Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  She took a slow, sliding step closer to the desk. Faust, preoccupied by the switches, didn’t notice. She lifted her hands, taking care to avert her body from the spill of the flashlight’s beam.

  Elsewhere in the building ceiling lights came on, and bright colors leaped out of the dark. She ignored them, staying focused on the phone.

  He looked up, looked past her, said something about art and death.

  She wasn’t listening. It didn’t matter what he said.

  All that mattered was that he was within arm’s reach, and distracted. Vulnerable.

  Now.

  She seized the phone and swung it up in a powerful arc, tearing out the cord. He turned, not fast enough, and the corner of the metal box caught him under the chin and whipped his head back. She heard the clack of his jaws and knew she’d hurt him. She stepped forward and delivered a smashing downswing, aiming for a knockout blow, but he jerked to one side, the sharp edge of the speaker raking his cheek.

  Then the phone was in his hands. He wrested it away and threw it aside. Her flashlight was rolling on the desk where he’d dropped it. She grabbed for it, thinking that it, too, could be a weapon, but already he had her hands in his, and he was staring at her as blood trickled down his face.

  He made a gasping noise, almost like a lover’s sigh, and thrust her backward, slamming her into the wall, and then the knife was in his hand and its blade was arrowed at her face.

  “Now there is the Tess McCallum I expected. I did not think you would remain passive. Nor did I want you to.”

  He pressed the knife closer, the needle-sharp tip almost touching her left eye. With one flick of his wrist he could insert the knifepoint in her eyeball.

  “I could do it, Tess,” he whispered. “Pop your eye like a grape.”

  But he didn’t. The knife withdrew.

  “I do not wish to have you blinded. I wish for you to see what I will do to you. To see the spectacle I will make of your bare body.”

  He seized her by the hair with one hand, the knife now teasing her neck, and hustled her through the partitioned rooms, past the glowing paintings—no, not paintings, but something else, some kind of luminous art, like sculptures in neon. He brought her to a corner, and together they slipped around the bend into a still darker room, where skulls floated in the dark.

  Halfway inside the room, he threw her down on the floor. She stared up at him, at the knife, at the jack-o’-lantern faces around her.

  She’d been right—he was a demon, and this was hell.

  “You fear me, Tess McCallum. I sensed it in our meeting.”

  He was smiling. She wanted fiercely to remove that smile from his mouth.

  “And you fear this, as well.” He rotated the knife in his grip. The long blade flashed, catching the light of one of the minispots in the ceiling. “As you should. It is an authentic knife once used by an officer of the SS. See the finely detailed oak leaf on the handle. See the engraving in the stainless steel blade. ‘Alles fur Deutschland’, it reads.”

  She thought of Hitler with his lashless blue eyes and hypnotizing gaze. Hitler in his bunker with Eva Braun, the two of them playing out the death dance of a suicide pact.

  “This blade will do terrible things to you, Tess. The Chinese had a method of execution called the death of a thousand cuts. I may not have time for one thousand, but I believe I can manage one hundred cuts before the last of your lifeblood drains away. I wish to see you grow weak before me, weak from pain and loss of blood.”

  Like his victims, she thought. He was accelerating the process that normally dragged on for days of limited food and water.

  “You will try to scream, but the gag has been knotted tight. Your voice will die in your throat. You will try to beg, but no words will reach me. And when I am done, I will peel the flesh from your face and leave you grinning, like these happy ones.”

  His circling arm took in the skulls, their teeth bared in ageless smiles.

  “Now,” he said, “let us begin.”

  He knelt by her. He pushed her back, prone on the floor, and took hold of her bound hands. She twisted her wrists, but the belt of the robe had been tied too expertly to work free. And suddenly she thought of Abby with her wrists restrained by flex-cuffs, facing a man who intended to make her suffer before she died. This was just like that, no different—except Abby hadn’t been in a room full of floating skulls.

