Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 2

Doug had been right. Their pursuers were close. Dawn was almost up when they reached the highway. Morning commuters sped past, whirring tires shooting rooster-tails of rainwater at them. Gunshots blasted behind them. The bullets missed but struck a passing car. The vehicle fishtailed wildly before slamming violently into guardrails. Sparks erupted into a column of orange flame. Behind it braking tires howled on pavement and cars skidded to avoid colliding. Doug, still carrying Annie, ran out into the busy northbound lanes. He just managed to dodge a speeding SUV when more gunfire erupted somewhere behind them. He heard bullets striking metal.

Collisions.

A concussive explosion.

He dropped Annie as gently as he could and they both tumbled down the slight incline of the grassy median. At the bottom he froze as that black, ethereal fluttering in his head tried to paralyze him again. And along with it, the plea, clear and bright, and so desperate: Please, mister, my name is Trinity and I need your help! I’m trapped in the House of Bones and I can’t get out. Doug shook his head, trying to lose the interference. He did not have time for this, goddamn it! He needed to think clearly.

From behind them came the sounds of more skidding automobiles.

Horns.

Metal shrieking against metal.

More horns.

More explosions.

The pink alien sky, now aglow with orange flame, cast their shadows forward in cinematic over-exaggeration. Annie was up, spinning around, eyes wild. “Look out!” she screamed. Doug, springing back into action, pulled the automatic out of his waistband and whirled. There were three of them. Three that he could see anyway. The bastards. Probably a little fucking army of them. He raised the automatic and dropped two of them in their tracks. He was just about to drop the third one when gunfire erupted from another direction. The guy dropped like a rock. Doug whirled, trying to see who had fired the third killing round. But there was no time, there was too much confusion, and more men were sprinting across the median toward them, guns drawn. He grabbed Annie’s hand and made for the southbound lanes pulling her along. But she was having trouble again, bending over, belly clenching with cramps. Maybe no one would have the fucking kid. He jumped the guardrail, lifting Annie over it. Behind them the northbound lanes were alive with the sounds of chaos. He could see at least four more hunters and they were beating feet like hungry dogs.

“Oh, God,” Annie said. “I can’t make it.” She was on her knees breathing in spasms. Doug ran back, lifted her to her feet and dragged her to the far side of the highway. He ran out into the middle of the south-bound lanes and tried to flag a car.

And was nearly killed. He jumped out of the way of a speeding sports car just in time.

The hunters were closing the gap quickly, sprinting across the median. More gunfire erupted, and two of them collapsed like sacks of dirty laundry. The other two stopped and whirled in confusion, weapons pointed. Doug was just as confused, but grateful that a guardian angel was looking out for them. What the fuck is going on? He prayed that the diversion would give him the time he needed to get Annie out of this situation. He turned around and was horrified to see that Annie was up and staggering back toward all the danger.

“No, Annie!” he screamed. “Stay there!” She wasn’t listening. Tires howled and cars careened to avoid her. Traffic began to slow. Doug frantically waved his arms. Annie went to her knees. Several vehicles contacted further up the line. Doug heard metal slamming against metal. He kept waving frantically, screaming for Annie to stay back. In the distance he thought he heard more gunfire, but he couldn’t be sure. There was so much noise, so much confusion. Cars careened around them, horns blaring. One skidded sideways and almost struck them before coming to a lurching halt. Others coming behind that one skidded and went off the road with terrible sounding impacts. Doug ripped the driver’s door open and yanked the man out.

“Don’t hurt me!” the man screamed, his hands high above his head, his eyes wild with terror.

Annie struggled to her feet and opened the passenger-side door. “Sorry,” Doug said, dimly aware of the fact that he was still holding the automatic. “Lady needs to get to a hospital.” The man eyed the gun warily then looked over at Annie. “We need to borrow your car.” Bullets pinged on metal. Annie fell into the car. The man took off for the ditch. Doug jumped in, his foot punching the gas pedal. A hail of bullets thumped into the car’s trunk.

The rear window exploded.

“You okay?” Doug asked. In the rearview he could see that two of the hunters were commandeering a vehicle.

“I don’t know,” Annie replied, panting, holding onto her midriff.

