Beautiful Dead

  “Two have broken free of the group,” Phoenix told me uneasily. He went to the window to gaze up at the ridge. “You hear that? They turned back in this direction.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Iceman is coming after them. You can hear them now, can’t you?”

  Joining Phoenix at the window, I listened hard until I picked up the whine of two engines. I stared up at the black hillside, my heart in my mouth.

  “This is serious,” Phoenix decided. “They’re way ahead of Iceman—I don’t think he can head them off.”

  Suddenly two bright lights appeared on the ridge, their beams dipping into hollows, then raking up into the dark sky. “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “You wait here. I’ll go help Iceman.”

  “But Hunter said for you to stay here!”

  “No, you—you have to stay hidden,” he insisted. “Keep the door bolted. You’ll be OK.” Phoenix slid the bolt then stepped out onto the porch. “Lock up, Darina!”

  I clenched my teeth and forced the bolt back in place. Then I stood with my shoulder to the door, eyes closed and hardly able to breathe. The two bikes raced into the valley, yellow headlights invading the blackness.

  Out in the yard, Phoenix saw a way to stop them. He seized a roll of fencing wire stored by the side of the barn, raised it over his head, and tossed it in the path of the nearest bike. The rider braked and skidded, making a sharp swerve across the track of the second rider. The two bikes collided and both men fell to the ground. Through the grimy window I saw them land in the dirt. The next moment, Iceman had joined Phoenix by the barn.

  Two Beautiful Dead versus two brainless bikers from Forest Lake—it should have been no contest. I expected Phoenix and Iceman to move in and toss the two guys aside like garbage, zap their minds clean, then send them home with sore heads.

  But that wasn’t what happened. In the low beam of one of the headlights I saw the first rider struggle to his feet and lurch toward the house. Meanwhile, his buddy had totally lost it. He picked up the roll of razor wire and flung it back at Iceman and Phoenix. The wire unwound at their feet in a snaking, lethal coil. Now the first guy was blundering onto the porch, reeling against the cabin wall to catch his breath. I saw him close up and recognized his features even in the dark. It was Kyle Keppler—who else?

  Fresh terror washed over me and I went weak at the knees. Phoenix and Iceman were trapped, the guy I suspected of killing Arizona was less than a yard away, coming around from the shock of being thrown from his bike and looking for a weapon to use against his attackers. He picked up a long-handled ax that leaned against the wall.

  “Phoenix!” I screamed a warning from inside the house. My face was at the window, plain to see.

  Keppler heard and saw. Instead of running at the original enemy, he suddenly turned the ax on the door, raising it and bringing it crashing down, splintering the wood and smashing the glass into a thousand pieces. Another blow smashed clean through the bolt and the door swung open. “Here, Jonno—catch this!” he yelled at the second guy, tossing the ax through the air like a tomahawk.

  Jonno…Jon…Jon Jackson, Kyle’s joined-at-the-hip brother-in-law. Jackson caught the weapon and forced Phoenix and Iceman back toward the barn.

  Which left me facing Kyle Keppler alone in the dark. Horror grabbed me and fixed me to the spot. In my own mind, I was dead—no question.

  “This is it, girl. You got in my way one too many times.” He blocked the doorway, his feet crunched over the shattered glass. “Whatever is happening here, you’re at the heart of it.”

  “Nothing’s happening,” I protested. “A few kids from Ellerton High and me—we hang out up here once in a while.” I fell back against the stove as Kyle towered over me.

  He grabbed my wrist and swung me back into the middle of the room. “These would be the same kids who tossed the fencing wire across the yard? They’re going to be sorry they did that.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed that Jon Jackson wasn’t as good with the ax as Keppler had been. Phoenix and Iceman would handle him eventually, but it would take time.

  “So what really happens out here?” Still gripping my wrist, Keppler sat me down in a chair by the table. “I hear a kid drowned in the creek last night. Who was he? Where’s the corpse?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me!” I cowered as Keppler raised his hand against me. I really was dead, unless Phoenix came soon. “Arizona used to come here,” I told him.

