Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (210 page)

With a critical eye, she surveyed herself in the mirror, searching for the telltale signs of age: wrinkles around her lips; crinkling at the corners of her eyes; the beginning of a crease at the base of her neck; the sagging of her abdomen despite a regimen of crunches, sit-ups, weight lifting, and cardio workouts. There was a thin line between being fit and slim and just plain skinny. But none of her bones showed where they shouldn’t. Her musculature was perfect and her skin still creamy and taut, her nipples tight and dark. No strands of gray dared shoot through her lustrous black hair.

Yet.

But age, she knew, was a relentless enemy and though she’d used all kinds of creams along with her private regimen, she hadn’t gone so far as to seriously consider liposuction or dermabrasion or a laser peel.

For the moment, she’d refrained from doing anything so radical.

She hadn’t needed to.

Because her remedy was working. Now, studying her flawless, age-spot-free skin minutely, she found it near perfect. Youthful. Vanity caused her to smile. She hadn’t been born beautiful; in fact, she remembered her mother saying she’d been an “ugly” baby, her head misshapen, her eyes too large, her hair patchy, her body frail. But she’d blossomed from an awkward tot and gawky girl into a teenager who had made boys and men twist their stupid necks as she’d strolled by.

It was that feeling, that rush from the power of her beauty, that she refused to relinquish. And so she’d done her research and realized despite her genes, and the help of products, age would try to destroy her. Her eyes would sag and grow puffy and dark, her skin would lose its elasticity, her breasts would droop, and flabby little pockets would try to appear.

Except she had a way to fight back.

Her secret method, she thought, twisting in the mirror and looking over her shoulder at her reflection. Her buttocks were still tight and firm, her waist small. And, from the pictures she’d seen, she looked amazingly like her stunning namesake. Actually, she decided with a tilt of her head, she was even more beautiful.

She’d known about her ancestor, Elizabeth of Bathory, for as long as she could remember and had been fascinated with the countess, but only recently, when she’d realized that her age was beginning to show, had she assumed Elizabeth’s name and regimen.

The story was, loosely, that Elizabeth, obviously a bit of a nutcase, had worried about losing her legendary beauty. Also, the countess enjoyed torturing and tormenting others, and one day, slapped a servant so hard that the maiden’s blood spilled onto her arm. Elizabeth had been even more outraged and raving until she noticed that the area of her skin the blood had stained appeared more youthful and beautiful than the surrounding flesh. From that day forward, Elizabeth found ways of ever more increasing cruelty to drain the blood of others for her own personal use.

Now, obviously, the woman had been deranged. Mental case with a capital M. Sadist to the nth degree.

All that royal inbreeding.

No wonder.

Of course many of the stories or legends about the “blood countess” hadn’t been proven, including the bathing in blood. That she had committed atrocities on dozens of young girls was not in dispute, however, and she was eventually tried and convicted of murder and sent to live walled into her castle. Those who had assisted her weren’t so lucky.

But it was the legend, the folklore surrounding the baths drawn from the blood of peasant girls and her eventual nobility that intrigued this new Elizabeth.

Even if the legends had been embellished with the passing of decades, and despite the fact that some of the more bizarre cruelties ascribed to Elizabeth had no foundation in historical fact, the theory about the blood of younger women wasn’t just intriguing, it seemed to have merit.

Hadn’t she, herself, proven its validity?

Now, staring into the mirror, Elizabeth arched her neck, surveying every inch of her body as she slowly rotated in the light.

Hadn’t the first traces of cottage-cheese-like bumps beneath the skin of her thighs, the barest breath of cellulite, disappeared with her first blood-infused baths? And that little suggestion of spider web veins, near the back of her right knee? Hadn’t they faded after the first bath?

Of course they had. Now, the back of her knee was silken and smooth, not even the tiniest line of her veins visible.

