“Don’t hang up!” Taylor yelled, but Ariadne was already gone. She cursed, then pulled the flasher out and attached it to the roof. They couldn’t waste any time. The revolving light gave her a headache, but she wanted people out of her way.
“Where is she?” McKenzie asked.
“McCrory Lane.” She keyed her radio, called Dispatch. “Lieutenant Jackson, E, 10-82, 10-13, 10-54. Suspect located, I need backup, 8 to the Shell station at McCrory Lane and Highway 100.”
She heard the affirmatives-she’d called for backup for their suspect, let the troops know he had a weapon and coded him very dangerous-the patrol officers in the area would scramble.
The trick would be to get all the personnel in place and take Schuyler Merritt Junior into custody before the press arrived. The media, local and national, had a vested interest in this case now.
The radio crackled. A patrol was rolling from Highway 70 South, ETA three minutes. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. Ariadne would be fine.
“What in the name of hell does that woman think she’s doing?”
“She thinks she’s helping, LT.”
“I never asked for help. Like I need Miss Marple for the occult set to solve my case?”
“Well, I never did see Miss Marple in a corset and cloak, but I get your drift.”
She smiled at him. “She could give Morticia lessons, that’s for sure. Damn stupid, silly woman, running off after a killer like that. I have half a mind to charge her with obstruction. She should have called me. If this goes south…”
He was white-faced beside her, but said, “It’s not going to go south.”
They were on Old Hickory now, the red light strobing off the fine brick homes, the woods taking on a momentary bloody glow as they flew past. They disturbed a gang of turkeys, feeding too close to the road in the rough off the eighth hole of Harpeth Hills. They fled away from the lights, disappearing off into the brush, tail feathers gleaming white in her peripheral vision.
The radio was crackling-the first patrols had arrived at the Shell station.
Dispatch popped into the fray. “Please advise, Lieutenant Jackson.”
“You’re looking for a pale woman with black hair named Ariadne. She should be locked inside.”
“Negative, LT. No one here like that.”
She heard the words, negative, from three different voices. Beads of sweat popped out on her brow, she put her foot to the floor. The Lumina launched itself down Highway 100. She wrestled her gaze from the blacktop just long enough to shoot a searing I-told-you-so look at McKenzie.
Fifty-Five
Nashville 11:00 p.m.
R aven had felt her, the weight of her presence, long before she stepped on the twig. He didn’t know who she was, other than she wasn’t a friend. She was strong, this one, but still no match for him. There was strength, and then there was the immutable power of steel and brass, a reality that couldn’t be argued with.
She’d fled quickly once she’d known he was awake. He stood, stretched, slipped the pistol from his waistband. A friend at reform school had taught him the right way to handle the weapon; he’d been an eager student. The cold steel warmed to his palm. He held it lightly in his grasp, finger alongside the trigger, gun pointing down the length of his thigh. He wouldn’t raise it until he was ready to use it. It was a small caliber weapon, so in order for it to be effective, he’d need to be close.
Like his parents.
Blood flooded his groin at the thought of the two of them, cowering in the living room like rats being sold to a lab. That day, the longest of his life, would never retreat from the recesses of his mind.
His bitch of a mother had walked in on him and Fane and freaked out. They’d known, of course-that’s why they’d split them up, sent him away.
“It’s not natural,” his father had spit at him, the disgust ripe in his throat.
“Natural enough for you,” he’d shouted. “You’ve been fucking Fane since she was four.”
“I have never laid a hand on that girl, and you damn well know it.”
“Sky, how could you say such a thing?” His mother, her eyes pleading, lost in a world they didn’t want to understand.
“Ask, Mom. Ask Fane. She’ll tell you. I had to sleep in her room, blocking the door some nights, to keep him off of her. But what we have is different. We were made for each other. We’re in love. You can’t stop us.”
The arguments had gone on and on and on, but in the end, his parents shipped him away. They divorced, his mother silently applying for a dissolution of the marriage for irreconcilable differences; his father signing the paperwork, face pinched white. They’d never spoken after that night, using e-mail to correspond about their family. His mother had always known, he was sure about that. Faced with the undeniable truth, the reality of letting her baby daughter be violated by her loving father for all those years, she just wanted to get away.
It had worked for Jackie Merritt. She quickly found a new man, a good man in her eyes, a soldier, one bred for violence and mayhem who was as gentle as a lamb with her. She remarried. Fane acted out, but Jackie could turn the other cheek, knowing that she was safe from both her Schuylers. Seeing what she wanted to see was Jackie’s greatest asset.
Until the night three weeks ago, when Raven had come home. Jackie had entered Fane’s room without knocking, the smile fading to horror as she watched her two children bucking together on the bed. Raven, fed up with the constant haranguing about a love that was as natural as it was fulfilling, called a family meeting, insisted that they come. Sat them down in the living room of his father’s house, took Fane in his arms and explained that they’d been married. It was handfasting, yes, but that was as legal as a priest and a church in the eyes of their religion.
Their parents hadn’t taken it well.
Raven had been standing a few feet away, the gun in his waistband, watching them fight with bemusement. Like it mattered? He caught Fane’s eyes and rolled his own. She nodded, it was time. It was amazingly simple-his father first, so he couldn’t fight, from behind and to the left, then his mother. They collapsed together, mouths open in remonstration.
The sudden silence was breathtaking.
It only took thirty minutes to dig the pit; the basement was old, the concrete cracked and worn. Dump the bodies, snip off the fingers they needed for their spells, mix up some quick-set, and they were free.
Sweating, tired and jubilant, they had sex in the living room, on the couch, mingling their fluids with the blood of their parents. No one could keep them apart anymore.
That first taste was enough to convince him that it was time to deal with all the rest of the people who’d shunned and abused him. The Immortals would not be stopped.
He came back to himself, realized he was standing in the open, the moonlight glistening on the dew-wet grass. The fog was heavier now; the wisps and tendrils flowed around his feet as he started to move. The woman was in her car, back to him, talking on the phone. He needed to make sure she didn’t see him slinking up behind her. He crouched low, below her line of sight in the rearview mirror. He inched forward, closer, closer. She finished her call, dropped the phone in her lap, laid her head back against the headrest.
Now.
He burst around the driver’s side of the car. The door was locked-he’d figured it would be. Using the butt of the gun, he shattered the glass, grabbed the woman by her hair, dragged her out the window. She was small, light, fine-boned. The long hair was a perfect handle, he was able to maneuver her entire body out and onto the ground. He perched over her, pinning her down, legs on either side of her. She struggled and bucked, tried to scream, but he punched her with his free hand.
She was pretty. Her skin was very pale, he could see the flush of color the imprint of his knuckles made across her cheek. Encouraged, he punched her a few more times, and she stopped screaming. Blood rushed from her nose, and her lip was split. He reached down on impulse and licked her face, savoring the salty essence of her heart.
