a terrible beauty Read online

  Her skin was flawless, and, Sara realized, that was wrong. The spot between her breasts burned only the previous day by Guillaume Sam’s cigar was as smooth and white as the rest of her ivory skin. There was no way such a bum could have healed in a single day. No way.

  “They break so easily,” Jean said with a teasing smile.

  “I should blow you away right now,” Sara said, scarcely needing the urgent voices clamoring in her brain.

  “Really?” Jean stretched like a cat, lifting her arms high over her head and arching her back. Her breasts disappeared, except for their hard, dark nipples. “I don’t think Gene would let you do that.”

  Sara followed the direction of her gaze, glancing behind her to see Gene, drawing down on her and smiling. He was wearing the matching pants to Jean’s silk top. He was as slim as his sister, only somewhat harder sculpted, with taut muscles standing out on his arms and chest. There was a burn mark in the center of the muscled ridges of his chest.

  Wait a minute, Skra thought.

  “Drop it, copper,” Gene said out of the side of his mouth. He grinned sardonically. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  “Detective Pezzini has been so good to us, darling,” Jean said. “She’s enabled us to indulge all sorts of fantasies.”

  Sara wavered, uncertainty whirling in her brain. It had .been Jean whom Guillaume Sam had burned, she was sure of it. Yet it was Gene who now bore the scar on his chest. How could that be?

  “He means it, Detective,” Jean said in a hard voice. “Drop the gun or he’ll drop you.”

  Sara started to let her gun droop and Sandro made his move.

  He came out of nowhere, striking silently and viciously, leaping like a tiger and fastening his teeth in Gene’s gun wrist. The masculine twin screamed in sudden pain as Sandro’s forty pounds dragged his gun arm out of line.

  Sara brought her arm back up and squeezed the trigger three times as fast as she could. She didn’t have time to be fancy so she went for the torso and put three slugs inside a soda-can top sized circle around the bum spot in the middle of Gene’s chest. The bullets made small holes going in and blew out big chunks coming out. Gene jerked at their impact like he was being hit by hammer blows. He flew backwards, knocking a small bronze of a passionate Pan off a pedestal. Blood spewed from his mouth to mix with that flowing down his chest and he collapsed in a strangely graceful heap.

  Jean screamed in agony, and by the time Sara had turned her weapon tois&rd her, she was gone, the door of the sleeping car slamming behind her. Sara went after her, Sandro at her heels.

  They went through the door recklessly, heedless of possible ambush, and stormed the next car without even thinking about what might be waiting for them.

  Sara could register only a confused impression of the third car’s contents. It was dominated by the same kind of altar that she’d seen in Paul Narcisse’s office, though it more closely resembled Guillaume Sam’s. But she had no time to take in details.

  Jake was kneeling in chains before the altar. He’d been viciously beaten. His face was battered and swollen. His eyes were shut. Jean held his head up by a fist wound in his hair, and was jamming a gun against his temple. Her face was screwed up as though she were ciying, and strange dry sobs were wracking her chest.

  She crouched over him like a menacing animal, and Sara knew that her partner was a moment away from death.

  “Let him go,” she said, her voice as calm as she could make it, her pistol centered on Jean’s forehead.

  “Oh, no,” Jean said. “He’s going to die. He’s going to die right now.”

  Sandro flashed towards them, wailing like a banshee. Sara could see with great clarity as Jean’s finger tightened on the trigger, Her mind seemed to throb with her heart as milliseconds seemingly stretched into minutes. She knew that Sandro wouldn’t reach them in time. She knew that if she pulled the trigger of her own weapon, her bullet couldn’t save Jake, but only revenge him.

  “Nooooo!* she screamed as she watched Jean’s fmger start to depress the trigger of her gun, and as she screamed she changed.

