True Bliss (41 page)

"Gunshots hurt," Sebastian said.

Silence fell.

"Tough to shoot yourself, Morris. What if you lose your nerve? How will you explain a pile of corpses in your living room then?"

Kitten surged upward. She surged upward, and screamed— and grabbed for the gun.

The shot jolted Bliss's spine all the way to her heels. She stood up and made fists in the air.

A second shot rang out.

One of Kitten's hands struck Morris's face, smeared blood from hairline to chin. She fell against him. Blood spattered his yellow polo shirt, and, as Kitten slid toward the floor, more blood soaked her husband's clothes. Streaks of blood running down his body, down his legs.

Bliss retched, and moaned.

"Keep still," Sebastian said in a harsh whisper. "Be quiet."

"Mom?" Bliss moaned. "Mom?"

Kitten slumped over Morris's feet. He stepped back, kicked free of her. Distaste curled his lips. "I caught my own wife when her daughter shot her," he said.

"Mad," Sebastian muttered. He took a step toward Morris but stopped when the gun barrel leveled in his direction. He said, "This isn't going to work. Why not quit while there's some hope you can come up with a story to explain why you'd kill your wife?"

"Never," Morris said. "I'm going to be President of the United States and no snot-nosed little bastard is getting in my way. I'm using you, Plato."

Footsteps in the foyer froze the scene. "Don't come in here," Bliss yelled, and shrank back when Morris's gun shifted in her direction. "Call the police! He's got a gun!"

Morris's face turned dull red. He backed toward the wall behind the door.

Maryan Plato appeared.

"Get out, Sis," Sebastian said. "He's behind the door and he's armed. Get the hell out while you can!"

She came into the room with dragging steps. Mascara trailed her thin cheeks. "Morris?" She peered around until she saw him. Swaying on sandaled feet, she gave the man a wobbling smile and waved. "Here we are again!"

"Welcome, Maryan. We're going to make things nice and tidy." Morris's voice was monotone. "Bliss Winters killed Plato's sister because she found out they had this sick thing. He was rucking his own sister."

Bliss flinched. They were going to die and Morris would tell disgusting lies about all of them.

Morris's attention was on Maryan. He approached her, shoved the gun down the front of her wrinkled dress—between her breasts. "She's going to take you out next. She already killed her mother."

Sebastian, stepping between Bliss and Morris, cut off her view. "Get down, Bliss! Now. On the floor. He can't shoot us all at once."

"Fuck you!" Morris yelled. "Next one to move dies first."

"Do it," Sebastian said.

Rather than follow his orders, she got up and flung her arms around his waist.

"Bliss," he ground out. "For God's sake."

"If you shoot him, you probably shoot me," Bliss told Morris. "Same bullet. Same trajectory. Explain that to the police."

"You were going to make sure everything was okay," Maryan said. "You promised, Morris. I tried to do what you wanted, and you promised. It almost worked, but Seb came back to the pool."

Bliss felt Sebastian grow even stiffer. "What the hell does that mean?"

Another gunshot exploded against Bliss's eardrums.

"Maryan," Sebastian said softly. "You shit, Winters. If you wanted me you could have had me. You didn't have to do that to her."

He lunged, and threw himself forward at the same time.

Bliss lost her hold on him, fell, rolled away. Her head hit a brass table. Blood had spattered the open, white-painted door— Maryan Plato's blood. Clutching her shoulder, she'd slumped against the wall.

Morris held the gun two-handed, his elbows locked, the barrel

pointed at Sebastian's face. "I want you over there." He twitched the gun. "My ex-wife's bastard makes a good point. Trajectory's important. Face her. I like that. She's going to shoot you in the face, lover-boy."

"Don't move," Bliss told Sebastian. "Stay where you are."

She saw Maryan slip onto her side and inch toward Morris. Blood oozed between her fingers.

"Turn around, Plato," Morris said. Veins stood out at his temples. His color had turned a mottled purple. "Turn around, you little shit!"

Grimacing, crying out with pain, Maryan rolled into the backs of Morris's legs.

He flailed.

Another bullet sang, and buried itself in the ceiling. And Morris overbalanced across Maryan's back.

Sebastian threw himself on top of the other man, clamped one hand around his neck and reached for the gun.

The phone rang.