  Speaking her name acted as a brake. The raised fist didn’t come crashing down.

  “No one knew about this place back then. She liked the silence.”

  “Arizona was here?” Keppler tried to make it compute as he glanced around the ancient room. I noticed that this time he didn’t try to deny the relationship. “When was that? She didn’t tell me.”

  “Typical Arizona—she liked to keep secrets,” I reminded him.

  “But she told you?”

  “We used to talk a lot.”

  “About me?”

  I nodded. “She said she loved you. She tried to break free, but she wasn’t strong enough.”

  A disbelieving half smile crept across Kyle’s face. “Are we talking about the same girl? I never met a person stronger than Arizona.”

  “On the outside,” I agreed. “You don’t have any idea how much she was hurting on the inside.”

  He took a long look at me in the moonlit room, converting my last comment into a harsh criticism of himself. “She made her choice,” he argued.

  I met his gaze. “She was seventeen.”

  Something snapped inside his head. He went back to being psycho-man, leaning in so close that I could feel his breath on my face. “What do you know?” he snarled, unconsciously echoing his dead ex-girlfriend. “What do you really know?”

  Hunter found us like that—face-to-face, me helpless, Kyle Keppler jerking me from the kitchen chair, about to smash the back of his hand against my face. The overlord went in for the kill. In an instant he shriveled Keppler’s strength, making him stagger back and sink to his knees. Another mind zap sent him sprawling full length, clutching his head and yelling out in pain. Hunter stood over him, calm and impassive, listening to him howl. “Don’t move from this room,” he told me quietly.

  I’d been thinking of running out into the yard, and Hunter knew it.

  “Phoenix and Iceman have dealt with Jackson,” he told me. “He’s already on his way out of here.”

  True—I heard the whine of a Harley engine and saw a single beam of light rake across the hillside.

  “You talked to Keppler about Arizona,” Hunter remarked. “That was risky.”

  “I had to say something. He was so angry—I thought he was going to kill me.”

  Hunter blinked, then turned his cold gray eyes on me. “You need to trust me, Darina. Keppler is nothing I can’t handle.”

  “But I didn’t know where you were!” I cried. “I thought you were on the ridge with the others.”

  “I’m everywhere,” he said as he hauled Keppler to his feet and gave his mind one more blast. “I come when I’m needed.” Then he threw Keppler out into the yard, where Phoenix and Iceman put the brainwashed husk of a guy back on his bike and pointed him up the hill.

  “Thanks,” I breathed—a word that didn’t measure up to the drama of the occasion, I know.

  Hunter’s back was turned, he was standing in the doorway watching Keppler roar back off into the night.

  “That’s the place—there, where you’re standing now,” he told me, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. His voice had turned spacey and distant. “Roll back the rug, Darina.”

  “What do you mean?” I stared at the floor and the faded, patterned rug.

  “That’s where I fell. Roll it back.”

  I crouched and lifted the corner of the rug to see a dark stain on the plain boards—black in the moonlight, but no doubt crimson all those years before.

  “My blood,” Hunter confi
rmed. “Mentone shot me and I fell right there.”

  I shivered. Why tell me this now?

  Hunter’s gestures were slow and trancelike. “Marie was standing there, by the stove. She was in shock—paralyzed by what had happened. Mentone drew his gun and fired.”

  I nodded, still half in shock from nearly having my face smashed in by Arizona’s ex-boyfriend. “He hit you in the head. The bullet went clean through your skull—I know!”

  “I haven’t spoken about it to anyone,” Hunter said, his voice weary. “Year after year I return. I’ve seen justice done for others among the Beautiful Dead—many times. And every time a restless soul is released I know my job is done.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this now,” I breathed.

  Hunter seemed to have made time stand still—I was caught in his memory capsule, struggling to break out. He turned to look at me, catching me in that powerful gaze. “What is it about you, Darina?” he asked. “I tell myself you’re not even like her.”

