by Nancy Bush
His relief was so intense he sat frozen for several moments.
Then he came back to the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: whose was it? Who was doing this?
It almost seemed like someone wanted Gemma to be the prime suspect.
Halloween night was clear though scudding clouds shut out the moon and stars. Wolf sat in his truck and turned the cigarette pack over and over in one hand. He thought of the mother-witch and how she would light up, aware he was watching her, how she would slide him a sideways look, almost like she wanted him. But she was waiting for his brother. She let smoke drift lazily from an open mouth, enjoying that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Tonight he’d parked above the quarry but out of sight in between scrub oak and sumac. He’d come here because that’s where she’d come—the witch girl. To a ridge high above the quarry. He’d waited patiently for her outside the diner, idling the time watching little children trick-or-treating with their parents, and older kids running in packs, whooping and hollering and carrying loaded bags of candy.
He’d followed this one in her witch’s garb to a slightly run-down, two-story house. She’d been greeted by an older man, whom Wolf now knew was her father. She treated him with disinterest, almost disdain. Wolf could hear the old man demanding to know where she was going. He didn’t much like that she was leaving with “that no-good Halberton boy.” Wolf had parked on the road in front of the house, his truck wedged between two other vehicles, a beat-up Ford Explorer and an old black, now gray, Dodge Monaco. His truck and GemTop fit right in.
That “no-good Halberton boy” had showed up driving a souped-up green Camaro with no muffler. He got out of the car, his jeans so loose they about fell off his hips. He had a scrubby goatee and a buzz cut that had grown out about an inch. The wolf saw a tattoo of some kind on the back of his neck, just visible above the collar of his brown leather jacket.
There was something about him that reminded him of his brother. He could almost hear Ezekiel’s voice.
“Call me EZ,” he said. “Like nice and easy. I’m a lover, not a hater.”
“But you’re always yelling,” the wolf said, wanting to understand, desperate to learn from him.
“When am I yelling?”
“When you fuck our mother.”
“Shut your stinking mouth!” EZ had grabbed him by the throat, surprising him. “We don’t fuck, okay.
She’s a witch. A witch! She has powers and she needs me.”
“She’s a witch…” he had repeated.
“She comes from those people,” EZ whispered. “Those women who live alone. One of them fucked an Injun and that’s where she came from. They killed that Injun boy. Smashed his head in with a rock. She told me. And they left her with his tribe but the tribe didn’t want her ’cause she was a witch. So they left her on a large, smooth rock and they went away.”
“Where?” Wolf asked.
He waved vaguely. “South. They were tired of their young men mixing with the witches, so they left. But she’s not the only one. There are more.”
The wolf had absorbed the lore.
“She uses me,” EZ said. “I can’t stop. I won’t.” But the look on his face was full of torture.
“Why won’t she take me instead?” the wolf asked.
“Because you’re not smart,” EZ had stated. “Whoever your daddy was was a moron, not like mine. Mine was a doctor. He was supposed to treat her, but he fell under her spell.”
“Then I’ll kill her,” the wolf said soberly.
“Don’t be a damn idiot.” EZ snorted. “She can’t be killed. She sucks out your life force.”
But the wolf knew he could kill her. From that day forward he determined she would die. He would fuck her himself and then send her to hell. And he would find those other witches and take them, too.
But one of them had gotten to EZ first. He was close to finding her but these other ones had to go, too. He had a sense of time running out. Of being unable to fulfill his destiny, of ridding the world of them. But he would take this one, and his brother’s murderer. That he could do.
She came out of the house in new clothes. A short black skirt which flashed bare legs above shiny black boots and a red jacket. She’d scrubbed herself clean of the hag makeup and now she looked like a little whore.
She kissed the scraggly-bearded boy and jumped in the passenger side of his Camaro. The wolf let them get ahead of him and then followed them to the ridge. He stayed well back. He saw them park and the whore-witch jumped on top of that no good Halberton boy and they were wrestling in the front seat, ripping at each other’s clothes. The wolf now understood they’d chosen this spot above the quarry on purpose. That this was a prime spot for sex.
