In the Garden of Sin (38 page)

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Hm?”

“You’re scowling.”

“Oh. Just lost in thought for a minute. I was wondering, um…”

“Yes?”

“I was, um, reading online about a mountain near Clermont-Ferrand that has a Roman temple on it.”

Nodding, she said, “The Temple of Mercury. The mountain is the Puy-de-Dôme. It’s about eight or ten miles from here. Amazing view.”

“Yeah, the article I read said the sunrises and sunsets are spectacular. I was thinking, if you felt like taking a drive, it might be a nice break from all this.”

Her gaze shifted from Turek to the spot in the courtyard where Elic and Galiana had been kissing. She nodded. “Yeah. Why not? I think I’d like that. And God knows I could use a break from… all this. What time is sunset tonight?”

“Tonight?” he said. “I was thinking about setting out before dawn tomorrow and catching the sun
rise
. There’s something about sunrises. They feel like… beginnings.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “Shall we say six o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“Why not make it five? I like to see the pitch-black sky start to lighten little by little. Oh, and maybe we should keep this little outing under our hats. If Galiana finds out about it, she’ll go postal on me, and I really don’t need that.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Sure as hell does
, Turek thought.

Elic gazed up at the sun-spangled leaves overhead, his thoughts as dreamy and insubstantial as the breeze waltzing through the woods. From time to time he would realize he was lying naked on his back in six inches of burbling water and forget why. And then he would feel the tickle of her hair on his
face and chest, feel the fresh blood, Inigo’s blood, surging into him through the fangs buried in his throat, feel the warmth of his own blood pumping into the water from the incision in his femoral artery and swirling downstream…

He couldn’t turn his head because the vampiress was holding it in a steely grip, but he could slide his eyes to the side and see his old friend lying nearby in his garish Renaissance garb, his face a death mask leeched of color, of life.

No, not quite. Already Inigo’s waxen pallor was just a bit less white, and there may have been a hint of pink on the pointed tips of his ears. He was regenerating the lifeblood that he had granted Elic with such careless generosity.
Bro! We’ll be the ultimate blood brothers! This totally rocks!

Mesmerized by the sun glittering through the branches of the sacred oaks far above him, Elic closed his eyes and saw her face, her beautiful, beloved face, and smiled to himself, and thought,
Not much longer now
, mins Ástgurdís…

HAME ABOUT THE CAR,” Galiana said as she smoked a cigarette in the driver’s seat of the Alfa Spider, parked on an overlook of the Puy-de-Dôme access road with its top down under a star-strewn night sky. She was in normal clothes tonight—vinyl leggings and a leather bustier.

“What?” Anton shimmied out from under the jacked-up chassis and stood, dusting off his ridiculous designer jeans as he aimed his flashlight in her face. “I’ll have to throw these out now.”

“Will you get that fucking thing out of my eyes?”

“Sorry.” He opened the passenger door and wedged the flashlight between the gear shift and the dashboard with its beam aimed downward to illuminate a square foot of neatly cut, peeled-back carpeting. In the middle of that square was
the small hole he’d cut in the floor pan with the cordless reciprocating saw lying on the pushed-back passenger seat. Threaded through that hole was Galiana’s Paramount 900XT Maximum Security Waist Chain, five feet of heat-treated, nickel-finished carbon steel, one end of which he’d just finished padlocking around the front crossbar of the car’s steel frame. Attached about a foot and a half apart at the chain’s other end, which lay on the passenger seat next to the saw, was a pair of heavy-duty handcuffs fitted out with Medeco locks in polycarbonate housings.

“I said it’s a shame about the Spider,” Galiana said as Anton smoothed down the square of carpeting with unsteady hands. He’d been a nervous wreck all night, seeing to these preparations for Lili’s final drive. “I hate having to destroy a beautiful machine like this just to take out that tiresome little bitch.”

“It’s your plan,” he reminded her as he gathered the business end of the waist chain and tucked it under the passenger seat. Then, as if worried that he’d overstepped himself, the little weasel added, “And it’s a great plan. You’re right, this road is perfect.”

It
was
perfect, a treacherously winding mountain road with rock face on one side and a drop-off on the other. The spot she’d chosen for Lili’s predawn “accident” was an especially sharp curve over a plunging drop about a hundred yards back.

Checking out her lipstick in the visor mirror, Galiana said, “I told the guard when he gave me the keys that I’d be giving them to Lili when I brought the car back tonight, because she’d asked if she could take it out for an early morning drive tomorrow—or rather today,” she said, checking her watch. “Elic will think what everyone else thinks, that she was driving a little too fast in the dark in a car she wasn’t used to, went off the road, and roasted to death in the ensuing fire.
Alone
. You
did tell her to keep her mouth shut about your romantic little sunrise date, didn’t you?”

“I told her.”

“And you won’t let anyone see—”

“I won’t let anyone see us leaving together.” Anton lifted the floor mat from where he’d tossed it onto the pavement and replaced it over the carpet, covering the incised square and most of the chain snaking under the seat.