She was so convinced of the rejuvenation of her skin, the restorative powers of the blood, she’d almost agreed to dip into a pool injected with some of the blood of Vlad’s lessers.

But no!

She watched her reflection visibly cringe at the thought. It was one thing to cover her body in the blood of smart, young girls. Elizabeth didn’t kid herself into thinking they were “virgins” or “pure” or any of that rot, but at least they hadn’t pole danced for ogling, drooling, fat-assed men. Or, so she told herself. What, actually, did she know of those she’d helped Vlad choose?

Just that they were intelligent, seeking higher education. Something that escaped Vlad.

She grimaced.

Vlad.

Or so he insisted on being called, though, of course she knew his true identity.

He’d given himself the name of Vlad the Impaler, though he had enough names already. But, fine, if he wanted to be Vlad, she’d go along with it. She had taken Elizabeth’s name, assumed her identity, so he, too, had felt compelled to become someone else.

Always a follower, was Vlad.

But she needed him, just as the original Countess Elizabeth had required the help of others who had been as sadistic as she.

Twisting her dark hair onto her head, she admired her profile, then adjusted a few curls to fall loosely at her nape, to play into
his
fantasy.

That was the difference between them. She was a practical woman who was only trying to extend her life and her beauty, to keep turning heads and feeling vital. And yes, there was a little sadism involved, but all for a purpose.

Vlad, on the other hand, was into the sensual feel of the killing, the bloodletting, the sex of it all.

Which was fine.

She could get as turned on as anyone, she supposed, frowning a bit as one tendril refused to curl seductively. She caught a glimpse of herself and forced her face muscles to relax. She didn’t need to test her own theory and start new lines from forming, marring her perfectly smooth brow. So far, the blood was working, although Vlad had intimated the blood supply was running low.

What kind of a moron allowed that to happen?

He was afraid, that was it. Balking at ramping up the killings of the good ones, always talking of his “lessers.” For the love of God, he just didn’t get it. But then he couldn’t. As intelligent as he was supposed to be, honestly, sometimes Elizabeth wondered. But he was her partner and devoted and she could twist him around her perfect little finger. All he asked was to have sex with the women before and after death. Yes, it was a tad odd, but as long as he pumped the blood from their bodies, so be it. And he adored her. Was faithful in his heart and head, if not his dick.

Who cared?

The only thing she needed to ensure herself was that there would be enough. And so she’d suggested that she accompany him on the next killing. Because he was getting nervous. Jumpy. Concerned that the police would take notice. It was a problem, but the answer was obvious: take more than one. Kill several at once. Then start hunting somewhere else. Somewhere less obvious.

But always hunt for smart, supple, clever women who were young enough to still have vitality. And never a mother, like that last lesser Vlad had tried to palm off on her. Come on! Didn’t he know that childbirth robbed a woman of her vitality? That once a mother had given her lifeblood to another, a babe in the womb, and then bled for days or weeks afterward, she was never the same?

Elizabeth finally managed to force the wayward tendril of dark hair into place. Gazing raptly at her own reflection, she decided it was time to tell him. She reached for her cell phone to convey the happy news. Tonight she not only wanted to watch him kill. Tonight she would help and ensure that there would be more than one victim.

Several coeds’ images came to mind.

The clearest belonged to Kristi Bentz.

CHAPTER 23

J
ay was just walking out the door for the meeting with Dr. Hollister and wondering how to cut it short when his cell phone chirped.

Sonny Crawley’s name appeared on the small screen.

“What’s up?” Jay asked, hauling his briefcase and laptop outside, where the rain was beating on the overhang of the porch and dripping over the edge of the sagging gutters.

“I thought you’d like a heads-up about those missing girls.”

Every nerve in Jay’s body tightened. “You found something?”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I thought you’d like to know.”

Bruno slipped through the door and Jay pulled it shut. Together they dashed across the wet yard. “Tell me.”

