Dark Heart

by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin

  The back of his neck kept tingling as if somebody was watching him.

  He looked over his shoulder again.

  Still no one.

  But the way the rain was pounding down, someone could be back there. Shit, they could be thirty feet away and he’d barely be able to see them in this mess.

  His eyes flicked from one side of the alley to the other.

  He was no hero. The heroes he knew were mostly dead ones. He preferred to be a live cop. And if a cop wasn’t kicking ass, he’d better be bugging out, oh yeah. But he’d bugged out before and never been this scared.

  Something dragged across the ground just behind him. Madrone stumbled as he tried to turn around.

  “What the fuck…?” He backed toward the lighted street only a few yards away now. Once again he drew his pistol. His hand was shaking, sweating on the grip of his weapon.

  Two hands grabbed his shoulders from behind and Madrone spun, leading with his elbow. The blow whiffed empty air. The owner of the hands—a thin, well-dressed Chinese man wearing a dark suit and sporting gold Armani-framed glasses—ducked and came back up. Madrone grunted, off balance. His assailant jumped closer, grabbed the skin, and yanked, trying to jerk it away.

  The skin was slick and heavy. Madrone almost lost control of it. But his fear boiled away, burned off by a rush of adrenaline. Here at last was something he could see, could strike at, could defeat. This was something he could understand.

  He ducked away from the man’s attack. He wasn’t about to play tug-of-war with some Bruce Lee wannabe. He dropped his shoulder, spun to break the man’s grip on the skin, and used the momentum of his weight to drive his elbow into the guy’s solar plexus.

  The man gasped, doubled over, and Madrone brought the butt of his pistol down hard on the guy’s neck. The man hit the pavement like a sack of wet cement. Madrone grabbed his collar, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him up against the wall.

  “The position, asshole. You know the position. Assume the fucking position!”

  He realized he was shouting. He forced himself to take a breath as he patted the guy down. No weapons. He stepped back, slipped his pistol back into its holster. Thank God he hadn’t had to shoot the fucker. The paperwork would have been enormous.

  “ID,” Madrone growled. “Let’s see some ID.”

  “Does it matter?” the thin Chinese man said. He met Madrone’s gaze calmly. Now that the dancing was over, he looked like an out-of-place accountant. “I meant you no harm.”

  “Yeah, right,” Madrone said. “You got a fucked-up way of showing it. Listen, you stupid asshole, I’m a fucking cop, and you’re under fucking arrest! You gotta right to remain silent—”

  “I want to help you, Officer Madrone,” the Chinese man said, his voice as calm as if he were reading numbers off a spreadsheet. His mouth thinned to a tight line as he looked at Madrone.

  Madrone blinked. “You know my name? I don’t think I know you. Do I know you, asshole?”

  “No, Mr. Madrone. You don’t know me. But that doesn’t matter.”

  He raised one hand as Madrone glared at him. “Leave the skin, Mr. Madrone,” he said. Madrone stared at him in disbelief. Was that pity in his eyes? The hair on Madrone’s neck stood up. He felt a chill, as if chips of ice were slowly condensing in his veins.

  “I asked you how you know my name, asshole,” Madrone said.

  But the Asian ignored the question with that same frigid, infuriating accountant’s calm.

  “You have no idea how much disaster you are calling down upon your head,” the Chinese man said. “That is why I am here. Leave the skin behind. Leave this place and forget Carlton Wheeler. You cannot change what happened to him. If you do as I say, you can save yourself.”

  Madrone stepped back, confusion rippling his sunken features. “Carlton Wheeler? What the fuck does this have to do with Carlton Wheeler? Who are you, asshole?”

  The Chinese man let out a slow breath and fixed Madrone with an intense stare. “That skin will be the death of you.”

  Madrone made up his mind. “That’s it, Charlie Chan. Hands behind your back, cross your wrists. Come on, do it! ”

  A loud scrape echoed suddenly behind him. He turned for just one second. But it was enough. The Chinese man jerked away from him. He was ten feet away and pounding for the mouth of the alley before Madrone could even blink. Madrone lunged for him, slipped, and landed hard on his ass.

