Then del Roble was rushing me, with his insane scream like a jungle bird. But above his scream I could hear Mary-Jane. She was screaming too, but she was screaming my name. “Now, Murdoch! Kill him! Murdoch! Murdoch! Kill him now! Kill him!”
Del Roble had been right. We each wanted something the other had, but what Mary-Jane Carter wanted was del Roble’s life. I lunged and made a grab for him, but he caught me by surprise and sprang like an animal over the balustrade. I saw him land on the sand and start running. His speed was freakish, and he was screeching as he ran. I turned to go down the steps after him and caught a flash of Mary-Jane rushing past the shattered window. Her long, platinum hair was streaming out behind her. Then she was racing down the stairs ahead of me, making for the beach.
I went after her, but when I got to the bottom of the steps, for a moment I couldn’t see her. Like del Roble, her speed over sand was astonishing. I saw his form cresting the dunes up ahead. Then I heard the roar of a. 45 and I saw the lick of flame coming from behind the stilts under the house. She had used them as a support to take aim, but it was dark and he was too far away so the shot went wide. Then she was running again. She was light on her feet and, as he crested the top of the dune, she was gaining on him.
I set out after her, but it was slow and heavy going plowing through the soft sand. When I got to the top of the dunes, I saw del Roble below, sprinting fast across the road toward his car. Mary-Jane had stumbled and fallen in the loose sand and was now scrambling to her feet. I started to slide-run down, but she turned away from del Roble and ran for her own car. It was parked over to the right, half concealed by bulrushes. She knew she wouldn’t catch him before he reached his bus, so she didn’t bother trying. She just made straight for her own.
As I slid to the bottom, where the sand met the road, I heard del Roble’s car explode into life. His lights came on and he reversed wildly into the road, spun then accelerated away toward the hills. Almost simultaneously, ten paces away to my right, Mary-Jane’s lights flared on, blinding me. Her engine roared and I felt, rather than saw, her car scream past just inches away. It was a convertible, and I just caught a glimpse of her hair streaming out behind her. Then all I could see was two sets of red tail lights vanishing round a bend behind the dunes.
My head was splitting open, I was exhausted and I felt sick, but I ran for the third car, a dark convertible Jaguar. I vaulted over the door and hot-wired the beast into life. I hit the gas, spun the wheel and accelerated after Mary-Jane.
There was a lot of sand on the road, and at every corner it felt as though the car was going to skid off into the dunes. But this car was built for speed and handling, and it stuck to the road like a magnet. As I crested the first hill, I saw I was beginning to gain on Mary-Jane. I could hear her tires scream as she hit the next corner and for a moment it looked as though she was going to lose control. The back end swung out and rode up into the sand. I had to break hard to avoid smashing into her trunk. Ahead I could see del Roble’s tail lights disappearing around another bend. Mary-Jane’s wheels spun in a shower of dirt then she was away like a bullet.
I accelerated after her and as I rounded the next bend I could see where del Roble had slowed to take a hairpin and start climbing into the hills. Where he’d slowed right down, she had caught up and was almost on top of him. But when she slowed to take the same bend, he pulled ahead. I saw a flash and heard a crack and a whine, and realized that she’d started shooting at him again.
I took the hairpin as fast as I dared, then we were all three climbing toward the hills. Del Roble looked like he was beginning to panic. As he took the next bend his rear end skidded and rode up on the dirt. Just for a second he couldn’t pull free and he was a sitting duck. Mary-Jane played it too fast and instead of taking her time to aim a shot at him, she rammed the side of his car. That knocked him loose. My headlights picked her out, climbing onto the front seat, leveling the .45. His back wheels spun in a cloud of dust and his car tore loose just as she pulled the trigger. The shot missed and the recoil knocked her back. By that time, I was practically on her. She saw me coming, scrambled to her feet again and turned to face me. For just a couple of seconds my headlights bathed her face in light and I knew suddenly why men like Rupert were prepared to do anything for her. In that moment she raised the gun and took aim. I ducked as she fired and I heard the glass in one of my lamps shatter. I hit the dirt as she pulled away. Then I had to reverse off the siding, spin the wheel and accelerate after her. In the time it took me to do that, she had gotten away from me.
