The Mephisto Club

weapon and fired again. One of the dogs dropped, but the other was already in the air, flying like a black rocket. Jane got off one last shot, just as the dog slammed into her. Her gun tumbled and slid away as they both went down, Jane grappling at the wounded Doberman.
    “No,” Edwina moaned. She was on her knees beside her fallen son, cradling his face, stroking back his hair. “You can’t die! You’re the
chosen.
”
    Lily struggled to sit up, and the room tilted around her. By the glow of the ravenous flames, she saw Edwina rise like an avenging angel to her feet. She saw the woman reach down and pick up Jane’s fallen gun.
    The room spun even more crazily as Lily staggered to her feet. The whirl of images refused to remain still. The flames. Edwina. The spreading pool of Dominic’s blood, glistening in the firelight.
    And the poker.
    The dog gave a last convulsive twitch and Jane shoved it aside. The carcass, tongue lolling, flopped onto the floor. Only then did Jane focus on Edwina standing over her, on the weapon gleaming in Edwina’s hands.
    “It all ends here. Tonight,” said Edwina. “You. And Mephisto.” Edwina raised the gun, the muscles of her arm pulling taut as she squeezed the grip. Her attention was fixed so completely on Jane that she did not see her own death hurtling toward her head.
    The poker slammed into Edwina’s skull, and Lily felt the crack of crushing bone, transmitted straight to her hand through wrought iron. Edwina dropped to the floor without uttering a sound. Lily lost her grip, and the falling poker clanged as it hit wood. She stared down at what she had just done. At Edwina’s head, the skull caved in. At the blood, flowing like a black river. And suddenly the room darkened, and her legs wobbled out from beneath her. She slid to the floor, landing on her rump. She dropped her head in her lap and could feel nothing: no pain, no sensation at all in her limbs. She was floating disembodied on the edge of blackness.
    “Lily.” Jane touched her shoulder. “Lily, you’re bleeding. Let me see your arm.”
    She gasped in a breath. The room brightened. Slowly she raised her head and focused on Jane’s face. “I killed her,” she murmured.
    “Just don’t look at her, okay? Come on, let’s move you to the couch.” Jane reached down to help Lily to her feet. She froze, her fingers suddenly taut around Lily’s arm.
    Lily heard the whispers, too, and her blood turned to ice in her veins. She stared at Dominic and saw that his eyes were open and aware. His lips moved, the words so soft she could barely hear what he was saying.
    “Not…not…”
    Jane bent over him to listen. Lily did not dare move any closer, fearful that Dominic would suddenly spring up at her, like a cobra. They could kill him again and again, but he’d always come back. He’d never die.
    Evil never does.
    The fire glowed in the reflecting pool of spreading blood, as though the flames themselves were seeping across the floor, an expanding inferno with Dominic at its source.
    Again his lips moved. “We’re not…”
    “Say it,” said Jane. “Tell me.”
    “We are not…the only…ones.”
    “What?” Jane knelt down, grabbed Dominic by the shoulders, and shook him hard. “Who else is there?”
    A last breath rushed out of Dominic’s lungs. Slowly his jaw sagged open, and the lines of his face smoothed like melting wax. Jane released the body and straightened. Then she looked at Lily. “What did he mean by that?”
    Lily stared at Dominic’s unfocused eyes, at a face now slack and lifeless. “He just told us,” she said, “that it’s not over yet.”

THIRTY-EIGHT
    A snowplow scraped its way up the mountain road, the rumble of its engine echoing up from the valley. Standing on the lodge’s snow-covered deck, Jane looked down over the railing to catch a view of the road below. She watched the plow’s steady progress as it wound its way toward them, scraping a path through fresh-fallen powder. Inhaling a breath of cold and cleansing air, she lifted her face to the sun, trying to clear the last wisps of fog from her brain. Once the road was clear, a whole host of official vehicles would be arriving on the mountain: the state police, the medical examiner, the crime-scene unit. She had to be fully alert and ready for their questions.
    Even though she didn’t have all the answers.
    She stomped the snow off her boots, slid open the glass door, and stepped back into the lodge.
    The other