Money Shot (34 page)

“Shhh.” He leaned forward, placed something cold against her lips. She blinked away the film of desperate tears and focused on the wickedly sharp blade that was laid flat against her mouth. Panic struck like lightning at the sight of the knife Einar had used when he taught her how to offer blood to the goddess. She whimpered.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice somehow both gentle and stern. “I’ll take care of you. It won’t hurt.”

“I thought—” She swallowed past a hard lump of horror and shame. “I thought you loved me.”

“Loved you?” He chuckled. “Yarrow, please. Nobody loves you.”

The words rang inside her with the purity of truth.
He’s right
, she thought.
How strange that I knew that but didn’t really understand it until somebody said it out loud
.

“You’ve been a disease to anybody who’s ever tried,” he went on. “Look at your parents. At Lila. At your friend, what was her name? Jilly? Are any of those people happy, healthy or whole?”

“No,” she whispered. Candles burned by the dozens all over the mine floor, their light thin, their heat stingy. She trembled uncontrollably against the unforgiving stone beneath her.

“And what do they all have in common, those poor, plagued people?”

“Me.” She gazed past the merciless blade into eyes that burned with fervor but also with honesty. She forced herself not to blink, not to shrink from this ugly truth.

“Your life was a waste, Yarrow. But your death will be priceless.”

Her death. The words spurted into her with the inevitability of a drowning victim’s first lungful of water.

“Think about it.” He crouched beside her, slid the flat of the knife across her cheek to the line of her jaw. Her heart pounded with fear, with anticipation, with resignation as the blade scraped against her skin. “Alive you’re nothing but sorrow and heartbreak. A disappointment at best, a legal nightmare at worst. But dead? Think of the gift your death would be. Your parents could finally let go of their guilt and shame over walking away from you. Lila could enjoy her twilight years in peace. Jilly could have the satisfaction of seeing you punished.”

“And you get my blood.”

“And I,” he said, smiling slightly, “get your blood. But you—you get absolution, Yarrow. You get to pay for your sins and finally, finally be free.”

Yarrow considered this, the gift of her death. Einar had scrupulously avoided mentioning the obvious bonus for him—dead girls seldom recanted confessions—but whatever. Compared with everybody else she owed, everybody to whom her death truly would be a blessing, one man’s selfishness faded into insignificance.

Everything inside her already felt dead anyway.

She wet dry lips and asked, “What do I do?”

 

IN THE dark of the mine shaft leading to the Stone Altar, Maria made a noise of suppressed fury and Rush threw out an arm to keep her behind him. “Wait,” he mouthed, though an answering fury welled up inside him. At Einar, yes, but also at himself. At Lila. At everybody who’d failed to see this desperate, endangered child now at the mercy of a psychopath.

At everybody except Maria, who’d seen just fine.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out his SIG Sauer and offered it to her. She took it, her hands quick and competent on the weapon. He put his mouth beside her ear and said, “It’s loaded. Concentrate on Yarrow. I’ll take Einar.”

Then he stepped out of the shadows into the maze of candles. Einar crouched behind the altar, his lips next to Yarrow’s ear. The girl sat before him, naked as an abandoned doll, her eyes dull inside black rings of tear-streaked makeup.

“Hey, Einar.” He leveled the rifle at his cousin with perfectly steady hands, and circled slowly to the left as he sought a line of fire that wouldn’t endanger Yarrow. Maria followed him into the altar room, but moved in the opposite direction, the SIG firm in a two-handed grip and trained on Einar’s chest. “I see you found our little cousin.”

“And you found me. Hello, Rush. Maria.” Einar, unsurprised, rose to his full height, the candlelight dancing on the polished bone blade in his hand. “Aren’t you two clever?”

“Nah. Just disgusted.” Rush edged forward, instinct demanding caution in spite of the fact that he held a moosehunting rifle on a man armed with nothing but an antique knife. “What the fuck are you doing, Einar?”

“Only what’s necessary.”

“Necessary.” Maria breathed the word with a sharp-edged scorn. “How the hell is talking a fragile young girl into suicide
necessary
?”

