“Come,” Charlotte motioned. “The least we can do for the moment is be civil. I am certainly curious about how you can do what you do, Jackie. It's quite extraordinary, given that you're, well, alive and all.”
And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much.
“Honestly, Charlotte, I'd like to discuss the issues at hand.”
She stepped into the living room and was immediately greeted by Carson and a man she did not recognize seated in a pair of antique Victorian chairs by the front window. Each had a rifle laying casually across their laps.
“Where's your cronies at, Ms. Rutledge?” Carson asked, his mouth twisting into a sneer. The man had tissue stuffed into his nose, and one eye was nearly swollen shut.
Jackie smiled. Someone had clocked him good. “Little trouble with the townsfolk there, Carson?”
“No thanks to you, missy,” he said. “Be glad when you're gone, bitch.”
“Elton! Language!” Charlotte's voice barked out so harshly that Jackie had to look and make sure it had actually come from her. “You will behave while in my household.”
Carson looked away from them and replied in a hushed voice. “Yes, ma'am.”
Well, if there was any doubt about who ran this town, that made it abundantly clear right there. Even the girls murmuring in her head cringed and hushed at Charlotte's voice.
“You do seem to have them all under lock and key, Charlotte,” Jackie said. It was rather impressive, she had to admit. “Though, I guess a hundred years gives you plenty of time to work things out.”
“Yes, it has,” she said with a pleased smile. “Everyone in the Mill puts in their time, isn't that right, Mayor Compton?” She gave the other man a sardonic grin. “Come, let's sit by the fire.”
A dark, quiet voice spoke over the murmur of the girls in her head.
Even after we're dead.
Charlotte stopped and looked back at Jackie. “Excuse me?”
Damnit, girls! You need to be quiet. It's not safe yet.
“Nothing, just muttering to myself.”
Margolin walked in then, carrying a tray with a teapot, three cups and saucers, and a sugar bowl. “Ah, there we go,” Charlotte said. “Thank you, Phillip. Just set it on the table there, please.”
Jackie rounded the sofa facing the fireplace to sit in the chair opposite Charlotte, ignoring the chattering of the girls, who were all excited at the prospect of tea time, and placing her back to Carson and the other man. She stopped abruptly at the sight of Jessica reclined peacefully on the cushions.
She stirred sleepily, blinking at Jackie. “Sis?” she asked, struggling to remove the quilt and sit up.
Charlotte reached over and put her hand on Jessica's shoulder. “Right here, Bec. Our guest has arrived.”
The sleep evaporated as her mouth pressed together into a thin line. “The one who wants to ruin everything?”
Great. What a nice way to situate things. “Hello, Jes ... Rebecca. Despite what you may think, I did not come here to ruin anything.”
Charlotte leaned forward and poured tea into the cups. “And yet, here you are, Jackie, doing your best to ruin everything after I finally got my sis back.” She smiled sweetly over at Jessica and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
“Youâ” Jackie stopped at the sudden outburst in her head. Tiny starbursts of light danced before her eyes.
“Jack?” McManus's voice piped into her ear. “Don't sit with your back to those guys. Not good.”
“Sonofabitch.” Jackie pressed her hands to her temples. Questions and demands from the girls assaulted her from everywhere.
Laur! Help!
I'm trying.
She tried to push back against the onslaught, with a surge from Laurel to back her up, but it was quickly becoming too much to handle.
“Ms. Rutledge?” Charlotte asked, curious. “Are you ... you ... what have you done?”
Jackie tried to focus on Charlotte who had risen to her feet. “I haven't doneâ”
She had pushed them all back, quelled the growing shock and outrage, except for one, the stern and silent Rebecca who broke free, taking hold of Jackie while she struggled to contain her.
“That is
not
your sister, Charlotte Louise Thatcher!” The voice spewing forth from Jackie's mouth was not hers. “You drank your sister's blood a hundred and ten years ago and sold your soul to Death. How many have you killed to bring me back, Sis? How many?”
Jackie pulled on Rebecca, trying to force her back within the confines of her mind, where the rest now watched in stunned silence. Even with Laurel's help, she was proving to be recalcitrant.