  “Like Marie?” I was fighting to breathe, caught like an insect on a pin. So what if I remind you of your wife? Don’t do this to me!

  “She was a good woman—happy and easy, no dark shadows inside her head, not like you. Marie was full of life. She dressed real pretty.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t like the way I dress,” I muttered. “Things were different then.”

  It was as if I hadn’t spoken. “And then I look in your eyes and they’re the same.” He sighed. “The painful memories flood back. They give me no rest.”

  “So how come you never found justice for yourself?” I asked. “You help the Beautiful Dead, but never yourself.”

  He focused in on my face even more. “It’s never going to happen. I won’t find peace.”

  “Maybe one day,” I said, without believing it or expecting him to.

  He sighed again. “Smooth down the rug, Darina. Phoenix and Iceman are waiting. Let’s go.”

  The Beautiful Dead came down from Foxton Ridge and gathered in the barn. They’d used up lots of energy on the Forest Lake intruders so they sat quietly, waiting for Hunter to make his next plan—Donna next to Eve, Iceman keeping a lookout from the hayloft, Phoenix standing guard at the door. They were all edgy, reacting to the smallest sound, exchanging uneasy glances.

  “So Phoenix gets to stay the night with you in Ellerton?” Arizona checked with me. Of them all, she seemed most restless and afraid.

  I checked my watch and saw that it was almost midnight. “Yeah, give me a good story for why I’m so late home.”

  “For Laura?”

  “You got it. Forget the one about my car running out of gas—I already used that a hundred times.”

  “Say you were at Logan’s house and didn’t look at the time,” she suggested. “That usually works. Keep her talking while Phoenix sneaks in.”

  I agreed that it was my best shot. “Tomorrow I pay your boyfriend one last visit,” I promised. “I ask him outright—did you visit him at work the day you died? Did you and he drive out to Hartmann together?”

  Arizona turned away impatiently. “He’ll tell you no.”

  “But do I believe him?” I stepped back in front of her. “Think again, Arizona, and think hard. Did you drive to the mall? Did you corner Kyle and beg him to leave Sable one last time?”

  Anger sparked in her dark-brown eyes. “OK, Darina—let me play it back the way you want to see it. I drive to Mike’s Motors, park my car, and go inside. Kyle is working. He’s not happy to see me. I say, ‘Please leave your pregnant girlfriend, soon to be your wife, and be with me. We were made for each other—twin souls who can’t be parted!’ This is too much pressure and Kyle totally loses control. Maybe he has a workshop tool—something heavy—in his hand. We struggle. He hits me—an accident, or on purpose. I fall to the floor—”

  “Stop it,” I begged. It felt like Arizona had moved so close to the edge that she would fall into a crazy abyss and never get her sanity back.

  “You never asked to see my death mark, did you, Darina? Should I show it to you? Would you like to see it?”

  “No. Stop. If you don’t remember what happened, you don’t remember. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push you this hard.”

  “Death mark!” she insisted, her gaze almost as powerful as Hunter’s. I felt my willpower crumble. “You expect it to be here on my chest, showing how I fell into the water and drowned.” Her long fingers swept across her slender upper body. “But it’s not there, believe me.”

  “So where?” I realized she was about to show me whether I liked it or not.

  Slowly she raised both arms to lift her long hair clear of her back. She twisted it like a skein of black silk, then turned so I could see her bare neck. The skin was white, every vertebra visible and vulnerable. “Do you see?” she whispered.

  The angel-wing tattoo nestled between two bones in her neck, dark and clear against her skin, very delicate, totally definite.

  “Yes,” I replied. “You didn’t drown in the lake. You broke your neck—that’s what killed you.”

  When I got home, Laura was past giving me a fight. She wore her wounded look—OK, so I’m only your mother. I don’t expect you to show me any consideration or respect.

  “Sorry, I didn’t look at the time,” I mumbled as I shambled off toward my room.

  “Jim called,” she told me. “He had an accident. His tire blew and he skidded off the road.”

  This stopped me in my tracks. “Is he OK?”