  “I often said I was an artist. Now I will prove it. Of course, it was necessary for me to downplay the point, to make light of it, even to deny it. But that was merely for my own protection. I had secrets to keep. But you and I, Tess—we will have no secrets between us, will we?”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about. She thought perhaps he had lost what remained of his sanity.

  “You are thinking I am crazy,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Wrong. I am fulfilling my destiny.”

  The knife flashed. A hot wire of pain shot through the back of her left hand.

  “I was born to hate. In my heaven there is no God, only power and the will to power.”

  Another sizzling arc of pain. He was slicing her hand. Cutting a zigzag pattern. The wolfsangel.

  “Joy is the conquest of weakness. I am building a more joyful world, culling the herd, disposing of the feeble. You see, I do believe in something larger than myself.”

  A third cut. Her fingers going numb. Wetness on her skin. Blood.

  “I believe in a world of men like me. And with every book I sell, every autograph I sign, I bring us that much closer to that world. It is nearly upon us, Tess. Sadly, you will not live to see it.”

  He leaned closer. The expression on his face was one she had never seen before on any human being: a look of feral enjoyment, the grin of a hyena on a carcass.

  “And neither will Joshua Green.”

  The words pulled all the breath out of her. She felt herself deflate, go limp. She was dizzy ...

  Another kiss of the blade on her hand. Pain brought her back from the edge of unconsciousness. She blinked, rallied.

  “Oh, yes.” There was humor in his voice. “I know about your secret paramour.”

  But he couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. Unless he really was the devil, really did possess occult powers ...

  She could almost believe it. She could almost believe that this man with his jackal smile in a gallery of skulls was something fiendish, inhuman.

  Blood soaked the belt of his robe now, the belt that tied her wrists. But not enough blood, not for him. He cut again, digging deeper, drawing a groan from her as she shut her eyes against the pain.

  “Hauser knew,” he said calmly. “I was always interested in you, always pressing him for details and gossip in our phone conversations. He no doubt saw it as a harmless way to lead me on and gain my trust. Or perhaps he relished giving away your secrets for reasons of his own. I had the impression he disliked you most heartily.”

  Hauser. So that was all it was. Nothing supernatural or magical. Just a man with a grudge, who had dug up dirt on her and passed it around.

  And Faust ... he was no devil, only a sick man, a psychopath, a crazy son of a bitch who had issues with women, with power ...

  And who had a knife. It worked its way down the back of her hand, slicing lightly this time, its touch almost a caress.

  “He learned somehow of your illicit relationship with Mr. Green. He found it most unprofessional. Now you and Joshua will pay for your transgressions. You are paying now. Joshua will pay later.”

  She thought of Paul Voorhees, killed by Mobius. And now Josh ...

  It couldn’t happen again. Couldn’t happen twice.

  She tried to say something, to communicate, but of course the gag made speech impossible. All that came through were muffled grunts, animal sounds.

  He balanced the knifepoint on her hand and spun it like a compass. He was smiling.

  “I want you to understand how thoroughly I will destroy your life, Tess. Not only will I murder you, but I
will kill the one you love. I can bide my time. I can practice patience. A month from now, or a year ...”

  From outside the exhibit room, a noise like the crunch of safety glass.

  Faust looked up, his breath held. He listened.

  “No.” His voice was very soft. “She could not be here. Could not possibly ...”

  Abby, he meant. Tess had heard his end of the phone conversation. But he was right. Abby couldn’t be here.

  Could she?

  He stood. For a moment she thought he had forgotten her, just as he’d forgotten Raven when his own survival was at stake. Then he lowered his hand in a sharp chopping motion, connecting with the base of her skull. She heard a soft little grunt, a sound from her own throat, and felt the world sliding away. Dimly she was aware that he had already left the room, taking his knife and a gun.

  Her gun.

  He’d assumed the blow would render her unconscious. But she couldn’t let that happen. She had to take off the gag, shout a warning. If she passed out, Abby was dead, and so was she.