“Bec?” Charlotte stood up, eyes wide in shock. “How?”
“Jackie!” Nick called out. “Get out of there. You've got the real Rebecca with you.”
No shit. Rebecca! You've got to stop now before it's too late.
Her efforts along with Laurel's, were slowly pulling her back, but Jackie had little practice in doing this kind of thing, and it was proving far too difficult.
“All of that blood on your hands! You don't deserve to have me back.”
Charlotte was in Jackie's face now. She grabbed a handful of rain slicker and leather jacket in each hand and shook her. “Bec! You've been here? This whole time you were here?”
“I've lingered here, Sis,” she said, “waiting for when I could say good-bye to you without all of this getting in the way. So, now I'm here. I loved you once, but no more, not after what you've done, what you've become.”
“Bec!” The violence of Charlotte's strength snapped Jackie's head back and forth. “Come out of there. Please.”
Rebecca's will to force herself over Jackie's own began to wane. They were pulling her back, but now Charlotte was reaching in, her eyes aglow, attempting to do the same.
“Good-bye, Sis. I hope you find peace.”
With that she withdrew back into the recesses of Jackie's mind, slipping away from Charlotte's probing power.
“Bec?” Charlotte grabbed Jackie's chin in a bruising grip. “Becca! Come back!” Her stare refocused on Jackie's, who was barely getting her vision back. “Where is she? What did you do with her?”
Jackie felt her feet lifting off the ground. “She's here with me, along with all the other Rebeccas.”
“Jack,” McManus hissed into her ear, “get out of the living room, if you can.”
“You aren't going anywhere,” Charlotte said, and twisted Jackie's head sidewise. “Got your boys waiting out there for you, Jack?” She reached up to pluck the earbud from Jackie's ear, as Jackie reached up to grab hold of Charlotte's arm. Her arm jerked away and she slapped Jackie a ringing blow across the side of her head. The blow stunned Jackie momentarily, and the next thing she saw was the earbud pinched between Charlotte's fingers. “You bring my sister back or I swear to God, I will crush your head with my bare hands and dig her out of there myself.” With that she ground the earbud between her fingers and dropped it to the floor.
“Sis?” Jessica asked, standing beside her now. “What do you mean? I'm right here.”
Charlotte turned and pushed her back to the couch. “Sit down and be quiet.”
“Well, well,” Margolin said from the living room archway. “Stuck your hand in the tiger's cage, didn't you, Rutledge?”
Jackie took advantage of the distraction to slam her steel-toed boot into Charlotte's shin with as much effort as her dangling body could manage. Inside her head, the muddled confusion was starting to focus into a hard, cool anger. The girls were beginning to realize just what had been going on for the past century in Thatcher's Mill.
Charlotte cried out and dropped Jackie to the floor. “Ow! You bitch!” Her tiny fist flashed out with prizefighter speed but missed its mark because Jackie was stumbling backward after dropping awkwardly to the floor. Charlotte's fist struck her, instead, high up on the shoulder, sending Jackie spinning sideways over the end table next to the chair.
She fell to the floor, her shoulder throbbing. So much for in and out in ten minutes. Her leverage had abruptly turned into a significant disadvantage. She got the bad feeling Charlotte might even try to make good on her threat.
“Elton! Stanley!” Charlotte called out. “Get out there and deal with whomever is waiting outside. Philip, get to the church. Go!”
Damn it all to hell.
Jackie turned and reached for the Glock. She would dive out the damn living room window if she had to. The team would be making a move at any moment, given what they had heard, and she did not want to be standing around in here when the bullets started flying.
The team, however, was apparently ready to make their move sooner than even Jackie had anticipated. Suddenly the living room window erupted in a shower of glass shards, and Jackie heard the familiar hiss of the tear gas canister as it tumbled across the floor.
She rolled away from the spewing smoke. Jessica began to scream. Elton and Stanley both swore and brought their weapons to bear on the front window. Charlotte kicked the end table so hard to get it out of her way that her foot went through it, splintering it in two. Jackie had maybe two seconds to bring her weapon around to face Charlotte before she would be on her.
