“What do I want from you?” Devota repeated, unafraid of the gun that was trained on her. She was breathing hard, furious, as she sneered into Charity’s ear, “I think you know, Reverend Mother. I want you to pay, of course. Like the others. They, too, were whores, all of them in love with Father O’Toole.”
“No!” Charity shook her head. She wouldn’t have the sisters vilified.
But Devota was convinced of their sins. “I know that probably only Camille had actually lain with him,” she said, and a shudder ripped through her body. Charity could feel it. As if the thought of Camille and Frank together was so vulgar Devota could hardly stand it, was nearly to the point of vomiting. Yet, she wasn’t finished.
“But the others, they wanted to. I saw it in their eyes, those pious little hypocrites. Every last one of them.” She was breathing hard, as if she’d walked up fifty flights of steps, her rage seeping through her blood. The fingers around Charity’s wrist gripped harder. “All of those pretty little girls who had all the advantages, who had been adopted to homes . . . with . . . with parents. And brothers and sisters.” She was nearly panting with her rage. “They shared Christmas Eves with the grandmothers who baked apple pies and filled their stockings with hand-knit caps and dollies and little tins of chocolate,” she said bitterly, the girl always left behind. “They believed in Santa Claus and had siblings to fight and play with, boyfriends in high school. They had crushes and friendship rings and . . . and some of them were cheerleaders or athletes before going to college with men meant to be their husbands.” She was spewing her anger, nearly choking on the unfairness of it all. Her fingers clenched so tightly Charity cried out, but Devota, in her rage, didn’t notice, didn’t care. She was reliving all the injustices thrust upon her. “They had first kisses and first loves, and they wrote in diaries. . . .” She glanced at Valerie. “Oh, yes, they wrote all their lurid thoughts in diaries. All their sinful acts recounted and detailed . . .”
Charity saw her daughter wince, and for the first time the gun wobbled, if only just a bit.
“You blame the girls who were adopted?” Valerie whispered, disbelieving.
Why didn’t Valerie leave? Charity thought desperately. Val could just run away, hide in the dark and save herself. But staying here, arguing with Devota, was of no use. She would only end up getting herself killed. “You should go,” Charity said, trying to hold her daughter’s eyes. “Quickly . . .”
Valerie glared at Devota, moved a little to the left but didn’t turn tail. “The others were innocent.”
“Innocent?” Devota repeated in revulsion. “Those idiots? They didn’t know the meaning of the word! Only when they’d had their fill of their normal lives, when their parents or a boyfriend or life didn’t give them what they wanted did they come running back, crying out that they wanted to be nuns. To be pure of spirit. To become brides of Christ!”
She squeezed Charity. “And you took them in, didn’t you, Reverend Mother? Every last pathetic one of them, especially your pets, those who came from St. Elsinore’s. You gave them a new life, instruction, and showed them the way, but all the while you were a scheming, lying fraud! A whore who slept with a married man, bore him a child and hid it all!”
“No,” Charity squeaked, feeling blood slide beneath her collar. Please, Valerie, leave. Leave now! She tried to stall. “I believe—”
“I don’t care what you believe. It’s all a lie anyway. And God knows!” Devota said. “He sees you for what you are and the rest of them, too, when their vows got too difficult. All of them were ready to jump into the first handsome priest’s bed.” She leaned closer, her spit touching the shell of Charity’s ear, her rancor oozing through the old tombs. “I saw them, Reverend Mother, and so did you, but you allowed it, didn’t you? You let them flirt. You let them dream. You let them fantasize and imagine sleeping with him. Because you knew of their hunger, their desire, their evil, vile desire.”
This was going so badly. And Valerie . . . Holy Father, please make her leave. Don’t let her blood be spilled. “They . . . they may have had fantasies, but—”
“But they were supposed to be devoted to Jesus, the son of the Holy Father!” Devota nearly screamed, her voice cracking, the depth of her fanaticism showing.