  She nodded. “The car got towed away. He’s spending the night in a motel.”

  “Are you OK?” Obviously not—she was pale, her eyes were red from crying.

  “What is it with this family and cars?” She sighed. “What is it with this family, period?”

  “Look, he’s not hurt, thank God.” By now I’d given Phoenix plenty of time to climb through my bedroom window, and Jim being involved in a minor traffic accident wasn’t high on my list of priorities. “Get some sleep. It’ll look OK in the morning.”

  “Where have you been, Darina?” She sounded exasperated. “Don’t tell me Jordan’s or Hannah’s house—I already checked.”

  “Logan’s,” I told her, rushing up the stairs. I knew she wouldn’t have called his house in case she got Logan’s dad and he was drunk as usual.

  Phoenix was there, waiting.

  To have him in my room, filling the space with his presence…even now, it was almost too much. I fell into his arms. Phoenix held me—I’m the center of his world, like he is of mine. We’re part of each other—no one can tear us apart.

  We lay on the bed together, lost in the moment, content in spite of everything. His face was so close, so smooth—dark eyelashes shadowed his pale gray eyes, his lips were soft against my cheek.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked after the longest silence.

  “Nothing. Only how perfect this is.”

  “Did we finally stop the world and step off?”

  “I guess so. We’re out in space, floating among the planets. It’s dark and silent. No one can reach us.”

  “Time stood still?”

  I nodded and kissed him, softly at first, then raising myself over him and sinking into a harder, more passionate embrace.

  It was Phoenix who pulled away first.

  “I love you so much it hurts,” he told me, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting hunched forward. “It hurts that we have so little time together, that I don’t have free will.”

  “Is Hunter looking over your shoulder?” I asked, sitting up beside him, nuzzling against his shoulder.

  “Always.”

  “He did that Marie thing again,” I told Phoenix, taking his hand and putting my small palm against his broad one. “Earlier this evening—he made me look at an old bloodstain on the floor. He trusted me with his own story.”

  “Because you remind him of his wife.” Phoenix understood immediately. “Three or four generations down the line, and
he sees Marie in you.”

  “He says it’s my eyes.” Remembering the intensity of the conversation made me shaky all over again. “Hunter scares me, Phoenix. But there’s one small corner of me that feels sorry for him.”

  Phoenix smiled. “He doesn’t need your pity, believe me.”

  “Maybe I’ll check out his story one day. When I have some time—after we’ve solved Arizona’s mystery.” And the Beautiful Dead went away from the far side to rest up and regenerate. “The Peter Mentone murder case must be recorded in some old newspaper somewhere. I could look at files in the library, or in the newspaper office. They keep stuff like that, don’t they?”

  “I guess they do.” Right now Phoenix wasn’t too interested in details of Hunter’s history, so he steered us back to the present. “When Arizona finally showed you her death mark, what did you think?”

  “I was shocked.” The way she’d raised her thick hair and showed me the small angel wings—it was an act that seemed to put her whole fate into my hands once and for all. “I’m thinking, was it an accident after all?”

  “Not even a suicide?”

  “It’s possible. The shores of Hartmann are pretty rough and rocky. Maybe she slipped and fell.”

  “But why was she out there at all?” Phoenix turned my hand so that it was resting in his. As he spoke, he traced the lines on my palm with his forefinger—the heart line crossing the lifeline. “Arizona’s not the hiking type, but there was no car at the scene, remember?”

  “So someone drove her out there? And even if it was an accident—Arizona falling and hitting her head against a rock—how come this other person didn’t dive in to save her?”

  “Sure. And why didn’t they call for help? You know it was a pair of hikers passing by who saw her body floating in the lake.”

  I sat for a while without speaking. “OK, try this,” I said at last. “Arizona goes to see Kyle at Mike’s Motors in this crazy, desperate mood. She uses the excuse of getting her car fixed. He’s scared she’s going to say too much in front of Mike Hamill, so he fixes to drive her out to Hartmann later that morning. The lake is way out of town—no one will see them there.”