Soultaker

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The first thing Stu Walker was aware of upon regaining consciousness was the strange medicinal taste in his mouth. He couldn’t identify it, but a powerful chemical smell clogged his nostrils, too.

Chloroform?

At first blush, the very thought of it was crazy. It made him think of scenes from movies. Guy walking down a street, some black-clad guys pop a white cloth over his mouth, and the poor bastard gets shoved into the back of a black limo. Maybe he’s a superspy, maybe James Bond himself, and he’ll wind up outwitting his abductors. Or maybe he’s just some guy in over his head, a gambler in debt up to his eyeballs. Guy like that, you’ll never see him again. He’ll end up chained to a cinder block at the bottom of a lake or buried beneath the goalpost at a football stadium. Anyone could conjure up a thousand similar scenarios with ease. Because it was so cliche. Any casual observer of popular culture had seen countless variations on it.

So it was ridiculous, really.

But.

Maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe chloroform or some other chemical agent had been used to knock him out. The smell and the sore-throat tickle at the back of his throat made it hard to deny. But there was a bigger question to consider. Who would do this? He thought about it and hit a brick wall. He didn’t have any real enemies, certainly no one who hated him enough to do something like this. The whole situation just didn’t make any sense. Well, whatever was going on, he had been out like a light for hours. He knew that by the darkness visible through the bedroom window.

He was in the master bedroom of the spacious lakeside cabin Lorelei’s parents owned. The room was dark, the only light courtesy of a single candle on the nightstand to his right. Its light revealed little of the room. He could see the nightstand, the bed’s gleaming brass headboard, and the window. The darkness was deeper at the other end of the room. He could just make out the shadowy outline of the bedroom’s open door. He sensed movement in the hallway beyond, motion defined by changing shades of darkness. He wondered who was out there, what kind of predator might have invaded the remote cabin, and that made him think of Lorelei.

My God, what have they done to her?

He pictured her as he’d last seen her, nude save for her stylish stiletto-heel boots, sprawled invitingly across the plush white rug spread in front of the fireplace. The image was the last thing he remembered. He marveled at the stealth of the intruder (or had there been more than one of the bastards?). He couldn’t recall any sense of danger. And he usually noticed such things. That ability to suss out danger-and to know when a tense situation was tilting toward violence-had served him well as a barkeep. Not many barroom brawls went down on his watch. But he couldn’t remember anything like that. There’d been no creak of the hardwood floor, no shadow falling over him, no warm breath tickling the hairs at the back of his neck.

There’d only been Lorelei.

Then the smell.

Followed by the long, dreamless void of unconsciousness.

His breath caught in his throat as he heard a click of heels on the hardwood floor. Something was moving through the deep darkness at the other end of the room, gaining definition as it approached, taking on a familiar form.

A smile trembled around the corners of Stu’s mouth; then he let out a gasp of relief. “Lorelei. You’re alive.”

He tried to rise as she approached the bed, but the ropes binding him to the headboard held him in place. He’d been so weak-and so groggy-that he’d been unaware they were there. He turned his wrists a bit, testing the bonds. There was no give to them at all. Someone had done an expert job of securing him to the bed.

Lorelei stood over him now. “Hello, Stu.”

“I’m so glad to see you.” Stu coughed. He felt lousy. Nauseated. The medicinal taste made him feel sick, like he was on the verge of coming down with the flu. He craved a cold beer to flush the taste away. “I was so afraid they’d done something horrible to you.”

Lorelei laughed. “It’s yourself you should be worried about.”

Stu frowned. “What? Why? They must have left, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in here. I don’t know why they didn’t finish us off, but I’m so grateful they weren’t killers. But they might come back. You never know. You need to find a knife, a sharp one, and cut these ropes off me.”

Lorelei didn’t answer.

Stu looked at her with a mixture of awe, love, and sudden fear. She was as beautiful as she’d been all those years ago. Her perfect, trim body was as toned as it had been in their high school days. It was as if the last decade had melted away. They were back together, as they’d been destined to be all along. How empty his heart had been during all those wasted years. He’d never stopped wanting her, and, like a miracle, she was his again. But maybe not. Because she was behaving very strangely. And it made no sense that ruthless home invaders would leave her alive and unbound. A quick study of her nude, and very lovely, body revealed no marks or damage of any kind.

“Lorelei…what’s going on here?”

She smiled. “I’m doing my duty. This is my sacrifice. My way of honoring the goddess. I do love you, Stu. But I love Lamia more.”

Stu coughed again. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lorelei’s smile broadened. “Of course you don’t, baby. And you don’t need to. And I’m sorry, but the worse it is for you, the greater my eventual reward will be.”

Stu’s head was swimming. He felt like he was in a dream. He knew now Lorelei meant to harm him. Probably kill him. And as bad as that was-he definitely didn’t want to die-the inability to understand what was going on here was even worse. He wanted to know why this was happening. Maybe she had lost her mind at some point during their years apart. That must be it. It was the only thing that could explain the nonsense talk about “sacrifice” and “honoring the goddess.” And as he considered the likelihood of Lorelei’s madness, the terror that had taken root within grew exponentially. His heart slammed in his chest and his eyes filled with tears. He had so much left he wanted to do in life.

It couldn’t end like this. So soon and unexpectedly.

It wasn’t fair.

Lorelei knelt and lifted a black plastic garbage bag off the floor. She flashed a smile disturbing in its gleefulness and dumped the bag’s contents on the bed next to him. Stu lifted his head and saw a funnel affixed to a length of vacuum hose, a roll of duct tape, a knife, and a bottle of extra-strength Drano.

He let out a whimper and showed Lorelei a beseeching look. “No…nonono…you can’t.”

Lorelei laughed. “Oh, but I can.”

Tears spilled in hot streams down Stu’s face. “No. Jesus…no…”

Lorelei’s eyes turned hard. “It’s Lamia you should be praying to, Stu.”

She picked up the length of vacuum hose and shoved it through his wide-open mouth, killing a burgeoning sob. Stu’s eyes went wide and he tried to push the hose out of his mouth with his tongue. But Lorelei climbed atop him and planted a knee on his chest, then used her leverage to shove the hose deeper down his throat. He gagged and coughed, and the rapid slamming of his heart sounded like thunder in his ears. Through it all, Lorelei laughed.

She wrapped several layers of duct tape around his head to better secure the hose.

Then she used the knife to cut him.

The cutting went on for a seeming eternity. Lorelei licked his wounds and painted her body with his blood.

The pain was immense. Staggering. All of existence was pain, it seemed. And yet, it afforded him a small mea sure of peace, because he knew it couldn’t get any worse than this.

But he was wrong.

Lorelei picked up the Drano and slowly twisted the cap off the bottle, savoring the agony and helplessness in his expression.

She smiled. “Bottoms up, baby.”

She picked up the funnel and began to pour.

And for Stu, things got a lot worse for a little while.

Then he was gone.