Fallen Angels 01 - Covet (44 page)

“Don't you get it, Vincent. Your door is always open to me.”

Vin put his body in front, shielding Marie-Terese. “Leave. Now.”

The laughter that sounded out was all nails-on-a-blackboard, high and cringe-worthy. “Ever since we first met, things have been on my terms, Vin, and that isn't going to change now. I've invested a lot in you, and I do believe it's time to call you home.”

“Fuckyou, Devina.”

“You certainly did,” the woman drawled. “And very well, I might add. But you weren't the only one. Your friend Jim also did right by me, and I think I liked him better than you. With him, I didn't need someone else.”

“Yeah, I had to have more than you gave me as well,” Vin snapped.

A wave of coldness rippled out from the woman, and her eyes, those awful black holes, shifted to Marie-Terese and locked on. “You've met Jim, haven't you. You ever been alone with him? Maybe...in a car? Maybe when you were taking him back home yesterday?”

How the hell did she know that? Marie-Terese wondered.

As Vin's body stiffened, the woman continued. “When you took him back to that shitty studio of his over the garage, you liked the taste of his cock, didn't you—but you would have blown him even if you hadn't. You need all the money you can get, and he was willing to pay for it.”

Marie-Terese glared across the room. “That never happened. Never. I didn't go to his place.”

“So you say.”

“No, so
you
say. I know what I did and didn't do and with whom.

You, on the other hand, are a desperate bitch who's trying to hold on to someone who doesn't want her.”

The woman recoiled a little, and Marie-Terese had to admit there was some satisfaction to be had with that.

But then Vin stepped away, and one look in his pale face made her realize that Trez had been tragically right. A past like hers had a long reach, and Vin and she hadn't known each other long enough for even rudimentary trust to have developed—much less the kind of faith required for a man to believe that a prostitute wouldn't be doing her

“job” with his friend.

Thank God for all the towels she had on, she thought.

Because she suddenly felt as though she were out in the frigid wind.

***

Standing in front of Devina's bathroom door, Jim measured the expression on Eddie's face: dead serious. More to the point, that big-ass body was going to be in the way if Jim made any move for the doorknob.

Releasing his tight muscles, Jim eased up his body and looked over his shoulder at the bureaus. Adrian was pulling open drawers in a methodical manner and rifling through whatever was in them— and there evidently was a lot given all the rattling.

“Fine,” Jim murmured. “Guess we should join in the Easter-egg hunt?”

“I know it's hard,” Eddie said. “But you have to trust me.”

Eddie clapped him on the back and together they turned to head over to his buddy. Jim followed one footstep—

And wheeled around for the doorknob. As the fallen angel barked out a curse, Jim yanked open the slab of wood and jerked to a halt.

A young woman was hanging naked and upside down over the porcelain tub, her legs open in a V, her ankles bound with black rope to the circular rod that should have held a shower curtain. Her hands were tied together with the same black rope and pulled tautly up her body so that her fingers just barely touched the top of her sex. All around her belly there were deep cuts, arranged in a pattern of some kind, and red blood covered her white skin, running down her torso before splitting around the jut of her chin and jaw and flowing through her blond hair.

The tub was plugged and full.

Oh, Lord...about two inches above the pool she hung. Her eyes were open and fixed straight ahead, but her mouth was working ever so slightly.... “She's alive!” Jim called out as he leaped forward.

Eddie caught him and yanked him back. “No, she's not. And we've got to get out of here now, thanks to you.”

Jim thrashed free of the hold and rushed forward, raising his hands, ready to start on the complex series of knots—

A hard, heavy palm locked onto his shoulder. “She's fucking dead, man, and we've got a problem now.” When Jim shook his head roughly and fought against the hold, Eddie's voice rose. “She's
dead—

those are autonomic spasms, not signs of life. See the cuts on either side of her throat?”

Jim's eyes careened around her body, desperately looking for a shallow draw of breath or recognition in her face that she was going to be saved...something...anything....

“No!” He pointed to her fingers as they twitched ever so slightly.

