Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (27 page)

“You don’t mind if I use your bathroom, do you? I have a long drive in front of me.”

“Oh hell,” he said. “I didn’t want to do this, even though my mother has a wild hair up her ass about you. I already had to shoot your boss. Now, I guess I’ll have to shoot you too.”

I froze and threw my hands up in the air like a captured bank robber on TV. As Uncle Mike’s stupid saying had predicted, our plan was going wrong already, but I comforted myself that at least I’d managed to pull off the lie.

Yeah. Because
that
was the important thing.

Score: Tess=1, Evil murderers=3,000.

I
dragged my
feet and tried to stall, thinking furiously, but Hank made me walk around the side of the house to the back by the simple method of pointing his gun at my head.

“What is it with you people and heads?” I shouted. I was way past the “nothing left to lose” mark on the terror-meter now.

“That’s my mother. She thinks it’s more dramatic.” He belched, and I heard him stumble, but when I glanced back at him, the shotgun was still pointing straight at me.

“Why did you have to kill Jeremiah? Because he figured out that your mother wanted Shelley?”

Strategy: get the villain talking while I try to figure out a new plan.

Olga Kowalski was standing right in my path when I rounded the corner of the house, and the new plan went straight out of my mind, replaced by sheer, unadulterated terror. The air itself turned icy and heavy, pressing against me like a rotting corpse in a desecrated grave. Evil—so powerful it was visible—clung to the woman, caressing her with shadowy, skeletal fingers that I could actually see, even in the bright light of mid-day.

My knees turned to jelly at the thought of what she’d be like at midnight. And after she sacrificed Shelley? We were
all
doomed. If there had been anything in my stomach, I’d be throwing up all over her.

Olga could see how scared I was, and a crazed smile spread slowly across her face. “Hank didn’t have to kill Jeremiah. I’d already placed a memory spell on him to make him forget his suspicions. But my son takes after his father. He’s a moron,” she said pleasantly, smiling.

Olga herself didn’t come across as particularly scary. In fact, she looked so completely ordinary that she could have been a mom on her way to a PTA meeting, if it hadn’t been for the midnight-blue velvet robe she was wearing. Or the leather belt cinched around her waist with what looked like human finger bones tied to the ends.

She had graying blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and she was shorter than me. Nothing about her face screamed “insane murderer,” until you took a deeper look into her eyes and pure, malignant evil looked back at you.

“But you weren’t like this before,” I said helplessly. “When you came to the shop after Jeremiah’s death, you were kind. Did you know then that Hank had killed him?”

“Of course I knew,” she said dismissively, and then she turned her back on me, like I didn’t matter at all, because I couldn’t affect her plan in any way.

It was nothing but the truth.

Now I had to depend on Jack and his team to create a diversion, so I could try to find Shelley, who wasn’t anywhere in sight. The yard sloped back gently to a large, level field. A group of women—I counted twelve, so Olga was the thirteenth—was there, chanting. They sat, evenly spaced, in a circle around a wooden post. The robes must be the fancy coven leader outfit, because the women were all wearing jeans and jackets.

Shelley must still be in the house, or perhaps in the small shed that was set off to one side of the field, its door propped open. The thought of that poor child enduring this after losing her mother and grandparents stiffened my spine, and I found my courage again. Now might be a good time to try to make Olga angry. I could distract her with my clever banter, so she wouldn’t notice Jack sneaking up on the place.

“Won’t it affect your evil plans if your witches’ asses are frozen to the ground by midnight?” Okay, more
rudeness
than
clever banter,
but I wasn’t exactly working from a script.

She whipped her head around and glared at me, but I was way past being worried about nasty looks. Behind her, the witches kept chanting. A few of them, including Delia, were hunched in on themselves, clearly terrified, but several were smiling as they watched us.

I marked in my mind which ones were smiling. I’d be sure to catch up with them later.

“What’s the matter, Olga? Was your magic so weak that your memory spell didn’t work on Jeremiah? Is that why your useless son had to shoot him?”

“My spell worked just fine,” she said, sneering. “Why do you think Jeremiah gave the sheriff his prized Wyatt Earp gun?”

