Kiss of Midnight

CHAPTER One

PRESENT DAY

“Remarkable. Just look at the use of light and shadow…”

“You see how this image hints at the sorrow of the place, yet manages to convey a promise of hope?”

“… one of the youngest photographers to be included in the museum’s new modern art collection.”

Gabrielle Maxwell stood back from the group of exhibit attendees, nursing a flute of warm champagne as yet another crowd of faceless, nameless, Very Important People enthused over the two dozen black-and-white photographs displayed on the gallery walls. She glanced at the images from across the room, somewhat bemused. They were good photographs—a bit edgy, their subject matter being abandoned mills and desolate dockyards outside Boston—but she didn’t quite get what everyone else was seeing in them.

Then again, she never did. Gabrielle merely took the photographs; she left their interpretation, and ultimately, their appreciation, up to others. An introvert by nature, it made her uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of this much praise and attention… but it did pay the bills. Quite nicely, at that. Tonight, it was also paying the bills for her friend Jamie, the owner of the funky little art gallery on Newbury Street, which, at ten minutes to closing, was still packed with prospective buyers.

Numb with the whole process of meeting and greeting, of smiling politely as everyone from moneyed Back Bay wives to multipierced, tattooed Goths tried to impress one another—and her—with analyses of her work, Gabrielle couldn’t wait for the exhibit to end. She had been hiding in the shadows for the past hour, contemplating a stealth escape to the comfort of a warm shower and a soft pillow, both waiting at her apartment on the city’s east side.

But she had promised a few of her friends—Jamie, Kendra, and Megan—that she would join them for dinner and drinks after the showing. As the last couple of stragglers made their purchases and left, Gabrielle found herself gathered up and swept into a cab before she had a chance to so much as think of begging off.

“What an awesome night!” Jamie’s androgynous blond hair swung around his face as he leaned across the other two women to clutch Gabrielle’s hand. “I’ve never had so much weekend traffic in the gallery—and tonight’s sales receipts were amazing! Thank you so much for letting me host you.”

Gabrielle smiled at her friend’s excitement. “Of course. No need to thank me.”

“You weren’t too miserable, were you?”

“How could she be, with half of Boston falling at her feet?” gushed Kendra, before Gabrielle could answer for herself. “Was that the governor I saw you talking with over the canapés?”

Gabrielle nodded. “He’s offered to commission some original works for his cottage on the Vineyard.”

“Sweet!”

“Yeah,” Gabrielle replied without much enthusiasm. She had a stack of business cards in her pocketbook—at least a year of steady work, if she wanted it—so why was she tempted to open the taxi window and scatter them all to the wind?

She let her gaze drift to the night outside the car, watching in queer detachment as lights and lives flickered past. The streets teemed with people: couples strolling hand in hand, groups of friends laughing and talking, all of them having a great time. They dined at café tables outside trendy bistros and paused to browse store window displays. Everywhere she looked, the city pulsed with color and life. Gabrielle absorbed it all with her artist’s eye and, yet, felt nothing. This bustle of life—her life as well—seemed to be speeding by without her. More and more lately, she felt as if she were caught on a wheel that wouldn’t stop spinning her around, trapping her in an endless cycle of passing time and little purpose.

“Is anything wrong, Gab?” Megan asked from beside her on the taxi’s bench seat. “You seem quiet.”

Gabrielle shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m just… I don’t know. Tired, I guess.”

“Somebody get this woman a drink—stat!” Kendra, the dark-haired nurse, joked.

“Nah,” Jamie countered, sly and catlike. “What our Gab really needs is a man. You’re too serious, sweetie. It’s not healthy to let your work consume you like you do. Have some fun! When’s the last time you got laid, anyway?”

Too long ago but Gabrielle wasn’t really keeping track. She’d never suffered from a shortage of dates when she wanted them, and sex—on those rare occasions she had it—wasn’t something she obsessed over like some of her friends. As out of practice as she was right now in that department, she didn’t think an orgasm was going to cure whatever was causing her current state of restlessness.

