Читать книгу Lost Souls - Lisa Jackson - Страница 14

The double doors of the student union clanged shut behind Lucretia, then opened again as a wave of students, talking and laughing, dripping from the rain, pushed their way inside and headed for the counter to order.

Wasting no time, Kristi gathered her notebook computer and purse, then hurried outside and down the steps as the bells from the church tower began tolling off the hour. “Great,” she muttered, noticing how few people were still hurrying across the quad.

Because everyone’s already in class.

Even Lucretia, who had left just moments before Kristi, was nowhere to be seen, as if she’d vanished into the gloomy day.

This is no way to start the term, she told herself as she half ran along a brick pathway that led out of the quad and cut past the chapel and around Wagner House, the two-hundred-year-old stone mansion where the Wagner family, who had donated the land for the college, had once lived. Now a museum, and rumored to be haunted, the towering manor rose three full stories and was complete with mullioned windows, gargoyles on the downspouts, and dormers poking out of the steep, ridged roof.

Raindrops began to fall as Kristi dashed past the wrought-iron fence that separated the gabled house from the edge of the campus, then cut behind a science building. She rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a tall man dressed all in black who was standing with his back to her. He held a hand to his forehead, as if protecting his eyes from the rain. He was deep in discussion with someone Kristi couldn’t see, but as she dashed by, she caught a glimpse of his white clerical collar and etched, grim features. He was talking to a small woman in an oversized coat. Her face was turned up to him as she lowered her voice when Kristi passed, but Kristi recognized Lucretia’s friend, Ariel. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, she was holding a bag of books, her glasses were splattered with rain, but even so, she looked as if she were on the verge of tears.

“…I…I just thought you should know, Father Tony,” Ariel said, flipping the hood of her jacket over her head.

Father Tony. The priest Irene Calloway had griped about being too hip. Kristi had seen his name in the school catalogue, where he’d been listed as Father Anthony Mediera. In the All Saints information packet the priest had been smiling and calm, wearing a cassock as he stared into the camera with large eyes. Now those blue eyes were dark and guarded, his jaw set, his thin lips flat in repressed anger.

“Don’t worry,” he said with the hint of an Italian accent, also lowering his voice as Kristi passed. “I’ll handle it. Promise.”

Ariel’s smile was tremulous and adoring, until she spied Kristi. Her expression changed quickly and she hurried away, as if hoping Kristi hadn’t recognized her like she’d obviously recognized Kristi.

Which was fine.

Kristi was late. Whatever Ariel was confessing to Father Tony had nothing to do with her.

She zigzagged behind the religious center and finally, nearly ten minutes late, reached Adam’s Hall, where she took the exterior steps two at a time. Inside the old building she clamored her way to the second floor, where the doors to her classroom were already closed.

Damn, she thought, yanking open the door to a room so quiet she was certain anyone within could hear a pin drop let alone her bold entry.

The windows were draped in thick dark velvet, the rectangular classroom lit by fake candles. A tall man stood at the podium. Her heart nearly stopped as he stared at her with near-black eyes, then glanced at the clock over the door.

She found one of the few empty seats and told herself he wasn’t glaring at her with eyes like embers, dark but threatening to glow red. It was all just a matter of lighting and her own vivid imagination. Because the classroom had been converted to a creep-a-thon, and the image that was cast behind him on the chalkboard from a slide projector plugged into his computer was of Bela Lugosi, dressed as Dracula, in white shirt and cape.

Bela’s picture disappeared, changed to another image, one of a horrible, hissing creature with needle-sharp teeth and blood dripping from his lips.

“Vampires come in all shapes and sizes and have varying powers,” Dr. Grotto said, glancing at the next picture, an old comic book cover with a cartoon image of a lurking vampire creature about to lunge at a fleeing, scantily clad blonde with a figure that would make Barbie envious.

Kristi tried to meld into the other students, but no such luck. Dr. Grotto seemed to single her out, to glower at her as she opened her notepad and laptop computer. Finally, he cleared his throat and glanced down at his notes. “We’ll start the term with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, discuss where he found his inspiration. In cruel Vlad the Impaler, as most people believe? In Romania? Hungary? Transylvania?” he asked, pausing for effect. “Or perhaps in other historical monsters such as Elizabeth of Bathory, the countess who tortured servant girls, then bathed in their blood to protect her own waning beauty? Myth? Legend? Or fact?” Grotto went on about the course itself and what he required. Kristi took notes, but she was more interested in the man than his lecture. He walked catlike from one side of the room to the other, engaging students, seemingly to mesmerize them. Tall and lithe, he embodied his subject matter.

The images kept changing behind him, from campy to cruel. As a trailer for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer appeared behind him, Grotto hit a button on his desk. The overhead lights glowed and the curtains retracted. Buffy and the gang’s image faded and the room transformed into a normal classroom. “Enough of the theatrics,” Grotto said, and the class groaned. “I know, we all like a stage show, but this is a college credit course, so, I trust you have all received a syllabus through your e-mail and you know that you’re to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula by the end of this week. If not, see me after class.

