“Scream again and I’ll break your goddamned neck,” the dead man growled in her ear. It was only then that Summer fully realized that the erstwhile corpse was not dead at all. He was very much alive, with homicidal intent.
The Undead could not have been worse.
She was on tiptoe, bent so far backward that her spine threatened to crack, dangling from the V of his elbow that entrapped her throat. The arm that he held twisted behind her back ached. Lack of air was making her light-headed. She was conscious of two sounds: her own terrified heart pounding in her ears, and the harsh rasp of his breathing.
“Don’t hurt me. Please.” The plea forced its way out of her crushed throat. The words were hoarse, barely audible even to herself. If he heard, it made no appreciable difference in the cruelty of his grip.
“How many others?” The arm around her throat tightened, strangling her. Instinctively her free hand rose to claw at it.
“You’re choking me!” It was a desperate little gasp.
“Scratch me and I’ll break your damned fingers.”
Her clutching fingers stilled and flattened on his cold flesh. Funny, he still felt dead.
Terror washed over Summer in waves. She couldn’t decide which was worse, a dead attacker or a live one.
“How many others?” Urgency roughened his voice, underlined the little shake he gave her.
“Please—I can’t breathe.” Summer tugged on the arm around her neck. To her relief, the chokehold eased. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Answer me.”
“Wh-what?”
“How many others are there?”
Dear God, what was he talking about? Was he deranged? Impossible to believe that this was really happening to her.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, you’ve obviously been in an accident, or—or something. You need medical attention …”
“Don’t play stupid with me. How many others are there?”
The chokehold tightened again. Forced to an en pointe position the likes of which she had not attempted since fourth-grade ballet, Summer clung to his forearm with her free hand to keep from being hanged, and despaired.
“Six?” she guessed.
The chokehold eased. She was allowed to balance on the balls of her feet. Clearly her answer had been acceptable.
“Where are they?”
Was he a homicidal maniac, or simply a nice, normal middle-American male who was suffering delusions as a result of the trauma that had brought him to the funeral home in the first place? In the milliseconds she was allowed to ponder that question, Summer came to a conclusion: It didn’t matter. For whatever reason, he was seriously dangerous. Her best course of action was to humor him for as long as she could, then escape.
Whoever had opined that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie had certainly known what he was talking about. The same could be applied to sleeping corpses. And would be, if she had the last ten minutes to live over again. Why, oh why, had she not simply gone out the front door when she had the chance?
“Damn it, where are they?” He tightened his grip.
Summer almost yelped. “Out—outside.”
His arm loosened. “Where outside?”
“Uh—in the back.”
He was silent for a moment, as if thinking over what she had said. Summer licked her lips and took a deep, shaken breath. Her answers were appeasing him, for the time being. The key was not to panic.
The pungent smell that enveloped him filled her nose and mouth and was drawn into her lungs. Summer suddenly identified it as kerosene.
“If you want to live, you’ll tell me that you know a way out of here.”
The menace in his voice made her stomach knot. The chokehold tightened, and Summer found herself en pointe once more. She nodded feebly.
His arm relaxed, and she was again able to breathe.
“You know a way out?”
“Y-yes.”
“Without being seen?”
Summer nodded.
“Screw me over, bitch, and I swear you’ll be dead before I am.”
Her arm was suddenly released. Moving it sent sharp tingles of pain shooting all the way up to her shoulder. Wincing, Summer flexed the fingers of her right hand, barely aware of a metallic scrabbling noise behind her.
“See this?” A shining silver scalpel was held before her eyes, and suddenly Summer forgot about her throbbing arm.
She nodded.
The overhead light glanced brightly off the razor-sharp edge as he brought the blade to her neck. The cold metal pricked the vulnerable flesh just beneath her left ear. Summer stopped breathing.
4
“One swipe—here—and you’re dead in just a few minutes. Hear me?”
Afraid to nod—the feel of the blade poised just above her racing pulse was terrifying—Summer moaned instead. Apparently he took the despairing sound for the assent it was.
“Don’t give me a reason to do it.”
The scalpel moved away from her neck to glitter in front of her eyes once more.
“Do we understand each other?”
This time Summer nodded. Vigorously.
“For your sake, you better hope so.”
With the scalpel gleaming just inches from her nose, Summer didn’t dare move as his imprisoning arm slid away from her neck. She stared at the deadly instrument with the horror a mouse might feel for a python as sheer black waves of terror threatened to engulf her. Beating them back, she also did battle with her nervous system, which was sending a tidal wave of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Her body’s fight-or-flight response had been triggered in spades, but she could do neither. Instinct warned that for the moment, docility was her best defense.
When Summer felt his hand dig deep into the knot of hair on top of her head, she did no more than utter a single surprised “Ouch!”
Ignoring that, he raked his fingers painfully through the untidy bun, freeing the fine coffee-colored strands with ruthless disregard for whether or not he hurt her. Half a dozen bobby pins went flying to land with tiny pings on the linoleum floor. Summer’s roots shrieked a protest as they were all but yanked out of her scalp, but she forced herself to endure the assault without resisting in any way. Every bit of instinct for self-preservation she possessed shrieked that she was just one wrong move away from a hideous death.