“Jamie is right, you know,” Kendra was saying. “You need to loosen up, get a little wild.”

“No time like the present,” Jamie added.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gabrielle said, shaking her head. “I’m really not up for a late night, you guys. Gallery showings always take a lot out of me and I—”

“Driver?” Ignoring her, Jamie slid to the edge of the seat and rapped on the Plexiglas that separated the cabbie from his passengers. “Change of plans. We decided we’re in the mood for celebrating, so ixnay on the restaurant. We wanna go where all the hot people are.”

“If you like dance clubs, there’s a new one just opened in the north end,” the cabbie said, his spearmint chewing gum cracking as he spoke. “I been takin’ fares over there all week. Fact, took two already tonight—fancy after-hours place called La Notte.”

“Ooh, La No-tay,” Jamie purred, tossing a playful look over his shoulder and arching an elegant brow. “Sounds perfectly wicked to me, girls. Let’s go!”

The club, La Notte, was housed in a High Victorian Gothic building that had long been known as St. John’s Trinity Parish church, until recent Archdiocese of Boston payouts on priest sex scandals forced the closings of dozens of such places around the city. Now, as Gabrielle and her friends made their way inside the crowded club, synthesized trance and techno music rang in the rafters, blasting out of enormous speakers that framed the DJ pit in the balcony above the altar. Strobe lights flashed against a trio of arched stained-glass windows. The pulsing beams cut through the thin cloud of smoke that hung in the air, pounding to the frenetic beat of a seemingly endless song. On the dance floor—and in nearly every square foot of La Notte’s main floor and the gallery above—people moved against one another in writhing, mindless sensuality.

“Holy shit,” Kendra shouted over the music, raising her arms and dancing her way through the thick crowd. “What a place, huh? This is crazy!”

They hadn’t even cleared the first knot of clubbers before a tall, lean guy swooped in on the spunky brunette and bent to say something in her ear. Kendra gave a throaty laugh and nodded enthusiastically at him.

“Boy wants to dance,” she giggled, passing her handbag to Gabrielle. “Who am I to refuse!”

“This way,” Jamie said, pointing to a small, empty table near the bar as their friend trotted off with her partner.

The three of them got seated and Jamie ordered a round of drinks. Gabrielle scanned the dance floor for Kendra, but she’d been devoured in the midst of the crowded space. Despite the crush of people all around, Gabrielle could not dismiss the sudden sensation that she and her friends were sitting in a spotlight. Like they were somehow under scrutiny simply for being in the club. It was nuts to think it. Maybe she had been working too much, spending too much time alone at home, if being out in public could make her feel so self-conscious. So paranoid.

“Here’s to Gab!” Jamie exclaimed over the roar of the music, raising his martini glass in salute.

Megan lifted hers, too, and clinked it against Gabrielle’s. “Congratulations on a great exhibit tonight!”

“Thanks, you guys.”

As she sipped the neon yellow concoction, Gabrielle’s feeling of being observed returned. Or rather, increased. She felt a stare reach out to her from across the darkened distance. Over the rim of her martini glass, she glanced up and caught the glint of a strobe light nicking off a pair of dark sunglasses.

Sunglasses hiding a gaze that was unmistakably fixed on her through the crowd.

The quick flashes from the strobes cast his stark features in hard shadow, but Gabrielle’s eyes took him in at once. Spiky black hair falling loosely around a broad, intelligent brow and lean, angular cheeks. A strong, stern jaw. And his mouth… his mouth was generous and sensual, even when quirked in that cynical, almost cruel line.

Gabrielle looked away, unnerved, a rush of warmth skittering along her limbs. His face lingered in her head, burned there in an instant, like an image set to film. She put down her drink and braved another quick glance to where he stood. But he was gone.