  “Jesus!”

  But the man was gone. The sound of his rapid footsteps lessened, then vanished entirely, leaving Madrone sitting flat on his butt, utterly confused.

  Carlton fucking Wheeler?

  Madrone shook his head to clear it, levered himself to his feet, then picked up the skin again. Limping slightly, he walked out of the alley onto the sidewalk of Dearborn, turned right, trudged to the corner of Ontario, and made his way past the club entrance. The trendy yuppies still standing in line peered out from under their Versace umbrellas at him, their expressions saying they wouldn’t be inviting him in for a drink any time soon. Madrone felt them staring—though it was a different feeling than the watchfulness he’d felt in the alley—and supposed he couldn’t blame them. Then the wind turned and he got a good whiff of what he smelled like. It was a miracle the yuppies weren’t running screaming into the night.

  He was already soaked, too wet to get any wetter without drowning, so that even though the incessant downpour pattered on his head and his clothes, it didn’t add new dimensions to his misery. It just made him feel more like an idiot. It was a pisser to lose Kung Fu Charlie, but what bothered him the most was that noise he’d heard behind him. What the hell was that? It was just noise, except for the sense of danger he’d felt.

  Madrone, still lugging the skin, ignored the yups and turned slowly, looking back toward the alley. All at once, he saw the dark opening as the maw of a huge animal. He swallowed.

  Watching every corner and shadowy niche, Madrone stuck to the streetlights all the way back to his car.

  He wrestled the door open, tossed the scaly skin onto the floor of the backseat, jumped behind the wheel, and pulled out without even checking the traffic. Luck was with him. A few people sat on their horns, but nobody creamed him.

  He blew past a stop sign on Ontario, turned right onto LaSalle, and headed north. He stomped the accelerator, ignoring the way the Mustang’s overworked engine whined, and followed Sheffield up toward the lake, almost ramming a taxi as he passed the huge, dark bulk of Wrigley Field. He raced through the city and didn’t let up on the gas until he turned onto Sheridan. He was getting close to home.

  Madrone kept looking in the rearview mirror, knowing it had to be paranoia. There was no one following him. No one in the backseat. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—no, something—was after him. The fear did not leave him, and he began to wonder if he’d snapped. He’d seen other cops lose it. Maybe he was next. Christ, he was hauling around a fucking animal skin…

  At a stoplight he turned, hooked his right arm over the seat, and stared at the mound of scales on the floor-board in the rear of the car. He considered opening the door and tossing it out. But he couldn’t. The Fu Manchu accountant had mentioned Carlton Wheeler. And he’d tried to take the skin. What possible connection could there be between the two?

  Madrone turned into the parking garage below his building, waited impatiently while the card reader swallowed his keycard, burped it back, and broadcast a signal that sent the wide chain door clanking upwards.

  He should have felt safe here. It was a secured building, one of the older high-rises along Sheridan that Lake Michigan had nearly swallowed a couple of decades before. He’d been living there then, when they had piled sandbags along the first floor to keep storm waves out of the empty apartments.

  The place had a doorman, cameras, and continuously monitored hallways and elevators. But he didn’t feel safe. He had to force himself not to run through the parking garage. He’d never noticed how dark it was in th
e garage before. Just a few old, flickering fluorescent tubes that cast everything into eerie blue shadows.

  He kept telling himself his feelings were irrational, but that didn’t stop him from shooting frequent glances over his shoulder and listening to the hollow sound of his heels echoing in the drafty concrete chamber. Like a tomb…

  He thought about going back to his car and returning to the precinct house, even though his shift was long over, just so he wouldn’t have to be alone. But that was crazy, too. Wasn’t it?

  He walked through the lobby, checked his mailbox, and exchanged a few words with the doorman, ignoring the way the man looked at the bundle of scaly skin under his arm. Looked at it and wrinkled his nose. Well, fuck him…

  He pushed the button to call the elevator, and waited. The elevator took its own sweet-ass time, and another eternity passed before he finally got to his floor. The skin was cumbersome, bulky, and slippery, and he kept having to shift it to keep it from sliding out of his arms.

