Stolen Souls (26 page)

“The same picture? What are you talking about?”

Herkus wanted to answer, hoped to save his life with the knowledge, but the pain dragged his mind down, robbing him of speech.

“Tell me,” the madman said, his breath hot on Herkus’s face. The darkness grew darker still. Herkus willed his tongue to move, air to charge his vocal cords, but there was nothing left but the fire that spread from his stomach to swallow his being.

And the faces.

So many faces, all of them waiting for him.

Oh God
, he thought, the words forming in his mind like bright stars above him.

Oh God forgive me.

And then something brighter pierced his throat, and he knew there was no forgiveness, only fire.

64

G
ALYA LAY ON
her side, feeling the heat spread beneath her, the same metallic smell that had overwhelmed her just a day ago. She writhed, trying to pull her body away from the blood, but the chair held her in place. She worked her jaw and tongue until the towel fell from her lips.

Behind her, the sound of something hard piercing flesh. One man breathed hard with each thrust, the other gurgled and gasped, until only animal grunts remained.

She tried to force her weight forward. If she could turn on her front, onto her knees, maybe she could crawl away. The chair leaned and fell back again. She pulled once more, using her shoulders to twist the chair around. Again, it fell back.

Galya shrieked with the effort. This time, the chair followed her and her knees hit the concrete. She swallowed the cry and pushed forward.

Something pulled the chair back.

“You did this,” he said.

He turned the chair on its back, wrenching Galya’s arms. Her head struck the floor, and sparks ignited in her vision. She heard him step away, then return, his breathing coming in hard rasps.

A light exploded before her eyes, and she turned her head away.

“Look at me,” he said.

The torch beam found its way beneath her eyelids, no matter how hard she squeezed them shut.

His wet palm struck her cheek. “Look at me.”

Galya opened her eyes a fraction, saw the vague outline of his moon face by the burning light.

“You caused this,” he said. “You brought him here. You made me kill him. Everything’s ruined because of you. I have to run because of you.”

Galya could think of only a few words to say, all of them Russian, so she spoke them.

“English,” he said.

She repeated the words, the only sounds that meant anything to her.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

He pointed the stained red blade of the screwdriver at her. “The Lord delivered you to me. So I will finish His work. I promised Him that. But you will suffer for what you’ve done. Beg forgiveness for your soul, for I will not spare you from the hell that’s waiting for you. But not here. It’s not safe here anymore because of you.”

She heard the screwdriver drop to the floor, felt the cold bite of the wire cutters working at the cable tie that held her left wrist to the chair.

Again, Galya spoke. Again, she said the only words that she could form.

She said, “Please, Mama, take me home.”

65

F
RAGMENTS OF SHATTERED
glass crunched under Lennon’s feet as he made his way across the darkened kitchen, his Glock 17 drawn and ready. His breath misted as heat left the house through the empty window frame.

As he moved into the hallway, a thin streak of light moved across the wall ahead of him. He tensed, brought his left hand up to support his right, pressure on the pistol’s trigger.

A door revealed a wooden staircase leading down to a cellar. Shadows shifted and twisted in the opening like demons wrestling over souls. He reached the top step and saw a torch beam moving in the black pit below.

A voice, low and hoarse, rose up to Lennon. He could make out only a few words among the rambling. “… your fault … will suffer … all lost … run.”

Another voice, soft, a girl’s voice, worked below the other, reciting the same few words over and over again, words Lennon did not understand.

Lennon peered into the darkness and saw the torch shone on a young woman, bloodied and semiconscious. Its halo revealed only a hint of the man who held it. The light weakened as it reached the top of the stairs where Lennon stood, but it was enough to show the switch. He hit it with his elbow and steadied his aim.

“Police!” he called.

The man stared up, wide-eyed, his mouth open like a hole torn in the pale disc of his face.

Lennon took it all in at once—the body of the Lithuanian he had questioned earlier, the blood pooling on the floor, the scattered tools, the pitiful form of the girl bound to the upended chair—and aimed the Glock.

“Edwin Paynter,” he said. “Move away from the girl.”

