B00IZ66CZ8 EBOK

by Unknown

  It was like I was hunkered down during a storm.

  The storm didn’t pass. Instead it grew stronger and more violent. Then it began to tear through the roof as if it were coming for the occupants of my house, no matter what.

  Shane’s hair would grow back, so it was a necessary sacrifice. He needed to be unrecognizable. No one had ever seen Shane without his full head of hair. His clean-shaven head would help to throw the police off his trail.

  Shane finished shaving his head.

  Staring in the mirror, Shane couldn’t even recognize his own face. His head was completely bald.

  Shane breathed a deep sigh.

  Then he backed away from the mirror and removed his jacket. He looked at the bed. It had dusty-looking covers. He imagined that most people didn’t come in here to sleep. Most used this room for extramarital activities. Others used it as a place to escape the world and take a shower.

  He needed to get a few hours of sleep. Shane had a busy night ahead of him.

  I had a busy night ahead.

  |||||

  The motel room’s bed sheets and covers clung to Shane’s body in the way that the darkness clung to his mind. He was fully at rest.

  Back at Shane’s penthouse, Kirk Cutter stood. A grin peeled away from his face, revealing his teeth just ever so slightly.

  He stood watching over two FBI agents and a withdrawn Detective Sun Good.

  The agents were forensic specialists. They probed every inch of Shane’s penthouse, looking for any kind of evidence that would incriminate him.

  They were wasting their time. They would find nothing, except of course Shane’s fingerprints on everything. But what else would you expect to find in someone’s home? The answer was nothing. The most common evidence in someone’s home was his fingerprints.

  If they found evidence of Townsend Dry in our apartment, then that would be something amazing. They weren’t going to find any such evidence. Townsend Dry had never entered our apartment, not living and not in one piece.

  Now, if the FBI searched that little apartment across the roof, the one with the red door; then they might find more than they bargained for.

  Inside that apartment they would find an orgy of evidence. There was a furnace, haunted by the ghosts of many dead souls. There was my kill trophy from the StoneCutter. There were my digital files, records, and other items of interest, all stored on my laptop.

  The agents had been searching Shane’s apartment for hours. So far, they had found nothing. And they wouldn’t find anything either.

  “I knew that we wouldn’t find anything here,” Sun said.

  “We will. We will.” Cutter said and half groaned back at her. He turned his back to her and the agents and walked away. He grew frustrated and didn’t want them to see the darkness in his eyes.

  He paced up and down the hallway near the stairs for a moment. He looked around, breathing in and then out. He tried to calm himself. He tried to steady his thoughts and emotions.

  Unlike me, the monster that lived inside of him had less control over Kirk Cutter’s emotions and outbursts than I had over Shane’s.

  Then suddenly, Kirk Cutter stopped. He gazed around the penthouse.

  At the moment, I knew what he thought. A telltale realization had struck him in the face like a hammer.

  Kirk knew that something wasn’t right about Shane. He’d known from the beginning that Shane hid something. Kirk knew that Shane had a dark secret. He knew this not because he could sense the monster that lived inside of Shane. He did not know this because he saw me.

  No.

  He knew this because Shane’s life was too perfect. His record was too clean. Cutter had no dirt on him. Shane seemed to be squeaky clean, but no one was that clean. No one who crossed Cutter’s path was dirt-free.

  Everyone turned out to be dirty. And in FBI Agent Kirk Cutter’s long career of hunting killers and dealing with them, the cleaner someone looked, the dirtier they were.

  Shane Lasher had one of the cleanest records that Cutter had ever seen. So now, as he looked around Shane’s shiny, clean apartment, he wondered to himself. He wondered just how dirty and dark Shane’s secret was.

  Shane’s penthouse, FBI file, career, and life were all immaculate.

  Cleanliness is next to godliness. In our case, the question was: Which God?

  Kirk Cutter was determined to find out Shane’s secret.

  He looked through the hallway and into the living room. That was when he noticed that there was a large number of windows. The sun had begun to rise an hour earlier. Now its potent light lit the sky above the city.

  Even Shane’s home is bright, Cutter thought.

  Among the monuments, the White House and Capitol Hill’s buildings, and the museums that were all brightly lit under the sun’s all-powerful, all-seeing eye, one other structure was lit up. It caught Cutter’s eyes. It caught the eyes of Cutter’s demon.

  Special Agent Kirk Cutter stared out the large windows of Shane’s penthouse. Without even realizing it, his feet carried him all the way into the living room and right up against the glass. His face felt the caressing heat that transmitted through the glass as it traveled millions of miles from the surface of the sun to Earth.

  Kirk Cutter smiled.

  He looked through the spotless windows at a small structure that was on the roof across from the penthouse. It appeared to be another penthouse unit, but a smaller one.

