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  Alicia was standing over her again, but her image was blurred, hazy.

  Dream was almost asleep now.

  But she remained aware long enough to hear her dead friend speak. “That was pretty impressive, Dream. Those kids are scared shitless, what with you makin’ like Linda Blair in the motherfuckin’ Exorcist. But this ain’t over.” Alicia gave her head an emphatic shake. “Uh-uh, not by a long shot. But listen, you remember what I told you before about trouble comin’, don’t you? I wasn’t talking about these kids, honey.”

  Dream’s eyes closed. “Whatever.”

  Alicia leaned close. Her rancid corpse breath hot on Dream’s ear. “Trouble’s out there, Dream. Lurking, waiting for you to show yourself. And let me tell you something—if you somehow walk out of here alive, somewhere down the line you’ll wind up wishing these punks had killed you.”

  Dream sighed.

  She could think about Alicia’s warnings later. Maybe.

  Her breathing evened out.

  At long last, the world went away again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sound of the television emanating from the bedroom abruptly silenced. Allyson looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and listened to the muffled sound of Chad yawning. He was tired. Not surprising, given how long a day it had been, and given how many glasses of whiskey he’d downed over several hours of conversation with the man he called Jim.

  Allyson had returned to the house less than fifteen minutes after storming off, making sure to stay out just long enough to allow Chad to believe she’d only been blowing off some steam. She had to stay in character. So she’d come home just soon enough, smiling and apologizing to their uninvited “guest,” but not making too big a deal about it. The men retired to the den while she cleaned up in the kitchen. And while she cleaned, she worked at not thinking about the hard, dangerous men who would soon be here. Whether they were coming to kill or merely apprehend, she did not know. And didn’t want to know.

  Or so she told herself, over and over.

  It wasn’t supposed to matter. Chad was just a mark, and his friend was just a person some other people wanted to get their hands on. She’d done everything asked of her, working her way into Chad’s life, earning his trust, making him love her. Being there when the moment her employers said would arrive finally did. She knew she should continue to be cold and emotionless about it, just wait until the opportunity arose to slip away in the middle of the night, but…

  The damnedest thing.

  She liked Chad. There was no use denying it. The line between playacting and reality had become blurred at some indistinct point. The moments before placing that phone call earlier had been like walking up to the very edge of a high cliff and deciding whether to jump. She had taken that leap after only a minor hesitation, believing her second thoughts would evaporate with the deed done.

  But those thoughts were still swirling around in her head, taunting her with images and fantasies of possible futures that could no longer be. They were all the more maddening for the obvious impossibility of taking it all back.

  What’s done is done, she thought, silently addressing her reflection. Just leave it be and when you board that flight tomorrow morning start working on forgetting there ever was a Chad Robbins.

  Right.

  She had a feeling that was going to fall into the category of things easier said than done.

  And as if she didn’t have enough to fret about, there was the matter of this mystery man. Chad clearly liked and respected the man a great deal, which added yet another layer of regret to her betrayal. There was something so naggingly familiar about the man. So she’d decided to eavesdrop on their conversation, kicking off her shoes and padding on her bare feet to a spot in the hallway just outside the den.

  They had talked of small things at first. But the tone of the conversation abruptly shifted when Jim at last told Chad why he had come to see him after all this time. Allyson’s eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat as he talked of danger on the horizon. Some survivors of the House of Blood had gone missing and another had been found brutally murdered. He urged Chad to “go underground.”

  Allyson had been able to bear no more of it, retreating from her eavesdropping position and heading in a hurry to the spare bedroom. There she retrieved from the closet the bag she’d packed months ago. It was a big black canvas bag stuffed full of clothes very unlike the fashionable wardrobe she’d adopted for her big role as Chad’s love interest. Tucked away in a zippered side pouch was the $10,000 cash advance she’d been given for the job. Her getaway money. Another pouch contained an array of flawlessly produced false credentials and ID, including a passport, a Tennessee driver’s license, a birth certificate, and a card identifying her as a consultant for something called Franklin Security Solutions. All bore the name Jennifer Campbell.

  Chad likely would invite his friend to spend the night, and she could too easily imagine the man stumbling upon the stuffed traveling bag. A man like that would operate at a base-level of paranoia every day. He would open the bag, see the fake ID and documents, and…so she stashed the bag at the back of her own closet in the bedroom she shared with Chad.

  Well. It was taken care of now. No one had any reason to suspect she was working with the bad guys. She turned away from her reflection and returned to the bedroom. She went to the bed, watched Chad’s sleeping form. He was snoring lightly. She prayed for him to turn over and see her in the expensive Victoria’s Secret lingerie they’d picked out together from a catalog. It would arouse him. It always did. A good, energetic fucking might be just the thing to get him talking again. She pictured herself in his embrace, their bodies naked and covered with a sheen of sweat in the afterglow of love. The intimacy of the moment leading him to confide in her again, sharing his fears and telling her of the danger Jim claimed they were facing. And it would then be so easy to fuel the fires of that fear, manipulating him with her own show of terror.

  They would run.

  Rouse Jim, grab a few necessities, and get the hell out of Dodge.