“Well, it all started with a poacher findin’ a damned woman’s arm in a gator’s belly, and we’re thinkin’ it might belong to one of those missing coeds, but we haven’t been able to find the rest of the body.”

Sonny recounted the whole story as Jay loaded his things and Bruno into the cab of his truck. He slid behind the wheel without turning on the ignition, staring out the windshield as he learned the poacher had called the Sheriff’s Department, which had taken the alligator with its stomach contents to the morgue, that tests were being run on the severed female arm, and the police were trying like hell to get fingerprints from the partially decomposed and consumed limb. Search teams were still looking for the body or bodies and the theory was that this arm could have belonged to one of the missing girls. So far, they’d had no luck.

“One of the oddest things about it was that there was no blood in that arm. Not a drop,” Sonny confided. “You’d think there would be something. You cut off a finger, ya got blood. You cut off a guy’s dick, ya got blood. I’m no doctor, no sir, but I figure there should be some blood in those veins and arteries.”

You and me both,
Jay thought, finally starting the engine of his truck, his mind turning to all the talk of vampires. “So the arm is at the morgue, and the other evidence, like anything under the fingernails, chips of the polish, for instance—that’s at the lab?”

“Yeah. You might want to call Laurent. She knows more about this than I do.”

“I will, but in the meantime, I need a favor.”

“Another one?”

“I’ll buy you a beer.”

“You bet your ass, you will.”

“I’ll buy you a six-pack,” Jay amended, hearing Sonny’s affront.

“Shoot.”

“Can you check if anyone who works at All Saints owns a dark-colored van?”

“Anyone at the college?”

“I’ll e-mail you a list of names.”

“You can’t check this out yourself?”

“I need this yesterday. I was hoping you could help me out. And I’ll need to see if any of them has a criminal record. A deep probe.”

“Might take a while.”

“Put a rush on it, we’re looking at a half-rack.”

He laughed hard, a smoker’s laugh that ended in a coughing fit. “For that much beer, I’ll do it. Let you know what I find. Probably tomorrow on the DMV records, the other as soon as I get the info.”

“Thanks.”

“And I want real beer, you hear me? None of that lite shit.”

“Real beer,” Jay promised.

“Gotta go. Another call comin’ in and it is Sunday night. You know, I do have a life.” Crawley clicked off and Jay let his mind catalogue this new information.

A chill slid through his soul. A severed arm with no blood. None whatsoever. Had it been drained and digested by the alligator, or had something else happened to it, something unworldly? As a man of science he didn’t believe for a second that there were vampires walking this earth, but if Kristi was right, there was a cult nearby with true believers and who knew what they were up to.

Of course, the severed arm might belong to someone other than the girls missing from All Saints.

But he doubted it.

Sliding the truck into gear, he dialed Kristi to give her the news, but her phone went directly to voice mail. “Hey, it’s me. Give me a call,” he said, then hung up, a feeling of restlessness overtaking him. He should never have let her out of his sight. Things were happening too fast. He needed to tell Crawley or Laurent or someone what the hell was going on at All Saints.

Kristi would be pissed, but so what?

He ground his teeth together. He should have blown off his meeting with Hollister and gone with Kristi to the damned play. But it was too late now.

Glancing at his phone, he willed it to ring. “Come on, Kris. Call,” he said. But the phone remained silent, and as he drove toward the college his restlessness and worry only increased.

In the women’s room at the student union, Kristi slid the gold necklace around her neck and wondered if she was making the worst mistake of her life. Beneath the harsh fluorescent bulbs the little vial gleamed, its dark contents looking nearly black.

It felt strange.

Outré.

Almost evil.

With a sound of annoyance she stuffed the necklace beneath her sweater so that the tiny glass pressed against her skin. It felt cold, surprisingly so, for its small size.

