Ceremony in Death - J. D. Robb [109]
And the sex had been incredible.
But something was happening. He found himself obsessing about meetings, desperately craving that first deep gulp of ceremonial wine. And then there were the blackouts, holes in his memory. He’d be logy and slow to focus the morning after a rite.
Recently, he’d found blood dried under his nails and couldn’t remember how it had gotten there.
But he was starting to. The crime scene photos Eve had shown him had clicked something open in his mind. And had filled that opening with shock and horror. Images swirled behind his eyes. Smoke swirling, voices chanting. Flesh gleaming from sex, the moans and grunts of vicious mating. Dank black hair swaying, bony hips pumping.
Then the spray of blood, the gush of it, spurting out like that final cry of sexual release.
Selina with her feral, feline smile, the knife dripping in her hand. Lobar—God it had been Lobar—sliding from the altar, his throat gaping wide like a screaming mouth.
Murder. Nervously, he twitched the heavy drapes open a fraction, let his frightened eyes search the street below. He’d seen a blood sacrifice, and not of a goat. Of a man.
Had he dipped his fingers into that open throat? Had he slipped them between his lips to taste the fresh blood? Had he done something so abhorrent?
My God, dear God, had there been others? Other nights, other sacrifices? Could he have witnessed and blanked it from his mind?
He was a civilized man, Louis told himself as he jerked the draperies back into place. He was a husband and a father. He was a respected attorney. He wasn’t an accessory to murder. He couldn’t be.
With his breath coming fast and short, he poured more scotch, stared at himself in one of the ornately framed mirrors. He saw a man who hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t seen his family in days.
He was afraid to sleep. The images might come more clearly in sleep. He was afraid to eat, sure the food would clog in his throat and kill him.
And he was mortally afraid for his family.
Wineburg had been at the ceremony. Wineburg had stood beside him and had seen what he had seen.
And Wineburg was dead.
Wineburg had had no wife, no children. But Louis did. If he was in danger and went home, would they come for him there? He had begun to understand during those long, sleepless nights, when liquor was his only company, that he was ashamed at the thought of his children discovering what he had participated in.
He had to protect them and himself. He was safe here, he assured himself. No one could get inside the suite unless he opened the door.
Possibly, he was overreacting. He mopped his sweating forehead with an already sodden handkerchief. Stress, overwork, too many late nights. Perhaps he was having a small breakdown. He should see a doctor.
He would. He would see a doctor. He would take his family and go away for a few weeks. A vacation, a time to relax, to reevaluate. He would break off from the cult. Obviously, it wasn’t good for him. God knew it was costing him a small fortune in the bimonthly contributions. He’d gotten in too deeply somehow, forgotten he’d entered into the cult out of curiosity and a thirst for selfish sex.
He’d swallowed too deeply of wine and smoke, and it was making him imagine things.
But he’d had blood under his nails.
Louis covered his face, tried to catch his breath. It didn’t matter, he thought. None of it mattered. He shouldn’t have called Eve. He shouldn’t have panicked. She would think him mad; or worse, an accessory.
Selina was his client. He owed his client his loyalty as well as his professional skill.
But he could see her, a knife gripped in her hand as she sliced it across exposed flesh.
Louis stumbled across the suite, into the master bath and, collapsing, vomited up scotch and terror. When the cramps passed, he pulled himself up. He leaned over the sink, croaked out a request for water, at forty degrees. It poured out of the curved gold faucet, splashed into the blindingly