Bone Orchard (10 page)

Dylan didn’t answer. He tilted the rearview mirror and found the gray lump of the dead badger in the red wash of the Fiat’s taillights. The legs of the frog, which was every bit as dead and still clamped in the badger’s mouth, continued to spasm.

“Look at the talent! Never dropped the frog!”

Sian rolled her eyes, but peeked into the rearview just the same.

“Ugh. Disgusting.”

She slumped back into her seat and Dylan drove off, quite satisfied with himself. It was the first time Sian had been in the car with him for one of his “scores,” and he was pleased it had been an adversary as worthy as a badger. Dylan had tagged just about every target there was to be tagged in Northern England with the exception of a wildcat. The missing feather in his cap. He was the best. He was sure of it. But he still wouldn’t be satisfied until he proved it.

Within minutes, the village came into view through the windshield. They’d listened to most of the first side of Sian’s “Cowboys from Hell” cassette since leaving the house and hadn’t seen another car since she pressed play. It was nothing but a dark country road, and Dylan rightly supposed the only vehicles that had used it that day had both been driven by him.

“Off to the pub then?” Sian asked.

“I suppose.” Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of Mayfairs. He flipped one into his mouth and reached back in for his lighter. He couldn’t find it, of course.

“You seen my Zippo?”

“No, why would I?”

“Bugger,” he mouthed silently. There was no question about what course of action was required. Dylan slowed before they reached the village and found a place for the little Fiat to make a u-turn. He looked over at Sian but knew the expression of surprise on her face had nothing to do with the change of plans. She simply flipped the tape, and a moment later Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell launched into another drop-tuned Texas groove metal riff to shred their way back to the manor house.

Lazarus clamped his hand down on Kitty’s thin wrist and bent it back hard. She cried out in shock as much as in pain and the truncheon fell from her hand, clattering to the floor and rolling off like a child’s toy. For a moment, it was as if the hot rage had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. The frosty chill of fear shivered through her straight into Lazarus, and he felt just how fragile she was. Hard, yes, but glassy and brittle nonetheless. She could be shattered. Without the stun gun, she was no match for him.

He threw her over his shoulder and carried her through the entrance hall.

“It’s over,” he said coolly. He threw the front door open, stepped out into the damp night and dropped her to the ground. She landed hard on her ass and sat in stunned silence.

“Get out,” he said with a finality that she completely dismissed. Instead, she stood up and made a show of rubbing her bruised backside. It was a game to her, and since she had nothing better to do, she would keep playing until it lost its novelty. Perhaps for all her splashing she could not yet grasp how far she’d swum out into the murk. Perhaps she thought that it was she who was guiding the undertow rather than it which pulled her further and further from the shallows. Perhaps, as Lazarus imagined she wanted him to believe, she just didn’t care, but that moment of fear he’d felt from her in the hallway had told him otherwise.

“It’s not over until I say it’s over,” she answered back. It had quite a bit more gravitas than Lazarus would have expected.

“This is my home,” he said. “Mine. I make the rules. Now go fuck off back to Canada.”

It was a battle for the last word that Lazarus did not care to fight. He stormed back into the house and slammed the door shut behind him.

Kitty stared at the door for a few seconds in disbelief until the heavy lock cylinder turned into place with a mocking click that shot her back into a tizzy. She pried up a loose brick from the walk and charged the entrance, but before she reached the door it breathed open suddenly, just long enough to spit her skull bag out into her stomach and snap back shut.

“Let me in! I’m not done with you!” The brick pounded away at the door in vain.

Maybe not, but I’m done with you.
Lazarus cracked a genuine smile and walked away. It was like setting a phone down while the blabbermouth on the other end of the line droned on obliviously.

“Let me in, you shitbag!”

He retired to the parlor and started cleaning up, sweeping crumbs and straightening pillows while he contemplated how many thousands of tea services the room had seen over the centuries. Barons and earls had most certainly been regular guests, viscounts and countesses, lords and marquesses, quite possibly dukes or even royalty.