Charity remembered her as she was: Darlene, a half-crippled, unwanted, and never adopted child, and the girl had embraced the life of the convent with open arms. There had been a darkness to her, too, a cancer in her soul that Charity had hoped would shrivel with her faith. She’d renounced her given name of Darlene and taken Devota, but the cancer, that blackness planted by Satan, had taken over, and the woman before her, a monster bent on her own vision of righteousness, was no better than Lucifer himself.
Fear pounded through Charity’s brain as the blood trickled from her neck. Despite her pain, she stared straight at her only daughter and silently prayed that Valerie would have the good sense to run into the darkness, to never look back at this monster Charity had helped create. “Leave,” she ordered desperately. “Leave now!”
Val only took another step to that same side, as if to get a better angle for her shot, as if she hadn’t heard a word Charity said. With incredible calm, she stood in the wavering light. “I said, let her go.” Valerie was firm, her eyes trained on the sick woman holding the knife.
“No.”
“I’ll shoot.”
“Of course you won’t! You can’t shoot that in here,” Devota said in disgust, as if Val were a complete moron. “You’ll miss and hit your mother, or the bullet will ricochet and kill you both.” She paused a moment, taking in little short breaths, as if a finger of excitement had slid down her spine, a new, thrilling energy passing from her body to Charity’s. “I think there’s someone you both might want to meet.”
Oh, dear God! Charity, the blood from her neck spilling onto her shoulder, felt a new dread. The tone in Devota’s voice was triumphant.
Smug.
Devota shifted then and, letting the knife slip a little, yanked open one of the coffin doors, the one that had never really been sealed.
To Charity’s absolute horror, a corpse, rotting and desiccated, tumbled out of the coffin.
“Son of a—!” Val gasped, and jumped back.
Charity let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her knees gave way as she stared at the dead body of a woman who was little more than bones, pieces of dried flesh, and scraps of hair. The woman’s skin had shriveled, her eye sockets were empty and black, and she was wearing the remains of a stained and threadbare wedding gown, its faded ribbons and tattered lace fluttering in the dim, eerie light.
“Recognize her?” Devota demanded.
Oh, yes. Of course she did. With sickening clarity, Charity knew she was looking at the body of Sister Lea De Luca, the nun who was supposed to have left for San Francisco years ago, the one who had sent her cards.
Devota gloated, “It’s amazing how easy it is to find someone to send mail from another city. And all the while you”—she wrenched Charity’s arm and she nearly cried out—“thought you knew what happened to her. You thought that you’d dealt with ‘the problem.’ ”
“You’re insane,” Val whispered, the gun no longer steady. “You killed this woman.”
“Punished her,” Devota corrected. “Sent her soul to hell. Just like the others. It was so easy. I just told her that Father Frank was waiting. For her. Down here. And she fell for it. Put on her pretty little dress.”
“Because you drugged her!” Val accused.
“I helped her.”
“By luring her down here and killing her?”
“She was a slut. A whore! She didn’t deserve him.”
Devota was so enraged she was starting to tremble.
“Frank O’Toole?” Val’s lips curled in revulsion.
“And,” Devota ranted, “she didn’t deserve to wear the holy habit, not with all her impure thoughts, her dreams of whoring with him! Lea deserved what happened.”
“You can’t
play God,” Charity whispered.
“Didn’t you? Every day, Mother? Pretending to do his work, to do what was best, to lead us all on the righteous path? And all the while you were holding your precious secrets. I just wonder how many times you let that old man take you to his bed, how many times you slept with him, how many times you touched him, kissed him, did what he begged. Is that what this is all about?” She took her knife and sliced it downward, ripping through the fabric of Charity’s habit. Charity felt the cold steel tip of the blade slice into her skin, running down one side of her spine, like a fish about to be filleted.
“Stop!” Val ordered.
But the knife slit the habit in two.
Tears filled Charity’s eyes.
She stared at the rotted corpse.
In that moment, she knew that both she and her daughter were doomed.
God help me. Help us.
She had to do something. Try anything. To save her daughter and her own black soul.
Gathering all her strength, Charity let out a scream of fury and rage, of hate and defiance; then, closing her eyes, she forced her knees to go slack, to unhinge.
