Three years before, Maggie had created an identity specifically for Rosetown. After creating Charlotte Hart and assuming her role, Maggie bought Rosetown Plaza and had renovated it exactly to the specifications that suited her. The money may have come from organized crime connections some years before then and laundered through their bankers and related accounts but when it had come to Maggie, the cash was clean. She had all the phony credentials to explain why she had so much money and no one had questioned it.
The fifteenth floor of Rosetown, the penthouse, was their refuge. Almost every tangible valuable they owned, aside from the real-estate, were presently stored in truck-trailers in the underground parking garage that had been made private for their own use when Maggie took over. The trucks contained some of their vehicles, although they dared not drive a number of them. They had five rental cars in the garage they would be using until things had blown over some. Also in the trucks were other unheard of valuables in the forms of art, antiques, jewels, furniture, rare and exotic items, and so on. Virginia's home in Pacifica had been cleaned out virtually overnight. Some real estate had been sold. Virginia's home and other properties were left to weather the bad times. Virginia wouldn't sell her house unless she was absolutely certain that she couldn't live there again.
The relationship between the circle and the mafia had always been a tenuous and fluidic one, but never had any one of the circle been killed at the hands of the mob. Ricky Martinez, a long-time friend and employee of Maggie's was hiding with them and was the only one outside of her circle to know about Rosetown. Of course, he knew everything there was to know about them. Maggie had no doubt in Ricky's absolute loyalty and devotion to the circle and she trusted him completely. Sal, on the other hand knew allot, but not everything. Sal was now running around, desperately looking for Maggie and not knowing where to find her. Word was that the mob was hot on his trail. As things were, it would only be a matter of time before the mob found Sal; but Maggie had other plans for him before that happened.
Sal had come to the end of his usefulness and he had never really been that reliable. His association with Maggie had lasted just over a year. There was only one more thing Sal was good for - appeasing Cathy's blood-lust and thirst for revenge. Maggie would see that Cathy would have it and she had been discussing the matter with Cathy more often lately. It was clear that Cathy's desire to pay Sal back still burned fiercely in her heart.
The penthouse on the fifteenth floor, like the underground garage, was impossible to get into without using a private elevator that ran between the two of them. Heavy, steel security gates blocked off the outside garage entrances and the private elevator required a key and a coded card to operate. The only other access to that elevator aside from the ones located in the penthouse and the garage was the one found in the main lobby. The penthouse had a main living room, a large meeting room, and seven private suites with all the accommodations of an apartment to each of them. Aside from these rooms, there was also a complete kitchen, a dining room, a recreation room, and a library.
It was into the library Cathy went now. The library was dominated by dark, stained mahogany tables that were kept separate yet uniform in their placements. Bookshelves surrounded the library, blocking the windows. The windows themselves had been painted over. More shelves encircled the center of the room, lined up so they faced each other and ran, more or less, from an area close to the center and out towards the shelves lining the walls. It was in this central area the tables had been set up, cornered by smaller tables and large, comfortable chairs. The library had two doors that broke the encircling shelves. One door faced South and the other West. Between them on those two walls were four tables and two desks on which each sat a computer. Virginia sat at the desk at the west end of the library. The only other person in the library aside from Cathy and Virginia was Ruby, who sat in one of the chairs reading a book. It was to Virginia that Cathy went.
The computer sitting in front of Virginia was an Aptiva with a large, SVGA monitor. The tower was stocked with a 333 MHZ Pentium II processor, a cable modem, 64 megabytes of RAM, a 6-gigabyte hard drive and a 24x CD ROM drive. It also contained a SoundBlaster card and a 3d accelerator. Attached to it were a color laser printer and a flatbed scanner. It also had a mouse. On the screen was a menu for Windows '98.
"So what do you have?" Cathy asked her. She pulled over a chair from the table to their right and sat down by Virginia. She pushed her ever-lightening brown hair out of her face.
"Other than some joker sending me obscene E-Mail?" Virginia asked.
"Obscene E-Mail?" Cathy asked. "Who would do that?"
"Some guy in Scottsdale, Arizona. He goes by El Glufo, whatever that's supposed to mean. But never mind that. I'll get to him later. Well," Virginia sighed as she grabbed her mouse, "you asked for it, honey, so I'm going to give it to you straight. Are you sure you want it?"
Cathy sighed and looked into the color screen "I need to know," she said.
Virginia used the mouse to move the arrow to a tab on her bar at the bottom of the screen. She clicked her finger down on the button and at once a large window superimposed itself over the desktop screen.
"I had someone I know get this file for me and send it to my address," Virginia said. She maximized the window so it filled the entire screen.
The largest letters at the top of the screen read, 'State of California Superior Court'. Cathy read the rest of the screen:
Catherine Patricia Modura IDNo. 480CM3385 DOB: 19 April, 1980"There it all is," Virginia said. "I've kept my end covered. They'll know someone inquired about you, that is someone performed an unauthorized access on their server but they won't know who or from where. As you can see, if you were convicted of any number of these offenses, it's likely that you would spend the rest of eternity in prison."
SSN: 545-91-3395
Issued Warrants
2nd Degree Murder
1st Degree Manslaughter
1st Degree Manslaughter (2)
Assault and Battery with a Deadly Weapon
Assault and Battery
Unlawful Flight with a Motor Vehicle
Reckless Endangerment
Reckless Endangerment (2)
Disorderly Conduct with a Motor Vehicle
Attempted Murder
Exceeding Posted Speed Limit
"They'll never get me," Cathy said.
"No they won't," Virginia answered. "But they're going to try all the 'violent' offenses in their court as adult charges. The only misdemeanor here is the speeding charge. Everything else are considered serious felonies, all the way from reckless endangerment to the murder of the social worker."
"Fuck her," Cathy said. She turned away from the screen and moved so she was facing Virginia. "Fuck them all... Well, thanks," she said to her, "at least now I know."
Virginia smiled and then shook her head. Something entered her eyes. In the three days she had been stuck here in the fifteenth floor of this building, she had never seen her look at her in such a way. It was an uneasy expression she had on her face as she addressed Cathy.
"And now you have come to us, but you are still separate." Cathy frowned in confusion as Virginia turned her head over her right shoulder. "Ruby's early for a change," she added. Ruby didn't look away from her book or make any other indication that she had heard her.
"The others will be joining us soon," Virginia said. "There are things that need resolution, namely your relationship with the rest of us."
The pit of Cathy's stomach sank. "You want me to leave, don't you? Isn't that it? None of you are prepared to get in trouble over me."
"No, that's not it," Virginia said slowly. The redhead looked at Cathy with her hypnotic blue eyes. "We want you to stay with us, but you don't even know what that means yet. If you do stay here with us you must be one of us, and then we will be together, always."
"I've been waiting for some insight to that for almost two months," Cathy said. "Just tell me what to do."
"It's really very simple," Virginia said. "Maggs will be the one to discuss it with you. The rest of us, the rest of the circle, will witness it. All I can tell you now is that you must commit yourself."
Cathy nodded and a look of rock-hard determination entered her eyes. To Virginia, Cathy's brown eyes seemed to have aged a thousand years and she had this distant look in them. They were the eyes of a killer, Virginia thought, and they made Cathy all that more desirable.
"I am ready for whatever it is," Cathy said. "I told you, I have nothing else."
"All right then," Virginia said. She reached over and grabbed a simple telephone receiver from its cradle aside the mouse and the computer's keyboard. She pressed the pound and the numbers 0 and 7. Virginia waited, and by her expression a moment later, Cathy could tell that someone had picked up. Number seven was Maggie's suite, the largest on the floor. All the rooms were quite large, the floor of the penthouse measuring 170 feet by 130 feet total.
"Yes, Maggs," Virginia began. "She's ready now. Do you want to call the others in? Ruby's already here." She paused while Maggie spoke. "All right then," she finished. She hung up the phone and turned back to Cathy. "They're coming," she said. "Just listen to everything Maggs tells you and if you have any questions please ask. Remember, you may find some of what you hear unpleasant, and you may have to do something you may find difficult. Just try to be patient..."
Virginia took the few moments it took to shut the computer down. Cathy wondered what the unpleasantness was that Virginia spoke of and could think of nothing. Her imagination seemed to be lacking today.
Cathy had been confined to the penthouse but that fact really didn't bother her. All the rooms were equipped with big-screen TVs, stereos, computers, and other such luxuries. Cathy's room even had a waterbed. Cathy could watch the others come and go by route of the elevator. The news from the outside world was always the same. The police were looking everywhere for her.
She had played pool in the rec-room and was learning how to play chess from Zoë. She worked out with both Zoë and Allie in the large area between the meeting room and the laundry room. Allison even sparred with her a little. Allie was twenty-seven years old and had been a boxer while she had been locked up eight years ago. Lindy liked to stay around Cathy allot and since Cathy was always there, she did a good deal of watching out for the little girl. Cathy talked with her, played games, and watched cartoons. Lindy loved the bloody anime features from Japan.
Cathy had been spending more time talking to Maggie and Virginia as of late. Ruby continued to keep her distance from Cathy, though she did so with everyone. Cathy couldn't fathom the schism in the relationship Virginia and Ruby had once shared. Cathy was awed by Ruby's reclusive nature. She would hide in the library whenever she got the chance and no one would see her out and around for hours. The woman hated to socialize.
Virginia's interest in Cathy had escalated but she wasn't so sexually aggressive toward her now as she had been at first. Within the first three days they had known each other, Virginia had tried to kiss her and touch her breasts. Cathy would not allow Virginia's hands or other features to go where they didn't belong and Virginia simply gave up, but she did so in a pleasant way. Virginia had tried to teach her something about computers but Cathy's interest in the machines was next to non-existent. She did enjoy playing the video games for the library computers on CD-ROM. There was also a Sony Playstation in the recreation room that she used to kill a great deal of time with.
Cathy tried not to think of the criminal charges against her but every once in awhile it would occur to her again. She was a killer, a murderer, a predator. The words that Virginia had used to describe the new woman she had become were accurate. Would Cathy kill again? That was another question that haunted her. It had been so easy to split open Vivian Bradley's head. After that, it took nothing to fight the cops down highway 12 so relentlessly. Before her mother died, even after she had died, she would have surrendered to Vivian Bradley without question. Her experiences with her new friends had definitely done something to her. She felt like she could kill again, almost as if it were the inevitable result of an addiction she hadn't come to realize. She knew the victim of such a recurring action was obvious. If she were to kill again she would kill Salvatore Vicchio, without a doubt, and his cohorts too, if she could find them. After all that, then how easy would it be to kill? She knew that all this was merely diversion for her attention, her thoughts. She didn't regret killing Vivian Bradley. She didn't regret the deaths of the two highway patrol officers. She didn't wonder about those they left behind. It seemed her conscience was gone, perhaps misplaced. Maybe it bothered her on some level, as if she had just come apart and had rebuilt herself so differently. The strength was a new thing to her so of course it would be disconcerting at first, but she liked it and she had no intention of giving it up. She was still exploring this new woman she had become and was slowly growing familiar with her new self.
Perhaps the others could help her in that. It was then that Maggie walked into the library and broke Cathy out of her daydream. Maggie wore nothing but a black leotard that fit tightly against her perfect form. Ruby put a marker in her book and closed it as the others filed in behind Maggie. They all took a seat around the table at which Ruby was sitting. Zoë entered dressed in a black robe that was cinched around her waist with a black, silk rope. In one hand she carried a glass bottle resembling a very old wine flask. There was a wooden cork stuffed into the mouth of it. In her other hand, Zoë carried a glass. She sat at the same end of the table as Maggie, across from her.
"Come," Virginia said, rising to her feet and taking Cathy's hand. "It's time."
The mahogany table was about twenty feet in length with a width of four feet. It was at the far end near Maggie and Zoë that they had Cathy sit. Maggie was on Cathy's left and Zoë was to the right. To Maggie's left on that side sat Virginia and then Ruby. To Zoë's right on that side sat Allie and then Lindy. All of them were wearing dark clothes. Aside from Zoë and Maggie's dark apparel, Virginia was in her black miniskirt and a sleeveless black top. Ruby wore and ash-gray tee shirt and a black pair of shorts. Allison wore a full-length dress as did her daughter, Lindy. Both dresses were black. The little girl's hair, as black as her garment, was done up in curls. Cathy herself was dressed in clothes that Maggie had bought for her the night she had been raped. It was a crimson-red, silken one-piece lady's suit that Cathy wore. It was sleeveless and had a revealing separation in the front that ended in a pair of thin, tapering lapels. It was finished off by a knee-length skirt that fit snugly against her buttocks and thighs but still allowed her enough freedom of movement to remain a casual and comfortable piece of clothing. Bright, fluorescent lights crowded the ceiling and brought out the details of everyone's faces, forms and dress.
The fifteenth floor of Rosetown plaza was virtually a single-level mansion with far more room than needed for eight people. Ricky Martinez was not to be seen here. It was still before four in the afternoon and Ricky usually didn't come out of his room until it was after six. He'd be out from six p.m. until six a.m. and either slept or got high in his room while watching TV the rest of the time. His 1964 Impala 2 door hardtop was known by the mob and kept covered in the lower parking garage. It was strictly off-limits until Maggie told him otherwise. The lowered twilight-blue car was unique for it's hood art and chrome and stuck out like a sore thumb. This fact served to compound matters.
Ricky's trips out into the night didn't seem to worry Maggie as much as it did Cathy herself. If someone spotted him they could follow him back here to this place. As far as Cathy knew, and she never spoke with Ricky so she wasn't certain; was that he once dealt coke, pot, smack and meth in his neighborhood in Los Angeles. She wasn't sure if he had ever been in a gang but she had heard others say something about him doing time in San Quentin prison for armed robbery.
Maggie looked at Cathy for a moment with a blank expression on her face. The light-blue contacts over the pink of her irises appeared reflective under the light of the fluorescents. Natural light gave Maggie's eyes warmth. In here her eyes were like balls of ice powdered with frost.
