A cat yowl made him turn his face away. When he turned back, the oleander spray shivered over thin air, the possum disappearing while his back had been turned. He put the palm of his hand on the top of the block wall, absorbing the warmth of the creature, feeling the aura it had left behind. A living body was like a fiery torch, fevered with the heat of all its processes. Through his palm he could, if he did not already know, cipher blood flowing hotly through flesh and fur, feel the exhalation ofbreath, the shiver of fear when it had first sighted him. He held the top of the wall until the masonry went cold.
He withdrew his hand and began to pick his way down the alley again. Crabgrass poked its way under grapestake fences and inched over the corroded alley. He was hunting and, like the ragged-eared ginger cat who leaped across his path, he had little doubt that the hunt would be good.
The aroma of night-blooming star jasmine drifted from a breezeway. He took an appreciative breath as he crossed, a welcome respite from the lingering smell of garbage cans just a day or two away from being put out for collection. This was a neighborhood of ethnic foods. The cans carried lingering odors of turnip greens and fatback. He heard a swelling of music, then it faded as he moved across the street, from one neighborhood into another, and the smell of jasmine was traded for that of the jacaranda, muskier, sweeter, almost winy as it collected in the alley potholes.
He paused behind a brown garage which had seen better days, the cracked corners of its stucco revealing chicken wire and tar paper. Across his line of sight, he could see a man in his backyard, taking out the trash and listening to the Dodgers’ game. The man dunked a sack into a tough plastic can and paused by the side of a tarp-covered vehicle. Radio balanced on his shoulder, he listened as he fussily tugged the car over into better placement over the bumpers. The stalker also listened. The peppery coach had just livened up the proceedings by getting thrown out, and now his team, as hoped, had rallied to tie the game up. The roar and hiss of overworked radio speakers straining to broadcast the excitement reached him.
He reached in his back pocket, drawing out a kitchen match, and lighting it with his thumbnail. The match hissed and flared into being with a smell of sulfur and smoke. He liked matches. He liked calling them lucifers, as they had been called a century ago. Fitting, with the bite and smell of hell itself, ready at the scratch of its chemical head to loose the power of chaotic fire. He watched the flame settle into its tear-drop shape and through it, eyed the house as he always liked to do, thinking as he’d been trained to do, looking for the weaknesses where fire could strike. Where the inhabitants could flee, once the flames betrayed their security and shelter. Peering through the match flame as he might through rose-colored glass, he assessed the home. Beyond, for a distracting flicker of a moment, in a back bedroom, he saw a silhouette thrown up against drawn shades, and like a hound which has winded a fox, his nostrils flared.
Prey.
Ta-rah-rah-BOOM-ti-ay, have you had yours today, I had mine yesterday, from the girl across the way .... Vulgarities blazed across his mind, his lips moving soundlessly to the words, his attention caught by the beauty of the girl. He dropped the match and ground it out, watching instead the lithe candlestick form of the naked girl, her brush of hair its own flame. Caught by the endless possibilities of all the ways he might kill her, he crouched down to spy.
A thin veil of sweat crept down his face, under the visor of his gear. It was irritating in the sultry night. He could not reach the salty moisture to wipe it away, and the air would not evaporate it. He blinked, rapidly, several times, aware he was losing sight of the girl as he did so. He sucked his breath in through his lips with a deep, inhaling hiss. She aroused him, and because of that, the sleeping man began to awaken also.
Like the sun in eclipse, a magnificent corona of hair stood away from her shadowed head and torso. Like a Roman candle, he thought in admiration; then, the moment passed, and the light snapped off. For a long second, like the corona of the sun in eclipse, he retained a vision of her. Then the silhouette disappeared in total darkness.
Business before pleasure. And doing her would be pleasurable. Very, very pleasurable. As he had done with the possum, his instinct was to go after her, put his hand on the windowsill, leech off the warmth of her presence, stand in the shadows outside the house, and listen to her fall into sleep. The need to feel her warmth, to see her again, to trail his fingers down the length of her throat ... with a great force of will, he stood where he was, aware she had a protector, knowing that he liked to strike the solitary. Ta-rah-rah-BOOM-ti-ay.... He hadn’t had his that day.
Someone else watched through him. He bit his lips, tasting the flat, iron sweet of his blood, driving the sleeping man out of his thoughts. He would not treat this woman as she deserved to be treated. He would ...
cut—bite—rip—rape—torment—
Images sheared through his mind. He blinked again, as if to wipe them away, strobe-lit visions of atrocities which fired him even as they disgusted him. The sleeping man’s memories.... Duct tape. Blades with serrated edges. Violence and desire interchangeable. The sweet flesh of the inside of the thighs being filleted, excising savage tooth marks ... blood pooling ...vise grips biting down on rosy areolae ....
Death.
He took a deep breath and shook himself like a dog shedding water even as he fought being caught up in the flashing emotions.
His muscles were tensed under his dark sweatshirt. They rippled with subconscious desire. Though compact, he kept himself built up, and he had no doubt he could overpower anyone who stood between himself and his chosen quarry. But this was not a physical foe. The sleeping man lay inside his mind, of him but not him, and the sweat rippled down his face inside his mask, cascading like a waterfall.