  His keys clinked as he fumbled with them at the lock. Keys always got themselves tangled up whenever you least needed that kind of crap. He nearly slammed them to the floor in frustration before he got a grip on himself.

  Blame it on fatigue, maybe, but he’d just be lying to himself. His hands were still twitching. Crashing off the adrenaline overload. He couldn’t seem to shake the sludgy fear that oozed through his veins. Finally he was able to get the right key in the lock and turn it. He pushed into his apartment, shut and locked the door behind himself, and stood there breathing hard, clutching the skin.

  Beside the door, the green light of the small alarm control box changed to red and began to blink. He flipped it open and reset it, then turned back toward the living room beyond the small entry foyer.

  The only light was the weak city glow that leaked through the dingy picture window and created dim white squares on his faded green carpet, vaguely illuminating a week’s worth of newspapers, crumpled Budweiser cans, and empty pizza boxes.

  He wiped the sweat and rain from his forehead, walked into the kitchenette, and dropped the skin on the tile floor. That stink that Madrone couldn’t place was strong now. It smelled as if someone had been cooking Chinese food. He reached for the light switch—

  Something blotted out the light in front of the picture window.

  Madrone’s heart bulged straight up into his throat. Somebody here? Here?

  But this was the fourteenth floor. Whatever it was, it had to come in through the window. The dead bolt had been locked in the door. The alarm had still been on and functioning. Nobody had come through that door.

  So how could anything—anything at all—be here? It couldn’t. It was plain and simple. Impossible.

  “Huhnng…” he said. A low, choking sound of pure terror. He fumbled out his pistol, his fingers quivering so badly he nearly dropped it.

  The shadows before the window shifted again, and a sudden blast of that now familiar stink filled his nose. But not cold and weak, like the skin on the kitchen floor. This was hot, fetid, boiling with life. And in that swirl of shadowed motion he saw the shape of it as it turned toward him.

  It wasn’t a second-story man, or some kind of genius lock-cracker.

  It wasn’t the Egg Foo Young guy, somehow miraculously returned for round two.

  It was worse, far worse.

  It wasn’t even human.

  Pointed wings rose above its low, squat head. Tightly packed muscles bulged on its massive frame. A thin, pointed tail whipped through the air behind it. As it stepped toward him, its great weight made even the concrete floor beneath the frayed carpet vibrate. Its red eyes glowed at Madrone, burning him somehow, turning his fear into stark terror.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus save us,” Madrone moaned, raising his revolver.

  The shadowy thing launched itself at Madrone too fast for anything living to see.

  Madrone pulled the trigger.

  The monster barreled into him and slammed him against the wall so hard the plaster cracked. His vision blurred from the shock of the blow. He fell to his knees, tried to suck in a breath, tried to bring his gun to bear on it again.

  He screamed as he distinctly heard his fingers snap with a sound like crunching celery stalks. Suddenly his arm was numb below the elbow, and he knew he wasn’t holding the gun any more.

  He thought it should hurt as he fell backward to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to feel anything. Not his hands, his legs, or his face. Nothing.

  He tried to gasp for breath, and couldn’t. In the split second since he’d seen the creature, he had somehow lost everything, his gun, his footing, even the ability to breathe and feel. A rocking shudder ran through his body. He finally managed to focus his eyes on the thing that stood over him. As a gesture of resistance, his glare was pitiful, but it was all that was left to him. And he was Sicilian enough to feel some shred of defiant pride in being able to do it. If only he could spit in its face before it killed him…

  What the hell was it? He couldn’t see it clearly, even though it was right in front of him, looming over him. He could only see its silhouette, as if the room’s shadows conspired to hide it.

  He tried to reach out and touch it, but his arms wouldn’t move. Something was horribly…wrong. When the creature had overpowered him, it had somehow shorted out his voluntary nervous system. Now he lay there, sprawling and crumpled, completely at its mercy. The stench of his own urine assaulted his nostrils.

  Wide-eyed and trembling, he looked up at the figure standing over him, as dark and hidden as some nightmare behind storm clouds. Only its red eyes burned.

