If Wishes Were Horses (21 page)

“I’m curious, so I go and see the woman. Her  face  is  the  face  of  my  dream,  only unravaged by the drugs, as she might have been before  she got hooked, and without the  overwhelming seductive power of the being  of my dream. I’m shaken enough by the  similarity that I submit to a  DNA test. The baby is ours.”

Sarah sucked in a breath. Justin leaned back in the chair, splaying his knees, and  stared at the screen and the image there, a macabre cartoon.

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“I looked at this wreck of a woman,  who had nothing but contempt for me and  those around me. She did not know me, nor I her. Yet when I first came into her room, I  saw she had some of the same sense of bewildering recognition of me as I did of her. I  told the hospital I wanted to  take custody of  the child,  for they had  called social services  in and refused to relinquish the child to her.”

He reached out, rubbed at the  side of the keyboard with his  thumb, an absent  gesture, a distraction for the emotions Sarah felt vibrating off of him. She saw his throat  work as he  swallowed. “When they let me hold  her for the first time, and Lori looked at me, I knew we were bound. It was a miracle she came out healthy, that Lorraine didn’t  lose her or abort her before labor. Perhaps  it was the circumstances of her birth that  provided her some type of protection, I don’t know. Lorraine couldn't sign her over to  me fast enough, was delighted  I was willing to  take her. She was  so out of her head and  confused by the whole situation. I was just as confused. She disappeared from the hospital the next day.”

“You called the baby Lori.”

He nodded. “I didn’t  know anything about Lorraine Messenger except she was a  disaster, but I wanted  to give  the child the safest gift from  her birth mother  I  could give  her.

“I researched the brand, and that's where I found this.” He scrolled down and she  was looking at the same symbol in bold grey, red and black graphics as it had been tattooed on Lorraine's skin and burned into Justin’s.

“If you go into the works of the monks of  the sixteenth and seventeenth century,  they did a detailed chronology and hierarchy  of the angels and demons. This was in  there. It also came up several times in testimony at witch trials. I uncovered another reference to it in a  story written in the nineteenth century, a nickel pulp fiction by a  cowboy in Colorado. Almost the exact story  as mine. The dream, waking up with the  brand. Three years later, he’s in Colorado and meets an unmarried Indian maiden with  the same mark, and her face is the one from  his dream. She has a tattoo like his brand,  that she felt compelled to have one of the tribe stencil on her in the same spot. She has a  boy who looks so much like the cowboy, there’s no doubt it has to be his son.”

Justin scrolled down as he spoke, so Sarah’s attention covered the same detail  information he was referencing.  “This,” he pointed to a smaller photo of the horned and  fanged caricature at the top, “was the rendering of the monks, their belief of his true  form. To most of his victims he appears with  the face of a person they know, or as an attractive, seductive stranger that they might later discover or meet.

“The Indian woman and cowboy married  and lived  happily ever after in the fictional account. The woman in the witch  trial was exonerated for succumbing to the  influence of the Devil, but her husband cast  her and her child out of his home  and she was expelled from the community. There are reports she joined her sister in  Virginia  and became a shopkeeper, her son a respected attorney. And you know my story, and  Lorraine’s.”

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“But why would it do this? What purpose—”

“I expect it’s simply a  random, unhappy  spirit.” Justin lifted a shoulder. “There’s a  theory that, just the same way we long  to connect to or possess the powers of  supernatural beings, so, too, do those beings  sometimes wish to connect with or possess  characteristics of our mortality. This may be a way to do it.”

Sarah chewed on the inside of her cheek,  studied the screen. “Say I believe any of this, and that’s a big ‘if’. Did  you find any evidence of it actually killing someone in the way Lorraine was killed?”

“Six times in this century.” He confirmed her fears, flipping to another screen  where she saw various news articles that had been downloaded from library archive files. He maintained his silence as she quickly read through the data he had compiled. Different parts of the world, always at least ten or fifteen years apart, sometimes much longer.

