The Collector

by Cameron

  “The Moon Fairy’s husband, the king, wishes to become immortal. He must boil all the children of the village, including his own daughter, in moon dew in order for the magician to concoct a potion to make the king live forever. But the Moon Fairy turns her daughter into a rabbit and they escape to the moon together.”

  Thomas said he’d sold the Eye to David Gospel. Had Gospel believed the object could make him immortal?

  “Owen told me that story,” Meredith continued. “He told me a lot of things. Strange things that, at first, didn’t make sense. He told me David was stealing his life source.” She said the phrase as if she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. “You see, Owen has had several eye surgeries for his condition. Rabbit’s eyes, he used to call them. I have rabbit’s eyes, Mommy. That’s what he’d say when he was little.”

  “Rabbits don’t blink,” Gia said, thinking desperately how to turn the situation around.

  “Owen recently confided that during his surgeries, he believed David would slip into the operating room and steal his life source. Owen talked a lot about life source. That it was in the eyes. I didn’t understand, of course. I had no idea his psychosis had become so…profound.”

  “How could you know?”

  “It’s a Vietnamese story, the Moon Fairy, a very beautiful fairy tale about a mother’s love.” She sighed. “I blame David, of course. That stupid collection of his. It was tainted with demons. You can’t ask for immortality without paying a price. There must always be a sacrifice, and David sacrificed our son.” She stared at Gia. “I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t be his Moon Fairy.”

  Gia tried to imagine the forces Gospel had gathered for his collection. Objects of power often had dark entities attached. “Mrs. Gospel, the Eye doesn’t have the power to grant immortality.”

  “I know.” She quickly brushed away the tears welling in her eyes. “There were other artifacts David was trying to secure. He had this clay tablet that mentioned objects that came raining to earth from the sky. He did boundless research on the matter. He’d come to believe these were meteorites imbued with special powers. When he heard about your mother and the Eye, he knew it was one of the objects mentioned in the clay tablet. If one existed…”

  “So would the others,” she finished.

  Meredith nodded. “Once he had the Eye, he became obsessed. Hiring women like yourself to get it to work.” She sat up stiffly. “He understood it was dangerous, so he let others to do his dirty work. Make the crystal come to life. But we are not meant to see the future. Only God can do that. I’m sorry to say it, Miss Moon, but women like you are an abomination.”

  Gia could feel her breath coming faster. She forced herself not to look at the gun—tried to make her mind think ahead, imagine some kind of escape.

  “When did you first know your son was ill?”

  “He started with animals. Of course, I didn’t understand the full extent of his disease. That didn’t come until much later. We even did an exorcism.” She frowned. “I was certain then he had changed, after that. I dedicated myself to God, thanking him every day for giving me my little boy back. The exorcism was unpleasant. Owen began to hide his condition in order that he not be punished.”

  “But something happened?”

  “David sent him away. As always, David was just thinking about himself. If Owen’s proclivities became public, the scandal would be monstrous. He sent Owen abroad with Rocket. He was a very decent man, Rocket. That was his last name, of course, but we always called him that. He called me Mrs. David. It was rather quaint.”

  On the love seat across from Gia, Meredith Gospel shook her head, looking suddenly horrified. “David told me Rocket and Owen were doing missionary work. Imagine. Missionary work.”

  Gia felt her blood chill. She thought of her session with Morgan, his claim that Thomas hadn’t killed her mother. Which didn’t make sense. Thomas had confessed to her, giving her the chilling details about how he’d killed Estelle.

  But now she realized Gospel and his family had to have been there. That David had brought them to Greece to get the Eye from Thomas.

  “My son was not performing any sort of charitable work. He was…honing his skills like a predator. When he came home, Owen gave me a choice. He wanted to destroy David. He had this elaborate plan. Only, he knew he’d be watched. I had to help. And not only help, but choose the people who should die…or he would kill indiscriminately.”

  Meredith Gospel gave a deep sigh. She tightened her grip on the gun.

  “At first, I wasn’t…willing,” she continued. “But Owen persisted. He showed me how these women, the ones helping David, were pure evil. How they were trying to cheat innocent people.” She met Gia’s gaze with a vacant look. “Women like you should die.”

  She put a plastic Baggie on the table. It contained a set of eyes.

  Oh, God, Gia fought the urge to retch.

  “I can see that you understand now,” Meredith said. “Yes, it was my son, Owen, who took your mother’s eyes. He explained to me that the first killer hadn’t finished the job. That he’d taken the cold eyes, the stone, leaving the real life source behind, the eyes of a sorceress. I’m sure you don’t want David’s eyes, but here they are.”

  Horrified, Gia tried to remain calm. She couldn’t even look at the Baggie and its repulsive contents. She tried not to think about her mother or any of the unspeakable acts Meredith described. Gia needed to focus on how to get out of this alive.

  “Meredith, I can’t read your mind…I can’t tell you the future. Please, Meredith, tell me how to help you.”