She collapsed.
And a startled Devota tumbled with her to the floor.
“Valerie!” Slade yelled out her name, and it came echoing back to him, tumbling through the tunnels, over a heart-stopping shriek that bounced off the walls.
“Hell!” He ran toward the sound, frantic with fear, certain that the maniac had Val in his clutches.
Goddamn it, why had he left her alone while he retrieved the damned picks for the lock? He knew she wouldn’t stay put, not if given the chance. He’d been a fool. And now Val was paying the price.
Dread thundering through his skull, he blundered through the darkness, not caring if anyone knew he was in the tombs.
It didn’t matter.
Let the killer be distracted from his heinous act.
Let the son of a bitch focus on Slade.
Bring it on, you bastard!
He only prayed that he could get to Valerie in time. If he didn’t . . . if Val was already dying at the hands of that maniac, then Slade would personally send the son of a bitch’s soul straight to hell.
No!
Val saw the reverend mother, her mother, sink to the floor. Blood slid down skin that was bared, the flesh of Sister Charity’s back scarred and covered in welts, as if she’d been whipped over and over again.
As Charity fell, she clutched the killer’s skirts and dragged Devota downward.
Valerie threw herself at them, lunging, ready to push the nose of her pistol against the monster’s head and pull the damned trigger. She’d blow the psycho’s brains out and to hell with the consequences. “You bitch!”
Devota was ready, wouldn’t give up easily.
She kicked out with her good leg, her heel connecting with Val’s shin.
Craack!
Pain splintered up Val’s leg.
Another sharp thrust of Devota’s good foot.
Bam! The heel of Devota’s shoe struck hard.
Ricocheting pain as sharp as a serpent’s bite screamed through her bones, sending her reeling.
The gun spun out of her hands. She scrambled for it, juggling it, sucking in her breath, the agony ripping up her leg, causing a blackness to pull at the edges of her eyes.
She couldn’t pass out! Not now!
She lost control of the pistol. It spun into the dark.
Clang!
Steel hit the hard rock floor, then skidded away.
No! No! No!
Desperately, Val flung herself at the .38. Her toe snagged on the outstretched, bony legs of Sister Lea’s corpse.
Val fell forward.
Bam!
Her chin bounced on the stone floor.
Her teeth jarred.
Her palms scraped along the rough stones, scraping skin, breaking fingernails as she scrambled for the damned gun.
Her legs tangled in the lacy folds of the wretched wedding dress, and she looked up to see Devota, breathing hard, eyes glittering with hatred in the faded light, a looming figure draped in black, struggling to her feet.
Like the monster in her dreams. More evil and callous and malicious than Sister Ignatia. The bloody knife dripping from her hand.
A murderer dressed as a nun . . .
Fear coiled through Val.
“It’s over,” Devota said, smiling with a crazy, off-kilter grin that stretched her lips thin, snakelike, over her teeth. “You’re nexxxt!”
Oh, God.
Horror curdled her blood as she kicked free of the yellowed folds of stained lace, her ankle and leg throbbing. “No, you stupid bitch,” she whispered, her voice just as deadly, her hands searching, grasping for the gun. One fingertip brushed something cold and metal. The pistol! “You are. You’re next!”
“Valerie!” Slade’s voice echoed through the tombs.
“Here!” she yelled desperately, her fingers stretching over the .38’s grip.
Too late.
With a scream of fury, Devota kicked the pistol away. It skittered across the floor. So incensed she nearly lost her balance as she dropped to her knees, she grabbed Sister Charity’s veil and yanked hard, pulling back her head, exposing the mother superior’s white throat. A tiny gold cross dangled and winked from a tiny chain around Charity’s neck, where blood was already running.
“Stop! Don’t!” Val yelled, horrified.
Sister Charity closed her eyes and started praying, her vulnerable throat working as she whispered, “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
In the smokey blue light of the flashlight, Val watched in horror as Devota drew back her knife, then, with a quick stroke borne of hatred, sliced the soft tissue of Sister Charity’s throat.
“Oh, God, no!” Val cried.
