by Anne Stuart
“No, I won’t. I’m eminently resourceful—you should know that by now. I’ll simply drive my car into a tree. I won’t be wearing my seat belt, and I’m afraid I’ll sustain a few more cuts than you managed to inflict on me, but it should cover up any other signs of a struggle you might care to attempt. You are going to struggle, aren’t you, Annie? It wouldn’t be any fun if you didn’t.”
“You’re sick.”
“Oh, have we sunk to that level already?” he protested wearily. “I think I’m quite remarkable. It’s not that many ex-husbands who’d take a glass mashed into their face with such equanimity. I’m attributing it to your grief over James. He was a worthless bastard, but you somehow managed to reach him when no one else could. Just as he managed to … inspire you. It’s all quite fascinating for a student of human nature.”
“You consider yourself a student of human nature?”
“No, my dear. I consider myself an artist of death. Never on James’s level, but then, he’s gone now, isn’t he? The king is dead, long live the king.” He reached down for her, and she braced herself, expecting pain. Instead he was eerily gentle as he helped her to her feet. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?” he murmured. “Unless you’d like to see whether there’s still a chance to make our marriage work.”
She laughed. “I’d rather die than fuck you, Martin.”
“And so you will, Annie. So you will.”
She had nothing left to fight with. No weapons, no energy. She’d given it all, and now she was spent. She let him take her arm in a solicitous gesture and lead her back down the winding steps in the dark.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She was already dead. She’d died when James had. This was merely a formality.
He took her through the kitchen door, the kitchen where she’d tried to cook Thanksgiving dinner a lifetime ago. She could almost feel James’s presence watching her. Watching over her. She stifled a hysterical little laugh.
“What’s so amusing, Annie?” Martin inquired gently, leading her across the drive to the narrow staircase that led up to the porch. There was a cool autumn breeze dancing through the trees overhead, lifting her hair away from her face. She’d always loved fall.
“I was thinking that James would watch over me now. Like a guardian angel. And then I thought he wasn’t particularly angelic.”
“You know,” Martin murmured, “I find I’m oddly jealous of him. I don’t like that.”
“You’re a child, Martin,” she replied, pausing at the foot of the stairs. She’d found her father there, stiff and silent in death. James had left him for her to discover. “You don’t play nice with the other children, and you don’t share your toys.”
“True,” he said lightly. “Up we go.”
They started up the steep, narrow steps. There was room for the two of them to travel side by side, but just barely. The screened-in landing at the top of the porch was shadowed in darkness, and she could just imagine James up there, hidden in the shadows, waiting for Father. Waiting for her.
“How did James manage to get my father up here?” she asked suddenly, more to herself. Not really expecting an answer.
“It was Win’s idea.”
She halted two-thirds of the way up, staring at him. “How do you know?”
“I was there, dearest. Watching, to make sure James didn’t become foolishly sentimental. After all, I had gone to a great deal of trouble to set the whole thing up. I didn’t want his nerve to fail at the end.”
“You set my father up?”
“Not exactly. He deserved to die, but then, most of us poor mortals do. I simply made sure those who had the power to see it taken care of found out about it.”
“You betrayed him.”
“As good a word as any.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“He wanted James. It was really quite touching, darling. Neither of them knew I was here, watching. They had an elegant dinner, a few brandies, and then they went for a walk. And when they reached the top of the stairs, Win asked James to kill him.”
“Don’t expect similar cooperation from his daughter.”
“Oh, I don’t, Annie. I’m hoping for a fight.”
A dozen more steps, and he was moving her up there, one step at a time. She looked up again, into the darkness, and she could imagine a tall, shrouded figure waiting there. Waiting to deliver death.
She looked at the man beside her, beyond hatred, beyond fear. His gun was pressed hard against her rib cage, and she knew there was nothing she could do. Except, perhaps, take him with her.
“So tell me, Annie,” he said. “Do you want to go down on me before you die? Just for old time’s sake, since you seem to have lost your aversion to the practice.”
“I’d rather suck a rattlesnake.”
The gun pressed harder. “I could make you.”
“That might be dangerous.”
He sighed. “You’re right, of course. Did I ever tell you that was one of the things I found most irritating about you? That you were usually right.” They’d reached the top of the stairs. Martin didn’t bother to glance into the shadows ahead of them. Annie did.
“Show time, darling,” he said. “Ready for a swan dive?”
“Get the fuck away from her, Martin.”
James moved out of the shadows, a bloody specter, limping, dark, vengeful. Martin stood there, frozen with shock for a brief, blessed moment.
And then Annie shoved him.
The railing splintered as he went down. His skull smashed on the cement block at the bottom. He twitched for a moment and then lay still.
The thick, dark ooze of blood looked black in the moonlight.
“You’re not dead,” she said to James.
“I feel like it.” He came closer, into the bright light of the moon, and she could see the dark blood that stained his pant leg, the scrape across his face. The sheer, utter weariness of him. He was alive, and he was hers. In the midst of death and chaos, that was all that mattered.
