Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

It was the dogs that again brought her down, both of them hurling themselves at her back, sending her sprawling.

“Release!” Dominic ordered.

The dogs backed off. Edwina, clutching her bruised face, aimed a punishing kick at Lily’s ribs, and Lily rolled away, in too much agony even to draw a breath. Through a haze of pain, she saw Dominic’s shoes move closer. She felt Edwina grasp her wrists and pin them against the floor. She looked up, into Dominic’s face, into eyes that reflected the fire’s glow like burning coals.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said. In his hand was the hot poker.

Lily twisted, screaming, as she tried to wrench free, but Edwina’s grasp was too powerful. As Dominic lowered the poker, she turned away, cheek pressed to the floor, eyes closed against the pain to come.

The explosion sprayed warmth across her face. She heard Edwina give a gasp, heard the poker thud to the floor. And suddenly Lily’s hands were free.

She opened her eyes to see the two Dobermans sprinting across the room toward Jane Rizzoli. Jane raised her weapon and fired again. One of the dogs dropped, but the other was already in the air, flying like a black rocket. Jane got off one last shot, just as the dog slammed into her. Her gun tumbled and slid away as they both went down, Jane grappling at the wounded Doberman.

“No,” Edwina moaned. She was on her knees beside her fallen son, cradling his face, stroking back his hair. “You can’t die! You’re the chosen. ”

Lily struggled to sit up, and the room tilted around her. By the glow of the ravenous flames, she saw Edwina rise like an avenging angel to her feet. She saw the woman reach down and pick up Jane’s fallen gun.

The room spun even more crazily as Lily staggered to her feet. The whirl of images refused to remain still. The flames. Edwina. The spreading pool of Dominic’s blood, glistening in the firelight.

And the poker.

The dog gave a last convulsive twitch and Jane shoved it aside. The carcass, tongue lolling, flopped onto the floor. Only then did Jane focus on Edwina standing over her, on the weapon gleaming in Edwina’s hands.

“It all ends here. Tonight,” said Edwina. “You. And Mephisto.” Edwina raised the gun, the muscles of her arm pulling taut as she squeezed the grip. Her attention was fixed so completely on Jane that she did not see her own death hurtling toward her head.

The poker slammed into Edwina’s skull, and Lily felt the crack of crushing bone, transmitted straight to her hand through wrought iron. Edwina dropped to the floor without uttering a sound. Lily lost her grip, and the falling poker clanged as it hit wood. She stared down at what she had just done. At Edwina’s head, the skull caved in. At the blood, flowing like a black river. And suddenly the room darkened, and her legs wobbled out from beneath her. She slid to the floor, landing on her rump. She dropped her head in her lap and could feel nothing: no pain, no sensation at all in her limbs. She was floating disembodied on the edge of blackness.

“Lily.” Jane touched her shoulder. “Lily, you’re bleeding. Let me see your arm.”

She gasped in a breath. The room brightened. Slowly she raised her head and focused on Jane’s face. “I killed her,” she murmured.

“Just don’t look at her, okay? Come on, let’s move you to the couch.” Jane reached down to help Lily to her feet. She froze, her fingers suddenly taut around Lily’s arm.

Lily heard the whispers, too, and her blood turned to ice in her veins. She stared at Dominic and saw that his eyes were open and aware. His lips moved, the words so soft she could barely hear what he was saying.

“Not…not…”

Jane bent over him to listen. Lily did not dare move any closer, fearful that Dominic would suddenly spring up at her, like a cobra. They could kill him again and again, but he’d always come back. He’d never die.

Evil never does.

The fire glowed in the reflecting pool of spreading blood, as though the flames themselves were seeping across the floor, an expanding inferno with Dominic at its source.

Again his lips moved. “We’re not…”

“Say it,” said Jane. “Tell me.”

“We are not…the only…ones.”

“What?” Jane knelt down, grabbed Dominic by the shoulders, and shook him hard. “Who else is there?”

A last breath rushed out of Dominic’s lungs. Slowly his jaw sagged open, and the lines of his face smoothed like melting wax. Jane released the body and straightened. Then she looked at Lily. “What did he mean by that?”

Lily stared at Dominic’s unfocused eyes, at a face now slack and lifeless. “He just told us,” she said, “that it’s not over yet.”

A snowplow scraped its way up the mountain road, the rumble of its engine echoing up from the valley. Standing on the lodge’s snow-covered deck, Jane looked down over the railing to catch a view of the road below. She watched the plow’s steady progress as it wound its way toward them, scraping a path through fresh-fallen powder. Inhaling a breath of cold and cleansing air, she lifted her face to the sun, trying to clear the last wisps of fog from her brain. Once the road was clear, a whole host of official vehicles would be arriving on the mountain: the state police, the medical examiner, the crime-scene unit. She had to be fully alert and ready for their questions.

Even though she didn’t have all the answers.

She stomped the snow off her boots, slid open the glass door, and stepped back into the lodge.

The other survivors were seated around the kitchen table. Although it was warmer in the great room where the fire was burning, none of them wanted to move from the kitchen. None of them wanted to be in the same room with the corpses.

Maura finished rebandaging Lily’s arm. “There’s damage to your flexor tendons. I think you’re going to need surgery. At the very least, antibiotics.” She looked at Jane. “When the road’s clear, the first thing we need to do is get her to a hospital.”

“It won’t be too much longer,” said Jane. “The plow’s halfway up the mountain.” She sat down and looked at Lily. “You realize the police will have questions for you. A lot of them.”

Maura said, “It can wait until after she gets medical attention.”

“Yes, of course. But Lily, you know you’re going to get asked about what happened here last night.”

“Can’t you back up everything she says?” said Maura.

“I didn’t see it all,” said Jane. “I slept through half of it.”

“Thank God you didn’t finish your wine. Or we’d all be ashes today.”

“I blame myself,” said Sansone. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep at all. That was my mistake, letting Edwina pour me a glass.”

Jane frowned at Sansone. “You were planning to stay up all night?”

“I thought someone should be awake. Just in case.”

“Then you already suspected Edwina?”

“No, I’m embarrassed to admit. You have to understand how careful we are when we bring in a new member. They come to us only through referrals, from people we know. And then we make inquiries, background checks. Edwina wasn’t the one I had doubts about.” He looked at Lily. “You were the one I didn’t trust.”

“Why Lily?” asked Jane.

“That night, when my garden window was forced open, you remember I told you that we always keep it locked?”

“Yes.”

“Which means that someone unlatched it from the inside, someone who was in my house that night. I assumed it was Lily.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Maura. “If you’re that careful about who joins the foundation, how could you be so wrong about Edwina?”

“That’s what Gottfried and I have to find out. How she infiltrated. How it was planned and executed. She didn’t just show up one day on our doorstep; she had assistance, from someone within Mephisto, someone who scrubbed away anything suspicious in her background check.”