Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
About the Author
Praise for Richard Montanari
Also by Richard Montanari
Dedication
Kiss of Evil
Part One: Altar
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Two: Spell
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Part Three: Brujo
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Epilogue
Other books of this author
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409035930
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Reissued by Arrow Books 2009
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Copyright © Richard Montanari, 2001
Richard Montanari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers
Arrow Books
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is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099524847
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About the Author
Richard Montanari is the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author of The Devil’s Garden, Play Dead, The Rosary Girls, The Skin Gods and Broken Angels, as well as the internationally acclaimed thrillers The Violet Hour and Deviant Way. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Praise for Richard Montanari
‘A relentlessly suspenseful, soul-chilling thriller that hooks you instantly.’ Tess Gerritsen
‘Readers of this terrifying page-turner are in the hands of a master storyteller. Be prepared to stay up all night.’ James Ellroy
‘A specialist in serial killer tales . . . a wonderfully evocative writer’ Publishers Weekly
‘A no-holds-barred thriller that thrusts the reader into the black soul of the killer . . . those with a taste for Thomas Harris will look forward to the sure-to-follow sequel’ Library Journal
‘Montanari’s superior thriller . . . [is] a welcome change from the gore typical of the serial killer subgenre. Likewise, Byrne and Balzano possess a psychological depth all too rare in such fiction.’ Publishers Weekly
‘One of the most terrifyingly evil stories I have read. Yet, with all its violence, it is balanced by much compassion and beauty. I just couldn’t put it down. This could be the book of the year.’
Norman Goldman, Barnes & Noble
Also available by Richard Montanari
Deviant Way
The Violet Hour
The Rosary Girls
The Skin Gods
Broken Angels
Play Dead
The Devil’s Garden
For my mother,
who first gave me a spoon.
Kes lusigaga alustab, see kulbiga lobetab,
Kes kulbiga alustab, see lusigaga lobetab.
—ESTONIAN PROVERB
If there be demons, there must be demonesses.
—VOLTAIRE
TWO YEARS AGO . . .
Michael Ryan sits in a gray leatherette swivel chair, in a dimly lit hotel room, tapping his right foot to some unheard song from the nineties, thinking: This is so much better than sex, it doesn’t even show up on the radar; thinking:
This moment, this lunatic moment, is why he became a cop in the first place.
His pulse rages.
The Glock 9 holstered under his left arm feels as long as a cannon and twice as heavy.
The young woman sitting on the edge of the bed in front of him is a tall, graceful beauty, uptown in a manner of fashion and speech and poise that had always driven Mike Ryan around the bend, even when he was just a cocksure, working-class kid from the wrong side of the Cuyahoga. Tonight the woman is wearing a teal blue dress, sexy heels, diamond earrings. Try as he had, he had not been able to evict her from his thoughts for more than fifteen minutes during the past two weeks, had seen her face in every movie, every magazine, every catalog.
She is not a classic beauty, but to Michael Ryan she is perfect: long, shapely legs; porcelain skin; dusky, almost-Asian eyes. It had taken four meetings to get her and this amount of money in the same room, and at each of those meetings she had looked better — sweats to jeans to slacks to this damned dress.
In the back of Michael’s mind, Dolores Alessio Ryan, his Sicilian-tempered wife of fifteen years, threatens castration. This woman had gotten way under his skin.
He wants this over.
“I’m happy,” Michael says. “You?”
“Yes,” she replies, softly.
He had just handed her the envelope. She, in turn, had just handed him the four stacks of cash. Ten thousand dollars, small bills, well worn. Invisible. Except for the twenty-dollar bill on top of one of the stacks. The twenty on top had some kind of red mark on it, a strange little drawing of a bow and arrow.