But Richard’s dark face did not register victory.
What the hell more does he want from her? “Are you proud of this!” Tarah stood furiously before him.
“What existed was revealed, that’s all.”
Tarah was startled: Richard’s lips had not moved to form the words. His face was as inscrutable as black ice. Then she realized: It was Mark, not Richard, who had just spoken.
“Is he here?” Savannah yelled.
“Who?” asked Joja. Her breathing came unevenly: Each slaughter bringing her nearer to the decision she herself must make.
“The bastard who tore me apart—so I can kill him!” Savannah shouted into the house.
“How could he be here?” Malissa asked, but with interest, eyeing Richard; remembering the surprises at other seasonal games. “An anonymous man, no doubt; how could he— . . .?”
“There is your purity,” Karen sighed, as if to herself, remembering those words, spoken long ago to her.
Like a panther finally approaching a long-stalked prey, Bravo advanced toward Savannah. Now she placed her hands firmly on Savannah’s bare shoulders. Then she drew her to her.
Needing suddenly what she had never needed before—to feel protected—Savannah did not draw away.
Roughly, Bravo pushed her back. “I don’t want you, you sullied bitch!” she struck.
14
Savannah retreated. She had needed a test of her iron stance: to perfect it. Passed, it would have ultimately choked the brutal scene of painful initiation rendering the imitation purity “real.” But she had not prepared for a confrontation with the recorded reality of the slaughter. Now, in sudden recognition, she stared at Tor: They were shells, magnificent, empty bodies.
“You can have her for yourself, pimp!” Bravo turned on Malissa.
“I never wanted her,” Malissa said quickly. Now Savannah would be spoken of as if she had once existed in sharp focus—but no more. “Nor anyone else!”
Bravo’s husky voice became a deliberate, mocking simper aimed at Malissa: “Someone to love, Malissa! Why not? It’s obvious she needs someone—finally; and you need someone too, Malissa.”
“No one,” Malissa rejected in a controlled voice. “No one. Ever.” The long fingers were like jeweled daggers.
“Everyone needs love,” la Duquesa asserted.
Bravo moved in on Malissa. “Everyone loves you, Malissa! Nobody hates you!” she roared. “Love, love, love, love!” she spewed the repeated word like poison in the woman’s ear, to kill.
Malissa pushed the word away. The purple-shaded eyes murdered Bravo.
Now Bravo’s voice broke into a roar of contempt. Again to feel out the potential for insurrection, she spun about toward Albert: “Why do you stay with her?”
“Because— . . .” he began with difficulty.
“Because he’s a fat little man!” said Topaze peremptorily, stretching his own small body as if his assertive words would enlarge it. “Without Miss Malissa there would be no entourage, and that’s why he stays!” It was his overt bid for a permanent place in the retinue.
Bravo ignored the midget. “Tell us, Albert! Why?”
“He has nothing to tell,” Malissa declared.
“Why don’t you want him to speak, Lady Cobra?” Bravo questioned.
“Why don’t we hear from you, Bravo?” Malissa spat. “Tell us about the man you had prepare your women for you.”
“Only at first—and then they wanted only me.”
“But there was the exception, wasn’t there, Bravo?” Malissa shifted the tide of battle.
Bravo winced, barely but perceptibly.
“A man, Bravo!” Malissa used the word “man” as Bravo had used the word “love” against her.
“I coiled my whip about their fucking necks, and I made them kneel before me—the man and the bitch,” said Bravo. “Okay. That was the one exception. I’ve confessed. Now you tell us, Malissa: Why don’t you let Albert speak? Are you afraid he’ll tell us what becomes of the people you collect? Is it true, Malissa, that you’re hundreds of years old and need regular transfusions of fresh young blood!” Then, aiming indiscriminately, striking in every direction: “Was Albert your lover once? Were you always sexless?”
“Speak, Albert,” came Mark’s voice, unexpectedly.
Malissa’s face expressed rage. Her eyes shifted quickly from Mark to Richard, exhorting him to chastise his son.
But Richard said nothing.
Topaze mirrored Malissa’s expression of rage.
