Nemesis (43 page)

Savich tried to talk, but it was beyond him. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his side. He knew he’d see his mangled flesh. The pain was so crippling he couldn’t seem to draw a breath. Everything was blurring, he was going to pass out. Griffin would be helpless with him, and they would both die. He saw blood dripping off Griffin’s shoulder, knew there was nothing he could do to stanch the blood. Griffin was wearing only a soaked T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

The violent rain slammed against him, filling the wound in his side. He heard Griffin shout, “Hang on!” He saw Griffin bend down and pull up his pajama leg. He was wearing an ankle holster with a Glock 380 pistol in it. Then he saw it was in Griffin’s hand. The eagle came through the cascading rain, diving down at them, its wings flapping wildly, shrieking, and Griffin waited until it was nearly on them and then shot it square between the eyes.

Its head flew off, feathers and blood mixing with the torrential rain. Still it hovered, still flapped its wings, as blood streamed from its neck. It flew away and disappeared into the sheets of thick, gray rain.

“Dillon! Dillon! Wake up, you’re moaning, wake up!”

He heard her voice, felt hard slaps on his face, and she was yelling over and over, “Dillon, wake up!”

His eyes flew open. He sucked in a breath and stared up at her, saw her her outline in the predawn light. “Sherlock,” he said, and stilled, waiting for the crippling pain, but it didn’t come. There was no gaping wound in his side, his flesh was smooth, he was whole. He felt pain from the ropes, but it was fading, and when he looked at his wrists, his arms, there was nothing. He felt cold, but he wasn’t freezing. Sherlock pulled him against her, stroking his hair, kissing his face again and again. “It’s all right now, Dillon, I’ve got you. It was Dalco, wasn’t it? He can’t get you again now. It’s all right, you’re safe.”

He managed to say against her neck, “Griffin was with me. I have to call him, see that he’s okay.”

She scrambled over him, grabbed his cell, and speed-dialed Griffin.

Griffin answered on the first ring. “Savich? Are you all right?”

Savich closed his eyes against his relief at hearing Griffin’s voice. “Yes, I’m all right. Sore, cold, but no open wounds. Your shoulder?”

Griffin worked his shoulder. “Like you, I’m sore, but there’s no wound, no bruise, nothing at all. It’s like it never happened, but it did.” He paused, then, “That was a hell of a thing, Savich.”

Savich smiled. “It was that exactly. Thank you for coming, Griffin. Thank you for saving my life. A gun, I couldn’t believe it when you pulled out a gun and shot the eagle’s head off.”

“After what you told me, I’ve been wearing it to bed with me for three nights now. Do you think Dalco’s dead?”

“I guess we’ll find out when we visit the Alcotts tomorrow. Try to get some sleep. I’ll call you.”

When he hung up, he realized he was cold again. He pulled Sherlock close until he was warm. She said against his shoulder, “You can tell me all about this, but not now. Now you need to sleep.”

And he did.

ALCOTT COMPOUND

PLACKETT, VIRGINIA

Wednesday morning

I
t doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Griffin said as he got out of the Porsche into the fresh morning air. It was so quiet he could hear a crow cawing high in the air above him.

Savich knocked on the front door. He heard the coming footfalls, recognized the steps as Deliah Alcott’s. When she opened the door, she looked at each of them, and nodded. “Agent Savich, Agent Hammersmith. I’ve been expecting you. I thought it best I be here alone when you arrived, after that scene between you and Liggert yesterday.” She suddenly smiled. “Thank you. Finally, it’s over. Come with me, see for yourselves.”

Savich and Griffin followed her past the pentacle hanging on the front door and down a long hallway fragrant with the scent of lavender, to the very end room. She stopped in front of the closed door, drew a deep breath, quietly opened it, and stepped inside.

