If Looks Could Kill (49 page)

"Monsters?" So quiet, so sure. So sane sounding in the roiling, rank darkness. "No monsters, Christian. Just people. Always has been. You just never understood that. It's why you never figured out why they locked you away."

With the last of her courage, Chris took a step in. "And you... did?"

"Of course. I was in because I saw the truth. I saw that people were the monsters and I killed them. You were in, of course, for the exact opposite. You couldn't kill the monsters. I've tried to illustrate that for you."

"I want... to see him." Cool, coarse, hand-hewn granite against her fingers. Stifling miasma of old despair and older fear in her nose. Chris did her best to approach the voices. All the voices.

Suddenly, a light speared into the blackness. A flashlight in Sandy's hands. It flickered like a poltergeist and etched shadows into her pasty face as she stepped out of one of the cells. Limp brown hair, avid eyes, small, pointed teeth. The face of madness.

She stood at the edge of the far cell, dirty and rumpled in a police uniform. Thrumming with the energy of purpose. With the adrenaline of delusion. The very vision of every nightmare Chris had ever had. The light glinted off the hunting knife in her hand.

"Why him?" Chris asked her, hands carefully at her sides, coat flapping open just a little, heart hammering.

Sandy smiled, and Chris saw what she hadn't in fifteen years. She saw the terrible, childish insanity. The vulnerable malice that fueled destruction. "You thought it would be the girl, didn't you?" She shook her head. "Couldn't be. She didn't believe you. The sacrifice had to be worthy. What could be more worthy than the man who'd risk his career for you?"

"He's not going to die," Chris said as certainly as she could. Eyes on Sandy, the light, any light better than the night. Her chest burned with fear; her lungs struggled for air. She balanced herself right on the edge of sanity and stepped forward.

Sandy's smile grew. "Then you're willing to die for him."

Chris nodded carefully. "Yes. Let him out."

A shake of the head. "Not until it's over. You know that."

"Then let me say good-bye. You can let me have that."

That blank face puckered a little. "It's not the way it's written."

Chris lifted her hands out to her side in supplication. "Please." It took every ounce of control in her, but she kept her eyes on Sandy rather than the small square of blackness to her right. To where she could hear Mac's breathing.

Finally Sandy swung the light. "OK."

Chris retrieved her hands. Stuffed them in the coat pockets. Drew in a few more shaky breaths. Took the necessary steps closer to that gleaming, deadly blade in order to reach Mac.

In order to step into that awful little hole where over a century of misery remained embedded in the walls.

It closed in on her. Weighted her down until she couldn't breathe at all. Whispered to her in familiar voices, in voices she'd never known, old voices, sad voices, terrible, despairing voices.

She turned into the cell and bent to where Mac was slumped against the wall.

"What did you do?" Chris demanded, seeing the blood that gleamed blackly along the side of his face. His eyes were closed, his face as pale as death.

"He kept waking up. I couldn't risk letting him go. Not before you got here."

Chris couldn't believe she could be more terrified. Mac's slack features did it. She'd been counting on him to help himself. To get himself away while she dealt with Sandy. Suddenly Chris wasn't sure he was going to make it out of this cell alive at all.

"Mac?" She lifted a hand to his forehead, to find it cold. Clammy. God, what was she going to do? He was curled up in the corner, his hands cuffed behind him, his shirt stained with his own blood and the side of his head swollen. "Mac, it's Chris. Come on..."

Nothing. Just that stertorous breathing. She wanted to shake him, to scream at him, that he was the only one who was going to prevent this from ending in a massacre. Sandy was primed for it, Chris could tell. She could see it in those flickering, hot eyes of hers, in the spasmatic movements of her body. Smelled it in the heat that shimmered from her. Chris's blood wasn't going to be enough. And Chris had depended on Mac to help everybody else. Especially himself.

She'd wanted answers. She didn't have time anymore.

"You've seen him..."

Chris whipped around, fury dimming even the terror. "You're going to have your resolution, damn it. Let me have mine!"

And then, crumpling as if it were too much for her to bear, she threw herself onto Mac's still form.

"I'm doing it for you," Sandy protested behind her. "Haven't you figured that out yet? All for you. I've been planning and working for this day ever since you wrote that first story... since you decided to devote yourself to understanding. How could I do anything but help?"

Chris left tears on Mac's cheek and straightened with his blood on hers. She also left behind a gun and an unlocked set of cuffs. Sandy didn't see them. Chris didn't know if what she'd managed would help. She simply couldn't leave Mac helpless like this.She couldn't continue to play Sandy's game at the expense of his life.

Straightening, she faced that half-seen face in the echoing darkness. She saw Mac's blood on the sleeve of the coat and knew a fear that swept away delusions. He was going to die if she didn't do something. If she didn't do something fast.

"All right," she said, facing her accuser, her friend, her personal demon. "I'm here. In the dark. Don't you think it's time we got on with it?"

Sandy's face actually fell a little. "You still don't get it, do you?"

"Why?" Chris demanded stepping forward, forcing Sandy a little farther back. Away from the cell. From Mac. "Why have you done this?"

The knife lifted, deadly and long. Sharp as retribution, the light gathering and sparking against its steel. "To show you," she insisted.

"To show me what? To tell me what?"

