A Whisper in the Dark Read online

  Oh, dear God no . . .

  A scream tore from his throat as he was penetrated. Agony tore through his body as the violation began, as swift and violent as the lash of a bullwhip. Pain and humiliation rose inside him like vomit. He tried to scream, but his face was crushed into the mattress.

  “No! God, please, no!”

  The horror of the nightmare sent him bolt upright. Labored breaths mingled with whimpers of pain and tore harshly from his throat.

  I’m going to give you what you really want . . .

  The evil words reverberated inside his head. He could still feel the agony of the violation. The evil lingering in the room. He desperately wanted to believe the entire episode had been nothing more than a nightmare.

  But he knew better.

  She was coming for him.

  In the darkness, he reached down and touched his pajama bottoms, felt the cold wetness of semen. Succubi were known for causing men to have nocturnal emissions. Even good, religious men of high moral character. Like him.

  Shame cut him at the thought of what he’d done. Of what had been done to him. A whimper escaped his lips. He put his hand over his mouth, but he could not keep the tears at bay.

  The succubus had violated his body. His mind. But he knew she wouldn’t stop. Not until she was finished with him. Then she would kill him.

  He wondered if he was the only man she had visited. How many more men would she rape and torture and maim? How many souls would she steal? How many men would not survive?

  Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, he stood. On trembling legs he walked to the tiny bathroom and flipped on the light. The sight of his tear-streaked face shocked him. At some point he’d bitten his lip hard enough to make it bleed. Or had she struck him? He’d been in so much agony, he didn’t remember.

  The only thing he knew for certain at the moment was that he had to stop her. She was the embodiment of evil. A demon preying upon men of faith. Some wouldn’t believe anything so utterly unbelievable. But he did. He believed with the fervor of a man who’d lived the terror.

  Feeling soiled and dirty, he spent several minutes washing up, trying hard not to think of the vile things that had been done to him. All the while a pristine new fury built inside him like a storm. He had been violated. He could not allow the succubus to get away with it. He couldn’t let her steal his soul.

  He dressed in blue jeans, black sweatshirt and dark sneakers. Leaving the bathroom, he went to his desk and switched on the lamp. His hand shook as he opened the drawer. The crucifix stared up at him. Next to it, the titanium blade of the ancient dagger glinted silver in the light of the desk lamp.

  Tonight, the hunted would become the hunter.

  TEN

  “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  Felicia nearly spewed her hurricane all over the bar at the tired line. Turning on the bar stool, she glanced at the man standing next to her and laughed. “That’s a real original pickup line you got there, Elvis. Maybe you ought to trademark it.”

  His mouth curved. “Who says I’m trying to pick you up?”

  “You’re in this dump at one A.M. Why else would you be standing there looking like some scraggly little mutt begging for scraps?”

  “Maybe I just want to have a good time.”

  Felicia sucked on her straw. He wasn’t the man she’d hoped to take home tonight. She’d had her sights set on the older guy in the Armani suit and Rolex watch at the end of the bar. But he’d been hanging all over that redhead with the big boobs for the last half hour. Why couldn’t it ever be the rich guy whose eye she caught?

  But it was late and she was feeling lonely. Elvis wasn’t exactly a heartbreaker, but he was attractive in a boy-next-door sort of way.

  He caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a hurricane for her.

  “You’re not drinking?” she asked.

  “Designated driver.”

  Responsible, she thought, and her opinion of him went up a notch. She smiled when he removed the money clip and wad of bills from his pocket. Maybe Elvis wasn’t a loser. Maybe the night wasn’t a total wash after all.

  “Make that a double,” she told the bartender.

  “In a to-go glass.” He laid a twenty on the bar.

  Big tipper, she thought. The night was definitely looking up.

  “Want to take a walk?” he asked.

  She drank deeply and contemplated him. “Where to?”

  “Your choice.” He shrugged. “There are plenty of pretty places in the Quarter.”