Now we were on a straight stretch, climbing gently, with a deep escarpment on the right-hand side. I was gaining on Mary-Jane, and as she loomed in my headlights, I could see she was tailgating del Roble, swerving from side to side to pull up beside him. Her convertible BMW was faster and had better performance than del Roble’s sedan.
She hadn’t many rounds left, and suddenly I knew what she was going to do. She swerved to the left until her right wing was level with his trunk, and before he could pull over, she hit the gas and rammed his rear left wheel. His brakes screamed as he tried to control the car, but he never had a chance. He was careening to the right, toward the edge. He tried to correct it by spinning his wheel right, but the sedan just lurched and rolled right off the road and down into the gulch.
Mary-Jane’s engine roared, her two-seater surged and she pulled ahead. The little BMW was fast, but it was no match for the power of the big Jaguar, and pretty soon I was gaining on her again and closing the gap. I could see another hairpin approaching, where the road started to climb steeply. I was just thinking that if I timed it right, I might be able to nail her back axle right there and disable the car, when she stopped, right on the bend. She stood, slowly and deliberately, with her long blonde hair glowing in my lights. Her shadow, huge and black, spread out and danced crazily behind her on the hillside. She leveled the .45 and took careful aim. I slammed on the brakes and ducked behind the dash. There was a loud crack then the deafening ring of a .45 slug hitting steel. For a moment I thought she’d missed, until I heard the loud hiss of escaping steam. A second crack brought the hiss of air and the Jag slowly subsided to the left. Then I heard the roar of her BMW again. I sat up and watched her pull away up the hill.
I got out to go and have a look at the damage. She’d plugged a hole right through the radiator. Her second shot had torn my front left tire off the wheel.
It took me almost fifteen minutes to walk back to the place where del Roble had been rammed off the road. I slid and scrambled down the bank to where his sedan was lying on its side. I leaned over and peered in through the open window. I fully expected to find him there, either dead or dying, but he was as hard to kill as a nest of cockroaches on Spanish fly. There was no sign of him, except a smear of blood on the steering wheel. The Jesuit from the Vatican had the luck of the Devil.
I was just turning to scramble up the bank again when a dark patch on the windshield caught my eye. I stopped and had a closer look. It made me smile. I peeled it off and slipped it in my pocket. That was going to solve my next problem.
It took me another half hour to find a farm that had what I wanted—a decent Land Rover parked outside. It took me thirty seconds to get inside and three seconds to hotwire it. As I pulled out of the driveway, I saw the glow of the farmhouse door opening in the rearview mirror and the dark silhouette of the owner watching his workhorse gallop into the night. Shit happens.
As I was approaching the main highway that runs east-west along the southern coast, I reached in my pocket and found the sticker I’d taken from del Roble’s windshield. It told any roadblock this was an official vehicle with A1 priority clearance. And that was exactly what I needed.
The sticker worked. I was waved through two roadblocks then hit the highway. There I headed west, doing a hundred until I reached Algarrobo. After that, I headed north and inland, climbing the steep sierra through the night with a growing rage in my belly. Now that I was clear—now I’d esc
aped—there was just one thing on my mind—payback. I had three calls to make that night, and each one of them was going to pay me, with interest.
It took me almost an hour to reach Çalares. My plan was to keep going as far as Sedella and have them wake Colonel Fermin for me. But as I passed Maria’s house, I saw the lights were still on. I felt a knot and a twist in my gut. It was part fear—not for me, but for her—and part a sheer, unadulterated need to be with her—to make things good with her. Right then I didn’t know who the hell I was. I didn’t recognize me. I was Liam Murdoch, confirmed bastard and King of the Chancers. My motto was ‘All women are bad news’. But right then the only thing I gave a damn about was Maria. I needed to know she was safe. And I needed to be with her.
