“Help me! Help me! I know somebody's out there! Hurry, hurry, you gotta cut me loose!”
The child would not let go and clutched me in a near stranglehold. I murmured soothing words and shifted the baby onto my left hip as I focused my aim toward the man's voice. It had sounded like Willie Vines. Alive. Panic-stricken. But Willie was dead. Or was he?
I searched the darkness hugging the walls and edged slowly toward the place where the voice was still calling for help, keeping my back against the wall. I needed to put down the baby but I couldn't bring myself to do it. She was terrified, shaking all over. I'd have to pry her out of my arms. Then I saw him, and was shocked to the core that it really was Willie. His wrists were bound together and tied up over his head to an iron hook hammered into the wall. He was bleeding from the scalp. Blood ran down his face and into the neck of his white T-shirt.
“Oh, thank God, thank God you came!” Willie cried. He burst into tears, his sobs echoing around the domed cavern.
I was more interested in the other person bound to the wall a few feet away from him. A woman. She stared wide-eyed at me as I moved closer but she didn't move, didn't say a word. Her eyes looked glazed, as if she were in shock. I recognized her at once by the red pigtails. Wilma Harte, the girl who had disappeared from the academy. Again I felt threatened, deep in danger, like I was standing in the jaws of a bear trap. I stopped and listened. I heard nothing. No sign of McKay.
Willie started to twist against the ropes, still blubbering. “Please, please. Cut us down. McKay's gonna come back and kill us.”
My intuition was screaming so loud now that I shivered with dread. At the sound of Willie's voice, the little girl began to whimper. Nothing looked right about this. Something was very wrong. “Where's McKay?”
Willie became agitated again and twisted frantically against the ropes. “I don't know! He took off but he said he's gonna kill us. We gotta get outta here before he comes back.”
I kept my weapon trained dead center on Willie's chest. This man was supposed to be dead. And if he wasn't, who the hell's body had been butchered beyond recognition inside his house on New Year's Eve? I wasn't about to cut him down, not yet. “That's Wilma Harte, right?”
“Yes, yes, McKay's had her down here all along. He's done awful things to her. She hasn't said a word but just stares with that awful expression. Please, you gotta help us!”
The sulphuric fumes from the hot spring were making me sweat, making me feel a little sick to my stomach, but I had bigger problems to worry about. “Did McKay hit the baby?”
“Oh God, yes, it was awful. He slapped her when she wouldn't stop crying. He's crazy, I tell you. He bragged about killing Simon and Christie and lots of other people!”
“We found a mutilated body in your house last night. Dressed in your clothes. Who was it, Willie? Why would McKay want us to think you were dead?”
“I don't know. There was a girl who watched the kid. Maybe he killed her, too. He likes killing, I tell you. He knew I was gonna tell you the truth and he followed me home. Hit me over the head and when I woke up, I was down here with Wilma. This is where he tortures people and he's coming back! Cut us down, cut us down!”
I wasn't sure what to believe. I held on to the baby and moved slowly to my right, still searching for McKay. I knew he was here, somewhere. Plastic trays, maybe four feet by five, were full of spiders and sitting around on the ground, lots of them. It looked like the spiders had been killing and eating each other. Dead ones littered the bottom. When I was sure McKay wasn't hiding in close range, I found the rope securing Wilma's arms and set her free. She dropped like a sack of sand to the ground and curled up in a fetal position.
I moved around to Willie. He was getting close to hysteria now. I didn't trust him one bit. I didn't believe a word he said. I put the child on the ground and pulled out my handcuffs. Elizabeth grabbed hold of my leg and wouldn't let go. She was whimpering and hiding her face against my knee. I released Willie's arms but kept the gun trained on his chest as he fell to his knees. He massaged his bruised wrists and stared up at me. “You gotta believe me, he's sick in the head. He'll kill you. He'll kill all of us, including that poor little baby.”
“Hold it right there, Claire. Don't move a muscle.”
McKay's voice, behind me. I whirled around, not sure where he'd come from. He was standing about six feet away. He had a brick of C-4 explosives in one hand. He held what looked like a TV remote control in his other hand, but I knew what it was. A remote detonator. He was going to blow up the cave. I took a step backward where I could keep my eyes on both men. I held my weapon on McKay. My voice sounded calmer than I felt.
“Get down on your knees, McKay. Right now.”
He shook his head. “You're making a big mistake, Claire. They're the ones you're after, I swear to God. Willie's been killing people for years and hanging them out there in the trees, and now she's helping him. I'm trying to stop it. That's why they're tied up. I'm going to blow up this hellhole and everything in it.”
