Prince of Darkness, page 15
“You heard a voice?” he said calmly.
“In the darkness…the candles flared up…A voice like…yours.”
“It wasn’t Peter.” Tiphaine had swept the candles and rabbit’s foot into the pocket of her robe. She came swiftly back to the bed, leaving a disappointed cat behind. “We sprinkled powder on the floor, Kate; there wasn’t a mark on it when I came to the door.
“Connecting bath,” Kate muttered. Incongruously, through all her accusations, she retained her desperate grip on Peter’s hand.
“It’s bolted. On this side.”
“Go look.”
Tiphaine gave Peter an expressive look and a shrug. She was back almost at once.
“Still bolted. Kate, even if he got into the next room, how could he have reached yours? Footprints would have shown in the hall; he can’t walk on the ceiling, you know.”
Kate’s teeth began to chatter. The room wasn’t particularly cold.
“That’s enough for now,” Peter said. “Tiphaine, you’d better call—no, I’ll do it; you stay with her.”
He went out, flexing ostentatiously empty hands. Kate’s next thought would be for some sort of mechanical recording device; she’d insist that Tiphaine search the room. Just to be on the safe side, he’d better get rid of the tape recorder. The trip downstairs, to admit the doctor, would give him an opportunity, and it was logical that he would stop off in his own room to put on more clothes. With Katharine More you couldn’t take too many precautions. But as he closed the door gently behind him, he knew he had struck a damaging blow. The last thing he heard was her admission of defeat.
“Then it was Mark. Mark’s voice…”
“Is she still pacing up there?”
“Yes.” Tiphaine was doing some pacing of her own; she swung around on her heel, bright hair flying. “Martin says he can’t give her anything more. Old maid, that’s what he is! I think I’ll go out of my mind if she doesn’t stop!”
“She ought to get out of the house,” Peter said.
“She won’t go with me.” The strain was telling on the girl; irritability sharpened her voice and flushed her cheeks.
“Let me see what I can do.”
“I wish you luck.”
Peter expected he would need it. He wanted to get Kate off by herself, preferably out of the house, where she couldn’t yell for help, but he didn’t expect her to acquiesce. But Kate agreed without a struggle when he suggested a walk. Apparently Tiphaine’s report last night had cleared him.
They went across the yard and through the gate into the woods, Kate leading, Peter trailing like a watchdog—or keeper, he thought. He didn’t try to talk. She couldn’t keep up her present pace very long. After a while her steps slowed and stumbled; but when Peter took her arm she shook his hand off.
“I don’t need any help.”
“Like hell you don’t,” Peter said unemphatically.
She glanced up at him and then looked away. Her eyes were unfocused and dilated to blacker blackness than usual.
“Let’s get off the path,” she said. “Someone might come, and I don’t want—”
“Lead the way.”
“There’s a place I go to sometimes.” She pointed up the trail, to a spot where a coil of wickedly beautiful scarlet leaves twined around a tree, and a broken branch stuck out from a tall oak.
Between the oak and the poison ivy a faint path went off into the underbrush, but Peter would not have seen it without guidance. Clearly it had not been used for some time; honeysuckle and poison ivy made a thick treacherous matting underfoot, and climbed to strangle trees and bushes. Kate wiggled her way through and Peter ungallantly let her lead. He was scratched and perspiring by the time they broke through into a final tangle of thorned bushes into a small glade.
A brook ran rippling across the cleared space and vanished between trees to the right. Tall trees ringed the clearing, shading it. Some pines; the ground was covered with a thick soft carpet of browning needles, which had triumphed even over the omnipresent honeysuckle. At the far end of the clearing, to the left of the path by which they had come, stood an unusual object—a massive block of stone about ten feet high and almost as broad. Its color was dark, almost black; granite, possibly. The top was flat, like a platform, but it bore no trace of man’s hand.
“A meteorite?” Peter hazarded.
“No, just a chunk of rock. The local people call it the Devil’s Pulpit.” Kate crossed over to the rock and dropped down beside it. She fumbled in her pocket for her cigarettes. “They avoid this place, particularly around Halloween. That’s why I like to come here.”
“Halloween?” Peter sat down beside her and declined a cigarette with a shake of his head. “Oh, yes, your local Allhallows. Jack-o’-lanterns and— what is it? Trick or treat.”
“Haven’t you ever seen it?”
“No. Sounds like a combination of Guy Fawkes and Carnival.”
“When I was small, there used to be farms around here.” Kate propped herself on one elbow and stared absently at a shaft of sunlight jabbing down through the trees. “The children came trick or treating to our place. Once.”
“Once?”
“Uncle Stephan met them at the door,” Kate said dreamingly. “I was there on a visit. He’d worked awfully hard on his costume. When they rang the bell he answered it. They were dressed…oh, rabbits, and little witches, and Superman. He’d painted his face dead white, except for his mouth. It was red. His canine teeth were particularly long and they shone in the dark. He made…noises.”
Peter was silent. Comment was unnecessary.
“Two of the fathers came next day,” she went on, in the same voice. “They didn’t stay long.”