His eyes met hers for an endless moment. There was no need for words. He didn’t touch her, he moved past her, slowly, painfully, down the narrow stairs with the broken railing. He paused partway down and looked back at her.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Away from here.”
Ireland, she thought. May you die in Ireland. Old and weary and at peace.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
If you enjoyed Moonrise
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Ritual Sins,
coming soon from Signet.
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Rachel Connery didn’t want to be there. At the age of twenty-nine she’d made it her policy never to do anything she didn’t want, to always have a choice in matters. She was there by choice, she reminded herself grimly. It was simply a choice she wished she didn’t have to make.
The taxi had already pulled to a stop outside the sweeping expanse of Santa Dolores, home base to the Foundation of Being. Seventeen miles away from Albuquerque, it sat beneath the New Mexico sun like the peaceful retreat it purported to be. A compound devoted to meditation, enlightenment, combined with a hospice center to care for the dying.
Her mother had sought enlightenment behind those walls. Her mother had died there.
The cab driver had already opened her door, and she slid out, brushing imaginary dust off her silk suit as she glared up at the compound. She didn’t want to be there, she thought again. And they knew it.
“I can handle it from here,” she said, taking her battered leather suitcase from the driver and handing him a generous tip.
“Blessings,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Blessings. You’re one of Luke’s People, aren’t you?” the driver seemed momentarily confused, but his fist closed tight over the money in case she was incl
ined to snatch it back.
“No,” she said shortly. “I’m not.” And she marched toward the beautiful forged gate, her high heels firm in the dusty drive.
Luke’s People, they called themselves. She’d managed to blot that particularly ugly thought out of her mind, but now it was back. There was no more hiding from things she didn’t want to face. She’d never met the man, only seen him from a distance. But even across a crowded courtroom she could feel the poisonous strands of his charisma, like a spider’s web reaching out toward any stray creature who wandered into his path.
Luke Bardell, ex-con, wanted man, founder of what some people called a philosophy, others called a religion, and Rachel called a cult. The man who had mesmerized her dying mother into leaving twelve and a half million dollars to the Foundation of Being. And not a damned thing to the only child she’d ever had.
Ten years ago Rachel might have simply curled up in a tight ball and wept. But not now. She’d fought back, hard. Only to have her lawsuit thrown out by the first judge, her lawyers quit on her, and defeat wash over her like a bitter shower of acid. You can’t sue a religion. You can’t accuse a saint. Stella Connery was of sound mind when she made her will, she knew she was dying of breast cancer, and she’d made her decision.
And the Foundation of Being had been nauseatingly gracious in triumph. Surely Rachel would want to make a pilgrimage to the place where her mother had spent her final, peaceful days, to the spot where she was buried. She could see the good that Stella’s money was doing, make peace with what the courts and her mother had chosen. The Foundation, and Luke’s People, would welcome the chance to share the blessings that had come their way.
Rachel would have rather eaten fried caterpillars. They certainly weren’t about to share the money that had come their way, that they’d wheedled and tricked out of a vain, dying woman. Stella and Luke had been lovers, Rachel had no doubt about that whatsoever. Stella had gone through men with a voraciousness that had left her only child awed and frigid in response. No good-looking man had been immune to Stella.
Luke Bardell, the messiah of the Foundation of Being, was a very good-looking man indeed. And he’d been paid well for sleeping with a dying old lady.
If Rachel had been willing to accept defeat she would have refused their offer of hospitality. A sensible woman would have accepted the fact that the mother who’d abandoned her on almost every level had finally finished the job. She could find a new job, make a life for herself, choose not to be a victim of a distraught childhood.
Choice, again. There was that word. She could choose anger and revenge. Or she could choose to get on with her life.
At that point, anger and revenge were far more appealing, and they carried her straight to Santa Dolores, to the Foundation of Being. And to Luke Bardell.
“She’s here, Luke.”
He didn’t move. He’d heard them shuffle in, that odd group of middle-aged and elderly businessmen who’d found the answer to life’s questions with the Foundation of Being, and used their financial expertise to make it thrive. They were called The Grandfathers, even though there were several women in the group, and they ran the organization like a blue-chip company.
And Luke ran them. He lay flat on his back on the cool tile, arms outstretched, eyes closed, as he inhaled the sweet smell of burning sage. He could feel the energy tingling, rushing, flowing through his body, every nerve taut, every vein pumping with blood, pulsing, throbbing. That energy was his power, his gift, and he used it carefully, never squandering it.
For a moment he wondered who they were talking about, and then he remembered. Stella’s daughter. The pale, sour-faced woman who’d had the astonishing gall to try to take his money away. She’d gotten nowhere, of course. The Grandfathers thought she should have been paid off. After all, lawsuits and accusations, no matter how far-fetched, were bad publicity. And the Foundation of Being preferred little or no publicity. They weren’t looking for converts. Those who needed what they offered would find their way to Santa Dolores. Sooner or later.