Remember who he was. Remember what she told him, she who’d sent him here, she who would be terribly disturbed if he failed in his mission. Think. Reason.
The thing which kept him free to hunt, his will, his intelligence, his ability to come and go without witness or interference, held him back. She had imprinted that on him. That, and his mindfulness of his original target. Bound, the sleeping man began to collapse, slumping, then melting away altogether. Gone.
This was business. Pleasure later. He nudged forward to the side of the alley, where a handful of avocado trees hung over weatherbeaten wooden fencing, and the house could still be watched from the back window of the car.
The stalker smiled. He sought prey tonight. He would have to gracefully bow out of this hunt. For the moment. The night was still very young.
He wove his fingers together and stretched them until the knuckles popped faintly. He had infinite patience. He stepped farther back into the shadows, turning to leave.
Under the leaning branches of an avocado tree, a roof rat raced across the boards, snatched a green fruit, and disappeared over the top of a garage.
The stalker continued down the alleyway until he found the house he searched for, a beige house, different from the others on this block in that a second story had been added. Done in ocher with white trim, it was a house that exuded a quiet kind of class and prosperity that set it off from the rest of the neighborhood, which was teetering between middle and lower economic groups. The man had not left the neighborhood when he’d begun to prosper, but had tried to take the neighborhood with him. Under different circumstances, the assassin might have admired the councilman, a man of color, who’d gone far and worked hard. But this was nothing personal.
The stalker paused in the shadows again. Overgrown oleander shrubs and bottlebrush leaned over him, hiding him, their dust as irritating as the oleander leaves were poisonous, but he held his breath for the moment he huddled in their sanctuary. Briskly, he checked his weapon, secured it, ran his fingers over the odd contours of his face, snugged his hood into place. When he stepped out, it was with business in mind.
It was not conscience which drove MacBeth from his sleep and his wife into a waking nightmare, Ibie decided, as he swung
his feet over the bed and slipped them into worn-out, faded plaid slippers. It was a bad prostate. Shakespearean prose not withstanding, it seemed to be the fate of all men, wicked or innocent.
He scrubbed a pink-palmed hand over his face, digging out the sleep, and sighed, looking at his clock. Not even one-thirty. That meant he’d be up again at least one more time before dawn.
He yawned with the realization and then lurched out of bed, the mattress springs creaking. He grabbed for his robe, as comfortably worn and threadbare as the slippers, and shrugged it on. He ought to go in and have the damn thing yanked, or cut, or whatever the surgeons did. He ought to, he knew he ought to, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. No, sir. Not when his doctor had explained some of the possible side effects.
No, sir. Ibie grinned at himself as he shuffled down the upstairs hallway. He had no intention of giving up the ladies. Not that he had many, at his age, and with his dignity of being a city councilman, but he had his chances, and he intended to take them. A hallway mirror reflected his passage, grizzle-haired, mahogany-skinned old man, shoulders still straight, face heavily lined, eyes heavy with sleep.
No, sir, Ibie had no intention of getting cut if he didn’t have to. He already knew it wasn’t cancerous. Just damned inconvenient. But he liked to stroke the sweet, velvety insides of a woman as much as the next man—more, when he’d been young, and he wasn’t giving that away. Uh-uh. So, until they could convince him that he wasn’t going to lose anything but the discomfort, he would get up in the middle of the night with his prostate feeling like a damn cantaloupe, waddle down the hall, and try to pee standing up. If he was too damn sleepy, then he would just sit down, like an old woman. That’s why he wore pajamas and a robe now. It wouldn’t do to be scaring anybody if they found him asleep on the toilet in the morning.
He made his way to the bathroom, relieved himself in spits and spurts as much as he was able, found some comfort, and then decided he was hungry. He’d eaten lightly at dinner and now his stomach growled much the way it had in his youth. Ibie grinned at the memory. He’d had a voracious appetite when young, for women, food, and the law. He’d done all right by all three. He straightened his pajamas, and left the bathroom, padding quietly downstairs toward the kitchen.
His aides all slept with a deafness he admired. Of course, he wore them out. But they did not fear the night, he thought, as he put a hand out to turn on the downstairs light, then hesitated. The telltale gleam might wake NaShonda or one of the other aides who lived in his old house. The kitchen light would be good enough for his aged eyes.
Ibie scuffled his slippered feet into the kitchen at the back of the house, wondering what there was he could eat. If Tildie, bless her heart, was still alive, there’d at least have been sweet potato pie, like pumpkin pie, but sweeter, more pungent with clove and nutmeg and the taste of the sweet potatoes themselves. My, he missed that—and her, the only woman who’d been able to tame him. Had it only been thirty-two years they’d had together? Not long enough. He would make a point of telling St. Peter that at the gate, when he met him. Not long enough at all. He would take the time to tell St. Peter that before sprinting through and finding his beloved, sass-filled Tildie.
He turned the corner and reached out again for the kitchen plate switch, eyes already blinking against what would be a white flood of light, when he saw a movement. Heard something twitch even as his fingers flipped the switch, and he looked toward the deep corner, the corner which angled toward the back door and porch.