  Reaching out, he ran his finger along the side of her face, to her chin, then brushed his fingertips over her arm. “How about if I give you a tour of the cemetery?”

  Felicia had never fucked anyone in a cemetery before. She was all too aware that the old cemeteries surrounding the Quarter were frequented by muggers. But with the alcohol humming through her veins and the feel of his fingertips against her face, she thought it might be exciting.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “You mean besides me?” He smiled.

  Felicia threw her head back and laughed. “Sorry, Elvis, but it’s going to take more than you’re pretty face to get me into some cemetery.”

  Never taking his eyes from hers, he pulled the money clip from his pocket. “Name it.”

  She stared at the wad of cash, her heart pounding just a little too fast. Felicia didn’t consider herself a prostitute. Prostitutes were drug addicts who gave ten-dollar blow jobs in back alleys and had some ruthless pimp taking all their hard-earned cash. Felicia, on the other hand, was a businesswoman. Yes, she accepted money in exchange for sex. But she chose who she slept with. She believed the men she slept with paid her because they liked her. Because they enjoyed her company. Because she was so damn good at what she did.

  “Two hundred and I’m yours for the night.”

  He didn’t look like he could afford it. But he didn’t so much as flinch when he tugged two hundred-dollar bills from the wad and passed them to her.

  Felicia slid the bills between the buttons of her blouse and tucked them into her bra. “St. Louis or Lafayette?”

  “Both,” he said and took her hand.

  She gripped the headstone and thought about her grocery list while he pumped in and out of her from behind. He’d grown silent after leaving the bar. He’d gotten downright sullen as they’d entered St. Louis Cemetery. Felicia regretted her decision, but she’d had worse dates in the two years she’d been having sex for money. He’d balked at the condom she’d insisted upon. Then he’d wanted to take her from behind like some kind of a damn dog. “Whatever rings your chimes,” she’d told him and hiked her skirt. Now, with the drizzle coming down and the night having grown cold, she just wanted him to finish so she could go home and take a shower.

  “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” He gripped her hips hard as he thrust into her, his fingers digging uncomfortably into her flesh. “Forgive me,” he grunted. “Please forgive me.”

  Some men liked to talk during sex. Elvis was a mumbler. Felicia caught about half of what he was saying, and it was getting downright weird. From what she could gather, he was some kind of religious nut who felt he needed God’s forgiveness for having sex. Get over it, she wanted to tell him. But she was afraid if she ticked him off now it would take even longer for him to finish.

  “Oh baby, yeah,” she cooed, hoping to help him along. “Give it to me. Yeah, right there. Oh, you’re going to make me come.”

  “Bitch,” he panted. “Whore.”

  An electric current of anger zipped through her at the words. “Zip it, Elvis,” she snapped. “Or I’m going to call it quits and you can spend the rest of the night jerking off.”

  “Succubus.”

  Felicia didn’t know what the word meant, but she didn’t like it. Using her elbow, she tried to push him away, force him to withdraw, so she could straighten. But his hands went from her hips to her throat. Adrenaline sparked in her gut when he squeeze
d. She let go of the headstone and tried to pry his fingers from around her throat. But he was too strong. His fingers were digging in, crushing her throat. His body continued ramming violently into hers. All the while he hissed. “Whore. Cunt. Succubus bitch.”

  Felicia had survived twenty-six years of hard living. She’d survived some things she probably shouldn’t have. Cheated fate once or twice along the way. But until this very moment she’d always believed she would die of old age. Never at the hands of man she was having sex with.

  Oh, dear God, he’s killing me . . .

  Panic exploded inside her. She thought of her parents back in Shreveport. Her sister in Baton Rouge. The little niece she would never meet. What would they think of her? How could she let them know what she had become? How could she break their hearts this way?

  The primal will to live thrashed inside her. Her scream came out as a choking roar. She clawed at the hands crushing her throat. She lashed out with her feet, trying to injure him with her heels. She opened her mouth to gulp desperately needed oxygen. But he only squeezed harder. Her strength was beginning to wane. The ghostly crypts around her dipped and spun. She could barely feel his body slamming into hers. Vaguely, she was aware of him speaking, but she could no longer make out the words.