Cursing myself for being a schmuck, I yanked savagely on the steering wheel and turned off the main road, then pulled in just short of her drive and killed the engine.
I climbed down from the cab and walked down the slope to her front door. There were two army Jeeps parked in front of it. As I approached, I could hear murmured voices from her terrace. I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle. There was a man’s voice, and I knew it was the colonel. He sounded mad. I peered round the wall and I could make him out, standing with his back to me, a glass in his hand. Past him I could see Maria, sitting in her chair. She wasn’t drinking and she didn’t look happy. There were four Guardia Civil standing around her. She said, “For the hundredth time, Fermin, I don’t know where he is.”
He put his glass on the table and went and stood over her. His hand flashed too fast to see it and the slap rang out with a squeal from Maria. Then he was shouting, “Why are you protecting him? Is he your lover? Tell me, puta!”
Sometimes you feel a rage that is so deep and so hot that it overwhelms you and becomes more than you are. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against five armed men. But I also understood in that moment that I would rather die protecting this woman than live a hundred years knowing I had let her be abused. But as I was moving to kick in the door, I heard the colonel shout again.
“If you will not talk for me, maybe you will sing for the leader! He has very special ways to make women sing! Llevarla a la Abadía!”
I froze. They were taking her to the abbey. After the crash, del Roble must have called for a car, and he was up there, now, at the abbey. I heard scuffling, and I heard Maria cursing and fighting. If I moved now, it could cost us both our lives. I didn’t care about me right then, but I knew more surely than I had ever known anything in my life, that I cared about her. I flattened myself against the wall and waited.
The door exploded open and four guardias dragged Maria out, kicking and screaming with fury, closely followed by the strutting colonel. They bundled her into one of the Jeeps and the colonel and his chauffeur climbed into the other. The engines roared into life and they both wheeled and bounced up the drive towards the road. I gave them five seconds and sprinted through the garden after them.
By the time I reached the Land Rover, their tail lights were disappearing up the hill toward the abbey. I gunned the engine and left the headlights off. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I knew exactly what I had to do. I took off after them on the long, slow climb toward Thelema.
I didn’t bother stopping to open the gate. The older Land Rovers were made of steel, not fiberglass, and the gate never stood a chance. As I approached the abbey, I noticed there was a ghostly light in the air, and against its glow I could see the silhouettes of a dozen cars parked outside the building. Then I noticed that the avenue and the grove I had noticed the first time I’d come with the colonel were illuminated with what looked like burning torches. I felt a sick twist in my gut. I pulled off the track and killed the engine. Then I jumped out of the cab and loped quietly toward the abbey.
On the sultry summer air, I could hear voices. They seemed to be chanting. When a bunch of crazies called the Brotherhood of the Goat take you to a torch-lit grove, and they’re chanting while they do it, that has to be bad news. I upgraded my lope to a sprint, bypassing the abbey, and went hell bent for leather through the coarse grass and shrubs toward where the torchlight was glowing among the ancient oak trees. All I could hear was the thudding and stumbling of my feet on the uneven ground, the pounding of my heart in my chest and my ragged breathing.
I dropped to the ground thirty yards from the grove then started to crawl on my belly. Now the chanting was louder. There were mixed voices, male and female, monotonous, dull and repetitive. There was a powerful stink on the air too—the boiled-cabbage stench of grass mixed with Salvia Divinorum, a hallucinogenic that was also a powerful aphrodisiac.
When I was finally close enough to peer through the dry grass into the glade, I saw pretty much what I expected to see. Del Roble had obviously watched all the Hammer House of Horror movies and read his share of Éliphas Lévi. There was a framework of nine carved wooden pillars supporting a domed, wooden roof over a stone altar in the center of the grove. There was a giant pentagram on the ground, contained within a circle, and there were flaming torches at the four cardinal points. He also had his chorus of two-dozen men and women in black robes, with their faces concealed behind black silk masks. What was new was that each of the dozen oak trees that made up the grove had a seven-foot goat, sitting in the lotus position, carved out of the living wood. And at the northern end, where I saw del Roble standing, the ancient, giant oak had been carved into the nine-foot effigy of an owl.