Adding a bit of gloss to her lips, she walked purposely toward the far side of campus, where she joined a crowd of students and faculty members heading to the brick building housing the English Department and a small auditorium not far from Wagner House. Lights glowed around the south entrance and a white sign painted with black letters proclaimed “Play tonight:
Everyman.
”

The quintessential morality play,
Kristi thought as she spied the girl named Ophelia who called herself “O” and also wore a vial of her own blood.

Perfect.

O was trying to buy a ticket from a girl seated behind a long table. Some kind of medieval-sounding pipe music filled the antechamber, and the ticket taker, dressed all in black, seemed to have trouble making both change and eye contact. Her black hair, scraped back and showing light brown roots, was in stark contrast to the thick white makeup covering her face.

“The play’s already sold out?” O demanded, glaring down at the girl in charge of the till.

“Yes…I mean, I don’t know…. Just a second.”

“This is required for my class!” O wasn’t about to be put off. “I have to get inside.”

“I know! Everyone’s saying the same thing.” The flustered girl caught sight of Father Mathias, who was hovering near the curtained entry to the theater. Clad in a black cassock that was probably all the rage for clerics in the 1400s, he pulled at one sleeve, the one covering a bit of barely visible bandage.

“Father Mathias? Could you help me a second, please?”

“What is it, Angel?” he asked, and Kristi wondered if Angel was really the girl’s name. Or did it have something to do with the play? Or, worse yet, was it Father Mathias’s own pet name for the flustered girl?

“Do you know how many seats we have left?”

“A few more,” he said softly. Patiently. Despite the girl’s discomfiture. “We’re setting up some extra folding chairs.” He eyed the gathering crowd. “I was afraid of this,” he said under his breath. Then, in a louder voice announced, “Thank you all for attending. Unfortunately the crowd is greater than we anticipated.”

There was a jostling behind Kristi, and one guy said, “Are you kiddin’ me?”

“The auditorium has a maximum seating capacity according to the fire marshall and we’re at capacity.”

“What?” A girl behind Kristi was beside herself. “I’m supposed to write a paper on this production!”

“Hey, what’s the deal?” another shouted.

Father Mathias lifted his hands and lowered them as he said, “Please, everyone, accept my apologies. We can only sell ten more seats tonight, but we’re planning a repeat performance tomorrow, or possibly Friday, whenever the auditorium is available again and the actors are able to perform, so you’ll be able to see the play.”

“Tomorrow? What the fu—?”

“I work Monday nights,” another voice protested.

“This is bullshit,” an angry boy said.

“Please, please.” Father Mathias was adamant. “I’m sure we can work something out. We’re recording, and if you can’t see the live performance, it will be available in the drama department. The next performance will be posted on the campus Web site as soon as I can get things organized. Thank you, all!”

He slipped away then, leaving the hapless Angel to handle the unhappy throng. O managed to get a ticket and Kristi, too, was one of the last lucky attendees who, for five bucks, received a thin, slick playbill and entrance ticket. She walked into a small anteroom where a person actually went through the contents of her purse, as if she were attending a rock concert and bringing in contraband. “We ask that you leave your cell phone with us,” the attendant said.

“Why?”

“The problems, you wouldn’t believe.” She handed Kristi a colored claim ticket and a pen.

“It’s already turned off.”

“It’s the rules. You have to leave it. Write down your name and a land-line or e-mail address where you can be reached, just in case there’s a mix-up.”

Kristi did not like giving up the phone, but she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to get inside. She filled out the information, kept one half of the claim ticket and, surprised that her canister of mace wasn’t confiscated, grabbed her purse and hurried inside, where the temperature seemed to rise twenty degrees. People were jam-packed into the rows of auditorium chairs, but she managed to find a folding chair angled into a side aisle and next to O, who was already positioning her purse near her feet, her eyes fixed on the stage. Faded velvet curtains, once a deep maroon color, were drawn shut, and overhead there were minimal lights trained on the stage. The auditorium held about fifty people at capacity—tonight closer to sixty-five. The heater was working overtime and the damned Renaissance music permeated everything, loud over the whisper and crush of the crowd.