A loud crash sounded at the other end of the bar, jerking Gabrielle’s attention over her shoulder. At one of the crowded tables, liquor seeped onto the floor, spilled from several broken glasses that littered the black-lacquered surface. Five guys in dark leather and shades were having words with another guy wearing a Dead Kennedys wife-beater tank and torn, faded blue jeans. One of the thugs in leather had his arm slung around a drunk-looking platinum blond, who seemed to know the punker. Boyfriend, apparently. He made a grab for the girl’s arm, but she slapped him away and bent her head to let one of the thugs put his mouth on her neck. She stared defiantly at her furious boyfriend, all the while playing with the long brown hair of the guy fastened to her throat.

“That’s messed up,” Megan said, turning back around as the situation escalated.

“Sure is,” Jamie added as he finished off his martini and flagged a server to bring another round. “Evidently that chick’s mama forgot to tell her it’s bad news not to leave with the guy who brought you.”

Gabrielle watched for another moment, long enough to see a second biker move in on the girl and descend on her slackened mouth. She accepted both of them together, her hands coming up to caress the dark head at her neck and the pale one that was sucking her face like he meant to eat her alive. The punker boyfriend shouted a string of obscenities at the girl, then turned around and shoved his way into the spectating crowd.

“This place is creeping me out,” Gabrielle confided, just now noticing some clubbers openly doing lines of cocaine off the far end of the long marble bar.

Her friends didn’t seem to hear her over the driving pound of the music. They also didn’t seem to share Gabrielle’s unease. Something wasn’t quite right here and Gabrielle could not shake the feeling that eventually the night was going to get ugly. Jamie and Megan began talking between themselves about local bands, leaving Gabrielle to sip what was left of her martini and wait on the other side of the small table for an opportunity to break in and make her excuses to leave.

Essentially alone at the moment, her gaze drifted over the sea of bobbing heads and swaying bodies, as she surreptitiously searched for the sunglass-shaded eyes that had been watching her before. Was he with the other thugs—one of that gang of bikers still stirring up trouble? He was dressed like them, certainly carried the same dark air of danger about him.

Whoever he was, Gabrielle saw no trace of him now.

She leaned back in her chair, then nearly jumped out of her skin when a pair of hands came to rest on her shoulders from behind.

“Here you are! I’ve been looking all over for you guys!” Kendra said, sounding breathless and animated at the same time, as she leaned over the table. “Come on. I’ve got a table for us on the other side of the club. Brent and some of his friends want to party with us!”

“Cool!”

Jamie was already on his feet, ready to go. Megan took her fresh martini in one hand, Kendra’s and her pocketbooks in the other. When Gabrielle didn’t rush to join them, Megan paused.

“You coming?”

“No.” Gabrielle stood up and looped the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “You go on, have fun. I’m beat. I think I’m just going to catch a cab and head back home.”

Kendra gave her a little-girl pout. “Gab, you can’t go!”

“You want some company for the ride home?” Megan offered, even though Gabrielle could tell she wanted to stay with the others.

“I’ll be fine. Enjoy yourselves, but be careful, right?”

“You’re sure you won’t stay? Just one more drink?”

“Nah. I really need to take off and get some air.”

“Suit yourself, then,” Kendra chided with mock venom. She stepped in and planted a quick peck on Gabrielle’s cheek. As she withdrew, Gabrielle caught a whiff of vodka, and, beneath that, something less obvious. Something musky, queerly metallic. “You’re a buzzkill, Gab, but I still love you.”

With a wink, Kendra looped her arms with Jamie’s and Megan’s, then playfully tugged them toward the churning mass of people.

“Call me tomorrow,” Jamie mouthed over his shoulder as the trio were slowly engulfed by the crowd.

Gabrielle immediately started her trek for the door, anxious to be out of the club. The longer she had stayed, the louder the music seemed to get, drumming in her head, making it hard to think. Hard to focus on her surroundings. People pushed at her from all sides as she tried to pass through them, squeezing her into the press of dancing, flailing, gyrating bodies. She was jostled and nudged, pawed at and groped by unseen hands in the dark, until, finally, she stumbled into the vestibule near the club’s entrance, then out the heavy double doors.