He felt himself go hard. He didn’t want them to have sex. He wanted to stop them now. But there was still some traffic. Still some Halloween activity, although the whore-witch and her boy didn’t care. Another car drove by and cat-called at them.
He had to let them go at it.
It didn’t matter.
She would be his.
He saw her in his mind in her pale blue uniform. The same color as the mother-witch’s.
He turned the cigarette pack over and over, tapping it against his thigh.
The phone rang and Gemma’s eyes snapped open. She’d fallen asleep fully clothed on her bed, reading about DID. And then she’d been dreaming about Will Tanninger and the images that crossed her mind brought on a slow blush as she shook off the remnants of sleep. Glancing out the window she saw that night had fallen while she’d indulged in her fantasy. At that same moment, her doorbell rang and she hurried downstairs, grabbing up the phone as she headed to the front porch.
“Hello,” she said into the receiver. Through the side windows she thought she saw trick-or-treaters. Some black material floated on a breezy upsurge.
“Gemma? It’s Vera Weatherford. I know I said Tim always comes home but he didn’t last night. I was wondering if I could call that detective you were with?”
Gemma snapped to attention. “I’ll call him. Do you have any idea where Tim might have gone?”
“Um…maybe the quarry?”
Back to Lover’s Lane. Gemma wondered if he’d tried to coerce a different woman besides herself to join him there. “I’ll call Detective Tanninger and we’ll go look for him,” Gemma promised.
“Bless you,” Vera said.
Gemma was distracted as she opened the door. For a moment she stared at the young visitor in the Batman suit. “Charlotte?” she said.
“Batman,” Charlotte said from behind the mask, her voice faintly distorted. “Although some people think I’m Bruce Wayne.”
The headlights of the car parked at the end of her drive, where the clearing gave way to her house, flashed at her twice. Macie. “Well…just a minute, Bruce.”
“Batman,” she corrected.
“I’ve got to get some bat food. You can step inside, if you like. It’s in the kitchen.”
Gemma hurried to a cupboard where she’d purchased one bag of tiny Snickers bars. She’d done it on a whim because she seldom received trick-or-treaters. Snagging it open, she grabbed a couple of bars and handed them to Charlotte who put them in a black Hefty bag. “Planning to make a haul?” Gemma observed dryly.
“Did you tell that detective about Mr. Bereth?” she asked urgently.
“Charlotte, Mr. Bereth was in a bad accident.”
“What?” she asked, sounding dazed. Then, “He’s dead, isn’t he? Robbie wasn’t at school today cuz his dad’s dead.” Alarmed, she asked, “Did he die on Halloween?”
“No, earlier.”
“Oh.” She processed that, then said, “He was a bad dad.”
Gemma forced herself not to check the time. She wanted to call Will and head out to find Tim.
Macie tapped the horn and Charlotte slowly turned back to the door. “I gotta go,” she said reluctantly. “Will you tell me more about Robbie’s dad? I think he was like that o
ther guy. I think that’s why you were chasing him.”
“That other guy?”
“The one who was trying to kidnap that soccer girl.”
Gemma, who’d been distracted, gave Charlotte her full attention. “I didn’t run Mr. Bereth off the road,” she assured her.
“Okay.”
“You believe me?”
She gazed at her through the Batman mask. “I believe you mean what you say,” she said cryptically, then she hurried down the steps and ran to her mom’s car.
Disturbed, Gemma placed a call to Will, surprised and thrilled when she got through immediately.
“I’m just leaving work,” he said. “Climbing into my Jeep. Was thinking about coming your way…”
There was a world of information left out that Gemma picked up on. “Can’t wait,” she said with a smile in her voice, then, “But I have a task for us, first.” Quickly she explained about Little Tim and Will offered to help before she could even ask.