"Most of us know why we're here," Maggie began, still looking at Cathy. "All but one, and it had become time for her to make a choice paramount to the nature of her future. All of us have made this choice in the past and know that it's a final choice that can never be undone. It either binds you with the circle for life or it separates the circle from you... for life."
"The circle can not exist without the seven," Zoë said.
Maggie was looking for some reaction in her, but so far Cathy was determined only to listen and to understand. Cathy was intelligent enough to know that the seven were the seven of them, those sitting about the table. Yet she had to be initiated in order to become one of that seven, one of that circle. Cathy could tell by Maggie's eyes that she knew Cathy really didn't expect anything from this and still doubted the power of magic. Still, Cathy knew she was further along in believing in genuine witchcraft more than she had ever been in the course of her entire life.
Maggie waved her hand in a gesture toward Zoë. The woman lifted the dark, glass bottle and pulled the cork free. Zoë pushed the wine glass, rounded and stemmed, over in front of Cathy. She lifted the bottle and turned her eyes, so dark as to be almost black in color, on Cathy before pouring the sooty-looking black liquid into the glass. It looked like liquid charcoal, the stuff they made you drink in the emergency room when you had ingested a certain kind of toxic substance. It was thick, dark, and chalky in texture. It poured from the bottle as if it were motor-oil.
It was then that the smell of it hit her. It was an odor like bile, like vomit mixed with rot and putrefaction. Cathy drew her head back and wrenched from the stench that attacked her senses.
"You must drink all of this," Zoë said softly, "all that is in the glass."
"You have to be kidding," Cathy groaned. Tears were coming to her eyes from the smell. Zoë re-corked the bottle and moved it back to where it had been before.
"If you want to be one of us then you must drink it," Maggie emphasized. "If you can't do it then you will have to leave us. Please understand; this isn't a game. We want you with us but we must abide by the code laid down in our beliefs. We are bound to honor them. I hope you understand."
Cathy looked at Maggie. The smell seemed to be intensifying, building in the air. "I understand," Cathy said, "but what is it?"
"Find out yourself," Maggie replied. "Drink it and you will know."
"Will it harm me?" Cathy asked. "Will it make me sick?"
Maggie seemed to think on this before giving Cathy a hard look. "No," she finally replied.
The patient and observant expressions each one of them wore as they watched her remained. It was clear that they would sit here for as long as it took to allow Cathy to make her decision, but here it was. Would anything else come after this, she thought? Maybe this was a test of trust, or faith in her friends.
She reached out and cupped the glass in her right hand and found that it, as well as the fluid within, were at room temperature. The smell was sickening. She knew she would probably throw it up before she could get one swallow of it down, yet she was determined to try her best.
She lifted the glass into the air, cupping it with her palm from beneath. The stem ran between her middle and ring fingers and the stand hung beneath her hand. The thick, black fluid seemed to thicken and congeal. A film was forming on the surface and began to slowly rotate in a counter-clockwise direction. With her left hand, she took her nose between thumb and forefinger tightly, cutting off some of the sense of smell. The glass was at her lips and she saw the smile slowly forming on Maggie's face.
Cathy shut her eyes tightly. What was in the glass? It could only hold six or eight ounces at the most. It had looked like more than it really was. She took the rim of the glass with her lips. She fought to force her mind to concentrate on getting it down rather than concentrating on the smell or the taste.
She raised the end of the glass and the liquid flooded her mouth. Vile was not an accurate word for what she tasted. It was so horrible it seemed to burn her tongue and the flesh of her mouth. She forced herself to swallow hard and she filled her mouth again. She picked up the pace; swallow, suck, swallow, suck; and kept replacing the fluid. A wave of nausea shot through her and she nearly wrenched up again. Her face felt cold on the outside and hot underneath. Sweat slicked her face then, beginning to bead and run into her eyes, off of her forehead. She wanted to puke so badly yet she forced this urge as far away from her mind as she could.
The glass had to be half-empty by the angle she held it. The nausea faded and she tilted the glass up, taking great gulps and a wall of heat seemed to pass down through her. Just as she finished the last of it, she felt a horrible tightening begin in her stomach. There was no way she was going to let it come back out when she had fought so hard to get it in. She held herself still and tight, refusing to let the automatic reflex that brought vomiting to take hold. Slower than it had before, it passed and Cathy let out a deep breath and sighed. She sat an empty glass with a dark-grayish, slime-like coating stuck to the surface inside.
Suddenly Cathy went into a burst of coughing. She let her hand off of her nose and opened her eyes. Tears poured out of them and down her face. She began to gag so hard that her throat burned. Again, she had to fight the urge to puke. She pulled back away from the table, pushing with her legs to roll the chair back. Zoë took the bottle and the glass and slid them far away from Cathy's side of the table.
"You did well," Maggie said. "Get her some water please, Ruby."
Maggie patted Cathy on the back forcefully. Drool was dangling from Cathy's lips and the tears were beginning to drip off of her face.
"God, that's disgusting," Cathy said.
Maggie was right, though. Cathy now knew what it was that she had just drank but she didn't know how she knew. In March of 1994, a sixteen-year-old Hispanic woman in Los Angeles was pregnant with a baby girl. She was unmarried and her boyfriend had abandoned her. Sal Vicchio offered to buy the baby for $50 and the young woman accepted, having an addiction to rock cocaine. The transaction was made before the birth and Sal was there, in a place he had rented under an assumed name, to deliver the child himself. Sal had taken the baby back to San Francisco, unnamed and unbaptized. Two days later the girl had been sacrificed, though Cathy couldn't remember where. How could she remember it, she had nothing to do with it...
It was there, nonetheless. The baby was killed, eviscerated and then cooked after some of the bones and small pieces of the organs, including the brain, had been placed in jars. After everything had been cooked and eaten, the small 'samples' were taken somewhere else. There, small pieces of the skull and the brain had been baked and then crushed into a fine powder. That powder had been burned and then the ashes placed into a liquid along with a number of other disgusting things that were too many and too unheard of to recall. The solution had been brewed until every ingredient had completely dissolved. What had remained was the potion that had been bottled for Cathy to one day take a drink from.
Cathy wanted nothing more than to vomit every bit of it onto the table.
"This is the memory of the circle," Maggie said. "Since the circle is still incomplete, you will have only fragments of it. When you are one of us you will know all our history."
"You mean to tell me that I have to do something else?" Cathy asked. "You're kidding, right?"
"I told you this was no game," Maggie said sternly, as if she took mild insult at the inference Cathy had just made.
"You must understand," Zoë said. "Until the circle is complete, we are all vulnerable. We cannot work magic as one until that time. Everything we can do, each of us on her own, amounts to very little when placed next to the might the circle can wield when unified. Without you, we will lose all that we, and those who were before us, have acquired over the years. We've been steadily losing more and more since your grandmother died, and not just in wealth, but in power, control over fate itself. The incident in Pacifica is a perfect example. Such a conflict with the mafia would never have forced us to hide if the circle were one."
"Worse than that," Maggie said, "is that the order no longer recognizes us as a circle any longer, as a coven; and they won't until there is a seventh. Seven is the number for our circle. For others it is four, sometimes as few as three and as many as a hundred and forty-four for some others. Without you, none of us will recover from losing Blossom. Do you still deny the reality of the power that now embraces you? The knowledge of its substance is in you now."
Cathy neither laughed at nor scorned the notion. She looked at Maggie and listened to her impassioned plea for her to believe. Cathy had always thought of magic the same way she thought of UFOs; that they were concepts for emotionally fragmented people who couldn't get a grip on reality; people that needed to "Get a Life".
Still, Cathy couldn't deny that what she knew now had come from the drink. Those memories were quite real and she knew them to be accurate no matter how much she wanted to be ignorant of that fact. The brew had not been a hallucinogenic; this she also knew. The facts came to her. She thought of Virginia's descriptive labels for what Cathy now was: killer, murderer, predator: and now she was a cannibal too. I am evil, she thought, diabolical. She knew she had no feelings for the child that had been killed so that she could ingest this dark medicine the others had prescribed for her. She had no regrets, no remorse, and no guilt. She knew that all she had done was wrong but she no longer cared. She had no compunction about doing those things again. All that had happened changed her and she liked who she was. She wanted to do what she wanted to do and she would do it, without regret. That was where strength and power existed.
"I will not deny anything," Cathy finally said. Ruby handed her a paper cup full of water from the dispenser near the West door of the library. She swallowed all of it, washing the sickening residue out of her mouth and the after-taste that burned in her throat like acid. "I know there is something to what I just drank, some purpose- but I must admit that I am still a little uncertain as to all of this. I still want to learn more of what I must know to be like you. I know that's all I want anymore. I want to know what you know, and possess the same strength that you have."
Maggie did not hide the joy she felt at hearing Cathy say this. She smiled openly and when she rose and stepped close to her, Cathy allowed her to place a soft kiss on her cheek. "Then I welcome you, and," she went on, in a soft whisper, "I have a gift for you, my dear. You will find him at the Sonoma County Fair, which is taking place just two blocks from here. We had better get you a costume."
***
Paul, Frank, and Johnny were dead. Robert Marceano had been whacked out at the worst possible time, right along with the man who had come to see him that night - Tony. There had been more to it than that, and Sal knew it. Marceano had been trying to push his way into Sal's business forever and turn Sal into one of his dumb, mindless lackeys who did as he was told and had no freedom. Someone had known what was going on between Sal and the Don and he didn't know whom. All Sal knew was that someone had set him up. Marceano was dead and the family had pinned it on him. They wanted both Sal and Maggie dead as a consequence.
Maggie had done business with him for about a year now. Maggie and her friends had sold him information at first, turning him on to people all over the world who were just looking for the right guys on the inside of the USA to set up with the connections. Sal had been able to do that. Everything he needed to know about who he needed to be plugged into, Maggie and the others kept him provided with. He had Colombians, Cubans, and a network of smugglers plugged into the mafia operations in San Francisco and Miami. It was Sal who had facilitated everything from jewels to cocaine to stolen valuables imported from all over the world. He had people in China, Japan, India, Germany, Russia, Poland, Austria, Britain, Ireland, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Italy, Australia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, and in Israel. Guns, drugs, diamonds, plundered artifacts, stolen art, and rare collectibles: all these things he made the international mobility of possible for his clients. The syndicate had never been all the way in on what he ultimately put together with the information Maggie Fontaine's little 'Franchise' made available to him. He didn't know where they got their news and he didn't care, but it was always as if they had simply pulled it all out of a hat somehow. All he was concerned with was putting what he learned to good use. The Italian Mafia usually wouldn't touch narcotics; or at least they weren't supposed to. It was an old rule. Maggie kept him up to date on who he could deal with on drugs instead. The money he had made had been beyond his wildest imaginings. Maggie and her friends had been the source of all the information that made any of it work and he could have never survived without them. Making decisions in his job was like making bets. With Maggie, he had always known the outcome of every bet before hand and had known exactly where to put his money each and every time, flawlessly.
Together, Sal and Maggie had made more than a billion dollars apiece during the past year, and that was aside from the favors they did for each other every once and awhile. A lot of the other girls in Maggie's club such as Virginia and Zoë had similar businesses of their own going on. They owned property everywhere and possessed ridiculous amounts of money.
Sal himself had nothing any longer, not even his damned restaurant. The last three days had been the worst of his life. His closest friends had been killed by mob hit men, all but Maggie Fontaine who had disappeared along with her associates. He hadn't even known they were gone until it was all over. All the money he had possessed in property and in accounts disappeared as people he worked with for years stabbed him in the back and went over to side with the new representatives the mob set up in place of Marceano. The members of their syndicate were taking over all his non-narcotic related business while Federico Gutierrez in Cuba took over the drug connections and smugglers for himself. Everyone was thinking the same thing, that Sal had fucked up, was dead, or could no longer do business even if he survived somehow: which made him as good as dead anyway. Men he was connected to through Marceano were moving in to take his place and work directly with guys that Marceano had been hooked up to through him. Sal had nothing except for a marginal amount of cash and a new car. This was shit to what he was used to. Even his Cadillac had been pulled from under his name. The syndicate had the power to do pretty much what they wanted to do to anyone, and he was no exception.
Aside from the four hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash locked in the trunk of the 1998 Subaru Legacy Sedan he had recently purchased under a bogus name, he had nothing. He had to do away with anything that could tie him to who he really was. He had no credit cards, no health insurance, and no social security number - nothing. All he had was a fake driver's license.
All Sal could do was run and live in hotels and stay on the move. He knew that half a million dollars was allot but he knew how fast that money would be used up, especially knowing his own habits.
There was only one person on Earth who could help him any longer. That person was Maggie Fontaine. If his luck had really turned to shit, she would want him dead too. He knew she trusted him, or at least he thought that she did. She knew that he wouldn't go out and kill Robert Marceano, their most valued pipeline to the rest of the country for non-narcotics (most of the time, but not always). Lindy had been sent to infiltrate and spy on Marceano the same night he had been killed. Maybe Lindy could help them all determine who was responsible for all this shit.
Sal moved from hotel to hotel, jumping all over the northwest section of California and hardly staying in one place for more than twelve hours. He had been looking over his shoulder, growing more fatigued every moment from the lack of sleep, and growing far more paranoid with the pressure. Sal had cut his hair ultra-short and had started wearing baggy pants and big tee shirts. He didn't shave for the last 3 days. With this and everything else, he figured he looked more like a spic than a wop. The wide, dark plastic sunglasses he wore completed the disguise.
Sal still knew some low-life drug dealers that worked the streets and knew how to get in touch with people that could get him in touch with Ricky Martinez and hence, Maggie Fontaine. It had taken the last two days for a message to get back to him. Someone was to meet him here at the fair and take him to meet Maggie. He didn't know whom he was supposed to meet but he was to be by the Ferris Wheel at 5 o'clock PM that evening. By his cheap, digital watch it was 4:49. He had been told to come alone, which he had. He prayed that whoever came wasn't coming to kill him or deliver him to the mob for a happy death-day torture celebration. Just in case, he had a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver tucked away in his pants next to his prick.