  Chad shifted position on the bed, rolling from his side onto his back. Allyson held her breath for a hopeful, tense moment.

  He didn’t wake.

  Damn.

  Allyson pulled on a tiny silk robe and slipped out of the bedroom. As she moved down the hallway toward the living room, she paused at the doorway to the guest bedroom. The door was partly open, but the interior was dark. She could just vaguely make out the sleeping form of Mr. Jim, Lazarus, or whatever his name really was. She heard an intake of breath and thought for a moment that he might be awake. Awake and watching her watch him. Her heart raced at the thought. Without waiting to verify whether the man was awake or asleep, she hurried past the darkened doorway.

  She retrieved Chad’s laptop from his office and carried it into the living room. She settled into the plush sectional sofa and propped the little computer on her lap. She opened it and tapped the power button. The computer came out of hibernation mode to present her with a screen that offered the option of signing on to her desktop or Chad’s. She moved the cursor to Chad’s name and clicked on it. The desktop icons quickly loaded and she signed on to Chad’s AOL account. She opened his mailbox and scrolled through the list of e-mails, looking for anything that might be from someone looking to tip him to Allyson’s true role here. She couldn’t imagine who might be in a position to do that, but paranoia drove her to periodically check his messages on the off-chance anything that needed intercepting did show up.

  Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she clicked over to his saved mail folder and opened the two-year-old e-mail from Dream Weaver. She read through it again, even though she knew the words by heart. And she felt again the familiar stab of ridiculous jealousy. Ridiculous because the woman seemed to be gone from Chad’s life forever. And doubly ridiculous given the true nature of her own relationship with Chad.

  But the feeling was there nonetheless.

  The note read: />
  Chad,

  Yes, I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. Yes, I know you’re worried. I can tell because there’s about a gazillion e-mails jamming my inbox. I don’t even need to read them. The subject headers tell me all I need to know.

  Sorry if that sounds cold. Sorry if I sound like a bitch. But you need to let go and move on with your life. Stop pining for me, because I’m telling you right now, once and for all, I am never coming back.

  I don’t say these things to hurt you. I honestly don’t. It hurts me to say them this way. I’m trying to be forceful and firm—yes, bitchy—because I need you to accept the way things are. What we had is broken and cannot be fixed. I’m broken. I love you with all my heart, more than I could ever love anyone else, but our lives are on very different paths.

  Paths, Chad, that will never cross again.

  This is the last time you will ever hear from me.Please don’t reply to this message. I’m cancelling this account and it will just bounce back to you.

  Have a nice life, Chad. Please find someone nice and forget about me.

  Goodbye,

  Dream

  Allyson closed the e-mail and clicked out of Chad’s AOL account.

  Dream Weaver. As usual, Allyson’s blood boiled at the thought of that gorgeous woman and her ridiculous name. That fucking cunt. Dream had put Chad through so much drama and strife. He always swore he was over her. But why, then, would he continue to save a two-year-old e-mail?

  Cunt. Fucking cunt.

  She’d been asked to keep an eye out for her, too. She wished the bitch had been the one to show up tonight. She would’ve called hell down on her without a second thought. But she’d been told from the beginning that Lazarus, as they still called him, was far more likely to one day grace Chad’s door. And…

  Allyson frowned.

  Wait a minute…

  Chad’s name for the elusive Lazarus was Jim. It didn’t require a lot of thought to conclude that Jim was far more likely the man’s real name. Allyson clicked over to Google Web search and entered the following:

  “Lazarus Jim House of Blood”

  She clicked on the first search result, a two-year-old Chattanooga Herald story that recounted everything then known about what had happened at that remote mountain house. One paragraph stood out immediately. It told of the wild Internet speculation about the true identities of the men known as the Master and Lazarus. One theory in particular made Allyson gasp. She’d heard it before, of course, but had forgotten about it or dismissed it as obvious nonsense.

  Now, however, she wasn’t so sure.

  She clicked back over to the image search tool and with trembling fingers typed in the name of a dead rock star. The images of this man were plentiful. She scrolled through them before clicking on a thumbnail image of the man at his most grizzled-looking. His face was bloated from alcohol overindulgence. His hair was a big brown mane and he had a thick, bushy beard. The hair was shorter now and the beard was gone, but the penetrating eyes and high cheekbones were the same.

  “Fuck—”

  Jim. Lazarus. That voice…no wonder it’d seemed so naggingly familiar.

  Allyson clicked out of the browser window and closed the laptop. She sat there in a state of numb astonishment for several more minutes.

  Then a noise from outside the house—a metallic thunk—snapped her out of it. She set the laptop on the coffee table and surged to her feet, her heart thumping in her chest as she moved hurriedly through the living room and into the foyer. Adjacent to the foyer was a small sitting room lined with bookcases. She slipped into this room and moved to a big window that overlooked the front lawn. She moved the curtain back slightly and peered outside.

