Rogue Oracle (14 page)

She looked over the dog’s ears, pressed her fist to her mouth. It smelled like sweat and gunpowder. “What’ve I done?”

She stared intently at the body seeping blood on the floor. She couldn’t detect any rise and fall in his chest, and he’d stopped twitching. On her hands and knees, she crawled to the man, touched his wrist with shaking fingers. She had to focus them to remain still, try to see if she felt a pulse.

But she felt nothing, nothing but the panic welling up in her throat.

Who was this man? What did he want?

She’d been chased by the military, months back. They’d wanted her dead father’s secrets, but Delphi’s Daughters had hidden her. Had they found her, at last?

She shook. Shook so hard she could barely put one foot in front of the other. She clambered up the steps. The gunfire had deafened her, and she could only hear her own ragged breath ringing in her ears. She grabbed her backpack, her cell phone, peeked under the bed to check for Oscar. His golden eyes were wide as moons. She saw him open his mouth, but couldn’t hear him meowing. She dragged him out by the scruff of his neck, jammed him into her backpack. She stuffed her laptop computer under her arm, stumbled down the stairs with the squirming backpack over her arm and Maggie glued to her side.

She had to get out of there. Whoever this man was, whatever he had wanted, it wasn’t safe.

She ran down the porch steps to the intruder’s car, uttering a prayer under her breath that the keys were in the ignition and not in his pockets. The door opened, and she found them dangling from the ignition. She opened the passenger door for Maggie, put Oscar in the backseat with the computer.

She cranked the engine to life, threw the car into reverse. Every fiber in her being was telling her to flee. Fear of the intruder, what he represented, mingled in her mind with fear of the Pythia’s wrath.

But she’d be long gone by the time the Pythia discovered the body on her parlor floor.

Far away, someplace where no one—not even Delphi’s Daughters—could find her.

Chapter Ten

S
OMETHING WAS
wrong. Tara could feel it pulsing behind her eyes, like a half-formed headache. When she dug in her purse for a pen, her pack of cards tumbled out on the Special Projects conference room table among Veriss’s network charts and Anderson’s DNA printouts.

Tara hesitated, her fingers pressed against the surface of the pack obscured in the cigarette wrapper. Harry had sent Veriss out to pick up lunch, much to the analyst’s irritation, leaving her alone with Harry and a mountain of data they were trying to decipher. She opened the pack and spread her cards out before her on the glossy table.

Across the table, Harry looked up from his files to watch her shuffle and draw. “Maybe you should give the cards a rest for a while, after that trance stuff,” he said, fidgeting and glancing at the closed door.

She shook her head. “Something’s not right.” Harry might be concerned about her playing cards in Special Projects and getting caught, but she couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling prickling at the base of her skull.

“This whole case is fucked up.”

“Yeah. But this feels … different.”

Tara shuffled the cards, and one slipped through her fingers to the cluttered surface of the table. She frowned. Jumping cards often contained urgent information. The Star showed a maiden bathing in a creek, looking up at the sky. She was the picture of innocence.

And that was the card she associated with Cassie. Her heart leapt in her throat, and she glanced at her watch. She didn’t expect to hear from Cassie until late tonight, but that wouldn’t stop her from checking in early. She picked up her cell phone, dialed the number to the farmhouse. It rang and rang, with no answer.

She looked down at the card, drumming her fingers on its margins. It was possible that Delphi’s Daughters were out frolicking in the yard. Or that they’d driven to one of the neighboring towns for pizza. It was possible.

She tried calling Cassie’s cell. It was shut off, rolled immediately over to voice mail.

She shuffled the cards again, and another card dropped to the table, beside the Star. The Ten of Swords showed a man lying on the ground, his back pierced with ten swords plunged into the rocky earth.

Without a word, Tara snatched up her cards and jammed them back into her purse. She grabbed her holster and made for the door.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Harry asked.

“It’s Cassie,” Tara said. “She’s in danger. There’s no answer at the farmhouse or her cell.”

Harry stood, reaching for his jacket. “I’ll go with you.”

She shook her head. “No.” She kissed him soundly on the mouth. “Stay here, in case she finds her way back here.”

Harry’s mouth was set in a grim line, and he caught her elbow. Cassie was like a little sister to the both of them. “If something’s happened to her—”

“There won’t be anything you can do. This is a matter for Delphi’s Daughters.” She blew out her breath. “And if I find out that the Pythia’s done something to her, so help me, I’ll make sure that conniving witch has no future to predict.”