Thirty minutes later a black Jeep pulled up to the house. Gemma had never seen his personal vehicle and she was also surprised to see him in jeans, a brown corduroy shirt, and a windbreaker. She stepped onto the porch to greet him and he pulled a pig mask from his pocket and put it on.
“I guess we aren’t in uniform for Halloween after all,” Gemma said.
“Maybe you’re not. Cops are pigs, you know.”
She laughed and he pulled off the mask and swooped her near, planting a kiss on her mouth, pushing her back through the open doorway at the same time. They kissed and fumbled and stroked each other with more fun than desire, and only when things started turning serious did Gemma reluctantly pull back from his embrace.
“Duty first,” he said, his lips slightly swollen from her kisses.
She kissed him one more time, gently biting his lower lip and pulling on it, reluctantly releasing it. “Duty first,” she repeated on a sigh.
Will had put off following up on the partial license plate for the vehicle that had run Spencer Bereth’s van off the road. He could chase down the possibles on Saturday. Today, tonight, he wanted to spend with Gemma.
They took his Jeep to the quarry, approaching on a pothole-riddled access road that led up to the ridge. When they reached Lover’s Lane, Will let the Jeep idle, its headlights cutting through the empty darkness above the quarry, twin beams that only emphasized the fact that the space below held no definition from this height.
There were two other vehicles parked on the headland. Both were dark and seemed abandoned. Will and Gemma climbed from the Jeep and Will swept his light over the nearest one. A head popped up, eyes blinking in annoyance.
“You’re not going to bust them, are you?” Gemma asked.
“Hell, no,” Will said. “I’m not that much of a pig. And I’m off-duty.”
“Sort of,” Gemma said, her gaze sweeping over the quarry. A faint drift of fog hung close to the ground far below. “Tim doesn’t appear to be here.”
Will’s flashlight ran over the other vehicle but no affronted heads appeared. “Any kind of trail down?”
“Used to be,” Gemma said. “There’s a road closer to my house, over that way.” She gestured to the southeast.
Will next swept the beam of his light over the ground. There were lots of muddy ruts from would-be lovers’ tires and the faint outline of a rocky track through the underbrush. The engine of the car nearest to them fired, and it backed out with mud splattering everywhere, hitting Will’s pant legs as it peeled away. “Maybe I was too nice to them,” he muttered and Gemma chuckled softly.
It was all he could do to keep from pulling her close again and engaging in some minor lovemaking.
“C’mon,” he said, and they held hands and started down the trail.
The wolf had bided his time. It had taken every scrap of self-control he possessed not to drag the witch-whore from the green Camaro by her hair before her boy could fuck her. He needed the commotion to die down, to have them to himself. His nerves were stretched raw and he felt like it was never going to happen but suddenly it was just him and the Camaro’s steamed-up windows.
They’d locked the car, so the wolf had to be strong and fast. He carried his heaviest wrench, rounded the vehicle to the driver’s side, which was pressed against an overgrown laurel, and smashed in the rear driver’s-side window. The whore-witch shrieked and grabbed for her top but Wolf saw the bouncing globes of her breasts. The boy beneath her was struggling for breath. Wolf knew he was still inside her. He took the wrench and smacked him near his ear. He stopped moving instantly.
“Stop! Stop!” the whore was screaming. “You killed him. Oh, God! You killed him!”
She was crying, screeching, scrabbling for the door, trying to escape, trying to get out the passenger side. He let her and when she tumbled out, buck-ass naked except for the tiny shirt she was holding to her chest like a shield, he grabbed her by her hair. She wheeled and shrieked like a banshee. Wolf slapped her hard and she fell down. He wanted to take her right there. In the mud. Where she deserved to lie. He jumped on her and wrapped his hands around her neck, strangling. Her fingers clawed at his and she gasped for air. Her body thumped and thrashed beneath him, stirring his need.
“Witch,” he ground out.
Her eyes bugged. She recognized him but couldn’t speak.