"Why," Sandy insisted, her eyes flickering in the light like the knife. Dark eyes, black eyes with the random, deadly lightning of madness in them. "Why," she repeated, straightening, stepping carefully back over the threshold into the hallway. "Just like you asked."

"Why what?" Chris shrilled, desperate, suddenly certain that this was the most important thing. "What did I do to you to deserve this?"

"You were my friend!"

It stopped her. Deep into the cell block, where the darkness was so thorough, where the only light had been shredded by the grillwork on the high, small windows. Inches from her foe, from her nightmare, from her friend.

Cards.

No one else had played cards with Sandy. No one else had even talked to her, the sad, sorry girl who had spent her days trailing Chris like a puppy and her nights trying to inflict new pain on herself.

Who had killed her parents because they had so grievously assaulted her.

Chris had felt sorry for her.Even battling her own sanity, even struggling to maintain a toehold on reality behind those terrible, high walls, she'd felt sorry for the whey-faced girl who had eviscerated her own mother.

"Why?" Chris asked, the tears welling again. "Why hurt me if I was your friend?"

Sandy took a step closer, eyes hot and anxious. "To help you know. To help you remember what you couldn't."

"I didn't want to remember!"

"You did! You did, or you wouldn't have written all those books."

"I wrote those books to get past it!" Chris cried, sobbing, hands at her chest to keep the loathing from escaping, from staining her shirt and burning her. "To finally get away from that place!"

"But you can't until you face it," Sandy insisted. "Until you face me. And you didn't even know me. You didn't even recognize the face of your own mirror."

"So you had to kill my friend?"

"You needed me to. I knew when you didn't recognize me that it wasn't just memory you wanted. It was expiation. Redemption. Cleansing."

"Why?" Chris screamed, shaking and desperate. Feeling the weight press on her again. Smelling the terrible fear that seeped from her. "Because I murdered my baby?"

"No!" Sandy screamed back. "Because your mother murdered your baby!"

Chris never heard her own strangled cry. She never saw the knife rise. The darkness exploded on her, the madness. Shattering the night into a million fragments, pictures and sounds and smells, overwhelming her, forcing her down to her knees. To the position of supplication, of abjection.

Of sacrifice.

Chris didn't see what Sandy was doing until the knife struck home.

Chapter 22

The impact of the knife knocked Chris completely over. Pain exploded in her chest and took her breath. The darkness shuddered with dancing lights and agony.

Above her, Sandy shrieked. "You lied!" she accused, her voice suddenly high and terrible. "You lied, you lied, you lied! You weren't ready to die for him!"

For a second Chris couldn't even focus on the vague blur of white over her head. She was trying to get her breath back from the force of that blow. She was trying to pull sense out of the swirling madness. All her plans, her precautions had been lost in one terrible sentence.

"She didn't," Chris gasped, curling in to protect herself. Feeling the tear in the protective vest. Struggling to get her breath back.

"You lied!" Sandy screamed again, reaching down to grab Chris by the collar and yank her back up. "You said you were ready to die!"

Chris fought to regain her balance. She fought for air. She fought for reason. "Please... I can't..."

The knife struck again, lethal and swift, slicing along her arm on its descent to her stomach. The power behind the thrust was immense, the aim deflected by Kevlar. Chris grunted, struggled to get free. To get clear of that knife, to escape those terrifying eyes.

"My whole life!" Sandy screamed, shaking her again, "I've given my whole life to you, following you, learning you, disciplining my mind to work in tandem with yours so I could paint your pictures for you, so I could give you what you wanted. And you deny me?"

"Because you didn't explain!" Chris shouted with the last of her breath. She felt her feet beneath her. Struggled to get them into position to lift her out of Sandy's grasp. "I don't believe you."

Sandy pulled tighter on the collar, bunching material in her fist and cutting off Chris's air, cutting off her escape. The knife winked at her in the diffused light from the fallen flashlight.

Sandy's eyes were wild, glittering. Her fingers curled like talons and her breath smelled like old metal, as if she'd been tasting blood. Chris fought a surge of nausea. She brought her hands up to claw at the clothing that cut off her air. She shuddered with the impact of exploding madness.

Chris had seen it before, the sudden, terrifying detonation of insanity. From silence to shrilling, screeching terror. From reason to the hurtling, howling kaleidoscope of delusion. It reverberated around her, a hot wind of dementia completely unpredictable, awesomely dangerous. It battered at her like a physical blow, like the knife thrusts. It sucked her in and spun her around, she who was no real stranger to the episode herself.

"I don't believe you," she insisted on a strangled breath, her chest on fire, her gut heaving, her black, blank memory tumbling with undefined sensations.

Sandy leaned so close Chris could smell the sweat on her, could almost taste that acrid scent of madness that clung to her like a foul wash.

"It's why you're crazy," the woman accused in a funny singsong voice. "Because you don't believe. Because you won't believe. Because you turn away from everything that is righteous and holy and have to be punished for it... punished... punished, like the fires of hell, eternal and scorching and never-relenting... punished..."

Her mother's voice. Chris heard it coming out of this madwoman's mouth, the cadence, the words, the awful, damning disdain. Chris shuddered with its impact. She sobbed with its import.

"You don't know her," she insisted brokenly, her hands hooked around her captor's. Her throat clogged with terrible sobs. "She was never there... she never came to see me."