  Why couldn’t he see what it was? His own hands, his bruised and bloody body, were visible in the dim light flowing through the window. Why not this…thing?

  Then, slowly the shadows seemed to fall away from it. It stood with its massive, scaled arms folded across its chest. Its clawed fingers dug into the swollen muscles of its own flesh, as though it was contemplating its next action. Green wings rose above its head. It was staring right at him. Madrone couldn’t seem to move his head to look anywhere else but straight into its red eyes.

  Then the thing spoke. Its voice was deep, rumbling from its chest like choked thunder, but its words were slow and quiet, softened with regret.

  “I am afraid it is necessary that you die.”

  It was the last thing Madrone ever heard. The monster reached down and rammed one taloned fist deep into Madrone’s chest, smashing aside ribs and cartilage to tear his heart from the bleeding cavity.

  Detective Jack Madrone gave one violent, convulsive shudder. Then, before the pain even had time to register in his brain, everything faded to black.

  The creature knelt beside the body. Madrone hadn’t felt a thing, not at the end. That was good.

  For himself, he could still feel the insane rush—the way that the rib cage bent beneath the force of his blow, the moist crunch as Madrone’s ribs broke and separated to admit his clenched fist. The warmth of the blood and the fluttery, dying movement of the still-beating heart in his claws. And then the power, the incredible power of ending a life in a single motion—the memory sang through his arm as he stood there. Wet, warm blood streamed from his talons and dripped onto the carpet. He tossed the heart, now limp and still, to the floor.

  He found the skin on the kitchen floor. He pulled the stolen time cards from the cop’s pocket. Then he picked stray scales from the sleeve of the detective’s coat and from his fingers. The creature searched for scales on the carpet and poured his finds into the skin. He wavered over the bullet casing from the cop’s gun, gleaming on the carpet, and finally decided to leave it where it was.

  The bullet had passed through him—unblessed weapons were useless against him—and was wedged in the far wall. He dug it out of the plaster, wondering where the mystery would lead investigators, sure it would confuse them, if nothing else.

  Finally he wrapped the whole mess into a loose bundle and tucked it under one inhumanly large arm. He
cloaked himself in darkness again. Invisible to all eyes but those of others like him, he walked to the door. The tips of his claws closed on the doorknob and turned it.

  Had anyone been watching, the door would have appeared to open and close as if by magic.

  His mission completed, the creature who had once been—and would be again—Justin Sterling found the stairway to the roof. After a time he stood alone beneath the storm, breathing in death and rain. Then, in utter silence, he merged once again with the night.

  three

  It was well after midnight when Detective Sandra McCormick stepped out of the elevator onto the fourteenth floor and headed toward Jack Madrone’s apartment.

  “Whoever’s doing this has a lotta balls. Gotta give ’em that.” Her partner, a veteran cop named Lawdon McKenzie, kept his comments in a low undertone clearly meant for her alone. He’d pushed his way through the crowd of pajama- and robe-clad rubberneckers clogging the hall between the elevator and Madrone’s apartment to meet her. “Or maybe he’s just stupid. You don’t kill cops in this city.”

  Sandra nodded. “You don’t kill cops in any city. Not unless you’re nuts…” She paused. “You got a time of death yet?”

  “The uniforms are telling me just after ten o’clock,” McKenzie replied. “The lady next door called 911 at ten-fifteen. She says she heard a big thump and a gunshot. When she got her nerves back together enough to crawl out from under the table, she called.” He thought about it. “It took her like maybe an hour to get her nerve back…”

  The police had already cordoned off the door. Sandra and McKenzie worked their way through the throng toward the apartment doorway, which was guarded by one uniform, a young woman with a flat blue stare. At the door, McKenzie paused, irritation plain on his beefy features. He turned and faced the gawkers, who stared back at him with barely suppressed excitement.

  Blood lust, McKenzie thought, disgusted.

  “Show’s over, folks!” he shouted. “Get back to your apartments. We have everything under control out here, so go on home. Please!” He lowered his voice and aimed a quick aside at the uniformed officer. “Get them outta here. Escort them to their doors if you have to. This is ridiculous.”