  She struggled to hold on as her awareness flickered and the skulls grinned down.

  48

  Faust slipped along one wall of the gallery until he reached the nearest hologram, a large wall-mounted display, very bright in the surrounding darkness. The image projected two feet into space, and pinned behind it he was invisible, like his countryman the Red Baron diving out of the sun.

  From this position of concealment he could scan the gallery with no risk of being seen.

  The noise might have meant nothing, but he was too cautious to rely on assumptions. It was perhaps not out of the question that Sinclair had guessed where he would go. He could not imagine how. Although she had been to the gallery, she had no reason to connect it with him, and she could not know that he was an owner. He had kept that fact well hidden in a maze of dummy corporations and offshore accounts.

  No, she could not—could not—be here.

  Yet there she was.

  He saw her enter this room, the last room before the skulls gallery. She moved slowly in the dark, her gun leading her.

  Somehow she had divined his whereabouts. She was smart, this one. Intuitive. A worthy adversary.

  He lifted Tess McCallum’s gun. He was no marksman, but he had sufficient experience with firearms to know his limits and his capabilities. From this distance, aiming at a stationary target, he would not miss.

  One round to the head. She would never even know what happened.

  He only needed her to come a little nearer. When she passed the first hologram in the room, the glow would illumine her face, and he would shoot.

  * * *

  Abby had been en route to Cafe Eden when a snatch of her conversation with Faust had come back to her.

  Do you remember my telling you that death is art?

  Why use that metaphor again? It had seemed to come out of nowhere. And statements that arose with seeming irrelevance were often the most meaningful clues to the speaker’s state of mind.

  She recalled what Elise had told her about the art gallery. Faust, she’d said, was a part owner, but he kept his ownership secret.

  An owner would have a key. Would know the alarm system code. And if his financial involvement with the gallery was unknown, no one would look for him there.

  Or maybe she was overthinking it, and the coffee shop was still the better bet. She had hesitated, considering both options, knowing that time was of the essence. Finally she went with her gut, which rarely failed her. Her gut said the Unblinking I was the place to look.

  And it had been right. She’d found an FBI sedan stashed in the alley behind the gallery. Faust was in the building. Tess must be with him, unless he’d disposed of her already.

  She doubted it. He would want to take his time.

  Despite her aversion to authority, she was momentarily tempted to call Michaelson and let his shock troops handle the situation. It would make more sense. Going in alone was the kind of boneheaded, reckless stunt she was ordinarily smart enough to forgo.

  Not tonight, though. Tonight Wyatt was dead, and she wanted blood.

  She spent less than a minute picking the lock on the gallery’s back door. She wasn’t worried about the alarm system. Faust couldn’t move around inside if the motion sensors were on.

  She eased open the door to face a tunnel of darkness. Faust had left the lights off. That was okay. She was nocturnal. She could hunt in the dark.

  She entered, her .38 already drawn—the .38 that killed Brody.

  Soon it would kill again.

  Down a black hallway. Ahead, a glimmer of ambient light. She went toward it and found herself in the foyer, where a penlight, its beam slicing the darkness, lay on the front desk. She wondered why Faust had left it there. She picked up the flashlight, turned it off, and stuck it in her pocket.

  Beyond the foyer were the exhibition rooms. She remembered the layout from her previous visit. The main body of the building was L-shaped, with most of the exhibit rooms occupying the long arm of the L, and the gallery of skulls taking up the base at the far end.

  The ceiling spots had been turned on. Piers Hoagland’s ghastly holograms hovered against walls and pylons.

  She rounded the desk and moved forward. Something crunched under her foot. The noise seemed loud in the stillness. She retreated, ducking low, and could just make out a rectangular box on the floor—some sort of telephone console, it looked like. She’d stepped on it and broken the speaker.