“She's alive!”

As he strained until he roared, the scene changed before his eyes, flipping from current horror to remembered tragedy. He saw his mother surrounded by blood, her eyes blinking slowly, her mouth working to form the words necessary to get him to leave her.

Eddie's calm voice came right into his ear, as if the guy weren't so much speaking, but implanting the words: “Jim, we've got to get the fuck out of here.”

“We can't leave her.” Was that his voice? That reedy croak?

“She's gone. She's not here anymore.”

“We can't leave her.... She's...”

“She's not with us, Jim. And we have to go. To save Vin, we have to get you the fuck out of here.” Adrian's voice exploded from the doorway, “What the
fuck
is wrong with you—”

“Shut the hell up, Ad.” Eddie's words cut through the interruption.

“He doesn't need you busting his balls right now. Jim...1 want you to back out of the room.”

Jim knew the guy was right. The girl was dead, bled out like nothing but an animal, and that wasn't the worst of it. Her frozen death mask was one of horror, as if her suffering had been great. “Come on, Jim.”

So help him God, he knew he had to listen to the angel and force himself to accept that there was no battle to be fought here: The time for conflict and the possibility of victory had come and gone without his even being aware it existed. And he believed Eddie about the taking off part. At this moment, risking an altercation with Devina would not have been good.

Right now one-third of the team was a total head case.

Jim went to turn around, but got slapped from behind, Eddie's huge hand catching his face and holding it where it had been.

“Keep your eyes straight ahead and back out with me. Do not move your head. Do you understand? I want you to step back with me and keep your head where it is. We're going to back away

“I don't want to leave her,” he moaned. “Oh, shit...”

Such suffering, the terror etched into the soft, pale planes of her lovely face. Where were her parents? Who was she? As he stared at the young woman's corpse, he memorized everything about her, from the mole she had on her thigh, to the light blue of her lifeless eyes, to the pattern that had been cut into her stomach.

“She's gone,” Eddie said softly. “Her body's just a leftover—her soul's not here anymore. You can't do anything for her, and we are in a dangerous situation right now. We need to get you out of here.”

The more he looked at her though, the more his insides started screaming again and he couldn't— All at once, he heard a rush of noise that sounded like the feet of rodents in a sewer. It wasn't hundreds of rats, however. The clocks had started up, every single one of them energized at precisely the same moment, the chaotic ticking of countless second hands rising up in the loft, filling the air.

Abruptly, Adrian's voice was grim instead of angry. “We have to leave—”

His words were cut off by a rumbling and then a vibration that emanated from the floor, one so great it rattled the smoky window over the toilet and created waves on top of the blood in the tub.
“Like
exactly now.”

“I don't want to leave her—”

Eddie's voice turned into a growl. “She's gone. And we need to—”

“Fuck you!” Jim lunged forward.

Eddie's massive arms were iron bars. Even as Jim fought the hold, and went animal on the guy, clawing and ripping to get free, he got nowhere.

Voices rang out—his and Adrian's. But Eddie was silent as he started to pull Jim from the room.

Then Eddie cut through the vocal chaos and the flapping of clothes:

“Knock him the fuck out! I can't keep him from seeing the mirror!”

Adrian stepped in, rolled up a fist, and cocked his arm back. The strike was hard and fast, the crack cutting through everything...and stunning Jim into compliance.

He was dragged out in a daze, the heels of his Timberlands streaking across the hard floor, his head ringing like a bell. Once his boots were past the bathroom door, Adrian slammed the thing shut, and Eddie flipped Jim up off the floor and into a firemen's hold.

Dizzy and disoriented, Jim tried to place a new fleet of strange sounds that came from a vast distance. Glancing over at the counter in the kitchen, he saw that the knives were moving around, arranging themselves, making order out of the mess they'd been in. And it was the same with the dressers—which explained the reverberations: The chests of drawers were trembling on their feet, finding positions like soldiers called for a lineup.

He barely remembered leaving the loft and he didn't register much of the trip down the stairs...but the cold air outside did revive him enough so that he was able to push himself free of Eddie's hold and make it to the truck on his own two feet.

