The Edge of Ruin

by Melinda Snodgrass

I didn’t answer him immediately. “I need you to get Rudi’s body. We’re not leaving him here.”

  His head was bobbing like a dash toy. “Okay, but how are you—”

  “Kenntnis used music to shield Rhiana from the Old Ones.” And I had a sudden vivid memory of how the strings of my piano had vibrated softly whenever Kenntnis entered the room.

  He was nodding again, but this time in agreement. “Yeah, yeah, might work. Music is pure mathematics. Supports your entire universe. Just let me get Rudi and get clear before you start. How you gonna make music out here?” I touched my throat. “Oh. Well, don’t get stage fright.”

  I forced a smile, and felt my lips tear again. It felt like pulling apart the pages of a rain-soaked book that had been left to dry. “I don’t really care if they like it.”

  I gave him a push toward Rudi’s body. How much time had passed since Pamela, Weber, and the others had started for the house? How much more time would they need?

  The Old One opened his mouth, and a roaring like waves through a cavern emerged. There was also the glow of sullen red from the back of his throat. Every muscle tensed, and then Cross shot away, running easily across the sand. The sand blew up around him in twisting tendrils. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light and the eddies of grit, or perhaps his body was dissolving into flesh-colored streamers that stretched behind him. The tendrils of light sparkled as he passed through the laser. They enfolded Rudi, and then they were both gone.

  My turn.

  And I didn’t have a clue what to sing. The place in my head where every piece of music I’d ever memorized was stored was an echoing void. Maybe if I picked a composer I’d remember something. Bach? Perfect mathematics, but mostly religious music. Uh-uh, no way. Mozart? Nothing but love songs or religious text. No. Schubert? Too light.

  I found myself thinking about how my piano and the Celtic harp in Kenntnis’s penthouse had always sung to him. A crooning whisper of sound as if something had breathed on the strings. It was always the same sequence of notes. Suddenly I was grateful to have perfect pitch, and an ability to hear a tune once and remember it.

  The air burned as it entered my lungs and stretched my rib cage to capacity. I had a terrible feeling that my voice would emerge as a thin thread, but then I realized that the shivering that had always run along my muscles and affected my diaphragm when I sang wasn’t happening. I sang the notes as a vocalist carried on a column of air.

  The power and resonance of the opening note made me take a step back as if I could retreat from myself. The sword, which had always hummed with escalating musical overtones, picked up the sound, amplified it, and carried it into the highest and lowest registers beyond the ability of the human ear to hear. The air shivered with the power of the music. And there was a flare of light from inside the spin glass.

  Even from this distance I could see the confusion and consternation at the gates. The monsters rolled back like the ragged edges of a thunderstorm scudding away before a powerful wind. All my rage and hatred got channeled into the singing. The Old Ones withdrew until they were close to the gate, but they didn’t retreat past the threshold. Apparently the sword and the song could hold them at bay, but not repel them totally.

  My lungs felt abraded by the air I was forced to breathe. My throat was growing raw, and my tongue seemed stiff and swollen. It was probably too early, but I couldn’t stay in this place, facing these things, any longer. It would be enough. We’d get away. I cast a final look to the glass that held Kenntnis. The diamond and gold motes suspended in the glass were still flaring. I amended the thought. All except two.

  The thought of Angela caused my voice to break. I just stopped singing, turned, and started running toward the house with every bit of strength that remained to me. I risked a glance back and saw a pack of humans in pursuit. The Old Ones followed, but not too close and not too fast. The power and danger of the sword were keeping them at bay. I stumbled on the rough ground and almost fell. My right hand did touch the ground, but I managed to steady myself and push back up. I kept running.

  A stitch began digging its way up my side. It felt like a knife turning slowly, cutting the ribs and closing down my lungs. I threw back my head and gulped in air. The house drew closer. The front door stood open, and Franklin knelt to one side, waiting. He had an arrow nocked and the string pulled back to his ear. They were supposed to get to the basement and into the tunnel! But I had to admit I was relieved to see him.