I backed off a couple more steps, where I could hold all of three of them in my gun sights, pivoting my weapon from McKay to Willie to Wilma, not sure now who to believe. Wilma was cowering against the wall, covering her head with both arms.
Willie took a step toward me, his voice pleading. “He's lying. I haven't done nothin' like that. I was gonna tell you about him that night after the gala when I called you. I was gonna tell you how he'd come back here after he got out of the Marines and started killing people again. You heard him. He's gonna leave me and Wilma down here and then blow the place up!”
Then McKay moved closer, still holding the detonator. He was a big guy, trained to kill. I kept my weapon pointed at him. “Don't come any closer, McKay. I'll shoot you if you give me a reason. Put the explosives down. Now.”
Very slowly McKay placed both the explosive and detonator on the ground. His eyes never left mine. His voice was as soothing as Willie's was frantic. “Listen to me, Detective. You cannot let Willie go. He's the killer you're looking for. You gotta believe me.”
“Yeah, right. And I guess he stole this little girl from your neighbor out in California, too. I know all about the Amber Alert that went out on her. Get your hands behind your back. You've got a child abduction warrant out on you, and I'm taking you in.”
“You got it all wrong, Claire. Elizabeth's my daughter. I didn't know about her until I opted out of the Corps. Her mother and I were together for a while but she got into drugs after I left on my last tour. Now she's a crackhead and lets her new boyfriend abuse my kid. That's why I took her. And I won't let her go back to that kind of life.” He stopped speaking and glanced at Willie. So did I. Willie had not moved. Then McKay said, “Claire, if you let Willie go, he'll kill us both in the worst way imaginable. He'll kill Elizabeth, too. Let me tie him up again, then you can decide which of us is telling the truth.”
“No way. I'm taking both of you in and we'll figure out later who did what. For all I know you're in on this together. Now get down on your belly, both of you, and spread 'em! Now! Do it!” Both of them looked guilty to me, and I'd feel a helluva lot better once I got them cuffed and on the ground. I glanced at the woman. She hadn't moved. She was making muffled moans.
I cuffed McKay first, hands behind his back, and he turned his face toward me as he lay on his stomach. “You're making a big mistake, Claire. You're gonna get us both killed.”
“Please, don't believe him. I've been afraid of him since I was a kid,” Willie cried. “He's evil, sick in the head. I thought he was gone for good when he joined the Marines, but then he came back and started following me everywhere and pretending to be my friend. He wants to kill me, you heard him.”
Now that McKay was cuffed, I felt more in control. He was too strong, too dangerous to take any chances with. I could handle somebody of Willie's size better. I said, “Get on your knees, Willie, and put your arms behind your back.”
Willie dived to his left so quickly I couldn't get a shot off. He darted in behind a glass tank teeming with small black scorpions.
“Stop, Willie, or I'll shoot!” But I couldn't shoot him without shattering the tanks of snakes sitting all over the place. I could hear him moving behind the tables and limped after him. Elizabeth let go of my leg and ran and threw herself down on McKay. I followed Willie's movements with my weapon.
McKay had scrabbled up on his knees now, Elizabeth clinging to his neck. “Uncuff me, uncuff me, goddamn it! You don't have any idea what he's capable of!”
Willie's voice called out from behind a glass case writhing with copperheads. “Better not shoot down here, Claire. A ricochet'll dump out all kind of trouble.”
“Guess again, Vines. I'd rather take my chances with snakes than with you. Step out here where I can see you.”
“Behind you, Claire,” McKay yelled.
I whirled around just in time to see Wilma Harte about ten feet away. She was holding some kind of blowgun to her lips. Something stung my thigh, and I pulled the trigger, then jerked the small dart out of my leg. My bullet shattered a case of rattlesnakes, and the reptiles hit the floor in a slithering, clicking mass. I backed away from the snakes. Elizabeth started screaming and pressed herself against McKay.
I edged left toward McKay, fumbling for the key to the cuffs, searching for movement among the tables. Both Wilma and Vines had disappeared into the shadows, and I was already feeling the effect of whatever drug had tipped the dart. I stumbled toward McKay with the key, fighting the dizziness assailing me. I couldn't see straight, couldn't maintain balance. I fell to my knees and tried to toss the key toward McKay. It hit the floor near his feet, then I went down onto my side, the Glock slipping from numb fingers. The last thing I heard was Wilma's voice, echoing strangely and hauntingly in my ears.
“Uriel, we got them now, both of them! I get to kill her! You can have McKay. . . .”
