearly fifty years, Eve Benedict had known the highs, and the lows, and used both to forge herself into what she wanted to be.
She did as she chose, personally and professionally. If a role interested her, she went after it with the same verve and ferocity she’d used to get her first part. If she desired a man, she snared him, discarding him only when she was done, and—she liked to brag—never with malice. All of her former lovers, and they were legion, remained friends. Or had the good sense to pretend to be.