“Want me to get you to a hospital?”

“No! Jesus! They’ll find us. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I don’t know, Annie, Christ. You’re okay, then?”

“Better.” Her head was back. She was white. She was puffing like she was in labor.

Doug was already doing ninety, weaving in and around traffic. The exit ahead said Scarborough. He took it at speeds well above sane limits. He skidded left at the light and wound through morning rush-hour traffic, constantly glancing in his rearview.

“I think we lost them,” he said.

“Doug, goddamn it, tell me!” Annie was staring helplessly at him. Tears slid down her cheeks.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Yes you do. What happened to my mother?”

“Your father can explain.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Doug said nothing.

Annie put her face in her hands sobbing. “What’ll we do now?”

“Head north.”

“They’ll be looking for the car.”

Doug swung the wheel hard right and turned down a side street. “We’re not keeping it.”

He swung into a parking lot. They got out. Doug wiped the steering wheel and the door handles clean.

“Sure you’re okay?”

“No! My mother’s dead!”

“I’m sorry, Annie.”

Sirens warbled in the distance.

Dawn was all the way up now, dismal as it was. The rain had diminished to wind-driven mist, sheets of it blowing across the lot. They went back out into the main street. A minute later Doug flagged a cab. He told the driver to take them to a motel on the edge of town. He had ten bucks in his pocket, gave it to the driver. Luckily his wallet was in his jeans. He was out of cash so he gave the motel guy a credit card, knowing it was a mistake. But it was their only choice. Maybe it could buy them an hour or two.

In the room Annie picked up the phone and dialed. Her lips trembled. Wetness streaked her white face. Doug watched her, feeling like shit.

Annie listened for a long moment but did not speak. “Okay, daddy,” she said finally. “Yes. We’ll be there.” After hanging up she collapsed on the bed in sobs. Doug stood, fists clenched at his sides, rage needing an outlet, but there wasn’t one. He calmed himself, knowing that he had to, vowing that he would kill Edmund De Roché with his bare hands.

Annie didn’t say a word about her mother, just cried for a long time. Doug watched her, his anger receding.

He sat down on the bed beside her, taking one of her paint-stained hands in his, caressing it tenderly. Annie was an artist, but not your regular kind. She had this insane way of painting where she put her whole body into it. She never used a brush. Claimed she didn’t know how. She would glob huge amounts of multi-colored acrylic paint onto giant canvases with her bare hands and swirl and twist like a graceful dancer until the vision in her mind began to take form. Annie put everything she had into her painting, and as a result her works were both beautiful and disturbing. She’d sold quite a few in recent years and her reputation was growing. The stuff she’d been working on for the past year or so was scheduled to be shown in New York, a coming out for the artist entitled The Beautiful Madness of Her Creations. Luckily some of the paintings had already been moved from the house to the gallery, but a lot more had been destroyed in the explosion.

After Annie stopped crying they showered together and dried their clothes on the radiator. Neither of them spoke. Doug turned the TV on. A major pileup on both sides of the interstate was the number one item on the news. Several people were dead. Coincidentally a house nearby had exploded at about the same time as the pileup. And something else. Witnesses reported seeing a man and woman running from a group of men with guns. Several of the pursuers had been shot but it was unclear as to who they were or who had done the shooting. The speculation was that it was some sort of gang war over drugs, but the police hadn’t yet issued a statement. They would do so later, after everything had been sorted out.

Doug called a cab. Annie sat beside him as they rode, head back staring fixedly out the window. Doug told the driver to find an ATM. He got cash. Then they headed north toward the airport.

Two miles out Doug told the driver to keep going north on 295.

“What are you doing?” Annie asked, turning swollen eyes on him. “Daddy’s sending the jet.”

“I think we’d be safer if we just headed north into the mountains.”

“I said Daddy’s sending the jet!”

“I heard you, Annie. Fuck your father.”

“My mother’s dead!”

“I know. That’s what bothers me.”

“You think he did it?”

“I think he’d do anything to get you back.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Doug!”

“Jesus Christ, Annie. Look what just happened.”

“You think he set that up?”

