A Righteous Kill (49 page)

Then she saw it. A hook in the carpeting in the corner right by her head. If having a mechanic as a father wasn’t handy enough, having him lecture about checking in any trunk for tools and tire changing implements may have just given her a chance.

She’d have to roll over and shimmy her body to the corner so her hands could lift the carpet. If she stayed low behind the panel, she should be able to pull it off. Holding her breath, Hero waited until the next erratic turn to roll her body, hoping her captor thought she’d shifted with the movement of the van. She froze after that, listening for any signs she’d drawn his attention, then cautiously, she began to use her feet and body to push her hands toward the driver’s side corner.

“Are you awake, Hero, my dear?”

She froze again and squeezed her eyes shut. What had once been a lilting and lyrical accent now sounded creepy and sing-song in a way she’d never heard before.
Unhinged
was the word that came to mind.

“Of course you’re awake. I can hear you moving back there.”

She needed some noise to cover her sounds. What better than her voice?

“Why are you doing this?” she asked loudly, not having to reach too deep to throw some confusion and fear into her voice. “I thought—I thought we were friends. That you cared— about me.” The strain in her voice came from her bending her body in half to fit in the corner while reaching for the loop with her fingertips from behind. Hero hoped he heard it as the tension of panic and tears.

“I care for you
very
much, sweet girl. Consider yourself lucky, that you’ll meet your Heavenly Father with your soul cleansed of all demons. Pure and unsullied. Where the dark lord will have no claim to you.”

The dark lord? What was this, Harry Potter? Hero stifled a hysterical giggle that had her doubting her own sanity as she groped behind her and found the loop in the flooring.

The carpet came up, but not without a slight ripping sound as it rubbed against the panel. “I don’t understand! I don’t
have
a demon, Father,” she said quickly. “I’m not a prostitute like the others. I’m Hero, you’ve known me my
whole life
.” A little trepidation speared her when it came to blindly groping in the space beneath the carpet. What if there were spiders down there? Or dead body parts?

She needed to get a hold of herself. What if there were
weapons
down there? Weapons that would save her life? What was a spider bite compared to a hole through the hand? Suppressing a shudder, she secured the folded carpet with her elbow and leaned back to grope behind her with her bound hands, connecting with something hard and metal.

“Come now, girl,” McMurtry said gently, his voice filtering through the cage. “You may be strong enough not to submit to the demon’s will and sell your body, but I’ve seen the face of Asmodeus on you time and time again, reflected in your actions and the actions of those around you.”

A gasp of real outrage escaped her. She’d seen a picture of the demon on the internet, and Hero found herself affronted on a level she’d never thought would enter the equation here.

Vanity.

Asmodeus was an ugly three-headed cretin. “Thanks a lot,” she muttered, remembering she had a job to do. “When did you see his face?” she asked louder this time. “What did I do to deserve this?” Some real, intense emotion escaped on this question, as it had dogged her since the night of her attack. “I volunteer at the church. I know I don’t attend as much as you like, but that’s hardly a reason to—”

Her groping fingers identified the cold metal rod of a tire iron, and she forgot what she was saying. At first she was excited, but then realized her issue.
Damn
. The implement was too big to conceal and no sharp edges to work on what felt like leather straps cutting into her wrists.

She redoubled her efforts and kept looking.

“Of course you’ve been a good girl!” McMurtry’s graveled exclamation sounded like a parent trying to encourage a child, which was creepy as hell. “But, my child, once a demon attaches itself to your soul, you’re nearly powerless to stop him. That’s why I have to save you. It’s your actions that let him in, yes, but they’re not above redemption.”

“What actions?” she asked.

“You prey on the weaknesses of men’s flesh.” McMurtry’s voice turned stern, disapproving. “You deliberately arouse their carnal thoughts and encourage them to sin.”

Hero cringed. Yeah. She kind of did that. Like a lot. But she didn’t believe as he did. She didn’t see sensuality, sex, pleasure, and love as a sin. Though she wasn’t about to make the argument.

Her fingers groped beneath the tire iron, but couldn’t seem to move it without making noise, so she worked on peeling the carpet back further.