Her mother’s oft-repeated advice to her three daughters had been, “If a man tries something out of line with you, knee him in the nuts.”
The nuts were there, bare and vulnerable, and her knee was ready, too. The only problem was, she was facing the wrong way around, and likely to stay that way.
What now, Mother? she wailed silently.
“Now show me the way out of here.” His growling voice was the most frightening thing Summer had ever heard. In an instant her mother’s smiling image vanished. In one hand he clutched the scalpel; the other was imbedded in her hair. Even if she had been foolhardy enough to brave, by struggling, the threat of having her throat cut, she couldn’t have broken away from him. Her hair was wrapped around his fist so tightly that it hurt.
If she’d gotten the boyish haircut that common sense—and her mother—had urged her to adopt for the summer, he wouldn’t have been able to tether her so effectively, she reflected bitterly. But no, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with her one remaining vanity—her shoulder blade-length hair. What price vanity now?
“Move,” he ordered. Swallowing, Summer moved.
Mindful that his delusionary “they,” whoever they were, were supposedly out back, she led him toward the front door. He stayed right on her heels as she moved out of the embalming room and down the back corridor. At that hall’s junction with the main hall, he jerked her to a stop, pulling her against his body with a yank on her hair so unexpected that it made her bite her tongue. Heart thudding, eyes watering from the pain, Summer nevertheless stood meekly in his hold. The knowledge of his nakedness was, in its o
wn way, as intimidating as the scalpel. Being held so close against him made her skin crawl. Though she could see nothing of him beyond the occasional glimpse of broad, bruised shoulders and blood-streaked, hard-muscled bare arms, she could feel him, everywhere. He wasn’t a lot taller than she was—maybe a hair under six feet—but, God, he was broad. And he felt strong.
He was tense, seeming to test the air almost like a dog.
What kind of creature was he? Was he even human? Visions of vampires and werewolves and zombies careened lightning-fast through Summer’s mind. Which was stupid, she told herself fiercely. Of course he was human. He was just a man. A violent, cruel man clutching a scalpel with which he had threatened to cut her throat. The stark truth made her mouth go dry. It was a toss-up, but on the whole she thought she would prefer a vampire or his brethren.
Panic threatened to swamp her again. Summer squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, God, was she going to die tonight? She wasn’t ready to die.
“Move.”
Opening her eyes, Summer obeyed. With every step she took along the plush center hallway, her fear increased. What would happen when she led him outside? Foolish to hope he would simply let her go.
“Please …” she whispered as they reached the front door. He loomed close behind her, his harsh breathing swooshing past her cheek, stirring the few strands of her hair that had eluded his hold. His breath smelled stale.
Daring to glance over her shoulder, Summer immediately wished she had not. In the bright light of the overhead chandelier, the apparition that met her gaze was as frightful as anything Stephen King could have conjured up: Frankenstein’s monster in shades of purple instead of green, the face so hideously distorted by bruising and swelling that the humanity of his features was almost obscured. His mouth was twice the size of a normal mouth, skewed down and to the left, with a line of dried blood snaking down from the left corner. His nose was huge and misshapen, the nostrils ringed with dried blood. More blood, black and crusty, was smeared across his cheeks and chin. The left side of his forehead down to the bridge of his nose was so purple, it was almost black, and the area around his left eye had swelled into a big puffy mask of discolored flesh that reduced that eye to little more than a slit. His right eye wasn’t a lot better; it wasn’t as discolored as the left, but it seemed to be swollen completely shut. She was surprised that he could even see.
He could. He was glaring at her, and the menace in that one viable eye was the most terrifying thing she had ever encountered. If she had ever had any doubts that he could, and would, kill her without a second thought, they vanished when she met his gaze.
“If you screw me over …” He didn’t finish the almost whispered threat. He didn’t have to. The scalpel pressed against her pulse again, harder than before, and for an instant, a hideous instant, she thought he would slice her throat there and then and be done with it.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Her shaky answer was met with a grunt and the shifting of the scalpel so that it no longer touched her skin. The large, blunt-fingered hand holding it moved to rest on her right shoulder. From the corner of her eye, she could still see its gleaming silver threat.
“Open the door,” he said, and she did, because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. For a moment they stood poised together in the doorway. His naked body pressed against her back, her buttocks. She could feel the bulge of his genitals against her hip, and barely managed to repress a shudder. His grip on her hair tightened as he seemed to listen.
Outside, the night was alive with the hum of cicadas. This was the year for them, of course. They crawled out of the ground every seventeen years, and this was the summer that Murfreesboro got lucky. After the soft hush inside, to be greeted by the endless low chirring sound they made was oddly comforting. It was good to know that there were other normal living creatures in the dark.
“That your car?”
Her car, a used Célica hatchback, was parked to the right of the entrance. As it was the only car in the vast parking lot, it hadn’t required a feat of genius for him to figure out that it belonged to her. Apparently he realized that, too, because he didn’t even wait for her weak nod before pushing her toward it.