  A big, dark-colored van was parked on the other side of the street. As she watched, two men clad entirely in black moved away from the van and crossed the street. Light from the streetlamps glinted off something shiny in the lead man’s hand. A pistol. Allyson’s breath caught in her throat. She made her shaking hand come away from the curtain. Without thinking about what she was doing, she raced out of the sitting room and headed back through the living room at full speed. Then through the kitchen to the door that led to the garage. She yanked the door open and reached for the light switch. Her hand froze on the switch.

  No, she thought. Can’t let them see light.

  She hurried down the three steps to the garage floor, making her way around in the darkness by memory and feel. Her bare right foot landed on something sharp and she let out a squeal of pain. But she made herself keep going. The men in black and their guns would have reached the house by now. She didn’t have much time. Her heart felt like it might explode out of her chest at any moment.

  Then she reached the back of the garage and her hands moved over the dim shapes of tools hanging from a neatly arranged set of pegs. She dislodged a hammer that landed on the cement floor with a loud clatter. A fresh jolt of terror flashed through her at the sound. But it was nothing she could do anything about. The men in black had heard it or they hadn’t. Her eyes at last discerned the shape of the axe on one of the highest pegs. She seized its handle and y anked it off the peg.

  She was back in the kitchen when she heard a soft tinkle of breaking glass. The sound was shockingly close and she realized the men had scaled the fence to make a rear entry. A glint of something shiny at the far end of the kitchen seized her attention. A big hand was reaching through a shattered pane toward the handle of one of the doors that opened to the patio and backyard.

  Allyson moved to the wall and edged toward the door, blood from the wound to her foot making a slick trail on the kitchen tiles. As she neared the door, she adjusted her grip on the axe handle and raised it over her head. She held her breath and tried to make herself be calm.

  Why are you doing this!? a panicked part of her mind railed at her. You only had to let it happen and collect your fucking money! You’re fucking crazy to be doing this!

  Allyson knew that. And she had no answer for the question. All she knew was it was too late to do anything but what she was doing right now.

  She was committed.

  The man’s hand grasped the handle, found the lock, and turned it.

  The door popped open.

  One man moved through the opening. He was dressed all in black and his face was smudged with black makeup. A pistol was gripped tight in his hand. Another man attired in exactly the same fashion followed him into the kitchen.

  Neither man sensed her presence until it was too late.

  Allyson stepped forward and brought the axe down, the finely honed blade chopping through the second man’s wrist with ease. Blood jetted from the stump. Hand and gun struck the floor. The man screamed as the first man into the house whirled around. He gaped in astonishment at his comrade’s mutilated arm. Then he saw Allyson and began to raise his own gun.

  But the blade of the axe flashed and cleaved through his neck before he could aim the gun at her. He reflexively squeezed off a shot that blew another pane of glass out of the rear door. Blood pumped out of his severed jugular vein in great gouts and he dropped dead to the floor. The other man reeled about the kitchen, then reached for his severed hand and gun with his good hand.

  Allyson brought the blade down yet again, planting it between his shoulder blades and making him cry out again. But it was a weak, dying sound. She yanked the axe out. Blood bubbled from the wound and the man cried out again. He mewled and crawled a few feet away from her, his right arm spewing blood in an arcing fountain as it flopped about uselessly.

  Then there were more voices. Shouts and the sound of approaching footsteps.

  The kitchen abruptly flooded with light.

  Someone gasped.

  Allyson blinked at the stark sight of all tha t bright red blood sprayed all over the kitchen. She looked at the dying man. A pale length of ragged bone protruded from his bleeding wrist. The man looked up at her with drowsy, condemning eyes.

  Allyson dropped the axe.<
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  Then she stumbled.

  Fell.

  Landed in someone’s outstretched arms.

  Fade to black.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Giselle awoke to the sensation of something crawling up her leg. Something about the feel of it triggered an instant feeling of revulsion. It was fuzzy and many-legged, a large spider probably. She swatted at it and missed, the charred stump at the end of her right wrist brushing uselessly over the still-moving creature. Her mind still fuzzy from sleep, it took her a moment to remember that she no longer had a hand to swat with. But apparently her nerve endings still hadn’t accepted this awful reality and continued to taunt her with this damnable phantom limb sensation.

  The fuzzy spider continued its progress up her inner thigh. Its insinuating presence on her bare flesh felt like the light touch of a would-be rapist stroking the sleeping form of an intended victim. The concept of violation galvanized Giselle. There was no telling what the thing on her leg really was. Perhaps it outwardly resembled a spider—though she couldn’t verify that in the absolute blackness of her suspended prison—but it could very well be something else entirely, a deadly magical construct conjured by Ms. Wickman. She thought about the deliberate way it seemed to be moving toward her vagina and imagined it entering her, saw it expanding and transforming itself inside her, becoming something hideous and bloated.

  And as she thought these things, the big spider’s body did seem to swell slightly. Giselle’s breath caught in her throat as she realized her suspicions were true. Though conjured by the evil woman’s magic, the creature was all too real. She suspected Ms. Wickman had designed the thing to adjust its shape and appearance according to its victim’s worst imaginings. And the slight swelling while it was still outside of her was a powerful indicator of the scope of its shape-shifting abilities. Once it was inside her and able to directly tap into her mind and feed on her worst fears…