As Adrian drove them away from the warehouse, all Jim could see was the girl's face.

There was no singing as they went off this time.

No talking, either.

Devina's taunt ricocheted around Vin's inner pinball machine, triggering all kinds of evil bells and anti-bonus points: Jim and Marie-Terese had been alone...in her car...going back to his studio...

“You know everyone you've been with?” Devina said to Marie-Terese. “You must have an incredible memory. But right now only one of those men matters—isn't that true, Vin?”

This was a crossroads, he thought, a place of choosing one or the other way to go.

And he had the crystal clear sense that if he let what Devina was saying sink in, he was lost forever—yet there was a side of him that found what she was saying inescapable: Marie-Terese had been alone with Jim, and she had been with men for money, and if those the pair of them had been together sexually, that was something he wouldn't be able to get over.

Devina's voice dropped low. “You were always afraid of turning into your father. And here you are, getting played by a whore.”

Vin took a halting step toward her and away from Marie-Terese.

Played by a whore...

Images of his father and mother were amplified by Devina's words and the reality of what Marie-Terese had done for a living.

Played by a whore...

He focused on Devina, really
seeingher...

“You're so right,” he whispered, the truth revealed to him.

Abruptly, Devina's face and eyes changed, sympathy warming her features and draining out the anger. “I don't want this for you. Any of it. Just come back to me, Vin. Come back.”

He walked forward, getting closer and closer, and she lifted her arms out to him. When he was in front of her, he reached up and brushed one of those dark waves back from her ear. Leaning in, he put his mouth close and tightened his hold on her hair.

“Vin...yes, Vin.” His name was spoken with relief and triumph. “This is the way it needs to be—”

“Fuck. You.” When she started to yank back, he held her in place by the skull. “You're the whore.”

Trez had called it. Back at the Iron Mask, the guy had said that a moment would come when he'd have to believe what he knew of Marie-Terese instead of what he had always feared would be true about a woman he cared about. “You're not welcome here,” he said, releasing Devina with a shove and going back to Marie-Terese. As he grabbed onto his woman's arms and held her behind him, he wished he were in the master bedroom, because his gun was there. “Get.

Out.”

All at once, the air around Devina warped, as if her fury were causing a molecular disturbance, and he braced himself for impact. Instead of lashing out, though, she seemed to gather herself.

With an eerie control, she walked over to the windows, and his first thought was sending Marie-Terese from the room. Unfortunately, the distance between the view and the open door was short enough so that Devina could close it easily—and the bitch was staring into the glass, effectively giving herself eyes in the back of her head.

“You can't rescind the pact, Vin. It doesn't work that way.”

“The hell it doesn't.”

Devina turned around and wandered over to the bed. Bending down, she picked up his boxers and looked over the rumpled duvet and the tossed-around pillows.

“Messy, messy. Do you want to tell me exactly what you did to her, Vin? Or should I use my imagination? She's had so much practice, I'm sure she satisfied you.”

Devina deliberately rearranged a pillow, returning it to a spot against the headboard. With her attention briefly distracted, Vin moved fast, pushing Marie-Terese backward into the bathroom and slamming the door shut. When the lock was immediately turned, he took a deep breath even though it was clear that Devina had no problems getting through Schlage's best dead bolts.

Devina's black orbs flicked up. “You do realize if I wanted to get in there I could.”

“You'd have to go through me first. And somehow I don't think you can do that, can you. If you were going to kill me or her right now, you'd have done so the second you walked in here.”

“You just tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.” Leaning down, she took something off of the twisted duvet. “Well, what do you know. I believe I have—”

Devina froze in midspeech and swiveled her head around so that she looked out the windows. Abruptly, her brows screwed down over the black holes of her eyes, and the features of her face morphed briefly, showing a flash of what he'd seen of her real side: For a split second, all that gorgeous beauty was replaced with rotted, gray sheets of flesh, and he could have sworn he caught a whiff of dead meat.