  I could hear the rasping breaths of my hunters. My cunning plan had been to slow down so they would be relatively close when I entered the house. Exhaustion had made it less a choice and more of a necessity. And now they were very close indeed. I imagined I could feel their breaths on the back of my neck. My thighs ached and shivered as I took the stone steps two at a time. A hand scraped at the back of my jacket. There was a hiss past my ear, and the sound of impact. I looked back. The woman in the lead was down with an arrow in her shoulder. I gave a convulsive leap, and then I was into the living room. Bob Franklin was ahead of me, already running down the hall toward the kitchen.

  And the cigarettes that had lain dormant under the blanket of magic suddenly flared to life as the sword and I entered the room. The burning ash hit the gasoline-soaked cushions, and they went up with a roar of flame and a blast of heat that singed the back of my neck.

  Behind me people screamed as the flames jumped to their clothes and hair. I ran harder, feeling the heat washing across my back, and the passage that had suggested this mad plan came back to mind.

  “But the buck lived.”

  “How?”

  “Because he came first. Running for his life.”

  “It is to pull the very whiskers of death.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Acouple of the pursuers followed them into the tunnel, but now they had Richard and the sword, so Jay and Sam just shot them. Pamela tried to think about who they might have been. Did they have families who missed them and worried about them? But the truth was that if she’d had a gun she would have shot them herself. When did a person get used to death and the dealing in death?

  Richard had wanted to carry Angela’s body, but Weber had gripped it jealously. It had been Sam who rudely pointed out the obvious—that Richard had to carry the sword, and he was too small to carry Angela one-handed.

  The tunnel seemed endless, but ultimately they reached the hatch, and found the car and trailer and Estevan and Jessie waiting. Syd and Franklin had unhitched the trailer; they didn’t need it anymore, and the car could go faster and was more maneuverable without it. Joseph took Estevan aside and told him about Rudi. Pamela turned away from the sight of the burly young Hispanic wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands.

  Jessie was huddled in the backseat of the limo. Richard knelt in the open doorway talking with her. Pamela moved to where she could hear. He had switched the sword to his right hand, and his left was resting on the door frame to steady him. His hand and wrist were crusted with dried blood. Pamela didn’t want to look, but had a hard time looking away.

  “You’ll testify to what he did to you, and what he did to Angela?” he was saying. The girl just stared at him. He made no attempt to touch her. In fact he leaned back a bit farther from her, and added, “He’s dead, Jessie. He can’t ever hurt you again. You’re safe now.”

  “Then why do I have to say anything?” she asked.

  “Because we’re coming back to Washington with a body.” Richard briefly closed his eyes. “Two bodies, and the police will get involved. You have to make them understand that we did what we had to do.”

  Jessie looked dubious. “I know you said that guy is dead, but what about that girl? She was part of this, too, and she’s still out there. What if she comes after me because I talked?”

  “Girl?” Richard asked, but Pamela could see from his expression that he already knew.

  “I don’t remember too much. Black hair. Lots of earrings. I asked her to help me and she just looked straight through
me.” Jessie’s lip began to tremble, and Pamela saw the shudders running through her body. Richard held back from her, but cast Pamela a look. She knew what her brother wanted. Pamela stepped around him, gave the girl a quick hug, and felt her relax.

  Jessie took a deep breath and continued. “She was telling him about how she wanted … her,” Jessie’s eyes shifted to Angela’s body, wrapped in a sheet, and still held in Weber’s arms. “We’re not gonna ride with that in the car, are we?” she asked in an abrupt change of direction.

  Richard’s voice was gentle but firm. “We have to. We have to take her back to her family. Just like we’re going to take you back to your family.”

  For a long moment the girl’s brown eyes were locked with Richard’s; then she slowly nodded. Richard signaled Joseph, who took his place behind the wheel. Everyone started piling into the car. Sam surprised Pamela by insisting that Jessie sit next to the door with Sam beside her, away from any male touch.

  Pamela grabbed Richard and held him back. “You need to wash your hand. Hands.”