The night was cool and dark. She drew in a deep breath, clearing her head of the noise and smoke and the unsettling atmosphere of La Notte. The music still throbbed out here, the strobe lights still flashed like small explosions behind the tall stained-glass windows above, but Gabrielle relaxed a bit now that she was free.

No one paid her any mind as she hurried down to the curb and waited to hail a ride home. Only a few people were outside, some passing by on the sidewalk below, others filing up the concrete steps and into the club. She spotted a yellow cab coming her way, and thrust out her hand to call it over.

“Taxi!”

As the empty cab navigated across the lanes of nighttime traffic and roared up beside her, the doors of the nightclub burst open with the force of a hurricane.

“Hey, man! What the fuck!” Behind Gabrielle on the steps, a male voice rose to an octave just north of fear. “Touch me again, and I’ll fuckin’—”

“You’ll fuckin’ what?” taunted another voice, this one low and deadly, and flanked by several others that were chuckling in amusement.

“Yeah, tell us, you little asswipe punker piece of shit. What’re ya gonna do?”

Her fingers gripping the door handle of the cab, Gabrielle swiveled her head, half in alarm, half in knowing dread of what she would see. It was the gang from the bar, the bikers or whatever they were, in black leather and shades. The six of them circled the punker boyfriend like a pack of wolves, taking turns jabbing at him, toying with him like prey.

The kid threw a swing at one of them—missed—and the situation went from bad to worse in the blink of an eye.

All at once, the scuffle came crashing toward Gabrielle. The gang of thugs threw the punker up against the hood of the cab, slamming their fists into the kid’s face. Blood splattered like raindrops from his nose and mouth, some of it hitting Gabrielle. She took a step back, stunned and horrified. The kid scrabbled to get away but his attackers stayed on him, beating him with a fury Gabrielle could hardly fathom.

“Get off my goddamn car!” the cabbie shouted out his open window. “Jesus Christ! Take it somewhere else, you hear me!”

One of the assailants turned his head toward the cabbie, smiled a terrible smile, then brought his large fist down on the windshield, shattering the glass into a spiderweb of cracks. Gabrielle saw the cabbie cross himself, his mouth working soundlessly within the car. There was a grinding of gears, then a piercing screech of tires as the taxi jerked into reverse, dislodging the burden from its hood.

“Wait!” Gabrielle screamed, too late.

Her ride home—her escape from this brutal scene—was gone. With a cold lump of fear lodged in her throat, she watched the cab speed off, careering into the street and its taillights disappearing into the dark.

And on the curb, the six bikers were showing their victim no mercy, too preoccupied with beating the punker senseless to give Gabrielle more than a passing thought.

She turned and bolted up the steps to La Notte’s entrance, all the while fishing in her pocketbook for her cell phone. She found the slim device, flipped it open. Punched in 911 as she threw open the doors of the club and skidded into the vestibule, panic rising in her breast. Above the din of music and voices, and the thundering pulse of her own heart, Gabrielle heard only static on the other end of her cell. She pulled the phone away from her ear—

Signal faded.

“Shit!”

She tried 911 again. No luck.

Gabrielle ran for the main area of the club, shouting into the noise in desperation.

“Someone, please help! I need help!”

No one seemed to hear her. She tapped people’s shoulders, tugged on sleeves, practically shook the arm of a tattooed military-looking guy, but no one paid any attention. They didn’t even look at her, merely continued dancing and talking as if she wasn’t even there.

Was this a dream? Some twisted nightmare where only she was aware of the violence taking place outside?

Gabrielle gave up on strangers and decided to search out her friends. As she wended through the dark club, she kept hitting Redial, praying for a decent signal. She couldn’t get one, and she soon realized she would never find Jamie and the others in the thick crowd.

Frustrated and confused, she ran back to the club’s exit. Maybe she could flag down a motorist, find a cop, anything!

Frigid night air hit her face as she pushed open the heavy doors and stepped outside. She dashed down the first set of concrete steps, panting now, uncertain what she was walking into, a woman alone against six, probably drugged-out gang members. But she didn’t see them.

