Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (219 page)

He was a monster. A mortal who envisioned himself as something more. Who was this sicko who licked at blood, who pretended to be a vampire, who taught a class at the college all the while preying upon his students? There was no doubt that he adored Elizabeth, who almost seemed to be his mistress. Almost.

“You’re like a dog on a leash,” Kristi said to him. “She uses you.”

“As I use her,” he replied, irritated. He reached down toward her neck and Kristi expected him to try and choke her. Instead one finger locked on the gold chain and he ripped it from her neck. “This belongs to me,” he said, clasping the vial of blood in his hand much as he’d held a piece of chalk during his boring lectures. He slid a glance at Elizabeth. “We’ll have to save a few drops for one more.” His lips curled into an evil smile, revealing his needle-sharp teeth.

“You’re such a fake,” Kristi said, feeling dizzy, hardly able to concentrate. As Vlad leaned forward again, she spat in his face, the spittle dripping into the tub.

“What! No!” Elizabeth nearly freaked. “The water can’t be tainted!”

Effortlessly, he scooped up the floating spittle and snarled, “It’s fine.”

“But—”

“Shhh. I said it’s fine,” he said more sternly, and Elizabeth, though irritated, quieted.

Light-headed, Kristi spat again. This time the globule landed on Elizabeth’s leg.

The woman screamed, and Vlad showed his teeth once more. “I’ll rip out your fuckin’ throat,” he warned, eyes blazing.

Good! Get it over with!
But the words didn’t form, with Kristi’s strength seeping away. Vlad saw her weakness and he gloated over her, his smile triumphant, his wicked, fraudulent fangs glistening in the candlelight. “She is ours,” he said, so loudly his voice echoed in the underground chamber.

Kristi opened her mouth to argue, to scream, but only a small sound escaped.

It was too late.

She saw her own skin leeching of color, knew she was shivering despite the warm bath, felt herself slipping out of consciousness. Darkness closed and in a way it would be a welcome relief from this torment.

No help was coming.

She couldn’t fight.

Her blood flowed, coloring the water a darker hue.

She was, she knew, dying, slipping away.

She would never see Jay again.

Never argue with her father.

All was lost….

As the black curtain slid behind her eyes, she wondered faintly if there was a heaven. Hell? Would her soul rise and would she see her mother again? Jennifer Bentz, who had become little more than a memory as faded as the pictures in the old album she’d found in the attic. Would she actually see her again?

Her throat clogged with unshed tears as she thought of the mother she barely remembered while being held afloat by a psycho who wanted, of all things, her blood.

Dear God…maybe she should just let go.

Never had she felt so alone.

Jay,
she thought weakly, and nearly cried with the thought of how much she loved him.

She was cold inside and the blackness that was teasing at her began pulling her under. All her life Kristi had been a fighter; maybe, finally, it was time to succumb.

Voices.

Jay heard the sound of voices.

He lifted his hand to Bentz, who nodded.

Nerves strung tight, crouched and ready for an attack within the darkness, they each took one side of the long tunnel that opened to a large, dark chamber. The room was empty except for half a dozen chairs placed in an arc around a raised platform, like a stage, upon which a worn velvet lounge rested. A hazy mist rose from the floor and a red light pulsed, almost throbbed, as it illuminated.

The voices emanated from an open doorway that led back to the tunnels.

Without a word they split, each taking one side of the next tunnel. There were offshoots, doorways that appeared locked. But at the end of the darkened hallway a room glowed in flickering light, as if lit by a hundred candles.

On silent feet, they headed toward the doorway, and the voices reached Jay’s ears.

“Her blood flows, Elizabeth…washing over you…it’s almost finished.”

Jay’s heart nearly stopped.

Jaw set, he exchanged glances with Bentz, nodded, and they burst into the room where Kristi lay, white as a sheet, in a tub that overflowed with thick red water and was occupied by another woman who was looking upward at a naked man who was about to step into the tub.

“Hands over your head!” Bentz roared.

Dr. Preston’s head snapped up.

The woman turned and Jay nearly faltered.

Althea Monroe? The woman he’d replaced? The professor who was supposed to be taking care of her frail, displaced mother? She was in a blood-filled tub with Kristi?

“On the floor!” Bentz ordered. “Now, cocksucker!”