  The blood drained from his face as he gazed down at the stains. He looked like he was about to vomit. “There were so many of them. I’ve lost count,” he said softly.

  Pamela pulled out a large bottle of water from the trunk. Richard ripped up a cassock and used it to scrub at the blood. When he finished his hands were still red, but from the force with which he had washed.

  Finally they were all in the limo, and went rocking and jouncing back onto the blacktop. Joseph floored it, and the bare trees became a gray blur. Weber continued to hold Angela’s body wrapped in the sheet. In places blood had darkened the cotton. Pamela breathed through her mouth—the body had started to smell.

  “That girl,” Jessie said in a whisper as if afraid Rhiana would hear her. “She looked in the bathroom and then she sort of … melted. How can somebody melt?”

  “Because she’s not human,” Richard said, and it sent a chill through Pamela. Not because of Rhiana, but because of what she saw in her brother’s face.

  * * *

  The bodies had been taken to the morgue. Pamela wondered when they had gone from being Angela and Rudi to the bodies. She felt guilty that they had, and resolved to keep using their names. At the morgue six degrees of separation set in. It turned out the ME in D.C. knew Angela from conferences, so when he called the police he wasn’t as suspicious as he might otherwise have been.

  As for the police, the phalanx of FBI agents surrounding her brother, and the badge he flashed, worked wonders. Pamela’s presence as attorney had been unnecessary. From suspicious hostility the mood had quickly softened to amazed admiration that they had been to Virginia and returned, and there was soon a discussion over the breakdown of civil society in the tri-state area of the Potomac.

  Pamela had always despised cops, but she saw the weariness and the worry that laid dark circles around their eyes, and grayed their skin, and she grudgingly had to admit that maybe the police were the first defense of a civilization, and that some, maybe many, of them took that oath “to serve and protect” seriously. She wanted to say so to Weber, but he had disappeared as soon as they reached the morgue.

  Jessie had been questioned at the hospital, and the female cops were gentle and understanding. They took swabs from the bites on her breasts, and vaginal swabs. Richard was confident that they would find matches once the DNA tests were run.

  In the car, as they drove back to the Mayflower, he had said, “Nobody makes the jump from B and E’s and assaults to felony rape and murder in one jump. There’ll be other women he hurt.”

  “Jessie told the cops that you told her that Andresson was dead,” Pamela said. “They’re going to want to know how you know, and that might come back to haunt us.”

  Richard shrugged. “They haven’t got a body. They’re sure as hell not going to go into the compound to look for one. As far as they know we ran a hostage rescue operation where we lost one and saved one.” His voice was dead level and even, but Pamela could see what it cost him to keep the clinical tone.

  She laid her hand over his. He turned it to grip her hand hard, and the sleeve pulled up on the leather jacket. The cuff of his shirt was stained with blood. They stared at it for a long moment.

  “We’ll get back to the hotel, and shower, and burn these clothes,” Pamela said.

  “Getting rid of the evidence,” Richard said with grim humor.

  “No, I just can’t stand the touch of that place, and my clothes reek with it.”

  “Some things never wash out,” Richard said, and then gave her his profile as he stared out the window at the passing city.

  * * *

  Weber was waiting in the sitting room of the suite. The muscles in his jaw bunched and flexed as he gazed down into Richard’s face.

  “Okay, this has gotta be said. This shouldn’t have happened. Points that you tried to get her. Points that you killed that motherfucker, but this should never have happened!” A universe of rage and anger simmered in Weber’s words.

  “Yes, you’re right,” came her brother’s simple reply.

  “You should never have sent her off alone.”

  “I know.”

  “You got Angela killed!”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn it! Fight with me!” The words were a roar, and Pamela retreated. Richard and Weber were only inches apart, but Richard didn’t move. Slim, erect, unflinching, he faced the older, larger man.

  “Why? There’s nothing you can do to me that would make me hurt any worse. I suspect it’s the same for you. But if it’ll make you feel any better, take your best shot. You get one for free.”