  To the regular onlooker, it looked like a single bedroom unit. The one thing about it that was eye-popping was the bright red backdoor. The rest of the unit’s outer walls were colored in a boring off-white color. They were beaten by weather, wind-battered, and dirty from being exposed to the outside elements.

  The windows had dark shutters that obstructed the view both into and out of the unit.

  What Cutter did not know was that he was staring directly at my lair. He stared at the building that housed all of his answers about who Shane Lasher really was. He stared at the truth.

  |||||

  Shane awoke to a dying day. He had been so worn out and tired that he’d slept most of the day.

  It was already late afternoon. Shane didn’t overreact to his tardiness to the day. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest that he had slept so long. I needed him to be at full strength. He had a busy night ahead.

  The afternoon seeped away from him and the night was born. Before the night came, Shane washed and shaved his face. He stared into the mirror, studying his new bald head. It looked good.

  Sun would approve, he thought.

  Shane walked to the shower and pulled back the curtain. The tile was corroded and grimy, but the showerhead looked new. The old one must have ruptured and bust. That would have been the only reason why the owners would have sprung for a new one.

  Shane twisted the knob and hot water sprayed out. The stream went right into the wall. Droplets of the water hit Shane’s arm.

  Shane turned the water to a temperature that was somewhere between scalding and lukewarm. Then he stripped down and stepped into the shower.

  He showered and dressed. Then he said a farewell to one of the worst rooms that he had ever stayed in. Before leaving the keys with the night manager, Shane made a mental note never to return to this place again. As with all of Shane’s mental notes, I filed it away into the depths of his brain.

  He headed out into the city. Before he made his next move, he needed something from his apartment. He needed some tools. Hopefully, Cutter and the FBI would be gone already. Hopefully, they hadn’t discovered my lair.

  |||||

  The night was infantile. Even though the darkness was technically just minutes old, it didn’t seem young. That was the difference between night and darkness. The lifespan of a night was less than twelve hours. It was a thing that was born, matured, and died. It repeated this process every twenty-four hours.

  Since the beginning of the Earth, nights have come and gone. Darkness was a different thing altogether. Even t
hough darkness faded away when the sun came out, it still lived on. Darkness did not die. Darkness simply hibernated. Darkness consumed half of the planet at every moment of every day. Instead of dying, it ran from the light. It moved to the other side of the planet.

  The stragglers, the ones that couldn’t keep up with the majority of the darkness as they fled from the light, simply retreated behind rocks and trees. They hid behind mountains and buildings. They reflected objects and became shadows.

  After Shane rode a couple of different taxis, just to make sure that he wasn’t followed, he walked the rest of the way from Lincoln Square.

  When he got to his penthouse, Shane saw no FBI agents. He did see one unmarked car. It was possibly Agent Cutter’s.

  Shane made his way into the lobby. He wasn’t recognized going to the elevator.

  So far so good, I thought.

  He had to be ready for when the doors opened.

  I crept to the edge of Shane’s surface. If the doors opened to a team of FBI agents, I would be there to take as many of them to the grave with me as I could.

  The doors didn’t open to a room full of FBI agents. Instead they opened to an empty penthouse. The lights in the apartment switched on automatically. Shane had them set to do so.

  Reacting as quickly as I could, I heaved Shane’s body against the inside of the foyer’s wall. I swept over it. Instantly, he was under my control. I became him.

  I hugged tightly to the wall and waited. I breathed in and breathed out. Shane’s chest cavity slowly rose and fell. I repeated the process again and again.

  The human body was an amazing machine.

  It created energy in two main ways.

  The first way was through the respiratory system. The body took in air, separated oxygen from everything else, and discarded the remains as carbon dioxide.

  The second way was with the digestive system. Food was taken in. The body created a transaction with the food. It took in all nutrients, stored fat, and then wasted the rest.

  But there was a third way that the body took in energy. The way was through a power utilized and controlled by the brain. Humans called this energy adrenaline.

  The brain released adrenaline in moments of heightened awareness or when unusual stress was created. It was in these moments that the brain functioned at a higher capacity than normal.

  Shane was unique because I was in control of his brain. Every moment that I was in control of Shane’s body, I released adrenaline into his bloodstream.

  I was his alternate source of energy.

  I used his adrenaline to hug that wall for a long period of time. No shaking. No twitching. No nervous movement at all.

  In case someone was alerted by the automatic light, I waited patiently. There was no sign of an ambush. No one came out of hiding. No flood lights lit up the penthouse. No choppers circled overhead. Nothing.

  I had Cutter’s Glock tucked into the waistband of Shane’s pants, just above the small of his back. I wasn’t going to shoot at the FBI unless I had to. That would be stupid. That would be murder one.