“Doc Holliday,” I said automatically, as another piece fitted itself into the puzzle.

“Like I give a damn,” she said, bored with the details.

That’s what Jeremiah’s life had been to this woman too. A detail.

I started toward her, but Hank poked me in the back with the barrel of his shotgun.

“Stop now, Callahan,” he growled.

I was beyond being afraid of him too, though, so I almost kept going, but Shelley’s pale, thin face flashed into my mind. I froze. Olga laughed in my face and then reached out to grab me, but she hesitated at the last moment, and then very carefully did
not
touch me.

When I realized why, I started laughing. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? Afraid that I’ll tell you exactly how you’ll die, you miserable excuse for a human being. I hope it’s horrible.
Agonizing
. Fire, and blood, and lots of screaming.”

Fury battled the madness in her eyes, and I thought I’d finally pushed her beyond the point of no return. But, no. Not even close. She visibly pulled her rage under control, took a deep breath, and looked past me to Hank.

“I don’t have time for this. Kill her.”

W
hoops
.
That hadn’t
been the plan.

Hank raised the shotgun and pointed it at my head again, and I closed my eyes.

“Tess, run,” Delia shouted.

I opened my eyes in time to see Olga turn toward Delia.

“I don’t think so, little girl,” Olga said, pointing at Delia, just like in my vision, and Delia slumped sideways to the ground, unconscious or dead.

“No,” I moaned.

“What a lovely piece of poetic justice,” Olga said, turning back to me. “The Death Seer gets to see her own death coming.”

“I don’t think so, unless you want to watch me rip your son’s throat out,” Jack said, walking around the corner. “And Death Seer is a terrible superhero name.”

Jack held Walt by the neck. Walt was bloody and bruised, and a rag was stuffed in his mouth, but he was still fighting back.

“You wouldn’t
dare
harm my son,” Olga shrieked. She muttered something I didn’t catch and made a flicking motion with her hands, like she was flinging water at Jack.

He grunted, and his shoulder jerked back as if she’d shot him. There was no blood, but I could see from his clenched jaw that whatever spell she’d cast, it had hurt. A lot.

“Bad move, witch,” Jack snarled. “Now you lose the son who killed Chantal Nelson and Harper Rawls.”

He grabbed Walt’s shoulder and, with a sickening sound like cardboard shredding, ripped his arm clear off his body. Time seemed to freeze—captured in that moment—as Walt’s blood sprayed through the air in a vivid red arc.

The witches never stopped chanting. Instead, the blood seemed almost to fuel their strength, and the sound grew deeper and more resonant. The sharp smell of sulfur sizzled through the air, and the blackness of the shadows coalescing around Olga deepened.

Hank, whom I’d almost forgotten, made a low, strangled moan, deep in his throat, and then he slammed the tip of the shotgun barrel into my side, almost knocking me down.

“You
animal
! You killed my
brother
,” he shouted at Jack. “I’m going to kill your woman, and then I’m going to shoot you in the gut and watch you bleed to death, slowly.”

I reacted with pure instinct and, instead of running away, I stepped closer to Hank. I grabbed his hand with mine and stared straight in his eyes.

Then I screamed.

Oh, how I screamed. Long and loud and ululating. It was the most piercing scream that anybody in Dead End had ever screamed, and they could probably hear me all the way from town.

I stumbled, retching, but managed to keep my feet. Hank, his shotgun forgotten, stared at me, his eyes filled with horror, and then he yanked his hand away from me and started to back away.

“Don’t you want to know how you
die
, Hank? It’s coming for you. Your
death
,” I told him, smiling viciously. “It will be bloody and painful, and you’ll die alone. So,
so
alone.”

“No! Stay away from me, you freak!” he shouted, making the gesture to ward off the evil eye. He looked at the shotgun in his hand as if he didn’t understand what it was or why he had it, and then threw it on the ground and ran away as fast as his drunken lack of coordination would let him.

When I turned back around, filled with triumph, Hank’s mother was standing over Jack’s body, and half of the witches in the circle were down—unconscious or dead. Delia was still down too.

The rest of them were still chanting.