She put her cigarette out very carefully, pinching the ends to make sure no spark remained. Then in one convulsive movement she slid down flat onto the ground and hid her face in her arms.
“Go ahead and cry,” Peter said gently. “It’ll do you good.”
“I’m not crying.” She rolled over onto her back and lay still, staring fixedly up at the blue circle of sky. “I’m trying to think. Whether I should see a psychiatrist. Or move away from here. Or do what he wants. Or just kill myself and get it over with.”
“That’s no solution,” Peter said. The moment he had been waiting for had arrived, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She gave a sudden dry laugh, like a stick snapping. “‘For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come …’ My dreams are bad enough now. That leaves three choices, doesn’t it?”
“Who,” Peter said, “is ‘he’?”
“Someone I used to know.” She rolled onto her side, looking at him through half-closed eyes.
It took Peter several seconds to recognize the look, not because it was new to him, but because he had never expected it from her. Yet the pull was there, he had been aware of it for some time. She looked so much smaller when she wasn’t standing. He put out his hand and traced with his fingers the curve of her cheek and throat. Then her arms were around him, pulling him down.
She lay on her back, eyes closed and face lifted, her arms lax and white against the brown pine needles. Peter propped himself up on one elbow and studied her face. It hadn’t changed. The tension was still there, tightening the corners of her mouth and hollowing her cheeks. Her sudden, unpremeditated try for temporary amnesia hadn’t worked. She hadn’t made any pretense about it; no soft murmurings about love, only wordless sounds of pure physical pleasure. Still…even from that point of view, it had been quite an experience.
“Want a cigarette?” he asked.
She shook her head without opening her eyes.
“Help yourself.”
Peter reached across for her shirt and felt in the pocket. His hand lingered on the return trip, and a faint smile curled her mouth, but she kept her eyes closed….
She must have felt the change in the pressure of his fingers, for her eyes flew open and she tried to sit up. Peter straightened his elbow, and she fell back.
“You’re hurting me…What is it? What are you staring at?”
The signs were faint, but they couldn’t be missed. On a fair-skinned blonde like Tiphaine, maybe; but Kate was dark.
From a tree high above, a mocking bird sang a long trill. It sounded miles away. Peter shook his head dazedly. Of all the unexpected…How the hell had Sam ever missed this? He felt her shrink under the painful pressure of his hand, and looked up to meet eyes wide with terror, and as easy to read as a page of print.
“So it’s true,” he said stonily. “What happened to it?”
Her answer was barely audible, even in the dead silence. The bird had stopped singing.
“She lived for eight months. It was pneumonia.”
He knew what need had driven her to the cult of Mother Earth, and the resurrection of the dead.
PART TWO
Quarry
Chapter
9
KATE KNEW SHE HAD BETRAYED HERSELF WITH THAT one simple change of pronoun. Not only the fact, but what it had meant to her…. Achink in the armor, a break in the wall; a weakness through which she could be attacked. She closed her eyes, wondering idly whether the hard hand would move up to her throat and tighten, and knowing that she didn’t really care any longer.
He had betrayed himself as well; but she had always known, in some remote corner of her mind, who he really was. They weren’t much alike, actually, only in superficial features like the shape of their heads, and the unruly fair hair. Mark’s delicate nose and mouth and boyishly rounded face were nothing like Peter’s features. But when Peter’s eyes narrowed and his mouth went tight, she could see him—Mark—in one of his rages. Mark…one long year in his grave, and still haunting her, in no figurative sense. Against the blackness of her closed eyes the picture formed again, the same scene that had fought its way past her will on countless other days and nights.
He always carried himself so arrogantly, walking on the balls of his feet with his head thrust forward. In the moonlight, that last night, he looked like one of Milton’s fallen angels—poised as if about to lift in flight, a thin diabolic smile on his youthful face. It was October, and cold—October, almost exactly one year ago—but Mark was coatless, and that, too, was typical of Mark. He expected even the elements to conform to his requirements. When they didn’t conform, he behaved as if they had.
First she had tried to reason with him. It didn’t work; it never had. Then she had tried to hurt him. The stinging words hadn’t bothered Mark; they bounced back off the barrier of his fantastic ego like tennis balls off a brick wall. He couldn’t believe any woman could resist him. But he had cause to think himself irresistible; once she had responded to the boyish charm and the words which seemed so much wittier and less trite than conventional wooing. Witch woman he had called her, enchantress, weaving spells…. Succubus, that was one of his favorite endearments—the supernaturally beautiful seductive spirit, preying on human lovers who cannot resist her deadly charms.
The epithets had palled even before Mark did; that night, in the cold passionless light of the moon, they made her angry. Mark had tried every trick in his considerable repertoire: threats, charm, even tears. Everything except reason, because that was a quality beyond Mark’s comprehension. When all his devices failed, there was only one thing left. And somehow the gun was in her hand, and he was coming toward her….
Katharine forced her eyes open. Peter was standing with his back to her, buttoning his shirt. The discarded sling lay on the ground at his feet.
“Your arm,” she said dully. “I forgot about it.”
“So did I.” Peter turned, with a smile that reminded her of an archaic statue’s—curved, remote, and terrible. “You’re very skillful. Practice, or natural talent?”