“So, let’s start the discussion…. What do you know of vampires? Are they real? Human? Do they really feast on human blood? Morph into a variety of creatures? Sleep in coffins? Today we’ll discuss what you know about vampires, or think you know.” He smiled then, showing off glistening fangs, only to remove the false caps and set them on the desk. “I said I was done with the theatrics, didn’t I?”

From that second on, Dr. Grotto held everyone’s attention for the rest of the lecture. The class was lively with Grotto asking questions as well as answering some, and it was obvious why the class was one of the most popular at the college.

Dominic Grotto could transform as easily as the mythical creatures he studied. One minute dark and thoughtful, the next animated and witty. He had an easy manner and used the entire front of the classroom as his stage, walking from one side to the other, making notes on the chalkboard, pointing to students to speak their minds.

Kristi recognized several students in the class, a couple of kids who had been in her Shakespeare class with Dr. Emmerson, including Hiram Calloway—was there no getting away from the creep? Again, she spied Lucretia’s spiked-haired friend Trudie, and Mai Kwan, the girl who lived downstairs from Kristi.

Small world, Kristi said to herself, then corrected herself, thinking small campus. With less than three thousand students in the entire school, it wasn’t that surprising that she’d see familiar faces in her classes.

Within seconds, the door opened again and the professor glared as Ariel slipped into the room, grabbing the first empty seat she found near the door. Ariel looked as if she wanted to do nothing more than melt into her seat. Kristi sympathized. Ariel caught Kristi’s glance, but turned her attention to her notepad, flipping it open as the professor continued to speak.

An odd girl, Kristi thought, wondering about Lucretia’s mousy friend. Ariel seemed shy, even needy, the proverbial wallflower who wanted to disappear into the background. Kristi glanced at the girl again, but Ariel had lifted the book up, to hide most of her face.

Was she still crying?

Why? Homesickness? Something else?

Whatever it was, Father Tony had promised to “take care of it,” so Kristi focused all of her attention on the front of the room.

She listened raptly to Dr. Grotto, taking in the man’s appearance. He was tall with thick, expressive eyebrows, a strong jaw, and a nose that looked as if somewhere along the way it had been broken a couple of times. His eyes weren’t red or black, but a deep brown, his lips thin, his body honed, as if he worked out. There was an arrogance about him, but an affability as well, and Lucretia’s words rang through her brain. He’s a wonderful man. Educated. Alive.

As opposed to dead? No…as in animated, Kristi berated herself. All this vampire talk was getting to her. Lucretia was certainly quick to defend Dr. Dominic Grotto, despite her suspicions. She’d acted as if the man were nearly a god, for crying out loud, and then there was the matter of the ring….

Kristi watched the professor’s hands. They were large. Strong looking. Veins apparent when he wrote on the board. But his left hand was bare. No wedding ring. No tan line or indentation suggesting he’d recently removed it. What had Ezma at work said? That Lucretia was rumored to be involved with one of the professors? A big secret? Hmmm.

She studied Dr. Grotto and tried to imagine him with Lucretia. It just didn’t fit. Grotto was smart enough, that much was evident, but he exuded an innate sexuality in his beat-up jeans and casual black sweater. Lucretia was the egghead’s egghead. Not unattractive, just socially a step off, almost snooty in her pseudo-intellectuality, but then, maybe that air of superiority was what had attracted him to her.

Stranger things had been known to happen.

Kristi settled back in her desk chair and scrutinized her new professor.

As Ezma had warned, Grotto was definitely “hot.” Was he involved with the missing coeds? The man who’d maybe inspired the vampire cult that had attracted Rylee?

When Kristi had first driven to Baton Rouge, her father’s warnings had fallen upon deaf ears, but now that she was here, on the campus of All Saints, she was beginning to think there might be some merit in Rick Bentz’s fears. Four girls were missing. Maybe dead. All had taken Grotto’s class on vampires.

Coincidence?

Kristi didn’t think so.

In fact, she was going to find out. She’d start calling the family, friends, and neighbors of the girls today, in between classes, if she had to. Something had happened to the missing students. Something bad.

Kristi was damned well going to find out what it was.

Jay stepped out of the shower and toweled off after a weekend of ripping off paneling and repairing the tears to the plaster that had been beneath the wooden facade. His muscles ached from hours with a chisel and hammer, but the house was taking shape. Most of the deconstruction was about finished. He had only a bit of linoleum to rip up and then he’d be ready to rebuild. He threw on boxers, a pair of khakis, and a cotton sweater, then yanked on a pair of socks and stepped into his shoes as he checked his watch. Less than an hour until his first class. With Kristi Bentz. He’d had no notes of anyone, including Kristi, dropping out, so he expected to see her.