Blood spurted from the reverend mother’s throat, showering Devota and spraying against the coffins and walls of the crypt, bloody drops hitting the fleshless corpse of Sister Lea.
The flashlight went rolling, its beam spinning crazily against the tombs. Val caught glimpses of the hollow-eyed skeleton and Sister Charity’s blinking, terrified face as she clutched her throat. Blood, dark and red, seeped through her old fingers, the silver wedding band on her finger disappearing in the ooze.
Their gazes met—mother and daughter. Val, her soul shredding as her mother bled, tried to stand, but her leg gave way and she fell, at the mercy of this beast. . . .
“Don’t,” Charity whispered, pleading with Devota. “Please don’t harm her . . .”
“Shut up!” Devota’s nostrils flared in outrage. “I’m done listening to you!” She kicked the mother superior away.
“Leave her alone,” Val said.
“And I’m not listening to you either!” Devota glared at Val. “You’re as bad as the lot of them. All those stupid women. The girls in this damned orphanage. I tried to point them out to God so he could punish them, but he didn’t seem to listen! Turned a blind eye to their sinful deeds. I meted out punishment, even back then, showed him the sinners. I even broke one girl’s arm as she tried to steal from the bakery, but did he punish her? No! It was all up to me.”
“She was only three,” Charity whispered.
Devota grinned. “Too young to talk.”
Damn it all to hell!
Val had heard enough. This monster had been hurting others, trying to destroy them, since she was a child. She’d probably been building to this point, bit by bit, and if anyone looked hard enough, they would find other victims who had been “punished” by her over the years. She’d escalated, her deeds getting more cruel as time passed. But what had finally pushed her over the edge to murder? Seeing Sister Lea with Father Frank? Falling in love with him herself? Hadn’t Camille’s cryptic message, a heart encased CALLED, included Devota as the D? Who really knew? Probably not even the murderess herself.
Eyes focused on Devota, Val slowly inched her way into the direction the gun had skidded.
&nb
sp; But it was far too late.
“There is no essscape,” Devota hissed, blood splattered all over her twisted, hateful face. She stood slowly, her bloody knife dripping over the bridal dress she’d brought with her. Like a monster from a horror movie, a hideous beast maimed but still bent on its hellish mission, Devota walked forward, dragging the damned dress.
Where’s the pistol? Where?! Val’s hands scrabbled over the rocky floor.
“Don’t . . . please . . . love of God . . . Valerie . . . she’s not . . . she isn’t taking vows,” Charity gurgled. Devota whirled on her.
Frantically, Val reached around her, searching for the .38, silently praying her fingers would encounter the barrel while her eyes were trained on Devota’s twisted face. She tried and failed to ignore the hideous dripping blade dangling from Devota’s blood-drenched fingers.
“I know she isn’t a nun!” Devota said to the crumpled form of Sister Charity. “But she was adopted out, wasn’t she?” Devota’s expression filled with hatred. “She and the whore of a sister of hers, taken in by a family . . .” In the half-light, Devota returned her attention to Valerie. “And he fancied you, too. I saw him lay his hand on your shoulder when you talked to him, just as I saw the light in his eyes when Asteria handed him a rose in the garden, or the way he smiled at Sister Lea . . . Yes, even I fell for his charms, but I was stronger than to give in to my evil thoughts. God helped me see the truth, that I was stronger than those weak, quivering, lusting idiots. Satan tempted them, you know. He lured them into falling for Father Frank, and they all willingly surrendered whatever piety, whatever courage, whatever devotion they’d once thought they’d had. They gave in. I didn’t!” Her voice actually shook for a second. “And he, too, was to blame. God tested him, and Frank . . . Father Frank failed.” She swallowed hard and hesitated for a second, collecting herself.
In a moment of striking clarity, Val knew that Frank had rejected Devota. Sometime, somewhere, she’d been passed over in his affections, just like she’d been passed over and never adopted to a family. Maybe it was real, maybe it was all in Devota’s twisted mind, but the result was the same: one more strike to her battered, malevolent soul.