“Yes, speak, Albert!” la Duquesa proclaimed her own rebellion against Malissa. “If you do, you may be free of her!”
Malissa’s purple-glassed eyes swallowed the queen.
“Tell about the pain of the humiliations, the taunts— . . .” the voice behind the black veils exhorted.
“How do you know?” Rev said.
Topaze was nervous, Rev was joining the interrogators, a rival Topaze must destroy.
Behind the dark veils, the voice said: “Because my life with the Duke was so perfect that I ache for those who haven’t known love.” Tears darkened the veil. “Candles never lit, giving no light.”
The unlived life, thought Jeremy.
“Who are you, Albert?” Bravo rode on relentlessly.
“I’m Albert!” he shouted.
“We’ll question Rev!” Malissa said, to indicate that she would ignore Bravo.
Rev frowned. “My tattoos!” he blurted, anxious to please Malissa, yet equally anxious to thwart the slaughtering attention. “Each stands for a perfect hustle! Diggit!” He opened the leather vest, exposing the jungle of tattoos. “Now question the midget!” he offered frantically.
“What could he possibly confess?” said la Duquesa. “To confess you have to feel agony, and he has no feelings.”
“Why should I have feelings?” the midget questioned. “I’m perfectly formed!” He exhibited himself proudly. “And my cock is the largest— . . .”
“Tell us about Malissa, Albert!” Bravo would not be thwarted.
Resuscitated, the mamaloi and the papaloi flanked Albert, rattles ready.
The pudgy little man covered his ears to block the hiss.
“Get away from him!” Malissa shouted commandingly at the black man and woman. She glared at Richard for allowing this charade. They must still be allies for the purpose of moving the others into the dark caverns of the game.
But the black man and woman stood steadfast beside Albert when there was no reaction from Richard.
And Rev made his formal bid for power: “You want me to kill them?” he asked Malissa suddenly.
Malissa glanced at Bravo. “Not them." She made a motion of slicing—perhaps the inverted sign of the cross.
Understanding—but his eyes questioning Malissa carefully for unequivocal approbation—Rev stood before Bravo. His knife opened before her with a deadly switch!
Bravo looked with a slashed smile at the tattooed man.
Malissa sent silent commands. No, she would not allow Rev to use the knife now: It was merely a further maneuver to steer Bravo from Albert—the game required improvised rules—and it was also a statement of warning, of the ultimate thrust against her.
Rev pointed the knife at Bravo’s throat.
The priest protested: “I won’t allow— . . .”
“Are we playing destiny now?” Mark asked.
So fast it appeared to be one movement, Bravo brought the coiled whip up in both hands, knocking Rev’s knife to the floor. Disarmed, Rev cowered before the raised whip. “You petty fucking little coward!” Bravo said.
“Don’t— . . .” Rev started.
Malissa did not even glance at Rev, and Topaze sensed a victory for himself.
Bravo’s boot pushed the knife away. It slid on the spiraling floor to the tip of Blue’s bare feet. It pointed to the tattooed star. With a cry, he kicked it away. Gleaming, the knife glided across the swirls of the floor. Now it pointed at the priest.
“Father Jeremy,” came Mark’s words quickly, “to whom does a priest confess?”
Live entities within the dead bodies, the blue-crystal eyes of the mamaloi and the papaloi shifted to the priest.
Jeremy picked up the knife.
“Father, let’s leave this terrible house!” Valerie’s voice broke. Her eyes moved past the archway of this hall into the room where the stage waited. “Something terrible will happen!”
Yes, leave it! Tarah’s mind screamed at the girl. But it was Paul her eyes—and Valerie’s—implored.
“Will you leave?” Blue asked the priest; there was a mournful tone in his voice, but the lips smiled.
The priest did not answer, but he did not move away.
Valerie backed away slowly from the priest. Is he one of them?
The priest dropped the knife.
Rev rushed for the weapon. Armed again, he stood staring about him in search of a victim, any victim another might choose for him.
“Your pose is over, you posturing petty hood.” Bravo turned her back on him.
“Put that knife away, you fool!” Malissa lacerated.