“He’s been  around for awhile,” Justin said.  “He doesn’t always kill, and there’s no  indication  of why he does, just that he has a short fuse and a lot of power. He’s killed  four  women,  two  men.  The  only  clue  is  in  that  seventeenth  century  account.  As  far  as  I can tell, she’s the only one who ever survived him when he got angry. And she’s the  only one who ever recorded  seeing him as an image similar to the rendering of the  monks.”

“You’ve been researching this for some time,” she said, realizing the impact of that  even as her gaze swept the stacks of files on his desk, the  books on paranormal  phenomena on his shelves.

“Since it happened to  me, over eight years  ago. It shocked the hell out of me, the  day you took me to the murder site. Seeing Lorraine dead was terrible, but not  unexpected. It was hard to see the body,  though. To remember… ”  He moved the mouse  to keep the  monitor from switching to the screensaver.

“What shocked you, then?” Sarah prompted  him.

“That she was trying to call it.  It never occurred to me that she ever had the cognizance to recognize the incubus was more  than a bad trip, but apparently she did.  She was Wiccan. In her lucid moments, few and far  between though they may have  been, she put it together.” Justin’s mouth thinned, the lips pressed hard together. “She was near bottom when she came to see me several months ago. Maybe she thought if  she could get pregnant by it again, I would  give her money.” He swiveled in the chair,  looked up at Sarah, “Or maybe she just wanted to feel that good again for a few  minutes. But as I said, this demon’s got a short fuse. I suspect he  doesn’t care for being  called or ordered about.”

“Or,” she responded, “maybe he saw it as a mercy killing, she was so far gone.”

Justin leaned forward, rubbed a hand over his  face. “I’ll go with you to Eric’s office, Sarah, but I’m not going to tell him all this. If  you want to do it, fine, but you can see  now that there’s nothing the police can do to stop this  thing, even if you all believed  me.”

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“What will kill it?”

“You can’t kill a demon. It’s  pure energy. You can neutralize it, bind it, lock it into a contained space in the universe.  The coven  can  do that, but to do it we’d have to find him and close in around him before he knew we were coming, and this guy has no  pattern as to whom he chooses initially for his victim. He  shows up whenever,  wherever.”

He rose out of the chair so his back was to  her, and stepped back out of the desk

space.

“I’ll go get dressed.”

Sarah stared after him for several long moments. Her brain had gone  as numb as  her heart and she wasn’t sure how long she stood there, paralyzed, before the cell  phone at her belt rang.

She pulled it off. “Wylde here,” she snapped.

“This is Dexter, Sarah.” Her lieutenant’s voice was a rush of relieved words. “They  finally got the rest of the dang reports from the medical examiner. Forensics says the  vic’s death was self-inflicted. They didn’t find any evidence of another person at the scene. No footprints, hair or skin samples  on her clothes or belongings. Not even any  semen in her body or evidence of a condom.  There were three drugs in her system. She  was a freaking pharmacy. The  toxicologist played with the combination and came up with a reaction like liquid nitrogen. It’s something he’s never seen before, but when it  all comes together, it turns into negative  100 degrees immediately. He says we may  have a new street drug, or she may have hit on  something by accident with her little  cocktail. He said based on that and a totally clean site, Marion’s just got themselves a really freaky OD situation.”

“Is that his official medical opinion?”

Dexter hesitated. “Sorry about that, Chief. His official report is going to rule it an  OD death. Another thing, even better news. Time of death was pinned at 11:00 pm. We  have nine people who verified independently that Justin Herne was leading a Wiccan  ritual from eight o’clock to midnight. Forensics says that alibis him even if he shot it  into her veins and left her there for it to take effect.”

Ten people, she thought.

“Chief?”

“Good work, Dexter. I’m at Herne’s home now. I’ll inform him and then I’m off for

the rest of the day. I think I’ve got a touch of the flu.”

