Chapter 41
Connie’s Justice
Brooke
It was all Brooke could do to keep up with the other caster on the mad rush back to Harvell House, but she wasn’t worried. She figured there’d be hesitation on Connie’s part once she actually reached the stained glass window. Some gathering of courage or careful focusing of thought before the attempt was made.
Not so much.
Connie rushed up to the window, hammered a hand down on it, and roared, “In!”
Just like that, Brooke found herself alone. She put on a press of speed to reach the window maybe twenty seconds behind Connie. Cursing, she tore off her copper bracelet and dropped it to the ground. Then she rapped on the glass and uttered the words that were second nature now. “I want in!”
Then she found herself back in her body and shooting across the room with more force than ever before. Covering her head with both hands and curling up, she managed to present her back to the far wall before impact. If it hurt, she barely felt it. She was flying too high on the adrenaline her body had been pumping out in her absence.
She leapt to her feet and began scanning the attic frantically. Where was Connie?
Duh. The only place she could be. The only place a cast could go on tapping back in. Connie must have gone back into what was left of her body.
If it worked.
And if it didn’t? What would happen then? Could her caster-self survive the attempt? And if so, could she get out of the house again? Shit, what if she couldn’t? What if she were trapped in this house of her horrors forever? Oh, Jesus, what had they done?
She tore down the steps, heading for the basement. It was only when she heard raised voices—C. W.’s and Maryanne’s—that she remembered Connie’s panic.
C. W.—Charles William. Billy. In the basement with Maryanne.
Brooke paused in the kitchen long enough to grab a knife, which she promptly dropped once she spied the meat cleaver. Much better.
Cleaver concealed behind her back, she glided to the basement door and started down the steps.
Her attempt at stealth was wasted, however. She knew this because Maryanne cried out, “Brooke! Don’t come down! He’s got a gun.”
Brooke froze, taking in the tableau before her. C. W. held Maryanne by the hair—none too gently, from the look on her face—and held a small pistol to her head.
“Oh, do come down, Miss Saunders. I’m so glad you could join us. It saves me the inconvenience of searching for you.”
Brooke’s heart thundered in terror, and the adrenaline in her system screamed for her to run. Of course, he’d just shoot her with that pistol if she tried. Besides which, she wasn’t leaving Maryanne to this monster. Together, maybe they could take him. On that thought, she slid the cleaver blade into the back pocket of her jeans and let her hands fall to her sides.
“Come down here,” he ordered. “Now!”
“No, don’t!” Maryanne shouted. “He’s the one who attacked Alex!”
Oh, God! This old geezer cracked Alex’s skull? Bit her? The bastard!
At Brooke’s hesitation, C. W. gave Maryanne’s hair a vicious tug, making her gasp.
“Disobedience is so unflattering in a lady,” C. W. clipped. “And you don’t want me to take my... displeasure... out on your friend here, do you?”
“Whoa! Chill. I’ll come down.” Brooke lifted her hands, palms out, to show she bore no weapons. “But I feel it’s only fair to warn you that I’m no lady.”
“No, you’re a whore, just like your friend, Alex. Like the rest of the little whores in this house.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Brooke said, trying to keep her voice from quavering. “Maybe we can find some middle ground.”
“Get your smart mouth down here!” he shouted, driving the barrel of the pistol into Maryanne’s temple.
Well, okay then.
Praying the cleaver wouldn’t fall out of her shallow pocket and clatter down the steps—damn her low-rise jeans—she started down the stairs. Then stopped dead on the last step.
Holy shit!
A bony hand appeared at the edge of Connie’s grave. As Brooke watched, another hand mashed flat onto the dirt floor beside it. Then Connie’s body—her mummified, largely skeletonised body—rose from the grave. But, oh God in heaven, it was more than a mere body now! It was a vehicle for Connie’s cast. The empty eye sockets that had so freaked Brooke out on first glimpse were no longer empty. They glowed now with a fierce, angry white light.
As Connie crawled from the pit that had held her all those years, Brooke’s mouth fell open.
“Miss Saunders?”
When she failed to reply, C. W. turned to see what could possibly have a stronger claim on her attention than his threats. The old man’s whole body jerked with a reaction that would have been comical in other circumstances. “No,” he whispered. The gun dropped from his hand, landing on the earthen floor with a soft thud.
Maryanne broke free from his suddenly lax grip and scuttled over to join Brooke at the base of the stairs, but C. W. hardly seemed to notice the loss of his hostage. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the vision of bone and sinew standing there with those glowing, rage-filled eye sockets.
“No!” This time, it was a cry not a whisper. As Connie’s corpse advanced on him, he clutched one hand to his chest and backed up, extending the other in front of him as though to ward Connie off.
“You’re dead!” he said.
Connie grabbed the shovel.
“We killed you!” C. W. took another stumbling step backward, not seeming to realize that he’d put himself in a corner. Connie kept advancing.
Maryanne clung harder to Brooke, and Brooke hugged her right back.
“This isn’t happening! It can’t be happening. Father killed you. I saw him do it. I helped him bury you.”
“Alive!” Impossibly, a croaking, terrible voice rattled out of Connie’s body. “You buried me alive!”
Unable to move back any further, he shrank before her horrible fury. “I’m sorry... we didn’t know. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t.”
“You killed my baby! My little Lily Michelle!”
“That was Father’s doing, not mine,” he cried. “Not me.”
Connie just kept advancing remorselessly.
Cornered, C. W. fell to his knees. “Connie, please don’t do this,” he begged. “It was bad, what I did. It was such a long time ago. I... I was just a boy myself.”
“Alex wasn’t a long time ago. You weren’t a boy when you hurt my friend.”
“But—”
He didn’t get a chance to rationalize his actions.
Connie grabbed him, then opened her skeletal jaw impossibly wide.
“Get ready,” Maryanne whispered to Brooke. She knew what was coming, and she and Brooke held each other tightly. They braced themselves. Braced their minds.
And Connie shrieked. Long and loud and mind-rending as the rapist crumbled before her. She shredded C. W.’s sanity. Broke him, mind, body, and soul. He dropped to the floor, and curled up in a shaking fetal position, urine darkening his trousers and soaking the soil around him.
Then—oh God!—Connie swung the shovel in a wicked downward arc, striking C. W.—Billy—squarely in the head. Connie stopped her shrieking just in time to hear the sickening yet glorious thunk as the shovel bashed his skull.
After a few stunned seconds, the girls pulled themselves apart.
Brooke rushed to pick up the gun. C. W. didn’t look like he was about to get up again, but she’d watched too many horror movies. The bad guy always had one last gasp in him.
After a minute, Maryanne was at his side, her fingers searching for a pulse, first on his wrist, then on his scrawny, old-man neck.
Brooke held her breath.
Maryanne looked up, first at Connie, then at Brooke.
“He’s dead,” she said.