"Fuck!" Morris screamed. "I'm going to kill you. All of you."

Another ring, and another, and another.

The two men struggled, twisted. Maryan, wriggling from beneath Morris, tried to grab the gun just as Sebastian's fingers began to close.

Morris laughed. "Justice! She sold you out before. She'll kill you now."

Holding her head, feeling warm wetness in her hair, Bliss got to her feet.

The phone stopped ringing.

She crept toward the writhing mass.

Again, the gun went off, and again. Panels on the door splintered.

Sebastian grabbed Maryan's arm and pushed her aside. Her agonized moans tore at Bliss.

She went to her hands and knees.

Morris and Sebastian turned. The gun, their hands, pointed

toward Bliss. She scurried and made it to the phone, dialed 911, let the receiver trail from its cord.

More shots. Great sheets of window glass splintered, disintegrated.

"Seb," Maryan moaned. "Help me, Seb."

Bliss hesitated, but approached the two men from the opposite side. They revolved again. On top of Morris, astride his hips, Sebastian found the other man's throat once more and beat the clenched weapon hand against the rim of a low table.

Morris's lips stretched in a wide grimace.

His hand, bleeding now, jerked until the gun once more pointed at Sebastian. In slow motion, the trigger depressed.

A scarlet gash opened across Sebastian's left arm—and Bliss flung herself on top of Morris's face. She curled over his head, filled her hands with his hair, yanked. Her own sobs filled her ears, her own, and Morris's enraged cries of pain. His free hand found her ear and he twisted.

She felt blows land on his body.

Then she hit the floor again, face down.

And there was silence but for Maryan's wrenching gasps and the labored breathing of the two men—and her own pounding heart.

"You okay, Bliss?"

She raised her head to look at Sebastian through blood that had run from her scalp. "Yes." He had the gun. "I dialed the police."

"Good."

"They'll never believe you didn't do all this, Plato," Morris said. His eyes were swelling shut. "Maryan will help me. We'll tell them how it went. I'm going to be President Winters. I'll need you, Maryan."

She lay on her side, curled into a ball.

"They attacked us, Maryan," Morris said. "They killed Kitten and they tried to kill you."

"Fuck off," Maryan whispered.

"I'll take care of you," Morris said. "I'll—"

Bliss followed the direction of his gaze to a red-haired woman in the doorway. A red-haired woman with a gun of her own. Dressed in jeans and a grimy white sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, she came into the room. Slowly, she made a circuit of the gory scene. With one shoe, she turned Kitten onto her back.

Bliss saw her mother's staring eyes, her shattered neck, and turned away.

"It wasn't you, was it?" the woman said. "Bliss?"

Bliss looked at her and frowned.

"You didn't try to kill me in Dad's trailer?"

Crystal. "No," Bliss said, shaking her head. "No. I was inside when the fire started. I went because you asked me to."

"She did it, didn't she?" Crystal indicated Maryan. "She needed me, but she hated me. So she wanted to get rid of me."

Maryan remained on her side.

"My mother did it," Bliss said. She should be able to cry. "I told her I was going to meet you and she went up there to get rid of you. She said she didn't intend for me to die."

Crystal laughed. She laughed, but her violet eyes were sad when she looked at Sebastian. "Figures. She didn't want to risk you finding out the truth. Any of you. I tried to talk to you at the Wilmans', Sebastian. I wanted you to let me help you, but you just wanted to get rid of me."

"Shoot the bitch," Morris muttered through battered lips.

Crystal positioned herself with a clear view of the scene. "Get away from him, Sebastian."

He didn't move.

"Please," Crystal said.

"Killing him won't help anything," Sebastian told her. "The police will deal with him."

"It was all his fault," Crystal said, turning her face toward Bliss now. "Your dear daddy had quite a taste for young girls, you know."

Bliss held her stomach.

"He would come to his precious new ball field and watch the games. Actually, he watched the girls, the cheerleaders. He

paid for my uniform. That was after he brought me to his little nest out there"—she inclined her head toward the building that housed Morris's study—"He brought me there and made me have sex with him. After the first time, it wasn't so bad. He bought me things. Promised me things. Until I got pregnant."

"Shoot her," Morris said. He jackknifed beneath Sebastian, but a blow to his jaw slammed him down again. "Shut her up," he whined.

