Death Do Us Part Read online

  Connor moaned and buried his head against Art’s chest. Missy fired again, two shots and then the gun clicked empty. As before, the bullets sent Catherine back a few steps but otherwise didn’t seem to have any effect.

  “That’sss the lassst time you do that, bitch!” Catherine sprinted forward, covering the space between them so fast Art never had a chance to move. She threw the table to the side and backhanded Missy, who tumbled over and lay still. Jeremy leapt up and rammed Catherine with his shoulder, putting all of his two-hundred pounds into his attack.

  Catherine didn’t even flinch.

  She gripped her old father-in-law by the neck with one hand. With her other, she raked skeletal fingers down his chest and abdomen. Blood flew in all directions and Jeremy cried out in pain.

  He was still screaming when she tossed him into the air, a crimson spray following him like a comet’s tail as he flew over Art and crashed to the grass beyond the patio.

  “Run!” Art pushed Connor to one side and dove in the other direction, hoping Catherine would follow him. She did, reaching him before he had time to get to his knees. Talon-like nails tore through his sweatshirt and dug into the flesh below his shoulders. Art’s body went rigid from the pain, his own scream trapped in his throat. For a moment, the world disappeared in a red haze.

  When his vision cleared, he was on his back, with Catherine on his chest, her knees pinning his arms down and preventing him from lifting his gun. She placed a gore-soaked finger next to his eye and laughed as he flinched and turned his head away. Foul-smelling spittle landed on his cheek, where it burned like acid.

  “Ssssweet hussssband,” she said, each word accompanied by a wave of corpse-breath. “You betrayed me.”

  “No!” The shout came from next to him.

  A burst of white light enveloped Art, and Catherine’s weight disappeared from his chest. He blinked several times, trying to drive away the purple and red after-images. Something moved next to him, and he turned in time to see Madam Prioleau falling first to her knees and then to her side.

  He looked around, but couldn’t locate Catherine. Still half-blind, he pushed himself to his feet, and gasped as the pain in his back woke up.

  “Missy? Connor?”

  “Over here.”

  Art swung around, orienting himself to their voices. Fighting to retain his balance, he staggered towards the blurry shapes, one of which was waving at him. Drawing closer, he found Missy and Connor huddled on the ground next to his father. Even with his vision murky, Art had no trouble seeing that his father’s wounds looked bad. Real bad. The entire front of his shirt was drenched in blood, and the four gaping, jagged tears in his belly looked like bottomless canyons.

  “Jesus.” Art flopped down next them and took his father’s hand. “Dad? Can you hear me?”

  Jeremy mumbled something but didn’t open his eyes. Art looked at Missy, who shook her head.

  “He’s out of it. And I don’t think we can move him.”

  “Where’s Catherine? There was an explosion…” Art looked around the property. The spots in his vision had faded, but he still couldn’t see her.

  “She did something.” Missy nodded at Madam Prioleau, who lay unmoving in the grass. “Whatever it was, it knocked Catherine clear across the yard.” She pointed to a spot in the farthest corner, and Art turned that way, just in time to see Catherine slowly rising to her feet.

  A cold, heavy weight settled on Art’s shoulders. The burden of the inevitable catching up to him. This was it. They’d run out of options. Nowhere to hide, no way out of the trap they’d put themselves in, no weapons. No last minute magic from Madam Prioleau. Catherine was coming for them, and this time she’d end it.

  He put his arms around his family, pulling them close together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He wanted to say more, tell them he loved them, but the words stuck in his throat and turned to tears.

  “Me, too.” Jeremy’s voice caught Art by surprise. His father’s eyes were still closed, his words thick with blood and phlegm. “Thought I was doing…a favor. Never expected her…come back.”

  “Shh, Dad, it’s okay. You…wait.” Had he heard his father correctly? “What favor? What did you do?”

  “Art?”

  He held up a hand to Missy and bent down lower, not wanting to miss what his father was saying.

  “Never any good for you. Always…told you. Saw her that night. Drunk, over the line. My chance…to help. Hit…wrote the…not supposed to be like this. Supposed to stay dead.”

  Art froze as the meaning of his father’s words sank in.

  No. It can’t be.

  “No. No No NO!” Art pounded his fist on the ground. Now he understood why their bullets hadn’t worked.

  He pictured it clearly. Jeremy seeing Catherine’s car swerving as she fought to control it, her abilities impaired by the drugs Missy had slipped her. He’d have flicked on his grill lights, the ones all auxiliary police officers were required to have. Wasted, Catherine would have pulled over. And then what? Had his father struck her? Or had he found her passed out in her car and just taken advantage of the situation? Either way, it didn’t matter. Write a quick suicide note, knowing the water would smear the handwriting. Put the car in neutral, wedge her foot on the gas, drop it into gear…

  What had it taken for Jeremy, a firm believer in the law, a cop with a perfect record, to consider murder as the only option for ridding their family of Catherine? And not just Jeremy. Missy too.

  Hell, I was the one married to her and I never seriously thought about. They both did it.

  And because of that, they were all going to die.