  So basically, I was unarmed. Certainly any FBI agents that waited around the corner also had their guns drawn. I made Shane stronger, but I didn’t make him impervious to bullets. He could be killed just like any other human.

  I hadn’t planned to be gunned down in my own home. Not today. Not ever.

  Several minutes went by and the lights sensed that there had been no movement beyond the elevator doors opening. They automatically switched off. They assumed that there was no one there.

  I waited just a little longer. If someone else was in the house he would retreat from the hallway. Then the lights would switch on again and reveal his location.

  But the lights did not come on again. There was no one waiting around the corner. There were no FBI agents. They would have made their presence known already. No way had anyone outlasted me. So there was no ambush.

  I relaxed Shane’s muscles and left his alertness on standby.

  I removed myself from the wall and slowly slid toward the hallway. Moving slowly enough would keep the motion sensor lights from switching on. I wanted to keep the penthouse dark.

  So I crept through the hallway and into the living room. There were no signs of disturbance except for some scuffing on the floors and some furniture moved to different positions. It appeared the FBI hadn’t taken much care to put things back the way they found them.

  I ventured farther into the apartment.

  Still, nothing happened. There were no sirens or alarms or people jumping from doorways with their guns drawn.

  I took Shane through the house and up the stairs. I wanted to inspect and make sure that the upstairs was unoccupied. It was.

  Then from the upstairs window, I saw a figure standing on the roof across from me. He was in front of my lair. The man’s back was to me. He stared at the red door. He hadn’t noticed the lights come on in the penthouse earlier.

  I knew who it was from his height and build. It was Cutter; he was alone.

  He had no FBI windbreaker on and no suit. He wore a black sweater, black pants, black shoes, and black gloves.

  He wasn’t here to catch Shane with a team of FBI agents. He was here to break into our lair. He was here to learn about the monster that he thought he knew.

  I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t come here to stop him. I was no match for him at the moment, unless I used the gun. But I preferred not to rely on the gun. It was a noisy weapon. It would most certainly garner unwanted attention. I couldn’t risk having neighbors calling the police.

  Then again it was my only weapon. So I pulled out the gun, but it was only a last resort.

  Special Agent Cutter did not have that same type of logic. If Cutter were to shoot me, he could just claim that it was self-defense. That was not an option for me. If I shot him, it was murder. I would be hunted and captured.

  Cutter held a dark, metal object in his hand. It was a pry bar. In a flash, he stabbed the bar into the border between the doorframe and the red door.

  With a short burst of muscle mass and skill, Cutter pried the door open. It swung open hard and the wood around the lock exploded and splintered into small red fragments.

  He stood in the doorway and peered in with an expression of triumph. Cutter had gained access to the part of my life that no one else ever had. He stood in the home of a mass murderer.

  There was nothing that I could do to stop him. I couldn’t engage him here and expect to win, so I had to let him see my secrets, but he would not live long.

  After he entered and vanished into the darkness of my lair, I saw a beam of light protrude out through the blackened windows. He had switched on his flashlight.

  The lair was not large. Sneaking in behind him wouldn’t be a good idea. The space was too crammed for that. He would’ve spotted me immediately. It was only a couple of rooms.

  So I continued to creep slowly through Shane’s apartment. I avoided the automatic lights with great success. I didn’t need them. After all, the darkness was my true home. I could see just fine.

  In Shane’s bedroom, I found my way to his closet. Quickly, I stripped off his clothes and casually tossed them on the bed. They draped across the master bed in the perfect shape of a man. In the dark they looked like a dead man who had been flattened by a steamroller.

  For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t going to need my kill-suit.

  I was going after a crazed, violent FBI agent. Shane was going to have to wear attire that was better suited for the job. I reached into the back of the closet and pulled out a vital piece of gear. It was something that I normally didn’t wear.

  After I had grabbed all of Shane’s gear, I began dressing him. He wore black cargo pants with plenty of extra pockets, a long-sleeved black shirt, black socks, black shoes, and that one piece of vital clothing: an Aramid Level III bulletproof vest. This version of the vest was tight-fitting. It was easily concealable and protected most vital organs.

>   I strapped the vest on beneath the black long-sleeved shirt. The interior of the vest was rough like sandpaper against Shane’s skin.

  I put on his shoes and socks and checked out the upstairs window.

  Agent Cutter was still investigating my other apartment.

  I needed to get some gear from my lair. So I waited and waited until Cutter was finished.

  I sat on the floor Indian style and watched from my perch. Cutter finally came out of my lair. He had a grin from ear to ear, like he had found the epitome of everything that he had ever looked for in a serial killer. It was like he’d found the devil himself.

  He pulled out a new cell phone.