Standing in the Shadows

by Shannon McKenna

  “Of course you have. I thank you for your dedication,” Novak replied. “But you will see, when you are calmer, that my plan is better.”

  Georg’s face was a mask of agony. “I cannot bear it. I am dying.” The words burst out in the obscure Hungarian dialect they shared.

  Novak rose from his chaise and put down his wine. He placed the scarred stumps of his maimed hand against Georg’s ruined face. His cosmetic surgeons would improve matters, but the young man’s youthful perfection was gone forever. Another score to settle.

  “Do you know why the butterfly must struggle to escape its chrysalis?” he asked, sliding into dialect himself.

  Georg jerked his face away. “I am not in the mood for your fables.”

  “Silence.” The nails of his left thumb and middle finger dug into Georg’s face. “It is the act of struggling that forces out the fluid from the butterfly’s body and completes the development of its wings. If the butterfly is released prematurely, it will lurch around, swollen and clumsy, and soon die. Never having flown.”

  Georg’s lips drew back from his gaping, missing teeth with a soundless hiss of pain. “And what is this supposed to mean to me?”

  “I think you know.” He let go. Blood welled out of the red marks that his nails had left. “Struggle is necessary. Punishment exalts.”

  “Easy for you to talk of punishment. You did not suffer as I did, with your father’s money to protect you.”

  Novak went very still. Georg cringed away, sensing that he had gone too far.

  Georg was wrong. His father had taught him about punishment. That lesson was frozen in his mind, dead center. A tableau in a globe of imperishable crystal. He turned away from the memory and held up his left hand. “Does this look as if I know nothing of punishment?”

  Georg’s eyes dropped in shame, as well they ought.

  A gull shrieked in the darkening sky. Novak looked up, and exulted in the wild creature’s freedom. Soon he would be reborn, with no father, no mother. He would be spotless, surrounded by gods and angels. He would be free at last, and he would never look back.

  He jolted himself back to the present. “Be grateful that you have been chosen as my instrument to make this sacrifice, Georg. My gods are not for cowards, or weaklings.”

  Georg hesitated. “I am not weak,” he said sourly.

  “No, you are not.” He patted Georg’s shoulder. The younger man flinched at the contact. “You know my tastes just as I know yours. I would rip their throats out with my teeth and drink their blood, if I had that luxury. But I cannot compromise this new identity before I have even established it. You know exactly what it will cost me to step aside and let you play…while I watch.”

  Georg nodded reluctantly.

  “I have chosen you to tear them to pieces for me, Georg,” Novak said gently. “And still, you cannot wait. You whine. You complain.”

  Georg’s eyes narrowed. “Do you plan to give it up, then?”

  “Give up what? Drinking the blood of innocents?” Novak toasted Georg with the skull goblet and smiled. “You know me too well to ask such a stupid question.”

  Streaks of purplish red appeared on Georg’s cheeks. The flush faded almost instantly to ghostly pallor. “I will help you,” he said.

  “I know you will, my friend,” Novak said. “And you will be rewarded for your loyalty. You must be patient, and trust me.”

  The terrace door opened, and Tamara and Nigel stepped out. Nigel looked uncomfortable, but that was his natural state of being.

  Tamara smiled, stunning in her brief, ice-green dress. She’d changed her chestnut hair to red and her golden eyes to green since he had sent her to monitor the household of Victor Lazar, his old friend and nemesis. He suspected that she had done her duty there with a fraction too much zeal. Perhaps he was being unfair.

  In any case, red suited her, and after six months of enforced celibacy, it suited him, too. She was astonishingly beautiful. He would settle for nothing less in his bed. And her ability to hack into computer databases and change the nature of reality to suit his whims was nothing short of magic. She was immensely talented.

  Nigel cleared his throat. “The courier has just delivered the blood samples from Switzerland,” he announced.

  Novak nodded his approval. Plans were proceeding with orderly smoothness. “Excellent. You know what needs to be done. See to it.”