  The Witchblade ripped into existence, drawn from the plane where it slumbered when it wasn’t riding Sara. Instantaneously the detective found herself encased in metal so cold that it burned her skin, so sharp it razored her clothes into fragments, so hideously intelligent that it shot a limb forward faster than a human finger could pull a trigger. A thin, needle-sharp tentacle took Jean between the eyes, punching upward through her skull and shattering her brain. Her body went lax, her gun slipped from her dead fingers.

  A paean of exultation slashed through Sara’s mind as the voices blended together in a great harmony of joy. But they weren’t finished yet. They weren’t satisfied.

  The metallic tendril of the Witchblade withdrew from Jean’s skull and, like a striking snake, whipped towards Sandro, who had watched Jean’s death with something like suspicious disbelief on his feline features.

  Only his more than cat-quickness saved him as the Witchblade shot in his direction. The tendril clanged against the floor as Sandro leaped sideways and up, landing lightly on the altar and scrambling behind the centrally placed wooden cross that had half a hundred other crosses nailed to it. The cat arched his back and hissed his outrage as the questing tendril withdrew and readied itself for another strike.

  “Noooooo!” Sara cried again, and only her fierce will drew the Witchblade back to her. It clasped her in its cold embrace, shuddering, begging to be released, but Sara’s iron control clamped down upon it, holding it tightly to her like a lover cold from his grave. It withdrew sullenly and suddenly disappeared. Only the voices remained, crooning like sated gourmets, whispering about the quality and essence of the kill they’d just made.

  Sara ran to Jake. She cradled his head, relieved to feel that his skin was warm against her exposed flesh, relieved to feel his heart thudding strongly under his own ripped shirt.

  “Jake!” she called. “Jake! Come on, man, come on!” After a moment he opened one battered eye, barely able to see for the swelling and bruising.

  ' *“Hey,” he said in a weak, but almost recognizable voice. “What took you so long?”

  Sara hugged him, almost crying.

  After a moment he said, “And what the hell happened to your clothes?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Sara said.

  Alek and Father Baltazar burst into the car, their panic barely under control.

  “What the hell?” cried Alec, as the priest crossed himself repeatedly.

  The musician looked from the altar to Jake to Jean’s body to Sara’s body, peeking out of the tom remnants of her clothing. “What... what happened to your clothes?” Sara shook her head. She rattled Jake’s chains in frustration. “Forget about that. See if you can find the keys to unlock these chains.”

  “Maybe Sandro can help,” Father Baltazar suggested.

  The cat remained sitting on the altar, staring at Sara and twitching his tail.

  “I think he’s mad at me,” Sara said.

  “What happened?” the priest asked.

  Sara shook her head. “Later. Just find the keys.” Wordlessly, the priest shrugged out of his coat and handed it to Sara. She slipped it over her shoulders, still cradling Jake’s head, and nodded her thanks.

  “How about these?” Alek said. He dangled a set of keys he’d found on a big ring that’d been looped around the horizontal arm of one of the altar crosses. Sara gestured and he tossed them to her.

  “Wow,” Alek said, disgust and a certain amount of admiration in his voice as he hunkered down over Jean’s body. “You killed her. A single shot between the eye's.”

  Sara, looking through the couple of dozen keys for one that would fit the padlock on Jake’s chains, didn’t bother to correct him.

  “I never exactly liked her, but she wasn’t an asshole like her brother,”

  Sara grunted. “He’s in the next car.”

  “Dead?” Father Baltazar asked quietly.


  Sara nodded. “Got it,” she said, finding the right key to unlock Jake’s chains.

  “Should I make sure?” Alek asked uncertainly. “Maybe he’s just wounded.”

  “No. He’s dead,” Sara said. “Give me a hand here.” Father Baltazar hurried to her side and helped her lift Jake to his feet. The two had to support the cop’s entire weight until his knees stopped shaking.

  “I’m okay,” he muttered.

  “Can you hold him?” she asked the priest, and he nodded.

  She went up to Alek, who was examining the altar with a look of fascination on his face. She didn’t want to do this, but she had to tell him. “Alek.”

  He looked at her, surprised by her solemn expression.