  She had a vague, faraway look even as she raised the gun. “I hear Owen’s voice inside my head. He tells me to do these horrible things. When Rocket came and showed me the surveillance tape, that voice told me to kill him, too.”

  “Your husband’s collection, Mrs. Gospel, it may very well have demons, or evil spirits. Demons are attracted to objects of power. They can attach themselves to these objects.”

  Meredith stared at her. “You have power. Do they attach themselves to you?”

  “I attract them, yes.”

  “And me?” She stood, still holding the gun. “Are there dark spirits—demons—attached to me?”

  “They cling to you,” Gia said in a soft voice. “They weigh you down like chains. They wear the faces of your husband and son and this man you call Rocket,” she said, pointing to Meredith’s right side, where she saw the dark shapes. “To your left are the spirits of the women you killed,” she said, seeing Mimi Tran, Velvet Tien, Xuan Du. “And there are others. The women your son killed. These spirits can be released. Let me help you.”

  “What do you propose, Miss Moon? Do you want to perform an exorcism, perhaps, like was done to Owen?”

  “I can speak with these spirits. I can ask them to move on, help them find peace.”

  Meredith raised the gun. Gia braced herself.

  Only, instead of shooting, Meredith started to cry.

  “Rocket wasn’t evil like those women I killed. He was a decent man—a complete innocent. Do you know what he asked me right before I shot him? He asked me to take care of his nieces. That dear man loved those girls.”

  “Give me the gun, Meredith. Give me the gun and it can all stop.”

  But she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have killed Rocket. You’re right, Ms. Moon. Those evil things David brought into the house, they’ve affected us. There’s something wrong with all of us. With Owen. With David. And me.”

  She raised the gun.

  Gia screamed, “No, don’t!”

  But it was too late. Meredith Gospel pulled the trigger, blowing away the side of her own head.

  53

  Seven stood alongside Gia in her garden. She stood hunched over, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. She looked like she was still in shock.

  He took her hand and led her to the steps. He sat down and pulled her down beside him placing his arm around her. He knew the exact moment she let go, mel
ting into him.

  She was crying.

  He held her, thinking about a television show his parents used to watch about a mystery writer who solved real-life murders. Every week, just as the show would start, his dad would say, If these neighbors were smart, they’d stay away from Jessica. Everybody around Jessica dies.

  They’d found all three bodies back at Gospel’s house. The Eye of Athena, the main crystal, had been shoved in David’s mouth.

  When Seven had first arrived on the scene of Meredith Gospel’s suicide, Gia had explained what had happened.

  “It’s called transference,” she said. “Meredith couldn’t differentiate between herself and her serial-killer son.”

  Seven supposed there was a whole psychology about it. And still, it seemed strange, like maybe Gia’s other explanation could just as easily describe what had happened to the Gospel family and Thomas. As if anyone who came in contact with the Eye would become possessed by some dark spirit.

  When she finally got it all out, the crying, Gia sat back on the steps and took in a deep breath. She looked up at Seven. “Thanks.”

  “I told you—we’re a full service operation.”

  She smiled. “Go ahead. Ask me.”

  It still surprised him when she did that, the whole mind-reading thing. He nodded, just going with it. “Did you think it was Thomas killing these women? Or were you just setting him up?”

  “Do you really believe that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to believe. Look, Thomas was just standing there, conveniently in front of the door, holding a gun. And there I am, conveniently ready to shoot him. Yeah, I feel set up.”

  She let out a deep sigh. “Yes, I knew you would be standing on the other side of the door. Everything that happened to Thomas in that apartment I saw in my vision.”

  Seven sighed in turn. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  But he knew. She couldn’t trust the police to believe some crazy psychic. And there was her mother’s murder. Crane had gotten away before.

  She turned Seven to face her, her touch still able to zing right through him. “I have the power to see the future, but I don’t know if I have the power to change it.”

  “You didn’t even try—”

  “Of course I tried. And for the record? I always thought it was Thomas who killed my mother, that he was killing these women. But I didn’t think the police would believe me. I had to do it the way I saw it happen in my visions. What I didn’t know—what I didn’t understand—was how it had all gotten mixed up. Everyone under the spell of the Eye just came through in my visions as one voice. I couldn’t tell the difference between Owen, Thomas or Meredith.”

  Gia stopped, as if just figuring something out. She shook her head.

  “What?” he asked.

  “All this time, I wanted you to believe in my gift.” She reached up and caressed his cheek. Despite himself, he leaned toward her. “But now that you do, it’s the one thing that will always keep us apart.”

  “And why’s that?”

  She pointed to his head. “I made you part of my story, never letting you in on what I was doing. You’ll always be wondering what I know next—if I’ll use it against you.”

  At that moment, a limo drove up. The door slammed opened and Stella raced for her mother. Morgan wasn’t far behind.

  Seven stood and watched the family reunion. It was almost painful to know he couldn’t be a part of it. Because she was right—even if he was ready to forgive Gia, he would never forget. No, he wasn’t ready to take on Gia and her gift.