  “The switch is arranged,” Nigel said. “I have identified a technician at the DNA laboratory named Chuck Whitehead who is perfect for our purposes. I will arrange for him to do the switch late Sunday night. According to my statistical analysis, that’s the period when the laboratory is most deserted. I will dispose of him afterwards myself.”

  “I have some good news, as well,” Tamara said. “We won’t need to bait the trap after all. The transponder on McCloud’s car shows him parked outside Erin Riggs’s apartment for thirty-five minutes this afternoon. He then followed her to her mother’s house.”

  His eyes wandered over her body, appreciating how the sheath set off her long, perfect legs. “Wonderful. Stalking the poor girl already.”

  Tamara’s smile widened. What a remarkable creature. Wanted all over the world for computer crimes and fraud, and her sexual skills were just as prodigious. She would do absolutely anything.

  In fact, now that he thought about it, her lack of squeamishness was almost inhibiting. A touch of disgust or fear was like a pinch of salt that brought out the flavor of a dish. After so long without sex, he had been less discerning than usual, but his natural high standards were quickly reasserting themselves.

  He was irritated. He wondered if she were doing it deliberately. Unacceptable, that one of his servants should presume to manipulate him. How dare she.

  Georg stirred restlessly, his fists clenching. “So the police must have told McCloud that we are free,” he said.

  Tamara turned her brilliant smile upon him. “It would seem so.”

  “Then Erin knows that I am coming for her.”

  Tamara’s smile faltered at the concentrated malevolence in Georg’s voice. Then the smile quickly reappeared…and gave him an idea.

  “No, Georg,” he said. “Don’t be obtuse. Erin knows nothing of the sort. I have spent a great deal of money to arrange for reports of our sighting in France.”

  “I am dying,” Georg moaned, in dialect. “I suffer.”

  Novak sighed. Georg could be so tedious. The poor man was a volcano of festering anger from his traumatic prison experience.

  Perhaps he should offer Tamara to Georg, and observe the results. He could gauge her loyalty and commitment, and at the same time, siphon off some of Georg’s restless, dangerous energy.

  “Stay and help us celebrate, my dear,” he said. “Georg, would you care to indulge? Let Tamara ease your torment.”

  Georg’s ruined mouth twisted in a feral smile.

  Novak studied Tamara’s reaction. Her expression did not waver, but he sensed the tightening in her jaw as the smile froze into place.

  His loins stirred. Yes. This was what had been missing. Delicious.

  He smiled at Nigel. “Nigel, you may stay. Tamara likes to be watched, no? Did you learn to love it during your time with Victor?”

  Her smile was like a neon sign, bright and empty. “Of course, boss,” she said, without missing a beat.

  Nigel’s face paled, but he knew better than to decline. Poor, sexless Nigel. This would be good for him. He was less manually skilled as an assassin than Georg, but the mask he presented to the world was impeccable. He was a dried-up, forgettable, middle-aged gray man, whereas Georg had lost his ability to blend. Georg was now no more than a deadly weapon to be kept hidden until violence was called for.

  Georg wrenched Tamara’s fragile dress down. The shoulder straps broke, and she stood naked on the terrace, the chilly evening breeze making her dark nipples tighten. She waited, unsure of what was expected of her. It was rare, to see her at a loss. Arousing.

  Nigel g
rimaced, afraid to look away. Georg unbuttoned his pants.

  He settled back on his chaise, lifted the skull goblet to his lips, and gestured for them to begin.

  It occurred to him, as he watched the spectacle, that he could liberate Tamara after her usefulness was done. The danger to his new identity would be minimal. Tamara was estranged from what family she had. She barely existed on paper. The contacts through which he had found her would not ask questions. Her body would never be found.

  Perhaps she had been offered to him just for this purpose.

  Georg was being very rough. Novak sipped his wine and thought about reining him in. He did not want Tamara damaged, at least not yet. But then again, the show suited his mood, just as it was.

  The ancient Celts believed that the skulls of their victims had potent magical powers. Perhaps he would make a new drinking goblet out of Tamara, decorated with hammered gold. What he had planned for Erin Riggs and Connor McCloud was a gift for his fanged gods.

  But Tamara would be all for him. A special treat.