The look on Charlotte's face spoke volumes. End game or not, her intentions looked damn clear to Jackie. She was going to kill her.
Cross over, hon! Cross over!
Laurel's voice yelled at her.
But the girls were in the way, interfering with her ability to do much of anything in that regard. She could not get the door open that quickly. Jackie raised the Glock to fire as Charlotte bore down on her, and watched in disbelief as it flew from her hand in a shower of blood. Her blood.
In the archway, Margolin stood with a shotgun in hand. “Not this time, Rutledge,” he said.
Jackie's arm flopped across her stomach, chunks of flesh now missing from her forearm. She was too stunned to even cry out or curse. Charlotte loomed over her, a wicked grin on her face. Behind her, Elton and Stanley began to open fire on the team outside.
Shit, Laur. Fucked that up.
“Come, Sis. Hurry and drink. This blood may be special, and you'll need the extra boost.” Charlotte smiled down at Jackie with a humorless flash of teeth.
Nick and Shel are on their way. I can feel them coming.
Laurel's words offered no encouragement. Jackie realized in that split second before Charlotte's pretty black shoe connected with the side of her head that they would probably be too late.
Chapter 27
Nick's stomach wrenched in knots when the words came out of Jackie's mouth. For a second, he thought someone unseen had entered the room with Jackie, but the voice had been far too clear and close to be anyone but her. Only the voice had not been hers at all. What she said sent a chill through him. Shelby realized it at the same time he did.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “It's the real Rebecca.”
“What the hell?” McManus asked. “Who is that?”
“It's the ghost of the real Rebecca Thatcher, and she's not happy with her sister.” Nick grabbed the mic from McManus. “Jackie! Get out of there. You've got the real Rebecca with you.”
When Charlotte leaped up into the camera, blocking their view of everything, all three of them startled. When the camera view began to shake, Shelby stepped out of the SUV. “OK, enough bullshit. We've got to get her out of there now.”
“Just let her go, Jackie,” Nick said quietly. “It's not worth it.”
McManus queued into the team. “Pernetti, we've got shit going downâget ready to launch that gas.”
They flinched at the sound of Jackie getting slapped. Nick hopped out to the pavement. “We're heading up.”
As he ran out into the street, Nick heard McManus telling Jackie to get out of the living room. Shelby was already fifty yards ahead of him, nearly at the end of the street starting up the drive to the Thatchers'. Then McManus's voice ordered the gas launched. Nick heard the distinctive shatter of glass. That should have been the tear gas going in. Any luck and it would disable everyone except Charlotte herself.
Nick had not bothered to holster either of the Glocks McManus had given him. He barreled full speed up the hill, powering his legs with the extra energy of the dead. Shelby was still fifty yards ahead. There was no plan now, other than getting to Jackie before Charlotte could kill her. Of that he had no doubt. With Rebecca showing up to condemn her sister, the one-hundred-year charade would now be collapsing into ruin. Charlotte would want to get her sister back at any cost, and he figured she would go to any lengths to get her out of Jackie or kill her trying.
A gunshot rang out as he topped the drive, low and harsh. It had to be from a shotgun blast. Where had the shotgun come from? Jackie's view had not revealed one, and the chief and the Mayor had been carrying rifles. Who was wielding the gun, and more importantly, who had just been shot? Nick had little time to ponder, as bullets began to fly out of the living room window.
Maddox's voice piped in about Jackie, followed by McManus's voice yelling into his earbud. “Do not fire on the living room. Jack is down in the living room. Repeat, Jack is down in the living room.”
Shelby crossed the circle, running straight for the broken window. Charlotte was still in there somewhere. Nick could sense her, as well as Jessica, who was far weaker at this point. Through the window, he could see the two men, one of them Carson, who had spotted Shelby as she sprinted for the house.
