All I could think of was getting Aliena out of there.
Hamilton called for backup. He gave Gonzales the breakdown, told him to get a warrant, and to bring it to him personally.
“Pronto,” he said. He hung up and dialed another number as I slammed on the brakes, turned the car off, and leaped out.
“Five minutes!” he shouted.
I jumped over the porch steps and pushed into the house, heading for the atrium. A trail of blood spattered the floor. Had he already killed Aliena? I ran through the glass-topped room, the rows of trees on either side of me a blur, and flung open the doors to the dungeon-like chamber.
Aliena still rested under the mosquito net, head up, eyes open.
“Sebastian!”
I ran to her, looking for Kanga. The trail of blood led to his body, which lay slumped in the chair behind his desk. I eyed him warily. He remained unmoving.
When I reached Aliena, I kicked the jujus and artifacts away, got down on hands and knees, and smeared the chalk symbols Kanga had drawn on the floor around her. Ripping the net away, I took her head in my hands.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I kissed her, tears rolling down my face. “Oh, my darling, I was so scared. Can you do your vampire stuff now?”
Her arms were still chained behind her back. She flexed her shoulders and broke out of the shackles easily.
I pulled her to me and kissed her until she pushed me away.
“Hand me my clothes, you cad,” she said. I reached over and grabbed the little pile. She took it. I ran my hand through her hair and kissed her forehead.
I stood and crossed the room to Kanga.
The Sorcerer Who Would Rule the World definitely inhabited his earthbound body. Not that it was doing him any good. He had become a human sieve, with blood oozing from hundreds of punctures. I stepped to his side of the desk, sat on the edge. He scrabbled at the wood. His bloody hand rested next to my thigh. He was attempting to pull himself forward. His mouth worked, and he was staring at something.
The only thing sitting on the desk was an inhaler. I picked it up. His eyes followed my hand as I lifted it to my lips and took a shot. My body tingled in a familiar manner.
“Ah,” I said. “A pick-me-up. Feels like it could rejuvenate anyone, no matter how bad the injuries. How nice.” I pocketed the atomizer. “You won’t be needing that.”
He collapsed back into the chair.
Aliena came up, holding Kanga’s ceremonial knife. I hunted around in his desk until I found a stick of black chalk, then knelt on the floor and drew twisted pentagrams on either side of his chair, like the ones he had carved into the wood when he slaughtered Madame Leoni. I was careful to replicate them exactly.
Kanga tried to pitch himself out of the chair. Aliena planted her boot on his chest and pushed. He fell back sluggishly, his head listing to one side.
I held out my hand, and she gave me the knife.
“You promised me the kill,” she said.
“Together?”
She gave a short nod.
I showed Kanga the knife. He stared at it dully.
“And now we begin the mystical ceremony where I send you to hell,” I said. His eyes grew wide as he realized what I was about to do. He shook his head. I raised the dagger and leaned over him.
“No,” he moaned, a bubble of blood bursting from his lips.
I ripped him open, jerking the knife down, spilling his guts into his lap. Aliena reached into his rib cage and tore out his heart. Kanga’s mouth opened in a soundless scream of mortal agony. Aliena tilted her head and squeezed the bloody organ over her mouth, catching the dripping protein on her tongue. When she had wrung out the last drops, she tossed it aside.
I peered into Kanga’s eyes, watched them glaze. Blood leaked from his mouth. His body slumped, and his head tipped.
Aliena glanced at the pentagrams. “He’s where he belongs.”
We had sent Kanga to Nowhere, a small, tight world of white nothingness. His soul would reside there for eternity. Only Aliena or I could release him.
“You realize we control his spirit now?” I asked.
“Yes. If he wasn’t dead, I would order him to kill himself.”
Forty-Six
Friday, December 24, 8:22 p.m.
I wiped the ceremonial dagger carefully with my tattered handkerchief, pressed the fingers and palm of Kanga’s right hand to the carved grip, then dropped it on the floor next to the chair. I would have preferred to take it with me, but it was the murder weapon in four homicides.
“Let’s go, Sebastian,” Aliena said.
“One moment more.”
Taking her hand, I led her to the side of the fireplace where that odd cylindrical object stood. The circular pad on the front glowed orange. Behind the glass, shadows swirled.
“What is it?” Aliena asked.
“I think I know.”
The control panel was a combination lock with a keypad of ten numbers. Figuring out the code would be time-consuming.
“Come on.” After we moved back a few steps, I pulled the Walther, sighted at the pad, and fired twice. The panel shattered. The sound of escaping gas filled the room. The thick silver band around the top slid down.
Three entities swirled out of the opening. They cruised along the ceiling, stopped, and hovered above us. They began to descend.
“Sebastian . . .” Aliena said.
I pulled her close. “It’s okay.”
The three spirits entered our bodies. As I suspected, they were the murdered girls, Sherri, Jessica, and Amanda. When they “spoke” to me, one message rose joyfully above the rest.
Thank you.
The freed souls slowly departed, sliding out and floating away. All of them were going home and had loved ones waiting for them.
Aliena hugged me. “Oh, Sebastian, they were so happy. Thank God you knew. If we had left them there . . . that would have been awful.”