  The earthy, rhythmic sounds of the act taking place on the terrace were drowned out by the voices of his angels in his head, like the wind in the leaves. Tamara would soon join their ranks.

  Punishment exalted. His angels knew this. And the word they whispered, over and over, was always “Never…never…never…”

  In every language on earth.

  Mom’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark. Erin was surprised to discover that her heart could actually sink any lower.

  She approached the handsome Victorian house where she’d grown up. The overgrown rhododendrons wreathed the porch in shadow. The Fillmores next door had mowed a surgically neat line where their lawn ended, to accentuate the ragged forlornness of the Riggs’s lawn and make their silent protest plain.

  She rummaged through her purse for the keys and let herself in, deliberately making a lot of noise. She switched on the porch light. Nothing happened. She peered up at it, and realized that the bulb was gone. Very strange. If Mom had removed it, she would have replaced it.

  It was as dark as a tomb inside, with the blinds drawn. She flipped on the floor lamp in the living room. Nothing. She tried to tighten the bulb. There was no bulb.

  She tried the track lighting in the dining room. Nothing. Maybe the power was out…no. The lights had been on at the Fillmores’.

  “Mom?” she called out.

  No response. She felt her way slowly, toward the utility closet where the lightbulbs were kept. She grabbed three, and stumbled back. She screwed a bulb into the living room lamp and flipped it on.

  The sight jolted her rattled nerves. The rolling table that held the television was dragged away from the wall. The cables that connected it to the power strip were torn away. The cable box lay on the ground. Her first thought was of burglars, but nothing seemed to be missing.

  Her dread intensified. “Mom? Is something wrong with the TV?”

  Still no response. She threaded a bulb into the hanging lamp over the dining room table. The room looked normal. She climbed onto a chair to replace the bulb in the kitchen ceiling lamp.

  The light revealed a cluttered mess. She peeked in the empty refrigerator, sniffed the milk. It had turned to cheese. She would load the dishwasher and set it running before she left. Maybe do some grocery shopping, but that would leave her no money to travel with.

  She headed for the stairs, and gazed, tight-lipped, at the new pile of untouched mail below the mail slot.

  There was still a bulb in the wall sconce on the stairs, thank goodness. She started to climb, passing photos of herself and Cindy, her grandparents, and her parents’ wedding portraits. The four of them, skiing together in Banff on that vacation they had taken five years ago.

  She knocked on the door to the master bedroom. “Mom?” Her voice sounded like a frightened child’s.

  “Honey? Is that you?” Her mother’s voice was froggy and thick.

  Her relief was so intense, tears sprang into her eyes. She opened the door. Her mother was sitting on the bed, blinking in the light from the stairs. The room smelled stale.

  “Mom? I’m turning the light on,” she warned.

  Barbara Riggs gazed up at her daughter, her eyes dazed and reddened. Her usually meticulous bed was wildly disarranged, half of the mattress showing. A terrycloth bathrobe was draped over the television. “Mom? Are you OK?”

  The shadows under her mother’s eyes looked like bruises. “Sure. Just resting, sweetie.” She turned her gaze away, as if looking her daughter in the eye were an activity too effortful to sustain.

  “Why is the bathrobe over the TV?” Erin asked.

  Her mother’s neck sank into her hunched shoulders like a turtle retracting into its shell. “It was looking at me,” she muttered.

  Those five words scared Erin more than anything else had that day, which was saying a hell of a lot. “Mom? What do you mean?”

  Barbara shook her head and pushed herself up off the bed with visible effort. “Nothing, honey. Let’s go have a cup of tea.”

  “Your milk’s gone bad,” Erin said. “You hate it without milk.”

  “So I’ll just have to cope, won’t I?”

  Erin flinched at her mother’s sharp tone. Barbara’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s not you. You’re an angel. It’s just…everything. You know?”

  “I know,” Erin said quietly. “It’s OK. Let me make up this bed.”

  She tucked and straightened the bed, but when she grabbed the bathrobe to pull it off the TV, her mother lunged to stop her. “No!”

  Erin let go of it, but the robe was already sliding onto the floor with a plop. “What is it?” she asked. “What is it with the TV?”