They were gone.

A group of young clubbers came strolling up the steps, one of them playing air guitar while his friends talked about hitting a rave later that night.

“Hey,” Gabrielle said, half expecting them to walk right past her. They paused, smiling at her, even though at twenty-eight she was likely a decade older than any of them.

The one in the lead nodded his head at her. “’Sup?”

“Did any of you—” She hesitated, not certain she should be relieved that this was not, evidently, a dream after all. “Did you happen to see the fight that was going on out here a few minutes ago?”

“There was a fight? Awesome!” said the headbanger of the group.

“Nah, man,” answered another. “We just got here. We ain’t seen nothin’.”

They passed by, climbing the rest of the steps while Gabrielle could only watch, wondering if she was losing her mind. She walked down to the curb. There was blood on the pavement, but the punker and his attackers had vanished.

Gabrielle stood under a streetlamp and rubbed a chill from her arms. She pivoted to look down both sides of the street, searching for any sign of the violence she had witnessed a few minutes before.

Nothing.

But then… she heard it.

The sound drifted from a narrow alley to her right. Flanked by a concrete shoulder-high wall that acted as an acoustic aid, the almost lightless walkway betrayed its occupants whose faint animal-like grunts carried out to the street. Gabrielle could not place the sick, wet sounds that froze her blood in her veins and tripped off instinctual alarms in every nerve in her body.

Her feet were moving. Not away from the source of those disturbing sounds, but toward it. Her cell phone was like a brick in her hand. She was holding her breath. She didn’t realize she wasn’t breathing until she had walked a couple of paces into the alleyway and her gaze had settled on a group of figures up ahead.

The thugs in leather and sunglasses.

They were crouched down on their hands and knees, pawing at something, tearing at it. In the scant light from the street, Gabrielle glimpsed a tattered scrap of fabric lying near the carnage. It was the punker’s tank top, shredded and stained.

Gabrielle’s finger, poised over the Redial button of her cell phone, came down silently onto the tiny key. There was a quiet trill on the other end, then the police dispatcher’s voice shattered the night like cannon fire.

“911. What is your emergency?”

One of the bikers swung his head around at the sudden disturbance. Feral, hate-filled eyes pinned Gabrielle like daggers where she stood. His face was bloody, slick with gore. And his teeth! They were sharp like an animal’s—not teeth at all, but fangs that he bared to her as he opened his mouth and hissed a terrible-sounding foreign word.

“911,” said the dispatcher once again. “Please state your emergency.”

Gabrielle couldn’t speak. She was so shaken, she could hardly breathe. She brought the cell phone up to her mouth, but could not make her throat form words.

Her call for help was wasted.

Knowing this with a certain, bone-deep dread, Gabrielle did the only logical thing that came to her. With trembling fingers, she turned the device toward the gang of sadistic bikers and clicked the image-capture button. A small flash lit up the alley.

They all turned toward her now, raising their hands to shield their sunglass-shaded eyes.

Oh, God. Maybe she still had a chance of escaping this hellish night. Gabrielle clicked the picture button again and again and again, all the while making her retreat back up the alley to the street. She heard murmured voices, snarled curses, the movement of feet on pavement, but she didn’t dare look back. Not even when a sharp hiss of steel rang out behind her, followed by unearthly shrieks of agony and rage.

Gabrielle raced into the night on adrenaline and fear, not stopping until she reached a standing taxi on Commercial Street. She jumped in and slammed the door. She was panting, out of her mind with fear.

“Take me to the nearest police station!”

The cabbie slung his arm over the back of the seat and turned around to stare at her, frowning. “You okay, lady?”

“Yeah,” she replied automatically. Then, “No. I need to report a—”

Jesus. What did she intend to report? A cannibalistic feeding frenzy by a pack of rabid bikers? Or the only other possible explanation, which wasn’t any more believable?

Gabrielle met the cabbie’s anxious eyes. “Please hurry. I just witnessed a murder.”