Father McMurtry continued, which was a relief because she’d run out of things to say. “I thought Asmodeus was contained to fallen women, to prostitutes, until I saw you that night in the kitchen with poor Father Michael.”

“What?” Hero searched her memory of that night, while desperately trying to pull a crowbar that was stuck down deep. She couldn’t use it as a weapon yet, but if she could get the sharp sides to wear through her bonds, she’d be in business. “There was
never
anything between Father Michael and me,” she insisted, breathless from the strain. “I would never!”

“I
saw
the demon in your smile that night. Realized you had the red hair of his priestesses,” McMurtry said sharply. “You can’t have missed the lust in Father Michael’s eyes as he shared the wine with you.”

“I—” Hero couldn’t bring herself to deny it. She’d enjoyed the appreciation of Father Michael back then. It had seemed harmless at the time.

“I knew Asmodeus had done the unthinkable.” McMurtry growled. “He’d infected my congregation. He’d taken one of the souls I’d found most dear.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Hero asked, attempting a different angle. “I survived the crucifixion and the stabbing. What if that was God’s will? What if he wants me to live because I’m not really possessed?” She was beginning to sound too desperate. A sheen of sweat broke out above her upper lip.

“This isn’t your fault, alone.” A weighty remorse filtered through the cage on his words, ignoring her logic. “Asmodeus has plagued me all the days of my life. I think he’s always known I was the one God chose to defeat him. I thought I
had
back in Ireland, as my mother was the first woman I was forced to save there. The others that followed her were tallied among the casualties of the Troubles.”

Hero gasped. He’d killed his own
mother
?

She’d had heard
all
about ‘the Troubles,’ the Irish name for the centuries-old war between the Catholics and the Protestants, from her father. In the past fifty years, a lot of people had died violently. It would have been easy to prey upon the women walking the streets of Belfast.

“The demon traced my steps here, though,” McMurtry continued wearily. “And I’m both proud and sorry that it is incumbent upon
me
to send him back to hell. Though, I hadn’t intended it to be tonight. Those new FBI agents forced my hand and I had to ask poor James Mazure to be a soldier of Christ.”

Hero was going to be sick. Poor Jimmy. He really had thought he’d been saving her.

After one final turn, McMurty brought the van to a stop and Hero
really
began to panic. She’d found nothing useful in the floor of the van, and now her time was running out.

“Wait!” she called as McMurtry opened the door and climbed out.

His walk was steady and sure on the ground as he came for her.

Hero’s fingers brushed something and hope rose in her chest, then died before it truly could clear the ground. It was little more than a metal tire pressure gauge. Mostly harmless.

As she heard him slide the key into the back door, she swiped it anyway and slid it beneath the leather thongs binding her hands. The carpet burned her legs as she wriggled her body back down toward the door and poised to make one last desperate move.

The moment the gun appeared in his hand, Hero kicked out at it with all the impressive power of her legs.

McMurtry yelled in surprise as the gun went flying. Hero kicked at him again, this time catching him in the chest.

He staggered backward, fighting for purchase in his flowing robes, and Hero plunged into the freezing night, running for her life.

It would never have occurred to her how important her arms were for balance. How strange it would feel to not have your hands to protect your face from the hard ground if you should fall. Cursing her heavy velvet skirt, she flew through the night, her eyes tearing from the wind and the cold enough to block out the terrain. Hero had no idea where she was, but ran toward lights instead of darkness, hoping to find a miracle.

A part of her had been certain McMurtry would recover his gun and shoot her in the back as she fled, but
anything
was better than another crucifixion. So when his heavy body tackled her to the ground, she lay stunned for a breathless moment of utter shock. Recovering quickly, she flailed and screamed and fought him like a wildcat.

“Yes,” he hissed in her ear, pressing his heavy body against her legs to subdue them. “Your demon begins to show himself.” He was so brutally strong. So solid against her. How had he hid that behind those flowing cassocks and false limp for so many years?

A press of his hips against the curve of her squirming behind brought a fresh terror slicing through her as the revolting realization that he was aroused caused her to gag.