The Sonoma County Fair wasn't often held in February and today was the third of that month, a Tuesday. The fair would be running for the weeks of February 1rst through the 14th. The fairgrounds were crowded with rides, games and other events including 4H and live musical entertainment. A Rock 'n Blues group was playing at the band shell. During the time he had been there, they had covered a number of songs from more popular blues bands.
The smell of corn-dogs and other foods reached him, carried by the breeze. If he were here under other circumstances, he would actually have been hungry. He passed a cotton-candy stand where a man dressed in red and white striped pants and coat, wearing a flat-brimmed hat of straw, was entertaining some kids. Not even the dumbest fuck of a mob hit man would open fire in such a place as this, he thought. After he was in the car he knew he would no longer be safe. Maggie said that only one person would be coming to get him, however; and with his gun and his wits, he felt he would be okay.
He was getting closer to where the band was playing. He saw the Ferris Wheel past a few stands and two rides. One of those rides was the Gravitron, a fast-spinning centrifuge in which people sat against the inside, circular wall while experiencing exaggerated G-forces while being elevated above the floor. The other ride was a merry-go-round, which looked far tamer than the centrifuge.
Hundreds of people were gathered in front of the band shell. He could see the three band members on the stage. A white guy, whom to Sal at least, appeared as if were trying to be Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar. A heavy-set black man played bass guitar and another black man played the drums. All three of them were taking turns doing the lead vocals and although they weren't the best singers Sal had ever heard, they weren't the worst either. From here, the music was so loud and the area was so crowded that he began to doubt that he and Maggie's representative could find each other. The people in the crowd were dancing and pushing against each other between him and the Ferris Wheel. He looked up at the ride as it turned, a big, yellow-painted wheel of steel framework with twelve white and blue enclosed carriages. The long, red neon tubes on the sides were flickering as the machine turned over and over. Very few people were riding it and there was no line that he could see.
Someone familiar was standing about twenty feet from the Ferris Wheel itself behind the crowd. Even the operator of the Ferris wheel was watching the band as they played nearby, rocking his head forward and back gently. Still, the woman at the Ferris Wheel looked at him and he looked back at her. He took off his shades so she could see his eyes.
The girl was wearing a fake, blonde wig, which was stringy and ridiculous by its bright color alone. She had on a huge pair of dark, red plastic rimmed sunglasses. Sal recognized her by her lips and her nose. She wore baggy jeans and a blood-red tee shirt. "Why did Maggie have to send her of all people," he grumbled. Yet he was also relieved. At least it was someone he knew. Perhaps Maggie wanted him to know that she wasn't sending someone to kill him after all; and maybe she wanted the pleasure herself, he mused at the same time.
The only way to get past the audience in front of the band shell was to move behind them which meant going around a number of game stands: pellet guns, skeet ball, and a dunk toss. Kids ran everywhere, holding toy animals and prizes, none of them paying a damn bit of attention to where the hell they were going. When Sal got near Cathy, she began to move away. At once, he began to run after her.
He made his way closer to the Ferris Wheel, uncomfortable in the baggy pants. He saw her duck into one of the carriages. He barely made it into that same carriage before the operator took his ticket and closed the door. Sal dropped onto the seat opposite Cathy's side. The carriage moved, rising higher and then stopping halfway up as the operator loaded another carriage.
Cathy looked at him and took off her glasses. Her eyes had changed, he thought. Somehow they seemed darker and colder than he remembered them. All the flamboyant youth was gone now. Her eyes were that of someone older and they were devoid of naivety, innocence, and compassion. She smiled at him with a malicious gleam in her eyes that disturbed him.
"All right," Sal said. "Maggie sent you to take me to see her, and don't take this the wrong way, but I've already talked to you as much as I want to, 'kay sweetheart? So why don't we just get off this thing when it stops and get on our way?"
Cathy frowned. Sal was nervous, this she could tell at once. "What's the matter, baby?" she asked him. "Don't you wanna have a quickie first? Don't ya wanna fuck me?"
Sal looked past her and shook his head. "Let's forget what happened last week. It's in the past, okay? I was drunk and my partners were drunk. I'm sorry if it got out of hand. We were just trying to give you a good time."
Cathy's expression didn't change. She looked both amused and accusing at the same time. "But you did give me a good time. You have me trained now, addicted. Don't you know? I can't get enough of your hard dick, Sal. Why don't you give it to me fast and hard right now? I'll suck you and then you can bang my pussy. You do want to stuff my pussy, don't you baby?"
Cathy had her hands on his thighs, rubbing up and down the dark, baggy pants. Sal looked down at her as she got down on her knees and began pulling his fly open. He hesitated, confused. He did and didn't want this, but what would happen if he refused or if he complied? He chose to let her, just for the moment.
Sal remembered the pistol when Cathy had found it. She held the revolver in her right hand, the muzzle pointing into his belly. "What is this for?" she asked him. "Naughty boy, you weren't going to try using this on Maggie after all she's done for you, now were you, baby?" He looked at her and then at the gun, unable to reply because of the shock, the growing fear. Then Cathy simply tossed the gun out the space over the door. Down it fell. No one noticed it drop close to the large, electric motor that turned the Ferris Wheel. Sal reached out and snatched her arms by the wrists. Holding them both, he looked down at her face and sighed deeply, pushing the sudden fear that had overtaken him at the sight of his own gun pointing at him away.
"Let's just get on our way," he said, looking into her eyes with a frown on his face.
Cathy broke free of his hold, grabbing his soft cock with a fierce grip that made Sal stand up. With her other hand she pulled his jeans down to his ankles, along with his underwear. He sat down and looked around with a half-embarrassed expression on his face.
"Let's wait until we get back to wherever Maggie is?" Sal suggested. Cathy swung his prick straight up and sucked it in between her lips, moaning and humming. He could feel his cock expanding sharply in her mouth. Her dark-brown eyes looked up at him, her eyelids half closed. She was sucking him in deep, squeezing his swollen balls in the palm of her right hand.
She was down on her knees with his dark-skinned, inflated cock pumping into her mouth. He watched her saliva coat his meaty shaft and drip down onto his dark scrotum. Her tongue poked out again and again, caressing the belly of the shaft. Her cheeks were drawn in from the force of the suction. She sucked his cock deep into her face.
She twisted her head around as she brought it up and down, letting him take her by the back of the head and thrust deep into her throat. His balls were against her face. The Ferris wheel went around once and the operator could have seen them clearly if he hadn't been watching the musicians. Their music nearly drowned the sounds of Cathy's slurping and smacking out of Sal's ears, but not completely
Cathy was pulling him deeper into her mouth, beginning to suck his scrotum as well. Then she slowly drew the entire length of his erection into her throat.
"God, I hope this ride doesn't end before I cum!" Sal cried out.
Struggling, Cathy pushed forward with one last effort, swallowing his eight-inch cock and straining until both of his balls popped one by one past her lips and into her mouth. Then she sucked in the rest of his scrotum and pushed her face right up against the flat, muscular surface of his abdomen.
Sal was on the verge of the most powerful orgasm of his life. His entire shaft was planted deep in Cathy's throat with the head down in her esophagus. Cathy had been holding her breath so long and he didn't know how long she could keep it up. She rolled his balls and his sack in her mouth with tremendous sucking pressure with her lips cinched hard around the vary bottom of all of it, up against his abdominal wall. He grabbed the back of her head forcefully and pushed his hips against her face as hard as he could. She seemed to open her mouth wider, sucking harder with saliva littering everything between his legs. She swallowed hard over and over again as if she wanted to eat him.
The semen was already rushing from his cock-head when a sudden, painful sensation exploded throughout his entire lower half. Cathy's teeth tore through his hardened penis, ripping his scrotal sack free and taking both of his testicles with it. She threw her head back and ripped a hunk of tissue out from inside of his body with a ripe, ripping noise. Blood erupted everywhere, shooting in powerful jets from his barren and gaping crotch. Part of his bloodstained scrotum was hanging from Cathy's mouth.
No one could hear Sal scream as Cathy drew back away from him. Her smiling face was red with his blood. The guitarist was again making his instrument thrum and cry over all other sounds.
Crimson splashed Sal's thighs and poured out onto the floor of the carriage. Cathy sat up straight, her hands soaked with his blood. Her maroon shirt looked like it was wet being that it was almost the same color of his blood. Ever her cheap, blonde wig was smeared with it. She took off the wig and threw it down onto the floor. Bits of his torn and splattered testicles were stuck to her cheeks in a mess of gore. Whitish semen turned a pink color as it was smeared together with blood and stained her chin. Sal began to fall forward as dizziness overtook him, hot and nauseated with the onset of shock.
Suddenly, Cathy was up and shoving him back against the seat and his head hit the wall behind him with a thud. She had a fierce, malicious grin on her face, her bloodstained teeth gritted together. He could see the remains of his sexual organs in her mouth one moment and then she swallowed hard and her mouth was clear. The lumpy pieces of mangled meat that were his cock, balls, and sack went down through her esophagus as she gulped three times and entered the acids of her stomach.
With her throat clear, she could talk. "You forgot something the other night, my prince," she said as she pulled something out of the baggy pocket of her blue jeans. She held up the switchblade and clicked it open. The metal blade flashed up into the light with a snap.
Grimacing with pain and weak from the sudden, massive loss of blood, he reached forward with an uncoordinated left hand. His other hand was between his legs where there was nothing but a mutilated and haggard gash that bled all over his palm, his thighs, and the seat under him.
"Maggie sends her regards, Sal," Cathy said. She then stabbed Sal in the stomach, sinking the knife deep into his belly and cutting up on his right side and then across to the left in a great, wide N figure. She cut straight through the muscles of his abdomen and his intestines burst out with a fresh rush of blood. Sal shut his eyes and began coughing painfully.
This smelled like the drink, Cathy thought; yet it was fresh and for some reason it made her salivate. She grabbed a handful of the heavy, dripping intestines. They were covered in muck, threatening to slip out of her hands. She wrapped several of the pinkish-red cords through the bars of the carriage's frame above and then wrapped a length of his intestines near the middle several times around his throat. She pulled two more layers of the intestines underneath and made a strangling knot, fighting with the guts as they slithered in the blood dripping from her palms. The noose would tighten under pressure. She reached outside the carriage and undid the latch for the door, letting the opened and bloodied knife fall to the floor.
The door swung open easily as she kicked it. Then, with all her might, she thrust the barely alive form of Sal Vicchio out of the carriage.
Sal fell in a horizontal position through the air; the carriage on it's way up on that side of the turning wheel. He reached the end of the intestinal rope about ten feet down. Guts hung in loops from his abdomen, his pants and his red, bloody underwear hanging from his ankles. His torn and blood-dripping crotch was visible to all below.
The intestines acted more like a bunji-cord than a rope in that they stretched and pulled Sal back into the air. He bounced twice before he began to swing back and forth by his neck. He was dead, Cathy realized with satisfaction, although she couldn't tell if he still struggled to breathe. Even so he would be dead soon. Revenge was sweet indeed. She licked some of the spermy gore from her lips and made ready to jump from the carriage.
The Ferris Wheel came around and Sal's body was lowered to the ground as the carriage descended the side furthest from the band shell. Cathy jumped, leaving the knife, the wig, and the sunglasses behind. She touched down on the dusty soil the Ferris Wheel had been set up on. There was a main street just behind the band shell and this is where she made for, keeping far left of the crowd as she made past the right side of the band shell facing her and the spectators.
A man noticed her as she passed. The eyes of his wife and daughter followed his and both of the females began to scream. Cathy could see the road ahead. Behind her, the Ferris wheel was dragging Sal's corpse through the dirt and then pulling him back up into the air.
Cathy realized suddenly that the music had stopped. It was replaced by screaming and chaotic shouting. Everyone, taken in by the music had taken several long moments to realize there was a mutilated corpse hanging from the Ferris Wheel by it's own intestines just behind them.
The guitarist was still at his microphone, unsure if what he saw was a gag. "What the fuck?" he sighed.
A brown 1980 Ford Granada screamed to a halt and the rear, right side door swung open. Cathy hopped inside and pulled the door closed. Maggie was to her left and Zoë was driving the stolen vehicle, picked up last night by Ricky before Cathy's brew ceremony this morning. Zoë hit the gas and they pulled away from the curb quickly. Those who had seen her first came running toward the street in a useless attempt to identify the get-away vehicle.
Maggie handed her a towel. "Interesting methods," she said. "God, he bled all over you, didn't he?"
Cathy took the towel and pushed her face into it, wiping as much gore from her face and her hands as she could. She tried in vain to get the blood off her shirt and pants but it stuck.
"Wipe the door-handle," Maggie said. "We can't leave any prints."
Zoë and Maggie were both wearing gloves. Maggie was now handing Cathy a pair of the white, elastic, disposable latex surgical gloves and Cathy slipped them on.
"He didn't cut you, did he?" Maggie asked.
"No, its all his blood," Cathy answered. She still felt the exhilaration of the kill.
"Are you sure?" Maggie asked her.
"Positive."
"Good," Maggie sighed. "Then that's all they'll find in this car."
They were a block away when they bailed out and ditched the car. They could hear the sirens as a number of emergency vehicles rushed to the fair grounds. Virginia was waiting for them in a black Oldsmobile Delta '88 four-door. The three of them piled in and sped off for Rosetown Plaza.
***
An elevated wall surrounded the roof, meant perhaps to add a safety feature to the building but it also kept any prying eyes from the roofs of surrounding buildings from peering in at her. It may have also been there to keep people from jumping but Cathy couldn't imagine anyone who couldn't just climb on top of it.