  Help me! her mind silently screamed.

  But no one heard her.

  No one came to her aid.

  And as a steady rain pounded down, conscious thought ebbed and slipped away. Her body went slack. Her knees hit the ground. She saw darkness. She heard the roar of an angry sea. And then she was spiraling down into a vortex of nothing.

  ELEVEN

  Consciousness came to John by degree. The first thing he became aware of was the ruthless little bastard in his head gleefully stabbing his brain with an ice pick. The second thing he became cognizant of was that he was pretty sure he was going to throw up. To top things off he had to piss. A fact he wasn’t going to be able to ignore much longer.

  A groan escaped him as he rolled onto his side and realized he wasn’t in a bed. The ice pick stabbed harder and faster. John’s mouth filled with bile, but he swallowed it back. The floor felt as cold and hard as concrete beneath him, as if his bones were bare and scraping against stone. Vaguely, he wondered how he’d ended up on the floor.

  He’d had worse nights, but not by much. The nightmare had started the instant he’d fallen asleep. It was always the same. John walking into the warehouse. The silhouette of a man raising his weapon. The blast of a gunshot. The smell of death and Franklin Watts’s blood on his hands . . .

  “Fuck,” he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  For an instant the darkness gave him reprieve. No thoughts. No feelings. Just . . . nothing.

  Then the chatter started. At first John thought he had finally gone around the bend. Voices echoing inside his head like a bunch of goddamn chipmunks. If he hadn’t been so hung over, he might have laughed.

  “I walk into the storage room for cash register tape and see a half-naked man collapsed on the floor next to the cot.”

  “On the floor?

  “Half-naked?” The two voices came simultaneously.

  “What’s he doing in the storage room anyway?”

  “What’s who doing in the storage room?” came a male voice.

  “Maybe he’s sick.”

  “Has anyone asked?”

  “Has anyone checked to make sure he’s still alive?”

  The pain in John’s head hit a high note. A moan squeezed from his throat as he forced himself to a sitting position. He cracked open one eye to see the room spin sickeningly. He was lying on the floor, beside the cot. Judging from the pain in his neck and spine, he’d spent the night there.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Muttering the words beneath his breath, he set his hands on the cot and carefully got to his feet. The room dipped and he closed his eyes. He tasted the sour remnants of gin at the back of his throat, and a wave of nausea washed over him. He looked around for a trash can in case he needed to hurl, remembered belatedly that he was in the storage room of Julia Wainwright’s bookstore—and it all came flooding back.

  Jesus Christ. What was he thinking taking on this assignment when he could barely drag his sorry ass out of bed—or in this case off the floor—in the morning?

  “John?”

  He jerked his head toward the voice, winced when pain shot through his neck. Dread joined the nausea and churned in his gut at the sight of the three people crowded into the doorway, staring at him as if he were an alligator that had wandered in out of the swamp.

  He squinted, trying to discern if there were three people looking at him . . . or if he was seeing in triplicate. Blinking the faces into focus, he realized two of them belonged to Julia and Claudia. He wasn’t sure about the wimpy-looking guy standing behind them.

  “What the hell do you want?” he croaked.

  Jesus. Had he just said that?

  “I thought you might want some coffee.”

  He looked at Julia, saw the cup in her hand, and for the first time realized he was making one hell of a bad impression. “Set it down on the file cabinet,” he said. “I’ll get it in a minute.”

  “While you’re at it you might want to put on your pants.”

  That came from the guy. Frowning, John looked down, realized he was wearing only his boxer shorts. He wasn’t easily embarrassed. He normally wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass if someone saw him in his skivvies. But he had a piss hard-on, and hangover or not, he much preferred to keep that part of his anatomy private.