“Christians,” Einar said in amusement. “Your Jesus redeemed an entire people by allowing Himself to be nailed to a cross and still you question the power of blood willingly spilled?”

“Spare me the religious bullshit,” Maria snapped. “Nobody believes it, least of all you. We all know the only thing about her blood that interests you is its ability to buy you a pass on a nice long prison term.”

His lips quirked. “There’s that, of course. Her suicide—though tragic—won’t exactly be unexpected. A troubled young girl seduced by black magic? It’s an old, sad story, but not an unusual one. I doubt anybody will want to put her family through the pain of investigating her story too closely.”

“Oh, but I will.” Maria gave him a smile that was all teeth. “I’m kind of a bitch that way. It won’t take me long to prove there’s no way she was the one smuggling supernotes into the country. Not alone, anyway.”

“Mmm.” Einar considered her with a sharp amusement that had Rush taking the slack out of the trigger.

“And what about you?” he asked, unexpectedly turning to Rush. “Looks like it’s coming down to brass tacks here, cousin. Choices to be made and all that. Your little girlfriend’s obviously made hers. Now it’s your turn.”

Rush shook his head. “You haven’t left me a choice here, E.”

“Of course I have. There’s always a choice, and in this case it’s a pretty simple one. Family versus the dick.” He grinned, the usual devil-may-care charmer. Rush felt sick. “No denying your Maria has a certain appeal, but she’s not blood. She’s not ours.”

“You can talk to me about honoring blood when you’re ready to spill our cousin’s?”

“Stepcousin’s.” Another smooth smile. “She’s not really ours. Plus I’m not the one doing the spilling. She’s doing that all on her own, and it’s powerful stuff. Can’t you feel it?”

“All I feel’s a bunch of crazy and I’m pretty sure it’s coming from you. Now put down the knife.”

“If you like.”

Einar flipped the knife in his hand and offered it, hilt first, to Yarrow. She looked up at him with huge lifeless eyes. Then she took the knife and brought the wickedly sharp blade to her wrist. She pulled it across her skin with the delicate motion of a violinist playing something sad and sweet. Just hard enough to break the skin but not hard enough to do real damage. A thin line of blood bloomed on her waxy skin and she looked up at Einar. He smiled down at her like a fond parent, a proud lover.

“Good girl,” he said. “Now for real.”

Rush’s heart knocked hard against his ribs, but his hands were steady as he sighted down the barrel of his rifle at Einar’s chest.

He flicked a glance at Maria.
Now
.

MARIA SHOVED the SIG into the back of her waistband and launched herself at Yarrow. She took the girl in a flying tackle that rattled her teeth and jarred her bones but knocked them both out of Rush’s line of fire and onto the dirt floor of the mine shaft. The knife leaped from Yarrow’s hand when they hit the ground, and she and the girl tumbled willy-nilly through a minefield of lit candles.

Maria braced for the blast of Rush’s rifle but heard nothing. Then she was too occupied with Yarrow to wonder why not. The girl fought like a cat, all claws and teeth and fury. Maria tasted blood, bright and metallic, on her lip when the kid landed a lucky elbow.

“For God’s sake, stop
fighting
!” Maria straddled the writhing girl, pinning her wrists to the floor. “You’re going to get us killed!”

Yarrow bucked and twisted under her, her breath coming in ragged sobs. “That’s the whole idea, bitch.”

Maria stared down at her. “You don’t want to die, Yarrow.”

“The fuck I don’t.”

TIME SLOWED to a crawl for Rush as Maria knocked Yarrow to the ground. Rush kept the rifle steady on Einar’s chest, instinct and skill allowing him to anticipate and adjust for the man’s startled step back and to his right as Maria tackled Yarrow out from under his nose. He let the breath flow out of his body as the women cleared his line of fire, and for the first time in two long years, he prepared to pull the trigger on a fellow human being.