Air conditioners sat on top of the roof over in one corner where the ventilation pipes for the plumbing and exhaust fans came up, all a good distance from Cathy. She could hear the deep, electric humming of the huge motors as they pumped chilled water down into the various floors where individual fans worked to keep each apartment cool. Still, it really wasn't that warm yet as it was only the seventh of February. It was Saturday, and just before four in the afternoon. The high-temperature for the day would be seventy-seven degrees, warmer than usual but not so bad. The elderly residents of Rosetown felt terribly insecure without their air conditioning and often kept their apartments as cool as sixty degrees. Maggie had the air-conditioning available every day of the year and the building was equipped with a separate gas heating system, which was also always available. Maggie wasn't concerned about managing Rosetown as a revenue generating enterprise, only as a hide-away.
Neither the employees nor the resident managers ever entered the fifteenth floor. Access to the roof was gained through a stairwell. Doors in the stairwell to the fifteenth floor were always locked. The only ones ever allowed in presently were Maggie, her six comrades, and Miguel Ricardo Martinez, who preferred to be called Ricky.
The roof, other than housing the big air-conditioners, also served as an arboretum. There hadn't been sufficient depth or structural support in the construction of the roof to permit the installation of a pool, unfortunately. They had instead, been able to put in three feet of dirt in some spaces and box them in with concrete walls. Steps had been placed next to these walls so that people could have easy access to the soil. Grass, flowers, and small trees were planted in these areas. The depth of the soil was unsuitable for large trees and their deeper roots. Everything was watered by an automatic sprinkler system.
Cathy was in one corner of the arboretum that was about forty feet wide on one side and eighty feet on the other. She had moved her lawn-chair away from the table and the umbrella around two-thirty that afternoon. Sunbathing nude, she wore nothing, not even a silver bracelet Zoë had given her. Her clothes, a long-sleeved blue shirt of silk and a blue skirt, sat along with her underclothes. Nearby were her shoes and her jewelry, the bracelet, a watch, and a gold-chain necklace. Lying here, she had been turning a quarter of the way over every fifteen minutes. In the two days she had been doing this, all her tan lines had vanished and her skin was taking on a rich, golden tone and was well on it's way to a dark copper-bronze.
From up here, she couldn't hear the traffic and the other noises of the city. Santa Rosa wasn't a very large town, having a population of approximately half a million. Yet, with that many people it wasn't small either, and it was growing very fast. The downtown area of the city had a few modest-sized buildings, and Rosetown was one.
Nowhere else could Cathy find such leisurely comfort and peace. The sound of the air-conditioners was muted and soft from this distance and the sound of the breeze dominated all other noise. It was all so oddly soothing to her, but she wouldn't question it. On seldom occasion, a helicopter would fly overhead, or a small plane during the course of a day. So what if any aircraft flew above their building and saw her, she thought. She doubted anyone could identify her from way up there and the fact that they could see her was fun and exciting in a way, that a pilot could drool and pop a boner while watching her. More importantly, her lack of inhibitions made her feel free.
Cathy heard the stairwell door open and listened to the clicking of a woman's wood-soled shoes. She knew at once that it was Maggie just by listening to the rapid pace.
Cathy looked up from her chair. Maggie was in white again, the color she had been wearing the past two days. Everything she wore was loose, allowing her skin to breathe. Cathy watched as she went to the protective shade the umbrella offered and set herself down gently into a chair there. Cathy could only imagine how tender an albino's skin was faced with the rays of the sun.
"Don't you know that malignant melanoma is the most serious, life-threatening form of cancer there is?" Maggie asked her. "Why don't you come sit with me in the shade?"
"They know that I'm the one who killed Sal, don't they?" Cathy asked, answering Maggie's question with her own.
"Well, let's see. You left the weapon, which had your fingerprints, by the way. More bloody fingerprints were found all over the seat on the Ferris wheel. You left the wig and the glasses, not to mention Sal's gun. I would say so, dear," she finished with a chuckle.
"I figured they would," Cathy said. She got up and walked across to another chair at the table and umbrella. "Does it really matter, adding first degree murder to the charges already against me?"
"It can," Maggie warned her. "The police have just declared you a serial killer. They tried to connect you to the mob, being that you killed Sal who they knew was already tied into the mob. In the end, they couldn't, so they assumed that it wasn't a hit and just coincidence, that you've gone totally psycho or something like that. However, our old gangster pals believe differently."
Cathy laughed. "They're figuring it was you who sent me, aren't they?"
"Yes, and they're right, though you did what you did because you wanted to, I just pointed a finger. Yet the mob doesn't have any real idea of our power. They know nothing about any of us except that we worked with Sal and the police have no idea that I even exist at all. That's because we had people like Sal working with the mob directly. We stayed the hell out of the way. Sal depended on what we told him. When he lost us, he lost everything.
"I'm sorry their paid killers found Sal's friends before we could," Maggie finished.
Cathy shook her head. "As long as I got Sal, I'm happy."
Maggie smiled and pushed her hair back.
"A serial killer, huh?" Cathy asked Maggie. Maggie was looking at Cathy's lean, nude form through her blue sunglasses and she knew that Maggie was excited and enticed, hungry for her. She could almost smell the desire coming off of her.
"I've killed four people in less than a week," Cathy said, "but only one of those killings was deliberate. Yet, I guess the name fits. They wouldn't have any way of knowing which ones were on purpose and which ones weren't; except, of course, where Sal was concerned. Virginia must be tickled pink to hear what they're saying about me."
"You're notorious, Cathy," Maggie said, still smiling. "The whole state has seen you on the news and you're scheduled to appear on "America's Most Wanted". Not only are you a serial killer, but you're also a cop killer, and because of the way you mutilated Sal: nice touch, by the way; leaving him hanging from the Ferris Wheel like that: you're also considered to be someone who kills because you like it. They say you're a psychotic, homicidal maniac; that you kill for fun and no reason. In the eyes of society that makes you the most dangerous kind of fugitive. I wonder what a cop would think if he were to see you from a helicopter, not realizing who he's seeing."
"A naked woman he'd like to fuck," Cathy said. "What else do men see when they look at a woman with a body like mine? They're all the same."
"You're unique," Maggie said. "I would have never imagined an underage serial killer who possessed such exquisite beauty."
"Beautiful?" Cathy asked, "Do you really think so?"
"Don't be absurd. You know you're beautiful."
Cathy nodded. "Oh yes, I know I'm beautiful. I just didn't think you thought so."
"Now you're being conceited," Maggie smiled.
Cathy shrugged. "Would you rather I dressed?"
"I'd cry if you did," Maggie said.
Cathy turned her head so she could look directly at Maggie. Maggie looked back. Cathy's hair was becoming lighter from the sun and her skin was naturally darker. It seemed her eyes were darker too, something everyone had noticed. The change in Cathy's eyes had first been apparent to Virginia. It was Virginia who had predicted Cathy's trouble when the cops had been chasing her. She had also divined Cathy's location. Virginia had used methods Maggie had used when she first realized that Cathy was in their limited perceptual range, back when Cathy had first come to Santa Rosa, to the hospital there the day her mother had been killed in the accident. If Blossom had still been with them and the circle still one, they would have been able to find Cathy and her mother anywhere on the planet.
"I thought that you said I wasn't your type?" Cathy said. "Why should it matter?"
"Maybe I changed my mind," Maggie answered. "Have you changed yours?"
"Changed my mind about what?" Cathy asked, shaking her head, but Maggie was certain that Cathy knew full well what she was talking about.
Maggie didn't answer. She turned her head and looked off into the blue sky. Wispy clouds were drifting along the western horizon.
"Even if I had changed my mind about that," Cathy said, "that I had found myself wanting you, there would still be Zoë to consider. I wouldn't hurt her in such a way and I can't believe that you would hurt her either."
"And what if I told you that Zoë has been hurting me that same way for a very long time now?" Maggie asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't suppose you've noticed anything strange about the way Zoë behaves," Maggie said, "except that she's jealous of me. Once I was jealous of her also, but no longer. Zoë is a professional at hiding anything from anyone, but if you were to take a closer look at Ruby..."
"Ruby?" Cathy asked. She's a lazy, introverted bookworm. "What could be going on with Ruby?"
"Virginia did everything in the world for that girl. Ruby was nothing but a cocktail waitress in a bar, doing pornography on the side; but she was so self-conscious and such a terrible actress that they got rid of her. You don't think those gigantic tits of hers are real, do you?"
Cathy shook her head. "I hadn't thought about it."
"Ruby couldn't hide the fact from Virginia and she sure as hell couldn't hide it from me. Zoë could hide it, but Ruby gave both of them away. Virginia told everyone what they were doing behind our backs. That's why Ruby stays away from everyone. She's talked to you more than anyone else in the past six months. Virginia still loves Ruby and she'll never give up on her deep down; but Ruby loves Zoë and Zoë loves her too. That's why Ruby and Zoë talk about Virginia behind her back. The reason Virginia hasn't told you about Ruby and Zoë is because she wants you now. She's afraid that if you knew Zoë was unfaithful to me that you'd come to me instead of her. Virginia wants you to think I'm unattainable."
"Are you saying you aren't?" Cathy asked. "You said Zoë was still jealous. What would she do if I were to come to you?"
"Zoë isn't the only one who would feel jealous... possessive. Virginia already talks like you're hers. At the same time she thinks of you like a little sister, an object of adoration. Remember how she was back at her house when you were angry with her? She felt that you were against her and she already knew that Zoë was. She's uncertain about all of us. She needs love so much and she's looking to you for it."
"And by coming to you, I'd hurt her," Cathy pointed out. "Which is why I could never do such a thing. I can't bear to hurt any of you. I know I love all of you now. All of you are my only world. Who care's about the rest of humanity, I don't. You six are all I have. If by coming to you I hurt Zoë and Virginia, even if I was really sure it's what I wanted, such a thing just isn't worth it."
"We all love each other," Maggie said. "Even Zoë loves Virginia and vice versa and Ruby loves Virginia and me but we all still find ways to hurt each other and get angry at each other. Allison would also be upset if you were mine. She has no one because she never gives up on the prospect of having me and she's been waiting for me to give up on Zoë."
Cathy nodded. "And now you're to that point."
Maggie shook her head and took off her glasses. She wiped her forehead. "Why does it have to be so goddamn hot?"
"It's a heat wave," Cathy said. "It will pass in a couple of days."
Cathy herself didn't think it was hot at all. Granted, it was close to eighty but most people found a break from the cold, wet weather highly enjoyable. Maggie seemed to have an affinity for the cold. "I can't be sure that I'm in love with any one of you," Cathy said, returning to the subject at hand. "I know that I do love all of you and I know now that you're the best friends that anyone could have. I understand now why you love each other like you do. I know now because, like you, I know there is no one else for me except for my companions in the circle. We are all each other has. I'm not saying that a day will never come when I find myself in love with you or Virginia. If I loved you, I'd hurt Virginia, Allie, and Zoë. If I got to Virginia, I'd risk hurting you and Ruby."
"Do not doubt that one day, if you come into the circle..." Maggie started.
"There is no if," Cathy said boldly. "I am joining the circle."
"Then there's no if about you someday having a lover who is also a member of the circle, another woman. You already have two who want you, two you can decide between. Either way someone is hurt, but there can be no pleasure where there is no pain. Do not doubt that you won't choose, because eventually you will. You will find that you need someone special to you, even when you have love that is common to all of us. I love my coven and every woman in it, every girl; of which there is only one now. Someday Lindy will also take a lover, but for now she is a child."
"And since the circle has an odd number of members, seven; someone is always alone. Not everyone gets to have someone special," Cathy said.
"For now, you are alone; as both Allie and Lindy are: but nothing lasts forever. Relationships will break apart. I do not expect any of us to die for many decades but some day one of us will go. By that time we must have candidates who can join the circle and take their place. As situations change, all that time before we've grown old, you will find others in the circle who want you."
"What about my grandmother?" Cathy interjected suddenly. "I don't imagine my grandfather, Willie was part of the circle? How was it my mother was born if those in the circle are limited to only those who are part of the circle with them?"
"You are not limited, Cathy," Maggie started. It was clear to Cathy that she was trying to suppress some amusement in response to Cathy's direct approach on the subject, almost an attack really. "Your grandmother had a lover in the circle once and when she died… well, Blossom did not speak much of her. It all happened when they were both still very young. After she was gone, she wanted to have a daughter. This is why she chose to be with a man and since the circle has never had a warlock, she chose to accept the love of a man who lived his life loving her; yet to Blossom, he was as a stranger - though he did serve his role…" Maggie's eyes trailed off, "and then some," she added in a bitter tone.
"So she did not love him?" Cathy asked.
"That is not entirely true, she had some affection for him, some degree of it, but she could never really be close to him the way two people who share all should be.
"If you ever want a child of your own Cathy, there are ways," Maggie added quickly.
"Artificial insemination," Cathy nearly laughed.
"It works," Maggie shrugged. "They didn't have it in your grandmother's day or I imagine she would have taken advantage of it."
Cathy shook her head and pushed it all away, returning then to the center of the subject. "If I went to Virginia, you went to Allie, and Zoë and Ruby could be happy and committed; then everyone could be happy: that is if everyone were willing to give up their past relationships. I still don't know if I could love a woman in such a way but if I could, I would make the choice which wouldn't hurt anyone."
Maggie smiled. "Those are sweet sentiments, especially coming from a serial killer. Nothing ever works out so well as that, though. Old jealousies could never completely fade, but let's not think of it anymore. What will happen will happen."
"I can live with that," Cathy said. "It doesn't do any good to make plans at the moment for such a thing. As you say, what will happen will happen, regardless..."
Cathy could see that Maggie's head was down and that she was putting her glasses back on. She was hiding the rejection she felt, or was at least trying to. Guilt, a feeling Cathy had forgotten since the day she had killed Vivian Bradley stabbed into her deeply. She hadn't wanted to hurt anyone in the group. That was why she had been so adamant about staying out of it. Yet in doing this, she had already hurt Maggie, the one she owed the most. Maggie was the greatest friend she had ever had.