As the light came on, it struck the thing which waited for him. Ibie staggered back, slammed into the wall, his head smacking solidly. But the pain he felt was in his throat, no—his chest, spearing downward as he tried to gasp and scream at the same time.
Never in his life had he been so terrified, not even decades ago when he’d awakened to find a white-sheeted and hooded man in his living room. Then, young and strong and fearless, he’d thundered out, “This is Los Angeles. Get the hell out of here!”
Now, words failed him. They swelled in his chest and weighted him down like an anchor. He gargled and clawed at his mouth as if he could free a scream.
The thing moved at him, manlike, dressed in sweats, for Gods’ sake, but its face—and Ibie tried to roll away from him, the awful pain in his chest spreading up into his neck and down into his arm.
The last thing he managed to do was to trigger his alarm necklace and send it blasting into the night, waking his aides and, hopefully, the whole damn neighborhood. There was no way in hell Ibie Walker planned to let any alien take his body and keep him from the gates of heaven and his Tildie.
When the assassin dove back into cover, the coolness had evaporated. His hands shook as he disassembled his weapon which had not even been fired. He dropped the hood from his head, ran his fingers over his face, and ripped off the masklike equipment. He breathed hard. Still in a low squat, he made his way to where he could see the angled front of the house and waited.
He crouched under the oleanders as light flooded the target house. Sound and fury woke the neighbors. A low siren sounded. He could see the emergency vehicle slow, stop, the paramedics disembark, their cases in their hands as they ran to the house.
Nothing in the plans or the preparation had gone wrong, except that he had miscalculated the insomnia of the old. He and his target had run into each other in the kitchen hallway, surprising each other. The councilman had fallen back, gasping. The old man had clutched his chest and gone down, rich brown face graying with pain. He’d had enough presence of mind to set off his medic-alert alarm, but had never uttered a word.
Fright might have done the job meant for a bullet, but the assassin couldn’t count on it. He could not allow the councilman to regain consciousness, to remember, to live. He stayed crouched in the bushes long enough to hear the paramedics talking to one another as the first returned to the vehicle for more equipment, communicating to the mike clipped to his shoulder. He learned where the councilman was going to be taken, which triage unit had room and staff available to treat him immediately.
The assassin backed out of hiding and bolted down the alley, knowing that all attention was directed elsewhere, to the spectacle of the paramedics on the councilman’s front lawn, desperately trying to save a life.
Chapter 6
Light from the backyard flooded her window. It flared into her dreams. McKenzie woke, blinking, her chest heaving while she remembered where she was. She lay still, her pulse thundering in her ears. He’d been chasing, she’d been running. Like Death with his scythe, he’d been after her with a baseball bat, himself faceless, taller, faster, malevolent. Unlike the bloody visions which washed across her from time to time, this had had a reality to it that, even now, pumped adrenaline through her.
She took a deep breath, trying to exorcise the nightmare. She’d slept in her clothes and felt vaguely uncomfortable. The scent of the jacaranda lay heavily on the night air. For some reason, it reminded her of years ago, blocks and blocks away, where the scent of spring was the rich and heavy star jasmine that bloomed at night. Thinking of pajama parties, small escapes from home, she kicked back the covers.
It hadn’t all been a nightmare. She could hear the timbre of a rich, male voice rising in anger. Her father’s voice. Did she smell Four Roses on the air, the cheap whiskey which used to fuel his alcoholic rages? What had she done, what had she come home to? Or was he just being Walt, arguing with the baseball announcer over some call on the game?
McKenzie turned her head to read the dusty face of the clock radio. After two. It couldn’t be the baseball game, now long over, players off the field and out of the showers. The voice continued to swell in belligerence. She lay back uncertainly, wondering if the radio was still on, if she even knew her father’s voice.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” It had to be Walt, bellowing through the house. “Get out of here before I call the cops.”
She sat up. Her jeans had twisted and she
squirmed around in them for more comfort. A thinner, more distant tenor answered her father.
“I came for my wife.”
McKenzie froze, fingers tucking at the hem around her ankle. Her blood went cold. She breathed quick, twice, in and out, then grabbed her ancient baseball bat from the corner. Its weathered wood, old and gray, fit the curve of her hand snugly. She hefted it. The sound of crashing china came from the kitchen.
She opened the door cautiously and put her back to the hallway, crab stepping through the dark tunnel. Only the bat in her hand seemed familiar. She wrapped her hands more tightly about it.
Light from the kitchen spilled out, menacing and sharp to her sleep-darkened eyes. McKenzie stopped as the argument grew louder, took a deep breath, then stepped around the corner.
Floodlights from the yard silhouetted Jack’s angular, wiry body as he moved across the kitchen. She could feel him look at her. “McKenzie,” he said. “You lying little bitch.” Her vision opened. His lips were thin and tight, and his white teeth gleamed. He looked grimly pleased.
Her heart plummeted. It was impossible, there was no way he could have known, she had had it all planned, buried in Los Angeles under thousands of Smiths—how could Jack be here? Only Sarah could have located her and she never would have told voluntarily....
Death Watch Page 6