“If not him, then who? He called. He told me to get you out of the house! Be honest with yourself, Annie. For Christ’s sake, you know him better than I do.”

Annie was silent for a long moment searching her husband’s face. But Doug knew that she was really searching inside herself, attempting to excavate the fossils of her history with her father. There were things that happened back in Annie’s other life that Doug had no knowledge of. Things he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to know about. He’d glimpsed bits and pieces of Annie’s reluctant excavations occasionally in the dead of night when she’d come awake covered in sweat, her breath rasping raggedly in her throat, her eyes dim and haunted. Eight years gone and it had taken an enormous amount of work on both their parts to get Annie on an even keel. And now she was actually considering going back to that bastard.

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “What I do know is, he’ll find us if he wants to, no matter where we go. And if he doesn’t, those bastards, whoever they are, will. We’ll be safer with him. Trust me.”

“Those bastards and your father are the same thing, Annie.”

“Stop it, Doug.”

Doug stopped. He watched his exotically beautiful wife carefully for a long silent moment. He did not want to give in. He was stubborn and independent and his instincts told him that going back into the world of Edmund De Roché would be the biggest mistake of their lives. But what if he was wrong about De Roché? What if he was just jealous of the hold he’d once had on Annie? Yes, that was true. He was jealous. And no, he wasn’t wrong about De Roché. The man had tremendous power. Unlimited resources at his disposal.

Doug thought back to the day he’d found out that De Roché had made some sort of sick deal for Annie’s first-born. He’d gone nuts and threatened to kill the bastard.

“It’s just one child, Doug,” De Roché had said in that maddeningly patronizing tone of his, as if deals like this were done every day. And perhaps they were in De Roché’s world, not in Doug’s. In Doug’s world you worked hard all day, came home and made love to your wife, and on weekends you watched the game while your wife went to the mall. “You’ll have more children,” De Roché said. “You and Annie are both young.”

“Never going to happen,” Doug insisted. “And you’re crazy if you think Annie and I are just going to give you our child. What kind of sick fuck are you, anyway?”

De Roché’s rage simmered just beneath the surface as he stared Doug down. Doug sensed that hiding inside the man’s refined demeanor lived a dangerous and desperate predator.

“I’ll take her away from you,” Doug said, staring directly into De Roché’s handsome, hateful eyes with defiance. She’ll forget about you. You’ll no longer know your daughter, and you’ll never know your grandchildren. Is that what you want, you sick son-of-a-bitch?”

“Come now, Douglas,” De Roché patronized. “Do you actually believe that you and Annie can have a life that’s free of my influence? If you do, you’re a bigger fool than I take you for. When and if you two decide to have a child, and you will, I have ways of finding these things out. Make no mistake.”

“Why are you doing this?” Doug asked, totally frustrated by this terrible man and his terrible perversions. “Why in God’s name do you want Annie’s child?”

“Let me tell you something, Douglas,” De Roché said in that same colorless and patronizing way he always spoke to Doug. “Painful as it might be to you, Annie is too good for you, she always has been, and she always will be. You don’t understand who she is or where she came from. Our family is a very old one, goes back to the dim recesses of the human race. There’s royalty and . . . immortality in our blood, and something else you can never understand . . .”

De Roché hesitated as if there was something in this confession that pained him. Doug waited, his rage still simmering, but a little intrigued at the idea that De Roché might actually be attempting to fabricate some sort of fiction in hopes of further degrading Doug’s status and elevating Annie’s worthiness. The man had said the word immortality. There could be no mistake. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Could De Roché think Doug stupid enough to believe such an absurdity? Or worse, did he himself believe it? Was the man that delusional?

Doug, of course, did not have to be reminded that Annie was too good for him. He’d known it from the day they’d met. In the real world a beautiful heiress with a name like Antoinette De Roché would never have given the likes of him a second glance. Whatever stars had been in alignment on the day they’d met might never again align. Doug was no fool. Annie was a goddess, and he was a mere mortal. But goddess or not, Annie belonged to him now, and she would remain his until she, and only she decided differently.

“Never mind,” De Roché said, flapping his hand almost in contempt. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, and even if you did believe, you certainly wouldn’t understand. Suffice it to say, promises must be kept. Deals are made, and when the collector calls, bills must be paid.”