"I have something for you," Maggie sighed. She reached for a small bag she had brought with her and placed it on the table between them. She reached in and pulled out five stacks of tightly bound one hundred dollar bills.
"This is fifty-thousand dollars," Maggie said. "It's the sum I planned to offer to whoever killed Salvatore Vicchio. I had yet to make a contract with anyone but I will overlook that little formality considering how fond I am of you. It's yours, and you may still need it if things don't proceed as anticipated."
Cathy reached out and lifted the first stack. In each stack there was ten thousand dollars, one hundred $100 bills. Each stack was around an inch and a half in thickness. Cathy didn't know what Maggie expected her to do with the money. Cathy had everything she could ever want now that she was with them and she didn't know how the money could help her if she were on her own. The cops would pick her up in no time at all without their protection.
Cathy placed the first stack back on top of the others. Maggie put all of them back into the small, black leather bag. She zipped it closed and left it on top of the table in front of Cathy.
"You initiation will take place tomorrow night," Maggie said in a voice that was cold and a touch bitter. Again, Cathy was reminded that Maggie felt hurt. "You will need to select a baptized child to serve as the sacrifice..."
"But I thought an unbaptized..."
"Not for this ceremony," Maggie said. "At Blockula or any other mass gatherings, only unbaptized children are permitted for such things. In this case you must prove your worth by destroying an enemy of our master."
It stung. She knew about that part, of course, having drunk the contents of that cup; but she was still foggy on the details. She knew that she would have to make regular sacrifices, and that didn't bother her. She didn't care about others anymore, not even children. Yet somehow it made her a touch uncomfortable. I can handle this, she thought: I am both a serial killer and a cop killer. What is it to become a child killer also?
"Does the child have to be anyone in particular?" Cathy asked. She found the ice in her own voice unusual, something alien to her. It was as if knowing she would carry this out made her feel evil and less human, colder in a way.
"Not really," Maggie said, "but if it can be someone you are familiar with, someone you have feelings for, then it will give the sacrifice more meaning. The whole point is to feel the loss for the sake of our master."
"Who is Satan," Cathy said without emotion.
"Yes," Maggie replied, "who is Satan. I have already explained to you what really exists can't be divided into good or bad. They are part of each other and inseparable. Pleasure and pain, gain and loss; these things are companions to one another. You must forget everything the world taught you about Satan. He is the real god because he affirms that all is inseparable. Take for example, the drink. You had to suffer its vileness to gain the knowledge. You and everyone else must pay for pleasure with pain. If this sacrifice makes you feel pain then it is a better sacrifice for the love you will prove to our lord and master. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Cathy said. With some sarcastic amusement in her tone she went on, "There's only one child that I can recall ever really knowing, ever caring for. Yet I've also hated him, you see. I've hated his whole family for betraying me. I can't think of anyone better to serve as my sacrifice than Tommy Kane."
"That will be perfect," Maggie said. She looked at Cathy and then at the bag with the money. "There will be other preparations, of course. You must be the one to take the boy, to abduct him. It is part of the ritual. You yourself must offer this sacrifice in every way. Do you realize that we will probably have to kill his parents?"
Cathy thought on this for a moment. "Good," she finally said. Her mind started to ask her why she didn't feel terribly shocked at hearing her own voice say that, but she pushed it away. Cathy felt comfortable with who she was, this newborn killer. "I owe them for what they did to me."
Maggie nodded, "I agree. Vengeance is often a very rewarding enterprise, but don't let it be your only reason for killing. There are other reasons, other pleasures to be found in the letting of blood."
Maggie began to rise but Cathy reached out and took her hand suddenly but gently. "I don't want to hurt you, Maggie," she said. "Please know that I do love you. Even if I grow to hate the world and everything else in it, I will always love you."
Maggie looked down at her with a blank expression and Cathy rose to her feet. She reached out with her other hand and slowly pulled the glasses Maggie wore from her face. "I know I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else," Cathy said. "I need to know that you know that. I need to know it badly." It was then that Cathy leaned forward and softly kissed Maggie on the mouth.
At first, Maggie was rigid and unyielding, but after a moment she closed her eyes. Cathy didn't know if she had become a lesbian or not but she did know that she loved Maggie Fontaine and that she wanted to give her anything that would make her happy. Maggie's soft arms encircled her naked frame and her mouth relaxed, opening wider. Their tongues touched and came together tightly in a snug embrace, moving and writhing together in passion.
This went of for several seconds but finally Maggie loosened her hold and gently broke away. She opened her eyes and they both looked at each other.
"I love you too," Maggie smiled, "and now I don't feel so bad; but let us come together when it is something you want too." Maggie turned away and made for the stairwell as Cathy watched.
When she was alone on the roof again Cathy realized that she had wanted her.
***
Aside from the fifty thousand dollars, Maggie also had another surprise in store for Cathy. Later that evening, both Maggie and Ricky escorted Cathy down to the private garage. In the large, dark chamber with the other vehicles was her 1966 Ford Thunderbird Convertible.
The entity Maggie called "The Franchise" possessed far more in the way of material objects than Maggie had let on. The cars they had stored included a classic 1962 Jaguar XKE coupe (red before but since painted black), Virginia's black Aston Martin DB5 (with all of the damaged windows replaced and the transmission repaired), a black Mercedes-Benz limousine, two Mercedes Sedans, two BMWs, Ricky's 1964 blue Chevrolet Impala, the recently purchased 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 which had served as the second get-away car from the fair, five semi-trucks and their trailers, a black 1998 Bentley Continental, a brand new 1999 Lotus Elise (black), a Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph, a black Lamborghini Countach, and a few other cars Cathy couldn't identify.
Money: that was what was here. Cathy could imagine the things loaded into the trailers of the semis: priceless furniture, antiques, art, jewelry, weapons, sculptures and objects crafted from gold and silver, rugs, steel boxes packed with bonds and cash, and who knew what else. There was well over 20 million dollars in just automobiles alone. Who could tell what other assets existed in the form of real estate. The one undeniable impression that Cathy got, however, was that what she saw here was merely a small fraction of what the circle possessed.
Cathy had come to love the T-Bird she had inherited from her mother and her grandmother before her. Blossom had bought the car new in 1965 and it was now irreplaceable. 1966 was the last model year Ford had produced a Thunderbird Convertible. There had been only five thousand of them made. All the other '66 T-Birds were of the Landau, hardtop, and town-car series.
Ricky had stolen her car back right under the noses of the police with a little help from Allison. Both of them were master thieves. Allison had found her greatest talent in the art of theft, just as Virginia had found hers in finding people and things. From the impound yard, the car had been loaded into a truck and then taken to some of Ricky's friends in L.A. who were professionals at refitting, restoring, and then disguising cars (a skill they had acquired mostly with boosted cars and other vehicles). They had painted Cathy's car black (as Maggie had requested) and Cathy didn't mind since the car looked even more beautiful than it had before.
Her car had been given a complete makeover. A 1966 Ford Thunderbird Town-Car had been located in a junkyard. Data plates from that car, including the serial numbers, had been retrieved. Those plates had been altered slightly in order to fit the exact make and model of Cathy's car, a type 76A.
Her car had been completely restored so that it was nearly exact to what it had been when it was new. The power contour seats didn't work ever since Cathy could remember and now they did. Those seats had been done over with white cloth upholstery. The "Highway Pilot Control", an early form of cruise control, hadn't worked ever since before she was born. It worked now. The 428 cid, 345 horsepower V8 engine had been overhauled and rebuilt. All identifying marks had been removed and then restamped with bogus ones. A phony registration, as had Cathy's fake license and new identity, had been made under the alias, Elizabeth Jean Hawtree.
All of the original gauges had been restored and were now in perfect working order. The amp had been replaced with one of higher quality and with nearly twice as much power. Two new subwoofers had also been added. Two personalized license plates "Cat's Meow", had been placed on the front and the back in antique, copper plates. The retracting soft-top worked smoothly and like new. The chrome trim had been replaced and someone had even gone out of the way to add a perfect set of rear fender shields. The multiple tail lights all now worked perfectly. They even flashed sequentially as they had done three decades before when operating as the turn signals. The original dress-up wheel covers had been replaced. Each had five stems and the emblem 'Thunderbird' stamped in three locations around the rim. Even the utility box between the two front seats had been fixed so that it didn't stick when it was closed. All the carpet and upholstery, both in front and in back, had been replaced with white cloth and black vinyl.
Now, behind the wheel of this car, sat a woman the world could only assume was Elizabeth Jean Hawtree. Her hair had been dyed black and trimmed evenly across the bangs. If her hair had been longer, it would look as if Cathy were trying to emulate Betty Paige. However, Cathy's skin was much darker from tanning. Everything about Cathy was different now, her appearance, her name, and especially her overall attitude toward everything. She had her new driver's license, credit cards, social-security card, club cards, registration, and health insurance all under her new name. Cathy had no idea how much all of this had cost Maggie or the others. Whatever it had been, it must have been allot. No one could recognize Cathy or her car now. The only two things that could prove who she was now were her fingerprints and maybe her DNA, if they actually had samples of her blood to test. Anything she did would be blamed on Cathy Modura who already had a criminal record including four murders (the two manslaughter charges had been upgraded). Cathy was now the most notorious serial killer in California but for all intents and purposes, she had disappeared into thin air. A woman by the name of Lisa Hawtree now replaced her where all legalities were concerned. Maggie wanted Cathy to undergo plastic surgery and to have her fingerprints deformed. That would have been too much for her and she refused to go by her fake name when among her friends.
They didn't have to worry about any of Maggie's employees being traced to Rosetown Plaza. Sal Vicchio and his compatriots were dead. Maggie had computer hackers, truck drivers, and various miscellaneous workers in her employ. All of them functioned in their services by means of second and parties. Trucks were carefully watched. There was no way any of the vehicles themselves or the drivers could be traced. Watching this end of the operation was Ruby's responsibility. Drivers were always temporary workers and hired through second, sometimes third contacts. Sometimes they were brainwashed.
Ruby's special talent was mind-control. As Virginia could find anything and anyone while Allie could steal the statue of liberty if she wanted it, so could Ruby control people and their thoughts. Predicting the future was something Zoë did well. Maggie had many versatile powers but she was quite fond of necromancy and death magic. Lindy had the power to create either pleasant or terribly horrifying illusions. However, these special powers did not cover all the forms of magic any of them had available to them.
They were behind schedule and Cathy's initiation had yet to take place. It was four days ago since Maggie had come and given her the money on top of Rosetown. Since then, Cathy found that she could cause some substances to grow either warm or cold simply by concentrating as hard as she could. Maggie assured her that once the circle had been completed, that her ability would develop into a powerful weapon. Cathy thought about her mind melting prison bars if she were to ever be caught. She thought of guards erupting into flames as they tried to stop her.
Everyone wasn't so interested in their personal powers so much as they were looking forward to working magic as a group again. Cathy had no idea what would be involved. Maggie told her that it would take years for her to become familiar with everything.
Cathy, or Lisa, to those who might prefer her new identity, slowed the Thunderbird at the corner of Los Guilicos and Randolph. She looked out through the dark, plastic sunglasses she wore and gently pulled to the right. She moved southwest past the school slowly and then brought the car to a stop and put it in Park. The engine hummed sweetly and she sighed, looking across the recess field of Kenwood Elementary School. She was parked in the same spot that Philip always came to pick up Tommy in his Ford Ranger at 2:40 every school-day afternoon.
"He should be here," Maggie said softly. She looked out across the field and watched as the kids there continued to play unaware of them. There were dozens of boys and girls playing in the grass of the field or on the playground. Most of the kids in this area were either on the swings or seesaws.
"I don't see him either," Cathy said. "Where is he?" The tone Cathy carried was impatient and frustrated. She turned the key in the ignition and killed the motor. "We should be able to see him," she said. She was quiet a moment and then sighed with an after-thought, "Unless he got in another fight. In that case he'd be in detention, I guess."
Maggie took off her blue sunglasses and passed her pale eyes over the field once more. "He's not out there," she finally decided. "Take us around to the other side of the block before anyone gets suspicious."
Cathy nodded and started the car back up. The engine came to life with a growl and she pulled away slowly, picking up speed and making a left at the next intersection. She let the car coast at an easy twenty-five miles an hour and turned her head to Maggie. The albino was pulling something from her small handbag. The object she presented was a brand-new cellular phone. Cathy had bugged her enough about getting one that she had finally given in. It wasn't as fancy as Ruby's but at least it had all the basic features. Maggie quickly dialed the number for Rosetown's library. While Maggie had Ruby find Virginia, she swept her pale arm out to indicate a shaded area by a field. Cathy slowed the car as she pulled close to the shade and stopped in it at the side of the road, parking once more.
Cathy was dressed in a black pair of sweat-pants, the same she had slept in last night. She had only been up for an hour and a half and morning recess at Tommy's school was nearly halfway over with. She had on a dark-gray, sleeveless button-up shirt of ordinary fabric and a pair of tennis shoes. Maggie herself was once again dressed in white, contrasting perfectly with the dark tones of the car. The white seats and the black and white of the upholstery wasn't enough to allow Maggie to blend in, though it seemed she was a printed figure in a black and white photograph, she was so colorless.
Maggie sighed and hit the button that terminated the call. She slumped and her expression became one of fatigue and exhaustion. Cathy felt the same way as well. She had stayed up until very late, making preparations for her upcoming ceremony. Virginia, who couldn't wait to touch Cathy for any reason, had done her hair. A courier stopped by with an envelope filled with all of Lisa Hawtree's various credentials and cards, a checkbook, a job-resume (what the hell for?), and a high-school diploma for 1996. The date on her birth certificate was August 6th, 1977. According to that paper, she would be twenty-one years old as of this year. It took all night for Virginia and Zoë to set up this new person. Whatever else it all entailed, Cathy loved the black hair they had given her.