  Catherine was closer now. Still moving slow, but the fleshless grin she wore told Art it was to prolong his agony rather than because she was still stunned by Madam Prioleau’s metaphysical attack. Catherine raised her hands, bone and nails curved into deadly claws.

  I can’t let this happen. Can’t just sit here and let her butcher us.

  Art turned to Missy and kissed her, pressing his lips against hers with all his might. He tasted the salty tang of her tears, an acknowledgement of his goodbye.

  “Don’t,” she said against his cheek as he tried to pull away. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” He let go of her and hugged Connor tight, repeated his kiss and his final statement of love. Connor said nothing, just shook his head, unable to look his father in the eye.

  His own tears running freely down his cheeks, Art stood up and faced the demon of retribution his wife had become.

  As a cop, he’d always told himself he was prepared to die. He didn’t relish the idea, but the possibility of it existed every time you responded to a call or walked into a dark building or pulled over a speeding car. He’d believed it too.

  Now he knew he’d been lying to himself all those years.

  He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live, to grow old with Missy, to see Connor graduate college and start a career. There’d been so much in life to look forward to, so much he’d wanted to do.

  Now it would all be taken away from him, stolen by something that shouldn’t even be possible.

  In that instant, Art understood the impossibility of facing death bravely. He was just taking the coward’s way out. Dying first so he wouldn’t have to watch his family get slaughtered.

  “Do it,” he told Catherine. He closed his eyes. His body shook so badly he thought he might fall over. He gripped the useless gun in his hand, but never raised it. Catherine’s death-stench wafted over him. An uneasy feeling crept across his skin, telling him she stood mere inches away. He tried not to picture how she would do it, but he couldn’t stop the morbid images produced in his brain.

  A skeletal hand thrust into his stomach, reaching up to tear out his heart.

  Yellowed teeth ripping his throat away, his blood spraying in foun
tains.

  Razor-sharp nails puncturing his eyes and digging deep into his brain.

  “Firssst you watch them die.”

  The words didn’t register until Catherine took him by the arms and lifted him. He was still opening his mouth to shout “No!” when she tossed him over the heads of his family.

  Art landed on his side several feet behind his father. Something snapped inside him and he cried out. Paralyzed by pain, he was forced to endure the ultimate agony, unable to stop Catherine as she approached Missy and Jeremy, one finger pointing back and forth as she toyed with them, an evil game of Eenie Meenie to decide who would be her first victim.

  Catherine’s jaw moved up and down but Art heard nothing except the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears. He forced his arms forward, fingers digging into the earth, each movement sending fiery bolts of agony through his body. He couldn’t let his family die, not alone, not like that. Even if there was no way to stop Catherine, at least he would be with them at the end.

  Missy shouted something as Catherine picked Jeremy up. Art wanted to shout as well, but he had no breath to spare. Catherine brought her head down towards Jeremy’s neck. Jaws open wide, she looked like a laughing skull and out of the blue Art remembered a scene from an old comic book, Tales from the Crypt or something like it, about a corpse rising from the grave to hunt down the people who’d murdered it.

  That’s—

  Art’s hand came down on something cold and hard.

  A gun.

  My gun. He recognized it instantly.

  And knew he had one chance to stop Catherine forever. A chance to save his family at the expense of his own heart.

  “In order to stop monstru, need blood of the killer.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he lifted the gun in both hands and aimed at his father’s back. Everything around him disappeared, his view narrowing to a circle that contained his father and the creature about to kill him.

  He pulled the trigger.

  And the world exploded.

  Thunder filled his ears and the gun flew out of his hands. Catherine dropped Jeremy and stumbled back, her arms spread and her skull tilted up to the sky. Her jaw hung open, pieces of Jeremy’s flesh still dangling from her teeth. A white glow enveloped her and she let out a horrible shriek, a high-pitched cry of anguish that went on and on and pierced his brain like acid-coated needles. Something popped inside his head and warm liquid trickled from his ears.

  The white light disappeared and Catherine’s body toppled over.

  Everything went silent.

  Darkness settled over him, a black fog that came down like a weightless blanket.

  Art remained on the ground, his body refusing to respond to his command to get up and move. He heard a loud hissing, like being surrounded by televisions all set to empty stations. Gradually, other sounds filtered through. Voices.

  “…move?…Art…hear…Connor…”

  “Is she…Dad…I…”

  Connor. Missy. They’re alive.

  Catherine!

  He opened his eyes, unaware until then that he’d closed them. Missy’s face hovered close, covered in blood and bruises.

  “Is she…?” He couldn’t get the rest of the words out. Missy nodded.

  “She’s dead. Really dead. You did it.”

  Dead.

  It was over then. He tried to smile.

  Darkness returned.

  * * * * *

  Staring at his father’s coffin, Art couldn’t help but think about fate and karma.

  Here I am, back again. Putting someone in the ground and feeling guilty as hell about it.

  If he raised his eyes and looked beyond the rows of police officers decked out in their uniforms, he could see the section of the cemetery where Catherine’s body had been re-interred.

  So far, he’d avoided looking that way.