  “What?” c . ' ’

  “It’s Rog and Jer/They’re in the next car."

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” he asked eagerly. “Are they tied up or something? We’d better go get them.”

  Sara grabbed his arm as he went by her, heading for the sleeping car. His eager, inquisitive expression turned uncertain as he looked into her face.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. Then, seemingly, it struck him. “They’re not dead... are they?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  From her hand on his arm Sara could feel the strength run out of Alek’s body. He wavered for a moment, and she almost put her arms around him to hold him up. But he stiffened and looked at her wildly.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “They were already gone when I entered the car.”

  He pushed by her without a word and rushed for the sleeping car. Sara stopped to glance at Father Baltazar and Jake.

  “Go on,” the priest said. “Go after him.”

  “Jake?” she asked.

  He nodded, almost impatiently. “I'm okay. Make sure he is. And go make sure that asshole Gene is dead. He’s the one who did most of this to me.” Jake touched his face gingerly, wincing as he traced the swollen bruises that blossomed over his features like malignant flowers.

  Jake was right. She should have confirmed the kill. Still, even if he wasn’t dead, Gene wasn’t going to be up to making mischief with three holes punched in the center of his chest.

  Alek had gotten to the car ahead of her. He stood in the doorway; blocking her view.

  “Where are they?” he asked in a strange soft voice.

  “On the bed,” Safa said, pushing past him.

  Only they weren’t.

  The bed was still a mess with rumpled, stained sheets, empty booze bottles, and even fragments of food strewn about it, but Roger and Jerry Stem were gone. Startled, Sara looked up at the other end of the car where she’d last seen Gene lying in a crumpled heap, blood running from his mouth and oozing out of the holes her bullets had punched in his chest.

  He was missing, too.

  “It can’t be,” she said.

  “You’re sure they were dead?” Alek asked insistently.

  “They weren’t breathing. They had no pulse. They were cold."

  “Something weird is going on here,” Alek muttered.

  “I know that,” Sara said flatly. She looked at the musician. “Some of Guillaume Sam's people must have snuck in and taken the bodies out.”

  “We would have seen. Or heard,” Alek said distractedly, staring at the rumpled bed. Suddenly he snapped his head up and looked at her. “Wait a moment. Did you say Sam? Guillaume Sam?”

  Sara sighed. “He seems to be the one behind this, this whole spree.”

  “Sam?” Alek said again, as if trying to convince himself.

  Sara was thinking fast. If Guillaume Sam knew they were here, he wouldn't waste time beating around the bush. He was, as he told her, a direct man. He would send an assault team powerful enough to crush them.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing Alec’s arm. “We have to get out of here.

  “But Roger—Jerry—”

  "There’s nothing wt 'can do for them now,” she said. She shook his arm, trying to break him out of the daze into which he’d fallen. “We’ve got to get out of here before reinforcements show up.”

  She suddenly had a vision of Bakula-baka chasing them through the abandoned tunnels, his bloody machete held high. She didn’t like it. Neither did the voices in her head. Seemingly finished congratulating themselves on the Witchblade’s kill, they agreed with Sara’s assessment that the sooner they left the tunnel, the better.

  “Come on.”

  Sara practically dragged Alek back to the altar car. Jake draped an arm around each man’s shoulder, and they helped him hobble away.

  Once out of the train, Sandro found an unblocked stairway that led to the street above, so they didn’t have to trace their steps back to Club Carrefour. He sprang the locked door that led to the open street. Jake insisted that he could walk by himself. Although that proved too optimistic an opinion, Sara could see that his injuries weren’t terribly serious. He was already starting to recover.

  Sandro refused to come near her. She couldn’t blame him. The Witchblade would have taken him just as it had taken Jean. Sandro seemed to know that. She could read it in his eyes. In the end, he simply vanished when they reached the open air. No one saw him disappear, but one

  moment, when no one was looking, he simply ceased to be with them. They couldn’t tell if he’dTiterally vanished or had just ducked away when no one was paying attention.