Maggie put the phone back into her bag. "312 Juniper," Maggie said. "That's where he is. He's sick today."
"Poor little bastard," Cathy muttered. Maggie took a Marlboro 100 out of the pack Cathy had on the dash and lit it. She took one drag and passed Cathy the cigarette. Today was only the second day Cathy had been a smoker and it seemed that she was already completely used to it. "Do you still want to take him today?" Cathy asked.
Maggie sighed. Her pale skin seemed gray in the gloom of the shade. Huge oaks at the side of the road towered over the Thunderbird. The car itself possessed it's own darkness and while in the gloom of the shade, it seemed to become one with it.
"More risky," Maggie said finally. "I'll let you decide." She turned to Cathy. "We can still put it off for another day or two, but no longer than that."
Even Maggie's eyes seemed gray in the shadows as Cathy turned to look into them. Maggie's face was small, girl-like and fine. Cathy wanted to trace her finger along her thin, pointed nose.
Cathy shrugged her shoulders. "Fuck it," she said. "If he's sick today, he'll be sick tomorrow. Let's put him out of his misery."
"All right," Maggie said as she looked away into the sky. A few dense clouds were beginning to gather quickly. Cathy's gaze followed Maggie's eyes. To Cathy, the thickening clouds looked very much like a storm on the way but a moment ago the sky had been empty. "We'll have to do it with a little more finesse," Maggie continued, "if you know what I mean. We'll have to make sure their telephones aren't working before we go in. We'll need to incapacitate the mother and the father first. It should be easy..." Maggie shook her head. "We're going to need help. I'll call Ruby and tell her to meet us there with Zoë."
"The two of them together, are you sure?" Cathy asked.
"It's a lovely Wednesday afternoon," Maggie said. "Did you know that storms come easier on this day than any other? Don't ask why, though. I'm not really sure."
Maggie reached for the cell phone again and Cathy looked away, the cigarette hanging in her mouth. It had been nothing to her to get used to them. Last night she had even snorted a line of coke with Virginia. The way Cathy saw it; she was growing up. She couldn't understand why she had been so squeamish about it all a week and a half ago in the Pacifica Beach House. It made her feel great, in ways different from how she had always felt great up until that time. What the hell, she thought; they could afford it. Coke felt nice. It wasn't like they were going to turn into a band of low-life street junkies who broke into houses and robbed people; although those activities did sound like fun.
Cathy put the car in drive and turned them around. She knew just how to reach 312 Juniper from where they were. Juniper was the unpaved road that intersected route 12, the Sonoma highway where Philip Kane's house stood. Overhead, the clouds seemed to be thickening and billowing out. They grew larger and filled in the spaces between each other, soon encompassing the entire sky. The ambient light all around them grew soft and muted. Shadows grew fuzzy and then failed to be distinctive at all as the sky became dark and bruised. Maggie's breath began to scratch at the air as she began to chant something too soft for Cathy's ears to hear.
***
Country Music gave him some comfort, provided he mixed the music with plenty of Miller Light of which he had nearly gone through a twelve-pack by lunchtime. He hadn't bothered eating and he didn't want to wake up Pearl in order to have her prepare something. He simply stuffed all the empty beer bottles into the trash, not bothering to separate them for recycling. He crossed to a side cabinet and pulled out the fifth of Johnny Walker Black he had been drinking earlier. Out of the freezer he took a bowl of ice-cubes. He found a squat, cylindrical glass that he figured was more fitting for morning orange-juice but he didn't care.
He had made some big mistakes in his life, but he had always made it through by counting his losses and then picking himself up. He wasn't sure if what had happened to Cathy was his fault. He was sure, however, that there was something he should have been able to do to spot the violence festering inside of Cathy and deal with it. Pearl blamed Vivian Bradley for what had happened. She also blamed the woman for her own death, not Cathy. She told Phil that Vivian had simply pushed her too far and Cathy was bound to act out the pain she was feeling over all that had happened in one way or another.
Philip himself couldn't put the blame with anyone, not himself, not with Vivian Bradley, and not with Cathy. It had all been because of the circumstances. Philip knew that Cathy hadn't killed Vivian on purpose and that the deaths of the patrolmen due to the chase couldn't possibly have been deliberate. As for the man at the fair, Philip didn't believe for a second that it was Cathy who had killed him, no matter what they said.
He sat down at his kitchen table. Three empty beer-bottles sat around him. The bottle of Scotch was half-empty and his head swam in the sickening toxicity of it. He wore nothing but blue jeans and he stank from not showering in three days. In all that time, he hadn't gone anywhere. The press had been to his door on and off, wanting specifics on the notorious teenage serial killer. They had camped out across the highway from his gate after Philip had the Sheriff's Office remove them from his property. The day after, Phil had his lawyer get an order from a judge that made them stay at least 250 feet away from any part of his property. They complied with the order and two days after that they gave up and went away completely.
In Sonoma, news crews had mobbed Philip yet again. They were from stations all over the southwest. The two most persistent ones were from Portland, Oregon and Phoenix, Arizona. Home was the only place Phil knew was safe, at least until Cathy was caught and the ensuing after-crap blew over. Philip had asked his lawyer to defend Cathy as a personal favor and she had accepted.
He was suddenly startled by a terrible crack of thunder that rolled in across from the south. It was then that he realized that the inside of his house was far darker than it should have been for this time of day. He sighed; it really didn't matter. It was with that thought that the power went out. All the lights went dark, including the one above the table. The TV Guide he had been reading was now illegible. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and set them on the table. The music from the living-room stereo had ceased.
Philip got up and stretched. He yawned and nearly fell over from his drunkenness. Was he really feeling guilty for what happened? He didn't know, but he did know that he felt terrible about it. Since he couldn't go anywhere or do anything without being imposed upon, he found his mind dwelling on this particular misery. Bad feelings and boredom couldn't really be drunk away completely, but he could try.
He found the living room stereo in the dark. The CD player was set on the wooden shelf in its space in the entertainment center. He opened the glass door, realizing that the tray would not eject while there was no power. He didn't care. He jerked the tray towards his body, listening as the plastic wheels lost the hub of the disc and it unlocked with a snap. The tray came out with a whine as the gears were spun and he plucked the disc out with his middle finger through the hole.
He returned to the dining room and placed the CD on the circular dining table and then walked around it. He found Pearl's RCA CD/Radio in the kitchen. He removed the unit from the power cord and then took it back to the dining room where he set it next to the CD. He switched the selector over to the radio and heard the wail of some Trisha Yearwood song. Assured that the batteries were good, he flipped the selector to CD and opened the top. He tossed the disc in quickly and slapped the top down forcefully. Once it was closed he hit the play button and skipped forward to track 7.
He didn't know why this song was his favorite on the disc. It was slow and depressing, making him think of times when Pearl would clam up and he could never tell if it was because he had done something to make her mad or not.
Philip poured more Scotch into the glass. All his sense told him that he'd be very sick and very miserable if he were to drink much more of this stuff, but he didn't care. Maybe if he were physically miserable than he wouldn't be so miserable emotionally. That was one trade he'd be happy to make at the time. He didn't want to think of Cathy. He almost felt like crying when he did that.
Pearl was upstairs sleeping in bed. Tommy was lying up in his room playing on his new Nintendo Gameboy. They both had come down with something and he himself was beginning to feel a little under the weather. The back of his throat felt itchy and inflamed. He listened to music a bit more and then flipped the selector over as he finally made up his mind to not drink anymore today. He'd just go up to his room, take off his clothes, and then slip between the sheets and hold the warm, tender form of his wife.
The portable stereo was not off, however. He had only pushed the small, plastic lever one notch and it was back in the radio position. A news announcer's voice filled the dining room at once and attacked his hearing before he could think to stop it.
"And the search for the killer of two state highway patrol officers continues today. This is the thirteenth day of the search and the police have yet to make any progress. Are they taking every means available to find this demented serial killer who bit off a man's penis at the Sonoma County Fair and then left him hanging by his own dangling intestines!"
Philip's hand came back up and slapped the switch into the tape position. The voice ceased immediately. Philip blew out a hard breath and then looked at the small, black plastic box that had been shouting at him a mere moment ago. Why did society find that sort of trash so fascinating? Who could blame the media in the end, when all they really do is react to society's interests. The walls of the dining room were thrown in a wash of bright blue-white flashes from outside as lightning arced and jumped from the sky to trees bordering the field across the highway. Almost at once it was followed by a horrible crash of thunder. This is going to disturb Pearl, he thought. Tommy, on the other hand, liked storms. He would sit at his open window with his face against the screen as he smelled for the scent of rain. It would be a matter of minutes before Pearl came in for coffee. She would be cranky and then even more so when she discovered there was no power by which to make a fresh pot.
Bit off a man's penis, Philip thought scornfully. Cathy could never do such a thing. It made him angry that they would blatantly announce it before any of the evidence had been weighed and considered in a court of law. The announcer had sounded excited, as if he expected his audience to be the same way. He had spoken rapidly, like a salesman who sold cheap, zirconium jewelry on the home shopping network. That was how they sold their radio, he thought; cheaply, just like the zirconium pendants.
Philip knew that going upstairs would be a bad idea after all. If Pearl weren't up now, she soon would be. He lifted his glass and swallowed all that he could of the Scotch. Ice had been melting in his glass and had cut away some of the whiskey's sharp burn as it went down. He managed to swallow about four shots before he had to put the glass down. His stomach rolled and nausea began to bleed into the sensations filling his stomach without welcome.
He waited and the sick feeling and the dizziness passed. Replacing it was the overwhelming urge to urinate. He got up and moved carefully, holding the wall of the dining room as he passed into the gloom of the house.
The downstairs bathroom had only a sink and a toilet. He left the door to the bathroom open but it was still terribly dark inside. Not bothering to lift the toilet seat, he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, hanging his prick out over the water with his legs apart.
That was when he felt a strange sensation around the base of his organ, as if someone were touching him. If he hadn't been so drunk he would have jumped away. His reaction was to look down at once. He could see that his curly bush had become a patch of straight pubic hairs that stabbed out in all directions.
"What in the world?" Philip said, almost laughing. It took his muddled and drunken mind a few moments to realize what was causing this, that it was static electricity. But from where? He wondered this and considered that it may have been the water in the toilet but he knew the pipes to be grounded. He shrugged and let go of his urine and a yellow stream left him and arced down toward the water.
The last thing Philip saw was a brilliant flash of white as the bathroom seemed to explode all around him. The intense flash of heat instantly vaporized his penis and half of his abdomen. The power in the lightning that hit the house and channeled itself through the water pipes, the toilet, and then to Philip and the ground beneath his feet was four times that of an average bolt. The toilet and the surrounding air in the bathroom were superheated for that instant. The toilet exploded violently, sending chunks of porcelain through his body like shrapnel from a bomb.
Philip was already gone. His crisped and smoldering corpse fell to the floor. Smoke and steam billowed out of the bathroom through the open door. The pissy water on the floor boiled for a few seconds and scalded Philip's face as he had fallen with it flat against the tiles.
***
It was like the sound of a cannon to Tommy's ears. His whole body jumped in response to the sound and his Gameboy tumbled out of his hand and rolled off his bed to land on the floor.
Tommy leapt from his bed and ran into the hall. It had been the loudest crack of thunder he had ever heard. He felt the blue shag of the second floor carpeting under his feet as he ran. He passed the room that used to be Cathy's. He felt the pain of loss when he passed that door and he missed her. The door to his parent's room was closed. He ran past it and down the stairs. He didn't notice the nasty reek of charred flesh as he entered the living room and went to the windows that looked out toward the highway. He grinned as another bolt of lightning twisted its way across the sky between the clouds.
The thunder abated and he heard the rumbling growl of a car's engine replace it. He turned his eyes in time to see Cathy's car stop in the driveway near the corner of the house. She had painted it black. Just then the T-Bird's engine died and the headlights went out. Cathy climbed out and shut the driver's door with a thud. Another car was coming. Its headlights pierced the heavy, vertical rain. A thick overcast filled the sky from one end to the other, bringing about an eerie gloom that seemed to take away color from everything. The second car, also black, had pulled up behind Cathy's T-Bird at an angle just beyond the garage in the driveway. The headlights were aimed right at Tommy and he couldn't see who was in the car. He knew he was happy to see Cathy. He pressed closer to the windowpane and smiled. Cathy smiled back to him and waved. The lights on the other car went off and the windshield wipers stopped. Then there was only the monotone of the falling rain.
It was Cathy, but something was strange. Her hair was dyed black and her skin was darker. Something also bothered him about her smile. Her eyes looked fake and unreal somehow.
***
It had also been the sound of the blast that woke Pearl up. Her eyes shot open and she rocketed up straight. Then she could hear the rain washing against the roof and she knew then that it was only thunder. Her breath was heavy, she realized, as she pushed herself up.
She let the sheets fall away and she stood in the room nude. The cool air hit her skin and caused goose bumps to spread across her belly. Again there was a rumbling in the distance and a muted flash from far away.
What was Philip doing, she thought. She looked around for her robe and saw it nowhere. She then crossed to the closet, seeing herself in the full-length mirror. Her pink nipples were erect in the cold air. Automatically she brought up the first and second fingers of her right hand and pressed there. It felt good. Her nipples were always so sensitive.
She looked into the mirror and that same awful thought came to her again. It was always what she thought of when she stood in front of this mirror after waking. She was aging but she wasn't old yet. Still, she knew she wasn't young but old was a subjective term.
Was she old? She had always been tall and lean. Where there had been muscular biceps twenty years ago there was loose skin. It wasn't that bad but her arms were far from firm. Neither were her thighs or her buttocks. Her breasts were large and heavy and had never been all that firm. These days, however, they sagged nearly halfway to her waist.