A thirty-something man sitting in front of Kristi had splashed on too much aftershave, possibly to cover the scent of marijuana that clung to him. The Old Spice trick hadn’t worked; it had only made the cloying odor more noticeable.

Feedback screamed through the auditorium for a second, then suddenly all was quiet. Kristi looked around and saw familiar faces, people who were also in her English block. Near the back of the room Hiram Calloway was studiously reading his program. He was alone, it appeared, and she wondered if he’d sold her out, given someone a key to her place, or if he was the one who had been videotaping her unit. She flushed at the thought and shot daggers at him with her eyes. As if he felt her gaze, he glanced up, caught sight of her, then buried his nose quickly in his playbill again.

She remembered chasing the guy she’d seen at her apartment and Hiram just didn’t seem right. He was a little doughy, like an ex-football player gone to seed, and she was an athlete, had always been fast. If she hadn’t been a swimmer, she’d probably have been a track star, so surely she could have caught him as she chased him into the night.

Adrenaline could have spurred him on. Fear of getting caught.
If so, it was a wonder he didn’t have a heart attack. Or, maybe it hadn’t been him at all. But the only other person with the key was Irene Calloway, and she was close to using a cane. Surely Kristi could have run her to ground.

Then
who
?

She stared at Hiram, who didn’t dare send a glance her way.
Loser,
Kristi thought, and let her gaze drift around the room. She spied Grace near the front of the room. But no Lucretia. No Ariel. She checked her program, thinking Ariel might be in the play, but Ariel was neither listed as a performer nor anyone who worked behind the scenes. A nod was given to Dr. Croft, as head of the English Department, and to Father Mathias, of course, along with Dr. Grotto, who was listed as “an advisor,” whatever the hell that meant. Zena Regent, the next Meryl Streep, was listed as playing the part of Good Deeds, while Robert Manning, an African-American student who was in a few of Kristi’s classes, was the lead. Gertrude Sykes was listed as Death. And at the bottom of the back page mention was given to Mai Kwan, who had designed the playbill and helped with “advertising and press releases.”

Mai had never mentioned that she was connected to the drama department, but then Kristi had never asked too much about her classes or outside interests. Kristi knew little about the girl other than that she was nosy, a journalism student, had been acquainted with Tara Atwater, and dreaded doing laundry in the basement.

Now, Mai, too, was connected to the drama department and therefore Father Mathias and his obsession with morality plays…the plays all the missing girls had attended.

The houselights blinked, and then, within a few minutes, went down altogether. In the ensuing hush, a spotlight appeared and Father Mathias began the introduction.

Kristi had never seen the play before but had read it, or part of it, in high school. The gist of it was that Everyman, symbolizing all men and women on earth, was too caught up in worldly goods and had lost his soul. When called upon by Death, Everyman had nothing. He confronts other characters including Good Deeds, Knowledge, Confession, and more in his quest to take someone with him to the afterlife.

What interested Kristi was not so much the play itself, but the actors who represented the roles. She recognized Lucretia’s friend Trudie, listed as Gertrude in the playbill, as Death. Zena, of course, was emoting all over the stage, and some of the other characters looked familiar, as if she’d seen them in class but couldn’t quite put a finger on their names. One of the characters, Angel, was indeed played, albeit unconvincingly, by the girl who had sold tickets. The audience was also filled with students in some of Kristi’s English classes, and she thought for a fleeting moment that she caught a glimpse of Georgia Clovis lurking in the alcove of a side exit.

What would she be doing here?

Kristi’s eyes narrowed on other attendees. A number of her teachers had shown up as well, a regular Who’s Who of the English Department. Dr. Natalie Croft, head of the department, was seated next to both a man Kristi didn’t recognize and Dr. Preston, who still looked as if he were ready to catch the next big wave. He, in turn, was seated next to Professor Senegal, Kristi’s journalism instructor.