  Stella was first to break it up. She approached Seven and said simply, “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “She gives you any trouble,” he said, nodding toward Gia, “you give me a call.”

  Stella smiled, for the first time that face free of its worried intensity. “You bet.”

  He walked to Gia and kissed her on the forehead. “See you around.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Unfinished business,” he told her, heading for the car.

  Seven waited downstairs at the county jail with the other visitors. The place reminded him of a bus stop. He could hear the flotsam and jetsam of conversations usual for this place.

  “He wants me to put up the house for bail, but I told him, ‘Baby, you did the crime, now do the time….’”

  “I don’t know what to do. I just know he’s innocent this time….”

  “Fucking pigs always picking on her…”

  He tried to shut out the noise but still keep an ear open for his name. Erika waited on the bench beside him.

  “Thanks for coming with me,” he told his partner.

  She smiled. “Thanks for asking.”

  He wasn’t going to worry about Erika. She was a big girl. But he did want to—what did Gia call it? Make her a part of his story.

  He heard his brother’s name called over the intercom. Seven stepped forward with the others making their way to the metal detectors. He flashed his driver’s license, not wanting to show his badge as ID as he normally would. At the county jail, he liked to fly under the radar.

  He stepped into the elevator, making room for the other bodies crowding in. He waited for his floor, the place where they kept the medicated inmates. His brother was still on suicide watch.

  Seven thought of all the things he’d learned the last months. It had been a trial by fire, and now he needed to face that final challenge.

  Or maybe it wasn’t final at all, he thought, seeing his brother waiting for him behind the glass. Maybe it was just a beginning.

  One of Ricky’s hands was cuffed to the stool where he sat. He held the phone in the other, looking a bit dazed to see Seven. Probably the drugs they were giving him.

  Seven picked up the phone, saying, “Hello, bro. Sorry it took me so long to get here.”

  “Yes, Terrence, we have the Eye.”

  Carin Barnes lay back on the hotel bed, cell phone tucked under her chin. On the bedspread beside her was the Eye of Athena, the crystal she’d been searching for ever since she’d met Estelle Fegaris and watched her incredible effect on Markie, her autistic brother.

  “Ironically, it’s just as you feared,” Carin told Terrance on the phone. She picked up the crystal and held it up to her eye. “It’s a fake. A beautiful, lovely fake. Professor Murphy confirmed it, although I’m sending it back to you for more testing.”

  After finishing up her conversation, she hung up the phone and dropped back on the bed. She held the Eye up to the light, the real one—not the fake she planned to hand over to Terrence and the gang back home.

  Murphy had tested the Eye, all right, as well as the beads that made up the necklace. The results substantiated Estelle’s theory—the twelve beads on the necklace were merely decorative, a precious gem hereto unknown to exist.

  The Eye was a different story.

  The Eye was a unique crystal. According to what Estelle had told Carin, it worked like a weapon on the brain. Estelle had likened its power to crystals used in the first radios to convert radio waves to sound. The Eye was able to detect and convert brain gamma waves. If used properly, the energy from the Eye would stimulate the part of the brain that, according to Carin’s research, was associated with psychic ability.

  Mimi Tran’s autopsy supported yet another of Estelle’s theories: that, if used improperly, the Eye could cause necrosis, or cell death, in the prefrontal lobe area of the brain. The user would experience psychic phenomena, but not because of an increase in gamma wave activity, like that found in the Tibetan monks and the psychic volunteers at Morgan’s institute. Rather, the damaged brain then behaved like the brain of someone who suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. The crystal’s user experienced hallucinations. Soon, the crystal would kill more and more cells in the brain, eventually using it up like so much spent fuel.

  Carin didn’t feel guilty lying to Terrence. If NISA got hold of the crystal, they’d bury it in research, experimenting
ad nauseam. Carin was, unfortunately, very familiar with that kind of bureaucracy. And there was the possibility that the crystal might just disappear again—the military, trying to figure out how to use it.

  No, Carin didn’t trust the government to do the right thing. She could only trust herself and people like her, the ones who believed in Fegaris’s vision.

  During the hypnosis session in Morgan Tyrell’s office, Estelle had given Carin what amounted to a psychic thumbs up, communicating through her daughter. While in a trance, Gia had told Morgan it was Carin who would get the Eye.

  But Carin had to be careful. Her boss wasn’t necessarily the trusting type. The fake she was handing over was damn good—she, Morgan and Murphy had made sure of it. She’d needed something a collector like Gospel might believe to be the real thing. It wouldn’t do to have Terrence suspicious that she’d switched the stones.

  Carin poured herself another glass of champagne from the bottle at her bedside. She didn’t claim the least psychic ability, but she could swear she could feel Estelle’s presence in the room with her.

  She toasted the sparkling crystal on the bed next to her.

  “To the future.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-0209-5

  THE COLLECTOR

  Copyright © 2007 by Olga Bicos.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  MIRA and the Star Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.