  Weber’s hand closed into a fist. Pamela was fascinated with the way his knuckles looked like pale walnuts, and how the veins stood out like pale blue snakes. She hadn’t expected it, and she squeaked when Weber took the swing and hit Richard hard on the jaw. Richard staggered sideways, caught himself on the back of a sofa, and managed to stay upright.

  Her brother touched his jaw gingerly, worked it a bit. “Okay.” He started toward one of the bedrooms, only to be halted when Weber said, “Maybe it’s time for somebody else to be in charge.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Richard said. “I’m the only—”

  Weber let out a roar and charged. And Richard met him with murder in his blue eyes. Just as Weber was about to grab Richard in a bear hug, her brother stepped lightly aside and delivered a kick to the side of the big cop’s knee. The roar became a yell of pain, and Weber fell sideways against a chair. It seemed to topple in slow motion. Richard moved in and punched Weber in the ribs. After that any sense of order disappeared. It was a kaleidoscope of windmilling arms, fists, feet, knees. The torchère lamp went over with a crash.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Pamela realized she was the one yelling.

  The commotion brought Joseph and Estevan. Estevan displayed the barely suppressed glee of the very young enjoying the excitement of catastrophe. Joseph looked disapproving, but resigned. Pamela rushed to him.

  “Do something!”

  “Let ’em have it out,” the security chief said.

  Pamela let out a sound like an outraged cat. Her gaze fell on the enormous bouquet of flowers that the hotel management had sent up to welcome the CEO of Lumina Enterprises. Running over, she pulled out the flowers. It sloshed most satisfactorily when she picked up the vase.

  She ran over to the grunting, fighting males and threw the water over both of them. They broke apart spluttering and cursing.

  “Now stop it! Do something useful! That’s what Angela would say.”

  The fight leached out of both of them. “And that we all need something to eat,” Richard added softly. Pamela couldn’t tell if the water on his face was from the vase or from tears. She decided it didn’t matter.

  Weber leaned down with a grunt and rubbed at his knee. “You got a kick like a mule.” He held out his hand to Richard. Her brother didn’t take it.

  “Not yet. It’s too soon. Don
’t forgive me yet. Forgive me when I’ve earned it.” They all watched as Richard walked to the bedroom and closed the door.

  Weber suddenly frowned and looked over at Pamela. “What the fuck do you think that meant?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But it sounded ominous.”

  FIFTY

  RICHARD

  The GPS system in my phone had taken me right to the house in Van Nuys. After the cold and sleet of Washington, the seventy-plus-degree weather in Southern California felt like a caress. I had the windows rolled down, and the scent of star jasmine was carried on a soft wind.

  That hadn’t been the case overnight. A harsh Santa Ana wind had come roaring out of the east, vibrating the windows in the hotel and hissing through the pine trees that dotted the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel. I had taken one of the private cabanas and phoned room service for breakfast. The staff knew the CEO of Lumina Enterprises was in residence—I’d gotten great service.

  The winds had ripped this neighborhood as well. Palm fronds lay scattered across the road and postage-stamp front yards. They looked like wings torn from the bodies of gigantic insects.

  The Lumina jet had touched down in L.A. at 2:00 A.M. I had checked into the hotel for a few hours of sleep, a shower, a shave, and a meal, and then I’d had a car delivered. Now I was here, and Rhiana was only a few hundred feet away.

  Finding her hadn’t been that hard. My badge had enabled me to run the plates on her BMW convertible. To my surprise the car wasn’t stolen. Rhiana had bought and registered it, which gave me the address of her Georgetown house. I had searched it last night, and I hadn’t even had to pick the lock; I’d just climbed through the broken windows. Inside I’d picked my way through the welter of dead birds. I’d used the sword on every mirror and the chandelier. The teardrop crystals just hadn’t looked right to me.

  Others had entered the house before me. Dangling cables showed me where a television had once stood; there were racks of CDs, but no player; and in the upstairs bedroom, which had been decorated like a scene out of the Arabian Nights, the tall jewelry case stood with its drawers hanging out like tongues. The thieves had missed one earring. The emerald lay sparkling, as green as Rhiana’s eyes, in the back of a drawer.