When She Was Bad

12

“I’ll take that.” Max’s left hand shot out, snatched Pender’s gun from Lily’s waist, and slipped it into his own waistband. It was a glorious moment for him-until a few minutes ago, when Lily had spotted Dr. Cogan trudging up the hillside, he’d been convinced the cops were already on their way, and that even if he managed to avoid being shot down, he’d have to settle for a hasty closing of accounts and a quick getaway.

But now he had all the time in the world, he realized. Not since he’d taken his revenge on the deputy sheriff who’d arrested him in Monterey three years ago-the late deputy and her late lover-had Max had two women so completely under his thumb. Oh, the games they could play back at the cabin! And this time he wouldn’t have to worry about someone hearing their screams.

Nor would he have to share them with the other alters. There were no others anymore, except for Kinch, who was helpless without a knife in his hand, and Lyssy, whose earlier attempt at a palace coup had ultimately proved a failure. True, he had managed to distract Max long enough for the girl to get away-but that had been due largely to the element of surprise. As soon as Max had realized what was going on-that the shouting in his head emanated from Lyssy in co-con-he was able to ignore it, treat it as so much white noise.

Even so, it was with a crushing and unfamiliar sense of failure that after trying unsuccessfully to get the mule started up again, he’d left the ridge alone, on foot, his shoulders hunched against the sky, expecting with every step to hear the whap-whap-whap of the police choppers and find himself bathed in the glare of their searchlights.

Limping down the dirt track, scrambling down the switchbacks on his ass, Max had come closer to despair than he cared to remember. He’d even begun thinking about putting an end to the farce, and had gone so far as to draw the gun from his waistband, when he’d spotted Pender and the girl by the side of the road.

And when he discovered that it was Pender’s heart attack that had saved him, Max, who was a big fan of irony (like many psychopaths, it was what he had in place of a sense of humor), was almost giddy with delight. Once again the Creator had demonstrated his utter disinterest in the battle between good and evil.

Tough shit for them, thought Max, tender shit for me. Then he’d learned that Dr. Cogan had gone off alone to contact the police and was herself on foot, and a situation that had seemed at first hopeless, then barely survivable, had turned rosy as a whore’s cheek: all Max had to do was pretend to be Lyssy, and hang on for the ride.

From that point on, things couldn’t have gone more smoothly if he’d planned them out months in advance. “What we’re going to do now,” he said over the chugging of the engine, tracing the curve of Lily’s ear with the end of the gun barrel, “as long as we have a little more time to spare than I thought we had, we’re all going back to the cabin to get to know each other a little better.” He glanced over his shoulder. “How’s that sound to you, Dr. Cogan?”

“Whatever you say, Max,” Irene said evenly, her hand stealing into the front pocket of her jeans. She felt almost relieved, now that he’d unmasked himself. No more uncertainty, no more paralysis by analysis. All complexities, moral or otherwise, pared down to the stark geometric simplicity of the spatial relationship between a cylinder and an arc, between the muzzle of Max’s gun and the side of Lily’s head.

Lily too experienced a moment of frozen clarity, during which she was, briefly, neither Lily, nor Lilith, nor Lily pretending to be Lilith, but only herself, all tangled up with conflicting emotions, feeling heartsick over losing Lyssy again, foolish for allowing herself to be tricked, righteously angry at having been betrayed, afraid for all the obvious reasons, and at the same time determined to think of something, to do something.

But for Lily too the possibilities began and ended with the gun muzzle pressing against the side of her head. So when Max turned back to her after his brief exchange with Dr. Irene, and said, “You heard her-get this thing turned around and let’s get going,” it seemed pure common sense to refuse him at least that much.

“Not until you point that thing someplace else,” she told him.

It must have made sense to Max, too; it was the last thing that ever would. He tilted the barrel upward, pointing toward the sky. “You satisfied now? Okay, let’s get-”

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Jagged muzzle flashes lit the night. Lily threw herself backward as Max toppled sideways off the bench. Irene, who’d fired the.38 from a seated position, holding it in both hands in emulation of Pender, now scrambled to her feet, aiming the gun straight downward at Max, who lay head-down, crumpled into the narrow, V-shaped space between the dashboard and the front seat with his neck twisted at a grotesque angle, his cheek jammed against the floorboard, and his artificial leg sticking out sideways.

And yet he lived. Shot three times at close range, his neck broken in the fall (or to be precise, the sideways landing on his head), Max stared hungrily toward the pistol, lying only a few inches away from his left hand, and was still trying to will the hand into motion when a red haze washed over his vision.

Standing over him, holding the revolver in both hands and pointing it straight down at Maxwell, Irene glanced to her left and saw Lily lying on her back a few feet from the mule. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just got the wind knocked out of me,” the girl replied, sitting up gingerly. “Is he…dead?”

“Not yet,” said Irene grimly. “Get his guns.”

Lily rose, brushing dirt and damply clinging spears of grass from her jeans, walked over to the mule, picked up the black pistol, then boldly plucked Pender’s wooden-handled Colt from the waistband of Max’s jeans. It was impossible to be afraid of him any longer-with his neck bent and his leg sticking out like that, he looked to her like a broken doll some spiteful little girl had tossed into the trash.

She cut the mule’s engine. “Give me your cell phone,” she told Irene. “I’ll go get help.”

Irene hadn’t realized how badly the constant chugging and shuddering had been getting on her nerves until it was gone and relative quiet had descended over the hillside. “Tell them we have two critically injured people that need to be evacuated by helicopter,” she said. “You can tell them one of them is Ulysses Maxwell, but try not to say too much else until we know how things stand with you, legally speaking, if you get my drift.”

She tossed the phone down to Lily, who caught it deftly. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Take good care of Uncle Pen.”

“I will,” Irene called after her, then turned to Pender again, kneeling beside him and pressing two fingers against the side of his neck again. She felt his pulse, weak but steady, and watched his great chest rising and falling, rising and falling. “Don’t die on me,” she told him. “Don’t you dare die on me.”

Pender opened his eyes. “I’ll drink to that,” he said with a wink, then closed his eyes again, and let the darkness wash over him.