Her belly curved outward a little, but only slightly. There were wisps of silver in her blonde hair. She ran her hands back through it and pushed it up. Her hair was as thick, soft and luxurious as it had ever been. She closed her eyes. It felt the way it had twenty years ago. It was the only thing that had stayed the same, except for its color. Looking back at herself again, even her eyes appeared older. Getting out of bed and thinking, this could be the last day I have, couldn't possibly be healthy, she thought.
"Shape up, girl," she told herself. She coughed suddenly and cursed under her breath. "Shit, I hope Phil didn't get cute and turn the damn heater off." Her voice sounded raspy. Still, the fever and most of the congestion were gone. Not only that, but there was no longer any headache.
Pearl squeezed her breasts and smiled. "No way are you old," she told herself. She pinched her nipples and twisted them. Her pussy was warm and wet. She ran her fingers down across her belly, forcing herself to think it was firm and hot when her flesh was just a little too cool and pliant to her hands.
She was getting over the cold and it had been more than 48 hours since she had sex. She had never gone so long without making love with her husband. So long as she could have sex at least once a day, she wouldn't be old. This, she decided, would be her affirmation for at least today.
She fastened her robe then and crossed to the door. She opened it, meaning to descend the stairs and coax Philip back upstairs with her when she heard the voice of her son.
***
"Mommy! Mommy!" Tommy called out. He had heard her bedroom door open. She had still been sleeping when Philip had called the school to excuse him. She probably didn't even know that he was home. He thought he heard her heavy footsteps but if he had, they had stopped. "Mommy, it's Cathy out there!"
He turned back to the window and looked out at Cathy. Her eyes seemed to look through him and she was no longer smiling. Wasn't she glad to be home? He stood still. Both Cathy and Tommy stared back at each other. To anyone else it would have looked like a cougar staring down a jackrabbit it had trapped in a burrow. The smell was getting worse and he became completely aware of it, but he didn't know what it was. He still wore his pajamas. They were striped black and white with a big zero on the front and the back. His pajamas were a fair imitation of an NFL Official's uniform.
Tommy Kane was just a little less than five feet and had dark-brown hair and blue eyes. He had thick arms and legs, almost fat for a kid his size but he was also powerful and well proportioned. In that respect, he took after his mother.
There was a sharp click from the front door and Tommy jerked his head around in that direction. He watched as the lever of the dead bolt flipped the rest of the way around and unlocked. The next moment, the door was pushed open and Maggie Fontaine walked in to stand just past the mat. Maggie was soaked. Her white hair was a heavy mess that dripped water all over the carpet.
"Hello, Tommy boy," Maggie smiled. He stood there gawking at her. He had expected his father to be coming back. The locks were new and Tommy didn't know that Maggie had a key.
It was only a moment before Cathy was standing behind Maggie inside of the doorway. "Hey, Tommy," she began, making no effort to smile. "It sure is wet out here. Want to go for a ride?"
"I'd better tell mom you're home," Tommy whined. "She's missed you."
"Has she now," Cathy mused. "I know all about it," she said. Both Maggie and Cathy crossed into the house and stopped close to him. Tommy took one step back and stood looking up at both of them. Something was wrong and he couldn't hide the fact that it made him afraid.
"And your dad is right outside waiting," Cathy continued. "He wants you to come out and watch the storm with us, you see. We all know how much you like storms."
"Where is he?" Tommy asked.
"In the car," Cathy answered, allowing a predatory grin to appear across her face. "He doesn't want to get wet. So here I am, Tommy, all ready to play; so let's go now."
The haze was clearing and fresh air was coming through the door. The smell of rain was thickly penetrating the room, covering up that other terrible smell just a little. Suddenly, there were rapid, heavy footsteps as Pearl finished her decent down the stairs. Cathy turned her gaze toward her as she came into view. Pearl was in a dark-red robe. She brought the top tightly together, snug against her breasts in a gesture that indicated her uneasiness. Pearl stopped and looked at Cathy stupidly, her eyes still at half-mast. She hadn't been up that long. It had only been a couple of minutes since the lightning had struck the house.
"Hello mother," Cathy almost sneered. Her dark eyes burned into Pearl's. They locked gazes for a moment and a terrible understanding erupted inside of the older woman.
"Get back to your room, Tommy," Pearl breathed sharply, staring straight at Cathy with an expression bordering terror. To Tommy, it looked as if she were about to run at them.
"It's Cathy, mom," Tommy said, his confusion growing. "She's home."
"Get to your room now!" Pearl cried. It was then that Cathy moved to Tommy and took his hand tightly in her own. Pearl's expression of horror became mixed with rage. Two more women entered the house. A large-breasted woman with short, brown hair handed a black-leather bag to Maggie and the albino turned to smile pleasantly at Pearl. Then the two unidentified women came forward and stood with Cathy and the boy.
"Take him," Cathy said. She handed Tommy's arm to Zoë. Zoë took him with a grip around the wrist tighter than Cathy's own had been.
"Let him go!" Pearl hissed out at once, moving down to the bottom of the stairs. She rushed forward and grabbed a new phone from the same table Vivian Bradley had that last day Cathy was here. As Vivian had done, she dialed 911. The look of horror on her face intensified and she let the receiver fall from her hand and down to the floor.
"Dead," Cathy smiled cruelly, "isn't it?"
Pearl only looked at her and moved forward slowly, meaning to challenge the woman who now held her son tightly by the wrist. "You let him go now or so help me God, I will kill you."
Zoë looked back at Pearl with a calm expression, some amusement seeming to fill her dark eyes. Zoë wore a long, dark coat and from inside where it had been concealed, Zoë brought out her free hand. In it was an 18-inch Kukhuri knife. She placed the inside of the broad, curved blade against the left side of Tommy's throat as she twisted the boy's arm around and pinned it up against the small of his back. Tommy cried out in pain and gasped as Zoë pressed the blade closer to the under-side of his jaw bordering his neck. With such a weapon, it would have been a simple matter to slice the boy's head off right there and then.
Pearl froze and gasped sharply as she saw the reflection on the blade in the available light. She watched helplessly as Maggie removed something from the large, leather 'Doctor's Bag'. In Maggie's hand was a syringe. She was certain that Maggie was going to inject Tommy with it, until she started moving toward her.
"Now, Mrs. Kane," Maggie grinned, "be a good little girl and take your medicine!"
Pearl began to back away. Then she turned and rushed for the kitchen, her robe belt coming undone as she did so. Her robe flapped behind her and her breasts swung up and down. Maggie was right behind her. Pearl knocked the half-empty bottle of Scotch from the table as she passed it and it fell to the floor but it didn't break. Maggie kicked it aside as she closed in on Pearl. Just then Pearl reached the far counter and ripped a butcher knife from its stand near the cutting-board. Maggie stopped, facing the woman with a playful smile on her lips.
"That's no way to behave now, is it, Pearly?" Maggie said, staying well out of the reach of the knife Pearl held. "I promise it won't hurt. Hurt is far too soft a word to describe the searing agony you will soon be feeling. On the other hand, it would be some what accurate to say, 'I promise it will hurt really, really bad!'"
Pearl was gasping for air, frantic and going into a panic. She was forced back into the corner of the kitchen and at the same time her heart cried out for her son. A sweat was breaking on her forehead and her skin was flushed.
"Father wants to say hello," Cathy said from beyond the dining room. Pearl looked to where Cathy's voice had come just in time to see her and Ruby place the blackened body of her husband into his customary chair at the side of the table furthest from where she now stood. She couldn't take it in at first. What was it, she asked herself? A moment later she saw the scorched jeans and she knew. Her eyes went wide and she reached up to grab her face, pressing the wooden handle of the knife against her cheek as she screamed. Cathy then rounded the table and moved straight toward Pearl. She was hunched over when Cathy reached her. She took Pearl firmly by the hand she held the knife in. She put sharp pressure on the point between Pearl's thumb and forefinger with her own thumb. The knife slipped from Pearl's grip and tumbled to the floor with a clatter. Maggie wasted no time. She jumped forward and pulled Pearl's robe halfway down and then jabbed the needle of the syringe into the woman's thick upper-left arm. She pushed the clear contents of the vial into her at once. Maggie withdrew the needle and slipped the robe from Pearl and threw it aside. Within seconds, the tall woman fell in a nude heap to the floor.
"This is only the initial effect of the drug," Maggie said. "Let's get her tied down before she comes to."
"Initial effect?" Cathy asked. "What is it really supposed to do?"
"You'll see, now come on," Maggie said. "Let's get her on the table."
"All right," Cathy said, struggling to help Maggie lift Pearl's head. Maggie had left the empty syringe on the counter and the butcher knife on the floor was ignored.
"Damn, she's heavy," Maggie said. "Zoë," she called out, "stuff our little man in the trunk of the Delta and help Cathy and me lift our bonus, will you?"
Out in the living room, Zoë put her enormous knife away and Ruby took Tommy's other arm with a fierce smile on her lips. "Come now, my little turkey," she said. "We have to get you stuffed in time for Thanksgiving!"
Tommy cried out and began shouting as both Ruby and Zoë lifted him into the air and carried him out to the car kicking and screaming. It was only sprinkling rain now. The two women walked through the mud, carrying Tommy up by both arms. The trunk of the Oldsmobile Delta 88 was already open and had an inch of rain accumulating in it in some places. Zoë and Ruby both tossed him inside gleefully. Tommy banged his head on the metal rim going in and he began to cry.
"Poor baby," Ruby said as she sat down on the edge of the bumper and removed a slim, narrow case from the pocket in her wool coat. She flipped it open and pulled out a syringe. She handed the case to Zoë and then removed the orange cap from the needle. She grinned at Tommy and said, "This will make it all better."
Tommy screamed, tears rolling down his cheeks. "No, no!" he cried. Zoë took his right arm forcefully and tore his sleeve back. Ruby quickly jabbed him with the needle and backed away. Before Tommy passed out, Zoë slammed the trunk closed and trapped him inside.
"He sure is going to be one tasty little boy," Ruby said, licking her lips.
"He will be a joy to prepare," Zoë said. "Damn, I love to cook."
Ruby slapped Zoë on the ass and laughed. "Damn, I love to eat."
Cathy and Maggie had dragged Pearl across to the foot of the table. Cathy had found a number of belts upstairs and had set them around the table. "Damn," Ruby said as she passed Philip's body, "this one was in the oven too long!"
"Are you putting down my cooking?" Maggie teased.
"Just a bit overdone," Zoë said. She grabbed Pearl by the left leg and Ruby took her right. With Maggie and Cathy holding her arms, they set her on top of the table face up. Maggie passed the belts under the table to Cathy as she tied the ends together. They bent Pearl's arms at the elbows so that her arms were turned around to the outside with her forearms strapped and secured under the edge of the table. Her wrists were also bound together so that her arms were overhead. Her legs, however, were apart. Her knees were bent and her calves were pinned against the underside of the table.
Cathy was under the table. She had belts tied together into three different lines. One belt tied Pearl's wrists together. The three lines went in a triangular pattern under the table between Pearl's wrists, her left ankle, and her right ankle. Cathy made sure the binds were very tight before coming back up. When she did, she could see that Pearl's eyes were beginning to move behind their lids.
"She'll be coming around any moment," Maggie said. "Zoë, Ruby; get our little lamb back to Rosetown and see that he's made comfortable. Give him plenty of sweets. I want him fattened as much as possible."
"Just like Hansel and Gretel, eh Maggie?" Ruby teased. Then the two of them left. Cathy could hear the Oldsmobile start up and then turn around for the trip back to Santa Rosa with their intended feast.
As the Delta 88 cleared the gate and turned right on the highway, the overhead kitchen light and the one above Pearl's table came on. Maggie went over and quickly shut the blinds of the dining room window. Maggie tied her hair back first and then retrieved the black bag from the living room. A moment later she returned and passed Cathy to take it into the kitchen.
Pearl was awake.
"What are you doing?" Pearl asked from the table. "Where's Tommy!" She cried out in a voice that betrayed her sudden recollection of her dire circumstances. "My God, what have you done with my son?"
Maggie returned from the kitchen and slapped Pearl softly on the face twice. "Quiet now. It won't do any good to throw a fit before we operate." Maggie opened her hand, revealing a big, red rubber ball about two and a half inches in diameter. "And look," Maggie smiled. "I have a sucker for you!"
Cathy watched as Pearl hollered and screamed in a shrill tone. Maggie forced the ball between Pearl's teeth and then wrapped and secured a black rubber strap around her head and in her mouth, firmly gagging her.
"Could you please move the car into the garage while I shave her, dear?" Maggie asked Cathy as she returned to the black bag where she had left it open on the kitchen counter. "We could be here awhile and I don't want any passers-by to get suspicious."
"Shave her?" Cathy asked with a frown.
"Yes," Maggie said. "We can't have all this hair getting in the way." She slipped on a pair of white latex surgical gloves of the same type they had been wearing just after Cathy had killed Sal Vicchio. "The car please, Cathy. We must have no interruptions while we operate!"
Maggie had found a small, plastic bucket under the sink and was filling it with water. She had a pink disposable razor nearby and a bottle of regular shaving cream. It was then Cathy realized it wasn't Pearl's head Maggie intended to shave. Cathy turned away, meaning to make for the living room. She looked at Philip's disgusting corpse, sitting in his chair. He had been moved away from the table some but had been set up facing the table as if he were some sort of patient spectator waiting for the curtain to go up and for the show to begin. Philip's skin was charred in some places and gray in others. Some urge inside of her made her push him over and he tumbled to the floor. What was left of his pants fell down to his knees. A few cups of blood had leaked out of him and on to the floor. His death had been too easy.
Cathy passed through the living room and out to the garage. She found the switch that turned on the light and then hit the button on the wall that operated the garage door. The door swung up, squeaking and whining on its tracks. She ducked under it and stepped out into the last of the drizzle that came down. Most of the clouds had dispersed and the storm had all but disappeared. The power was back on now and she figured that the phones were too. Lightning had hit a transformer somewhere. Cathy knew that all of this had been part of the plan, part of the magic. Both electricity and telephone service to the Kane household had been knocked out.