But what turned my blood cold was what I saw in front of the altar. She was on her knees in a transparent white shift. Her hands were tied behind her back with rough rope and her ankles were bound so she couldn’t get to her feet. When I saw her face, my head pounded with suppressed rage. Her chin was lifted, and there was a look of sheer defiance in her eyes. She had more balls than any man I’d ever known, and, in that moment, I knew beyond any doubt that I was crazy for this woman.
That was when I saw del Roble walking toward her. He was holding a long, wicked blade that looked cold and razor sharp. He stopped in front of her and held out the blade in both hands for her to see. The chanting stopped and there was a terrible silence in the glade. Her expression of defiance held, but I could see her hands trembling behind her back. When he spoke, his voice was a harsh rasp.
“We, the Brotherhood of the Goat, are the supreme predators, child. We own you. We are your lords and masters. We are at the top of the food chain, and we shall feast on your flesh tonight. Your choice is simple. Do you wish to die swiftly and painlessly upon the Altar of the Seraph, or do you wish to go beyond your threshold of horror into total madness?”
She didn’t answer. My mind was racing, screaming at me to do something, to find some way to get her out of there. But every plan I thought of was a non-starter. We were unarmed and outnumbered twelve to one.
Then he was talking again.
“Very well, child. If you will not to tell me where Murdoch is hiding, I shall take you tonight on a journey to the furthest limits of horror, and when you think it is impossible to experience more pain and terror, I shall take you beyond. I shall become your god, your Shaitan, I shall consume your world, your joy, your love, and when I finally destroy you, you will thank me for it.” He turned to two of the chorus and said, “Make the altar ready.”
I didn’t wait. I saw two acolytes begin to wash down the stone slab while another moved off to get a silver bowl, but by then I was running like I had all the hounds of hell on my heels. I made it to the Land Rover in seconds flat. I grabbed the gallon gas can from the rear door without breaking stride, and I was on my way back toward the grove, ripping off my shirt one-handed as I ran.
I squatted down as close to the altar as I dared. Through the trees, I could see four of them holding Maria down, tying her wrists and ankles to iron rings in the stone. A fifth was positioning the silver bowl behind her head. A sickening chill went through my skin. I bunched my shirt on the ground, opened the gas can and dowsed the shirt with petrol.
Then I stuffed the shirt into the open mouth of the can and reached in my pocket for my Zippo.
The four acolytes had stepped back and now del Roble was standing at Maria’s head, looking down into her face. The chorus had started to chant softly again. His voice was quiet, then it rose above the chanting. “This is your last chance, child. Where is Murdoch? When I begin to cut, we shall feed on your pain and there will be no way to stop us.”
She stared up into his face and said, “Go fuck yourself!”
I spun the wheel on my Zippo. My petrol-soaked shirt exploded with a gentle ‘whoosh!’ He raised the blade and I leaped through the trees swinging the can with both hands. I hurled it and watched it sail across the grove, slam into the living carving of a goat opposite me, ricochet and collide with three of the astonished chorus. There was a full second of astonished silence. I saw myself in slow motion, leap two feet into the air then slam my fist into a black, silk mask on my way down. The acolyte crumpled under the blow and, in that moment, there was a violent ‘whoomph!’ and a blast of hot air ripped across the grove as the petrol can exploded. Then there was screaming, shrill and hysterical.
I saw five figures engulfed in flames doing a weird dance to some grotesque choreography of death. Behind them, flames were licking up one of the nine wooden pillars toward the domed roof. Around them, people in black were scattering, some frantically ripping at their robes to try to pull them off. Del Roble was standing frozen, staring about him, trying to understand what had happened, and I was sprinting across the glade toward him. His head turned and our eyes met as I jumped into a scissor kick and slammed my right foot into his chest. He reeled back and the sacrificial knife fell into the dust. I dropped into a crouch and snatched the blade from the ground.
A Love to Kill For Page 18