“Fucking fucktard fuckstick fuckety fucker!”

“Lovely mouth you’ve got there darling!” He endeavored to make it sound utterly neutral despite the fact that he had to shout so it would be heard. “Your mother must be proud!”

“Fuck you!” Her voice was clearer. Closer. She’d moved from the door to outside the parlor windows, though the heavy curtains spared them any awkward visual contact.

“Go away before I phone the police.”

“You don’t have a phone!”

“Then I’ll email them.”

“You don’t have internet. I cut all your ties with the outside world! You’re stranded. You’re alone! You’re an island!”

A tired sigh leaked from his lips. The night was clearly far from over. He rubbed the gold border piping of the lumpy pillow in his hands.

“I’ll send an instant message… Smoke signals... I’ll use
semaphore!
”

There was silence, but it was a quiet devoid of calm, and the ticking of the grandfather clock seemed cartoonishly amplified in contrast.

“What the hell’s semaphore?”

Lazarus slapped the pillow into place on the sofa. “It’s flags.” He walked toward the window and addressed the curtains.

“Point being… fuck off!”

“Go ahead and call the cops! I’ll tell them you raped me!”

His body tensed at the word. He was the one fighting the undertow now, but Lazarus dug in his heels.

“You can tell them anything you like, Miss Van Winkle, but I didn’t, and there’s no proof that says otherwise.”

He knew he was right, but it did nothing to dispel the undercurrent of panic that swirled around him. He could feel its ebb, threatening to swallow him up. There was nothing to grab onto though. Panic was weight without mass.

She said something that Lazarus couldn’t hear. He hurried closer to listen, breathing in the stale must of the heavy drapery. He could hear her boots shifting in the grass outside.

“Don’t be so sure,” her voice came back softly.

The panic rose up to his chest and squeezed. The stale air turned thin and dry.

What was she talking about?

Lazarus tried to focus. He fought to recount the events of the evening.

“Rock stars,” she snickered. “I guess when you guys pass out you just go on auto-pilot or something, because… well let’s just say the garden isn’t the only place to find a Morning Glory around here.”

Lazarus sprinted out of the room. The panic was in full swing now. He felt crushed under its weight. It was a constrictor that squeezed tighter the more he struggled against it. 

Jesus Christ, what has that little cunt done?

He raced to the front door and grabbed the handle. He almost flung it open but managed to maintain the thinnest remnant of prudence and released it before he did.

“You’re an evil person, you know that?”

“Let me in!” she shouted from the other side.

“I’m not going to let some little psycho bitch terrorize me!”

“I’ll fake it. I know how.”

“What did you do?!”

“I’ll ruin your life. I’ll make sure that you’ll have to spend every last cent you have defending yourself.”

Lazarus rested his head against the door with a dull thud. It was only then that he realized he was dripping with sweat. An awful truth washed over him. His mind conjured up a dozen disgusting scenarios about what had happened while he was unconscious… and there was not a single one among them that he didn’t unequivocally believe she was capable of.

“I’ll have every aspect of your life examined,” she taunted. “This nasty-ass house won’t be your little sanctuary anymore.”

It struck a nerve. His lips curled back into a snarl. No one would ever have believed who the real man was behind the larger-than-life stage persona of Lazarus Walker. It was easy to camouflage himself behind the character he played on stage, the static and bravado, but in the aftermath of a life lived under never-ending watch, his privacy had become paramount. He would not be put under a microscope. Kitty was right. The manor house was his sanctuary. And she was an invader. He threw the door open so hard it nearly splintered against the house.

“How dare you threaten me, you little bitch!”
he roared. The echo in the courtyard added an appropriately dramatic touch.

He expected to confront her fury and have it out with her right then and there, but found himself alone instead. All he saw was the shuddering, bilious glow from a single, frosted glass lamppost orb before him. It cast a pool of light that fell away quickly into the creases of darkness. His heart knocked in his ears. His face was hot.

