by Stacy Gail
One thing she knew—her mother hadn’t raised a fool.
“Nikita.”
Her heart froze. In the process of tying the plastic bag’s handles together, Nikita turned stiffly, like a marionette whose strings had tangled, toward a voice she knew she couldn’t possibly be hearing. Her stomach quivered, her mind flinched away in instant denial, and reality turned inside out as she came face to face with her mother.
Chapter Twelve
“Mama?” Nikita hadn’t meant to speak. To call out to a dead woman was insane. To see a dead woman standing no more than a few feet away, smiling in welcome and happy acceptance that had always glowed in her dark eyes, was lunacy.
This couldn’t be.
This shouldn’t be.
“Ah, Nikita. Look at you, all grown up.” That light in the chocolate-brown eyes she remembered reached out to twine around her consciousness until it was all she could see. “I knew you would be such a beauty. A beauty worthy of having the world at her feet. You make your mama so proud.”
Nikita shuddered while the words tore a jagged sound from some dark hole deep inside, that secret place she’d tried to hide even from herself. It was where she housed the hopeless yearning to hear her mother’s voice. To see her mother’s smile, a smile that meant everything was going to be all right.
To have the chance to say, one last time, I love you.
“Mama.” Nikita felt something spatter her cheeks, and at first she thought it was rain. Then she realized that after nearly two decades, the tears she’d never let fall were escaping at last. “Where... How can you be here? I saw you. I saw what happened to you. To everyone.” Again the screams rang in her ears, while that terrible feeling of something squeezing her consciousness twisted deeper. Her stomach somersaulted queasily as the dread and horror came back in a rush, as vivid as the day when her mother...had...had...
Died.
“You’re dead.” Shaking. Dear God, she was shaking so hard she didn’t know how much longer she could remain upright. “I saw you die. I screamed for you to come back. I screamed until I didn’t have any voice left. But you didn’t come back. You couldn’t.”
Her mother spread her arms wide, both a plea and a beckoning. “My bond with my only child isn’t so weak that it can just vanish. Don’t let the past confuse you, Nikita. Just believe that I’m here for you now.”
“But...” Memories of churning, endless water. Screams. Redness. It all jumbled together in one long ribbon of chaos. Feverishly she clamped her hands to her head before it could blow apart. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real.”
“Do you not love me anymore, mi hijita?”
“Don’t say that.” This time she couldn’t stop the flinch as her hold on sanity eroded, until she couldn’t remember what she was trying to hold on to. “Please, please don’t say that. I’ll always love you. Siempre...”
“My last word to you. You have it tattooed on your back now so you would never forget.” Again she held out her arms. Her smile was better than coming home. “Come, Nikita. Aren’t you happy to see me? Didn’t you miss me?”
“You’ll never know how much, Mama. I’ve been so alone without you.” The grief welled up like a poison that had no antidote, swamping the last of her reason. This was her mother, an answer to an old prayer, the one person she’d longed for with a futility that had crippled her in her younger years. She’d dreamed of this impossible moment for so long it had become a wound that had never fully healed
With a sob of tortured joy, she stepped into the awaiting embrace.
Icy coldness emanated from the inside out as the arms locked around her. While the yearning within her cried at last, at last, a strange alarm sounded through the layers of wanting to believe. Her mother’s embrace had always been warm, loving. It had never failed to chase the bad things away.
But this was...different.
Something’s wrong.
Her mother had spoken English. After shutting out every piece of the nightmare that had come from leaving Cuba, Nikita had buried herself in her new life so ferociously that for well over a decade she now thought—even dreamed—in English. It was now so much a part of her that at first it didn’t even register her mother had spoken perfect, unaccented English.
Her mother hadn’t known one word of English.
And the tattoo was an addition Nikita had gotten on the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death. It was an oath to never forget how her mother had sacrificed herself. Nikita had marked herself because she had started to forget—what her mother looked like, smelled like, all the love she had brought into Nikita’s life. And how Nikita had selfishly taken life from her.
There was no way her mother could know about that tattoo.
There was no way she could be standing there, period.
Something’s wrong. Do something!
The frigid sensation spread, and suddenly she realized the arms around her were not embracing her. They were crushing her. Nikita’s eyes widened as the air pushed out of her lungs and her bones ground together. The confused grief and bittersweet joy blanketing her brain vanished under a wave of brutal pain, and with a jagged gasp she struggled against the thing holding her.
“I lied about being proud of you, Nikita,” crooned her mother’s voice as the arms around her became viselike. “Quite frankly the sight of you sickens me and I wish you’d never been born. You know that, right? We both know I’d still be alive if it weren’t for you.”
Every nerve in her body spasmed with pain at the sucker-punch. “Mama, what—”
“There we were in the ocean and you, you selfish little brat, wouldn’t let me get on top of that cooler with you. I became fish food because of you, you fucking little bitch.”
The horror of guilt gushed forward to overtake the waves of pain. “No.”
“Yes. And you’ve always known it. Deep down you knew you were the one who killed me. Murderer.”