“It doesn’t
have
to be a child of the Blood Moon, you know,” Olga said, a crazed, dreamy smile on her evil face. The shadows circling her body had intensified. “Any death can help me raise the Dark Power I crave. Even my witches, or a shifter, or my own son.”

“You killed your own coven? And Jack?” I didn’t believe it. Not Jack.

I
couldn’t
believe it.

Jack’s death was not part of the plan. A whirling cacophony of pain shot through me, threatening to suck me under, but I clawed my way back up to the surface of sanity.

Shelley. I still had to rescue Shelley. It’s what Jack would have wanted too.

Olga laughed, and the last shreds of her sanity disappeared right before my eyes. “He killed my son. I’m going to slice him up slowly, piece by piece. His pain will fuel my magic for a very long time.”

She pulled out a knife from somewhere in the folds of her robe, and she leaned down and stabbed Jack’s leg. I screamed, but Jack didn’t even flinch. She laughed at me again, and I scanned the area, desperate for help.

Where were Lucky and his commandos? Jack must have warned them not to attack, in case Olga or the witches killed Shelley.
Damn it
.

A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Something in the shed. I tried not to look directly at it, in case it was Shelley, but just then Olga stabbed Jack again, this time in the arm, and I made a break for it.

I ran as fast as I could toward the shed, and on my way I clenched my hand into a fist and punched one of the chanting witches in the face, as hard as I could. Since Velocity = Speed + Level of Fury, I
clocked
that bitch.

I hit the door to the shed, still running full out, and almost ran over Shelley. She was bound and gagged but still alive. Still
alive
.

Thank God, thank God, thank God.

I just didn’t know for how long.

I untied her and gently pulled out her gag. She threw herself into my arms, sobbing and shaking, and I wanted to kill Olga with a white-hot fury.

“It’s going to be okay,” I soothed her, even though I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be.

The door slammed shut.

“I couldn’t have planned it any better myself,” Olga said from outside the door. She was panting from exertion, and she was speaking in a weird sing-song voice, but at least she wasn’t stabbing Jack. “I’ll sacrifice two for the price of one. Maybe even three, if your shifter boyfriend lasts until midnight, but I doubt he will.”

I heaved in a deep breath and realized I was sick and damn tired of letting Olga Kowalski have the last word. I glanced around at the dim, damp interior of the shed, and I smiled.

“Think again, witch,” I said, very softly, and I grinned at Shelley, who didn’t flinch at all. She flashed a fierce grin right back at me and handed me the garden tool I’d been staring at.

And then I smashed open the door, and tripped over Olga’s feet and landed on my face. Not my plan at all.

“You are going to die right now, you stupid bitch,” she snarled at me, raising her hands.

“No!” Shelley screamed, and the little girl came up behind Olga and hit her in the arm with a rake. It was enough to skew the witch’s aim, but the spell still bit into my arm with a blast of searing pain. If it had hit me in the face, where she’d been aiming, I’d probably be dead.

And if I didn’t suck it up and get up off my ass, she’d kill me now.

The witch turned her attention to Shelley, raising her hands again, and I tried to grab the shovel I’d dropped. My arm, though, was screaming with pain, dripping blood, and refusing to cooperate, so I rolled over to try to use my other arm.

“Leave her alone,” I screamed, trying to ignore my injured arm even though nothing had ever hurt that much before, and I was probably going to die from the pain any second, but I’d be damned if I wouldn’t take her with me.

I swung the shovel at the back of Olga’s knees and knocked her down. Her head bounced off the ground,
hard
, and I yelled “
yes!
” with a hoarse, primal triumph.

But it was too little, too late.

“Now you watch the child die,” Olga screamed at me, and then she aimed those evil, death-dealing hands at Shelley again.

“I am so sick of you,” I shouted. I kicked the witch in the side and then jumped up, my arm still burning like it was on fire. I yanked the shovel up and then rammed its blade into Olga’s throat so hard that it took her head halfway off her neck. “How’s
that
for poetic justice?”

B
ehind me, Shelley
cheered.

But the witches kept chanting.

One of the six remaining witches, a woman with half of her hair shaved off and the other half dyed green, stood up and stretched. She was wearing a red leather jacket, and it might not have been Chantal’s, but I wanted to tear it off of her anyway.