  Unlike the days following Catherine’s death and burial, Art had no doubts about whether the guilt gnawing at his guts was deserved or not. He’d killed his father, put a bullet straight through him. Sure, he’d done it to stop the hell-creature his father’s actions had spawned, a creature who’d have torn all of them to pieces, who’d been in the process of delivering death to his father at that exact moment.

  But I was the one who actually did it. Who ended his life. Did he understand what happened? Why I had to do it? Did he hear me say I’m sorry?

  Art knew his father understood the consequences of murdering Catherine, at least at the end. He’d confessed. Apologized.

  But they’d never told him it was his blood that held the secret to putting Catherine back in the grave.

  If he had, would he have willingly sacrificed himself, knowing he was already dying? Knowing there was no other way, nothing else I could do?

  Art wanted to believe he would have, but he remembered his own reaction when faced with imminent death. That he’d have done anything to prolong life just a little longer. Even a few more seconds. That wanting to give yourself up to save the people you love, even putting yourself in a situation to do it, was different than actually letting go of life.

  Jeremy Stanhope had been a hero while alive. A cop who had no qualms about putting his life on the line. Yet wasn’t it possible he’d have wanted Art to shoot him through the arm, or the leg, or anywhere that wasn’t fatal?

  Missy had said, more than once, that Jeremy would have told Art to shoot if he’d known the truth. That he never knew what killed him, never felt the bullet.

  “She was tearing his throat out. All you did was end things quickly for him, save him a lot of pain. And save all our lives in the process.”

  The guilt rat in Art’s guts took another nip and he held back a groan. The truth was, he’d never know the answers to any of his questions, and that the torment of what he’d done would linger on forever, no matter how long he lived.

  Hands took his, Connor to his left and Missy to his right. Their love flowed through him, warmed his heart and stilled the hungry animal doing its best to chew a hole in his conscience.

  He’d saved them, and they were still a family.

  I guess I can live with some guilt.

  * * * * *

  He killed you, Jeremy. Your own son. Shot you.

  No. Not like that. Not…

  He put a bullet in you. He didn’t have to.

  Yes, yes he did. My blood. Only way to stop you.

  Your blood, yes. But he didn’t have to kill you.

  Yes, he…he did, didn’t he? How else…?

  How else, indeed, Jeremy. He never stopped to think. None of them did. Not him. Not her.

  I…

  He killed you, Jeremy. Just like my sister tried to kill me. Never cared about you when you were alive. Put his family before you. Always did. You know that. How does that make you feel?

  Angry.

  About the Author

  A life-long resident of New York’s haunted Hudson Valley, JG Faherty has been a finalist for both the Bram Stoker Award® and ITW Thriller Award, and he is the author of six novels, including his most recent, The Cure, as well as eight novellas and more than 50 short stories. He writes adult and YA dark fiction/sci-fi/fantasy, and his works range from quiet suspense to over-the-top comic gruesomeness. He enjoys urban exploring, photography, classic B-movies, good wine, and pumpkin beer. As a child, his favorite playground was a 17th-century cemetery, which many people feel explains a lot. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/jgfaherty, www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, www.jgfaherty.com, and jgfaherty-blog.blogspot.com

  Look for these titles by JG Faherty

  Now Available:

  Castle by the Sea

  Thief of Souls

  Fatal Consequences

  Legacy

  Cult of the Black Jaguar<
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  The Cure

  Winterwood

  She was born with the power to cure. Now she’s developed the power to kill.

  The Cure

  © 2015 JG Faherty

  Leah DeGarmo has the power to cure with just a touch. But with her gift comes a dark side: Whatever she takes in she has to pass on, or suffer it herself. Now a sadistic criminal has discovered what she can do and he’ll stop at nothing to control her. He makes a mistake, though, when he kills the man she loves, triggering a rage inside her that releases a new power she didn’t know she had: the ability to kill. Transformed into a demon of retribution, Leah resurrects her lover and embarks on a mission to destroy her enemies. The only question is, does she control her power or does it control her?

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Cure:

  Fifteen minutes before she saved a man’s life, committed murder, and started a chain reaction of events she could never have imagined even in her worst nightmares, the only thing on Leah DeGarmo’s mind was a hamburger and French fries.

  It had been years since she last ventured into a McDonald’s—or any other fast food restaurant—and after a particularly bad morning at work, her cravings had reached the point where she couldn’t ignore them any longer.

  “I’m taking lunch,” she said to Chastity Summers, as she hung up her white lab coat and headed for the front door of her veterinary clinic. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Okay, Doctor D.” Chastity Summers waved, never looking up from her computer screen. She was busy entering the data on the last patient of the morning, a twenty-year old beagle in remarkably perfect health. At one time Smokey Two had suffered from cataracts and liver disease, but he’d managed to beat them both. His owner, Tanya Weston, always told people Smokey Two was a walking advertisement for Leah’s skills as a veterinarian.

  Opening the door to her three-year-old Toyota, Leah felt a pang of sadness in her heart. Smokey Two couldn’t keep it up much longer. Dogs rarely lived past twenty. She wiped tears from suddenly damp eyes. It would break Tanya’s heart when her dog finally passed away.