His eyes moved over her body with an inhuman contempt, and Kate snatched at her clothing.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Mark was something of a connoisseur. I’m sure he appreciated you even more than I could. Until you tired of him.”
Her head bent, Kate began to dress. But she could not close her ears to the remorseless voice.
“It must have been the final blow to him when he found out why you really wanted him. Not as a husband, not even as a lover. Just for breeding stock, like a healthly thoroughbred dog. Because it wasn’t carelessness, was it? Not with a woman of your intelligence, not these days, when every gum-chewing adolescent knows how to take precautions. That’s the only thing I find hard to believe: that a cold-blooded bitch like you could have one normal instinct. But then it is an instinct, isn’t it—a matter of uncontrollable hormones. A sick, sentimental substitute for—”
“Stop it!” Kate clutched at her ears.
He caught her by the elbows and forced her to face him.
“What did you do to him? What happened? I’ve always known it wasn’t an accident, Mark knew too much about guns. He killed himself, didn’t he? Didn’t he? And you drove him to it.”
Shaken in his grasp like a doll, Kate stared up at him from under her loosened hair.
“Killed himself?” she gasped. “Himself? Mark?”
She began to laugh. It surprised her. She hadn’t meant to laugh, and once she started she couldn’t stop. Through a haze of dreadful, shaking mirth she saw Peter’s face alter, saw his hand swing back; and then the red haze faded into a lovely blackness, a cold blackness that swallowed up the laughter and the sting of the blow across her face, and all other sensation. She fell into a deep dark hole, embracing the blackness. Maybe, if she was clever and careful, she would never have to come out of it again.
Martin’s voice brought her out of it, and she hated Martin. She hated the pressure of the bedclothes on her body and the familiar smell of fresh linen and the smooth feel of it on her cheek. All her reluctant senses fought at being awakened; she curled herself up tighter inside and tried to go back into the dark.
Almost…She hovered on the rim of the blackness. But the hateful voice wouldn’t be still.
“What the hell happened? Goddamn it, don’t shake your head and look blank at me; something must have happened, something cataclysmic; she’s in a catatonic state, I can’t even reach her.”
“Let me try.” That voice. That one was worse. Kate hated it, it meant disaster; but it jabbed and prodded like a needle, sliding in past defenses that kindlier voices could not pierce.
“Kate, wake up. You can’t hide, it doesn’t work. Kate…Answer me, Kate….”
Oh, now—now she was feeling more—the hand on her shoulder, the bedsprings sagging as he sat down. Tears of fury welled up and slid down from under her stubbornly closed lids; and Peter said, with a queer relief, “She’s crying.”
Then it was nighttime, and that seemed strange, because it was as if no time had passed at all and the same voices had been talking without interruption.
“Hasn’t she been asleep a long time?”
“The injection should be wearing off soon. But if she does withdraw again—well, you brought her out of it once.”
“She didn’t need me. She’d have come out of it herself.”
“She’s tough, yes, but everyone has his breaking point.”
“Wise remark number forty-two.”
“I haven’t had an easy day myself, Stewart.”
“Sorry. You’re quite fond of her, aren’t you?”
“I wanted to marry her,” Martin said.
Kate lay very still, her eyes closed; with that vital sense cut off, it seemed as if the others were strengthened. She could almost feel Peter’s reaction, and Martin’s response to it.
“I know,” Martin said, after a moment or two. “I already have a wife. But that doesn’t prevent a man from dreaming.”
“What did prevent you?” Peter asked pleasantly.
“She was in love with someone else.”
“So I’ve heard. What was the fellow like?”
“Rather like you. Nothing specific; but that first day, when you came into my office, there was a look…. I think,” Martin added, “that Kate’s seen it too.”
Kate opened her eyes a slit. They stood at the foot of the bed, facing one another. Peter leaned wearily on the footboard; his hair looked as if he had been running both hands through it, and his face was haggard. Paul looked tired too. Poor Paul; he had probably been working over her all day.
“I don’t care what he looked like,” Peter said sharply. “What was he like?”
Martin took his time about answering. When he did, his comment was concise and his tone savage.
“Treacherous, arrogant, selfish.”
“Mmm.” Peter rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, but he’s dead. Has been, for almost a year. Since conventional considerations don’t prevent you from—er—dreaming, why haven’t you tried again?”
The smooth, sneering voice was so like Mark’s that Kate made a little movement of withdrawal. Neither man noticed. Martin stiffened and Peter straightened up. The air was electric with antagonism.
Kate pulled herself to a sitting position.
“Stop it,” she said. “Paul, stop it, stop it, stop—”
“It’s all right, Kate.” He was beside her at once, pushing her back onto the pillows. “Be quiet now, calm down. You don’t want another injection, do you?”
His hands were hard against her shoulders, and she was weaker than she had thought.
“No,” she muttered; all at once she felt as limp as a rag doll, as limp as a little wax figure held over a fire, softening, melting….
“Don’t want …that,” she said, with an enormous effort. “Want …I want…”
“What? What is it you want?”
“My lawyer,” Kate said. “I want …make my will.”