“Yes ma’am, that’s been going around. We’re all glad about the way it turned out, though, but sorry for that lady. She sure was messed up.”

“Yes, she was. Bye, Dexter.”

Sarah stood there, listening to the sounds of Herne moving upstairs, drawers  opening and closing. She looked at the computer screen again, the fanged creature  sneering at her.

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When Justin came down a few minutes later, his sitting room was empty, and  Sarah’s car was gone. A scrap of paper was propped up on the computer screen, held there with a piece of Scotch  tape. The shadow of the demon was silhouetted behind it.

Justin pulled off the note and swore viciously.

You’ve been  cleared. We’re through.

“That’s what you think, sweetheart,” he growled, crushing the note in his hand.

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Chapter 14

He let her be for the night.  He could be that patient,  knowing the weight of what he had laid on her earlier in the day. He did  leave a message on her machine, he couldn’thelp that.

“Sarah, this is Justin. We’re going to have to talk about us. There
 
is
 
an ‘us’, whether you want there to be or not, and I want to  see you. Call me tomorrow, or I swear I’ll show  up  on  your  doorstep  and  you’ll  have  to  deal  with  me.  I  should  have  handledthings differently, I know, but don’t use it as  an excuse to run from me. Don’t run from us.”

He lay in bed for awhile staring at  the ceiling, and then  gave up and snapped on the small reading light. He withdrew  the news clippings  he had printed from the Chicago  Times and went through them again, imagining Sarah all alone in a warehouse full ofblood and violence, her struggle toward that  one last man, her refusal to give up.

From Sarah’s limited comments on her personal life, Justin knew her husband had left her shortly thereafter. He had left her when she needed him  desperately, and it sounded like during their marriage he had let her push him away when she thought thejob had become too much to share. Justin wasn’t going to let her do it to him. Sheneeded someone in her life strong enough to push back.

He turned off the light, lay back in the  bed and went back to studying the ceiling until the grandfather clock downstairs struck  midnight, and his body raged for her. Hewondered if this was how drugs had been for Lorraine, this all-consuming need to havethat pleasure in her blood. He wanted Sarah in his house, in his arms. He wanted his cock buried in her and her body arching  beneath his, that sinuous movement that women made, an erotic dance to offer themselves up to a man’s need, to sate their own in the bonding.

Fuck it. He  was going to get up and go to her house, and he was going to use every method fair or unfair to get her to accept him. He knew  it was wrong, but he didn’t givea damn. He hadn’t believed he would ever know  what love felt like again, and certainly hadn’t expected it to  take the form of an  instantaneous attachment to a skinny police chief with a smart mouth, shy smile and irises as big as robin eggs.

He flipped over and jumped back with a  startled oath. Sarah was in the process of getting into his bed, her knee up  to slide in  next to him. Justin froze, his face just inches from hers. She stared back, her eyes round and sad, and her lips  parted to speak. He caught her  to him, his hand  to the back of  her head,  and brought her  to his lips. He nearly moaned at the joy of that contact, her bare breasts crushed against his chest, for she was naked as he was, her body cool where his was hot, a melding of elements.

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“I’m sorry,” he muttered against her, and she made a noise of acceptance. He was  already achingly hard for her, and she straddled him with her thighs, pulling the sheet back and sliding down  on him, taking him  inside her, fusing them together even with  their lips still joined. He wanted to touch her, caress her, watch her grow  more and more wild with passion, but she  seemed as desperate to simply mate as he did. She left  him no choice, for the muscles  in her cunt clamped down on him. As she rose and fell  on his body, riding that wave of their desire, she was as relentless as a rider mounted on  a thoroughbred, coaxing him with the stroke of  her silken walls to lengthen  his stride,  make for the finish line.

“Sarah, let me—”

She shook her head, placing her fingers over his lips. He groaned again as her hands lifted, cupped her breasts, their quivering movement contained in the curve of her palms, her nipples  stiff and eager. He reared up to possess them with his lips and tongue.