“Bills?” Doug said, as if the word tasted foul on his tongue. “This is about paying bills?”

De Roché’s handsome blue eyes narrowed to seething pinpricks. There was something in them that made Doug’s blood run cold, some unspoken mystery or terrible knowledge. Suddenly Doug was quite certain that De Roché did have a secret, something sacred, perhaps evil, and in his moment of frustration, was on the verge of revealing it. Down deep Doug was hoping the man would keep his secret forever, for he suspected the knowledge might alter him in some incontrovertible way. It was not the first time he’d suspected there was something more to the De Roché dynasty than met the eye, something more than power or influence or money. In the first year or so of his acquaintance with the family, before he had taken Annie away from them, he’d glimpsed things that had disturbed him, overheard nuances that had baffled him. Nothing concrete, nothing he could lay his finger on exactly, but enough strangeness to make him happy to be away from their influence.

“There are things in this life that defy common logic, Douglas,” De Roché said, dashing Doug’s hopes. “Things that you do not and never will have the capacity to grasp.” De Roché’s eyes fell unfocused, as though he’d suddenly heard a distant voice. “There are worlds beyond ours,” De Roché said. “Worlds within worlds. Vast and complex and unreasoned places. Most are beyond our grasp, but not all. There are a few within reach. I’ve glimpsed one of those worlds, been there actually, and the possibilities, oh the possibilities. One only needs the key to tap into them. But you’ll never understand, will you? You’re too compliant, too deferential, too . . . ordinary to see beyond your shallow little life. The universe contains wonders and horrors you could never fathom. The days ahead will bear this out and then you will surely see what I have known from the beginning.”

Doug stared at the man not knowing how to react to his strange rhetoric, but being suddenly sure of one thing: De Roché was insane.

“And besides,” De Roché said dismissively, “this is between Annie and me and her firstborn. This is not about you. As it is I have to deal with the fact that she has chosen the likes of you to be its father.”

That’s when Doug had done the thing he would always regret. Not for his sake but for Annie’s. Rage had replaced all semblance of rationality and the fist was at De Roché’s face before the man saw it coming. Although in that moment Doug believed De Roché deserved what he got, it was the wrong thing to do under any circumstances.

De Roché recovered nobly from the blow, however, picking himself up off the floor and wiping the blood from his mouth. He opened the liquor cabinet, poured himself a shot of some amber liquor and downed it in a single swallow, his sharp, canny eyes never leaving Doug’s. Doug stood like a statue, fists clenched at his sides. He could not even bring himself to feel pity for De Roché, just more rage and frustration that such an unfeeling creature could be possessed with such maddening influence.

“By the way, Douglas,” De Roché said unflinching. “Annie’s not to know of our little . . . deal.”

“Deal?” Doug said with incredulity. “I’ve made no deals, you sick bastard, and I never will. Especially when it comes to my children.”

“I thought I’d made it clear that this is not about you, Douglas. Annie will bear a child. This is not debatable. And it does not matter with whom. You are only a minor player in this little drama that exists between Annie and her father. Just remember, if Annie learns of our conversation today, I will kill you. Regardless of Annie’s feelings, I will squash you like a bug. Annie’s playing the part now with her newfound freedom, being the rebel and all, the tortured artist. I tolerate her behavior, although I don’t understand it. But make no mistake. Annie is my girl. She always has been and she always will be. She has a responsibility to this family that she’s too blinded to see right now, but she will eventually, trust me, she will, they always do. I believe this thing she has for you and the bohemian lifestyle you two have chosen is just a temporary distraction, and if it turns out that it’s not, that I’m wrong, well, the world is not large enough for you to hide her from me. I will find you and I can promise you, when I do, you’ll beg for mercy before you die.”

That’s when Doug had taken Annie away from De Roché, away from all the money and privilege. Away from the sickness that infected De Roché and all that he surveyed. And Doug had remained defiant right up until the final moment. His defiance, however, could not drive away the fact that Annie was De Roché’s daughter and that he would always have to deal with the reality of it. De Roché was not a man to be fooled with, Doug knew. He might be power mad, he might even be insane, but it was of little consequence, for the man had the clout to accomplish nearly any task. Doug was maddeningly sure of that simple fact.

