Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

And there was no warmth in the little girl’s eyes. No more. It was gone.

“You lied to me,” she said.

“No.” I swallowed hard, knowing that it was too late, but going on all the same. “I didn’t lie. I didn’t mean to-”

Her hand passed through mine again, and the coldness froze the lie in my throat.

“It’s true,” she said. “I’m dead. I’m a ghost.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I explained. “That’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. That’s why I lied.”

We sat there in silence. The only sounds were the guttering torch and the girl’s sobs, but it seemed I heard the pounding of my heart.

“You shouldn’t stay here,” I said finally.

“I won’t. I’ll go back to the bridge.”

“That’s good.”

I took the torch from the wall and started up the stairs. We left the bottle house together and crossed the beach to the trail that led into the woods.

No breadcrumbs there, but we both knew where the trail led. To a special place, a place where the little girl belonged.

I wished I could go there with her.

Circe felt the same way. “Please come with me,” she said.

“Not now. There’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back.”

She looked away quickly, but not quickly enough. I saw the doubt in her eyes.

“Don’t tell me any more lies,” she said. “All I want is the truth.”

I nodded.

The truth was all I wanted, too. One woman could give it to me. Her name was Circe Whistler.

Cerberus’s teeth gleamed in the harsh glow of the hearse’s headlights.

But I wasn’t looking for a bronze dog. I flicked a lever near the steering wheel and the headlights flared to bright, blinding the guards lurking in the shadows near the rear gate of Circe’s compound.

Two men with black robes and very large guns. They looked like Spider Ripley’s brothers, and maybe they were. Maybe they were waiting for Spider to show up in a big black hearse.

The men exchanged glances and a few words, standing there like a couple of bowling pins.

A seven-ten split.

It was an easier pickup then I’d had at the funeral home. I slammed my foot against the gas pedal. Cerberus’s bronze teeth savaged the Caddy’s left front fender as I clipped the statue. Gunfire pitted the windshield. But it was too late.

I picked up the spare.

The guards disappeared under the Caddy’s front bumper, and I crashed through the electronic gate on whitewalls stained red with blood.

Only a brick footpath on the other side, but it would have to do. The main entrance to Circe Whistler’s estate was heavily guarded, with another gate in the way. The odds of making it through that gate alive-and down the winding driveway, and into the mansion itself-were short.

I needed a direct route, like the one I’d used at the funeral home. This was it. Past braided vines and ferns and orchids and hanging fuchsias, Cadillac hearse on brick staircase, Detroit steel screaming against wrought iron railings, fenders kicking up sparks that rained down on the dark windshield like dying fireflies.

Hi-beams splashed black water. The swimming pool was just ahead. I cut the wheel sharply, tires digging through a patch of orchids like four wild dogs, and the hearse went into a power slide.

Driven by too much weight. I’d misjudged badly, and all I could do was bail.

Shoulder first, I landed hard in the churned earth. The Cadillac rushed on without me. I didn’t have time to watch it go. Flaring taillights painted my hands the darkest red as I pawed the soil, trying to get up.

A quick glance beyond the taillights as I rose.

Men sprinted around the side of Circe’s mansion, drawing guns as they ran.

I was almost up, but almost wasn’t going to cut it.

The hearse hit the water with a thunderous slap.

A curtain of water rose from the pool, and Circe’s guards were lost behind it.

Just another second and I’d have my feet under me.

Gunfire ripped through the wall of water.

My right foot slipped on a pulped orchid and I dropped to one knee.

Water splashed down on me, pasting lank white hair to my shoulders.

Flashlight beams seared my face like lightning strikes. Circe’s men recognized me. The first one whispered a prayer. The second dropped to his knees.

The third squinted at me. Raised his pistol. Said, “Wait one fucking minute-”

I shot number three twice in the chest. He fell forward as I rose, pistols bucking in my hands while I cut down his companions.

The guards’ guns clattered against the cement. Two splashes in the pool. Two dead men bobbing like Halloween apples.

A white arc of light pierced the deep water. A sinking flashlight. I watched it hit bottom.

Four more guards turned the corner of the house. For a second, they thought they knew who I was. A second was all I needed. I killed them where they stood.

Ghosts stumbled into the woods, and writhed on the cement patio, and swam like drowning things in the black water of Circe’s swimming pool.

I ignored the spirits of the dead. Moving fast, I scavenged a couple of pistols from the fallen guards, along with extra ammunition. Then I tossed a deckchair through one of the glass doors and entered Circe’s mansion.

So far, I’d been lucky. The guards at the gate had hesitated when they saw the hearse, thinking that I might be Spider Ripley. Their counterparts at the pool had hesitated for another reason-they thought that I was a dead man reborn.

I had only fooled Circe’s men for a moment, but in that moment they had mistaken me for her father. Not that I looked like Diabolos Whistler. But I was wearing his double’s face.

I’d carved it off the undertaker’s skull before leaving the Owl’s Roost Mortuary, and now I wore it like a monster mask. Long white hair hanging halfway down my back, my mouth surrounded by a dead man’s bristling goatee-the horrible disguise wouldn’t fool anyone with 20/20 vision and an ounce of sense, but it was enough to freeze a true believer’s circuits for just a second.

That second was all I needed to get the upper hand.

I sucked a breath through the undertaker’s dead lips as I crossed the dining room. I was sure that Circe was in the house-the property wouldn’t have been so heavily guarded if she had pulled up stakes and run. And Circe Whistler wasn’t the kind to run.

Inside the mansion, silence hung heavy in the air. No frightened voices, no bodyguards shouting orders. If any guards remained, they weren’t showing themselves.

If they were here, I’d take them the way I took the others. I was sure of that. I had two pistols, extra ammunition clips in my pockets, and a K-bar knife jammed under my belt. As long as I could hide behind a dead man’s face, as long as I could count on a single moment of hesitation, the odds were on my side.

Pistols gripped tightly in my hands, I stepped into the long shadows of the living room. I paused as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The large windows that faced the Pacific came into view. Leaden clouds above a black horizon, silhouetting furniture…and a bonsai tree on a low table…and a spiked wrought iron staircase twisting upwards.

Upstairs…that was where I wanted to go.

A staccato slash of raindrops rattled against the windows.

I drew a deep breath.

Held it in silence…lost it with a single sound. A scrabbling of claws near the bonsai tree. A throaty growl as a black shadow launched itself in my direction.