Brace yourself, he thought, then chided himself for being childish. They were both adults now. So they’d gone together as teenagers. So what? Time had marched on and other relationships had come and gone.

The phone rang and he recognized Gayle’s number. What the hell did she want and why now, when he was just getting ready to deal with Kristi, did he have to talk to her? He almost didn’t answer. But the thought that she might really be in trouble, might really need him, caused him to take the call. Good old trusty Jay. “Hi,” he said, without preamble. They both knew about Caller ID.

“Hi, Jay, how’re you?” she asked in that soft, dulcet drawl he’d once found so intriguing.

An interior designer who adored antiques and New Orleans architecture, she’d grown up in Atlanta, the only daughter of a judge and his wife. Jay had found her cultured, smart, beautiful, and fun-loving. Until they’d gotten serious. Then he’d recognized her strong, unbending will and almost obsessive attention to detail. How many times had she insisted his tie hadn’t matched his shirt and jacket, or that his shoes were out of style, or that his jeans were far too “ratty to even be considered hip, darlin’?” Her temper, too, had come to the fore. What did it say about his personality that he always picked hardheaded, smart, sassy women who could blow at any minute. For a half a second, he thought of Kristi Bentz. Talk about a temper! Kristi’s was practically legendary. Jay figured his choices in women were a major character flaw.

“I’m doin’ fine, Gayle,” he said, realizing she was waiting for a response. Tonight, he didn’t have time for niceties. “How ’bout you?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Good, good.” He was gathering up his keys and wallet, making certain he had everything he needed. His gaze scraped the interior of the cottage as he made certain he was leaving everything secure.

“But I have to be honest. Sometimes I get lonely. Sometimes I miss you,” Gayle said, drawing his attention back to the telephone conversation.

His gut tightened. “I thought you were dating someone—an attorney, right? Manny or Michael or something?”

She hesitated, then said, “Martin. But it’s not the same.”

“Nothing ever is. It’s always different, sometimes better, other times worse.” Why the hell was he even having this conversation?

As if she knew she’d pushed him too far, she said, “I know this is the night of your first class and I wanted to wish you luck.”

Yeah, right. “Thanks.”

“You’ll do great!”

The woman did know how to stroke his ego.

“Hope so.”

“Believe me, those kids will be enthralled with all that creepy forensic stuff.”

“Yeah?” He checked his watch. Time to go. Where the hell was the leash? He didn’t want to take Bruno anywhere without it. Oh, maybe in the truck!

“Oh, yeah, honey. I’ve heard you speak. You know, I was wondering—”

Here it came, the real reason for her call.

“I know you spend most of your weekends up there at your cousins’ house, but when you’re back in the city, give me a call. I’d love to go out for a glass of wine or dinner or something…. You know, no strings attached.”

The no strings part, he didn’t believe.

“I doubt I’ll have any time before the end of the term,” he said. “Pretty busy.”

“I know, Jay. You always are. That’s the way I like it.”

Again, a fairy tale. She liked a man she could boss around. That’s where most of their problems began and ended. “Listen, Gayle, I gotta run. Take care.”

“You, too,” she whispered as he hung up and whistled to the dog. He was not going to be pulled into the trap of dating Gayle Hall again. Not ever. He’d learned his lesson and had the scar above his eyebrow to prove it.

He double-checked the lock on the back door, then gathered his notes and stuffed them into his banged-up briefcase. He had samples in the case as well. Examples of evidence that he’d share with his class. The science of forensics had become a big deal since the airing of the CSI shows and their knock-offs on television, and Jay figured part of his job was to point out the difference between fiction and fact, between wrapping up a drama in forty-odd minutes, and doing the legwork and lab work that required hours and hours in real life. Even the shows on Court TV were somewhat misleading with days, weeks, months, and even years of detective work wrapped up in under an hour. Though the detectives and criminalists and even the announcers would remind the viewer of the time that passed, the case was always solved within an hour, including time for advertisements. It was all part of the quick response/action/reaction short attention span television programming that viewers had come to expect.

If only they knew the truth about all the fancy television-inspired crime labs that could get DNA evidence back nearly instantly. The extraction of body fluid, the dropping of a sample of the fluid into a test tube, a flick of a switch and the spin of some centrifuge, and voilà, DNA results. In truth it took weeks and months to process, and then there was the matter of all the evidence that had been destroyed by the hurricane. Not only evidence that could convict a criminal, but evidence that might exonerate an innocent man. Or woman. It made him sick to think about it.

He locked the front door behind him, whistled to the dog, then with Bruno at his heels, walked briskly to his truck. The rain that had pummeled this part of Louisiana all day had stopped, leaving sodden ground and the air heavy with a thick mist that seemed to rise to the skeletal, bone white branches of the cypress trees.