She hated putting her muddy shoes into her car now that it had been made so clean and new. She started the Thunderbird and moved it the handful of yards into the garage and next to the three Kane family vehicles. She parked and shut off the motor. She got out quickly and shut the garage door, heading into the house again before it had finished closing. Nothing would now look out of the ordinary to passing drivers, she thought.
Cathy reached the telephone and lifted the receiver. There was nothing but silence, no dial tone. Cathy set the receiver aside the phone without hanging it up. When service was restored, anyone calling would get a busy signal. The Kanes would be busy all right, Cathy thought; busy being dead.
In the dining room, Maggie was carefully shaving around Pearl's vagina. Pearl's eyes were wide open and locked on Cathy as she entered. Those eyes seemed to appeal to Cathy for help. Cathy would only meet Pearl's eyes with cold hatred. Maggie looked up at her and smiled as she dipped the razor back into the water of the bucket and moved it in circles to get all the hair off of it. Then she brought her gloved fingers back and held the flesh of Pearl's labia taut and drew the razor across in small, careful strokes.
Cathy noticed that Maggie had a full-length plastic apron over her clothes.
On a chair near Philip's over-turned body was another apron, folded neatly. On it was a pair of latex gloves. "Go ahead and get suited up," Maggie said.
First Cathy put on the white plastic apron that went from just below the shoulders all the way down to her ankles. She tied it off around the waist and slipped the gloves on over her hands. When Pearl saw this, she started whimpering.
"Shut up," Cathy mumbled with disgust. She went over and slapped Pearl across the face as Maggie had done. Pearl began to scream as much as she could past the ball-gag but the muffled sounds were far from being loud.
"Careful," Maggie said, pausing for a moment as she shaved her. "The drug has taken effect. All her nerves are working on overtime. A soft slap would feel as if someone were hitting her with a hammer."
Cathy looked down at her. Pearl's face was red and she was crying softly. Tears streamed down the sides of her face. This was the woman who had fed her in this same dining room, she thought. She had embraced her and loved her under this roof. Pearl and Cathy had talked and laughed together in that same kitchen. Now, Cathy couldn't remember what those things had made her feel like. She knew the gratitude and guilt were gone, but she couldn't place the emotions either. They eluded her completely. The tears from Pearl's eyes meant nothing now, though she knew that there was a time when she would have sympathized.
It was silly to feel pain because someone else's face was wet, she told herself. Cathy felt grateful to Maggie that she had straightened her out. If Pearl had her way, Cathy would be in prison right now. Pearl was no better than Vivian Bradley. Facts were what were important. The fact that Pearl had betrayed her was undeniable. Pearl was her enemy as much as Maggie was her friend.
Maggie finished shaving her pussy and was wiping her exposed vagina and anus with a dry towel, brushing away the shaving cream and the hair that had stuck. Pearl's vagina was a large slit with a thick labia and a lot of plump, tender flesh surrounding it all in an oval shape.
Maggie returned to the kitchen and disposed of the razor. Then she came back with something else that Cathy found herself examining curiously.
It was a thin, wooden tube about ten inches long. Threaded though it was a number of pieces of fishing line measuring about fifteen inches each. At the end of each line was a long, thin razor-sharp fish-hook which had been carefully placed so that they were gently stuck in the smooth wood surrounding the outside of the tube on that end. The eight pieces of line came out the other end and were tied together at a point that kept each piece of line the same length from the knot to each of the eight hooks. To this point was also tied a length of thin rope measuring eight inches. It was made of yellow nylon and was thin enough to pass easily though the hallow tube. Cathy watched as Maggie set this on the table between Pearl's legs and opened a small tube of K-Y jelly. Maggie completely covered her left forefinger with the lubricant and then circled around Pearl's anus, greasing it entirely. She smeared the jelly all over the surface before pushing her forefinger inside to the large knuckle. In reaction to this, Pearl began to moan and struggle.
"Oh, yes!" Maggie smiled. "This butt-hole is no stranger to cock. If only you weren't gagged you could tell me how often you let old Phil there pack your poop chute!" Maggie put one large drop of jelly on the end of the wooden tube and over the place where the fishhooks were imbedded. Slowly and carefully, Maggie pushed the tube into Pearl's ass.
Cathy watched with fascination as the first inch vanished, then another and another. Before Maggie stopped she had about seven inches of the tube inside of her. Then Maggie pulled back on the tube ever so gently and Pearl struggled violently.
"I suggest you hold still," Maggie said. "We wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, now would we? That's a pleasure we want for ourselves!"
Cathy understood what was happening. The shape of the hooks had allowed them to be placed deep into her rectum easily. When Maggie pulled back on the tube it dislodged from the hooks, leaving them behind. Slowly, Maggie pulled the tube back out, slipping it around the lines and the thin, nylon rope. Everything except the tube was left in place. When she had pulled the wooden tube clear, she tied the end of the rope around it's middle and made a handle for this homemade device of mutilation.
Pearl was crying as Maggie went around to where her head was. Maggie ran her fingers through Pearl's long, blonde hair. "Sssh," Maggie whispered close to her ear, "ssshh..." Maggie was wiping the last bit of K-Y from her fingers, from the gloves and then smearing it into Pearl's hair. "Just a little sting, that's all. Doctor Modura is going to take good care of you."
The eight lines hung out of Pearl's anus and the eight hooks were somewhere deep in her rectum. It took no genius to realize what the crude device was for. The tube, now serving as a handle, was meant to be given a good, sharp pull: or perhaps to be pulled slowly until all the hooks were free of her. It would be like ripping the hook from a fish after it had already swallowed it. The idea was the product of a demented mind, but the application made Cathy admire its simplicity.
"It's time to find out how dead your conscience really is, my dear," Maggie said softly. "Just take the handle and pull those tiny, razor-sharp hooks clear of your beloved ex-foster mother."
Cathy looked at her a moment and smiled. She then shrugged and nodded. "I think you've underestimated me," she said. Maggie's eyebrows went up curiously in response to this. "I understand what I am now," Cathy continued, "what we are, what the seven are. We're no longer human beings because we have evolved beyond them. Killing is our nature and accepting that makes us better, more civilized and pure in a way. With the realization of such civilization in ourselves, we know that the rest of so-called 'mankind' cannot be civilized. For that reason I have no qualms about killing any of them. It embodies no more feeling than stepping on cockroaches."
Maggie clapped her hands together softly and rapidly. "Well done. A bit too much 'Natural Born Killerish', but well put in it's own right.
"I knew you would understand," Maggie continued. "Embracing truth is what makes a people civilized, not their laws. Embracing truth cannot be achieved without embracing Satan. He is truth because he professes it as it is, in the eye of the beholder. All things are subjective and relative when all things are considered as a whole: as both sides together, pain and pleasure, death and life, all things inseparable. He does not lie like the God they follow, the one who looks down on killing and calls it murder. Every other predator has been known to kill its own kind and this also applies to man, because he is uncivilized. Our kind is as Satan is. We are the only ones with true conception of what civilization really is. We know we are killers. It is in our nature. Followers of Satan have lived in truth and harmony together and there have been no bloody holy wars in our ranks as there have been all over the world with Christianity and other religions based on half-truths and dogma.
"The world is an uncivilized jungle. It is our hunting ground and it is there we satiate our lust for blood. We realize the existence of our hate and our rage and save it for the world. That is why we can live peacefully in our circles. We do not deny the destroyers within ourselves."
Pearl was still crying, struggling to get free of the belts that bound her wrists and ankles. Pearl's eyes were shut tight but Cathy had no doubt that she had heard and understood everything that Maggie had said, even if she did believe that it was perverted beyond belief. To Pearl, it was nothing more than an intricate delusion.
Cathy grabbed the tube and yanked as hard as she could.
Pearl screamed in her throat, pushing her back up off of the table. Her breasts were spilling over the sides of her chest under the effects of gravity. The hooks were in there firmly and Cathy had to pull with all her strength. Pearl's legs were starting to shake madly as she tried to break free, more from the pain. Yet, she wouldn't pass out. The drug was there to make sure that Pearl felt all of it, every part of it in exaggerated proportions. The drug was also designed to keep Pearl alive as long as possible and to keep her from becoming numb in any part of her body or from becoming unconscious. It also suppressed all the effects of shock. Blood poured from Pearl's anus, the hooks digging deeper as Cathy pulled.
Cathy gritted her teeth, breathing heavily yet saying nothing. Two of the hooks tore free with a ripping sound, and then all of them were out. Pearl's anus was torn apart. Shredded pieces of pink flesh were protruding. Part of her rectum had been pulled out. Blood pooled the table. Cathy threw the hooks and the tube aside.
Maggie had gone to the kitchen and was now returning with a sixteen-inch pole that was about one and a half inches in diameter. Fixed directly through the pole were a number of nails up and down the length of it. One end, meant to serve as a handle, was clear of nails. Cathy didn't need to ask what this was for either.
Pearl was writhing back and forth, straining so hard against the leather belts that her ankles were starting to bleed. Her eyes were open but they were rolling in circles. She was beyond the point of delirium, yet she still felt every nuance and degree of the pain. For Pearl, the rest of the world had gone. She would have passed out by now if it hadn't been for the injection Maggie had given her.
Cathy forced the pointed tip of the pole into Pearl's pussy and grabbed the duct-tape wrapped handle with both hands. She leaned forward and shoved, using both her strength and her might to drive the pole into her. Again there was a dull ripping noise as the pole buried itself into her halfway. The nails were set at alternating angles; half of them slightly forward while the rest of them were set at about ten degrees back. Half of those nails gouged and ripped themselves through Pearl's vagina as Cathy shoved.
Pearl was making a variety of noises now as she flopped up and down. Maggie had Pearl's left tit in her hand and was cutting layers of skin and tissue away with a razor-sharp scalpel. Blood splattered Maggie's gloves and apron and covered Pearl's chest. There was a pitter-patter as runnels of blood dripped off the edge of the table and pooled likewise on the floor. The space between Pearl's thighs was a lake of blood.
Maggie peeled the meat back, throwing it into a dish she had set on a nearby chair. Each layer looked like a thickly cut piece of steak.
"I always did love breast meat," Maggie laughed. Blood was spilling off the table faster. Cathy had the shaft all the way in and she yanked back hard, angrily, loving every morsel of sweet vengeance without the slightest hint of remorse. Her enjoyment was near ecstasy.
The spiked pole came clear and droplets of blood sprayed her face and her apron. The pole was drenched in blood. Gore and mangled pieces of vaginal tissue stuck to the nails. She shoved it back in and pulled it back out. The pole moved easier this time. Then she began to piston it in and out of Pearl's gaping hole, moving faster and faster as blood shot past her and against her apron in leaping spurts. The sound was like tearing open the cushions of a sofa, but these soon faded into a loose, sloshing sound as the resistance of Pearl's cunt-flesh became almost nothing. Still, Cathy continued to tenderize her. Blood was absolutely gushing out of Pearl now. Maggie was happily working and both of Pearl's breasts were almost gone.
It wouldn't be long until Pearl bled to death.
Maggie took the bloodied scalpel she was holding and cut the rubber gag free. "Just a couple of more items to collect."
Pearl had bitten the rubber ball in half. She spit these free and began to wail and sob, though she really didn't do any screaming. It was as if all that was left to do was cry. If there was a hell then this was it, Cathy thought: weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
Maggie quickly moved into the kitchen where her bag was and returned with a huge set of pliers. Cathy watched, shoving in the spiked pole harder. Maggie put the scalpel into Pearl's mouth and followed it in with the tong-like pliers. There was a cut and a sharp cry. Then Maggie pulled a bloody tongue free. After this, she rapidly used the pliers to rip seven teeth free with horrible, wet cracking noises. Cathy pushed the spiked pole all the way into Pearl and let it go, rounding the table to watch Maggie put the tongue and the teeth onto the same dish with the breast-flesh. Then she covered it and carried the dish back into the kitchen, leaving her scalpel and the other items lying on the table. She packed what was on the dish into a Tupperware container and put it in the leather 'Doctor's Bag'.
"Well, my dear," Maggie smiled with satisfaction as they stood facing each other in the kitchen. "The operation was a success, I'm glad to say." She undid her apron and let it fall to the floor. Then she pulled off her gloves. "Damn," she said suddenly, "I forgot. Um, Cathy, could you step over there and cut her throat, please?"
Cathy sighed and looked around. It was time to leave. She turned around again to where Pearl was whimpering. Cathy could tell that she was growing weak. Pearl's eyes were so bloodshot they were almost nothing but red. Blood was all over Pearl's lips, filling her mouth, on her cheeks and chin as well as in her hair. There were two red, bleeding gashes where her breasts used to be.
Cathy found the bloodied scalpel. Everything that happened was overwhelming in a way and very exciting. Other than that there was no feeling left in her. Cathy lifted the razor-sharp blade and drew it forcefully across Pearl's exposed throat.
Despite all the blood everywhere else, there was still plenty left in her. She choked hard twice and then stopped breathing. Pearl was dead. Satisfied, Cathy let the scalpel fall from her grip. Maggie came out and smiled at Pearl. She kissed her once on her unmarred forehead, looking into Pearl's eyes as if there really was affection to be found there. Cathy was already slipping out of the plastic apron and latex gloves.
Maggie didn't touch anything as she carried the bag with her. Cathy made sure that the knob of the door to the garage and the light switch within were both free of fingerprints. Cathy used the same handkerchief to open the garage door.
Maggie opened the passenger side door of the Thunderbird and dropped her sealed black bag into the back seat. Then she climbed in. Cathy got into her side and started up the engine. A moment later, the black car was backing out of the garage and turning around to head out toward the highway. "I have to run this beast through a car-wash when we get back to Santa Rosa," Cathy finished.
End of Chapter 5