He had caught sight of them when they crested the drive and was bringing his rifle around to bear down upon them. Shelby ignored that fact, racing up behind Jackie's car as partial cover before using it as a launching pad. The car sat a good fifteen feet from the edge of the house, but that space was nothing for either of them to deal with. She put one foot on the near corner of the bumper, stepped across to the edge of trunk on the far side for leverage and flew across the open space and through the busted window, taking out a fair chunk of glass in the process as she crashed into Carson. Nick could not tell if she had been hit by the one frantic shot he got off before she disappeared through the flutter of curtains and into the living room.
The other man, whom Nick did not recognize, took a surprised step or two back from Shelby's attack. This allowed Nick to take a more direct approach. The window frame was a good six feet wide, which was more than enough space for him to plant his hands on the sill and swing his feet up and over, much like hopping a fence. Only, at his current speed, there was no opportunity to look for an ideal place to grab the sill. Nick planted both hands on the far right side, knowing but not feeling the bite of broken glass slicing into the palms of his hands, and swung up and over. His momentum made it more of somersault, but it got the job he wanted done. Nick's body tore down the curtains, but his boots connected with the other man and sent him sprawling backward, where he crashed into a bookcase next to the archway leading into the entry.
Nick landed on Shelby and Carson, who had tumbled into the chairs situated before the window. The Mayor was out cold, but Shelby struggled to extricate herself from the jumble of bodies and furniture.
“Damn it, Nick! You big oaf.” She pushed to her knees, lifting Nick up along with her. “Get off.”
Nick stood up, grabbing a handful of Shelby's shirt to bring her upright with him. On the floor, not ten feet away, Jackie lay unconscious, blood pooling around her. Jessica sat back on her heels next to her, shocked by their entrance, a glistening sheen of blood painting her mouth. Charlotte was nowhere to be seen but she was definitely near at hand.
“What have you done, Jessica?” Nick said, springing over the knocked-over chair to land beside her, grabbing her by the collar of her dress.
“Sis said,” she exclaimed, and tried to pull away. “She said to!
Nick shoved her away, sending Jessica sprawling over the broken end table to land on the couch. He squatted down next to Jackie to examine the mess of her forearm. It looked like half the flesh had been ripped away, and blood was flowing from a broken vein.
“McManus!” he barked into the mic. “Get a medevac up here. Jackâ”
He stopped at the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked.
“What, Nick?” McManus replied. “What's happened?”
“Don't touch my sister, Marshal,” Charlotte said.
Nick caught her out of the corner of his eye, standing in the middle of the entry with a double barrel in her hands. Shelby had begun to move at the sound of her words, but was a split second too late as the blast of both barrels went off.
The spread of shot, tight at such short range, caught Nick high on the side, under the right shoulder blade and knocked him over Jackie and into the wall beside the fireplace. It burned like a sonofabitch.
Shelby let out something like a banshee cry, which was followed by the sound of more shattering glass. Nick shook the cobwebs out of his head, pushing energy toward the wound to staunch the bleeding.
Jessica yelled. “Charlie!” She leaped from the couch and landed on Shelby's back.
Jackie still lay unmoving next to him. How much had she bled out already? Nick pushed himself back to his feet, feeling the warm rush of blood soaking his shirt. He needed to get Jackie out of there. If only Shelby could hold off Charlotte for a few seconds.
The thought ended almost as soon as he had it. Shelby flipped Jessica off of her back, sending her upside down into the wall beside the front door.
Charlotte's eyes got very wide, her nostrils flaring with rage. Twenty feet away, Nick could feel the surge of energy welling up around her. She blocked Shelby's left cross, lunged in, and grabbed a handful of leather jacket with both fists. He launched himself toward Charlotte, a long leap aimed at taking her out at the knees, but Charlotte was too quick. He hit her, dropping Charlotte to her knees, but not before she had spun a quick 270, hurling Shelby through the front door, blowing it off its hinges in a crackling splinter of wood and exploding glass.
Charlotte cried out, more in anger than pain and brought her elbow down hard against Nick's shoulder. There was an agonizing pop as the blow tore through ligaments and separated his arm from its socket. It was then, rolling away from the stinging shot, on the shifting air created by the hole where the front door had been, that Nick picked up on a faint, familiar smell. Propane.