Lazarus crossed the threshold and stepped out onto the pavers of the walkway. He felt its undulations underfoot and looked down, noticing that one of its bricks was missing like a tooth gap in a bloody smile.

Angry is stupid. Angry is careless.

His own thoughts came flooding back with vengeful irony. From the corner of his eye he saw movement to his left. He barely had time to react before Kitty sprung screaming from a recess in the front façade, swinging the missing brick at his head. Lazarus ducked and the brick grazed his temple. He was spared a direct hit but the friction scoured off a patch of skin like a kitchen grater. Grabbing her arm at the wrist, he wrenched the brick from her hand and it tumbled to the ground.

She threw herself at him with alarming ferocity, scratching and clawing at his face. Lazarus flailed backward and tripped on his heels back into the house with Kitty on top of him as they both crashed to the foyer floor. He crossed his forearms in front of himself to shield his face from her mad thrashing. Her fingernails raked at his arms, scoring skin and sweeping sprays of blood away like paint from a brush.
She was a wolverine with teeth bared and no capacity for rational thought. He seized her by the wrists to stave off the onslaught and was instantly shocked by her strength. Adrenaline coursed through her lean muscles and gave Lazarus a run for his money.

Behind and above her loomed the Queen Anne cabinet. He hoped that in her frenzy Kitty had forgotten about the stun gun, but it was a moot point anyway; Lazarus would get it and drop her like a house of cards.

With a burst of power, he threw her off and sent her skidding across the limestone floor. She rolled to a stop and just as quickly scampered back to her feet. By the time she was up, Lazarus was already off the floor himself and fishing around the top of the cabinet for the stun gun. At first he couldn’t find it, but then his fingers grazed the metal case. It was wedged between the cabinet and the wall.

He stretched, standing on his tiptoes in a frantic bid to reach it. He nearly had it, but Kitty lunged at him, leaping onto his back and yanking his hair again. His head snapped back and he howled in pain. It was a note-for-note repeat performance of his earlier attempt to grab the stun gun and Lazarus was infuriated by the déjà vu.

Throwing himself backward, he slammed Kitty into the wall. She grunted but held on tight. It felt to Lazarus as if she was close to pulling his hair out by the roots. He was right. It made an awful, tearing sound as she clenched tighter and blood began to trickle over his burning scalp. His teeth clenched in a horrible masklike grin, eyes watering as he reeled through the hall with Kitty on his back and her full weight hanging from his hair in a sustained effort to separate it from his head.

Lazarus staggered into the parlor, scanning for anything even remotely resembling a weapon. His eyes honed in on the brick fireplace. He lurched toward it but Kitty sunk her teeth into the muscle of his right shoulder and he cried out in anguish. He spun a one-eighty and threw himself backward, slamming his jockey into the stone mantle. It smashed into her shoulders and her grip faltered momentarily.

He had his window. Lazarus flung himself back again and slammed her into the mantle to buck her off. The air emptied from her lungs and he felt its heat on the back of his neck. He could feel her resolve draining away and it fueled him on. Coiling himself, he sprung back and rammed a third time. She finally lost her grip and slumped to the floor like dead weight, a tangle of buckles, ruffles and fishnet.

Where she’d bitten him, a ruby circle bloomed on his shirt like the blurred ring of a wine glass. Lazarus stumbled back, winded but relishing the sight of Kitty writhing in pain and fighting to regain her breath, gasp by leaden gasp. He steadied himself against the arm of the sofa and his hand brushed the same lumpy pillow with the gold border piping he’d placed there earlier. He looked down at it. Yes, that would do very nicely. She’d called him a killer, hadn’t she? If Kitty gave him any more shit, he’d have no trouble shoving it over her pretty face and snuffing her lights out with it. No noise, no mess, and best of all, no fucking electricity.