Paynter’s eyes widened further at the sound of his own name. He fell back, pulling the chair and the girl with him.

“Stay back,” he shouted, bringing something red to the girl’s throat.

For a moment, Lennon thought Paynter wore a shining glove. When the glove’s fabric dripped onto the girl, he knew it was not a glove, but the dead man’s blood coating Paynter’s hand, and the screwdriver it gripped.

He tried to steady the Glock’s aim on Paynter’s forehead, but neither his hand nor the crazy man below would stay still.

“Let her go,” Lennon said, taking a step down.

“Don’t come down here,” Paynter said.

“I’m coming down, Edwin,” Lennon said. “I’m going to come down and get the girl. You let her go and you won’t get hurt.”

The sane part of Lennon’s mind shrieked at him to get out of there, but the girl’s eyes fixed on his, and he knew he had no choice.

“You hear me, Edwin? Move away from her, and I promise you won’t get hurt.”

Paynter laughed and reached for something near the Lithuanian’s body.

Lennon’s reflexes understood before his consciousness did, and he dropped low as the cellar boomed with the discharge and the wall by his head exploded with red dust and brick fragments.

His balance gone, Lennon tumbled headfirst down the rest of the stairs, the wood slamming into his shoulders, his elbows, his knees as he turned end over end. The concrete floor struck his chin, and he tasted blood as his vision blackened.

The world skipped a beat, and he was on his back, staring at a bare lightbulb, his hands empty by his sides. A broad shape moved into his line of sight, blotting out the bulb’s painful glow. A moon face smiled down at him.

“When will you people ever learn?” Paynter asked.

Lennon blinked up at him, coughed as he swallowed his own blood.

Paynter hunkered down and pressed the pistol’s muzzle to Lennon’s forehead.

“You can’t beat me,” he said. “Not when I’ve got the Lord on my side.”

66

E
DWIN
P
AYNTER HAD
never held a gun before. When he grabbed it from the floor, he wasn’t sure if it was as simple as pulling the trigger, or if there was some trick he wasn’t aware of. For all he knew, he might end up having to throw it at the policeman.

But it was indeed as simple as pulling the trigger. It had sent a shock up through his elbow and into his shoulder, and his arm tingled. And his ears whistled. And it caused a heat and hardness in his groin.

Now he had the policeman at his mercy, blinking stupidly up at him like the dog he had owned as a teenager—the dog that had continued to gaze at him with witless adoration, even as he calmly kicked it over and over again until its eyes dimmed and its tongue sagged in its reddened sputum.

Paynter liked this gun. It was noisy and it hurt his arm, but it felt good to use it. He looked at the policeman’s gun lying a few feet away and wondered if it had the same kind of bullets. It appeared identical to the one he now pressed against the policeman’s forehead.

“Have you ever shot anyone?” Paynter asked.

The policeman hesitated. “No.”

“I don’t believe you. Have you ever been shot?”

“Yes,” the policeman said.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Were you scared?”

“Yes.”

“Are you scared now?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Paynter said. “I am an instrument of the Lord, and fear is the only proper response. It took me years to learn that. When people looked at me strange, when girls didn’t want to talk to me, I thought there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t. They were acting like they were
supposed
to act. Afraid.”

He stood upright, keeping the pistol aimed at the policeman’s head.

“What did he say your name was? Lennon, I think. Well, Mr. Lennon, it’s time I was going.”

The policeman’s breathing quickened, his chest rising and falling. Paynter tightened his finger on the trigger, feeling the pressure, the hair’s breadth between terror and forever silent. The policeman screwed his eyes shut and raised his hands in some pointless effort to shield himself.

Enough
, Paynter thought,
just—

The floor rushed up at him and the pistol boomed, sending the bullet into the concrete. He had a moment to wonder what had slammed into him, sending him sprawling on the floor, before something hard struck the back of his head.

67

L
ENNON FELT RATHER
than saw the girl slam into Paynter. He’d seen her coming, covered his head with his forearms, and weathered the battering of elbows, knees, and feet.