That odor had not been noticeable from the outside, which meant somewhere in the house a propane source was bleeding gas into the house. Would she really be taking that route, blowing them all to hell? No, she couldn't be.
McManus shouted into his ear. “We've got a church full of people running toward the hill.”
Nick could hear shouting in the background. “I'm coming up. Get Jack out of there now!”
Charlotte had turned to check on Jessica, who groaned and whimpered in a heap against the wall. Shelby was out on the front porch, struggling back to her feet. He hoped she had heard the call from McManus to get out. The smell of propane was beginning to overpower. The kitchen likely had a propane stove. If that was the case, one nice spark anytime soon and the whole north side of the house would turn into kindling.
“Head out back to the garage,” Charlotte said to Jessica. “It's time to go.”
Nick reached for one of the Glocks that Shelby had dropped when she attacked Charlotte, but even his swift reactions were no match for hers. She swung the barrel of the shotgun around in a swift arc, knocking the pistol from his hand as he tried to bring it around on her. It skidded toward the front door, where Shelby looked to be back in control of her senses.
Charlotte raised the shotgun to fire, and Nick had the sudden, horrifying image of Jackie getting buried alive in the rubble of the house. “Charlotte! No! You'll blow us all up.”
“Just now figuring that out?” Her foot flashed out, the two-inch heels puncturing through Nick's already lacerated hand. She yelled at Jessica, who was coughing her way back into the kitchen where the fumes were likely still strong. “Go, Sis. Run!”
There was a breaking sound from out front and Shelby was gone from the doorway, having leaped through the wall of the screened-in porch. At the point, gunfire began to erupt from the outside. Blood blossomed backward in a spray from Charlotte's shoulder and then her side.
“Cease fire,” Nick called into his mic. “Cease fire! There's a gas leak in the kitchen.”
Charlotte cried out, more in rage than pain by the tone of it, and sprang for the relative safety of the living room, where the protective shield of Jackie lay on the floor, bleeding to death. Nick lunged for her as she flew over him, but caught nothing but air. He did not have the advantage of a dozen or more other Rebeccas fueling his reserves.
Shelby had come in through the living room window again and was diving for Nick's weapons, still lying on the floor by the fireplace. She reached them, but a second too late, as Charlotte was on top of her before she could raise the guns. The butt of the shotgun came down with swift precision against Shelby's head, who collapsed to the floor with the sickening sound of cracking bone.
Nick launched himself at Charlotte again, just as she was wheeling around to meet him, swinging the barrel of the gun in a lightning quick arc. He had guessed high this time, a fortunate move that brought the muzzle of the shotgun under his outstretched arms. The detonation of the shell so close to his head deafened him for a moment, and somewhere below, the shot connected, ankle or foot, he could not tell, as he slammed into Charlotte and crashed into the wall, shattering plaster in an explosion of dust and debris. They both dropped down on top of Shelby's prone body.
If his shoulder had not separated before, it definitely was now, and Charlotte dug her hand into the flesh there, shoving him off of her legs. Nick kicked at her knee as she got to her feet, but his positioning was awkward and he landed only a glancing blow, pushing her sideways, but not back down. He attempted to roll away from her well-aimed toe, but turned instead into Jackie, whose face, he realized was looking very ashen.
The blow from the point of Charlotte's shoe caught him across the jaw, not quite enough to dislocate it, but something cracked and he felt a warm gush of blood in his mouth. The momentum of it carried him over onto his other side, and he was forced to attempt to push himself up with the one good arm he had remaining, which lay pinned beneath him.
Several more shots rang out and Charlotte screamed this time, drowning out part of what McManus yelled in his ear. “... almost here. Everyone, in the cars, now!”
Nick tried to laugh and coughed out a spray of blood. “Not happening.”
“Couldn't stop the vampire before, could you, Marshal?” Charlotte said, her voice full of menace. Nick turned to see her looming over him, the quaint, Victorian chair held up in her dainty hands. “And you certainly can't now.”
Charlotte brought the chair crashing down, and Nick lifted his separated arm to ward off the blow. In that moment, before things went dark, something unexpected brushed up against his leg. Jackie.