A car engine sounded outside. There were no sirens, but a blue light cut the darkness beyond the windows.

"Let the police have him," Sebastian said.

"She sold you out," Crystal said. "Maryan. When she found out you were leaving with Bliss, she went to Morris. He pulled all the strings. He knew you'd been with me at a party. And the timing was about right. He said he'd make sure none of us ever wanted for anything as long as I said the baby was yours."

"Crystal," Sebastian said, with amazing gentleness. "That's all past now, all over. We've paid for it. Don't do anything that'll make us pay anymore."

Bliss blinked stinging eyes. All that, and the baby had died. All this.

Maryan squirmed until she could see them. Her mouth stretched in a grimacing smile. "And you weren't pregnant," she said, a croaking sound coming from her throat. "A phantom pregnancy. A fucking phantom pregnancy! But it worked. Kill him, Crystal. Kill Morris. He did it all."

"Please," Bliss said. "Please. No more."

"Give me the gun, Crystal," Sebastian said.

"He couldn't have done any of it without your help," Crystal said, approaching Maryan. "And all because you were in love with your brother."

"He's not my brother," Maryan said, holding a hand toward Crystal. "He's not."

"Don't," Sebastian said, getting to his feet. "Let's stop this. There's been too much suffering."

"Maryan wanted you, Sebastian. She ruined my life, and Bliss's—and yours—because she wanted you."

Behind Sebastian, Morris rose awkwardly to sit, then to reach for the gun.

Crystal rotated gradually, aimed, and shot Morris between the eyes.

Bliss was still screaming when a second shot found its mark. She screamed while Maryan's last breath left her body, and she screamed as Crystal turned the gun on herself.

"Oh, love," Sebastian said, holding out his arms. "Oh, my dear love."

Bliss flung herself at him, hugged him.

"Police," a voice called from the foyer. "Police! We're coming in."

Vaguely, Bliss felt another presence enter the room.

"Police!" the same voice announced. "Freeze. And drop your weapons."

Sebastian let the gun fall to the floor. "Be my guest," he said, turning to look at the law. "Welcome, Officer Ballard."

Followed by two more policemen, Beater slunk around the uniformed officers already in the room. He ambled to Sebastian and Bliss, sat down, and dropped his orange rubber spider at their feet.

Epilogue

Sitting on the raised deck outside her rooms had been Bliss's choice. Sebastian knew he'd do anything as long as he could be with her. Their wooden chairs were side by side. The morning air was still chilly, but there was the promise of a beautiful day to come. Beater and his spider had found a puddle of sunshine beside a planter box filled with daisies.

They would overcome what had happened. Somehow they'd have to learn to make every day beautiful, and the past would make them stronger.

"What do you call a dachshund sitting on a rabbit?"

She raised her face slowly. "Hmm?" Her eyes didn't quite focus behind her glasses.

Sebastian ran a finger over the bones in the back of her hand. "In winter? In Minnesota?"

Bliss continued to stare at him.

"A chilly dog on a bun? Remember that, Chilly?"

The faintest of smiles crossed her lips. She turned her hand beneath his on the arm of her chair and laced their fingers together. "Just making conversation, again?" she asked.

"You've got it. You haven't spoken since we came out here."

They'd returned to the Point in the early hours of the morning, after a visit to the hospital, and a lengthy interrogation by the police. There would be more of that to come.

"How's your arm?"

He raised it gingerly. "Sore. It'll pass. How about the head?"

"Same. Seems trivial, somehow."

"None of it seems real to me," Sebastian told her.

"Not real at all," Bliss said. "I never loved my folks. No. I loved them in a way, a dependent way. That's the way it always is, I guess. Children are supposed to love parents, so I did. Probably because I thought they loved me and because they were all I had."

He studied her. The sun had risen and morning shadows spread phantom tree trunks across the grass beyond the kitchen garden. Her hair caught light in its red depths.

"I don't want to find out who my father was." The distance claimed her attention once more. "I'm curious. Til always be curious. But not curious enough to go hunting. I don't want to dig around in Mom's past."

"Morris could have been your father, couldn't he? Your mother had . . . She was already married to Morris." He knew all the feelings Bliss was having. He'd been there, done that, as the flip saying went.

"Poor Mom. She was never happy, was she?"