The girl let out an animal shriek as she set about her captor with the chair that was still bound to one of her wrists. Lennon scrambled back as she raised it and brought it down on Paynter’s head. He kicked to untangle his feet from the other man’s and rolled to his side to reclaim his Glock.

Paynter groaned and tried to deflect the blows with his hands, but the girl’s determination got the better of him. For a few seconds, it seemed he had given in, but then he turned and struck out with his boot. He caught the chair, throwing the girl’s balance.

Lennon got to his feet and raised the Glock. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll put one in you, I swear to Christ.”

Paynter stared up at him for a moment, incredulity on his face, before a high peal of laughter escaped him.

The girl went to swing the chair at him again, but Lennon forced himself between her and Paynter.

“What’s so bloody funny?” he asked.

“You swear to Christ? You think the Lord Jesus cares what promises you make?”

Lennon struggled for an answer. When one wouldn’t come, he did the only other thing he could think of: he kicked Paynter hard in the balls.

Paynter doubled up and rolled onto his side, his face turning first red then purple.

The girl lay curled against the wall, muttering something. Somewhere outside, in the cold night, sirens rose and fell. Lennon crouched beside her, said, “It’s all right. Help’s coming.”

Paynter groaned and squirmed.

“You move, and I’ll shoot,” Lennon said. “Understand?”

Paynter did not respond. Instead, he retched and spat on the floor.

Lennon kept an eye on him as he listened to the girl. Her words came tumbling one after the other, thick with her Slavic accent, a language he didn’t understand or even recognize. Lithuanian? Latvian? Polish?

Whatever she said, she repeated it over and over until it sounded like some mantra, a deranged prayer to an ignorant god.

Lennon spared her a glance. “Do you speak English?”

The sirens drew close, along with the sound of engines pushed into anger.

“What’s your name?” Lennon asked.

Still she repeated the words, blurring and smearing them until he couldn’t tell where the prayer ended and began again. It climbed in pitch, punctuated by desperate inhalations.

Lennon grabbed her wrist. “What are you saying?”

She gasped and stared as if woken from a nightmare. For a moment, Lennon thought he was looking at Ellen stirred from her night terrors.

The girl blinked and said, “Please, sir, I want to go home.”

68

S
TRAZDAS HAD BEEN
sitting slumped on the floor for so long, his back against the base of the couch, he’d lost track of time. His head jerked up when his phone rang. He decided to ignore it for the moment. Instead, he focused on the suite’s large flatscreen television, unnaturally bright in the darkened room, the colors jarring his retinas with their intensity.

It appeared to be some old comedy show, with two men, one small and old, the other middle-aged but trying to play younger, both of them scruffy, arguing over Christmas decorations in a wretched house.

Was this what people here found funny? Pathetic men with miserable lives? Did it make them feel better about themselves to laugh at the poor souls who were unhappier than them?

The elderly wretch on the television screeched while the younger one scowled and grumbled, called the other a dirty old man.

Strazdas laughed, but he wasn’t sure why.

The phone fell silent, and in the absence of noise, Strazdas noticed the pain that nestled inside his skull, curled above his eyes.

What had he been doing sitting here?

Oh, yes. Drinking.

He had taken a bottle of wine from the minibar an hour ago. His nerves had been jangling more and more as this damned city fell into darkness, a heavy quiet settling on the street outside as it emptied. The silence had been so thick he imagined he could hear the blood in his veins charging around his body. A less sane man than he might have believed that the cold and the dark, borne on soundless air, were invading the hotel, creeping up its stairs, stalking its corridors.

But he was a sane man, and he believed no such thing.

Not really.

More cocaine did not make him feel better, and he began to suspect that it might even be the cause of his anxiety. So he had opened the little fridge that was hidden inside a cabinet and chosen a bottle of white wine. He had tried to read the label, but his eyes seemed unable to pin the words down. He unscrewed the cap, put the bottle to his lips, and swallowed. Arturas Strazdas did not drink alcohol often, so he did not find the taste, or more specifically, the sensation of the liquid in his throat, at all pleasant. But still, he persevered.