Grief-tainted guilt stabbed at her with each razor-sharp word until she was certain she was bleeding to death inside. “Mama, please...you put me up on that cooler—”
“And then you didn’t do the same for me, did you? Don’t think I don’t know that was the real reason why you didn’t talk for so long when you were saved. Everyone cooed and fawned over you—poor little traumatized girl, such a delicate flower, so crushed by tragedy. What a laugh. The real reason you didn’t open that mouth of yours was because you were afraid the ugly truth would fall out. So you kept everything inside. But I know. I know what you did to me, killer. Now it’s time for you to pay for your unforgivable sins.”
Something shattered within Nikita, and it was the shredding of the fragile world she had pieced together for herself over the years. Her mother had put her up on that cooler, yes. But the one time she’d tried to join Nikita up on top of it, it had upended them both into the water. In that moment it had been sickeningly clear—one could survive. Not two.
With all the redness in the water, Nikita had made sure she had been that one.
“Mama. I’m...sorry.” Black despair gushed out of the wounds she’d hidden away, a cancerous festering that was as hideous as her true self. Darkness claimed every corner of her, devouring her from within. She deserved to be devoured. After so many years of living on borrowed time, the truth of her self-centered grasp for life had at last caught up to swallow her whole.
The crushing arms suddenly whipped her around. Through the twisted black edging her world and the tears of hopelessness clouding her eyes, she saw a man approaching from a car parked farther down the track. She stared, not believing, as the man’s identity swam to the fractured surface of her mind.
What the hell...?
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Paul Hardy’s unshaven, ravaged-pretty face looked almost mournful as he closed the distance separating them. His unplea
sant scent was stronger than ever—sex and dirt and sweat. It was as if bathing was no longer a part of his life. “It’s so goddamn awful when they come back to life like that. I want you to know I didn’t want this for you. I’d swear on my honor on that...if I had any honor, that is. You seemed nice. I’ve never really known nice, but you seemed like a person who lived there.”
Lived in nice? Come back to life? She shook her head, unable to make sense of his words. “What’s happening?” She couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t stop anything. There was screaming going on somewhere inside her, and if she ever let it out it would last forever. “What’s happening?”
“I’m not sure.” For a moment Paul looked lost. Broken. As broken as she felt. “There are things that are real, and things that are not. But the tricky trick of all the tricks is this—you have to know which is which.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
“Everything that’s real, isn’t. Everything I believed to be impossible, is true. The dead come back to torture us even more than when they were alive. There’s no such thing as love, and we’re all monsters wearing human skin suits.”
At last the answer hit her. “Oh. You’re insane.”
“Yeah. I know.” Nothing but sad resignation sighed through Paul’s admission before he glanced past her shoulder. “Will this make you go away, Dad? For real this time?”
Dad? What...?
“Yes, son. This last one will make me go away from your side forever.”
The unfamiliar male voice made Nikita jump under the harsh hands that still held her. She jerked her head around to see the severe, iron-haired image of Senator Floyd Hardy. A squeal of shock and terror left her as she shrank back from the person who held her—the person who, only seconds ago, had been her mother.
No, no, no...
“Hey, that’s funny. I felt the same way when I saw him.” Paul stepped closer, and there was a world of understanding in his mad eyes as he lifted a hand to her neck. “See, I killed my grandpa when I was a kid—just got tired of being that horny bastard’s anytime-whore, you know? When I pushed him down the stairs, I’d thought the time of wearing my knees as earmuffs was finally over. But then he came back. Can you fucking believe it? Do you know what it’s like to have your own personal demon come back to torture you all over again?”
Her thoughts flashed to her mother, her sweet mother who shouldn’t have died, and she closed her eyes before she could see if the thing holding her had changed back. “Yes.”
The thing that had been her mother and was now Floyd Hardy made a sound of disdain. “Always the victim, aren’t you, Paul? Protest all you want, but it won’t change anything. We both know you revel in being a whore.”
A savage growl ripped out of Paul. “Shut up.”
“Think of all those disgraceful sins you delighted in throwing in my face throughout the years, Paul. At your core, you’re nothing more than a filthy pervert. Don’t forget, when I came over to your house two nights ago, I saw you in all your dubious glory. My son—my pride and joy—proven to be nothing more than a pill-popping slut, begging for anything you could get when I found you in that debauched party of yours.”
“And that’s why I had to kill you too, Dad. As usual, you wouldn’t listen, you wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t help me, so you had to die. But you came back too, just like Grandpa. Even after I buried your body in my backyard, you still came back.” He looked to Nikita, distressed and bewildered. “Why do they keep coming back? Am I not killing them hard enough?”
“You should try again,” Floyd suggested, his voice suddenly soothing, as if encouraging a toddler to take his first steps without holding onto anything. “I’ve already promised I’ll go away if you do it right this time around. But you have to prove you’re not the amoral little pansy I’ve always thought you were. Prove it, son. Show me you can kill one more time, and do it so spectacularly you’ll be sure she stays dead.”