Galiana said, “Pull the seat forward to hide the rest of the—”

“Way ahead of you,” he said as he adjusted the seat. “But thanks. The devil’s in the details.”

Rolling her eyes at the pedestrian cliché, Galiana leaned back against the headrest and blew a plume of smoke at the winking stars. “Make sure one handcuff is where you can reach it easily from either the passenger seat or the driver’s seat. In the unlikely event she doesn’t want to do the driving, you’re still going to have to immobilize her.”

“We’ve been over all this.” He didn’t apologize for his insolence this time.

Galiana closed her eyes and shook her head. You’d think, after having tried to hoodwink her with that Gebirgshaus shit, that he’d be walking on eggs, but no. She’d promised to let him live if he helped her get rid of Lili, and like the trusting moron he was, he believed her—all the more reason to thin him from the ranks of the Upír. As soon as Lili was dead and she’d gotten Elic away from here and under her control, Anton Turek was going to get the slow roasting he’d been begging for all these years.

Tapping the cigarette onto the pavement, she said, “Go over it again,
marish
. One bungled detail could ruin the entire thing.”

Anton grimaced as he stowed the saw in the trunk alongside the five gallons of gasoline he’d picked up that afternoon. “I tell her she’s about to hit a deer, and when she stops, I handcuff her.”

“Both hands.” Even if Lili possessed extraordinary strength, there was no way she could work free of such a secure restraint.

“Right. Of course. I drain her completely, leaving her too weak to move, and then I douse her with—”

“No!”
Galiana bolted upright. God, the
imbecile
. “After you drain her, remove the handcuffs and unlock the chain from the car’s frame. You’re going to take it with you, remember? So it looks like an acci—”

“Right, right. I knew that, I’m just… a little keyed up.”

“Speaking of which, you’ve got both keys, right? For the handcuffs and the padlock?”

“Right here.” He patted his front jeans pocket.

“And remember,” Galiana said, “if she’s in the passenger seat, you’re going to have to move her to the driver’s seat and strap her in. Then comes the gasoline.”

“I soak her down and take the can.”

“Don’t forget to bring a backpack or something to put the chain in. The can you can carry. You’ll just look like you ran out of gas. Don’t run, it’ll attract too much attention. You can hoof it back to Grotte Cachée in about two hours. Don’t let anyone give you a ride. Stay off the local radar.”

“Gotcha. So then I figure I should put the car in neutral so it’s easier to push off the—”

“Did I tell you to put it in neutral?”

“Um, no.”

“The cops might be able to tell from the wreckage that it was in neutral, and then it won’t look like an accident. You want the engine running and in drive—with something to
brace the front wheels, like a rock or a log. Aim them toward the drop-off, release the parking break, toss a match in— remember to bring the matches, not your lighter, so you can throw it and don’t have to try to—”

“Sheisse
. The fucking matches.” Anton slammed the balls of his hands against his forehead.
“Fuck!”

Leaning back, she said, “God, chill, Anton. You still have time. You can scrounge some up before five o’clock. There are, like, a hundred fireplaces around the castle. Check them.”

“Fucking matches,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Toss the match in. She’ll go up like a torch. Then just roll away whatever was bracing the wheels and push the car off the mountain. The engine will probably explode immediately. Cars burn at super-high temperatures. She’ll be toast within minutes. Dead and gone. Kaput.”

Galiana hurled her burned-down cigarette out the window, plucked another one from her bustier, and looked toward Anton for a light.

“Um, yeah, okay. Hold on.” He slid into the passenger seat, reaching into his back jeans pocket.

“You didn’t forget your lighter, too, did you?”

“What? No,” he said, fumbling in the pocket. “I don’t
think
so.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “You are the most worthless fucking—”

Something cold and hard snapped around her right wrist. She opened her eyes to find him reaching toward her with the other handcuff.

She swatted him away with a snarl, teeth bared. He landed on the pavement with a grunt of pain.

She jerked at the handcuff, rattling the chain, as he scrambled to his feet. In a voice deepened by rage, she said, “Very funny,
marish
. Unlock this now.”

Digging in his front pocket, he produced the two keys, held them up in a quavering hand…

And threw them over the side of the mountain.

A growl of fury thundered from her lungs as she strained toward him.

“I know what that means,” he said in a voice that was at once tremulous and irate.
“Marish
. I know what it means. It means slave. That’s what I am to you. That’s what I’ve always been. Your personal fucking slave.”

“What are you doing?” she demanded as he hauled the five-gallon can of gasoline out of the trunk and unscrewed the cap.

“You’re so smart, such a brilliant schemer.
You
figure it out.” His old Germanic intonations were creeping in on the British accent he’d been affecting for the past century or so.

She tried to wriggle her hand free of the cuff, but it was no use; he’d snapped it on good and tight, and it was probably the best handcuff in the world, which was why it was her favorite. Willing her voice back to its normal timbre, she tried to reason with him. “Why are you doing this, Anton? Our plan is that close to completion. After today, you can go your way and I’ll go—”