Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

The first book in the Oregon Coast – Wicked series, 2009

Special thanks to Terry of Iron Station, North Carolina, for supplying the character name for Butterfinger, the cat in this book.

St. Elizabeth’s campus

February 1989

Midnight…

Mother Mary, help me!

Oh, please…save me!

The girl rushed headlong through the maze and rising mist. She stumbled, her face grazed by a poking branch.

“Damn.” Clapping a hand to her cheek, she instantly felt the warmth of blood welling against her fingers. It spurred her onward. She kept running, moving, breathing hard. Her calf muscles ached, her lungs burned, and still the midnight rain washed over her, cold and cruel.

This is wrong. Oh, God, so wrong.

It shouldn’t be this way! Couldn’t!

Glancing over her shoulder, she listened hard, deafened by her own heartbeats. She wasn’t lost. She knew where she was. She knew the twists and turns that would take her to this maze’s center, and once there, she believed there was another exit-maybe two-though it had been so long since she’d seen them. She thought for an instant that she might be leading him to her own doom, to a trap of her own creation. She just had to keep moving, recalling twists and turns…

But it was so dark.

And he was getting closer. She could feel him. As if his breath was already brushing across her skin.

Fear clutched at her throat and she nearly slipped around a corner of shivering laurel. He knew about her and now was running her to ground.

How had he known? When she’d spent so many years-her entire life, it seemed-learning the truth herself!

Then, foolishly, she’d goaded him. Dared him. Brought to the maze by her own invitation as she’d hoped to learn more; to expose him. She’d believed she could turn the tables on him, avert the very doom she now faced. But things weren’t going as planned, she thought, her shoes slipping on the long grass. Somehow the hunter had become the hunted.

But how could he know about her…unless…unless he was one of them?

Oh, Jesus!

She heard something. A noise…a sibilant hiss…

The hairs on the back of her nape lifted.

What the hell was that?

She froze in place, hands up, as if to ward off danger, body quivering, poised on the balls of her feet, softly panting. He was here! Close! He’d already entered the maze. She could hear him now easily, as he was making no effort to disguise his approach.

Her heart knocked painfully against her ribs.

Was he alone? She thought he was alone. He should be alone. She’d set this up so he would be alone, but now she didn’t know.

Didn’t know anything.

That’s where the fear came in, because she always knew.

That was her gift.

And maybe her curse.

That’s why they hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her. That’s why she’d found out who they were, and who she was, even though they’d tried hard to keep her from learning.

For her own safety, they’d said.

And now…now she was beginning to understand what they’d meant.

Because of him.

She strained to listen, her heart quivering, her fear mounting. He was walking through the maze. Unhurried. Undeterred. Making all the right turns. Was there more than one set of footsteps? Someone else? She couldn’t be sure.

And she couldn’t stay where she was. She glanced upward over the tall hedge and saw, as the clouds shifted over the moon, a shaft of the palest light. It threw the bell tower of the church in stark, ominous relief, and near it, just to the south, the roof line of the convent.

She’d seen those landmarks a hundred times before.

Heart thudding, her bearings now intact, she slipped through the hedges. Stealthily. Edging onward, around a bench and a sharp angle, toward the center of the maze, toward the statue.

She’d always been slightly leery of the ghostly Madonna, but now she wanted to reach it with all her heart. Her need to find it was like a hunger, something she could almost cry out for if she dared on this dark, evil night.

Sanctuary.

Safety.

Or so she prayed. Her veins were filled with ice, freezing her so thoroughly it felt as if her blood might solidify.

Silently rounding a final corner, she stopped suddenly as the statue of Mary abruptly appeared, its arms uplifted, greeting her in pale white. Accompanied by the quake of the branches and the musty smell of dead leaves and mud, the statue shimmered ghostlike.

At the sight of it she drew a sharp breath and stumbled backward, nearly falling. A tiny stick snapped beneath her shoe.

She glanced backward fearfully, crouched, poised like a hunted animal. Had he heard? Behind her, through the night-dark maze, she heard his progress. Steadfast. Onward. Skirting corners without hesitation. His footsteps echoed the beats of her own heart, knelling her doom. Swallowing, she licked her lips nervously as she forced her legs to move forward. One corner…a length…another corner.

Where the hell was the exit?

Had she missed it?

She wanted to cry out in fear and frustration as she was forced to backtrack, knowing he was nearer, feeling him close enough that her skin quivered.

There was no opening, no parting of the thick branches.

Panic tore through her. There had to be a way out, a place to hide, a way to get the upper hand…Oh, God.

And still he came.

Nearer.

His footsteps loud against the muddy ground. Determined.

Where? Where the hell was the opening?

She hurried along each of the back walls of shrubbery, running her hands through the leaves, searching…searching…Head pounding, heart thrumming wildly, her ears seemed filled with the roar of the ocean, the battering of the ocean against distant cliffs…though she was nowhere near the ocean in this closed labyrinth. But it had always been this way. She had always heard these oddly familiar sounds, always sensed a remote place with thick salt air…

But here she found no opening. No escape. Nothing but thick, unbroken branches.

She swallowed hard against her fear. This was it. There was no escape.

Kneeling at the statue, she mouthed, “Mother Mary, save my soul…”

She hadn’t been good.

Oh, God no.

But she wasn’t all bad, either.

Behind her she heard him move ever forward. No rush, no rush at all.

He knew he had her. Terror crawled up her spine.

She kept silently, desperately praying, again and again, Mother Mary, save my soul. And then another voice. Deep. Rough. Echoing hollowly through her skull: She can’t help you. You have no soul to save.

Were they his words? Was that his cruel voice inside her head?

She thought with sudden clarity: I’m sixteen years old and I am going to die. How stupid she was to have goaded him-teased him. Dared him.

What had she been thinking?

This was the crux of her problem: Not only could she see the future, she sometimes tried to change it.

And now he was going to kill her. In the middle of this maze, in the cold of winter, he was going to end her life. Desperately she slipped one hand into the pocket of her jacket, curled her fingers over the jackknife hidden within.

With all her strength she prayed for her life, her soul. Above her pulsing heart she heard the hunter’s footsteps. Nearer. Relentlessly closer. She rose, turning, facing the yawning opening in the thick shrubbery, the only means of escape. From the depths a dark figure appeared.

Tall.

Menacing.