T
HE OLD MAN KNEW HE WAS BEING WATCHED
.

Galen could see it in the way he tightly closed his blinds and shut his lights off after dark. The old man must be moving through his house through sheer touch and familiarity with the floor plan. Once in a while, streetlights would pick out a shimmer of metal inside, behind the glass. Whether it was a weapon or the shine on his wheelchair, Galen couldn’t tell.

The old man had been warned.

For certain, the old man knew he was being watched by the two men in the sedan with U.S. Government plates sitting across the street. They stuck out like a sore thumb in the quiet suburban neighborhood, swilling their coffee, yakking on their cell phones, and flipping their newspapers. Neighbors kept peeking out behind their curtains to see what the men were up to. Galen was certain they were here primarily for deterrent effect.

And that would’ve worked for most people. An ordinary burglar would have simply passed by. But Galen wanted Norman Lockley. He wanted what was rattling around in his brain. That beautiful chaos he could sell, unleash upon the unsuspecting world.

Galen crouched in the shadow of Norman’s bird feeders, listening for sounds within the house. He heard the jingle of chain and a dish scraping around inside. A dog. Eventually, Norman’s wheelchair creaked into the back of the house, and Galen could hear the old man wheezing as he dragged himself out of the chair and into his bed. Bedsprings groaned as the old man made himself comfortable. A television droned in the background.

Galen crossed around the back of the house, his step stealthy. With a pair of wire cutters, he snipped the phone line leading into the basement of the house. He left the cable television line alone; no point in alarming the old man unnecessarily. He crept around to the back garage. A door opened out into the backyard, but it was locked.

No matter. Galen had learned a few simple criminal tricks in his time in Ukraine and Belarus. He’d learned many more from Gerald, Carl, and the others. He pulled a CO
₂
fire extinguisher from his backpack, aimed it at the knob lock, and squeezed the trigger. The cold foam enveloped the brass knob, and Galen waited until the metal began to crackle and sweat. He withdrew a hammer from his bag and a bath towel to muffle the sound. He wrapped the towel around the knob. With one swift motion, he struck the knob with the hammer. The blow severed the knob from its stem, shattering it with nary a sound.

Gently, he opened the door, stepped down two steps into the garage. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the thicker darkness. Streetlights filtering in from the high windows showed him work tables full of disguises, of half-completed masks and bits of limbs. It seemed to be a dollmaker’s studio, devoted to the simulation of life. Galen reached out to brush the back of his hand against the silicone flesh of a mask. He would use this information.

But later.

He stepped up a wheelchair ramp to the door leading to the kitchen. This door was a simple interior lock, easily dispatched with a credit card. The old man should’ve known better, but time had made him complacent.

Galen slipped across the kitchen, worked his way to the back of the house. Flickering shapes from Lockley’s television played in the hallway. He thought he was being silent, but the dog found him halfway down the hall.

The dog, perhaps thirsty for her bowl of water, ambled sleepily into his path. Galen saw she was glossy and fat. Complacent, like Lockley. She blinked and crouched down when she saw Galen, pulling her lips back from her teeth in a growl.

Galen pulled his jacket sleeves down across his knuckles, holding his arms across his body to protect his chest.

“Diana, what is it?” The old man’s voice rumbled in the back room.

The dog lunged, teeth digging into Galen’s arm. He thrashed the dog against the wall, his free arm twisting into her collar. In his panic, he didn’t let go soon enough. He felt his fingers digging into her jaw, the whine of the dog as she let go of his arm. She tried to squirm free, snapping and biting. She sank her teeth into his thigh, and he felt hot blood welling there. But she couldn’t pull her teeth free of him. She was like a shark with a piece of meat, only the meat was devouring her. She began to foam at the mouth, thrashing like a fish on a line. A heady swirl of scents and colors invaded Galen’s brain. He smelled meat, fear, sweat …

Galen stumbled into the bedroom, the dog flailing at his leg. The old man sat up in bed, fumbling in his nightstand for a gun. He lifted it, but didn’t have time to aim.

“What do you want?” The old man’s hand shook.

“I want what’s in your head.” Saliva oozed down Galen’s chin in a string, and his tongue was too thick to speak around.

Galen slapped the old man’s arm away. He grasped his wrist, and the gun clattered to the floor. Norman began to yell. Salivating, Galen reached for the man’s throat, possessed by an instinctive urge to rip it out. His fingers plunged into Lockley’s flesh, crushing the fragile larynx and wrapping around the tongue that pulsed behind his teeth. His head was suffused by Norman’s fear and Diana’s terror. It felt like his brain was being trapped in one of Lockley’s grotesque, half-finished masks.

