Haunted (56 page)

His words echoed hollowly in the silent room.

They waited one beat, two.

"Chief Swenson?" answered Theo Pelinore in a trembling voice.

"Theo?" Swenson called. "Are you alone?"

"Yes."

David thought her voice was coming from somewhere in the darkness back beyond the glowing brazier. He stepped forward, ignoring Swenson's dirty look. "Where's my daughter?"

"I--I don't know."

Swenson cleared his throat. "I want you to come out slowly, Theo. We'll take you out of here."

"I can't." She was almost sobbing, and David thought the sound was utterly unnatural. "My ankle... I think it's broken."

Swenson glanced back at David and murmured, "Stay here."

"It's a trick--" David began.

But Swenson ignored him, turning and walking farther into the room. "Where are you?"

"I--I don't know. You sound closer, though."

"Okay, keep talking." Craig moved into the center of the room, listening for Theo's voice.

"It's a trap," Melanie hissed in David's ear.

Swenson passed the brazier, moving forward into the darkness.

"I think you're very close," Theo said.

Another sound, a small moan, followed her words. It didn't sound like Theo, it sounded like…

"Amber!" he yelled.

Swenson's head swiveled toward David, then Theo Pelinore leapt out of the darkness, brandishing a thin club of some sort, and threw herself on him. They fell, scuftling, to the floor.

"Daddy?"

Amber's muffled voice broke David's paralysis and he ran into the room, Eric and Melanie right behind him.

"Amber? Where are you?" David called as Eric raced to help his uncle.

"I don't know. I'm under something."

David caught movement under the shroud on the table at the rear.

They ran to the table and yanked the cover off.

"Daddy!" Her eyes were wild with relief.

"Are you okay?" Melanie whispered as she pushed tangles of blond hair from the girl's face.

Amber nodded as David began working on the ropes.

Someone cried out in pain and David glanced toward the Swensons. One of them was down, but the other was locked in combat with Theo Pelinore, who seemed to possess preternatural strength. He needed to get over there and help.

"She's not just Pelinore," Amber said, as if she had read his mind. "Christabel's in her."

David nodded, digging in his pocket for his jackknife as Melanie started working on one of the heavy knots securing Amber's legs. "Here!" He gave Mel the knife and ran across the room. .

Eric lay on the floor, holding his head and groaning. David paused, seeing the blood in his hair. Suddenly, a gunshot blasted in his ears. Deafened, he looked up and was appalled to see Craig Swenson backing slowly away from Theo. She had the gun, but at least no one appeared to have been hurt.

"Shit," Swenson said.

She laughed Christabel 's laugh, and motioned toward David and Eric with the gun. "Okay, Chief, go stand over there with your friends." Slowly, Swenson backed toward them.

Theo kept the. gun trained on them as she moved through the room toward Amber. David turned slowly, and saw that the heavy velvet was again covering Amber. There was no sign of Melanie and he prayed Theo hadn't noticed her.

Before reaching Amber, Theo paused at the shape under the other velvet spread. She didn't bother to look beneath it; instead she poked it, hard, with the muzzle of the gun. There was no response, and that seemed to satisfy her. She must have Jerry Romero under there.

Giving David a knowing smile, she proceeded to Amber's table and pulled the cloth down to reveal his daughter's face. She appeared to be unconscious. "Here's your little girl, David," she purred as she lifted Amber's head by the hair to let him see better. "You were looking for her, weren't you?" She let go of the hair and Amber's head dropped back to the table. David cringed, but Amber showed no reaction and, thank God, Theo moved away without checking her bonds.

"Where's your slut, David?" she asked as she moved toward them.

He said nothing.

"Answer me!"

"Melanie's gone. I sent her away."

Theo smirked. "Too bad I would have liked to have known her better." She laughed obscenely as she came to a halt by a tall pillory. A skeleton stood trapped by its head and hands, its mummified skin stretched tightly over its emaciated body and its long brown hair in tangles around its eyeless, screaming face. It wore only a faded purple corset and a gold heart shaped locket around its neck.

Theo tapped its collar bone. "This is Colette," she said.

"She was very pretty in her day." She pushed the skeleton out of the device and it fell, skin cracking, into a pile of bones on the floor. "Come here, David."

He didn't move.

"Don't be obstinate. We have to keep you out of trouble."

"No. Theo, listen to me. You're possessed. You can fight her, you can force her out of your body."

She stared coldly at him. "What makes you think I want to fight her, David?"

"She's tricking you, Theo. She's using you." David paused. "She doesn't have the Erzuli doll yet, does she?"

Theo glared at him. "Get over here now!"

"Once she has it, she won't need you anymore. She'll put you in one of these too. Then she'll kill you, just like she did Colette."

Keeping the revolver ready, Theo stepped up to a portion of stone wall where ancient whips and blades were hung. She took a knife, a nasty one with a slightly curved eight-inch blade, from its holder, then moved back to stand over Amber. "If you don't get in the pillory now, David, I'll remove your lovely daughter's little finger. If you still refuse, I'll remove another. Ten fingers, ten toes, then a hand, a foot ... " She smiled, pure evil, as she flicked the knife through the air. "Don't worry, David. The brazier's all ready, so I'll be able to cauterize her wounds. I promise you, David, I won't kill her." She paused. "So, what's it going to be?"

Out of options, he put his wrists and neck in the contraption she'd indicated and waited while she dropped the top and flipped the latch. "Good choice, David. Now, you, Chief, I want you to pick up your nephew and put him on that table near the brazier."

