wouldn’t want to carry the whole load, though. I wouldn’t want to grow old, or give up certain advantages I’ve always enjoyed. But it’s like they say-sometimes you’ve got to bring it to get it. I paid a high price to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Higher than you would ever believe.”
But I did believe. I had to. Satan had shown me the proof.
I believed every word.
I blinked and tried to focus. I looked for the woman who had drawn me to her bed. I looked for her in the shadows. She was with them now. A thing that wore a woman as a mask. A dark ripple on water. A siren calling from the heart of my wildest dream My wildest nightmare.
“It’s past your bedtime,” said the thing that lived in Circe Whistler’s skin.
I sucked down one last breath.
Her palm closed over my face, dammed my nostrils and my mouth.
That last breath burned in my lungs. I knew I’d never draw another. I drew my K-bar instead. Drew it from behind my back.
The blade sliced crushed velvet, tore flesh, skittered between ribs.
And dug a grave in Satan’s black heart.
They lay at my feet.
Three dead dogs and Satan’s corpse.
Her blue eyes shone with surprise.
Her open mouth was a gutter for blood.
In dying, that was all she had surrendered.
Or perhaps it was all I could see.
No shade. No ghost. Only blood.
But blood was enough.
Flies came.
And flies lingered.
So did I.
I heard footfalls on the staircase. Careful, quiet, afraid. And very much alive.
Janice Ravenwood stood before me, searching for answers in my eyes.
My eyes held nothing. I was dead. But I saw clearly. I saw Janice’s future. She could have everything she’d ever wanted. Fame, fortune…even Circe Whistler’s mansion. She could have it all, as long as she was willing to pay the price.
We all paid our prices. All of us, the living and the dead. Me, and Diabolos Whistler, and the thing that had masqueraded as his daughter, and Spider Ripley and all the rest.
Janice Ravenwood was no different.
I remembered what she’d told me, once upon a time: “A wise soul understands the dynamics of mercy.”
I wondered if Janice truly believed that, for even mercy has its price.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said. “But I want to tell you that I’m sorry. For everything. I didn’t know about Circe until tonight… When she told me what she was, I thought it was too late for any of us…especially for me. I hope you believe me.”
Sirens howled in the distance.
Janice’s fingers brushed my forehead.
“Thank you,” she said.
She closed my eyelids with fingers that felt too much. She knew the price of a single touch. She paid it.
I left Circe Whistler’s mansion under a ripe moon.
The storm was clearing. Tattered clouds whipped across the heavens, but there was no power left in them. The wind took the clouds where it wanted to go, blustering through the long night and beyond.
I could not go with the wind.
I looked to the road ahead.
A pair of gates swung open before me.
Not the gates of heaven, and not the gates of hell.
Only the gates that shielded the Whistler estate from the outside world.
A car from the sheriff’s department raced down the driveway. Instinctively, I made a grab for my K-bar, and the laughter that spilled across my lips didn’t even amount to a whisper on the wind.
I held the knife before me. Just like the deputy I’d murdered at the side of Circe’s house-the one who’d aimed a ghostly pistol in my direction-I could see the weapon clearly.
But I wouldn’t be fooled by it. I tucked the knife under my belt. The patrol car skidded to a stop beneath the porte-cochere. Two deputies jumped out, and Janice Ravenwood met them at the door, and they entered the mansion together.
I turned my back on the mansion and started toward the open gates.
I didn’t know where I was bound.
Heaven. Hell. Somewhere in between.
But I knew where I wanted to go.
I started up the road. Another police car came down the drive, followed by a CNN news van.
This time, I didn’t spare them a backward glance.
Car doors opened behind me, then slammed shut.
Radio crosstalk drifted through the night air, along with insistent voices.
The talk was of a killer.
They’d given him a name, the way they always do. They called him Jehovah’s Hammer.
2
She was waiting, of course.
Sitting on a footbridge that arched across a rushing creek, her little girl legs dangling over the side as she gazed down at the cold water rushing below.
I moved toward her, following a fern-choked path through old redwoods, but Circe Whistler didn’t notice me.
Of course, the sounds I made were hardly sounds at all, and what the little girl would have heard had she been listening was masked by the hollow sigh of clear creek water flowing to the sea.
Silent as an evening breeze, I stepped onto the bridge.
“I always keep my promises,” I said.
Circe looked up with startled blue eyes that were as clear as the October sky.
A smile bloomed on her face. “I’m glad you came back,” she said.
“So am I.”
I sat down next to her, and Circe looked into my eyes. She saw nothing there to make her wary or afraid. But she was afraid of questions, questions she had to ask.
Questions are never good. She said, “Did you find out-”
“The truth?”