“Vlad!” Althea screamed. “Kill them!”

As if she had complete control over him, Preston whirled, knife in hand. With incredible precision, he threw the knife at Jay and in the same motion, launched himself across the room, straight at Bentz. Hands outstretched, teeth bared, he leapt.

Jay ducked, the knife glancing off his shoulder, pain shooting down his arm.

Bentz fired, unloading into the naked man as he fell upon him. Jay was at the tub in an instant, dragging Kristi from the murky, red water. She was unconscious, her body limp and pale, the slits on her wrists dark with smears of crimson. He tore at his shirt, making strips for bandages. He couldn’t lose her now. No way. He had to save her. Frantically, he wound the fabric over her right arm.

“No!” Althea raged. “I need her!” Climbing from the tub, she pounced, her eyes bright with her madness.

Blam, blam, blam!

A gun fired and Althea’s body jerked as the bullets ripped through her flesh.

She gasped, covering her wounds as she fell, screaming, “No, no…oh, no…Scars…I can’t have…scars….” Blood bubbled from her mouth with the final words.

Montoya stood in the doorway, his weapon still aimed at her.

“Call 9-1-1!” he yelled as Jay wrapped the strips of cotton over Kristi’s wrists.

“They’re on their way.” Mai was already at Bentz’s side as he pushed Preston’s body away. “You okay?”

“Fine.” He was on his feet and crossing the room to kneel beside Jay, who was cradling Kristi. The slightest pulse was visible at her neck, but Jay knew she’d lost too much blood.

“Hang in there, Kristi, you just hang in there. Don’t you dare leave me.” His throat was thick and though he knew Bentz wanted to touch his daughter, to hold her, Jay couldn’t let her go. She was breathing, but just barely, and he willed her to survive as Althea Monroe breathed her last.

Through the veil, Kristi heard the crack of gunfire, smelled the acrid odor of cordite, and heard voices…frantic voices. People shouting. People running. People screaming. She felt herself being dragged from the water and one voice was louder than the others.

Jay?

She tried to open her eyes but couldn’t, and though she felt his arms around her, heard his muffled voice telling her to hold on, it was impossible.

“
Don’t you dare leave me….”

Another voice. Her father’s?

If she could just pull back, if she could find the strength to open her eyes, to push back the curtain to…

“Kristi! Stay with me, darlin’! Kristi!”

Jay’s voice was steady, determined, as if he were willing her back to him, but it was too late. She wanted to tell him she loved him, that he shouldn’t worry about her, but her lips wouldn’t move, the words wouldn’t come, and she felt herself slipping ever deeper, floating away…

It seemed to take forever for the paramedics to arrive, but when they did, Kristi was still breathing. Shallow breaths, but still alive. The EMTs administered to her, placed an oxygen mask over her face, and carried her out on a stretcher.

“I’m going with them,” Jay insisted.

“Me, too.” Bentz was covered in blood, Charles Preston’s—Vlad’s—blood, but otherwise unhurt. Jay’s wound was slight and he assured the EMT that he would be fine until they reached the hospital. He asked Mai to check on Bruno in the truck, then hurried to keep up with the stretcher.

Outside the storm howled and keened, lightning striking wildly. Bentz watched as Jay climbed into the ambulance with Kristi, then walked to the front of Wagner House, where he’d parked the Crown Vic. Rain poured from the heavens, the wind screamed down the streets.

“I’ll drive,” Montoya said as Bentz paused to take one final look at Wagner House.

In that instant, lightning forked in the sky. As if thrown by angry gods, a bolt struck a huge live oak in the front yard.

“Watch out!” Montoya yelled.

Bentz dived as the wood cracked and smouldered. The tree split in two and as Bentz and Montoya scrambled out of the way, a huge branch crashed to the ground.

Bentz dived as the limb struck, heavy wood cracking against his back, a broken limb piercing his clothes and flesh. Pain sizzled up his spine and for a second he couldn’t breathe.

Then there was nothing but blackness.

Kristi opened a bleary eye.

Jay was staring at her.

“Welcome back,” he said, managing a smile.

Her lips were dry and cracked, her tongue thick. “You look like hell,” she croaked out, and realized she was in a hospital bed, IVs strapped to her wrists.

“You look beautiful.”

She started to laugh, coughed, and managed to ask, “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not everything, not what happened earlier, but last night…” She looked at him and he shook his head.