“Okay.” Paul shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way before he clamped his other hand around Nikita’s throat. “Just so you know...this isn’t personal, lovely. I really did want to fuck you. But I have to get rid of this bastard once and for all, and I can always fuck you after you’re dead, right? So that’ll be fun for us. Just do me a favor, if you don’t mind. Stay dead. Please.”
Survival instinct pierced like a knife through the hazy shroud of madness engulfing her mind. She knew better than most that she had between ten and twenty seconds of full lucidity in a choke hold before the brain began to shut down. The hands that held her did nothing to prevent her knee from rocketing up into Paul’s crotch, then as he curled in agony with a harsh groan, she head-butted him hard enough for her to see stars, and for his nose to explode like a balloon full of blood.
As Paul fell, she kicked out one last time and felt something crunch in his ribs. He didn’t make another sound as he hit the dirt, which told her he was out, if only for the moment. The hands loosened on her without warning and she wrenched away, only to have a scream back up in her throat.
The person who had held her had no face.
For just an instant there was absolutely nothing there, as blank as a mannequin that had yet to be molded to resemble anything human. Then in a blink of an eye her mother was back, her dark eyes full of sorrow and disappointment, and something in Nikita’s head twisted, and twisted.
Oh God, she was breaking inside.
“Nikita. Come to me. If you ever loved me, you can show that to me now by—”
“Stay away from me, you thing!” At last the scream that had been bottled up burst forth loud enough to startle the birds out of the trees. But she didn’t hear them, didn’t see them as she turned and hurtled away from her mother and ran for her life. For her sanity. Escape. Escape, escape, escape.
But she could never outrun the truth.
“Nikita!”
Hard-packed sand, rock and beach detritus pounded beneath her feet, the whistle of the wind in her ears competing with the frenzied thunder of her heart. For the first time in her life, she knew, beyond all doubt, it truly was possible for a person to be frightened to death.
Murderer.
You killed me.
I’m dead because of you.
I wish you’d never been born.
How familiar those words were. During the hell that had been the aftermath of leaving Cuba, they were the suspicions that had crowded her head until it was impossible to think of anything else. Feel anything else. Those agonizing thoughts had buried her so completely they’d crushed even her desire to speak. The only way she’d been able to get out from under the crippling weight of those thoughts was to shut down. If you felt nothing, you suffered nothing. The ability to not care, to purposely forget what love felt like, had been a matter of survival.
If she hadn’t shut down all emotions, she would have been destroyed by the belief that she’d...she’d...
Murdered her mother.
Oh God, she’d murdered her mother. Yes. Her mother believed it, so it must be true. There could be no forgiveness for the life she’d lived all these—
“Nikita!”
Something large and far stronger than her grabbed her by the shoulder. With her wild stride broken, she spun with an incoherent scream and flailed her fists toward her assailant, using every trick in the book to escape. Paul Hardy was a killer, as desperate as she was to escape his victims. He’d kill her too if she didn’t kill him first. And heaven knew she was capable of killing, because...
She’d taken her mother’s life.
“Nikita, stop it! Stop!”
Stop. She had to make it all stop. The agony inside was unbearable. Maybe if she tore the world down it would crush her like she deserved. She lashed out in hopeless fury, not hearing the screams coming from her, as they had that day when her heart of hearts
had died along with her mother. Because she’d killed her—
Without warning, there was a brilliant flash. Then nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
The setting sun colored the sky a sullen orange over the mangroves. The cacophony of what sounded like every frog in the state filled the air, while a lone snowy egret glided over the calm waters of Oleta River. Over the next day or so, other houseboats and watercraft would appear to lay anchor in preparation for the incoming tropical storm now known as Oscar, but for now Kyle’s was the only boat around. He was alone on the river, because concern over a storm wasn’t what had compelled him to pull up stakes. The one and only priority that burned like a fever in his brain was to get Nikita to a place where nothing could reach her.
But if Dantalion had already achieved full manifestation, there was no place on earth where he could hide her from the madness.
Ensconced in a chair by a mosquito-proof screened window, Kyle stared without blinking at the inert woman on his bed. The last thing he’d wanted to do was Tase her—or his own personal type of Tasing—but she’d given him no choice. He’d always known Nikita Tesoro could handle herself in a fight. But damn, she’d been cage-match dangerous in her need to either kill him or herself in her need to escape.
Escape what, he still didn’t know. After a quick burst of electricity from his palm had shocked her into unconsciousness, he’d followed her trail—bloody footprints and eventually her shoes that she’d run out of in obvious blind panic—only to find signs of a struggle at her car a quarter of a mile away from where he’d finally managed to catch her. There was a small spattering of what looked like blood, several scuffed footprints, and a man-sized handprint that proved at one point someone had been knocked in the dirt. But other than that, he had nothing.
Nothing, but a gnawing suspicion and a conscience drowning him in a sea of guilt.
He didn’t blink when his phone vibrated. Instead he gave it his best fuck you look. For the first time since finding Neo-Philim, he actually regretted the close ties he’d managed to build there. Yeah, there was an apocalypse to worry about. But texting every ten goddamn seconds to see if there was any news was wearing on his last nerve.