“Even now, at the moment of his reckoning, Asmodeus tempts me to commit a sin of the flesh.” McMurtry sounded as disgusted as she felt.

“Please.” She hated herself for begging. “Don’t!”

He jerked her up by her hair and pressed the gun to her neck, drawing a ragged sob as she scrambled to stand. “I would never so demean myself as to touch the likes of you.” All traces of the sorrowful savior were gone, replaced by a spitting, angry megalomaniac. Hero was too relieved to be hurt by his words.

Blinking, she recognized the park in which they stood, the stone bridge illuminated by Parisian light posts. The Willamette River meandered by in its slow winter crawl to the ocean.

Cathedral Park.

Hero finally began to feel the hope leach out of her, replaced by a trembling, sick apprehension and a resolute preparation for the worst.

“D-do you have to pierce my hands again?” she whimpered.

“No.” he sounded equally relieved. “That part of the ritual is already done. All of the required rituals are complete. You are the only remaining thread, and upon your return to our Lord, Asmodeus should be forever banished from this world.”

“Upon my murder, you mean.”

“Call it what you will.” McMurtry pushed her ahead of him by the merciless grip in her hair, forcing her to stumble toward the river. East of the bridge, a long pier connected to a floating dock empty of any boats. He steered her in that direction and Hero knew the water would be deep.

She didn’t
want
to cry. Didn’t want to be weak at this, the hour of her death. But her head throbbed painfully. Everything hurt from where his heavy body had driven her into the frozen ground. Her heart clenched for the guilt her family would feel over her death. For the casualties of the day, and the pain of not knowing who’d lived or died. For the friends and strangers John the Baptist had already taken.

For the man she loved who would never have the chance to love her back.

“I—Is Luca dead?” she whispered through her tears.

“Mazure may have killed him, but likely not. There was no need for him to die. Not anymore.”

His answer puzzled her. “Anymore?”

“I completed the final ritual without him, which
you
forced me to do in parts.” His voice was almost back to conversational now, as he pushed her onto the pier. “God always calls for a sacrifice, in a case as serious as Asmodeus, he called for
three
. A goat. A bull—”

“And a
man
,” Hero whispered, horrified. The heel of her shoe caught on a wooden plank and she stumbled, crying out as McMurtry’s tight grip on her hair was the only thing that kept her from falling. The resulting jerk wrenched her neck.

“Not just
any
man,” he continued, as though nothing had happened. “But one who was tempted and partook of the flesh of the demon.”

Hero’s eyes closed as a fresh wave of guilt and pain washed over her. The tears felt hot against her cold cheeks, but quickly turned freezing as they dropped from her chin to her chest. “You didn’t have to kill Angora.”

“I didn’t plan to, but God showed me that she had to die.” The pride in his voice angered her almost beyond bearing. He thought he talked to God, that his hatred and murder was sanctioned by heaven, and that was the worst kind of evil.

“The Lord helped me sneak away from the FBI that night,” he bragged. “I drove
right
past them. When I arrived at your house, your wanton of a landlady was inviting Mr. Winthrop inside to fornicate with him. I was able to slip inside as she disabled the alarm and complete the ritual. You see? God prepares a way for his servants.”

“God had
nothing
to do with this,” Hero spat, fury and disgust overtaking her fear and pain.

“You’ll see it differently when you’re standing before Him.”

“You didn’t kill Josiah Winthrop,” she informed him smugly, hoping that put some freaking Vaseline in his cornflakes.

“Don’t lie to me, demon!” he wrenched her hair again. “There’s no way he survived what I did to him.”

They reached the end of the pier and the black water lapped at the dock. He shoved her onto it and held her off kilter, dangling over the water to where she had to use the toes of her shoes for purchase.

The lights of St. John’s Bridge made the water seem darker and their depths more yawning. Hero knew how cold it would be. Sometimes at night she would still feel the barbed chill as it engulfed her, and would wake up gasping for air. A last-ditch survival instinct kicked in and she struggled against the hand in her hair. But her knees were weak with fear and cold and exhaustion. The pain in her head caused the tears to flow harder and frightened sobs to break the barrier of her raw throat.