  “He saved my life,” Sara said in a low voice. “Gene had the drop on me, and he wasn’t afraid to tackle him.”

  And then, she 'added silently, I tried to kill him. But it really wasn’t me. It was the Witchblade.

  “Perhaps you’ll see him again,” Father Baltazar said.

  Sara shook her head.

  I hope not, she thought. For his sake.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  V -■

  ' K#

  It was quite late by the time Sara finally stumbled into her apartment, physically exhausted and mentally depleted, as she always was whenever she used the Witchblade. Like the macho idiot that he was, Jake refused to go to the emergency room, so Father Baltazar had volunteered to wash and bandage his cuts, bruises and minor wounds. They hadn’t discussed in any detail an official report. One look from Jake had told Sara that he’d defer to her judgment, as he always did when something “out of left field” happened. No way could Sara envision explaining the night’s events in the plain black and white of an official report. Some things, she knew, were best left unofficial.

  She barely had the strength to strip off her tattered clothes and drop them on the floor beside her unmade bed.

  She was so exhausted she couldn't even conceive of taking a shower, despite the fact that she smelled strongly of an unpleasant combination of odors: adrenalin sweat, the stink of the subterranean station, and the metallic stench left on her skin by the Witchblade.

  She collapsed naked on the mattress and pulled her rumpled sheet over her dead-tired body and closed her eyes, desperate for sleep.

  But it wouldn’t come. The voices wouldn’t let it. They were angiy at her. They had tasted death, but it hadn’t been enough. They’d wanted more, and were furious that Sara hadn’t let them have Sandro.

  “How dare you deny us?”

  “We saved your wretched partner.”

  “And you would not let us have the creature.”

  “Vile, vile creature.”

  Stop it, Sara told them. Stop it! He was on our side. He helped us—

  “It was a thing of the others.”

  “It was NOT a good thing.”

  , “It was not one of us.”

  WILL YOU LET ME SLEEP! Sara shouted at them. They ignored her, but somehow, despite their annoying twitterings, Sara did finally manage to drift off into coal-black slumber so deep she was still asleep when she reached the shores of Guinee.

  She felt something moist and rough slather across her face and she awoke, opening her eyes to see that she lay on a beach with gentle waves
washing almost to her feet and a big black panther, perhaps the veiy one that had accompanied Erzulie during Sara’s first visit to Guinee, standing by her head, licking her face with his sandpapery tongue. She was too tired to be afraid.

  “Hello,” she said, looking the big cat in the eye. “Are you any relation to Sandro?”

  He smiled a sly feline smile and sat on his haunches like Sandro with his tail curled around his feet,

  “If you are, tell him I’m sorry. Tell him that I never

  meant the Witchblade to hurt him. Tell him that sometimes the thing gets out of control—oh, hell.” She sat up, unsurprised that she was still naked. Little, or maybe nothing, could surprise her now. “Here I am in a dream, sitting on my bare butt and talking to a cat while there’s a perfectly good ocean right at my feet.”

  She stood in a single lithe movement and ran into the waves until they surgedtover her waist, lapping against her torso. The water was warm and indescribably soothing. She dove below the surface and swam out deeper, letting the gentle rocking of the surf envelope her entire body. The waves felt like a thousand caressing fingers delivering a soothing massage from head to toe. She flipped over on her back and floated for a few moments, eyes open and staring at the star-spangled night sky, riding the gentle waves like they were a lover.

  She felt better by the second. The weariness washed out of her muscles. The voices, perhaps afraid or unable to exist in this place, were out of her mind. There was no sense of time passing. She may have rested in the waves for an instant, she may have rested in them for an eternity. When she finally reached the point of complete contentment, she simply headed back to the shore with strong, hard strokes.

  She walked back onto the beach, water running in sensual rivulets from her hair down her back to her buttocks, puckering her skin with fleeting goosebumps as they dried in the cool breeze. She felt rested and richly alive with her skin washed clean of all the awful odors as the perfumed breezes dried her hair.