"Maybe sometimes. We can't be sure what makes other people happy."

"She loved him. I know she did. She loved him too much and she never grew to be a person herself. I see that so clearly now. I should have tried to be closer to her."

Sebastian pulled her to her feet and settled her on his lap, against his naked chest. She rested her head on his shoulder and looped her hands around his neck. Her old terry-cloth robe was warm. Inside the robe, Bliss was soft.

He loved her so much it ached.

"Maryan didn't deserve to die like that," Bliss said. "She tried to save you. And Crystal. Oh, Sebastian, I keep thinking about her as a kid in high school. She never had any luck."

"Not really. And they almost took my luck from me." A certain kind of luck, the most important kind. "Without you, the rest didn't mean much."

"I just wish they could have another chance."

It was too soon to think about Mary an or Crystal. And he didn't feel like reminding Bliss that she'd been marked to die. "We're going to have children, aren't we?" he asked her.

Bliss leaned away to look into his face. She studied his eyes, then his mouth. She kissed him lightly, but evaded his attempt to pursue her lips. "Are we?" she asked. "Can we do it right?"

Sebastian had to smile. "Could we do it any other way? We're human. We'll make mistakes. But we're strong or we wouldn't be here, and relatively normal, so we'll be trying so damned hard we'll probably overdo it. They'll be spoiled."

The tears that filled her eyes caught him off guard. "Hey." he ducked his head and brought his face closer. "Don't melt on me now."

Her mouth trembled. "I had a sudden vision of our children. Of you with our children. You'll be wonderful. I've seen you with Bobby. He thinks you walk on water."

"He's a neat kid. He needs a dad of his own."

"Yeah. But he's got a great mom and a doting grandma and aunt. And we love him."

He stroked her jaw with a thumb. "Some people are ruined by their childhoods."

She smiled at him then. Smiled, and sniffed, and a tear overflowed to course down her cheek. "And some people are made stronger. That's us. You and me. I just wish no one had died while we were finding our way."

''Because we were finding our way," he told her seriously. "But we can't control the world, or the people in it. We can only do our best not to be destroyed by them."

"They tried," Bliss said. "But I'm not going to shake the guilt very easily. The goblin still lives inside me. The goblin who whispers, 'it's your fault they didn't love you.' "

Sebastian nodded. "I know that goblin well. He's part of it. And you'll grieve. We both will. But we'll do it together, right?" He rested his forehead on hers. "No suffering alone and in silence. We've both done too much of that."

"I can still hear their voices."

He caught her against him and hugged until he was afraid he would hurt her. "We're going to help each other, okay?"

"Okay." She hugged him back. "When they get Vic, there'll be a court case, won't there?"

"If they get him. Zoya, too, for different reasons."

She shifted on his lap and tilted her head. "You'd better think about getting ready for work."

"When I go, you're going with me."

"I've got work to do here," she protested.

"Then I'm staying here, too."

Her brow puckered. "We can't be joined at the hip, Sebastian."

"We can until we start feeling safe again. William's holding down the fort, but I'm going to have to fill Zoya's spot quickly—yesterday wouldn't have been too soon. I'm going to bring someone in from Los Angeles, I think."

She settled her head on his shoulder again but she wasn't relaxed.

"What's up?" Sebastian asked. "What's on your mind?"

"Nothing."

"Why do women do that? Say there's nothing wrong when everything's wrong?"

"It isn't. I don't like uncertainty, is all."

"There isn't any uncertainty!" He rocked her. "We know exactly what's going to happen."

"I don't."

The steps from the kitchen garden creaked. "Breakfast ap-proacheth," Venus Crow's voice announced. "Are you decent?"

Sebastian laughed.

Bliss tried to struggle from his lap but he wouldn't let her go. "Decent as we're going to get, Venus," he called.

Bobby beat his grandmother up the steps and promptly scampered to Sebastian's side. Spike lolloped to Beater and flopped down in his patch of sunshine.

Venus arrived carrying a tray crowded with tall glasses of chunky, pale purple something. "A sad day," she said, her eyes

doleful. "Mourning requires energy, my children. The living souls must be fed so that they may offer their strength to those departing."

The urge to laugh felt too hysterical for comfort. Sebastian stroked Bliss's hair and smiled at Bobby. "How's it going, Sport?"