Nonetheless Doug had heeded De Roché’s admonition; he had never told Annie of the conversation he’d had with her father concerning their future child. It wasn’t because he was afraid of De Roché. He wasn’t, despite the fact that De Roché had threatened his life. He was more concerned with Annie’s stability. How in the world would she have been able to handle such knowledge? Although Annie possessed great intelligence, enormous strength of character and undeniable talent, there was something hidden inside these complexities that baffled him, sometimes even frightened him. Sometimes he saw things in her eyes, a dark and fluttering presence that in a very strange sense seemed to mirror Doug’s own inner demons. Coincidence or something else? He never wanted to think about that. When Annie was up and on an even keel her strength could lift the earth but when she was down she brought the world down with her. Doug suspected that her emotional highs and lows had everything to do with her former life as Edmund De Roché’s only child. Now he was afraid he’d waited too long, and that disclosing her father’s desire to possess her firstborn might destroy her. But the true heart of Doug’s fear was that his years of silence would bear evidence to some sort of complicity between him and her father. But isn’t that what De Roché had been banking on all along? The man might be insane. He was by no means stupid.

After marrying Doug, Annie had been ready and willing to leave De Roché’s lair for good. She was eager to be free of her father and his influence. Or so she’d said. The old man had gone nearly mad with grief on the day his daughter had left his fold as the wife of Douglas McArthur, jockeying and positioning, trying everything within his enormous power spectrum to win her back. And Doug had taken a perverse kind of pleasure in seeing it; ever aware that his world could come tumbling down at any moment and the last laugh might very well be at his expense. Annie had been adamant, however, repeatedly insisting that nothing her father could do or say would change her mind; she was, after all, in love with Douglas McArthur and that was a place she was quite happy to be in.

“But he’s a carpenter!” De Roché railed with equal amounts of fury and loathing. “And you’re going to live in the woods on the edge of a fucking freeway in a half completed wood-frame house!” Doug had been working on the house prior to their marriage and that’s where he and Annie intended to settle down, at least for the time being.

“Jesus was a carpenter,” Annie reminded her father. “It’s a noble profession. Besides, I like it in the woods. Doug and I will be happy there.”

“Happy?” De Roché said as if the word tasted foul on his tongue. “Living like common trailer park trash? What makes you think that happiness is an inalienable right? You’ll change your tune,” he admonished his daughter. “You’ll come crawling back when you realize you have nothing, when you need a fix of what only daddy can provide.”

But Annie hadn’t changed her tune. It had been more than eight years since that terrible day and Doug was as amazed as De Roché that he and Annie were still together and vital. There was some part of Doug that had always expected Annie would some day come to her senses and go back to her sheltered and privileged life. And now, it had taken the death of her mother to accomplish the deed. Poor Rachael, she’s the one who’d suffered because of her husband’s perversions, hadn’t she?

Loyal wife, keeper of terrible secrets.

Now she was dead and De Roché was calling in all his debts.

Annie was being forced back into De Roché’s sick world. And Doug knew why, and he was almost crazy with grief over it. As he’d said would happen, De Roché had somehow found out about Annie’s pregnancy and he’d sent those assholes to root them out, to frighten them into going back. Doug was trying to convince himself that at least Annie would be safe behind the walls of De Roché Manor. No harm would come to her until after the baby came. He was reasonably sure of that. He wasn’t quite so sure, however, about his own chances for survival. What he should do is deliver Annie, then get away as quickly as possible, disappear, begin looking into De Roché’s life, his past, find out everything he could about the man and his associations. From where he stood right now, there didn’t seem to be any other choice. He should have been doing it all along instead of blissfully loving Annie and ignoring De Roché’s resolve. Now he was sorry he’d become so complacent. Annie was an heiress to one of the largest political and financial dynasties in the history of the United States. How did he think that their lives could ever be normal? The years had almost made him forget De Roché’s threats. Big mistake. Now Doug needed to remember if he was going to survive. If he got moving now perhaps there would be time enough before the baby came to figure out what the hell was going on and rectify the problem.

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