Pounding footsteps approached. Hamilton came running in, gun drawn.
“What the hell?” he shouted. “Who’s firing?”
“It’s okay, Steve, it was me.” I gestured at the cylinder. “Kanga was keeping the girls’ souls in that. I had to shoot the lock off to release them.”
He put his gun away and rubbed his face. “I guess that’s okay.” He looked at Kanga’s inert, bloody form. “Jesus. Dead?”
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked Aliena.
“I’m fine now,” she said, holding on to my arm.
“You’ll need to be checked out medically and—”
“No!” Aliena said.
“You’re a kidnap victim, and a witness to the death of the Voodoo Killer. I can’t just let you go, Aliena, you know that.”
“You don’t have to,” I told him. “I’m taking her. Now, before anyone else gets here.” Aliena and I hustled across the room and out the doors.
Hamilton chased us, shouting.
“You can’t just leave the scene! Sebastian! Hey, listen to me! You guys can’t just walk out of here!”
Aliena and I were already outside and sprinting to the car, she maintaining a normal human speed. Sirens wailed in the distance. Ten meters from the Maserati, I chirped the doors open, and Aliena jumped in. I opened my door. Hamilton stopped on the passenger side of the car, glaring at Aliena through the window. I leaned on the top.
“No one would believe our version of what happened tonight, you know that,” I told him. “In a couple of weeks, you may not even believe it happened.”
“I doubt that.” He put his hands on his hips. “What the hell am I supposed to do then?”
“Tell them what they want to hear. And look on the bright side. You’re a hero. A case like this comes two or three times a century.” I shook my keys at him. “We’ll watch you on TV tonight.”
I jumped in and sped out of there.
I turned onto Latigo Canyon less than an hour later. The dar
k night had grown December cold, with a slow but sharp wind. Once Aliena and I were inside, I went to the fireplace and built up the logs. A long match got the pile burning in several places before I put the grate back in place.
“There we go.”
Aliena stood in the middle of the living room. Her arms were wound tightly across her chest, hands gripping her elbows. She shook uncontrollably. I went to her.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God, Sebastian, he had me. He could do anything he wanted. I’ve never been so scared in my life, oh, God!” She pulled me close, shivers wracking her body.
“It’s okay.” I stroked her beautiful golden hair. “He’s gone. Forever. We saw to that ourselves.”
She sobbed quietly. I held her for a long time while the logs sizzled and popped.
11:59 p.m.
We reclined on the couch, both of us smelling of soap and shampoo. Aliena leaned against me, her head on my shoulder.
I pointed the remote at the big screen and switched to Eyewitness News. The top feature was the death of the Voodoo Killer.
“In a breaking story this Christmas Eve, police have found the man known as the Voodoo Killer dead in his home. We go to the scene now, and Virginia Sanchez.”
The camera cut to an exterior shot of the white Spanish colonial. Aliena scrunched against me, trembling. Sanchez stood in a sea of police cars and official city vehicles.
“Thank you, Connie,” she said. “Amid the chaos of the crime scene surrounding the death of the most notorious murderer in decades, some facts have emerged already.”
The video cut to the ME’s technicians rolling out a gurney.
“The man’s name was Karnall Kanga, a scientist working for a small pharmaceutical company. Tonight, he alerted detectives to his whereabouts, saying he wanted to give himself up. Before police could arrive, he took his own life.”
The video cut to her standing with Hamilton.
“Detective Hamilton, you have been the lead on this investigation since the beginning. Who did the Voodoo Killer call tonight?”
“Me,” Hamilton said.
“Can you tell us what he said to you?”
“Mr. Kanga indicated that he wished to surrender to us and provided me with this address.”
“And when you got here . . .”
“There was nothing we could do. We attempted resuscitation, but he was gone.”
“How did he kill himself?” Sanchez asked.
“I’m sorry, I am not at liberty to say,” Hamilton replied.
The reporter turned to the camera, which zoomed in on her.
“Detective Hamilton and the men and women of the LAPD have given all of us Angelenos a reason to celebrate this holiday season. In West Hollywood, I’m Virginia Sanchez, Eyewitness News.”
I turned the set off, stood, held my hand out to Aliena. “Come. Let’s sit on the patio.” She unwound off the couch. I plugged in the lights on the Christmas tree, plucked a long, thin box out from under the branches, and slid it in my pocket.
We lay side by side on the chaise lounges, gazing at the stars. She reached over and took my hand.
The stunning speed of current events still had my mind in a whirl, and bright pictures blinked: Madame Leoni’s open mouth as she dissolved into nothing, the Key of Akasha descending into the inferno of the Records, the lobby of the Knickerbocker.
Most of all, James’s face. Not the way he had looked when Guthbert stabbed him, but the seraphic boy who had slept between Marguerite and me. For him I hunted killers, because I had failed in my duty to protect him.
I wondered if Aliena suffered from shock after what had happened. Shock included a physical reaction in humans, and she did not have that metabolism, but being held captive had a strong psychological element as well.
“Did you enjoy killing Kanga tonight?” she asked.