But Luke hadn’t wanted to pay her off. He’d watched her, with her patrician face and her fuck-you eyes, her designer clothes and her utter contempt, and that old feeling rose in him, one he thought he’d squashed down. Here was a challenge, when nothing had been a challenge for years. Here was a soul who would fight him, tooth and nail, before he could claim her. Here would be a battle that would test his rusty skills, prove that there was no one immune to the power he could exert, when he chose to focus it.
He would bring Rachel Connery to Santa Dolores and he would seduce her. Spiritually and emotionally, he would strip her, ravish her, drain her, and own her. As he did all the others.
He had no qualms about it. He could take that sour look on her pale face and turn it into the placid expression of bliss that surrounded him twenty-four hours a day. All without laying a hand on her.
He never slept with his followers. As far as they knew, he never slept with anyone at all. Luke Bardell was celibate, vegetarian, purity personified. It was all part of the tools of the trade. They all wanted him. He knew it, and he used it. He slept with no one, and they believed they could all have him, men and women, young and old. As long as he remained put of reach it kept them blind and focused and needy.
The way he liked them.
It would be interesting to see just how long it would take him to bring about that change in an angry disbeliever like Rachel Connery. He’d converted others before; it should be a simple matter.
Except that she was different; he’d felt it, even from a distance. Her anger ran deeper. And it called to him, a challenge that he had no intention of refusing.
He opened his eyes and sat up, fluidly, brushing his long hair behind him as he crossed his legs and stared back at the grandfathers. “Blessings,” he said.
“What do you want us to do with her, Luke?” Alfred Waterston had taken forced early retirement from IBM. Their loss had been Luke’s gain. Alfred’s attention to financial detail was impressive to the point of being frightening.
“Make her welcome,” he replied in his gentle voice, which he’d trained to carry to the farthest corner of any room. Another tool, one he used wisely.
“She’s expecting to see you. I told her you were meditating, and she just laughed. I’m afraid she’ll be a disrupting influence, Luke.”
Luke simply nodded. “Not for long, Alfred. See if she’ll submit to purification before she comes. What’s she wearing?”
“City clothes,” Alfred said with contempt.
“Bring her some of our things. She’ll be more comfortable in them.”
“And if she refuses?”
“Then I’ll deal with it, Alfred. I always do.”
She’d refuse, of course, even though the ritual bath was simply the private use of a hot spring that was wonderfully relaxing. She’d probably insist on cold showers during her stay. She’d refuse the loose cotton clothing they all wore as well, but he’d see to that in good time. The phrase rang in his head, Strip her, bathe her, and bring her to my tent, and he smiled serenely.
“Blessings,” Alfred mumbled, with no idea what his saintly leader was thinking.
“Blessings to you all,” Luke replied, lying back down again.
It had been three months since he’d been laid. He’d grown used to the long periods of celibacy—if he were to keep up the image of purity, then he had to be very careful how and when he took care of his needs when they became overwhelming.
But he’d learned to channel that sexual energy into a kind of burning power that reached out to everyone. And he lived inside that volcano, inviolate.
Santa Dolores was a safe haven for all, based upon trust and love and freedom. It also worked extremely well due to an advanced security system that gave Luke visual access to every room on the compound. He sat up again, alone in the pale, cavernous room, and rose. He would retire to his meditation chamber, the one place where no one, not even Calvin, would disturb him. He
would draw aside the thick black curtain and stare at the banks of television monitors. And maybe he might get a chance to see whether Rachel Connery was as much of a challenge without her clothes on.
The first thing she noticed was that there were no children around. Apparently this cult catered to the unencumbered. The better to extort their money, Rachel thought angrily. The main house of Santa Dolores was built along fittingly Southwestern lines—cool tile floors, adobe walls, plain dark wood on the windows and ceiling.
They’d put her in a room at the far end of one hallway. The woman who’d shown her there was pleasant enough, and to Rachel’s annoyance she didn’t appear to be particularly brainwashed, despite the loose cotton outfit she wore, which resembled a cross between men’s pajamas and a karate gi. She’d tried to press one on Rachel, which she flatly refused, and tried to lure her to a hot springs for purification.
“Not in the mood,” Rachel had drawled. “I took a shower this morning.”
“You’ll feel wonderful. Like a new person,” the woman, who’d identified herself as Leaf, said.
“I like the old person just fine,” Rachel said. “When do I see Luke?”
“When he’s ready. He spends most of the day in prayer and meditation. I’m certain he’ll grant you an audience as soon as he’s able. In the meantime he would want us to make you welcome at Santa Dolores.”
Rachel looked around her, at the plain walls, the kiva fireplace, the twin bed with the white cotton coverlet. “Not very sybaritic, is it?” she observed.
“We aren’t here to indulge our senses,” Leaf replied. “We’re here to fine-tune them. To open ourselves to everything.”
“You can’t do that on a twin bed.”
Leaf smiled at her. “We do not indulge in drugs, alcohol, sex, or any toxins. This is a place for purification and learning.”
“No sex?” Rachel echoed. “What about husbands and wives?”
“They welcome the chance to concentrate on their spiritual rather than their physical needs.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “My mother never spent a celibate week in her life.”