  Her mother wrapped her arms around her middle. “It’s just that I’ve, ah…I’ve been seeing things.”

  Erin waited for more, but Mom just shook her head, her eyes bleak and staring. “What things?” Erin prompted.

  “When I turn on the TV,” her mother said.

  “Most people do,” Erin observed. “That’s what it’s for.”

  “Do not be snotty with me, young lady,” Barbara snapped.

  Erin took a deep breath and tried again. “What do you see, Mom?”

  Barbara sank back down on the bed. “I see your dad, and that woman,” she said dully. “In those videos. Every channel. Both TVs.”

  Erin sat down heavily on the bed. “Oh,” she whispered. “I see.”

  “No. You don’t. You can’t.” Barbara’s voice trembled. She wiped her puffy eyes, and groped for the bedside box of Kleenex. “The first time, I thought it was a dream. But then it started happening more often. Now it’s all the time. Every time I touch the thing. Today it turned itself on. I swear, I didn’t even touch it today, and it turned itself on.”

  Erin had to try several times before she could choreograph her voice into being low and soothing. “That’s not possible, Mom.”

  “I know it’s not,” her mother snapped. “Believe me, I know. And I know that it…that it isn’t a good sign. That I’m seeing things.”

  Their eyes met, and Erin glimpsed the depths of her mother’s terror. The yawning fear of losing her grip on reality itself.

  She reached for the controls on the TV.

  “No!” her mother cried out. “Honey, please. Don’t—”

  “Let me show you, Mom,” she insisted. “It’ll be perfectly normal.”

  An old Star Trek episode filled the room. She changed channels, to a rerun of M.A.S.H. And again, to the evening news. She changed that channel quickly, in case news of Novak’s escape should be announced. That was all Mom needed to hear tonight. She left it on a perky commercial for floor wax. “See? Nothing wrong with the TV.”

  Her mother’s brow furrowed into a knot of perplexity. A chorus line of dancing cartoon mops high-kicked their way across a gleaming cartoon floor. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Nothing to understand.” Erin tried to sou
nd cheerful. It felt forced and hollow. She flipped off the TV. “Come on downstairs, Mom.”

  Barbara followed her, with slow, shuffling steps. “I don’t know whether to be relieved, or even more frightened that it was normal.”

  “I vote for relieved,” Erin said. “In fact, I vote that we celebrate. Get dressed, and we can go out to the Safeway. Your fridge is empty.”

  “Oh, that’s OK, honey. I’ll do it myself, tomorrow.”

  “Promise?”

  Barbara patted her daughter’s anxious face. “Of course I will.”

  A teabag dangled inside the teapot, fluffy with mold. “How long has it been since you ate, Mom?” Erin demanded.

  Barbara made a vague gesture. “I had some crackers a while ago.”

  “You have to eat.” Erin rummaged through the clutter for the dish soap. “Did you know about Cindy’s scholarship?”

  Barbara winced. “Yes,” she murmured. “They called me.”

  “And?” Erin scrubbed the teapot with soapy water, and waited.

  No reply was forthcoming. She looked over her shoulder, frowning. “Mom? What’s happening? Tell me.”

  “What do you want me to say, hon? The conditions are clear. The scholarship is only valid if Cindy keeps up a 3.0 average. It was 2.1 last semester. Her midterms this semester were a disaster. There’s no money for tuition if she loses that scholarship.”

  Erin stared at her in blank dismay. “Cindy can’t just quit school.”

  Barbara’s shoulders lifted, and dropped.

  Erin stood there, frozen. Her soapy hands dripped onto the floor.

  Mom looked so defeated. Now would be the moment to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but there was no money for tuition at a private college. Not even fees from her new client could solve a problem of that size. The CDs were cashed in. The new mortgage had gone to pay for Dad’s defense.

  Erin wiped her hands on her jeans. She groped for something positive to say as she gazed at her mother. The impulse sagged and faded into silence. Barbara Riggs had always been so well dressed and perfectly made up. Now her face was puffy, her eyes dull, her unwashed hair snarled into a crooked halo.