It was a large room with old-fashioned furniture, lace curtains on the windows, rag rugs on the polished maple floor, an old person’s room. There was an ancient iron-framed bed against the far wall, and on it lay Ms. Louisa, utterly still, deeply asleep or unconscious. She was wearing a white high-necked nightgown, a white bedspread drawn to her neck. Her hair was in a skinny braid over her shoulder, as gray as her still face. The nightstand beside her was ablaze with lighted green, white, and gold candles surrounding a plate overflowing with herbs and dried flowers.

Deliah looked down at her. “I heard her scream after midnight. When I came running in she was on the floor, clutching her head. Then she fell over unconscious. When I touched her I knew she was gone. How strange it is, but do you know, I miss the sound of those infernal knitting needles of hers?” She turned to them. “You know now, don’t you? You know what she was?”

“Until this moment I wasn’t completely sure whether she was Stefan Dalco,” Savich said.

“You thought I was this Dalco character?”

“Perhaps, for a short time. I quickly realized how much you loved Brakey, how you’d go to any lengths to protect him. You would never make Brakey a murderer.”

“She came after you again?”

Savich nodded. “She would have killed me if Griffin hadn’t shot her. I was helpless until then.”

“Actually,” Griffin said, “a huge black eagle was attacking Savich. I shot its head off.”

Deliah picked up a large book from under the bedside table, handed it to Savich. “She liked her Greek mythology. She was studying this.” He and Griffin looked down at a painting of a naked Prometheus chained to a rock over a violent sea, an eagle hovering above him, wings flapping madly. Savich nodded, handed it back. “Yes, that was what she fashioned for me.” He turned to stare down at the still figure who’d had so much power. He remembered the horrific pain in his side.

Deliah said, “She was always bragging how she was the most powerful witch who’d ever lived. But you beat her, Agents, you beat her.”

“What she was,” Savich said, “was a powerful psychic who used the symbols of witchcraft. And she was quite mad. I’ve known a couple others like her, both of them terrifying.”

“Why isn’t she in a hospital, Mrs. Alcott?” Griffin asked, looking down at the slack face.

“It would do absolutely no good.”

“They could monitor her, feed her intravenously.”

She shook her head again. “As I told you, I knew the moment I touched her that she was no longer there. Come with me to the kitchen. We can have some tea.” She turned and left the bedroom. Savich and Griffin followed her through the lavender-scented hallway to the kitchen.

Savich and Griffin remained silent, watching her prepare the tea, giving it all her focus and attention.

When at last she sat at the table with them, spooning sugar into her tea, she said, “Looking back, I realize she’d been hovering on the edge of madness for a long time, or maybe she always was and I simply refused to see it. After Arthur and I were married, she liked to mock me for being a Wiccan, for my foolish and meaningless rituals, she called them, but never when Arthur could hear her. He held her in check. You see, my husband knew what she was, knew what powers she had, knew she had no compunction about using them. She was his mother, after all. Then a car accident put her in the wheelchair a few years ago. Arthur was driving when a drunk slammed into the passenger side at an intersection. That man died a month later. He killed himself. We didn’t know if she was responsible, but sometimes I would look at her and she would look very pleased with herself. But when her injuries healed, she changed. She was angry all the time. Arthur was worried he couldn’t control her. When he realized he had no choice, he bound her. Binding is a powerful spell that holds a witch’s power in check. After that, she didn’t harm anyone for several years.”

“Or perhaps, Mrs. Alcott,” Savich said, “she respected him enough to listen to him?”

Deliah rolled her eyes. “Believe that if you like, but I strongly doubt that. It is true that she loved Arthur more than anyone in the world, more than her two dead husbands, more than any of us. She admired his strength, you see, probably envied it, continually begged him to free her. She thought he was weak not to use his power, and she blamed me.

“When he died six months ago, she said she was free to do as she wished. That’s when her madness surfaced for all of us to see, and the chaos began.” Tears sheened her eyes. “Arthur was a fine man, a good man. He didn’t expect to die and leave us in her hands.

“After he died, I tried everything I knew to control her. I tried cajoling her, making her feel a central part of the family. I tried ritual prayers, even repeated the binding spell Arthur had worked to control her, but none of it was enough. I wasn’t strong enough, not like Arthur was.”