This man wasn’t his cousin, he told himself. Not anymore. This man had forfeited family—hell, humanity—for pure selfish madness. But he dropped the barrel anyway. Not far, just an inch. Half an inch. Just enough to ensure that his bullet would put Einar on the ground rather than six feet under it.

The hammer clicked home into an empty chamber.

Einar’s laughter rang through the small room even as Maria rolled with a wildly clawing Yarrow into the far wall.

“You’d have done it.” He chuckled delightedly. “You really would have shot me. For shame, Rush. Where’s your sense of loyalty? It’s a damn good thing I thought to unload your gun back on Lila’s porch.”

Einar was still smiling when he bent and scooped up the knife Yarrow had dropped when Maria hit her. Rush threw down the gun and gripped the carved handle of the moosebone knife at own waist. The instant the hilt hit his hand, a certainty blew through him. It was right, he knew suddenly, that he should face Einar with nothing but this ancient knife, an almost exact replica of the one in Einar’s hand.

“You want blood, Einar? Leave the kid out of it, you fucking coward. Come get something the goddess can really sink her teeth into.”

“Rush, please. Your blood is useless to me.”

“But I’d get a real kick out of spilling yours.” Rush flipped the knife in his hand, tested the heft and balance of it. He moved into the candles until he stood at the center of the room. He held the knife loosely in his hand, spread his arms. “Come on, Einar. I’ll even give you the first shot.”

“Oh, Rush,” Einar said with a small smile. “You tempt me. You do.”

Candlelight flickered over Einar’s handsome face as he balanced his weight on the balls of his feet like a boxer. He was a big man. Big enough that he ought to lack speed, but he didn’t. Einar was quick and vicious and lawless. Rush would have to be quicker, meaner and beyond lawless if he was going to get out of this cave with both women alive. He’d have to be inhumane.

Lucky for Rush, inhumanity was something of a strong suit.

“Come on, Einar.” Rush smiled at his cousin. “Let’s dance.”

 

“YARROW, PLEASE.” Maria gazed down at the girl with a mixture of horror and pity. “You don’t want to die.”

“You don’t know what I want.” She spit the words, a savage burst of pain. “Like I’d listen to you even if you did. Jesus. You think I want to end up like you? You spend all your time making yourself look like somebody you’re not, trying to act like somebody you’re not, trying to be something you’re not. You’re a fucking cop and you can’t even fire a gun.” Her laughter dripped rage. “You talk all kinds of shit about bouncing back from mistakes, like you can make up with the universe or something. But look at you. There’s no forgiveness. There’s no paybacks. You fucking hate yourself, just like me. You want to kill yourself, too, only you’re doing it one tiny sliver at a time. I want to just get it the fuck over with.”

 

EINAR STRUCK, as fast as a snake and twice as silently. The knife was a lethal flash in the pale light, then a burning bright pain on Rush’s shoulder. He’d spun with the blow and managed to avoid the full thrust, but blood eased down his biceps and began soaking into the sleeve of his long johns.

Adrenaline rushed through him with a wild, whippy thrill as he danced away from the reach of Einar’s blade. The pain was minor. A flesh wound, nothing more. But his adversary had engaged him in battle, and had proven himself worthy by drawing first blood.

“There’ll be a fire later,” Einar said, smiling at blood blooming on Rush’s arm.

“Will there?”

“Here in the mine. All those candles, the old timber beams? In the trauma—completely understandable—of you and Maria discovering Yarrow’s body—suicide, so sad—one or the other of you will knock over a candle.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It is.” Einar flashed out with a vicious thrust and Rush twisted, measured, assessed. “This place’ll go up like a tinderbox. Neither of you will survive.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Lila will take it hard, I imagine, losing all three of you. But I’ll be there for her. I’ll shoulder full responsibility for the coven in her twilight years.”

“That’s nice.”

Einar, Rush realized, fought exactly like he lived. Sharp bursts of a raw, explosive genius tempered by a shocking lack of discipline. He was quick and unpredictable, but Rush countered him with a patience and endurance honed by years of grueling training. Einar’s attacks grew sloppier, then edged into desperate, and still Rush waited.