“Three nights ago. You’ve been out awhile.”

“Tell me. Everything,” she insisted, and felt his hands touch her fingers.

He did. He explained that Althea Monroe, who had died of her wounds at the scene, had been in league with Dr. Preston, killing girls for their blood in an effort to keep Althea young and beautiful.

“Elizabeth of Bathory,” Kristi said.

“Exactly.” Jay told her that Dr. Preston was a fraud. He’d been DOA at the hospital, but his fingerprints had identified him as Scott Turnblad, a man with outstanding warrants in California, where the real Dr. Preston had resided before his death.

Dr. Grotto had been a part of their plan. He’d been involved up to his pointed eyeteeth, though he, still alive, insisted that what he’d done was for the greater good, that Preston had convinced him that he would help the troubled girls disappear and start new lives. In exchange, Grotto got to stage his weird production and play out his own sick vampire fantasies. His audience—the girls he played to—were just as bad as he was and under his spell, finding “new blood” and not caring that the unwilling participants disappeared.

“You mean Trudie and Grace and Marnie?” she asked.

“And a couple of others, including the waitress who added a little something extra to your drink. They all were half in love with Dr. Grotto and got off on his fantasy.”

“More Elizabeths in the making,” she said, and he squeezed her fingers.

“More jail time in the making. They’ll be up on charges, too.”

“What about Father Mathias? And Georgia Clovis?”

“The Wagner heirs are apparently innocent, but Mathias is dead, probably killed by Vlad because he knew too much. We’re not certain but it looks like Mathias might have turned troubled girls toward their deaths. Probably inadvertently. The conjecture is that he heard their troubles during confession or maybe counseling. He tried to help, gave them parts in the plays and allowed Dominic Grotto to ‘guide’ them, and I use the term ‘guide’ loosely. Even though Grotto might not have known about what ultimately happened to the girls, he was no saint. He probably had affairs with them.”

She shuddered, thinking of the innocent victims.

“But the real maniac in all of this was Vlad, aka Dr. Preston aka Scott Turnblad. We’re guessing that too many people knew too much. Lucretia took care of Grotto, but that left Father Mathias. Vlad couldn’t let him escape.”

“He was beyond sick. And Elizabeth.”

“Althea. Yeah. She duped us all. Turns out her mother never even lived in New Orleans. She just wanted to spend more time being Elizabeth.”

“Where does that come from?”

“She was a distant relative of the countess, I guess.”

“And crazy.”

“Certifiable. She got all caught up in trying not to age. We found her diaries. Besides being related to the Blood Countess, Althea was convinced she could turn back time, regain any lost youth by bathing in the blood of younger women.”

“Nutso.”

“Yeah, on top of that, she’d been married and the husband left her for a younger woman, just as her father left her mother twice for trophy wives.”

“So what? It happens to a lot of women. They don’t turn into homicidal maniacs.”

“You said it yourself. ‘Nutso.’ Althea aka Elizabeth found her soul mate in Vlad. Their relationship started young. We’ve been digging into Turnblad’s sordid past. His killing may have started young, with his own parents. And he got away with it.”

“So he learned from a young age that he could.”

Jay’s lips twisted at the thought, the way they always did when he encountered a problem he couldn’t understand. “Turns out he and Althea—”

“That would be the nouveau Elizabeth of Bathory?”

“You
are
paying attention,” he said with a wink. “We found out that they’ve known each other since they were kids.”

“I can’t imagine what kind of games they played.”

He grimaced. “Don’t even go there. Anyway, Detective Portia Laurent put two and two together and found Vlad, er, Preston’s lair under an old hotel. Ariel’s body was there, on ice, as was another woman, a stripper from New Orleans by the name of Karen Lee Williams, whose stage name was Bodiluscious.”

“Does everyone have an aka?”

“At least one,” Jay said with a smile, then explained to her about Mai Kwan and the FBI, and the camera in her apartment. It was Mai they’d chased that night because she hadn’t wanted to reveal her true identity.

Kristi absorbed this with disbelief. “I knew that Hiram was a first-class creep, but Mai…FBI…” She shook her head and started to smile, but then saw Jay’s taut expression. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, her smile disappearing. When he didn’t immediately respond, she urged, “Jay?”