The door clicked shut behind them, snuffing out the last sliver of artificial light. The only illumination now was provided by the moon, which was hidden from her sight by the ring of tall pines around the mortuary. A scattering of stars twinkled with incongruous cheeriness against the inky black of the predawn sky. A soft wind, warm and redolent with the scent of the pines, caressed her face. From underfoot, a low crunching sound marked their progress. The thousands of cicadas celebrated their rite of passage by shedding their skins, and the dried, brittle shells littered the ground like leaves in autumn. The feel of them shattering beneath her bare foot was unpleasant.
Briefly, uselessly, Summer mourned the shoe left behind in the embalming room. Would its absence slow her down should she get a chance to run? She dismissed that thought with the contempt it deserved. If necessary, she would sprint barefoot over broken glass to escape the monster who held her hostage.
“Get in.”
They had reached her car, and with those words he thrust her against the passenger-side door, which was closed. Her hip made painful contact with the jutting handle before her fingers could grab hold and lift.
Nothing happened.
For an awful second that seemed to stretch as long as all eternity, Summer measured the size and scope of the acute danger in which she now found herself.
“Are you deaf? I said get in.”
“It’s locked.”
“What?”
“It’s locked.”
“Unlock it, then.”
“I—I don’t have the keys.” Her voice quavered.
“You don’t have the keys? Where the hell are they?”
“Inside. In m-my purse. By the door.”
He swore, filthy and threatening strings of oaths that were no less chilling because their low volume made them largely unintelligible. Summer didn’t even try to decipher most of the abuse he hissed at her as he dragged her back toward the mortuary. Stumbling in his wake, bent almost double by his grip on her hair, Summer tasted terror. It was sour on her tongue, like vinegar.
She heard, rather than saw, the click as he tried and failed to turn the front-door knob. Click, click, click, click …
“This door’s locked too.”
Summer cringed.
“Tell me you don’t have a key. Tell me the goddamned door’s locked and you don’t have a key. Tell me that the key to this door, and the keys to your car, are locked inside this goddamned building. Tell me. I dare you.”
He had the situation summed up in a nutshell, but not for all the world would Summer have admitted it. She didn’t need to. He took her silence for the assent it was and let loose with a sound that was a cross between a growl and a snarl and put the fear of God into her.
“I’m sorry! Please …” she babbled as he jerked her upright so that they were suddenly eyeball to fearsome eyeball. Murder was written on his distorted face.
The bright glare of headlights sliced through the darkness. A vehicle was turning into the private lane that led to the mortuary’s parking lot. Summer felt a wave of thankfulness so intense that it weakened her knees. Saved, she was saved.
“Shit.”
Not so fast. Deliverance was snatched from her grasp even as she embraced it. He ran, with a heavy, lumbering, almost crablike lope indicating, she hoped, that his left leg might be severely injured, around the corner of the building and dragged her with him by her accursed hair.
As she stumbled in his wake, the two of them barely ahead of the pursuing headlights, a scream died in her throat without ever making it past her lips. His grip on her hair was unbreakable—and he still clutched the scalpel in his right fist.
“Make a sound and die.” Having reached safety, he flung himself against the building’s brick wall and jerked Summer with him
, her back to his chest. His right arm locked around her waist. She imagined that the scalpel nestled somewhere beneath her left breast. Close to her heart.
His body heaved with each breath he drew. She was panting too, from terror. Sweat poured off him. His skin was damp with it. The odor he gave off was not pleasant.
“Do you have on a bra?”
“What?” The guttural question so surprised Summer that she answered in a near-normal voice.
“Do you have on a bra?”
Summer nodded faintly. From the front of the building came the swoosh of tires on pavement, and then the faint squeal of brakes. Thank God, someone was there.
“Take it off. Take off your shirt and take off your bra and do it now.”
The fierceness of the command, accompanied by the shifting of the scalpel from beneath her breast to the pulse below her ear, spurred Summer into complying without question. He meant it. There was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that he would kill her that exact second if she did not do as he ordered, or if she impeded him in any way. Hands shaking, she fumbled at the buttons at the front of her blouse, afraid to even speculate on what he meant to do when it was off. Surely, surely, he did not intend rape. She didn’t think he intended rape. Despite his overpowering nakedness, sexual assault seemed to be the last thing on his mind.
“Hurry.”
Summer tried, but dread made her fingers clumsy. She still had two buttons to go when he grew tired of waiting. Untangling his hand from her hair with an impatient jerk that made her grit her teeth against the pain, he grabbed hold of her blouse by the back of the collar and yanked it off her. The thin nylon gave with a soft ripping sound, and the remaining buttons shot into space.
The sheer unexpectedness of it made Summer gasp. Instinctively she crossed her arms over her chest. His hands were already at her back, clawing for the fastenings of her bra. When he could not find it, muttered curses intermingled with threats singed her ears.
Feeling as if she were trapped in a nightmare, Summer lifted her unsteady hands to undo the hook-and-eye closure between her breasts. At this point, she was willing to do anything necessary to appease him.
Walking After Midnight Page 3