  What the hell it was doing there, she had no idea. Evidence of a struggle, presumably. The more important question was whether Faust had heard the noise.

  She listened. She heard nothing. No movement, no footsteps.

  Moving away from the desk, she crept along the wall into the first exhibit room. As she approached the first hologram, she averted her face and half shut her eyes. Didn’t want to lose her night vision by staring into the light.

  She reached a partition and crabbed along it to the doorway to the next room. More holograms in there, some mounted on pedestals or displayed on pylons. The garbage dump with the flash image of a skeleton’s hand. Roadkill. A nest of dead wasps. In a shoe box, the remains of a cat.

  Death all around. And more death to come.

  She passed through two more rooms. Faust must be in the back, with the skulls. She had one more room to cover before she got there.

  She entered carefully, nearing the first of several holograms on the wall. It was beginning to look like this would be easy. She could burst in on Faust and take him out before he had a chance to return fire. She could—

  “Abby!” Tess’s shout, echoing in the dark. “He knows you’re here!”

  Instinct took over. She pushed herself away from the wall, and in the same instant the hologram where she had been standing shattered and winked out, and a gunshot rang in the stillness.

  She looked up in time to see the muzzle flash. Then she was diving to the floor in a snap-roll that carried her behind one of the pylons. She snapped off two rounds in the shooter’s direction, then plunged sideways, behind a second pylon, changing her position so Faust couldn’t shoot back.

  Her ears were chiming, her night vision compromised by the purplish afterimages of the muzzle flares. She could hardly hear or see, and in the blackness Faust could be anywhere.

  Gun battle at close quarters in near total darkness. Not a good situation. She could hope that the handgun reports would attract the attention of passersby, who would summon the police—but at five a.m. there weren’t likely to be any passersby, and police response time in West Hollywood had to be at least seven minutes.

  She didn’t have seven minutes. These things never lasted that long.

  Two options, then. She could stay hidden and let Faust wear himself out searching for her. There was a good chance he wouldn’t find her. He might even flee.

  Or she could take the offensive, go after him. A less intelligent strategy. In a shoot-out, the mobile and aggressive pa
rty was always more vulnerable.

  But Tess altered the equation. Faust could retreat to the skull room and use her as a hostage or a human shield. Which meant sitting back and waiting wasn’t a viable plan. She had to intercept him, if possible.

  She scrambled out from behind the pylon and made her way to the closest wall, staying well clear of the holograms and their telltale glow.

  The clamor in her ears was dying down. Her vision wasn’t as badly impaired as before. She scanned the room, looking for movement. She saw only the holographic images of decay, each one shimmering with its sickly monochromatic glow. The minispotlights overhead glowed feebly like distant stars.

  And then they were gone.

  All the lights, out. The holograms, vanishing like ghosts.

  Faust had reached the master controls and darkened the gallery. She didn’t know where the controls were. She hadn’t seen them on her prior visit. They could be anywhere, and so Faust could be anywhere, and now with the spotlights dark and the windows blacked out, there was no light at all.

  She couldn’t search for him in total darkness. She wouldn’t know where he was, even if he was a foot away.

  All she could do was crouch by a corner of the exhibit room, still her breath, and listen.

  Creak of floorboards.

  From where? She wasn’t sure.

  Faintly, a soft metallic whine. Hinges. A door, opening.

  There were only two doors—the rear door by which she’d entered, and the front door in the foyer. Both too far away.

  No, wrong, there was a third. The door to the basement.

  A click—the door had shut.

  He had retreated into the basement. She was almost certain of it.

  Unless it was a ruse. He might want her to think he’d left this floor, so she would get careless and show herself.

  She crawled along the wall to the nearest doorway. The bend in the L was close by, the room of skulls just beyond.

  Could he be waiting for her to go in there? Hoping she would do the obvious thing and make the simple, fatal mistake?

  Slowly she stood up. She held the gun in both hands as she pivoted at the hips, sweeping the darkness.