Dark Angels
Uriel trained Claire Morgan's gun on McKay while Wilma bound his feet tightly together. McKay deserved to die, but Uriel didn't know what to do about the detective. He looked at her, where she lay immobilized by his tranquilizer dart. He was scared of her. He had feared her ever since she had told him that the Archangel Michael protected her. He had seen the special silver medal hanging around her neck. What if Michael came to avenge what they'd done to her and brought down God's wrath? And he and Wilma had killed Gabriel, too. He shut his eyes, stifling a sob in the back of his throat. Gabriel had died the most horrible death, and Uriel had done it to him, his own blood brother. What if the Archangel Gabriel joined up with the Archangel Michael to punish him?
Oh God, he felt sick inside, desperate and afraid. He had let Wilma talk him into killing Gabriel. It was all Wilma's fault, and now he was so sorry, so very sorry he'd done it. Gabriel would've still been alive if it weren't for Wilma. She'd messed up everything. She had convinced him to clobber Gabriel in the head and stuff him into that sleeping bag with all those recluses, then hang him in a tree where he could see the academy. And Uriel had done it, all of it. For her. Because she'd told him that she loved him better than Gabriel ever could. And because Gabriel was going to kill her, and Uriel couldn't bear that either.
God help him, he missed Gabriel so much he could barely stand it. And now Wilma was always playing loud heavy-metal music in the cave and talking about the devil and painting pentagrams on the floor so she could try to conjure evil spirits. The archangels were probably furious with him. Even his namesake, Uriel. He watched Wilma grab Claire Morgan's coat and drag her toward a spider tank. Wilma wasn't trembling and faking fear anymore. Now she was laughing out loud, all excited. But she didn't know the power of the archangels and what Michael might do if they harmed the detective.
“Stop, Wilma, let go of her. How many times I gotta tell you that we can't hurt her? The Archangel Michael protects her. She told me so herself. She showed me her medallion.”
Wilma dropped the detective to the ground. “Oh, Willie, don't be so stupid. She doesn't have angels protecting her or she wouldn't be lying here helpless. You've got to quit with all this angel mumbo jumbo. We gotta kill them, and you know it. All of them, just like Simon. You told me if I joined up with you I could send people to heaven, too.”
“I told you not to call him Simon any more. Call him Gabriel like I do. That's his name, and call me Uriel.”
Wilma sighed. “Oh, whatever. I know what, you can call me Lucifer. Lucy for short.” She laughed.
“Lucifer's a fallen angel. You shouldn't compare yourself to him. That's sacrilegious and you'll be punished.”
“Well, it was your precious Gabriel who taught me all about the fallen angels in his stupid angelology class.”
Her retort infuriated Uriel. He loved Wilma, he loved her, loved having sex with her. She'd helped him when Joe McKay came back and was following them everywhere they went and telling them he knew Gabriel and Uriel had killed his little brother, Freddy. And it had been Wilma who'd bludgeoned Christie over the head at Stuart Rowland's house. They had been lying in wait for Stuart. Stuart had been the one who had pointed the detectives in Uriel's direction and accused him of dealing drugs. Stuart was supposed to die in that trunk with the scorpions, not Christie. But then Christie showed up unexpectedly to get back the devil mask she'd given to Stuart, and Wilma had knocked her on the head before Uriel could stop her. She said she hated Christie and accused her of flirting with Uriel, but that wasn't true.
It seemed that once Uriel had introduced Wilma to killing, she had wanted to kill everybody, had liked it a lot, even more than he did. She acted crazy and said she was sending people to hell instead of heaven. She talked about the devil all the time and stole people's pets and sacrificed them. She'd wanted to sacrifice the detective's little white dog but Uriel wouldn't let her. Truthfully, she had begun to frighten Uriel. He feared she might be in league with Satan and that the Archangel Michael would smite him down for being with her.
Joe McKay was yelling at him now from where he lay bound on his side. “Willie, Willie, listen to me, you've got to think this through. Claire's too good a cop to come in here alone without calling for backup. And if she did, the cops'll know where you are and they're gonna swarm all over this place. If you and Wilma kill a police officer, every cop in the state's gonna hunt you down. Let us go, and you and Wilma can take off now while you still can.”
Uriel considered what McKay had said. He had always been scared of McKay, too, from the very beginning, back when he was a little orphan boy, right after his family had been killed in the car crash. Then McKay had come back and watched their every move. Soon McKay got involved with the detectives, helping them find Gabriel's murderer, leading them closer and closer to Willie. That's when they had to kill his babysitter and steal his kid so he'd back off. But McKay was smart enough to follow them to the cave and watch how they got inside. Nobody had ever done that before. That's how he got the jump on them and tied them up. If Claire Morgan hadn't shown up, he and Wilma both'd probably have been blown to smithereens by now. They owed the detective for that much.