“Yes. I wanted to do it.”
“Does it ever give you a thrill to kill someone?”
She had told me before that she loved the hunt, the final act, the sensual experience of clutching a body close, the hot salty blood spilling over her tongue. I tried to compare my feelings to hers.
“Sometimes,” I said. Killing a human being was rarely fun. It was often a necessary function, though, like putting down a rabid dog or inoculating the body against a virus.
“He stripped me,” she said. “I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. He took away every bit of power I have enjoyed for three centuries and made me as vulnerable as any of his human victims. It has been so long since I was a mortal. I had forgotten what it feels like to be so weak.”
We lay in silence for a few minutes.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked.
“Yes. Now that he’s dead, and I was the one who ripped his heart from his body, yes, I’m fine.”
I took the slim box out of my pocket and handed it over to her. She took it and laughed delightedly when she saw the wrapping paper.
“My Christmas present?”
“One of them.”
She tore the tape away and clicked the wooden box open.
“Oh, it’s lovely, Sebastian.” It was a plain necklace of silver, with a crystal heart pendant.
I sat up and took the necklace from her. She turned and held her hair up. Once I had clasped it, she turned around.
“How does it look?”
“It would look better without that amulet,” I said, reaching for the charmed stone, but she pushed my hand away.
“No. I’m leaving this on for now.”
I took her hands. “He’s gone, sweetheart. The way we killed him . . . he is never coming back.”
“I know, but I want to wait for a little while.” She studied me. “Do you know what happened to the Key of Akasha?”
I had been in such pain after the explosion and so desperate to get back to my physical body, I had forgotten all about the key. “It must have been destroyed in the eruption of the Akashic Records,” I said without thinking.
Aliena shook her head. “No, you can’t destroy something like that.”
She was right.
“I didn’t see what happened to it, no. I will have to journey to the ether again and visit the Knickerbocker. It may still be on the roof.”
“When you have found it, I will remove the amulet.”
We lay back down and watched the cosmos spinning above, holding hands, occasionally murmuring to each other.
When the sky began to lighten in the east, my heart rate accelerated. I had been waiting to ask the question that had been on my mind since taking her from Kanga. It was now or never.
“Aliena, darling, will you stay here today? Please? Just for today. So I know where you are and that you’re safe. Please, darling.”
She stroked my cheek with an icy hand.
“Yes. I want to stay today. You make me feel very safe.”
I clasped her hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Come on then. It’s getting light.”
We went inside and closed the windows. I leaned down to remove some of the fetishized artifacts from the sill when her voice stopped me.
“No. Leave those there.”
“Of course.” I set the jujus down, walked over to her, and took her cold hands in mine. “There is nothing to worry about,” I said. “I will watch over you.”
“You will protect me?”
Gazing at her golden hair and her wide, dark eyes, the fine arch of her eyebrows and the full lips, I knew any man on the planet would tell her he would protect her—or do anything else she asked. I put my arms around her and pulled her close playfully. “I will watch you every single moment, if that is what you desire.”
Her mouth twitched. She gave me a severe glare. “You won’t undress me, will you? Stare at me with no clothes on? Maybe, you know, fondle my body when I’m asleep?”
“I only said I would watch over you,” I replied, acting perplexed. “As to your delectable body, if I get bored . . . what’s the matter, anyway? You have undressed down
to nothing in front of me many times.”
“I was awake then. I knew what I was doing.”
“Teasing me.”
Her tinkling laugh. “Yes, very well, I know the effect my naked body has on your senses.”
“All naked bodies as beautiful as yours have that effect on my senses. Just because—”
She covered my mouth with her hand. “Don’t say that, Sebastian, not to me. Do not say there are other bodies as beautiful as mine. I am your special one. I always will be.”
“Yes,” I said, scooping her into my arms and carrying her to her room. “You are my special one. There could never be another.” I dropped her unceremoniously on the bed and tossed the Bugs Bunny pajamas next to her. She giggled.
“I don’t really wear them, you know.” The rays of the nearly risen sun filtered through the open door. She did not have much time awake. If she did not drink my blood, she would be comatose already.
“I will come in later to check on you. Around noon, I think.”
“To see me naked? Haven’t you seen enough naked women in your life, Sebastian? You have lived four hundred years longer than I! How many naked women does it take to satisfy you?”
“One more,” I said. “And it will always take one more.”
She stuck out her tongue at me and began stripping off her clothes. She did it slowly, the minx, giving me a long look at her glorious body, the ridiculous span of her hips. Then she threw on the pajamas and jumped into bed, pulling the covers to her neck. She pressed her head into the pillow.
“Now give me a good morning kiss,” she said, holding her arms out to me. “And hurry. I can’t keep my eyes open much longer.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. Aliena wrapped her arms around my neck with a devilish smile and sighed, watching me with heavy-lidded eyes.
I ran my hand through her soft, golden hair. “My darling one.” I leaned over.
Our lips explored; our tongues danced. She had my lower lip between her teeth when her arms slackened on my shoulders and fell onto the quilt.
I straightened, tucked her cold hands under the blanket, gave her mole a light kiss.
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