Bewildered, Rev obeyed.
“That is Rev’s confession,” Malissa announced contemptuously.
“Now can I have him, Malissa?” Albert whispered.
Hatred draped Malissa’s face, like the queen’s black veil. Albert retreated meekly, knowing: No, he would have no one as long as Malissa held the awesome power over him.
Not joining Savannah and Tor among the slaughtered, Rev touched the knife now in his pocket, asserting its dormant presence.
Her blazing triumph over Rev had only whetted her desire to confront Malissa: Bravo attacked: “That’s how much you love Albert, Malissa! You’d have someone kill for him!” she taunted.
“Love!” Malissa formed the word with abysmal disgust. And she turned defeat into victory: “Love is as foreign to me as it was to you, Bravo, until— . . .” And her eyes, her jeweled fingers named Karen as the subject of the unfinished words. Now the words shaped like bullets: “We’ll!—question!—Karen!” She had aimed expertly:
The threatening whip fell lifeless at Bravo’s side.
And so she had forced Bravo, finally, to withdraw—for now, Malissa knew. And she knew too: Through Karen, yes—it would be through her that she would pay Bravo back for all this. But it was not yet time for Karen.
Richard nodded: The mamaloi and the papaloi retreated like shadows from Albert.
“How can anyone despise love so much?” the priest said. (“I love you! Don’t let me die— . . . !”)
“Because to love is to become a victim,” Karen answered.
“The perfect love I had with the Duke— . . .” began la Duquesa.
“A dark guy?” asked Rev abruptly.
“Tanned from season to season.” La Duquesa drew the veil more securely over her face. “A bronze pearl— . . .”
Joja, Karen—they flowed toward Richard. Like a jury about to pass judgment—or defendants announcing their confessions, their own sentences. Tarah watched, studied.
Richard looked slowly at the three women.
Joja stopped. Her heart screamed: I need you, Richard!
“You make love sound terrifying,” Valerie seemed to accuse them all. What terrible games are they really playing? she wondered. A trap to catch me and Paul!
“It is,” said Tarah. “It’s merely a word, misused for ‘hate.’”
The mamaloi and the papaloi followed Richard’s gaze on Tarah. Their rattles rose.
Defiantly, “I don’t need them to elicit my . . . confession!” Tarah said. “I’ll shout it only too gladly.” She addressed the others: “Listen! When he was through with me, he told me two men waited for me in a room upstairs. A challenge. I knew he’d withdraw. I walked up those lighted stairs, he followed me to the door. Two men, already naked, waited. I entered. Richard didn’t relent. The bastard just walked away—entombing the darkness which contained me and the two men.”
“You didn’t turn back,” Richard said.
“What do you want to find, Richard? Finally, what?’, Karen asked him.
“I merely opened the door for you, Tarah,” Richard said, as if, mysteriously, that were Karen’s answer.
Karen saw: A door opening into another dark room. Legs, flesh— . . . And crushed roses.
“And turned me into a hunter!” Tarah accused Richard. “I even worked in a whorehouse after that!” she announced to the others. “I didn’t need the money, of course not—Richard is most generous with that: I needed the hungry youngmen to fill— . . .”
“The pit,” said Joja.
“Is that really your confession, Tarah?” Richard asked almost gently. “Is there nothing about Gable?”
This time the beaded rattles shook before Tarah’s face. She saw: Dazzling pinpoints of color. She breathed deeply, deeply. “Gable? My son? We were confessing to the worst in our lives. And I’ve confessed it: I’ve confessed you, Richard!”
Malissa’s smile congratulated her, an unsuspected challenger.
“There are no restrictions,” Richard said. “We’ll allow each confessor to tell the good in his life.”
“Good requires no confession,” Jeremy said.
“Things are not always as they seem,” said Richard.
“Not here, not in your inverted world,” said Tarah. Then swiftly: “You want me to tell about Gable? All right then: He was born into his father’s strange world, where love revealed itself as hatred.”
“When examined closely,” Richard said.
“And so I fled with Gable,” Tarah said. The black man and woman faced her like guards. “Yet despite my son’s purity, Richard had stirred a hunger in me which is his mark.”