A perfect night to discuss the subject of murder.

Hoisting himself easily from the pool, Vlad stood at the edge of the shimmering depths and felt the water cool upon his skin. The lamp beneath the water’s surface and the monitor of his small computer gave off the only light in this, his special retreat. He loved the kiss of the cold air against his wet flesh but had little time to savor it.

There was so much to do.

And one problem that nagged at him. He’d tried to ignore it, had spent months telling himself it was of no consequence, but with each passing day, he felt a little more irritated, a bit more compelled to correct his stupid mistake.

He’d hoped that the taking of the last girl would have calmed him, but it hadn’t. Not completely. Though Rylee’s ultimate submission and death thrilled him, the fact that he’d erred gnawed at him. Distracted him. Even now, he found himself biting his nails and spitting them into the pool, then forced himself to stop the disgusting habit he’d had since childhood, when he was certain his father would return, discover that he’d gotten into trouble, and lock him into the old outhouse.

At that thought his stomach convulsed, so he pushed all images of his childhood aside. After all, the old man had gotten his, hadn’t he?

Vlad smiled as he remembered the bloody tines of the pitchfork in his father’s freak farming accident. He’d spent hours relating the horror of finding his father on the barn floor, how the old man had fallen from the hayloft and onto a broken bale where the pitchfork had been left. Vlad had admitted to leaving the tool where it wasn’t supposed to be. And had the pitchfork not hit the femoral artery, how his father might have survived. Instead, the old man had lain on the pitchfork like a turtle on its back, his pelvis shattered, his screams unheard until Vlad had returned from the neighbor’s house and found the man who had sired him in a pool of coagulating blood. How unfortunate it had been on the weekend when his mother had been away, visiting her sister.

But the old man’s death couldn’t help the situation now.

Vlad prided himself upon his perfection, and the fact that he had made one mistake bothered him.

He walked to the far end of the pool and into a small alcove where a bank of metal lockers still resided. They were empty save for the one he’d reserved for his treasures, those he’d locked away. Deftly, in the semidark, the smell of the chlorine he’d added drifting to him, he flipped the combination of the lock and opened the rusting door.

Inside were several rows of small black hooks. Three, on the upper row, saved for the elite, the ones he thought of as royals, had been marked with the name of the owner and held a gold necklace from which a tiny vial dangled. Carefully, he extracted one of the gold loops and held it to the light so that he could see the deep red color within the bit of glass…like expensive wine, he thought. Gently twisting open the vial, he held it under his nose. He inhaled the sweet, coppery scent of Monique’s blood. Closing his eyes, he remembered how she’d struggled. A natural athlete, she’d fought the effects of the drugs, and as he’d restrained her, she’d gone so far as to spit in his face.

He’d laughed and licked it into his mouth and that’s when he saw her fear. It wasn’t that he could hold her wrists or pin her weight with his legs, it was that he enjoyed the fight in her and that scared her to death.

He’d seen it in the dilation of her pupils, felt it in the rising and falling of her chest as he’d held her down waiting for the cocktail she’d been given to completely take effect. He’d witnessed her struggles on the stage before she’d ultimately succumbed to him. He’d suspected she would be difficult, a fighter. And she hadn’t disappointed.

Hers was a life not quickly given.

Thinking of Monique now, he licked his lips. Draining her blood had been exquisite, watching her breaths become shallow and bare, seeing her skin whiten, feeling her heartbeat slow and finally stop all together, then staring into her open, dead eyes….

He shuddered, reliving the moment, but it wouldn’t be enough. Memories faded all too quickly.

Fortunately the bloodlust would be fulfilled.

He capped the teeny bottle and watched it dangle and sparkle for just a second before returning it to the locker.

The empty hooks mocked him, especially the one marked for Tara Atwater. Old rage burned through him when he thought of how that little bitch had tried to defy him, had hidden the treasure meant for him. No amount of urging or force had been able to loosen her thick tongue and she was dead quickly, almost willingly, with little fight in her.

But she had managed the tiniest of smiles as the blood had drained from her and she’d released her soul, as if she had somehow won their battle.

His teeth clenched as he considered the imperfection.

The vial was out there. He just had to find it.

He’d tried of course, to no avail.

But he wouldn’t give up.

He slammed the locker door shut. Bam! The sound ricocheted off the walls and he stormed still naked into the cavernous room with the pool and alcove he used for an office. The water reflected in shifting shades of blue upon the walls and ceiling, his computer hummed faintly.

The vial was most likely in Tara’s apartment, hidden away somewhere. Until now, he’d been careful to stay away from the empty unit with the old busybody of a landlady. But now he had more than one reason to return. Not only was he certain that the precious vial of Tara’s blood was secreted somewhere on the premises, but now Kristi Bentz occupied the very apartment he had to search.

Which was perfect.