Uriel said, “They ain't gonna find us down here, no way, McKay. The detective didn't come in through the boiler room or I would've seen her. She came down one of the tunnels. Gabriel and me hid out down here for going on twenty years, and nobody's ever found the way down until you followed me.”
“Yeah? But you and Simon never offed a cop, either, did you, Willie? The whole force is probably outside right now, searching for her. Don't kid yourself. They won't stop until they find her.”
Wilma jumped up angrily and walked over to McKay. “Shut up, McKay. You don't know shit about what we've done. If you hadn't come back here and stuck your nose in our business, nobody ever would've found out about us.” She turned back to Uriel. “Hey, Uriel, maybe we oughta just kill her now and throw her body outside where they can find her. Then they'll think we're long gone.”
McKay struggled to his knees, his little girl clinging to his neck. “You're a damn fool if you listen to her, Willie. She's the one who got you to kill Simon, isn't she? He'd still be alive if it wasn't for her. You miss him, don't you? You've been best friends ever since you moved here, and now he's dead. I bet it was her idea to put him in that sleeping bag, too, right? Bet you wouldn't have tortured him like that.”
Uriel felt tears welling up again, hot, burning. It was true. Everything he'd said was true. Wilma saw that he was getting all broken up about Gabriel, and she came over and pressed her body up against him and rubbed around on his loins. She always did that when he began to miss Gabriel and then they'd make love and he'd feel better. She rubbed her hand over his chest and spoke to McKay, “Guess what, McKay? None of this would've ever happened if it weren't for your stupid little brother, Freddy. He was the first one Gabriel and Uriel killed together. And you know what else? It was an accident, they really didn't even mean to. But afterward, Uriel says they were glad they did, because he was a little jerk. He pushed Uriel into his mother's grave, so he deserved to die.”
Uriel shut his eyes, remembering how he'd felt that day so long ago when he was down in his mother's grave and Freddy was shoveling dirt in on him. Gabriel had saved him that day, loved him like a brother, taken care of him.
McKay fought his bonds, his face twisted with rage. “Willie, you bastard. I always knew you and Simon Classon did it. Even back then, right after it happened, when the two of you were always hanging around and whispering together in church. I just couldn't prove it. And I saw that old lodge in my dreams, night after night, and I knew it had something to do with Freddy's death. That's why I tried to burn it down.”
“Yeah, we knew you suspected us. But you fucked up when you put that snake in Gabriel's grade book. And you fucked up now, too. You shouldn't never have come back here again after all this time. Now you're a dead man, and so's that little girl over there you stole from her mother. And so is the detective. We're gonna get outta here and leave you down here to rot, the lot of you. Nobody's ever gonna find you.”
Wilma was looking at Uriel now, her face disappointed. “Oh, c'mon, Uriel, let's put them in with the spiders before we leave. They deserve it. And if they get loose, they'll be witnesses against us and we'll have to go to jail. Then we can't be together any more. That's why we killed Simon, remember? To be together forever.”
Uriel remembered and it cut him straight through his heart. “We never, ever should've done that. I miss him too much. He taught me everything I know. You shouldn't have made me do it. He didn't deserve to suffer like that. I don't know why I let you talk me into it.”
“Because he was going to murder me, that's why. He told you to kill me or he was going to, just like he did that other girlfriend that you keep in that tunnel over there. He was jealous because you loved me better'n him. But we showed him, didn't we, we really turned the tables that night when you took me to his house. He never saw it coming, never knew you were going to kill him instead of me.”
Uriel said nothing. Everything she'd said was true. But he still missed Gabriel. He watched Wilma go over and jerk the child away from McKay.
Now McKay's voice sounded desperate. “Willie, don't let Wilma hurt Elizabeth. She's just a baby. She can't identify you. Please, I'm begging you, drop her off somewhere safe, at a hospital, anywhere, just don't hurt her.”
Uriel smiled. “So now it's you doin' the begging, McKay? You were going to kill us. Were you gonna show us any mercy? Uh-uh. So why should we care about savin' your kid?”
“The angels won't like it if you kill an innocent baby. You think they'll go easy on you if you hurt her?”
That gave Uriel pause. He hesitated, not sure how he could get himself out of such a big mess. Wilma grabbed his arm.
“Hey, Uriel, we don't have to kill the kid. Maybe we'll just take her along with us and make her our new little protégé. That's what you said I was, right? How would you like that, McKay? Us teaching little Elizabeth there all about spiders and snakes. She'll grow up thinking we're her mommy and daddy. She'll want to be just like us. Wouldn't that be cool?”
Uriel looked at the child. He liked that idea a lot. He'd always wanted to have a family. They could get married, and nobody'd ever know Elizabeth wasn't their own child. He smiled. Maybe Wilma was right, after all.