Galen bared his teeth and growled.

• • • •

T
ARA DROVE HOURS TO GET TO THE FARMHOUSE, ARRIVING
when the moon had climbed high in the sky. Cassie’s cell phone and the line at the farmhouse still rang unanswered. She was infuriated to see lights on at the house and cars parked in the yard when she pulled up the gravel driveway.

She snatched the keys from the ignition, slammed the car door, and stomped up the porch steps into the house. To her right, she saw one of Delphi’s Daughters scrubbing the wooden floor and another one repairing a screen. Whispers could be heard in the back room.

“Where is she?” Tara demanded.

The Daughter scrubbing the floor looked down, didn’t answer. Tara reached down and grabbed her sleeve, forcing her to look up. “I said,
where is she
?”

“Cassie’s gone,” the woman said.

When Tara looked down into her scrub bucket, she saw the rusty tinge of blood on the soap bubbles. She smelled spent gunpowder. “Where’s the Pythia?”

She smelled the familiar scent of clove cigarettes. Tara wheeled to see the Pythia standing at the foot of the stairs with a cigarette in her hand. She wasn’t dressed in her usual feminine skirt and blouse; she was clad in cargo pants and a T-shirt. Her boots were streaked with mud. She smelled like a fresh grave.

“What the hell’s going on?” Tara released the woman scrubbing the floor and advanced on the Pythia.

The Pythia regarded her coolly, but Tara could see the worry mark deepening between her eyes. “She’s gone. We can’t find the cat or the dog, either.”

Tara pointed to the stained floor. “What’s all that?”

“Cassie shot an intruder. We found him dead on the floor.”

Tara’s heart hammered. “Where is he now?”

The Pythia shook her head. “He’s been taken care of. Buried. No one will ever find him.”

Tara believed it. She’d seen Delphi’s Daughters dispose of bodies before. “What was he? Military? How did they find her?”

The Pythia shook her head. “It wasn’t the military. I sent him here, as a test.”

“You
what
?” Tara’s eyes were round in incredulity.

The Pythia’s red mouth turned downward. “The new Pythia must be capable. She must be strong enough to do what needs to be done.”

“You dumped me in the woods when I was twelve to navigate my way out. Was that not test enough for her? You had to see if … if she was capable of killing?”

“Yes.” The Pythia stared at her cigarette, seeming both cold and weary. “She passed.”

Tara doubled up her fist and struck the Pythia in the face. The Pythia didn’t flinch, turned back to Tara like some creature from a Terminator movie, not even spitting out her cigarette. Tara could see the swelling already beginning around that meticulously kohled eye. Two of Delphi’s Daughters grabbed Tara from behind, keeping her from throwing a second blow.

“Where is she now?” Tara snarled. Damn, that felt good.

The Pythia shook her head. “We don’t know.”

“How can you not fucking know? You’re the goddamn Oracle of Delphi. She’s your protégé.”

The Pythia’s eye was beginning to blacken. One of the Daughters handed her a washcloth full of ice, and the Pythia pressed it to her face. “She hasn’t made up her mind, yet.” The Pythia sighed. “Tara, I’m truly sorry for this. It didn’t come off as I planned. He was a serial child molester. He didn’t deserve to live.”

“That’s not your call.”

“Society failed to contain him. I did.”

Tara shook her head. There was no arguing about guilt or innocence with the Pythia. “You just planned for her to kill this guy and stick around to tell you about it?”

The Pythia looked at her with her one good eye. “We’re searching for her now. I can only ask … I can only ask that you help us.”

Tara shook herself free of Delphi’s Daughters. “I’ll look for her. But I’m not going to bring her back to you to turn her into a monster.”

The Pythia whispered after her: “My dear, you have no choice in it.”

Tara turned on her heel and stomped off down the steps. She slammed into the car, cranked over the engine, and backed out of the driveway at top speed.

What had she been thinking, leaving Cassie alone with that witch? Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Cassie had trusted her, and Tara had left her in the care of that … that monster. The Pythia had become a myopic slave to her own ends, losing her humanity in the process.

Miles of two-lane country road flashed past before Tara found a place to pull off. This far from civilization, her only company was the sound of crickets and tree frogs, and the quarter moon rising high in the darkness. A forest spread to her left, and a meadow to her right, containing a small pond as still as a forgotten mirror. Fireflies drifted across the landscape.