“And before me, Tarah?” Richard interrupted her.
She answered automatically: “It had been the same as after.” Swiftly she tried to counter herself: “But you gave it pause. . . . And then it was over, and it was the same. But worse,” she added quickly, like a witness underscoring her allegiance or hostility at a trial. “Shadows—shadows, that’s all they were; bodies which I needed, attempting to satisfy with numbers— . . . But always away from Gable—to protect the only purity that had emerged from the corruption of his father.”
“The investigation of Savannah’s purity revealed— . . .” Malissa reminded, without finishing.
“Gable’s is real purity,” Tarah said firmly, her eyes on Paul and Valerie. “He didn’t suspect where I went—he never does, because the pure conceive only of purity.”
Mark listened as if at an important initiation.
“Now I’ve confessed the worst and the best!” said Tarah.
“But have you?” Richard still challenged.
“Why should we justify our lives to you?” the priest interrupted.
“Only if you feel compelled to,” Mark said as if the question had been asked of him.
“What gives you the right to play— . . .” the priest addressed Richard; he paused, he had been about to say “God.” He finished: “. . .—to play Satanic inquisitor?” His look included Mark.
“Satanic inquisitor!” Malissa clutched the words in her eager fingers, destroying the words, re-creating them: “Do you suppose Satan too hears confessions? As selective as God, does he too investigate profoundly to choose those worthy of damnation and hell? Would one, then, confess the evil? Or the good?” Her laughter was seized by Topaze’s.
“A judgment in hell,” Blue spoke aloud.
A perverted “purification” was occurring. Valerie’s thoughts were like deep knives. A “purification” for a terrible communion!
“But you, Father Jeremy,” Richard said. “What gives you the right to— . . . grant absolution for living?”
“For sin, not living,” the priest corrected. Then: “I was ordained,” he said—and stopped. His words instantly boomeranged. He was being baited into reciting his qualifications to play— . . . Richard’s deliberate pause had been un
equivocal. . . .—to play God.
Richard turned quickly back to Tarah.
Malissa knew: An important one, his investigation of the priest would come in phases throughout the evening.
“Is there nothing else to confess, Tarah?” Richard asked his first wife.
“I hate you, Richard.” Swiftly Tarah attempted to block any further interrogation.
15
Now Richard’s words cracked with the fury of a snapped whip: “What if I told you that Gable is here, Tarah; that he heard everything?”
“Is my half brother here?” Mark asked eagerly.
Tarah had taken a step toward Richard. She stopped. There was no way Gable could be here. The words had been calculated to disorient her. She would resist his move. Suddenly she felt very strong. The moment to attack! Enlist Karen and Joja! “What would you confess?” she questioned Richard abruptly.
Instantly Mark looked at his father.
“Tell us, Richard: Why did you invade our lives?” Tarah included Joja and Karen—she must count on them. “What did you want to find?” she pursued.
Mark still watched his father.
“Tell us why you prepare people,” Tarah flailed. She waited, for a signal from Karen, Joja that they would join the attack. “You make actions inevitable, you choke alternatives,” she continued to accuse Richard. Still no reaction of support from either of the women she needed as witnesses. “You leave only one avenue open— . . .”
“And then even that avenue closes,” Karen finally joined the assault, an ally Tarah could count on.
Malissa knew: Sudden alliances would be formed tonight, and allies might turn into enemies. “Why, they might be talking about your God,” she tossed flippantly at the priest.
“I identify the avenues,” Richard said to Tarah, to Karen.
“You use lives for your amusement,” Tarah continued, determined to enlist Joja: “Like props on a stage— . . .”
The actress’s magnificently sculpted face looked up at Richard—at the beautiful, inscrutable man who had dominated her life from the moment he entered it, so totally that it seemed to her he had ruled even the earlier parts of it—her life before then a preparation to receive him completely. Suddenly she could not join Tarah and Karen against him. Not now. “The roles I played— . . . constantly trying on new masks, to find the one I could live with— . . . Richard drew the masks, and I came to life.”