Glowering and grunting, Swenson finally managed to put Eric over his shoulder, fireman style. David watched out of the corner of his eye as the chief pushed an old set of bones onto the floor, then laid the nearly comatose boy carefully down on the table. Finished, he remained where he was, his hand resting gently on his nephew's shoulder.

Body House: 2:51 A.M.

He stood by Eric, knowing the boy had a concussion, at least; knowing he had to get him to a hospital, and wondering if he--or the others--would be alive long enough to do so. Swenson's mind had been reeling from the moment he'd first looked into this chamber of horrors, and when Theo Pelinore came at him with that poker or branding iron or whatever the hell it was, she'd knocked him off balance easily, then fought him with the strength of a woman possessed. Which he supposed she was.

He'd thought they had her when Eric jumped in, but an instant later, she'd grabbed her iron rod and bashed the side of his head. The boy went down, but Craig kept fighting. And then, the most unforgivable thing of all had happened: Theo Pelinore had wrested his revolver from him.

He glanced left and right. Now, here they all were: in bondage, hurt or held at gunpoint. The way things looked right now, he thought as he stared down the barrel of his own gun, Melanie was their only chance--and she was going to have to have God's own luck just to stay alive herself.

"Chief, come here." Theo beckoned him toward her. Slowly he moved forward, stopping a few feet from her, wondering what she was going to do now.

"You see the cabinets behind me?"

"Yes?"

"Two of them are locked--the tall one behind me and the very large one below." Keeping the gun trained on him, she used her other hand to extract a long bobby pin from her hair. She tossed it to him and he caught it by reflex.

"Pick the locks."

"I don't know how to--"

"Don't play stupid, Chief. Remember, you've picked locks for Theo--for me--several times. The last time was just over a year ago, when the seller forgot to leave me a key for that split-level on Gull Street."

She had him there. "Which one first?"

She pointed at the bottom door. "That one."

Obediently, he took the pin and squatted in front of the lock. The wood and hinges were heavy, but the lock was old and simple, the sort that required nothing more than a special skeleton key. He had it open in fifteen seconds.

"Now, Chief, do you see a blue steamer trunk in there?"

"Yes."

"Pull it out for me, very, very carefully."

The trunk moved more easily than he expected and he had it out in a moment, surprised to see two lengths of chain wrapped around it and secured with a padlock.

"Jimmy it," Theo ordered.

The padlock took longer, and when it finally opened, he was sweating profusely despite the chill in the room. He looked up and came face-to-face with his gun.

"Now," Theo said, "I want you to listen very carefully. You are going to open the trunk and you are going to treat what lies inside it as if it were a king's treasure. If you don't, I'll start paring your nephew's toes and fingers. Go ahead, open it."

He flipped the brass latches and slowly pushed the arched lid open. The stench of jasmine and bodily decay rose in a putrid, choking cloud, and when he saw the body, it took every ounce of control in his possession to stop the dizzyingly black swirl that spiraled through his brain.

His head spun and he pushed himself away. "My God," he whispered. "My God."

She lay curled in a fetal position, her raven hair swirling down over her white shoulders and black gown. Despite the odor, which reminded him of a two-weeks dead body he'd had the misfortune to discover in the trunk of a car abandoned by the beach several summers ago, there were no visible signs of decay. Long black lashes edging the closed eyelids emphasized the unnatural pallor of her skin. There was a fragility about her that made her look more like one of her porcelain dolls than a woman of flesh-and-blood.

"Lift her out of the trunk," Theo ordered softly. "Go ahead, she won't break."

He took a deep breath and held it as he scooped the body into his arms. It lay cold and limp in his grasp and was not desiccated, as he'd expected, but heavy with muscle and, judging by the blue traceries in the forearms, blood. The head had tilted back and he searched for a pulse in the neck, but saw none.

Theo moved to an empty table near the cabinets. "Put her here," she directed. "Be careful."

He gave up holding his breath as he placed her on the table, and was again nearly overwhelmed by the noxious, sweet odors.

"Okay, stay where you are." Theo, standing across the table from him, lovingly straightened the old-fashioned black gown Christabel wore. She lingered a moment, gently touching one cold cheek, then combing her fingers through a tangle in the thick black hair.

"Alright, Chief," she said a moment later. "Open the other lock."

He walked back to the cabinets and worked on the keyhole that held two tall upper doors together until it yielded. Various vials and bottles of oils and powders lined the upper shelf, while the lower contained dolls, male and female.

"These dolls all contain souls," Theo said softly. She pointed at one. "See? It's sweet Colette. Now, Chief, I want you to carefully take them down and set them on that tray next to my body."

There were eight of them, and each seemed to stare at him accusingly as he laid them on the tray. Dazed, he stared back. Nothing seemed real anymore.

"There's one more, Chief."

Slowly, he returned to the cabinet. "I don't see it."

"In the far left corner."

His hand closed over a cool, rough object and he drew it out It was nothing like the porcelain dolls. Instead it was a primitive female figure made of red clay. It squatted, as if giving birth, and its gaping vagina and jutting breasts were obscenely exaggerated. Erzuli.

"Give it to me." Theo moved closer and held out her free hand.

He made no move until she cocked his gun, then reluctantly he handed it over.

Holding the icon protectively against her bosom, Theo gave him an ugly grin. "I have one more job for you, Chief, before we put you with your friends."

He said nothing, but continued to watch her, hoping her guard would drop so that he could make a move for his gun, though so far she'd left him no openings.

"Over here, Chief." She walked him back to Christabel's body and the tray of dolls, then gave him another leering smile. "You should be honored, you know. I could truss you up like I did the others, but instead, I'm going to let you help me."