Deliah looked down at her tea cup. “I confronted her one night after I overheard her speaking to Liggert, encouraging him to punish his wife because she thought Marly had insulted her.”

“What did she do?” Griffin asked her.

“She laughed at me. She did that a lot, said I was a silly weakling, a sham who couldn’t stop her from doing anything she liked. She started threatening my children, making them do bizarre and dangerous things to amuse herself and frighten me. She told me if I didn’t behave—her word—she’d make Tanny, Liggert’s daughter, sorry she’d ever been born. I believed her. I think now that if I’d had a knife in my hand I’d have tried to use it, I was that afraid for my children.

“When Liggert told her about Sparky Carroll’s damaged Mustang, she didn’t scream and yell and curse him, she went silent, didn’t say a word for hours. Then she made Walter murder Sparky because she thought they both deserved it. She picked Brakey, her own grandson, to kill Deputy Lewis. In her mind he was as guilty as Sparky—he’d buried the truth. I believe it’s my fault she used Brakey. She was punishing me for trying to control her. She wanted me to see how powerful she was—she could make Brakey murder someone, and her silent threat was that she could make me kill someone, too.

“It’s been a reign of terror, and she’s held us all prisoner. Until you came, Agent Savich. What will happen to Brakey now?”

Savich said, “Brakey will be fine. As for Walter, that will be more difficult. He stabbed Sparky Carroll in front of dozens of witnesses, but I hope I’ll be able to convince the federal prosecutor to send him for psychiatric evaluation and, I hope, a stint in a federal sanitarium, not jail.”

“When you left that first time, do you know she sat rocking in her chair, and she laughed, knitted and knitted and laughed and laughed. She said she was going to have some fun tormenting you, teaching you what was what, she said. We all thought she would kill you.

“Thank you for what you did,” she said simply. “Last night you and Agent Hammersmith ended six months of terror for us.”

She smiled. “Most of us Wiccans are cremated when we die and return our life force to the Goddess. I think I’ll have her cremated when she takes her last breath. She would have hated that, you know.”

EPILOGUE

SAVICH HOUSE

GEORGETOWN

One week later

Y
ou can be sure I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Cal said. “My boss, Marvin Conifer, told me this morning my transfer’s gone through. I’ll be starting in New York in two weeks.”

Sherlock looked from Special Agent Kelly Giusti to Special Agent Cal McLain. Kelly looked pleased. Sherlock knew she and Cal had discussed his relocating to New York, but now Kelly was shaking her head sadly. “You won’t be reporting to me, or I’d already know about it. Too bad—I could whip you into shape in a week, two on the outside.” She turned to Sherlock. “Actually, I’m glad he’ll be in New York, part of the team. He now knows that’s where the action is, where boots hit the ground, not like down here in nerdland, analyzing everything to death. When all’s said and done, I’ve got to admit, he was pretty useful.” She smiled at him. “We’ll have to try to keep you from driving like a maniac race-car driver in Manhattan. Hey, if you’re nice, I’ll let you stay at my place until you find your own digs.”

Cal took another bite of Dizzy Dan’s pepperoni pizza, chewed, and looked thoughtfully at Kelly. Maybe if things worked out between them, he wouldn’t need his own digs. He wondered how she would react to his real news. He patted her knee and dove in. “Ah, Kelly, I’m real glad to be coming to New York, and I know I’m really going to like staying with you at your apartment, but I gotta tell you something first.”

That got her attention. “You already told me everything. What something?”

“Well, not quite everything.” He took a drink of his beer, swiped a napkin over his mouth, and prayed.

“What? You’re going to try to snag that last piece of pizza?”

“Maybe, but I think Sherlock’s going to nab it. Okay, here’s the thing. I did get the transfer to the New York Field Office like I told you. But there’s more. I also got a promotion. Director Comey said something about being impressed with my part in bringing Basara down. He, ah, seemed impressed by my driving, particularly in that FBI SUV. Good advertising, I guess.”