And then the sound of an approaching car.
Wolf jumped to his feet, dragging her with him. He slammed shut the open door of the Camaro and then pulled his still struggling victim to the undergrowth. She was making sounds so he was forced to press her windpipe harder until all that was left was a last soft whoosh from her emptying lungs.
The couple in the newly arrived car got right at it. The wolf could see their shadows and silhouettes from the interior lights they didn’t immediately turn off. His lips pulled back in a sneer. But the woman wasn’t wearing a disguise. She didn’t try to hide her identity. She was not a witch.
He watched for several moments, then he pulled her further, deeper, away from the cars and the quarry, which was where he would dearly have loved to take her. That should be her final resting ground. Her and the One.
Alone with the whore-witch, deep in a copse of trees and high, overgrown bushes, he pulled the cigarettes from his pocket. He couldn’t have her. She was already dead. But he could burn her.
Carefully, he lit a match, touching the flame to the end of the cigarette, puffing just enough to make certain it was lit. He’d been so careful with the other two. He’d been so needful, marking his conquests. Labeling them. Marking them with their numbers. But now that was over. His hand shook a little as he seared the burning tip into her flesh. Once. Twice. Three times. Then a frenzy of burning.
Burn. Burn. Burn, whore!
The scent of searing human flesh woke him to the moment. They would smell her.
Suddenly afraid, he extinguished the cigarette and slung her limp form over his shoulders, stealing through the woods, oblivious to slapping wet branches and sharp limbs that drew harsh lines on the skin of his face.
He worked his way back to his brother’s truck, breathing hard, sweating, his sweat mixing with a lightly falling rain. Opening the GemTop, he threw her in the back. She was a tangle of legs, arms, hair, and breasts. For a moment he wanted to lick those breasts but she was dead. He would have to wait for the one he sought.
He would make sure he had time with her.
She was the witch who’d taken his brother from him.
He would drive into her till she screamed on her way back to hell.
Turning the ignition, he put the truck in gear and rumbled away from the quarry.
But he would be back.
Gemma slipped down the rocky trail to the base of the quarry. It was damper at the bottom. The air was thick with pent-up rain. The fog lay damp and soggy against her face and turned her hair to limp strands.
She shivered and looked over her shoulder, feeling a sudden malevolence she couldn’t understand but that felt
decidedly real.
Will was ahead of her. She reached for his sleeve, afraid to get too far from his warmth and security. They worked their way to the bottom, then Will picked his way, with Gemma at his left shoulder, through the broken rocks and scraggly plants along the quarry’s ravine.
“Tim!” Gemma called. She’d been calling his name sporadically on the way down. “Tim! It’s Gemma.”
There was no answer. Just a soft soughing of the wind, high above. Will twisted around and looked up but the fog obscured his Jeep and the abandoned vehicle at the crest of the ridge. “Tim!” he called out.
They both waited. “What do you think?” Gemma asked at length as they traversed the quarry. She looked east toward her own property, and north to the Dunleavys. The gray fog deadened everything.
“Why does he come to the quarry?” Will asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s more about Lover’s Lane,” he theorized. “That’s where he wanted to take you.”
“Maybe he’s still up on the ridge,” Gemma agreed. Then a moment later, “Maybe he watches the lovers who come here?”
Will grunted. “He’s a Peeping Tom?”
“He doesn’t really understand what’s okay behavior and what isn’t.”
They called Tim’s name several more times, then slowly hiked back up to the top. Another car had appeared but when Gemma and Will showed up in their headlights they shouted some obscenities and reversed out in a hurry.
There was no sign of Tim.
Will shone his flashlight on the abandoned car. Again nothing moved. He stepped closer and noticed the seat belt was hanging outside the closed passenger door. The windows were fogged.
Something felt off so Will moved closer. It looked like the rear driver’s-side window had been smashed in. With the end of his flashlight, he knocked against the passenger door window pane. Then he tried the handle. It opened easily.