  Cursing beneath his breath, he turned away, snagged his jeans off the cot and stepped into them. “Do you fucking mind?” he snapped.

  “Oh . . . sure.”

  He looked over his shoulder as he zipped his fly. Julia looked embarrassed. Claudia looked like a fifth-grader who’d just been told laughing would get her a detention. The wimpy dipshit looked like he was enjoying the entire stupid scene.

  “Close the door behind you,” John added.

  In unison the three people backed away from the doorway. Julia reached in to pull the door closed. For an instant, their eyes met. An apology hovered on the tip of his tongue, but John didn’t voice it. He was in no mood to grovel. He wasn’t even sure he cared.

  “This is the guy who’s supposed to be protecting you?” came the wimp’s voice as Julia closed the door.

  The door closed with a resonant click.

  John stood there a moment longer, telling himself he wasn’t ashamed. Goddamn it, he didn’t care enough to be ashamed. But deep inside he was a hell of a lot more than ashamed.

  The problem was he didn’t know what to do about it.

  Julia sat at her desk, her right hand flying over the calculator keypad, her left flipping through the month’s invoices as she tallied them. Claudia perched a hip on the corner of her desk, sipping a tall café au lait from the coffee shop across the street. A few feet away Jacob rolled a cart down the nearest aisle, shelving the books Julia had bought at auction last week in Shreveport.

  “My God, you could have been killed,” Jacob said, shoving a Steinbeck first edition onto the top shelf.

  “I was mostly just . . . shaken up,” Julia said.

  Turning to her, the clerk put his hands on his hips. “Honey, that turtleneck only goes so far to hide those bruises that bastard put on your neck.”

  She’d done her best to hide the bruises, but the smudges had deepened overnight and makeup only covered so much. In the end she’d opted for a turtleneck, but it didn’t cover the bruises high on her throat. It sure didn’t do much for the pain. The night before the adrenaline had anesthetized her to a degree. This morning, she felt every bruise with an intensity that told her just how violent the attack had been.

  “At the very least you should have called me,” Jacob said, looking perturbed.

  “It was late,” Julia said. “Claudia was here. So was John.”

  “You mean the
guy passed out in the storage room?” His voice was incredulous. “A lot of good he would have done. From the look of him, you’d be lucky to wake him up. What was your dad thinking, hiring a guy like that to protect you?”

  “Maybe he was thinking John was once a good cop,” Claudia put in.

  “If super cop is so damn good,” Jacob motioned toward Julia, “where was he last night when that maniac was trying to strangle her?”

  “I was in the back room getting shit-faced and planning my next fuckup,” came a gravelly voice from the storage room doorway.

  Jacob spun at the sound of John’s voice, nearly dropping the book he was shelving. Claudia slid from the desk, looking like a teenager who’d just been caught smoking.

  Julia leaned back in her desk chair and watched John approach. He looked rumpled in the same jeans and flannel shirt he’d been wearing the night before. His hair was sticking up on one side. The pale cast to his face combined with bloodshot eyes told her his night had probably been every bit as bad as hers. Maybe even worse. She could tell by his dark expression that he’d heard every word of their conversation.

  He walked to the coffeemaker and poured. His hand shook as he raised the cup to his lips. When he turned around, his eyes were hostile and landed on Jacob. “While we’re on the subject of last night, where were you?”

  Jacob choked out a sound of incredulity. “You can’t be serious.”

  John’s gaze didn’t falter. “As a heart attack.”

  Jacob shot a look at Julia. “Do I have to answer that?”

  John didn’t give her time to respond. “Unless maybe you have something to hide.”

  Jacob snorted. “I was home all evening. Reading.”

  “Alone?”

  “I live alone.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “That’s the truth.” Jacob turned to Julia. “This is ridiculous.”

  Knowing the situation was a nanosecond away from getting out of hand, Julia opened her desk drawer for the bottle of aspirin she kept on hand. Tapping three into her palm, she carried them to John. “Be nice,” she said, shoving the pills at him.