Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

And so tonight, I lead a goat into the woods.

It comes willingly, because it has never felt the sting of human cruelty. The moon is so bright I need no flashlight to show me the way. Behind me I hear the confused bleating of the other goats that I’ve just released from the farmer’s barn, but they don’t follow me. Their calls recede as I walk deeper into the woods, and now all I hear is the sound of my footfalls and the goat’s hooves on the forest floor.

When we have walked far enough, I tie the goat to a tree. The animal senses what is to come and gives an anxious bleat as I take off my clothes, stripping down to naked skin. I kneel on the moss. The night is cool, but my shivering is from anticipation. I raise the knife, and the ritual words flow from my lips as easily as they always have before. Praise to our lord Seth, to the god of my ancestors. The god of death and destruction. Through countless millennia, he has guided our hands, has led us from the Levant to the lands of Phoenicia and Rome, to every corner of the earth. We are everywhere.

The blood spurts in a hot fountain.

When it is over, I walk naked, except for my shoes, to the lake. Under the moon’s glow I wade into the water and wash away the goat’s blood. I emerge cleansed and exhilarated. Only as I pull on my clothes does my heartbeat finally slow, and exhaustion suddenly drapes its heavy arm around my shoulders. I could almost fall asleep on the grass, but I don’t dare lie down; I am so tired, I might not awaken until daylight.

I trudge back toward the house. As I reach the top of the hill, I see her. Lily stands on the edge of the lawn, a slender silhouette with hair gleaming in the moonlight. She is looking at me.

“Where have you been?” she asks.

“I went for a swim.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s the best time.” Slowly I walk toward her. She stands perfectly still, even as I move close enough to touch her. “The water’s warm. No one can see you swimming naked.” My hand is cool from the lake, and she shivers as I caress her cheek. Is it from fear or fascination? I don’t know. What I do know is that she has been watching me these past weeks, just as I’ve been watching her, and something is happening between us. They say that Hell calls to Hell. Somewhere inside her, the darkness has heard my call and is stirring to life.

I move even closer. Though she’s older than I am, I’m taller, and my arm slips easily around her waist as I lean in. As our hips meet.

Her slap sends me reeling backward.

“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she says. She turns and walks to the house.

My face is still stinging. I linger in the darkness, waiting for the imprint of her blow to fade from my cheek. She has no idea who I really am, who she has just humiliated. No idea what the consequences will be.

I do not sleep that night.

Instead I lie awake, thinking of all the lessons my mother taught me about patience and about biding one’s time. “The most satisfying prize,” she said, “is the one you’re forced to wait for.” When the sun rises the next morning, I am still in bed, thinking about my mother’s words. I am thinking, too, about that humiliating slap. About all the ways that Lily and her friends have shown me disrespect.

Downstairs, Aunt Amy is in the kitchen cooking breakfast. I smell coffee brewing and bacon crisping in a frying pan. And I hear her call out, “Peter? Have you seen my boning knife?”

As usual on a hot summer’s day, the Piazza di Spagna was a sea of sweating tourists. They milled elbow to elbow, expensive cameras dangling from their necks, flushed faces shaded from the sun beneath floppy hats and baseball caps. From her perch above, on the Spanish Steps, Lily surveyed the crowd’s movements, noting the eddies that swirled around the vendors’ carts, the crosscurrents of competing tour groups. Wary of pickpockets, she started down the steps, waving away the inevitable trinket hawkers who hovered like flies. She noticed several men glance her way, but their interest was merely momentary. A look, a flicker of a lascivious thought, and then their eyes were on to the next passing female. Lily scarcely gave them a thought as she descended toward the piazza, threading past a couple embracing on the steps, past a studious young man hunched over a book. She waded into the throng. In crowds she felt safe, anonymous, and insulated. It was merely an illusion, of course; there was no truly safe place. As she crossed the piazza, tacking past camera-snapping tourists and children slurping at gelato, she knew that she was all too easy to spot. Crowds provided cover for both prey and predator.

She reached the far end of the piazza and walked past a shop selling designer shoes and purses that she would never, in this lifetime, be able to afford. Beyond it was a bank with an ATM and three people waiting to use it. She joined the line. By the time it was her turn, she’d already taken a good look at everyone standing nearby and spotted no thieves ready to swoop in. Now was the time to make a large withdrawal. She’d been in Rome for four weeks, and had not yet landed any work. Despite her fluent Italian, not a single coffee stand, not a single souvenir shop, had a job for her, and she was down to her last five Euros.

She inserted her bankcard, requested three hundred Euros, and waited for the cash to appear. Her card slid back out, along with a printed receipt. But no cash. She stared down at the receipt, her stomach suddenly dropping. She needed no translation to understand what was printed there.

Insufficient funds.

Okay, she thought, maybe I just asked for too much at once. Calm down. She inserted her card again, punched in the code, requested two hundred Euros.

Insufficient funds.

By now, the woman standing behind her in line was making hurry up already! sighs. For the third time, Lily slid in her card. Requested one hundred Euros.

Insufficient funds.

“Hey, are you going to be finished sometime soon? Like, maybe, today ?” the woman behind her asked.

Lily turned to face her. Just that one look, molten with rage, made the woman step back in alarm. Lily shoved past her and headed back to the piazza, moving blindly, for once not caring who was watching her, tracking her. By the time she reached the Spanish Steps, all the strength had gone out of her legs. She sank onto the stairs and dropped her head in her hands.

Her money was gone. She’d known her account was getting low, that eventually it would run out, but she’d thought there was enough to last at least another month. She had enough cash for maybe two more meals, and that was it. No hotel tonight, no bed. But hey, these stairs were comfortable enough, and she couldn’t beat the view. When she got hungry, she could always go diving in the trash can for some tourist’s leftover sandwich.

Who am I kidding? I’ve got to get some money.

She lifted her head, looked around the piazza, and saw plenty of single men. Hello, guys, anyone willing to pay for an afternoon with a hot and desperate chick? Then she spotted three policemen strolling the periphery and decided that this was not a good place to troll for prospects. Getting arrested would be inconvenient; it might also prove fatal.

She unzipped her backpack and feverishly dug around inside. Maybe there was a wad of cash she’d forgotten about, or a few loose coins rattling around on the bottom. Fat chance. As if she didn’t keep track of every single penny. She found a roll of mints, a ballpoint pen. No money.